Iraqis learn red tape, the Indian
way By Arun Bhattacharjee
NEW
DELHI - Behind the more visible show of cooperation
through a joint air exercise between the air forces of
the two countries over Alaska, or joint commando
operations in Kashmir, relations between India and the
United States have reached a stage where apparent
differences over principles no longer derail the process
of understanding that has taken almost half a century to
build.
Although India refused to join the US-led
war in Iraq, criticized President George W Bush and
declined to send Indian troops for post-war
peace-keeping missions - a departure from the
traditional Indian role as a global peace keeper under
the United Nations in Korea, Africa and Cyprus - India
might still prove to be an asset to the US in helping
create a democratic administration in Iraq.
The
government of India is trying to achieve this without
the media glare and by not antagonizing a large section
of Muslims in the country just weeks before general
elections in which every Muslim vote counts. The
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee is wooing prominent Muslim leaders in a
bid to dilute its hardline Hindu image, and it is
unwilling to publicize any activities related to Iraq,
says Arun Jaitley, the commerce minister and a prominent
BJP leader in charge of managing the coming general
elections scheduled for April and May.
According
to Jaitley, India's domestic compulsions forced it to
maintain a "critically neutral stand" over Iraq. Those
reasons are still valid, although India has been able to
vindicate its stand on Iraq by adroit diplomatic public
relations with the Arab countries, the US, as well as in
its domestic constituencies.
Quietly, though, as
opposed to sending troops, India has chosen the less
glamorous task of training Iraqi bureaucrats, at the
request of the US.
The first batch of 14 senior
officials from Iraq arrived in India recently and are
being trained at the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri
Institute, which turns out India's vaunted and feared
civil servants - officers of the Indian Administrative
Services - at the Himalayan hill station of Mussourie,
340 kilometers from the capital Delhi. The Iraqis will
be schooled in how to function in a democratic society,
and will go through various orientation programs at most
ministries, especially foreign, finance and commerce.
India has a world-wide reputation for its 9
million-strong central and state government bureaucracy,
the foundations of which were honed during British rule,
although it also has a reputation for excessive red
tape, and being prone to corruption.
J N
Dikshit, a retired foreign secretary, says that the
Iraqi officers will not only receive training in
administration, but in diplomacy as well. A senior
officer from the Iraqi group, who requested not to be
named, commented that there is a feeling among many
officials in Iraq that the US-led war was precipitated
in part by Iraq's diplomatic failures. He says that
perhaps the war and the consequent miseries of the
Iraqis could have been avoided with mature diplomacy,
rather than saber rattling.
When the US embassy
in Delhi first broached the subject of training Iraqi
officials, India was only too glad to accept, for
several reasons. One was to sustain India's image as a
friend of Iraq, as both India and Iraq have maintained
their trade and other commitments, albeit on a lower
key. Another reason is the possibility of being involved
in the rehabilitation and construction efforts in Iraq,
from which India has been barred for its earlier
anti-war stance. The principal reason, though, appears
to be the revival of trade with Iraq. India's ailing tea
industry is already working on a major order from Iraq,
where people are familiar with Indian tea.
During the oil crisis of the early 1970s, Iraq
supplied oil to India at prices below the benchmark of
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and
when Saddam Hussein needed Indian expertise, it was
given as Saddam, although a Sunni Muslim, always
maintained a neutral stand on India's dispute with
Pakistan over Kashmir.
A foreign ministry
official in Delhi said that India was a natural choice
for training Iraqi officials as the US needed a country,
preferably Asian, with a long history of democratic rule
and which was not considered hostile by Iraqis. The
official said that India would possibly train about 100
Iraqi officers in all, and many would be expected to
hold key positions in their country's future
administration. Their training will also include
instruction in how the US democracy functions, and how
decisions are made by its democratic administration.
Government sources indicate that the US may
later ask India to undertake a similar assignment in
training administrators from Afghanistan, with which
India had an excellent relationship in the pre-Taliban
period (before 1996) and which it has now resumed under
President Hamid Karzai. Indian officials admit that it
may be easier to train Iraqi administrators as they have
at least worked in a country where there there has been
a semblance of administration, compared to Afghanistan,
where even a basic administrative structure has been
absent for many years.
The US, for its part, is
sharing a part of India's burden of bringing about
changes in the fundamentalist Islamic schools in India,
the madrassas, which in both India and Pakistan
are accused of churning out potential terrorists and
jihadis. A planeload of madrassa teachers from
India was recently flown to the US by the State
Department. There they will study modern education
systems run by the people of various faiths. On their
return to India, they will be charged with introducing
similar systems in the madrassas.
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