Myanmar is building spy base on Coco Islands, Chinese hand doubted

Instead of the phantom Chinese intelligence post still prevalent in the popular imagination, the latest images reveal that Myanmar may soon be intending to conduct maritime surveillance operations from Great Coco Island, the largest in an isolated archipelago that lies just 55 kilometres north of India’s strategic Andaman and Nicobar Islands, reports Chatham House website.

The photos from January 2023 by Maxar Technologies, which specializes in satellite imagery, show renewed levels of construction activity on Great Coco.

Visible are two new hangars, a new causeway and what appears to be an accommodation bloc, all of which are visible in proximity to a freshly lengthened 2,300-metre runway and radar station.

Visible as of late March on the southern tip of Great Coco, just beyond the causeway connecting the islands, is evidence of land clearing efforts indicating construction work to come, read the website.

The past two years of civil war in Myanmar have left it isolated internationally with the military junta, known as the Tatmadaw, increasingly fragile.

Beijing has staked a large investment in the country via the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor to access Indian Ocean sea lanes as a way to bypass the Strait of Malacca – which has acted as a critical sea lane for shipping destined for China’s east coast – and direct energy imports instead over land into China’s Yunnan province.

Growing evidence suggests Myanmar’s military coup has increased Beijing’s influence in the country, the website reported.

With Myanmar’s armed forces struggling to control large swaths of the country and with the economy in freefall, China seems to be shoring up the regime and protecting its investments for now.

Chinese companies are believed to be operating on the ground, building major infrastructure projects such as deep-water ports, while the junta is allocating the few troops it has left to protect them.

This has implications for India’s strategic interests in the region, as New Delhi seeks to counter China’s growing influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

With the Coco Island developments, India may soon face a new airbase close by in a country increasingly tied to Beijing.

The militarization of the Coco Islands by the Tatmadaw, combined with the wider Chinese developments occurring inland, could pose a significant security challenge to India and its navy.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands provide India’s Eastern Fleet strategic depth in the Bay of Bengal and command approaches to the Strait of Malacca, the website reported.

Chinese commercial shipping could soon bypass the strait and offload their cargo in Myanmar, nullifying India’s advantage. Meanwhile an expanded airbase on Great Coco opens the possibility that India may soon have to contend with Tatmadaw eyes watching the movements of its warships.

There is another concern. If China were to further apply pressure to the Tatmadaw, leveraging naval intelligence acquired from surveillance flights from Great Coco for desperately needed economic investment, it would give Beijing a key regional advantage over New Delhi, the website added.

Fears that China could use Myanmar to monitor the Indian navy are not new, especially in the context of Great Coco.

Conspiracy theories dominate the recent history of the Coco Island chain.

Despite efforts to debunk them, they underpin almost all the conjecture around Great Coco, with any activity by Myanmar to reinforce its military presence seen as having a Chinese hand behind it. It is essential then to sort fact from fiction.