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The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), positioned as a modern-day Spice Route and as a weighty ideological alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, was a challenging project to start off with, given the inherent logistical complexities of the multi-modal project and the prospect of navigating through the complex geopolitics of the West Asian region – a vital middle link.
But the eruption of fighting in Israel and the renewed tensions it has stoked in the region makes any progress on the project, which to leverage cross-country railway lines and shipping corridors to physically link up a vast stretch of the Eurasian subcontinent, an even more uphill task than when the initial announcement was made just over a month ago, officials in multiple government ministries indicated.
When PM Modi had made the announcement flanked by US President Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman during the annual Group of 20 leaders summit in New Delhi last month, there was a tacit acknowledgement of the logistical complexities, including the prospect of multi-modal shipment transfers and the possibility of consignments being subjected to multiple national customs checks and clearance. But the geopolitical challenge of wading through the complex geopolitics of the West Asia region was always the bigger, unsaid concern.
Increasing complexities
That situation has become way more complex now, with the Israel-Hamas war intensifying and as Gaza struggles to get aid amid worsening conditions, according to the officials, who spoke to The Indian Express. There is a growing realisation that the calculations on the kind of diplomatic cooperation that the project of the scale of the IMEC would have warranted as a prerequisite is far more complicated now.
The design of the corridor envisaged as a “cost-effective” cross-border, ship-to-rail transit network enabling goods and services to transit between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Europe, seeks to traverse multiple, diverse nations with different political dynamics, strategic interests, and historical tensions.
The US backing was seen as the catalyst, especially given that the signatories included countries such as Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But there was an expectation that the progressive initiatives mounted by Washington over the better part of the last decade to co-opt countries in the West Asian region to normalise ties with Israel would be a key factor in getting this project off the ground.
The eruption of fighting between Hamas and Israel earlier this month threatens to upend all those efforts. The Saudi-Israel peace initiative could be the first casualty, as mounting anger in the Arab world about the scale of Israel’s offensive in northern Gaza begins to override the initial outrage over the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel in its surprise attack on October 7.
US President Joe Biden’s planned stop in Jordan earlier this week, which was to take place after his visit to Israel, had to be cancelled after an attack on a Gaza hospital while a scheduled meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also had to be put off. A rocket attack near Baghdad International Airport added to a rising number of attacks targeting US forces in the Middle East, as Washington tried to stave off a progressive escalation of the conflict in the region. President Biden has suggested that Hamas’s attack, the trigger for the conflict, was aimed at disrupting stronger ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel…. they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency Friday.
Early announcement
In New Delhi, across some key infrastructure ministries, there is an acknowledgement that the project – spearheaded by the US – was perhaps announced prematurely, well before any implementation details were finalised, or communicated at a country level. Official timelines for the project’s completion or details on how it would be funded are not clearly spelt out yet. Clarity on the final alignment of the project is also awaited.
What is being said, though, is that the use of the land route in the Arabian peninsula could mean bypassing the congested Suez Canal that cargo ships currently take, and thereby offer some logistical advantages. A senior official in India’s union shipping ministry indicated that the details are still to be discussed at a country level but that India will “follow a whole-of-government approach” as and when the fineprint emerges.
“As the shipping and ports ministry, we are the transporter. There are other stakeholders involved like railways, roadways, and of course, the commerce and finance ministries. There will be close coordination at our end between various departments and ministries, and we will be working in an integrated fashion. Also, there will be multiple countries involved in this initiative. We will have to work closely with them as well,” the official said.
Another government official indicated that the fresh trouble in the West Asia region and the prospect of this derailing the diplomatic outreach between Israel and Saudi Arabia and also with countries such as the UAE, Bahrain and even Jordan, does pose a real risk and that there could be an extended impact of this conflagration, even if fighting were to subside in the coming days.
Already, because of the feeling of being bypassed, the Turkish government has announced its own project as a counter to the IMEC, with one of the ostensible triggers being that the sea route for the proposed corridor between Haifa in Israel and Piraeus in Greece – two key seaports that the IMEC could pass through – traverses waters described as “disputed” by Ankara. Turkey is in “intensive negotiations” with regional partners over its alternative to the IMEC, as the country seeks to bolster its historic role as a transport route for goods moving from Asia to Europe, the Financial Times reported on September 17.
For the IMEC, the Biden White House had started “having conversations” with regional partners about the concept in January 2023. The project is learnt to be part of a US-led initiative called the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment, and work on this is learnt to have picked up the pace at the 2023 G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, in May, where G7 leaders affirmed their commitment to identifying new opportunities to scale the PGII and decided that the grouping’s flagship infrastructure initiative, which had attracted major investors, would do better to respond “to the global demand for high-quality infrastructure financing, in low- and middle-income countries”. The resolution at the summit was to build out transformative economic corridors through PGII and “drive infrastructure investments that can boost and connect economic development across multiple countries and sectors”.
The tentative alignment of the corridor stretches from Western India to the European mainland via the Greek transhipment port of Piraeus, the Israeli port of Haifa and Dubai port, with a significant part of the route traversing through the Saudi Arabian mainland. The IMEC will comprise two separate corridors, the east corridor connecting India to the Arabian Gulf and the northern corridor connecting the Arabian Gulf to Europe.
It includes a railway that, upon completion, will provide “a reliable and cost-effective cross-border ship-to-rail transit network” to supplement existing maritime and road transport routes – enabling goods and services to transit to, from, and between India and Europe. Along the railway route, countries can also look at the laying of cables for electricity and digital connectivity, as well as a pipeline for clean hydrogen export.
