What the Tourists of Maldives Don’t Know.

have found myself a new assignment: I think I should go, in person, to Equator Village on the island of Gan, a 5km long by 3km wide patch of coconut palms and white beaches in the Indian Ocean island state of Maldives and check out the following information: India is installing radars there.

Few tourists know, and even fewer brochures reveal, that the Equator Village resort was the Royal Air Force's officers' quarters until 1976. Gan is the southernmost of the Maldives islands, just south of the equator, and it was here that Britain set up a secret naval base in 1941, building airstrips and vast fuel tanks to support its WWII fleet in the Indian Ocean.

“Asia Sentinel” an independent website, reports that now India is preparing to reopen the base to surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and possibly ships, to monitor Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. Under a deal signed in August, India is also installing radar across the Maldives, linked to its coastal command.

The website writes that in private both the Maldives and India admit the move is a direct response to China’s construction of a giant port at Hambantota in nearby Sri Lanka.

It adds that the plan is also being seen as the latest move in a low-level, but escalating struggle for economic and military supremacy between Asia’s two emerging giants. They are competing over naval control of the Indian Ocean, resources and markets in Africa, strategic footholds in Asia — and are even in a race for the Moon.

India feels particularly threatened by China’s “string of pearls” strategy, building ports in Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan that could be used by its navy, the website says. Beijing is concerned that a nuclear deal finalized last year between India and the US, was designed as a counterbalance to China. The deal not only lifted a ban on India buying US nuclear supplies, it also opened the door for India to take part in joint military exercises and buy billions of dollars of US weaponry.

What I want to know is: where will the tourists go? Or will they stay and observe the aircraft, helicopters and ships in addition to the more traditional tropical fish. This is why I need to go there. Bill?

Apparently the RAF barracks haven't changed much since they were turned into the Equator Village resort ... which tourists report is pretty basic.