Opinion The widening Gulf

Neither the previous charge nor the current one against India’s Middle East policy will stand too close a scrutiny. But there is no denying that India faces some very difficult political challenges in coping with the unfolding instability in the Middle East.

Part of the misunderstanding of New Delhi’s policy lies in the fact that the international discourse on the Middle East today occurs in the theatre of the United Nations Security Council,where India is a non-permanent member.

The Western powers want the UNSC to legitimatise their policies in the Middle East. Russia and China tend to leverage their special position as permanent members of the UNSC to bargain with the West as well as secure their own specific interests in the Middle East.

The West has posed the issues in Libya and Syria in terms of humanitarian intervention,regime change and sanctions. Russia and China tend to support the status quo where regimes friendly to them are targeted by the West.

India certainly does not like the current situation where the broad contours of the debate are being defined by the other powers and Delhi is compelled to take positions within that framework.

On Syria,India has sought to develop an independent diplomatic line along with Brazil and South Africa,but has not acquired much traction. Emphasising India’s “strategic autonomy” in the Middle East is probably easier than dealing with the radical changes in the regional balance of power and its impact on inter-state and intra-state conflict.

As the conflict in Syria worsens and begins to have a profound impact on the rest of the region,India needs to review many of the traditional premises of its policy towards the Middle East. Five considerations stand out.

First,India must discard its temptation to view all conflicts in the region as the expression of an unending conflict between the West and the Middle East. India’s anti-colonial legacy and its baggage of “Third World” radicalism do help explain this approach.

But it was never a good framework to understand the region’s complex dynamics. Many countries in the Middle East have voluntarily chosen security alliances with the West as a protection against local threats,especially against powerful neighbours.

While Western interventions continue to muddy the waters in the Middle East,the relative decline of US power means Washington is no longer in a position to dominate the region in the manner that it used to in the past. In many ways,the failure of the costly US occupation of Iraq,from 2003 to 2011,is a reminder of this new reality.

Second,many in India tend to reduce US interests in the Middle East to oil. In the last few years,US dependence on oil imports from the Middle East has declined amidst the emergence of new sources of production at home and greater imports from Latin America and western Africa.

Today,the Asian powers,especially India and China,need the Gulf oil a lot more than the US does and have the largest stakes in the stability of the region.

Third,the internal faultlines in the Middle East have always been as consequential as the ones between the region and the West. When those contradictions manifested themselves,for example,in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s,Indian foreign policy was paralysed.

While the Arab-Israeli conflict endures,the contradiction between Saudi Arabia and Iran has gained a new salience in the Persian Gulf and beyond in recent years. In Bahrain and Syria,for example,the proxy conflict between Riyadh and Tehran has acquired alarming proportions.

Fourth,as it figures out the new rivalries between regional powers,Delhi must also pay attention to the internal faultlines within most Middle Eastern nations. Most countries in the region have significant minorities that are restive. In Syria and Bahrain,minority sectarian groups rule over sullen majorities.

None of these internal fissures has become more important than the tension between the Shia and the Sunni which has enveloped the region — from Syria to Saudi Arabia and Yemen to Bahrain.

As the last US troops left Iraq this week,the Shia prime minister,Nouri al-Maliki,has charged the Sunni vice president,Tariq al-Hashimi,of harbouring death squads targeting Shia officials. Al-Hashimi has denied the charges and has taken refuge in the Kurdish territory of the republic.

A meeting of the GCC earlier this week accused Tehran of “instigating sectarian violence” in the region and demanded that Iran end its interference in the internal affairs of the Arab nations.

Finally,any sensible Indian policy towards the Middle East must be rooted in an unflinching defence of its expansive interests on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. India’s trade with the GCC countries is touching $100 billion and the near six million Indian workers there send home $30 billion dollars every year.

Above all,the GCC supplies more than 40 per cent of India’s rapidly expanding crude oil imports. None of the other Indian interests in the Middle East are comparable to these high stakes in the GCC.

To be sure,India would want to maintain good relations with all sides to the unfolding conflicts in the Middle East. Unlike in the past,when India could sit out on the fence or hide behind abstract principles,it will now have to choose between different forces in the Middle East.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi,express@expressindia.com