Opinion Seeing Syria straight

Consider,for example,the Indian vote in the United Nations Security Council in favour of peaceful dialogue and political transition in Syria last Saturday. Pakistan,which voted with India and 11 other countries to form a majority of 13 in a council of 15,has found no political need to justify its decision. China,which voted with Syria,is now holding talks with the Syrian opposition backed by the Arab League. In contrast,India seems under compulsion to explain itself on why it went against Syria and point to the minutiae of the diplomatic negotiation preceding the vote. While Delhi might have done the right thing in following its interests and siding with the Gulf Arab states,it is unable to hide its political discomfort.

Although domestic factors are important in understanding Delhi’s Middle East contortions,the problem is a deeper one. It is rooted in India’s premises about the Middle East that are way out of sync with ground realities. The Indian insistence on using the term “West Asia” when the region calls itself “Middle East”,is indeed a reflection of Delhi’s reluctance to approach the region on its own terms. Delhi would rather impose what it thinks are politically correct constructs on the Middle East.

Central to independent India’s narrative about the Middle East has been the anti-colonial theme. Equally important has been the principle of solidarity with the Arabs in their prolonged conflict with Israel. India’s Middle East mantra,however,has no solutions for dealing with the internal contradictions in the region. Therein is the source of India’s enduring Middle East muddle.

Local rivalries and intra-state conflicts have always been part of political life in the Middle East. Up until the 1970s,Delhi was not entirely wrong in seeing them as secondary.

The problems for India’s Middle East policy emerged when the regional and internal contradictions began to acquire a salience all their own. If India was flummoxed by the shifting regional coalitions,it was utterly unprepared for internal strife in the Arab states and its external consequences.

The first shock for India’s traditional narrative came from Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran in 1980. As the leader of the non-aligned movement and a neighbour to both,it seemed there was little India could do. Caught between friend Saddam Hussein and the victim of his aggression — the Islamic revolution in Iran — Delhi was simply paralysed.

The second test for India came in 1990,when Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait. Enamoured with Saddam Hussein,India was quite prepared to overlook the elimination of Kuwait from the map of the world. Delhi,however,made a colossal misjudgement in assuming that the rest of the region and the world would simply stand by.

India,which could not condemn Saddam’s invasion of the Gulf,found itself seething at the intervention against Iraq by the United States and an Arab coalition that included the troops of Egypt and Syria.

A third test came when Iran’s nuclear defiance forced India to take sides at the International Atomic Energy Agency during 2005-08. This period also coincided with India’s own efforts to end its three-decade-old nuclear isolation. In pursuit of this interest,India rightly voted against Iran three times at the IAEA. But the decision had to be taken amidst fierce resistance within the Indian bureaucratic and political establishment. Many in Delhi were quite convinced that standing up for Iran against the West was more important than securing India’s nuclear liberation.

While the United States had every incentive to frame the Iranian nuclear issue in its own terms,there was no reason for Delhi to have accepted it. If India had taken an independent perspective,it would have seen the Iranian nuclear programme in terms of regional balance. The great powers and India can all live with an Iranian nuclear weapons programme,but Tehran’s Arab neighbours,especially Saudi Arabia,can’t. The nuclear dimension is only one element of the shifting balance of power reflected in the deepening Saudi-Iran regional rivalry.

Riyadh and Tehran are not the only powers shaping the new regional balance of power. Turkey,with its growing weight,is pursuing its own independent policy.

This new regional power play is further complicated by the sectarian Shia-Sunni divisions in the region,which are critical for understanding the current turbulence in the region. While the Indian political classes are extremely sensitive to ethnic and minority politics at home,they refuse to acknowledge these issues staring at us in the Middle East.

In Syria,the minority Alawite sect has ruled with an iron hand over the Sunni majority. In Iraq,the newly empowered Shia majority has begun to target the Sunni leaders and in Bahrain,the Sunni regime is unwilling to give the Shia majority its rights.

India’s recent posturing on non-intervention,in Libya and Syria,has made little sense amidst the calls for intervention by the Arab League. Those calls are not a discourse on abstract principles of sovereignty. They are about targeting adversaries and mobilising great power partners to unseat hostile regimes. What is unfolding in the Middle East is a consequential war in all but name.

India’s persistence with the North-South discourse,in a paradox,underlines Delhi’s inability to transcend the popular Western antinomies in the Middle East — democracy versus dictatorship,social media versus censorship,secularism versus theocracy,republics versus monarchies,interventions versus sovereignty,and proliferation versus non-proliferation.

The time has come for India to view the region through the cold lens of power politics. Anything else would undermine India’s ability to secure its rapidly growing interests in the turbulent Middle East. The vote on Syria at the UNSC is a good start.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi