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India, Iran: Strategic
realignment
By Ajai Sahni
NEW
DELHI - In a country notorious for its inability to
"think strategically", the rudiments of a strategic
perspective are beginning to fall into place under the
extraordinary threats and pressures generated by the
enveloping shadow of terrorism in South Asia.
India has, for the whole of its independent
existence, remained committed to a policy of importunate
conciliation towards Pakistan - a country that has, at
the same time, exhausted the preponderance of the Indian
security perspectives and resources, and that has
adopted a posture of unrelenting hostility towards
India.
This hostility has been expressed in four
conventional wars (including the Kargil War of 1999) and
a campaign of cross border terrorism that was initiated
in Indian Punjab in the mid-1980s; that has steadily
intensified in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989; and that is
being gradually and systematically extended to other
parts of the country as well. This hostility was
extended into Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, and
was particularly noticeable during the hijack of IC 814
in December 1999, and in the Pakistan-Afghan collusion
with the hijackers at that time.
Though too much cannot be read into the visit (as chief
guest at India's 54th Republic Day celebrations) of the
Iranian President Seyed Mohammad Khatami, it is possible
to identify elements of an evolving strategy for the
containment of the crystallizing epicenter of Islamist
extremist terrorism in Pakistan, as well as a shared
interest in, and strategy for, the stabilization and
development of Central Asia. India's efforts to
cultivate relationships with Iran are also driven by an
attempt - at this juncture essentially optimistic and in
the extended long-term - to ensure India's energy
security by looking for alternative and cost-effective
sources of oil and natural gas supplies.
Khatami
was careful to balance his present visit to India with
another, just a month ago, to Pakistan; as well as to
moderate his rhetoric on the more contentious aspects of
the India-Pakistan confrontation over Kashmir. The
deepening of relations with India, he emphasized, was
"not aimed at any third country". Nevertheless, India
and Iran have found it possible to agree that the
current campaign against terrorism "should not be based
on double standards", and have sought to work for the
early finalization of a comprehensive convention against
international terrorism.
It is, however, the
pattern of agreements for cooperation in the "energy,
transport and trade sector" that provide an outline of
the strategic architecture that is being evolved in the
tentative India-Iran entente.
The most
significant elements of the agreements signed at Delhi
on Saturday, January 25, were the prospects of joint
development of new road and rail routes to Afghanistan
and Central Asia through the Iranian port of Chahbahar.
The Indian Border Roads Organization is to upgrade the
200-kilometer track between Zeranj and Delaran - which
links with the Garland Road network in Afghanistan, and
goes forward into the Central Asian Republics.
Iran is also asking India to take up
construction of the Chahbahar-Fahraj-Bam railway link.
The direct consequence of these developments is that
India would be able to bypass the Pakistani blockade of
its westward linkages, and restore efficient connections
to Afghanistan, and through these, into Central Asia - a
region that has become crucial to India's perceptions of
its future energy security.
As West Asia -
India's principal source of oil at present - edges
towards destabilization, cementing the stability of the
infant Central Asian republics, which currently sit on
significant resources of oil and natural gases, has
become a crucial strategic objective, not only for this
country, but indeed, for the US and the Western world as
well. Energy stability lies at the core of the stability
of the international order today, and Iran, by virtue of
its location, will remain a crucial player in the
structure of relationships with the Central Asian
republics.
At the same time, Iran and India have
come to share concerns regarding the potential for
renewed Pakistani mischief in Afghanistan. It is
significant that India and Iran had cooperated with the
Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to confront the
Pakistan-backed Taliban regime in that country, well
before such support became "accepted wisdom" after the
events of September 11, 2001.
Eventually,
despite initial hesitation, the US forces had also
combined with the Northern Alliance to expel the Taliban
from Afghanistan. The US campaign in Afghanistan,
however, failed to establish a strong and credible
regime with the will and the power to extend its fiat
over the whole country, and the Pashtun areas along its
borders with Pakistan remain virtually ungoverned.
In addition, the fundamentalist Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal has consolidated its hold over the
bordering provinces in Pakistan - the North West
Frontier Province and Balochistan; and if even Pakistani
commentators are to be believed, this has happened
through the active intervention of President General
Pervez Musharraf's military regime. America's persistent
indulgence of Pakistan's double dealing on terrorism,
the regrouping of the Taliban - al-Qaeda combine in
Pakistan, and the ambiguity of the situation along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border, have once again created a
situation of enormous potential destabilization; an
opportunity that Pakistan, with its track record, cannot
be expected to ignore. India's misgivings have been
exacerbated after the US recently - on Pakistan's behest
- told it to "go slow" on its developmental and
diplomatic interventions in Afghanistan.
Iran's
relations with Pakistan, it may be recalled, soured
substantially over Pakistan's support to the Taliban
regime - and consequently to the atrocities that regime
inflicted on Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority. Tensions
have also been high over Pakistan's treatment of, and
what is widely believed to be state-tolerated terrorism
against, its own Shi'ite minority. The extent of the
shift in the Iranian position can be assessed by the
fact that, during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, Iran had
openly and actively supported Pakistan, providing that
country with arms and military spares.
What has
been left out of the Delhi Agreement is, perhaps, as
significant as what has been included. There has been a
strong interest for some time now in building a pipeline
for oil and natural gas from Iran to India, either over
land through Pakistan, or under sea, skirting the
Pakistan coast. Iran had vigorously been pushing for the
more economical overland link through Pakistan, a
proposal that would have given Pakistan an estimated
US$500 million to $600 million annually in royalties.
The prospects for an overland pipeline have now
receded amid rising concerns about the security of the
pipeline - and possible misgivings in the Indian
establishment of channeling a substantial and assured
revenue to Pakistan, which could well end up feeding the
supply lines of Pakistan's jihad against India.
Musharraf has, of course, given an assurance that
Pakistan will protect the pipeline through its territory
- but his competence, if not his intentions, on this
count are in question after the main gas pipeline to the
Punjab and the North West Frontier Province from Sui has
been attacked and disrupted twice in January 2003
itself.
Iran is, of course, categorized as one
of the countries along the axis of evil. India, however,
has reservations on this characterization and sees Iran
as a potentially stable and increasingly moderate and
democratizing influence in the world of Islam.
Significantly, at Delhi, Khatami endorsed the idea that
"an Islam that relied on democracy would be
sustainable".
It is this possibility, an
increasing convergence on strategic perceptions, and a
commitment to democratic governance in Iran, that India
seeks to actualize through strengthening bilateral
relations. While Iran's role in West Asia remains under
an international microscope, the possibility that it
will eventually be replaced by Pakistan in the axis of
evil is not altogether remote.
Ajai
Sahni, editor, South Asia Intelligence Review;
executive director, Institute for Conflict Management, a
non-profit society set up in 1997 in New Delhi committed
to the evaluation and resolution of problems of internal
security in South Asia.
Published with
permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review of
the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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