Tuesday, Jul 15, 2003
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By Harish Khare
The no-troops decision commended itself politically. Both the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi were against the idea; perhaps the only time in recent years the two have held the same view. Ms. Gandhi had, in fact, written to the Prime Minister on June 4 last on the subject. In that communication, she had warned that "the Congress party would be totally opposed to the deployment of Indian troops under any arrangement other than a U.N. command or as part of a multinational peace keeping force that has the explicit mandate of the U.N." Today's outcome was a foregone conclusion because the Prime Minister had made up his mind against sending the troops. In the beginning, Mr. Vajpayee was known to have an open mind and allowed an internal debate within the Government, but in recent weeks he had reportedly come to the "no troops" conclusion. Quiet prime ministerial assertiveness had its impact on the collective thinking. The Vajpayee Government could not overlook the possible adverse domestic political fallout. As a senior adviser pointed out: "The bottom line is, no matter how you read Resolution 1483, our troops will have to serve under someone else — General John Abizaid (the new commander of the U.S. Central Command)." This was unpalatable to the "deshbhakti constituency" at home. The NDA Government has assiduously tried to manufacture an aura of patriotic and unselfish service around the Indian defence forces, and it was not prepared to subject them to a situation where the troops would get killed doing some other power's dirty work. Given the known opposition of the Congress, the Left, the Samajwadi Party and mindful of the reservations within the Sangh Parivar, the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues were not convinced of strategic advantages (limited, to begin with) over political disadvantages in sending Indian troops to Iraq. The "strategic advantages" argument looked less and less attractive after the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal's recent visit to Washington. At the Pentagon, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, is reported to have told Mr. Sibal that the Indian forces might be required for as long as 30 months. This possible prolonged stay — with every possibility of the Indian troops taking hits — changed the balance of considerations against obliging the United States. Then, there were definite strategic disadvantages of adverse reaction from Iran and Turkey to the presence of Indian troops. Even the inclusion of Abdel-Aziz-al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) in the new American-sponsored Iraq Governing Council was not deemed to be good enough reason to ignore Iran's misgivings. India had a definite idea of these misgivings from its interactions with Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the SCIRI's supreme leader. When all is said and done, once it became known that the Prime Minister had made up his mind against sending troops, the mood within the CCS changed. Mr. Sinha was the last to shed his ambivalence.
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