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India queues up for Iraqi
spoils
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - While it is too early
to expect normalcy to return to Iraq any time
soon, with the Sunni resistance showing no signs
of backing off, the heavy turnout as well as
the relatively smooth conduct of the Iraqi polls
has set the foreign-policy mandarins in New Delhi into
rethink mode, with perhaps a grudging recognition
that the United States has indeed pulled it off,
for now, in Iraq. It is clear that India will now
seek to engage the new dispensation in Baghdad,
with the belief that the United Nations and Europe
will not be able to deride the legitimacy of the
new authority much longer.
While the
Indian government is likely to calibrate a
step-by-step approach, the initial salvos have
already been issued. In its first salutary note,
the Foreign Ministry essayed the elections in Iraq
as a "noteworthy development" and hoped this would
set in motion a process that would lead the Iraqi
people to embark on a new destiny. "The government
of India has been carefully monitoring recent
political developments in Iraq. It has been our
view that the restoration of full sovereignty to
the Iraqi people is a necessary precondition for
peace and stability in that country," a Foreign
Ministry spokesperson said in response to Sunday's
elections. He said that in this perspective the holding
of elections "is a noteworthy development.
Preliminary reports about the turnout of voters
are encouraging." India envisages that handing
over democratic rights to the people would "set in
motion a process that would lead the Iraqi people
to taking full control of their destiny".
Observing that India has traditionally had
strong ties with Iraq and its people, New Delhi
said "we would, therefore, welcome the return of
political stability and economic prosperity to the
country". India wished the Iraqi people success in
their efforts toward nation building and stood
ready to contribute to the country's
reconstruction in an environment free from
violence, the ministry said in a statement.
As a first step, India
will also look to send back an ambassador to
Baghdad in place of B B Tyagi, who returned a
couple of months ago because of the deteriorating law and order
situation. Until then, India's newly appointed
special representative for West Asia, Chinmoy
Gharekhan, is being dispatched to the region for
an on-the-ground appraisal of the situation.
Indeed, India and Iraq do go back a long way.
The Iraqi people are familiar with having Indians
in their midst, one of the reasons US President George
W Bush had applied several back-channel pressures
on New Delhi to acquiesce to the
US request for troop deployment. From a strategic point
of view, Iraq is important to India as
a large number of Indian citizens are employed in
the Persian Gulf region, as well as it being an
important source of India's energy supply. India
is not shy about eyeing the huge reconstruction
pie that is yet to be divided among nations, and
aims at the very least at regaining oil
exploration and production rights that India's Oil
and Natural Gas Corp had won.
In India, estimates put the reconstruction
opportunities in Iraq at more than US$100 billion.
The year has seen Indian business and government
delegations visit the US and Iraq to lobby for
work, as well as to make first-hand assessments of
the extent of possible Indian involvement, and to
see the security situation and establish crucial
contacts. The Indian business lobby that stands to
gain through the Iraq-US dispensation is quite
powerful as India and Iraq have been traditional
business partners for a long time. Some estimates
put the value of new contracts that India hopes to
garner at over $10 billion, mainly in the fields
of oil, power, telecommunications, construction
and railways.
A day before the Sunday
polls, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
reiterated India's stakes in Iraq as well as the
desire to redraw the relationship with its
leaders. Earlier, Manmohan had written a letter to
Bush indicating India's keenness for renewed
engagement with Iraq, beginning with the
elections, with Indian electoral officers having
been sent as observers and offering their
expertise in the conduct of the polls. US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during her
confirmation hearing that India does want to get
back into Iraq.
However, Manmohan's offer to
assist in the normalization and reconstruction of
Iraq will crucially depend on the condition that
stability will return to the nation. Manmohan
faces the challenge of persuading the leftist
parties, key coalition partners of the government,
which have called for continuing with the boycott
of Iraq until after the US troops are withdrawn
from Iraq. Leftist leader A B Bardhan doubted the
figures of the turnout in Sunday's elections and
called for resisting any engagement with Iraq.
Then, Manmohan will also need to cobble support to
reverse a parliamentary resolution that had called
for the isolation of Iraq after the attack by
US troops in order to build closer ties
now.
Last August, three
Indian truck drivers illegally operating in Iraq
were kidnapped for ransom and were released only
after protracted negotiations with New Delhi, with reports
of huge sums of money having been paid by the
employers of the drivers. After the episode, the
government issued instructions to crack down on
recruiting agencies that were sending Indian workers,
whether ex-servicemen, drivers, cooks or menial hands,
by issuing visas to Jordan or Kuwait and
illegally transporting them to Iraq, to work mostly as
help to US troops deployed. About 1.3 million
Indians work in Saudi Arabia and 100,000 in Kuwait,
while some 3 million Indians are said to be working
in the Gulf region. India will also closely
follow the progress of the Middle East peace
talks.
However, in the current context,
the voices calling for renewed engagement with
Iraq are quite strong within the establishment. In
an interview, Gharekhan has said that the
government is seeking to build bridges with the
new democratically elected government in Iraq.
"Till now, the prevailing atmosphere in Iraq was
such that India could not have done much. Since
now the elections have taken place, the Indian
government should have good relations with the new
Iraqi government and see what help it could
provide," he said. "India's relations with Iraq
have been very close and friendly since the days
of Saddam Hussein. Iraq's stand on the Kashmir
issue has been better in comparison with other
Arab countries. There is great love for India
among the Iraqi people and the Indian government
is very conscious about taking the close and
friendly relations with Iraq forward," he said.
Indeed, the biggest fear in India, as with
the rest of the world, is that while the elections
will throw up a representative government in Iraq
that will for the first time in decades reflect
the wishes of the majority in Iraq (Shi'ites), it
might fall short of incorporating aspirations of
all the sections of Iraqi society, especially the
Sunnis, who are used to holding power and are now
leading the insurgency in Iraq. Shi'ites, who make
up about 60% of Iraq's population, are widely
expected to have won most votes in the election,
and officials in the top Shi'ite-led coalition,
the United Iraqi Alliance, have already begun to
celebrate what they perceive as an impending
victory.
Shi'ite leaders did comfort
opponents by saying that they envisage the
inclusion of the Sunni minority, dominant during
Saddam's 35-year rule, in the new government. The
list of candidates put out by Shi'ite leader Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani included many Sunnis and
Kurds, and the secular list of interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi is peppered with all
communities and sects. However, as praise for the
vote pours in from all over the globe, observers
have warned that true victory for democracy can
happen only when Sunnis accept the result and
return to the political mainstream.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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