India's first overseas 'military base' taking shape in Tajikistan

23 July 2007

Quickly and quietly, India is preparing to deploy a squadron of Mi-17 helicopters at the Ayni airbase in Tajikistan, possibly even before the end of this year.India's first real military outpost in a foreign land will give New Delhi a 'strategic' capability in energy-rich Central Asia

India recently completed refurbishing the airbase at Ayni (also known as Farkhor), just 10 km northeast of Dushanbe, Tajikistan's capital, at a cost of around Rs100 crore ($25 million), after four years of hard work. The airbase, shut since the late '80s, after the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, is to be operated under a trilateral joint agreement between India, Russia and Tajikistan.

The defence ministry — with the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security — has renovated and upgraded the base using engineers from the Border Roads Organisation, which extended and relaid the runway, constructed three aircraft hangars and an air-control tower, and installed perimeter security fencing around the base.

Tripartite tete-a-tete
In April 2002, when Indo-Pak relations were at their lowest following the attack on the Indian parliament and Pak airspace was closed to Indian aircraft, then Indian defense minister George Fernandes first signed a bilateral agreement with Tajikistan for renovation of the base during a visit to Dushanbe.

Initially, two squadrons of MiG-29 fighter-bombers were to operate from Ayni, but the proposed Indian force was later downgraded to a single helicopter squadron. The final trilateral agreement does not explicitly provide for use of the base by the Indian Armed Forces.

However, clandestine military cooperation between India and Tajikistan goes back to the 1990s, during the Afghan civil war, when both Tajikistan and India opposed the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime and threw their diplomatic weight behind the Northern Alliance. During this period, India also quietly helped to maintain the Northern Alliance's minuscule fleet of helicopters.

India's immediate plan, according to defence ministry sources, is be to deploy Mi-17 helicopters, as well as some Kiran trainer aircraft to train Tajik pilots, by the end of the year. But this is likely to be just a prelude to establishing a larger strategic imprint in a geography that India sees as crucial to its growing energy needs. Eventually, we may well see MiG-29s operating from the airbase.