• Country should move quickly to bridge gaps in submarine cable protection structures
• Poor understanding and lack of strategic leadership risk leaving SL behind
• State patronage and regional cooperation needed to effectively protect submarine cables and deter disruption

Sri Lanka needs to build awareness, craft effective policies, and encourage regional multilateral frameworks to develop a multi-pronged approach to secure its national interest and safeguard regional stability in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), as the region and its seabed have become an area of strategic competition, experts said last week.

The Indian Ocean has been a maritime highway for millennia, with Sri Lanka being a midway point of the flow of trade, culture, technology, and intellectual progress. From the 1870s onwards, the Indian Ocean also became the global communications highway, with the British Empire laying submarine cables from Aden to Mumbai, linking Europe to South Asia. 

Since then, with the passage of time, Ceylon, and later Sri Lanka, has seen the bulk of the global digital communications umbilical laid through its maritime domain of influence, with over a dozen such cables laid over the island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) thus far. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increasing digitisation, such submarine cables have become critical strategic infrastructure for the island nation as well as the region.

The expert commentary regarding the need for Sri Lanka to ‘up its game’ came during the fourth Pathfinder Indian Ocean Security Conference (PFIOSC). The conference, organised by the think tank Pathfinder Foundation, was held in Colombo. 

The timely conference came as world powers rushed to secure critical minerals needed to maintain a technology edge over rivals both militarily and economically disrupting the longstanding rules-based order, especially at sea and in trade. The lack of cognition regarding how to understand and navigate the return to a near Cold War era strategic competition in the Indian Ocean, and increasingly in the sub-surface domain and the seabed, amongst Sri Lanka’s policy making community, bureaucrats, and public leaves the economically weakened island nation more vulnerable to geopolitical coercion, shocks, and tug-o-war, which will likely increase in the coming decade.

Era of geopolitical flux

Retired Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon – a former Indian Foreign Secretary, National Security Advisor, and New Delhi’s High Commissioner to Colombo – stated at the conference that while the Indian Ocean had faced many challenges in recent years, it had largely remained a zone of peace since the end of World War II.

“I’m not sure that in today’s situation, we can achieve an Indian Ocean free of power rivalry and power politics. We’ve been lucky so far,” Menon opined, citing increasing challenges, including adverse weather incidents, the change in the world order, and changes in technology, how warfare is being waged, and the rush to secure resources to maintain global economic dominance, all of which bring many challenges and opportunities to the region. 

He complimented Sri Lanka for having displayed remarkable resilience in the face of the many challenges it has faced over the last two decades.

The veteran diplomat pointed out that navigating the emerging world order, especially as it increasingly made inroads into our relatively “peaceful neighbourhood” of the IOR, was the critical political task which no Indian Ocean littoral state could disregard. 

“As the lines between war and peace are increasingly blurred, we must be able to tell our broader populace, especially in democracies like ours, of the wider array of threats that we face. Our political systems are not very good at this. Neither are security professionals, quite frankly. But conferences like this can help to perform that function. And it’s also in conferences like this that we can think through issues of Indian Ocean security. But for me, most of all, a time of rapid change like this is also an opportunity, a chance to do things that we find difficult in normal times but know that we must work together for our common security and prosperity. For that is still true because our fates in the Indian Ocean world are linked and depend on how we learn, think, and act in this hinge moment.”

The race to the bottom

Addressing the conference, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Canada Senior Fellow Jonathan Miller opined that while the Indian Ocean was well established as a maritime highway, the strategic calculation was rapidly shifting. 

“It is becoming something else. It’s becoming a frontier not just of trade but of extraction, and not just of transit, of course, but of competition. The seabed itself is moving from a periphery of strategic thinking to what I think is actually the centre. So, when we’re talking about different Indo-Pacific strategies, and you look at a map, you look at the geoeconomic realities, I think the IOR sits right at the juncture of that,” he said.

“The Indian Ocean in particular is home to significant polymetallic nodules, a seafloor mass of sulphides, and cobalt-rich crusts. And of course, these resources are not evenly distributed, and neither are the capabilities to explore them,” Miller added.

Former Navy Chief of Staff and Chief Hydrographer, Rear Admiral (Retd) Y.N. Jayarathna, delivering the main presentation on ‘Seabed Minerals: Strategic Competition and Security Implications in the Indian Ocean,’ explained to the gathering how Sri Lanka had missed several opportunities in the past. He outlined how seabed minerals and seabed features, which began as scientific research interests in the 1950s, gradually became a strategic subject during the height of the Cold War.

According to Jayarathna, with changes in the global order during the mid-2010s, the interest in mapping the seabed, its features, and resources increased significantly, with the Chinese committing significant resources to map seabed features, including those in the Indian Ocean. He opined that while Sri Lanka had an early start with maritime issues and seabed charting, the lack of strategic foresight and leadership had taken the wind out of the sails. He argued that scientific knowledge and research were critical to formulate strategic plans to secure national interest, yet Sri Lanka’s lacklustre efforts in the domain and reactionary self-restraint to collaborative maritime scientific research due to geopolitical tensions were scuttling the island’s future prospects ahead of time.

International Laws which govern the seabed fall under the UNCLOS and the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Sri Lanka’s claims to expand the island’s jurisdiction over the continental shelf region of the seabed south and southeast of Sri Lanka are ongoing.

However, it is reliably learnt that Sri Lanka has yet to post a delegate to the ISA, which is headquartered in the Caribbean. Sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told The Sunday Morning that “steps are currently underway” to do so, but the process lacks institutional momentum due to poor policy cognition at the national leadership level.

Protecting the digital umbilical

Globally, submarine cables carry 95% of the world’s total communications, while satellites are only able to handle 7% of global data traffic. Many key submarine cables that link Europe with the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa lie on the seabed of Sri Lanka’s EEZ. The highest density of submarine cables in the Indian Ocean falls in Sri Lanka’s EEZ or travels around the island.

Today, with geopolitics returning to ‘seabed warfare’ (unauthorised surveillance, disruption, or destruction of undersea communication infrastructure), and the growth of the digital economy, Sri Lanka needs to view its ‘digital umbilical’ to the world as critical national infrastructure and act accordingly.

Prof. Nobukatsu Kanehara of the Reitaku University, Japan, who delivered the keynote address at the Indian Ocean Security Conference, told The Sunday Morning that while submarine cable protection was difficult, repairing them was not difficult, if the necessary expertise was utilised. 

“Deep-sea cables are essential tools of communication. The optical fibre cable made possible an astronomical amount of data transfer. International financing systems depend on deep-sea cables today. Deep-sea cables are fragile and it is very difficult to defend them perfectly. Japan has a large number of deep-sea cables, so that it is difficult (for a malicious actor) to cut them all. Repairing the damaged deep-sea cables is not difficult. There are companies which specialise in it. But landing spots where many deep-sea cables are landing (coming ashore) together can be a target of an enemy in contingency,” Prof. Kanehara said.

Admiral (Retd) Prof. Jayanth Colombage, addressing the forum, described how Sri Lanka was one of the first nations in the region to initiate a National Submarine Cables Protection and Resilience Framework (NSCPRF) to craft legislation for the protection of submarine cables which supply Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is no stranger to the dangers posed to the submarine data cables which link the island to the world. In 2004, it suffered its first major internet and international communications outage which lasted a few days when the Indian-flagged merchant vessel State of Nagaland dragged its anchor over the SEA-ME-WE3 data cable that supplied linkages to Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT). The incident occurred in a coastal area which had restrictions put in place to stop ships from deploying anchors. SLT later took the vessel owners to court seeking $ 5 million as compensation for damages. The cost to the economy from the outage has not been calculated.

One of the challenges in protecting submarine cables is that a majority of them are owned, laid, and operated by corporate telecommunication consortia, making national jurisdiction of them difficult beyond the limits of a coastal nation’s territorial sea.

When asked if the protection and resilience of submarine cables should be led by the private sector or if it should be a hybrid approach where the State plays a critical role, Adm. Colombage told The Sunday Morning that a resilient strategy to protect submarine cables could not be undertaken solely by the private sector. “For them, it is a big business. They own the ships, lay the cables, maintain them, and repair them if necessary. However, these cables are strategic assets that have a direct bearing on the national security of the State. Hence, the national reliance strategy should be drawn by the State, but a role can be incorporated for the private sector as a contingency response facility.”

R. Adm. Jayarathna told The Sunday Morning that, while the Sri Lanka Telecommunications (Amendment) Act No.39 of 2024 served as the basis for Sri Lanka’s submarine cable protection structure, it alone was not sufficient.

“Enactment (of the act) alone will not suffice to meet the needs of the subject matter. Government officials at each stakeholder agency need to know where they stand in serving the legislative framework – for example, how to use the plethora of data available for Sri Lankan statecraft to proactively see potential submarine cable emergencies by way of vessels of interest (VoI) and possible sea areas where that could happen, etc. The knowledge and understanding of the submarine cable, apart from the commercial interests to secure State interests, are solely dependent on statecraft, and how wisely they are to use the data and proactively engage is today’s priority as we are empowered with the basic framework.”

Jayarathna pointed out that the region was also moving ahead to secure its interest regarding submarine cables, with India working to enforce a Union Government Enactment and seemed to be actively engaged in world forums for submarine protection, such as the International Cable Protection Committee, rather than expediting their legislative process. The Maldives and Bangladesh were guided by the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime (UNODC) to introduce the protection framework as they did as a pilot project for Sri Lanka, but the process is still pending for formal approval at respective governments.

When asked if Sri Lanka should leverage its strategic position to be a monitoring, response, and repair hub for submarine cables in the IOR, Jayarathna opined: “Yes, Sri Lanka remains an ideal ‘stand-by’ position for the cable repair ships and the emergency response. SLT maintains a spare-part depot in Galle to meet the contingencies of its main consortium partnership, SEA-ME-WE. However, we are in a position to go an extra step with detailed and elaborate arrangements to have a cable repair ship standing by in one of the ports and responding swiftly, but such a need requires State patronage in terms of berthing concessions and levies. These berthing does not fall into the lay-off category, thus will be considered under prevailing commercial categories, imposing high financial cost to be at harbours. However, we do not see the strategic value of such.”

Colombage advocated that Sri Lanka should build on the existing regional architecture to improve regional cooperation on protecting submarine cables. “Fostering common understanding and interpretation among like-minded nations, especially within a region, is essential to protect submarine cables from possible intentional damage by an interested party, whether it is a state or non-state actor or a non-state actor backed by a state. For the Indian Ocean, the best multilateral organisation for this common understanding would be the IORA. IORA can issue a joint statement narrowing the interpretation of ‘incident of navigation’ under Article 97 of UNCLOS to exclude intentional sabotage, thereby allowing coastal states to assert adjudicative authority. The Colombo Security Conclave was created for maritime domain awareness but now assumes the role of multi domain awareness, which includes the undersea environment. It can combine the protection of submarine cables as one of its main responsibilities. It has now expanded to include Mauritius and the Seychelles. Hence, a larger area of the Indian Ocean could be covered. We cannot create separate and new multilateral architectures, as it will take a long time, and due to the prevailing strategic competition, it may not even be possible.”