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Russia challenges US in the Islamic world
By M K Bhadrakumar
insinuates that American oil companies are siphoning off Iraq's oil wealth and
are making a killing out of high oil prices (though these are also provideing
Russia with a windfall); that the US strategy is to establish political and
military control over the region; that the US "simply does not want
stabilization in Iraq, and will keep a sustained conflict"; that the Bush
administration may deliberately launch an intensive air attack against Iran
with the sole purpose of crippling Iran's military and economic infrastructure,
which would make Tehran's "claims to regional leadership unrealistic for a long
time to come", to quote Moscow commentators.
Russia is now shifting gear and is extending its involvement in the Middle East
by directly challenging the US's traditional dominance of the region. Lavrov
made as the signal tune of his
regional tour the Russian proposal to sponsor an international conference on
the Middle East. The Arab countries have nothing against the Russian proposal,
though they doubt its efficacy, but Israel bristles. Moscow is aware that
Washington expects Israel to stifle the proposal. The issue, again, becomes one
of public perceptions. Lavrov tauntingly told the Western media while on a
visit to Paris on March 11, "My trip to the Middle East next week will make it
clear finally who is ready for a [international] conference, and who is not. If
all the parties are ready for that, we will hold such a conference."
Lavrov claimed all the so-called Quartet members - the US, the European Union,
the United Nations and Russia - have "already shown an interest" in Moscow
hosting the international conference. Washington would be seething with
irritation that it couldn't afford to publicly contradict the Russian claim.
Similarly, the Kremlin's policy criss-crosses the "Shi'ite-Sunni" divide that
the Bush administration meticulously tried to erect on the Middle East and the
Persian Gulf chessboard in recent years. Moscow stresses the "civilizational"
aspect of the crisis and dilutes the relevance of the sectarian barriers that
the US encourages in the Muslim world. In his message to the Dakar summit,
Putin stressed the "danger of the world divided between religions and
civilizations", while he called for efforts "aimed at preventing an inter-faith
and inter-ethnic divide".
To be sure, the Russian policy spontaneously strikes a chord of affinity in the
Muslim psyche when Moscow blames the Western world for portraying Islam as a
religion that drives international terrorism, whereas, the issue, Russian
thinkers maintain, really concerns manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism. As
the doyen of Russian "Orientalists" and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov
wrote in an essay some two years ago when the Kremlin's new thinking towards
the Muslim world began to surface, "Islamic fundamentalism is about building
mosques, observing Islamic rites, and providing assistance to the faithful. But
aggressive, extremist Islamic fundamentalism is about using force to impose an
Islamic model of governance on the state and society."
With a strong undertone of irony, Primakov pointed out, "History knows of
periods when Christian fundamentalism grew into Christian-Catholic extremism:
Remember the Jesuits or the Crusades."
Economic gains of friendship
But everything in the Russian policy is not about politics and history, either.
Ultimately, Moscow places emphasis on the expansion of economic interests. The
"peace dividend" of Russia's growing friendship with the Islamic world is
already not inconsiderable in economic terms. In January, for instance, Russia
won an US$800 million tender to construct a 520-kilometer railway line in Saudi
Arabia. The Russian arms export monopoly, Rosoboronexport, is on record that
Russia was discussing supply of T-90 tanks and armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia
worth $1 billion.
Again, Russia delivered to Egypt upgraded S-125 Pechora-2M and Tor M-1 air
defense systems despite US control over Cairo's military-technical policy. On
Tuesday, Russia signed a path-breaking agreement with Egypt allowing Russian
companies to build nuclear power plants in Egypt and envisaging Russia
providing training for Egyptian nuclear technicians and supplying nuclear fuel.
Evidently, Cairo expects that cooperation with Russia will be more advantageous
since the US imposes strict conditions, including regular inspections and
control. The US has been pressuring Egypt to place its nuclear program under
American control, even as a tender is expected to be floated later this year
for Egypt's first nuclear power plant estimated to cost about $2 billion.
Indeed, politics and business are developing between Russia and Egypt on
parallel tracks. Speaking after the signing of the Russia-Egypt nuclear power
agreement in Moscow, Putin said in the presence of visiting Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak that the two countries will work together as "mediators" to end
Israel-Palestine violence and that they saw eye-to-eye on the criticality of an
accord between Hamas and Fatah before progress could be made on forming an
independent Palestinian state.
No less important is the return of the Russian oil company LUKoil to Iraq. The
company had a contract with the regime of Saddam Hussein, signed in 1997, to
develop Iraq's largest oil field, West Qurna-2, which has estimated reserves of
about 6 billion barrels of oil.
On Wednesday, following talks in Baghdad by a Russian team led by Deputy
Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, the prospects have brightened for reviving
LUKoil's production-sharing agreement over West Qurna-2. (Chevron has been
reportedly keen to jettison LUKoil and secure West Qurna-2). Again on
Wednesday, one of Russia's largest engineering firms in the oil sector,
Stroytransgaz, signed a protocol on reconstructing the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline
connecting north Iraqi fields to the Syrian port of Baniyas.
Coincidence or not, the very next day, on Thursday, a Russian Foreign Ministry
spokesman said in Moscow, "We are urging political and religious leaders in
Iraq to do their utmost to end this fratricidal conflict, creating the
necessary conditions for building a democratic and prosperous state. Moscow is
convinced that a path to settling the crisis in Iraq lies through comprehensive
dialogue, the search for compromise, and the achievement of real national
reconciliation and accord between all ethnic and religious communities in the
country."
The Russian challenge is indeed becoming serious for Washington. Kosovo was a
wake-up call over the decline of US influence and the rise in Russia's prestige
in the Islamic world. Conceivably, the White House press secretary had a point
when she admitted Bush had a hard time locating a personality endowed with the
genius of a Renaissance man to be the US's special envoy to the OIC. Cumber's
background at CACH Capital does give him a keen insight into how economic
integration affects the political and cultural relationship between the US and
the Muslim world.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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