Iraqis get a taste of Indian
medicine By Tarini Unnikrishnan
NEW DELHI - Seeking a middle path to the Middle
East, India is planning to send a division of medical
troops to Iraq to aid in the war-ravaged nation's
"rehabilitation and reconstruction", rather than send a
contingent of combat troops, as the United States has
requested.
The operation, among the first big
initiatives to be launched by India's newly installed
Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government, finally brings to an end the year-long
speculation both in Washington and in New Delhi over the
possible role India could play in helping bail out the
hyperpower in Iraq as well as win the "hearts and minds"
of that traumatized population.
Half of the
medical team will be women, consisting of specialists
such as gynecologists, obstetricians and pediatricians,
who will focus on women's and children's issues, a move
that New Delhi predicts will be highly popular in a
nation that remains secular in spirit but conservative
in outlook. India will also send a paramilitary force to
exclusively protect its medical troops, who will be in
uniform. Sources insist the paramilitary soldiers will,
however, not perform the tasks of combat troops.
The Manmohan Singh government has been under
considerable pressure by the Bush administration to send
a division of combat troops to participate in the
multinational peace-keeping force which will remain in
the country even after the June 30 handover to the
US-backed Iraqi government.
United States
ambassador to India, David Mulford, is said to have
raised the issue when he met Indian External Affairs
Minister K Natwar Singh recently, while US Secretary of
State Colin Powell kept up the pressure when Singh
travelled to Washington to participate in the funeral
ceremonies of Ronald Reagan last week.
Standing
side by side with Powell in Washington, Singh's comments
in fact raised quite a dust-up at home, as he spoke
about the need for taking a "fresh look" at the issue of
sending troops to Iraq.
"There is a resolution
unanimously passed in the United Nations and there are
Arab members in it. We will look at it very carefully,"
Singh was quoted as saying at a joint press conference
after he and Powell emerged from an hour-long meeting.
Singh, however, did qualify his statement by adding, "It
would be premature for me to say aye or nay."
But the communist parties, who support the
Manmohan Singh government and have a clear-cut, very
critical position on the Iraq issue, were furious. "Iraq
has been under American occupation for the last 14
months," said a statement from the Communist Party of
India-Marxist, adding, "There is a popular uprising
against the brutal occupation there."
The Left
pointed out that sending troops when the issue of the
transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis was still unclear
went against the spirit of the new government's Common
Minimum Program. That document had promised to "pursue
closer engagements and relations with the USA", however
it had simultaneously promised to "maintain the
independence of India's foreign policy position on all
regional and global issues". Iraq constituted a key
regional issue, the Left leaders said.
The Left
Front, which controls 59 seats in India's 543-member Lok
Sabha or lower house of parliament, is not a part of the
Congress-led coalition government of premier Singh. But
it provides it with critical support with the specific
purpose of keeping the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and its allies - which ruled India's central
government until the April and May elections - out of
power.
Together with the Left Front, the
Congress Party had opposed plans by the pro-US
government led by the BJP to oblige requests from US
President George W Bush last year to send 17,000 Indian
troops to bolster the Washington-led effort in Iraq.
Indeed, the Congress Party and its communist friends,
while in the opposition, had also compelled parliament
to pass a resolution in April 2003 condemning the US-led
invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile, still adjusting to
being in the opposition chair rather than leading the
nation, the BJP mounted its own attack on the UPA.
Yashwant Sinha, till recently the foreign minister,
scathingly reminded the government of the resolution
passed last year and that there had been no "material
change" on this score. "The Congress [Party] always
accused us [BJP] of not having an independent foreign
policy, now the people of India have to decide whether
or not this is bowing to American pressure," Sinha said.
But senior government officials, defending
Singh's comments, pointed out that he had hardly
advocated a volte face of parliament's
resolution. They insisted he had merely been
"diplomatic" in his remarks, and was only referring to
the need to take another look at the issue in the
context of the recently passed United Nations Security
Council resolution on Iraq.
The fact that India
would now send medical troops instead of combat troops
constituted the difference, the officials said. India
had sent a similar medical team to Somalia exactly a
decade ago, and they had been extremely popular.
Ironically, American troops had even then been treated
rather poorly by Somali leader Aideed and his men.
India's decision to carve out a middle path on
the troops issue, in fact, comes in the wake of a
recently renewed campaign by the US administration to
bolster the multinational presence in Iraq. US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Bangladesh this month,
eyeing a division of soldiers, even as Dhaka
prevaricated with the superpower. Pakistan, meanwhile,
sandwiched between mounting American pressure to capture
key al-Qaeda operatives and its own Islamic
nationalists, is likely to base its own decision on what
India does.
To be sure, despite the
international outcry over the Iraqi invasion last year
and the consequent inability to find any traces of
weapons of mass destruction, New Delhi has been
considerably tempted to send a batch of troops to
participate in the US-led coalition. Senior BJP leaders
are said to have privately made the commitment last
summer with senior figures of the Bush administration.
But as the coalition got sucked deeper and deeper into a
morass and the world press began speaking of "another
Vietnam for the US", New Delhi retreated to its safer
position.
In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib
prison atrocities, New Delhi's I-told-you-so mind was
more than made up. With the surprise return of the
Congress to power, supported by the communist parties,
any extraordinary moves, at least on Iraq, were ruled
out.
And yet the new government hesitated to
abandon its stance to the exclusive influence and the
authority of Western powers. Here was once a great
civilization on the banks of the Tigris and the
Euphrates. It is now in a state of dangerous flux and
needs considerable attention. Moreover, New Delhi knew
that the Arab world, furious at the continuing presence
of the US-led occupation, really didn't want them to
leave. They feared a civil war would erupt in Iraq once
the heavy hand of the occupier was removed.
In a
letter to Iraqi interim Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zebari
a couple of weeks ago, Natwar Singh said India would
certainly help in the "rehabilitation, economic and
political reconstruction" of Iraq. Short of combat
troops, the decision to send medical personnel is a step
in that direction. It establishes an Indian presence in
Iraq, a benevolent one that is aimed at assisting the
Iraqi people, rather than the foreign occupation.
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