The Hindu : India's opportunity in Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 02, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

India's opportunity in Iraq

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI MAY 1. India has a historic opportunity at hand to play a definitive role in shaping the evolution of a new Iraq. But is New Delhi ready to seize the moment? Or will it succumb to the traditional impulses of political timidity dressed up in vacuous rhetoric? Sources in the Government indicate that Indian forces are ready to move humanitarian and medical relief as well as deliver other elements of support to the Iraqi people at short notice.

Yet, the Government appears paralysed by a theological debate on the need for an agreed political framework at the United Nations Security Council on Iraq.

The Foreign Office is believed to be delaying, and in effect preventing, a productive Indian role in Iraq by insisting on a prior understanding at the UNSC. The full import of this line of reasoning makes one wonder if the political commitment of New Delhi is to the U.N. or the Iraqi people. It also raises the basic question on whether the mission of Foreign Office is to promote multilateralism or find ways to pursue India's own national interests.

Must India await the outcome of a decision-making process in the UNSC, where it has no role whatsoever, before it can protect its enduring stake in Iraq and a long-standing friendship with the Iraqi people? That precisely is what the champions of multilateralism are saying: India's interests in Iraq must be subordinated to the murky political bargaining among the members of the UNSC.

India's diplomacy in a region of vital interest, it is being argued, must be subject to the conditions that will be laid out by an organisation which has no record of taking India's concerns into account.

India's long-term interests in Iraq are straight forward. It has a big stake in the political stability of Iraq and the Persian Gulf as whole. Developments in that neighbouring region comprehensively affect India's economy and national security.

India's immediate interests too are clear-cut. India has long campaigned for a lifting of sanctions against Iraq, and it has no reason to delay this because there are technical glitches to be sorted out in the U.N.

India would also like to see the maintenance of the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq, the establishment of an early representative government that will run the nation on modern, secular lines. India also has strong economic and energy interests to protect and develop in Iraq.

For decades, India had meekly adjusted to the power play in the Gulf. But the current situation offers India a rare prospect of emerging as an important player, in its own right, in the region.

It is self-defeating for India to debate its role in Iraq in terms of a U.N. imprimatur. For a U.N. mandate will eventually emerge.

Great Britain, one of the leading members of the American coalition in Iraq, is indeed working to get an early U.N. involvement. The expectation is that the U.N. will indeed come up with a set of political formulations on Iraq in the next few weeks.

Nor is there an operational contradiction between the U.N. and the American coalition that constrains India's ability to respond to the needs of the Iraqi people. There is nothing stopping India from going into Iraq, except self-doubt.

In entering Iraq, India is under no compulsion to play a subservient role to the coalition forces. All it needs is a methodology of coordination with the Anglo-American combine. A big choice stares India in its face. Should New Delhi adopt an active role in Iraq or wait passively for the U.N. to decide its next move?

An India that moves boldly will be in a better position to shape the international debate on the future of Iraq and defend its interests. Activism now will make India a power of consequence in Iraq and the Gulf. An India that ducks for U.N. cover will become marginal to Gulf security.

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