Defence and Security Alert Magazine (DSA) August 2017 Edition

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TERRORISM

or

POLITICAL CONFLICT ?

AUGUST 2017

VOLUME 8 ISSUE 11

editor’s note

DSA is as much yours,

as it is ours!

T

he Indian rupee was a legal tender in a number of Arab countries well into the 1960s. From the time mankind learnt how to ride the monsoon winds and trade goods, Indian merchants and currency have been an interminable vision seen in this part of the world.

But trade hasn’t only been one-way, for the Arab traders brought their own valuable goods to India. And along with trade came religion, with the three Abrahamic faiths settled in India virtually from the time of their revelations.

So, it isn’t strange that events of today; political, economic or security related, that occur in West Asia should have an impact on India or at least intrude into the country. And that is precisely what is happening in the context of terrorism and political conflict in West Asia. Wherever it occurs in the region, some impact can be felt on India. Since it is largely terrorism, the impact, naturally, is in the negative. Those in the business of monitoring terrorists and their chatter have detected a significant increase in India

related matters. Whether it is Indian volunteers going for jihad or it is motivational speakers, there is enough happening to warrant attention, deeply.

Geography has ensured that India and West Asia are neighbours, have always been and will remain so till the end of time. Political contours and boundary lines can change, place names and country names too, but the land, the sky, the wind and the monsoon, will always be as they are. India has millions of its citizens living and working in the West Asian countries. Blue and white collar employment – Indians top the list.

All drawn towards West Asia by the wealth generated from oil and gas reserves that are amongst the largest in the world.

Within the oil and gas world is also a deepening cleavage, one that is being influenced by faith and sect. There is a developing story around the region and its politics, wherein countries are being placed in groupings decided by faith and sect. The hydrocarbon motivation is of course there, but there is also an underlying divide because of history and beliefs.

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India has plenty of adherents of both major sects of Islam, amongst the largest in the world.

So, the developments there are of great interest to India and must always remain so.

Even as Saudi Arabia and Iran conduct their great game, trying to outflank each other on the ground and in the market, India cannot be a passive observer since its interests are deeply tied in with this part of the world.

India must be seen to be active and interested in matters that affect its core national interests.

Peaceful conditions for trade, employment and easy passage of its citizens remain the main focus. Along with that is also the predicament of Indians being drawn into the political conflicts of the region through terrorism.

Small in number but they exist.

This can only be tackled through regional cooperation in which India should take the lead.

Manvendra Singh

Defence AND security alert

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publisher’s view

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Volume 8 | Issue 11 | August 2017 Chairman Shyam Sunder Publisher and ceo Pawan Agrawal President Urvashi J Agrawal Director Shishir Bhushan Editorial Editor-in-Chief Manvendra Singh Associate Editor Supriya Aggarwal Assistant Editor Diana Mehra Manager- Sales & Marketing Vishal Kishore Corporate Communications Natasha Creative Senior Graphic Designers Manish Kumar Alka Sharma Representative (J&K) Salil Sharma Correspondent (Europe) Dominika Cosic Production Dilshad and Dabeer Webmaster Sundar Rawat IT Operations Sonia Shaw Abhishek Bhargava Photographer Subhash Circulation and Distribution Prem Kumar E-mail: (first name)@dsalert.org info: info@dsalert.org articles: articles@dsalert.org subscription: subscription@dsalert.org online edition: online@dsalert.org advertisement: advt@dsalert.org

Terrorism or

Political conflict?

B

attlelines have become blurred. Rare are the occasions when the Armed Forces of one nation confronted the Armed Forces of another in clearly defined geographical limits. Hybrid warfare has become the norm and war by proxy, the new methodology in regime change operations. The combatants are now either ‘our freedom fighters’ or as the victims claim, they are terrorists who use improvised explosive devices for suicide bombing, car bombing and act either in concert or as ‘lone wolf’ to strike.

A Large part of the globe are currently afflicted by the scourge of undeclared wars. Many States are directly or indirectly affected by terrorism of one ideology or the other. West Asia, North Africa and the Levant in the West, India in the centre and the Philippines in the far east are confronting on a daily basis the operations of terrorists on their soil.

There are two main reasons for the existence and proliferation of terrorism: one, political conflicts between various States; and two – certain States, manufacturing arms and ammunitions, finding a continuous source of fuel for their hearths and homes with employment for their populations in such conflicts.

Both these reasons are equally responsible for propagating terrorism in the last one decade. The first reason may possibly be amicably resolved through talks and patience but to find a lasting solution to the second one – the black market for small arms, will demand a Herculean motivation from the power corners of the world.

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When I mention the second as a strong factor in international instability, there is a strong logic behind it. Any State manufacturing arms and ammunitions keeps the best for their own defence and security forces. The surpluses are then picked up by its allies to conduct proxy wars in their respective spheres of influence.

Disclaimer All rights reserved. Reproduction and translation in any language in whole or in part by any means without permission from Defence and Security Alert is prohibited. Opinions expressed are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and/or editors. All disputes are subject to jurisdiction of Delhi Courts.

This edition, dear reader, is focussed on the political conflicts and terrorism as we build the dialectics centring aroud why conflicts are raging around the globe through the in-depth analysis of our esteemed authors.

Jai Hind!

Defence and Security Alert is printed, published and owned by Pawan Agrawal and printed at Graphic World, 1686, Kucha Dakhini Rai, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002 and published at 4/19, Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi (India).

Editor: Manvendra Singh

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Pawan Agrawal

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contents

An ISO 9001:2015 Certified Magazine

No Hope In Sight Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd)

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Adverse Effect On Indian Foreign Exchange Reserves Vappala Balachandran

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Arab Spring Dissipated Dr Rajiv Nayan

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Required A Saudi-Iran Bandaid Dr Harsh V Pant

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India Must Reduce Dependence On Oil Mukund V Puranik

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Saluting The Star Of David Colonel Utkarsh Singh Rathore (Retd)

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Long Strides In The Making Dr Sudhanshu Tripathi

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Sectarian Tensions In Pakistan And Its Geo-political Challenges Portia B Conrad

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A warm welcome to His Excellency, Ram Nath Kovind as the 14th President of India.

In a historic moment, Hon’ble President Ram Nath Kovind took the oath on 25 July 2017. In a long career comprising of mainly political stints, he has been the Governor of Bihar and a two-term Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. Prior to this, he has been an eminent lawyer in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court. As the supreme commander of the Indian Armed Forces, Ram Nath Kovind will take the Indian defence to greater heights.

Shia-Sunni cleavage

SPLINTERED GEO-POLITICS

No Hope

In Sight

The inevitable question which should arise is about the future and the potential of any resolution of sectarian conflict within Islam. The answer can, for a change, clearly be in the negative. Islam has grown manifold in the past fifteen centuries and developed in diverse social ways in different parts of the world. However, to resolve its ideological divide it will need to shed the weight of history through a progressive, more tolerant and forward looking philosophy of existence.

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o study the sectarian divide in Islam you need to know the Middle East, one of the most complex regions of the world. You also need a degree of clarity on the geopolitical or geostrategic dynamics and the ideological fault lines which drive much of these in the region.

As a backdrop to this essay, a short brief on the above will help in clarity.

Besides other things which make the Middle East important, it is its geographic location which sits astride the shortest routes (sea lanes) from the West to the East, the viability of having trade centres and the fact that it is the space which nurtured three major faiths (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) of the world. The discovery of energy reserves only added to that importance which made the Middle East a crucial region for the economic

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and strategic stability of the world.

Today, it has become the hot bed of ideological and sectarian divide within Islam which is virtually holding the rest of the world to ransom.

Ideologically, Islam has emerged as the dominant force in the Middle East even after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the after effects of colonialism and the challenges of Israeli presence as an island within Islamic territories.

Yet, the tribal hangover has never been far. Unity has been elusive and the march to modernism has only been in material terms, that too at peripheral levels. Islam remains deeply divided on political and sectarian lines robbing its people of the benefit of stability and growth. The hold of royalty and the clergy over the political fortunes of the Middle Eastern Islamic people have prevented them from achieving what could have been theirs many years ago.

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Islam remains deeply divided on political and sectarian lines robbing its people of the benefit of stability and growth

Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, SM, VSM & BAR (Retd)

Multiple Divides It is the sectarian divide within Islam which drives much of the instability and is linked to almost all the current woes of the nations here, thus drawing in their wake competing forces from outside the region. Two aspects of the sectarian divide, the Shia–Sunni and the intraSunni need to be understood to get a full measure of the problems.

First, the Shia versus Sunni. Where does this conflict come from? For the completely uninitiated, it dates back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD. He died without leaving a male heir. His first follower and son-in-law, Ali Ibn Abu Talib (Hazrat Ali) was married to his daughter Fatima and had two sons Hussain Ibn Ali and Hasan Ibn Ali.

It was considered by some that the Prophet had willed that his family alone would lead Islam or in other words, the first Caliph after the Prophet’s death would be Hazrat Ali. Equally, the Prophet spent his maximum time with some of his other close followers, chief among them being Abu Bakr. Thus, when it came to succession since the Prophet had left no written will or directions, his followers felt that the first leader to lead the people of Islam as the Caliph should be selected (elected) from among his followers. Abu Bakr thus became the first Caliph by popular choice. Ali’s claim that only members of the Prophet’s family could assume his mantel was rejected. He did go on to be the fourth Caliph by selection but by then the fracture lines had appeared and the Prophet’s family

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Defence AND security alert

Map not to scale

The writer, a former GOC of the Srinagar based 15 Corps, does extensive research on Islam to arrive at solutions for low intensity conflict generated due to ideological differences. His understanding of conflict between Islam and the rest of the world has led to his extensive advisories from time to time.

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Shia-Sunni cleavage

SPLINTERED GEO-POLITICS

was hounded in the ambitions of power and expansion of the Islamic empire. Broadly, those who follow the lineage of Islam through acceptance of Abu Bakr as the first Caliph are the Sunnis. Those who insist that Hazrat Ali being a part of the Prophet’s family was the first legitimate Caliph (although he took over as the fourth after Abu Bakr) are the Shias. This is as simplistic an explanation of a really complex set of circumstances which needn’t be spelled out here.

The Karbala Factor The divide would not have been so intense or hateful had it not been for the one iconic event of Islamic history, the Battle of Karbala where the remnants of the Prophet’s family led by his grandson Hussain were butchered for his refusal to pay obeisance to those opposed to the ways of the Prophet. For the past fifteen centuries thereafter, Islam has moved on but the divide among those who differ on the authority of the lineage has never been resolved; in fact, it has worsened for some reasons explained below.

The modern Middle East is divided into the Shia and Sunni strongholds with Saudi Arabia (the custodian of the holy shrines at Mecca and Medina) and a host of other nations (Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf countries) being Sunni. Iran with the Shia crescent comprising nations such as Azerbaijan, Iraq (majority) and Bahrain (ruler Sunni but populace largely Shia) leads the Shia pack.

The historical process by which each came to be as it is today has long drawn explanations beyond the scope of this write up.

It would have been simple if it was just a Shia-Sunni affair. The

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complication comes because Saudi Arabia is not just Sunni but follows a subsequent dispensation of Islam, hugely tainted today and known as Wahabi (or Salafi) Islam.

There will be many who will challenge this simplistic idea of merger of the Salafi and Wahabi. For simplicity of understanding, the Wahabi belief is essentially a revivalist philosophy which seeks to take Islam to its original roots, in the way it was when founded by the Prophet, as a movement against idolatry and other supposed anti-social malpractices.

The label Salafi comes from the Salaf or those who were the ideal followers of the faith the way the prophet followed it and presumed to be the three generations that succeeded those followers. In the pre modern times, the Salafi philosophy which frowned on any modern practices, such as emancipation of women or development of arts, was further developed under various thinkers creating division after division within the Sunni community. A spin off was the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt with its model of revivalism and political activism combined with Islamic charity work. While it spread its tentacles all over the Middle East its activism was shunned by monarchs and dictators whom it opposed.

A launch at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Andhra Pradesh

The Shia-Sunni conflict has transformed into a series of proxy conflicts dotting the Middle Eastern landscape Political Convenience The sectarian fault lines in the Middle East are extremely fuzzy and rarely sharp. Support and alliances are based on political convenience of the

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The Al-Haram mosque, Mecca

times rather than ideological unity and there is never any permanence in these. The geopolitics have, however, been largely dictated by the ShiaSunni and the intra-Sunni conflict.

There was a pan-Arab or Islamic alliance against Israel which lasted many years. This was driven by a degree of passion with which there was involvement of Egypt, Jordan and Syria at the forefront and Saudi Arabia a bit player. Iran remained at the periphery being a beneficiary of the US largesse during the time

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of the Shah. In fact, both Iran and Saudi Arabia were then apparent players in the geopolitics of the Middle East. It is the lethal combination of oil and ideology which changed things and it all happened simultaneously.

Egypt signed off from confrontation with Israel in 1978 and Jordan and Syria could not handle it alone to the extent they could earlier.

Cataclysmic Events In 1979, three iconic events of the second half of the 20th century

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took place which sharpened the sectarian divide and brought the early manifestation of geopolitical confrontation in their wake. First, the Iranian Revolution which brought the Shia clergy to power and a reversal of Iran’s US oriented modernism. Second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, not directly linked to the Middle East but with serious implications and opportunities. The third and lesser known event was the takeover of the Grand Mosque by the renegade Ikhwan who tried to overthrow the Saudi monarchy through claims of the arrival of the Mahdi in the form of one of its leaders. In effect, it was an indirect commentary on the House of Saud that it needed to be even closer to the ideology of the Salafis.

The results of the three almost simultaneous events strengthened the sectarian divide and their impact is being felt to this day. What were the exact implications? First, the power of Saudi Arabia, enhanced by the energy crisis of 1973, then considered as the resurrection of Sunni power was now matched just across the Persian Gulf by the Shia power of Iran. Saudi Arabia, thus far perceiving itself as the grand flag bearer of Islam, was stung awake by the feasibility of the Shia model becoming stronger and having greater geopolitical influence.

Second, the Ikhwan revolt sent the House of Saud to panic stations to promote revivalism and the Salafi model not only in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East but all over the world, for its own survival as much as to negate Shia influence. This led to the investment of time and money in as far away as Indonesia, Malaysia and South Asia. Third, taking off from the first two issues, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought home the

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opportunity to Saudi Arabia to ally with the US and more importantly with Pakistan to ward off potential Iranian influence in its east and embed Salafism into one of the most populous Islamic regions of the world – Af-Pak, with potential to spread into the Muslim strongholds of India.

The Pakistan Cog Money power along with Arabic language and Salafi ideology moved into overdrive to contain the power of Shia revival. Pakistan was the happiest with this arrangement because it offered a sufficient scope to become a frontline state of the US and the surrogate of Saudi SunniSalafi revivalism in South Asia.

Saudi money powered the search for nuclear capability and also the conversion of three million Afghan refugees to Salafi ideology. It sowed the seeds for the future employment of religious ideology as a weapon in J&K. Even more importantly, it set the stage for Pakistan’s eventual conversion to a virtual theocratic state and thus, the core centre for international radical and violent Islamic extremism. The power of

The US sponsored Coalition Authority permitted overwhelming power to the Shia majority of the new Iraq sectarianism to lay waste an entire city is best exemplified by Karachi and many other urban centres of Pakistan where its substantial Shia population remains targeted.

It makes Pakistan extremely wary of Iran with whom it shares a long boundary in its restive Baluchistan province. The power of sectarianism

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has kept the divisions in Afghanistan wide open. Iran and India supported the Northern Alliance due to it being far less radical and opposing the Taliban which was backed by the Al Qaida. The US based its war with the Taliban on the back of the Northern Alliance for the same reasons. The Hazaras are Shia but the Tajiks and the Uzbeks are Sunni of a more moderate strain. All of them were a part of the Northern Alliance.

Post-Saddam ISIS Seedbed

An anti-Israel protest in Tanzania in 2009

Saddam Hussain of Iraq was a Sunni but not of the Salafi strain. His Baathist party followed the secular, socialist model but his clash of interests with Iran and Saudi Arabia were beyond ideology. His defeat and removal upset the balance of ideological power in the Gulf and thereby, the Middle East.

Although secular by belief, Saddam’s presence gave the minority Sunni Iraqis out of proportion power. Without an adequate insight into the sectarian feelings of subjugation in Iraq, the US sponsored Coalition Authority permitted overwhelming power to the Shia majority of the new Iraq; it formed the government although a power sharing formula existed. This was one of the major reasons for the rise of the ISIS initially backed by the Sunni militias.

Multiple Proxy Wars The Shia-Sunni conflict which has manifested into an Iran-Saudi conflict of geostrategic interests has in recent years transformed into a series of proxy conflicts dotting the Middle Eastern landscape. It is the Levant where one of the most vicious ones is in place even today drawing in multiple players such as the US, Russia and Turkey. The swathe of territory from Lebanon to West Iran scanning

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Northern Syria, Northern Iraq, parts of Southern Turkey where areas claimed by the Kurds lie and touching the border of Iran. There is no distinctive stamp of Iranian Shiaism here but interests bring together Hezbollah in Lebanon, Allawite Syria (both Shia oriented) and Shia majority Iraq consolidated together in a Pan Shia conglomerate. Turkey is currently opposed to Saudi Arabia even as it is undergoing its own revolution in which the orientation of ideology remains largely uncertain; far from being Shia, it is also not Salafi. The Kurds have loyalties primarily to themselves but in alignment no one can say which way they will go; they have been hugely against any ISIS domination and have played no mean role in the defeat of the rogue nonState group. The battle for the Levant has been on since the last six years and more vehemently after the advent of the ISIS which had made Northern Iraq and Northern Syria its stronghold.

The rise of the ISIS was facilitated by the mistakes of the Shia dominated Iraqi regime.

The subsequent vanquishing of the ISIS at Fallujah and now at Mosul has been possible because of better understanding and cooperation with the Sunni militias.

Russia’s involvement arising out of its need to protect its interests in the East Mediterranean and maintain presence of boots in the Middle East, has veered off towards a pro Shia support. It is with Iran, Syria (Bashir al Assad) and the Shia majority government of Iraq.

Iran The Cynosure The polarised geostrategic environment is not in water tight compartments. Both the US and Russia support the Iraqi government.

However, the US appears less

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Shia-Sunni cleavage

SPLINTERED GEO-POLITICS

concerned about Russia and more about Iran. Old enmity dies hard and Iran’s propensity to be unpredictable and fiercely independent cannot find US endorsement. Its alleged nuclear arms programme has drawn the ire of the West and much more of the Saudi led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Egypt. The Saudi paranoia has led it into a meaningless, costly war against Iranian proxies in Yemen in an effort to prevent the spread of Iran’s influence. The war is unlikely to conclude in victory for either side.

Obama Doctrine Experiencing the complexities of the Middle East and conscious of the reducing the US dependence on Saudi energy resources, former President Barack Obama tried to follow hands off policy towards the region. In 2011, he brought about withdrawal from Iraq. However, almost simultaneously the US attempts to bolster liberal democracy among the nations of the region through support to the Arab Spring came a cropper. He attempted a softening of stance towards Iran leading to the signing of the Iran Nuclear Deal on 15 July 2015; this helped in de-isolating Iran and bringing a less radical President in leadership.

However, it put the US on a path of dilution of its strong relationship with Saudi Arabia purely on grounds of the change in balance of power.

The above situation seems to have undergone a temporary change with the recent much heralded Trump visit to the Middle East where President Trump attended a virtual summit of Sunni nations and placed himself strongly behind them thus once again returning to a ‘Shun Iran policy’.

The Shia-Sunni and the intra-Sunni divide has played a major role in the awkward alignment of relationships emerging from President Trump’s apparent decisions which have reportedly been based on insufficient research of the complexities of the Middle East situation.

Qatar Conundrum For example, shortly after Trump’s visit four nations chose to break diplomatic relations with Qatar. All four; Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt are essentially Sunni (Bahrain’s ruling family is Sunni) while Qatar is also Sunni; Egypt is ruled by its Army which though supported financially by the Saudis and the UAE is in power to keep the revivalist but revolutionary Muslim Brotherhood at

bay. Muslim Brotherhood which has its branches all over the Middle East is supported by Qatar. The Saudis also detest the Muslim Brotherhood as it acts against royalty and does not believe in the division of mosque and State. The Saudi-Qatari rivalry is rooted in more than ideology with the Saudis unhappy with the prominent position being occupied by the Royal House of Qatar headed

by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, its racing economy, high per capita income due to the gas and oil reserves and the fact that it is hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The excuse put forward is that Qatar supports terror groups all over the Middle East and especially the elements of the Arab Spring through its high profile television channel Al Jazeera. The US has realised its mistake of supporting the whimsical Saudi action and even signed a US$ 12 billion defence deal with Qatar thereafter.

President Trump forgot that Qatar hosts a full forward base of the US Central Command, central to the US strategic presence in the Middle East. This stand-off also aimed at Iran is sub sectarian in nature adding

to the complexity of an already hugely complex strategic environment.

The inevitable question which should arise is about the future and the potential of any resolution of sectarian conflict within Islam. Islam has grown manifold in fifteen centuries. However, to resolve its ideological divide, it will need to shed the weight of history through a progressive, more tolerant and forward looking philosophy of existence which is not in confrontational mode with all other faiths. Such a possibility currently seems remote unless one views the current events as a churning before the forces of reformation take strength and take the faith through a unifying and self-healing exercise over a few generations.

Only time will tell.

geo-political shift in West Asia MIGRANT LABOUR REMITTANCES

Adverse Effect

On Indian Foreign Exchange Reserves In 1991, Saddam Hussein became arrogant and invaded Kuwait causing the First Gulf War. After the US-led coalition forces attacked Iraq, three million Iraqis fled their homes to Syria. This war affected India very badly. It raised the price of oil which led to an inflationary spiral in India. Remittances from Indian workers drastically declined. The NRI deposits began to flow out. It affected all neighbouring countries of Kuwait and Iraq where Indians were working. Nearly 1,75,000 Indians had to be evacuated from Kuwait.

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Vappala Balachandran The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.

His latest book is ‘Keeping India Safe: The dilemma of Internal Security’.

places of work, especially in West Asia will adversely affect them.

I

ndia is now the biggest source of migration in the world. About 1.38 crore Indian-origin people live abroad according to the World Bank (September 2015).

Till recently, Mexico with 1.32 crore, was the biggest migration source. A majority of our people outside India are unprotected wage earners. Fifty-nine lakh Indians are located in five countries in the Gulf region. According to the World Bank, our labourers sent home some US$ 70.39 billion in 2014. In 2015, it was 68.9 billion. This was 62.7 billion in 2016, the highest globally. At the same time, foreign direct investment (FDI) promises to India during the first half of 2015 were only US$ 31 billion. In other words, our workers contribute more than the FDI promises. Any disturbance in their

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West Asia had always suffered turbulence from foreign inspired moves. The sudden announcement

by Saudi Arabia and allies of Qatar’s economic and political boycott on June 5, 2017 soon after President Trump’s successful meeting with 50 leaders of the Muslim world indicated that it had Trump’s blessing. Trump confirmed it by his June 6 tweet taking credit for the step against Qatar. He reinforced it on June 9 at a totally unsuitable venue while addressing a joint press conference with Rumanian President Iohannis at the White House: “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level”. He did not know or perhaps forgot that Qatar was supporting US war on terror by permitting 10,000 US troops at their Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military station in the region, from where ISIS targets are being attacked.

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geo-political shift in West Asia MIGRANT LABOUR REMITTANCES

The situation in Qatar will be worsened if the Saudi-led coalition makes any military move, emboldened by the US support.

Qatar has our 6,50,000 Indian workers who constitute 25 per cent of Qatari population of 26 lakhs.

Turkey is supporting Qatar and is considering sending more troops to a Turkish base in Qatar where there are already 300 of their soldiers.

Saudi led coalition want Turkey to get out of Qatar. This was flatly rejected by President Erdogan on 26 June.

Historical Analysis Historically, the West Asia area was mostly part of the Ottoman Empire which in the 17th century included South East Europe, West Asia, the Caucasus and North Africa. The Young Turk Revolution (1908) heralded the decline of the Empire. The idea of Turkish nationalism started spreading all over the area. The empire lost the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12) thereby losing Libya. It also lost the Balkan Wars (1912-13) after which it lost territories in Europe. During the First World War, it made the mistake of joining the ‘Central Powers’ led by Germany who were defeated.

The Arab Revolt (1916-1918) led

by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca saw the rise of Arab nationalism and also the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the Middle East theatre.

Hussein bin Ali’s motive in joining the revolt was to establish a single independent Arab State from Allepo in Syria to Aden in Yemen based on ancient traditions of the Arab people. Britain promised all help through the 1915 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, on the condition that Hussein’s forces should revolt against

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the Turks. Sharif Ali’s sons, Emir Abdullah and Emir Faisal, led the Arab forces and liberated Damascus in 1918 from the Ottoman rule. At the end of the War, Arab forces controlled most of the Jordan, Arabian Peninsula and Southern Syria.

Western Powers’ Deceit However, Britain went back on its promise, concluded the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) between British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes and his French colleague Francois George Picot.

They secretly agreed, on behalf of their nations, to carve out respective spheres of influence to control of the future Middle East. Thus, the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 which ended the

Our workers contribute more than the FDI promises War led to the partitioning of the Middle East portion of the Empire between British and French colonial interests. The British mandate of Palestine and French mandate of Syria were created. The agreement recognised French interests in Greater Syria and northern Iraq, while acknowledging British influence from the Mediterranean to the Gulf to protect its trade and communication links with the Indian subcontinent.

Seeds Of Future Terrorism Also Britain, in a totally deceitful move, promised to carve out a new country for the Jews. This was called the ‘Balfour Declaration’ by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a prominent British Jew in 1917, promising Britain’s commitment and support for

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a Jewish home in Palestine.

Eventually, this led to the first IsraeliPalestinian war of 1946-48 resulting in our 1.5 million deaths. An equal number became refugees, mostly Palestinians. Out of these, 50,000 are still alive. Their descendants number about five million.

The destroyed Hedjaz railway tracks & relics near Madain Saleh, Saudi Arabia

All these triggered colossal unrest in Palestine resulting in the partition of Palestine, migration of European Jews towards Palestine, civil war, eviction of Palestinians from their homeland and terrorism by the Jews and Palestinians. The seeds of modern day global terrorism were planted in the Palestinian refugee camps. Almost all terrorist groups, before the onset of jihadi terrorism by al-Qaeda, had their baptism in these Palestinian refugee camps. The continuing Israel-Hamas wars since 2004 over Gaza have resulted in more than 5,000 Palestinian deaths.

In the 2014 Gaza war alone, 2,100 Palestinians were killed and 60,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed.

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‘Ungoverned Territories’ The USA helped Saddam Hussein fight the eight-year Iran-Iraq War from 1980. President Reagan encouraged Saddam by removing his country from the ‘Sponsor of Terrorism List’ in 1982. In December 1983, he sent Donald Rumsfeld as his special envoy to meet the Iraqi dictator. The same Donald Rumsfeld would become the US Defense Secretary under US President George W Bush to wage the 2003 Iraq War on fictitious grounds, only to bring down Saddam.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein became arrogant and invaded Kuwait causing the First Gulf War. After the US-led coalition forces attacked Iraq, three million Iraqis fled their homes to Syria. This war affected India very badly. It raised the price of oil which led to an inflationary spiral in India. Remittances from Indian workers drastically declined. The NRI deposits began to flow out. It affected all neighbouring countries of Kuwait and Iraq where Indians were working. Nearly 1,75,000 Indians had to be evacuated from Kuwait.

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geo-political shift in West Asia MIGRANT LABOUR REMITTANCES

The 2003 Iraq War by the then US President George W Bush was based on spurious grounds. Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction as was alleged. Nor did he support terrorism. On the other hand, his autocratic but secular rule was holding such religious extremists in check. The war devastated the country and resulted in at least 8,000 civilian deaths. It displaced 2 million Iraqis making them refugees. Of them, 1.7 million were internally displaced peoples (IDPs).

Western Fertilised Terrorism The American invasion of Iraq and their rule through the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) caused a total breakdown of Iraqi administration. They dismissed the entire Iraqi army, scores of police and practically all civil administration, in their drive against ‘Baathist’ elements who were prominent in Saddam’s administration.

The immediate result of this action was the total break down of law and order and creation of ‘No Man’s lands’. Armed Shia groups started hunting and killing former Iraqi Baathist soldiers and intelligence officials. As many as 21 Shia militia units were operating during that time hunting down their Sunni targets. A survey published in October 2004 by the Baltimore (USA) based ‘Centre for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies’ (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) said that in Falluja alone, 98,000 deaths took place after the invasion.

In a similar fashion, a contrived civil war against Bashar-al-Assad’s regime in Syria which started in March 2011 has caused severe conflicts and creation of ungoverned

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territories which are occupied by terrorists. No doubt there were allegations of human rights violations against the regime, which is led by the minority Alawis, a Shia group. However, the rebels would not have gained such strength but

The seeds of modern day global terrorism were planted in the Palestinian refugee camps for the active encouragement from Turkey, which has been having strained relations with Syria. Turkey, which has the longest border with Syria, is angry since Syria had given refuge to anti-Turkish groups like the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) and Armenian Secret Army (ASALA).

In addition, a water dispute has been raging between them. Turkey had constructed some dams on Euphrates and Tigris preventing water flow into Syria. In 2012, Syria shot down a Turkey military jet. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, the US and allies had to respond to its calls. As a result, Turkey has actively encouraged rebels against Syria and wants a regime change. It was Turkey which moved the US and the UK on the complaint that Syrian regime had used chemical weapons on civilian population in 2012 which ultimately turned out to be false.

President Obama, according to the media was about to order air strikes against Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons but held back at the last moment.

Libyan Fragmentation A similar intervention was done by NATO in Libya in 2011. The ‘Arab Spring’ (2010-2013) which resulted in regime change in Tunisia (Ben Ali-

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A scene from the time of the Armenian Genocide

2011), Egypt-(Hosni Mubarak-2011) and Yemen (Abdullah Saleh-2012) also had repercussions in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi. The protests in Benghazi (2011) were suppressed by Gaddafi by excessive force. The rebels who formed a National Transitional Council received outside support. Their Air Force (Free Libyan Air force) also took part in the operations.

Gaddafi used his air force to counter attack the rebels. Foreign powers like France, the UK and Qatar supported the rebels. On 17 March the UN ordered intervention and on 19 March, the French and Italian air force bombed the government positions. By 23 March, Libyan Air force was totally destroyed.

On 20 October 2011, the NATO

bombed Gaddaffi’s convoy.

He died in the same month as a prisoner of rebel elements.

The country is now virtually divided into three power centres: One led

by Presidential Council (PC) headed

by Fayez al-Sarraj, second by the Government of National Salvation headed by Prime Minister Khalifa Ghwell and third by the authorities based in Tobruk and al-Bayda.

Western interference has only deteriorated the situation in West Asia war

All these will indicate that Western interference has only deteriorated the situation in West Asia leading to disorder, war, terrorism in which our foreign exchange earning workers are caught in the crossfire. One only hopes that the boycott of Qatar will not lead to a fresh series of fighting and exodus of population.

August 2017

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geo-political shift in West Asia DEMOCRACY DEFICIENCY

Arab Spring Dissipated Governance has been a major issue for West Asia. The region has undemocratic countries, for which, any way accountability does not matter. But there were countries, which were democratic and came to power through elections, turned authoritarian and to an extent, dictator.

W

est Asia has great capability to be an astounding international actor because of the massive natural resources and strategic geographical position.

In the international system, dominated by the Western discourse or narrative, the term West Asia is hardly used.

The term – the Middle East – coined

by US Admiral Alfred T. Mahan in 1901, has been dominating in international affairs at least since 1916. It is a different matter that despite promoting the idea of giving a geographical distinctiveness and restrictiveness to the Middle East, the constructed region has failed to emerge as a homogenous geographical entity. The diverse reality overshadowed the effort to perceive internal uniformity of the region. A section of the world continues to see the parts of two different continents in the Middle East. Internal diversity exists even within two parts of two continents.

Reconstructed Geography The countries in West Asia are Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Syria and the countries of Arab peninsula. The countries of Arabian Peninsula are Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan and Kuwait. Turkey was also considered part of West Asia but now it wants to be counted in Europe as it is trying to become a member of European Union (EU). At present, it is categorised as a candidate county by the EU. It is waiting for a long period to become a member of the EU. In the Western part of Asia, the countries have people professing many faiths but Islam is the dominant religion. Jews are small in number but Israel is a strong or militarily formidable country that keeps challenging the Muslim world quite effectively. The US military and diplomatic support to Israel acts as a bulwark against the regional and global pressure. However, the Muslim world is also not uniform. It is divided into Shia and Sunni sects.

August 2017

Dr Rajiv Nayan The writer is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi since 1993, where he specialises in export control, non-proliferation and arms control. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Tokyo, where he published his monograph on non-proliferation Issues in South Asia.

west Asia is not integrated economically because of internal religious and political divisions

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geo-political shift in West Asia DEMOCRACY DEFICIENCY

The two sects are often at conflict with each other. Occasionally, both demonstrated a united front.

The Arab world is also not united properly, though some institutional mechanisms for joint work do exist.

Pronounced Diversities As the region is not united religiously, so is it divided economically? West Asia is not integrated economically because of internal religious and political divisions. One of the prominent American think tanks working on the region noted, “lack of sufficient economic integration have stifled the region’s ability to tap its significant potential for economic growth and job creation to address high youth

unemployment and very low female labour force participation.” More or less the same conclusion has been drawn in a report generated by the World Bank. The Bank attributes unemployment as one of the reasons for the Arab Spring. It maintains that despite acknowledging this stark reality, the countries of the region are not taking serious steps towards economic integration which may solve many of the problems of the region.

Democracy Deficient Governance has been a major issue for West Asia. The region has undemocratic countries, for which, any way accountability does not matter. But there were countries,

The most tragic casualty of the Arab Spring was Arab nationalism.

It also resulted in the end of the secular regimes of the region

which were democratic and came to power through elections, turned authoritarian and to an extent, dictator. This set of countries also was not held accountable for performance or governance by its population. The democracy deficit has resulted in development deficit in the region. Of course, Israel is a golden exception. This kind of state of affairs gave way to yearning for a new domestic political system and even a new world order.

As a result, changes were witnessed not only in West Asia but also in the adjourning North Africa. Unfortunately, some of the democratic allies of the nondemocratic countries chose to remain aloof. The Arab Spring is

considered one of the ‘negotiated revolutions’ – the new trend of the post-Cold War world. In such a revolution, political, not social and economic, transformation takes place. It witnessed changes of the political regimes through non-violent protests, promotion of ‘an ethos of democratisation’ and a change through ‘negotiation rather than military victory’.

The region is now underpinned by a new strategic and political reality. The Arab Spring did succeed in removing some old established leaders of a few countries. Some of the countries, held elections to install new governments.

However, the democratic and liberal traditions is still eluding these countries of the region. In some

geo-political shift in West Asia DEMOCRACY DEFICIENCY

neighbourhood countries like Egypt, the Islamists seem to have taken over. A Yossef, one of the writers on the region, finds that the very idea of nation-State has not penetrated West Asia. As a result, these countries do not acquire legitimacy and capacity, which are viewed as the pillars of stability.

Shia And Sunni Divide As discussed, there is a deep divide in the Muslim society of West Asia despite the general understanding that Islam is a monolith religion.

The sharpest divide in the Muslim society of West Asia is between those who are following the Shia sect and those following the Sunni sect. The countries and the rulers are also divided on the basis of that. Iran is considered the leader of the Shia world and Saudi Arabia claims itself to be the leader of the Sunni world and even the Arab world. At times, Saudi Arabia believes itself to be the leader of the ‘pure’ Muslim world. In fact, in many of the countries dominated by one sect, people of another sect are in substantial number.

Although great powers are not divided on the Shia-Sunni basis, yet the Sunni world somehow is receiving the support of the Western bloc led by the US and the Shia countries and rules are getting support from Russia, China and many other countries, which are not in any camp. Regrettably, the US and Israel have been targeting Iran for promoting terrorism but the reality is that Sunnis are dominating Islamic terrorism. All the principal terror groups are from Sunni countries.

Struggling Arab Nationalism The most tragic casualty of the Arab Spring was Arab nationalism and the

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leaders who were elected through the forces swearing in the name of Arab nationalism. Admittedly, the process of the removal of such leaders started even before the Arab Spring. Saddam Hussein’s was one such case. The Arab Spring modelled on Prague Spring on the one hand led to the collapse of Arab nationalist dictators but on the other, it also resulted in the end of the secular regimes of the region. The so-called Arab awakening resulted in the virtual end of Arab nationalism. Syria is being considered the last bastion.

Unfortunately, the support for the Syrian regime is coming from the forces which are not rooted in Arab nationalism. Iran is supporting the Shia ruler of Syria. Russia and China are supporting their old friend to check American dominance in the region. The secular Arab regimes worked as a bulwark against the Al Qaeda. They fought against the terrorist groups. Now the ideology and the regimes to fight Sunni terrorism are gone. The possibility of the revival of Arab nationalism without secular ideology exists but it is going to be more disastrous for the region and the world.

Islamic Radical Groups One of the American scholars wrote, ‘The Arab Spring Descends into Islamist Winter’. No analyst of any part of the world would disagree that West Asia witnessed the resurgence of Islamic terrorism. A few years on, Islamist political groups, global Islamist insurgency and transnational terrorism appear to be joining hands.

They are exploiting prevailing chaos.

Islamic brotherhood represents radicalisation of the Muslim societies done in the name of cleaning the

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Iran is its old friend and Saudi Arabia is deepening its friendship with India

other than oil. Iran was suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

Interestingly, the possible Iranian nuclear weapon was not considered an Islamic bomb. As a result, Iran saw resistance not only from Israel but also from the Sunni and Arab countries. Although the Iranian nuclear deal has brought an element of stability in West Asia, the Iranian ballistic missile development programme is still creating ripples.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia is active to procure nuclear weapons. Reports indicated that Pakistan could be the supplier of the nuclear bomb for Saudi Arabia and the Sunni world.

Options For India The Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz. Men enter on the left, women on the right!

‘aberration’. The immediate corollary of radicalisation or the emergence of radical Islamic groups is the emergence of terror groups.

Islamic State is a result of the dangerous interplay of radicalisation of the West Asian society on the one hand and the power struggle within the countries of the region on the other. Unfortunately, Islamic State was created by those who wanted to bring about democratic changes in Syria but simply unleashed a new monster. Initially, these forces tried to justify that Islamic State would counter terror groups like the Al Qaeda. At present, the Al Qaeda and its affiliates along with a number of other terror and radical groups are wreaking havoc in the region and the world.

Nuclear issues For years, the geopolitics and security environment of West Asia was dominated by nuclear issues

August 2017

India has a deep engagement to the region. The largest amount of remittances flow from the Gulf region. Its huge workforce – skilled and unskilled is employed in the Gulf region. Besides, India is heavily dependent on the region for its oil needs. A multi-religious country like India, West Asia has both Sunni and Shia residents. In recent years, its relationship with Israel has grown; and is cooperating with it on a range of issues, especially in high technology items.

Quite naturally, India would like to see a stable and peaceful West Asia. It enjoys excellent relationship with the Shia and Sunni countries. Iran is its old friend and Saudi Arabia is deepening its friendship with India.

India has not encouraged any kind of alliance politics in the region. It also keeps itself away from great power politics. Despite the good relations, it did not offer its office for mediation.

India should be watchful and continue to maintain good relations with all the countries of the region.

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Shia-Sunni schism WEST ASIA CAULDRON

Required A

Saudi-Iran Bandaid While the Middle East remains embroiled in conflict over ideological differences, it is vital for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to revive and strengthen their diplomatic ties to minimise, if not eliminate, misunderstandings that might blow out of proportion and have disastrous consequences.

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T

he rift in West Asia escalated further when the Islamic State took credit for two brazen attacks in Tehran in June 2017, resulting in the killing of at least a dozen people and wounding dozens more. Gunmen reportedly dressed as women stormed the main gate of the parliament building in central Tehran and opened fire.

They took a number of hostages and at least one detonated a suicide bomb even as, at the same time, a suicide bomber targeted civilians at the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum about 15 miles away.

has been exploited by countries, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East to fuel their ambitions and vested interests.

Instances of militant activities and human rights violations indicate the precarious conditions that exist in this region.

As Ross Harrison, a scholar at the Middle East Institute conceives it, “The ongoing conflict in the region is part of a three-tiered contest for power, involving local, regional and international actors. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the pivotal regional components in the three-tiered contest for power. Both countries represent the conduit linking international players, such as the United States and Russia, to the local players in the conflict zones of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.”

The Islamic State (IS), which advocates a radical Salafi version of Sunni Islam and regards Shi’a as heretics, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which are believed to be the terrorist group’s first major assaults within Iran’s borders. The assaults have further accentuated the tensions in the region even as there is a growing danger that a broader sectarian conflict could worsen.

Iran has deployed senior military advisers and thousands of ‘volunteers’ in the past six years to help regional ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad battle an armed insurrection that includes the IS and other Islamist fighters as well as groups supported by Turkey and the United States.

Yet, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have blamed Saudi Arabia for these attacks.

Saudi-Iran Contratemps

What began as a religious and ideological dispute a millennium back has become increasingly political today. The divide between two rival factions of Islam, Sunni and Shia, has created a vacuum, which

If we reflect on the past events chronologically, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was one of the first political events that marked the schism between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The rising stature of the Shia religious leader Ayatollah

Dr Harsh V Pant The writer is a professor of International Relations in Defence Studies Department and the India Institute at King’s College, London. He is presently Head of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He is also an Associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC.

At the heart of this issue, lie the central questions: Which country dominates the Middle East? At what cost has this stature been achieved?

While Iran discerns that it embodies Islam with its majority of Shias, the House of Saud that rules Saudi Arabia also holds a stake in this claim with its majority of Sunnis. In the light of these claims, as Iran and Saudi Arabia battle it out in a fierce competition for hegemony in the region today, it is inevitable for them to feel threatened by each other’s growing influence.

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Shia-Sunni schism WEST ASIA CAULDRON

Khomeini, coupled with the support given to Shia militias and other actors during the Iranian Revolution, did not sit well with the Saudis. In an effort to counter this, the Saudi Kingdom sought to strengthen its ties with other Sunni countries and joined the Gulf Cooperation Council.

When Iran and Iraq went to war in 1980, Saudi Arabia preferred to support Iraq. Further, when hundreds of Iranians pilgrims were killed after skirmishes during the Hajj pilgrimage in 1987, the diplomatic ties between the two rivals were severed for a few years. Even after Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the US-led coalition in 2003, a Shia government came into power, much to the dismay of the Saudis.

What aggravated them further was Iran’s nuclear deal. This uneasiness stemmed from fear of Iran’s rising economic and political clout and of their capabilities to build a nuclear weapon. More recently, when the Saudi government on grounds of instigating violence and Shia dissent in 2016 executed the Shia Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the Iranians saw this as an attack on their faith. On the other hand, the Saudis blamed Iran for funding the insurgency against the Houthi movement to remove Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen.

Time and again, the Arab countries have blamed one another for causing problems detrimental to their position in the world order. While Iran blames Saudi Arabia for trying to limit its influence and restricting Shia’ism from spreading in the Middle East, the Saudi kingdom accuses Iran of training, funding and supporting terrorist organisations like the Hezbollah and even ISIS, one of the most lethal forces in Syria today.

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Besides, Saudi Arabia is skeptical about the Shia Crescendo that is taking shape, anxious that it will give greater geopolitical weight to Iran.

External Forces With the diplomatic ties almost severed between the two nations, the actions and policies of international actors like the US has made the situation even more volatile.

Ex-President Barack Obama’s sanctions to block Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is in jeopardy with the Trump administration all set to tighten the sanctions even further.

If the sanctions against the Shia majority country is intensified, it may even prompt Iran to back out, undoing any plans to isolate it from nuclear weapons. In fact, the Sunni-Shia divide has widened with President Donald Trump’s recent antics in the Middle East. With his foreign policy still somewhat ambiguous, Trump signed a US$ 110 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia, hinting at greater military ties between the two nations.

He criticised his Iranian counterpart by branding Iran as an endorser of terrorism. Further, quite contrary to his promise of reducing American involvement in the Middle East and diverting the attention towards an America First policy, Trump’s recent visit shows his agenda to strengthen

Saudi Arabia is skeptical about the Shia Crescendo that is taking shape the Sunni alliance in the Middle East, which will only serve to deepen the sectarian conflicts in the region.

Perhaps, it is the involvement of too many international actors in

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Map not to scale The satelite view of the Nile-Sinai stretch

the messy affairs of the Middle East that has served to deepen the divide. It is evident that American influence since the very beginning has been the subject of disapproval and criticism for the people and their governments. The war in 2003 and the subsequent uprisings in 2010 sprung from people’s desire to have their own government in the absence of any western power.

August 2017

Thus, the American presence that exists in this region even today and that too under a very unpredictable and impulsive president, can worsen the situation if corrective measures are not taken to improve ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This would be a challenging task at a time when other international actors like Russia have also started meddling in the affairs of the Middle East. For

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Shia-Sunni schism WEST ASIA CAULDRON

instance, Russia has involved itself in the Syrian civil war by backing Bashar al-Assad’s government, causing changes in the realpolitik in this part of the world.

to work together as allies instead of two influential nations responsible for creating a vacuum violated repeatedly by radical militant groups and international actors with hegemonic ambitions.

Rapprochement While the Middle East remains embroiled in conflict over ideological differences, it is vital for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to revive and strengthen their diplomatic ties to minimise, if not eliminate, misunderstandings that might blow out of proportion and have disastrous consequences.

As much as this seems like an impossible task to undertake, it is in the interest of both the countries

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Hence, it is vital for Iran and Saudi Arabia to realise what they can achieve as allies in a manner, which is aligned with their national as well as regional interests. This will keep in the ambit, a greater possibility to solve the humanitarian crisis in Syria and elsewhere.

Perhaps, an all-hands-on-deck approach can be the key to prune violence and ensure peace and stability in the region.

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it is vital for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to revive and strengthen their diplomatic ties

The Iran hostage crisis of 1979

terrorism or geo-political shift in West Asia political conflict?

India Must Reduce

Dependence On Oil

In view of the various challenges, conflicts, hidden forces and interests of various nations it is important that we should minimise our procurement of oil from West Asia region.

W

est Asia is viewed in many different ways by different combinations of countries. This is further confused by the terminology like ‘Gulf The Digboi refinery in Assam

countries’, “Middle East” countries and “OPEC” countries. This region has gained importance from early 60s mainly because of oil. In light of huge potential and stock of oil and gas storage which also boosted the complete automobile sector

Mukund V Puranik The writer is the director at the Universal Engineering Consultants, Mumbai. He is a chartered engineer and an expert valuer of plant and machinery.

geo-political shift in West Asia terrorism or political conflict?

all over world. As per history, oil was being produced and refined in various parts of the world but in very small quantity. Major industrial boost started after the WWII. Until the mid-1950s, coal was still the world’s foremost fuel but after this oil quickly took over. Later, following the 1973 and 1979 energy crises, there was significant media coverage on the subject of oil supply levels.

This brought to light the concern that oil is a limited resource that will eventually run out, at least as an economically viable energy source.

Eighty per cent of the world’s readily accessible reserves are located in the Middle East, with 62.5 per cent coming from the countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Qatar Kuwait, Iran etc.

Oil – The New Coinage India had hardly any resources of oil in late 50s except some wells in Assam area. The first oil deposits

discovered in India in 1889 near the town of Digboi in the State of Assam. The first well was completed in 1890 and the Assam Oil Company was established in 1899 to oversee production. At its peak during the Second World War, the Digboi oil fields were producing 7,000 barrels per day. However, India was seen not as a producer but as a market, most notably for fuel oil for cooking. Soon, the potential applications for oil shifted from domestic to industrial and military purpose. However, after independence in 1947, the policy adopted by the government mainly known as Licence Raj gave main role to Government and little or no role to private sectors. This resulted in a focus on centralised planning and heavily bureaucratic system. Only foreign companies played the main role in oil production. In October 1959, an Act of Parliament was passed which gave the State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) the powers to plan, organise and implement programmes for the development of oil resources.

Over a period, the auto sector, industrial development, railway network using diesel engines grew very fast and India had to depend on supply from other countries since domestic production was not sufficient to meet the demand. The

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major suppliers were Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. Oil shares maximum import bill for India today. Since West Asia was the major supplier of oil to India, it has been always a policy of India to support West Asia, Palestine cause, etc.

India even voted against the Partitioning of Palestine Plan of 1947 and voted against Israel’s admission to the United Nations in 1949.

citizens working in Arab States of the Persian Gulf, who were helping India maintain its foreign-exchange reserves. The formation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which allegedly neglected the sentiments of Indian Muslims, and the blocking of India by Pakistan from joining the OIC are considered to be the causes of this diplomatic shift.

Hence, India formally established full relations with Israel in 1992.

Diplomatese On 17 September 1950, India officially recognised the State of Israel. Following India’s recognition of Israel, the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated,

Some events have changed the dynamics of the West Asia market and may affect the relationship of India with respective countries “we would have (recognised Israel) long ago, because Israel is a fact. We refrained because of our desire not to offend the sentiments of our friends in the Arab countries.” In 1953, Israel was permitted to open a consulate in Bombay (now Mumbai). However, the Nehru government did not want to pursue full diplomatic relations with Israel as it supported the Palestinian cause and believed that permitting Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi would damage relations with the Arab world. India’s domestic need for energy was another reason for the lack of normalisation of ties with Israel, in terms of safeguarding the flow of oil from Arab nations as well as domestic vote bank politics.

Additionally, India did not want to jeopardise the large amount of its

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Emergence Of Islamic Militancy Around at this period, several militant groups were born as such: • Hamas mainly consisting of Palestine Sunni Muslims • Hezbollah mainly consists of Lebanese Shia Muslims. These are the main groups mainly fighting against Israel. They are based in Lebanon but receive financial and political support from Syria and Iran.

• Al Qaeda mainly consists of Sunni Muslims extremist group founded by Osama Bin Laden who fought against Soviet invasion in Afghanistan but has network in various countries.

The 9/11 attack was organised by this group in addition to several blasts in other countries.

• The ISIS mainly consists of extremists Sunni Muslims group and believers of Wahhabism. This group mainly flourished after the death of Osama Bin Laden and is supported financially and politically by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Oil And Expatriates These are the various extremists groups operating in West Asia or Middle East and neighbouring

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geo-political shift in West Asia terrorism or political conflict?

areas. India is not interested with extremists groups because the effect of the various terrorist activities in this region can seriously affect the supply of oil to India including several lakh Indians working in that region. This is the main concern for India. It has affected not only their oil production but also the stability of these countries.

Following events have changed the dynamics of the West Asia market and may affect the relationship of India with the respective countries.

The events cover the UN and the International opinion and sanctions apart from lobbies playing against India as well as various troubles constantly faced by India from across the borders. These main events are as follows.

• Iraq war which affected the supply of oil to India since we were procuring quite a large quantity of oil from Iraq. The Present situation is quite unpredictable though there is a legitimate government in Iraq as they are facing the heat from the ISIS. However, while production has been affected, India’s export to Iraq and import of oil have also fallen and several thousand Indian workers have lost jobs thereby adversely affecting foreign exchange which helped India’s reserves.

• Sanctions on Iran and change of policy after the new President has taken over in the USA. Iran-India gas pipeline is also in trouble as the shortest route would have been through Pakistan which now cannot be guaranteed and India is forced to look for some other route or alternative.

India is developing the Iranian

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Chabahar port lying on the Gulf of Oman along the approaches to the Straits of Hormuz, the port of Chabahar is central to India’s hopes to crack open a transport corridor to Central Asia and Afghanistan that bypasses archrival Pakistan. However, because of the likely UN sanctions on Iran, this development may be difficult. As of now also, suppliers’ response to this project is not very encouraging. This is the biggest challenge and we are in a wait-and-watch situation.

• Qatar is now isolated from other countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others of the GCC and is labelled as terrorist supporting country.

This is also a very serious issue.

Though both the sides claim that they are right and the former question why Qatar is in good relationship with Iran which share

Because of the likely UN sanctions on Iran this development (of Chahbahar port) may be difficult common gas field from where the two countries extract oil and gas.

Qatar already has many military bases of the USA and is hoping some via media may be worked out shortly.

• Situation in Yemen was a very big challenge from where we had to move safely several thousand Indians employed there. Very good work has been done by our External Affairs Ministry in helping these people.

• Pakistan which gave shelter to Osama Bin Laden for many

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years is still untouched by most of the West Asian countries and also by Europe and the USA from the way these countries are engaging Qatar. Most of the

India has the best relationship with all the West Asian countries but has no control over the geo-political fallout terrorist activities in Europe and the USA have their origin from this country. Moreover, Pakistan is also supported by China for their corridor to Central Asia through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. If these issues of training of terrorists, financing them and supply of arms are well

Islamic State fighters near Raqqa

checked by the UN and the USA by drastically cutting their aid and total ban of supply of arms to Pakistan, we can halt the terrorist activities substantially.

In view of various challenges mentioned above and several hidden forces and interests of various nations, it is important that we should minimise our procurement of oil from West Asia region with the following developments.

India’s Options • India has already found good sources of gas and oilfields and same have to be expedited production of gas and oil increased substantially. This will help us to cut import of oil from West Asian region.

• Maximum use of solar energy in all possible fields to minimise oil consumption.

• Maximum use of nuclear energy for generating electricity to minimise the consumption of oil fuel and even coal.

• Coal will act as transit source till we are self-sufficient in other resources.

• The highest emphasis on electric cars to minimise petrol or diesel consumption.

• Use of gas based energy of which we have good potential.

All the above measures will help us to overcome the existing challenges. India has the best relationship with all the West Asian countries but because of various issues faced by them, we hardly have any control over the geopolitical fallout unless the whole world decides to take stringent measures against these conflicts.

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geo-political shift in West Asia INDIA-ISRAEL EMBRACE

Saluting The Star Of David

There are over fifty dreaded terrorists and criminals, some of them internationally proscribed, residing in Pakistan. India has not been able to take them out so far.

Prime Minister Modi as seen shaking hands with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu

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eventy years is a long time.

It subsumes almost three generations.

When Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister echoed this sentiment, while receiving

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 4 July in Tel Aviv, his rue over the years wasted in diplomatic dithering

by India was evident.

Israel became a nation on 14 May 1948. After more than two

years, India recognised it on 17 September 1950. Israel was permitted to open its consulate in Mumbai in 1953. It took more than four decades for India to come out of its diplomatic closet and establish formal relations with Israel in January 1992. Indo-Israel relations have been a victim of stubbornness of not recalibrating foreign policy and sacrificing bilateral relations and national interests on the altar of misplaced idealism. For long Indian leadership considered diplomatic relations with Israel as politically damaging, fearing a backlash from large Muslim population and vote bank.

India did court Israel through backdoor whenever there was a need.

Israel responded. In 1984, Israel is said to have sought landing and refuelling facilities from India for its fighter jets to bomb Pakistan’s nuclear reactor at Kahuta. India refused.

During the wars of 1965 and 1971, Israel helped India by supplying much needed weapons and ammunition.

During 1999 Kargil War, India ran out of Bofors gun ammunition. It is said that Israeli arms dealers arranged the supply of shells.

Israeli Hegemony Israel has made impressive progress despite the challenges it has faced.

It has fought wars with its hostile neighbours. It forced them militarily to sue for peace individually. It broke their unity to stablise regional power balance in its favour.

Israel has faced scourge of terrorism like India. Being a small State, it is susceptible to infiltration, terror attacks and stand-off attacks from across the border. Its citizens and

interests have been targeted overseas too. With every attack, Israel’s resolve to refine its internal security, border security, counter-terror measures and covert operations to hunt down the terrorists (and Nazi war criminals too) grew and succeeded. Though, Israel has enjoyed the US’ unstinted patronage and support, but on occasions, it did not hesitate in going against the patron, to protect its national interests.

Disarray In Arab World Regional power balance has tipped in favour of Israel. Its neighbours are either engaged in civil war or terrorist violence. Arab unity has been polarised and lies in tatters. With falling oil prices, Sunni-Shia divide, internecine wars, terrorism and absence of a credible leadership, the Middle East has turned into a cauldron consuming societies, national unity and most sadly, innocent citizens.

Having surmounted all the opposition and silenced its enemies, Israel has emerged as a regional power, sound economy, and military might.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) command a professional respect from all armies of the world. Its Special Forces – Sayeret Matkal – have developed unique techniques in dealing with conventional and unconventional war situations.

Israel’s secret service, Mossad has earned a well deserved name and notoriety, for its operations overseas.

Israel has received Jews from all over the world. They brought with them diverse talents and enterprise.

About 1,00,000 Jews from India had also migrated to Israel. In 1948, what was a strip of barren land along the Mediterranean Sea has been

August 2017

Colonel Utkarsh Singh Rathore (Retd) The writer is a Delhi-based risk and threat analyst. He is associated with the Haryana Vishwakarma Skill University.

India did court Israel through backdoor whenever there was a need

Defence AND security alert

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geo-political shift in West Asia INDIA-ISRAEL EMBRACE

developed into an oasis by sheer perseverance of its people. Application of technology in agriculture, water management and urban planning has been rewarding for Israel.

Military Industrial Complex Israeli defence industry has grown considerably. Unlike India, which tries to produce a long inventory of military hardware and software indigenously, Israel has focused on high technology critical areas of defence production, communication, unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs), radars, missiles, precision ammunition and small arms are some of the areas where the Israel defence industry has excelled.

India has been a buyer of Israeli military hardware since long. During 2012-16, India purchased 41 per cent of Israel’s total defence exports amounting to 7.2 per cent of India’s total defence imports. Israel ranks third after Russia and the US in supplying arms to India.

In 2017, defence deals worth US$ 2.6 billion were signed – the highest ever for Israeli defence industry. The Indian Armed Forces use Israeli Airborne Warning and Control System, the UAVs, missiles of different kinds, small arms, etc. Area of cooperation in defence production would be beneficial to both the countries. India and Israel can research and develop technology jointly and co-produce the defence equipment in India.

Lessons From Israel What India should learn from Israel? Israel is also a democracy like India. It displays political unity, when needed. National interest and national security are held supreme by all political parties. Israel is a diverse society but its citizens stand united under the Zionist flag.

Government displays political will in matters of national security. The State’s organisations are lean, mean and responsive. Project management, resource utilisation and, research and development in civil, economic and military areas are noteworthy.

India is an agrarian country. Over 60 per cent of its population is still engaged in this vocation. India had invested in raising agriculture institutions for education and research and development, which were considered the best in Asia.

The Indian Armed Forces have been interacting and training with the IDF at various levels. They engage in regular joint training and exercises.

Prime Minister Modi’s historic visit to Israel has drawn a sharp reaction from Pakistan. It has generated lots of hype and optimism in India.

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Field Training Week in southern Israel for women combatants in the Israel Defense Forces

India has been a buyer of Israeli military hardware since long

Today, we are seeking help from Israel in areas of arid farming, protected farming, horticulture, floriculture and irrigation.

India is the land of rivers. We defiled our rivers. Today, we seek Israel’s help to clean up the Ganges. The Indian peninsula has a long coast line, yet we could not develop water desalination technology and infrastructure to provide drinking water to the masses.

The idea of citing paradoxes in our governance is not to let down the country, but to highlight the need for building up scientific temperament, progressive thinking and judicious resources utilisation culture in ourselves.

Not to be buoyed by the bonhomie, India has to maintain diplomatic balance with the Arab world and Iran. We have good ties with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Relations with Iran are equally important for energy security, access to Afghanistan and posing a counter to China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Pakistan’s Phobia What is it in Indo-Israel relations that unnerves Pakistan? What India should expect from Israel when it comes to reining in Pakistan and its proxy war?

Cutting through the optimism and hype, we have to take a pragmatic view.

India has serious internal security situations in hand. Terrorism is present in many States. Proxy war by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir has been a perpetual problem. Though the Army, Central Armed Police Forces and States’ police are doing a commendable job in counter-terror operations, the situation

August 2017

in some regions cannot be termed as normal. Infusion of surveillance technology and employment of troops in more innovative manner can have a profound effect on the way we carry out operations at tactical level. If the Line of Control and borders could be secured from infiltration, the situation in J&K can be turned around.

India has been vary of committing troops across the border and the LoC, except for the much-touted surgical strikes in September 2016 against the terrorist launch pads in Pakistanoccupied Kashmir, our response to Pakistan’s proxy war has been largely defensive. With no surfeit of terrorists in Pakistan, the attrition caused by the armed forces is regularly made up. We need to up the ante by hitting targets located inside Pakistan and the PoK. The situation needs a de novo look at macro and micro levels to improve upon counter-terror strategy. May be the IDF and Sayeret Matkal can provide an insight and suggest an alternate strategy.

Mossad Method There are over fifty dreaded terrorists and criminals, some of them internationally proscribed, residing in Pakistan. They move openly in Pakistan, keep flitting through Gulf States, Africa and Europe. India has not been able to take them out so far. Mossad can cooperate with Research and Analysis Wing through intelligence sharing.

India and Israel have a lot in common in their security threats. Their armies have rich operational experience in this field. Synergy of ideas and actions between the two armies will help in breaking the stalemate in our counter-terrorism strategy.

Defence AND security alert

39

Modi doctrine

ACT EAST

Long Strides In The Making

Today, the Act East Policy is not being driven by New Delhi alone but by all those regional partners who sincerely look after their security and economic interests and also wish to gain from the experience of other countries in the East in diverse areas including skill development.

S

oon after coming into power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made ‘Act East’ a cornerstone of his government’s foreign policy as a follow up to India’s Look East Policy introduced in the early 1990s. Since then, India has had a more focussed engagement with the Asia-Pacific region in the East with several high profile bilateral visits and a particular focus on completing infrastructure projects in the countries of the region. Earlier, India’s Look East Policy focused primarily on the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Japan. Over the subsequent two decades, there was a realisation that India’s outreach to the East cannot be restricted merely to the ASEAN and Japan, and cannot be confined to just economic sphere.

Consequently, the Modi government decided to concentrate more on improving the country’s relations with the ASEAN and the East Asian countries by enlarging the core interests of the region to include the immediate requirements as regards national as well as regional security.

It was also aimed at eliminating the insurgency problem in the Northeast

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by way of opening up the region to Southeast Asia for promoting greater interaction among the regional members and also ensuring India’s eastward thrust by interlocking sea and land routes therein. In short, the Look East and Act East policies prominently highlight India’s military, political and economic interests in association with the regional partners.

Suspicious Neighbours Although the Look East policy evolved as an instrument of greater economic engagement of the country with its eastern neighbours, yet forging strategic partnerships and security cooperation with them has so far been a tough task barring few exceptions. It is a clarity of strategic intents and end-goals that makes the ‘US Asia rebalance’ and China’s ‘One Belt One Road (OBOR)’ initiatives as powerful foreign policy tools, but India’s ‘Act East’ suffers from suspicions of being the old ‘Look East’ wine put in a new bottle. Further, the ‘Act East’ Policy lacks a strategic fulcrum as India is being regarded as a reactive agenda, instead of being a proactive agenda setter, with committed political and economic

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Regional actors continue to see India as a relatively peripheral player

Dr Sudhanshu Tripathi The writer is a professor of political science at the UP Rajarshi Tandon Open University Allahabad (UP).

“All the way” International Cooperation Summit Forum

engagements.

Consequently perhaps, the regional actors continue to see India as a relatively peripheral player in the region compared to the United States, China and even Japan.

All these factors can reasonably be clubbed as key ingredients of the so-called evolving ‘Modi Doctrine’, which emphasises upon economic resurgence of not only the country but that of the entire region with a view to arouse their confidence in New Delhi as a genuine regional security provider.

The Modi doctrine especially lays stress on enlarging the earlier Indian mind-set confined only to ‘South Asia’ to the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and beyond to include the entire East spreading upto West Asia and Africa as extended part of the Asian continent, so as to consolidate its geopolitical interests in the resurgent Asia because global geopolitics is moving towards the East. In fact, the IOR is a strategic link from the

August 2017

Straits of Hormuz to the Straits of Malacca making it a highly volatile maritime zone as regards global peace and stability. Modi very well understands that India and the Indian Ocean are appropriate half-way points between West Asia and Southeast Asia. For consolidating India’s maritime strategy and strengthening security in such a vast area requires an ambitious geostrategic and economic goal and the desire to develop an institutional framework around it with a view to create an effective mechanism for the economic integration of the wider South Asian region linking India – including Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal – with the ASEAN economies.

Such economic integration would go far beyond traditional trade agreements and encompass timebound connectivity infrastructure projects like China’s OBOR, production network linkages facilitated by the FDI and the integration of energy and electricity infrastructures.

Defence AND security alert

41

Modi doctrine

ACT EAST

Challenges Despite these good prospects, there are several challenges too which need immediate attention.

Mounting tensions in the AsiaPacific due to rising Chinese hegemony and aggressive assertions have consequently prompted India to coordinate with other super and major powers and also other regional members who are equally affected by such obnoxious developments.

Unfortunately, bilateral relations between Myanmar and Bangladesh suffer from acrimony due to the Rohingya issue in Rakhine state.

Similarly, India needs to become more proactive to resolve the Teesta river water-sharing issue with Bangladesh as the Act East Policy includes not just Southeast Asia, East Asia and countries in

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the Indo-Pacific but also South Asian neighbours like Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Bangladesh is important for India’s Act East Policy, since both are working together in the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) as well as the BBIN (Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal) corridor. The India-Bangladesh cooperation referred to the BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) Corridor is an important forum of furthering relevant regional or sub-regional cooperation initiatives. As Islamabad continues with its lackadaisical attitude regarding progress within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members, Dhaka has well realised that there are more opportunities

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US Secretary of State, Rex W Tillerson poses for a family photo with Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN Member States in Washington

outside the SAARC framework and that it can work as an important partner in India’s Act East Policy.

This is evident in Dhaka’s pragmatic approach towards expansion of land, rail and maritime connectivity and also its strong steps taken against terrorism.

Similarly, Malaysia is another country to which India reached out first when it launched its Look East Policy in the 1990s. The Malaysian PM’s recent visit was important for both strategic and economic reasons as that focused on enhancing bilateral trade between both the countries. The Malaysian PM laid a special emphasis on the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership). As he opined: “It is more relevant now than before that we conclude the RCEP. With the TPP gone, we need the RCEP as a free trade arrangement for this area.”

Apart from the South China Sea issue both the PMs raised concerns against terrorism in the region.

Earlier, Malaysia had supported Pakistan but the present Malaysian PM looks inclined towards India.

Significantly, PM Modi praised Malaysia’s bold actions against

Overall, India’s outreach to the East - the Act East Policy - has witnessed a significant transformation terrorism.

But intra-regional conflicts arouse grave challenges in Thai-Myanmar and Thai-Malaysia relations. But these challenges must not restrain India in forging closer relations of economic integration and greater connectivity with the regional

August 2017

members as that would be largely beneficial for all of them and would provide the ASEAN States the means to gradually move away from their over-dependence on China.

Greater Proactivity India will have to become more forwardly offensive rather than defensive.

The bilateral and multilateral steps taken by India for improving relations with Southeast Asia besides South Asian neighbours, must be geographicallyexpanded so that India may assume a prominent role in the region.

This may urge PM Modi to reflect on India’s long-neglected maritime imperatives as well as to think of India’s strategic future in maritime terms. But continuing tensions with Pakistan and China have compelled India to focus more on the emerging Beijing-Islamabad unethical collusion against New Delhi rather than forging closer relations with America, Australia and Japan and other extended regional partners.

Fortunately, Japan and the United States and also Australia have been quietly lobbying for a more proactive role in the region for India and look to extending their covert promises for their future strategic alignment towards this end.

Further, PM Modi needs to concentrate on deeper economic engagements within and outside of the IOR, and safeguarding core Indian interests backed by a more assertive and credible military power, particularly on the maritime front.

He envisions that India must also expand its diplomatic, economic and military relations with China and Pakistan while pursuing its onward march to become a great and

Defence AND security alert

43

Modi doctrine

ACT EAST

respected power in the world. Indeed, ‘vikas-vaad’ (development) and ‘vistarvaad’ (expansion) as well as ‘ahimsa’ and ‘non-alignment’ are the driving forces behind Modi’s unfolding vision for India’s peaceful rise.

Asia-Pacific Ambit Despite serious deliberations having already emerged regarding the geographical security nomenclature about the IOR, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific, the regional security debates have implications for India’s strategic projection wherein there is a significant move from an IOR towards the Indo-Pacific security building architecture. Over the past decade, Australia-India ties have strengthened significantly owing to the China factor and India’s increasing ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region with Australian support for playing its legitimate role for help-maintaining stability in the Indo-Pacific Region. Both countries recognise the “importance of freedom of navigation and overflight, unimpeded lawful commerce, as well as resolving maritime disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with international law, including UNCLOS”.

India’s Indo-Pacific role is clear enough, especially after Modi’s visit to Japan in September 2014.

A stronger maritime partnership is envisaged as both nations committed themselves to increasing their maritime interaction and reaffirmed support for the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force’s continued participation in the annual Indo-US-Malabar maritime exercises.

The net effect of such military build-up exercises on stability in the IOR is a function not just of power

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and strategy, but that of evolving a culture of self-confidence and benign assertion on the high seas along with full capability of bold and aggressive retaliation, if required. Obviously, the Indian Navy needs to counter the Chinese and Pakistani navy in and around its maritime territory. Indeed, if the Modi Doctrine persists, then about a quarter century of ‘looking East’ is destined to be substituted by the much required policy of ‘acting East’, in the changed context of eastward shifting global geopolitics.

Obviously, India is to particularly focus on its friendly strategic relations with all the littoral states in the region besides major powers.

With Australia, the US had already concluded a significant military agreement in 2011 following its ‘Asia-Pivot’ policy. And the situation in the region has deteriorated further due to legal defeat of China’s sovereign claim over the entire South China Sea.

Free Trade Associations Thus, all these developments have prompted India to revitalise its expanding relations with the US,

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What India needs to give a greater attention to are Free Trade Agreements

The 2015 BangladeshChina-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Business Forum

Australia, Japan along with other major powers, particularly Russia, Brazil, Israel and South Africa.

Overall, India’s outreach to the East – the Act East Policy – has witnessed a significant transformation. No longer does it depend solely upon one or two countries or even the ASEAN. Instead, it is willing to look at new partners who adjust with its strategic and economic priorities. Today, the Act East Policy is not being driven by New Delhi alone but by all those regional partners who sincerely look after their security and economic interests and also wish to gain from the experience of other countries of the East in diverse areas including skill development. What India needs

August 2017

to give a greater attention to are Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which had been dubbed as Phase II of India’s “Look East Policy” by Yashwant Sinha in his famous speech in the Second India-ASEAN Business Summit in 2003. “Apart from dealing with its external interlocutors, India will also need to take all domestic stakeholders on board for ensuring that the FTAs go ahead and domestic infrastructure is enhanced, especially in the North East.” Thus, the Act East Policy has a very strong domestic component ensuring peace and progress for the entire East and also of the whole world in the true spirit of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam because nothing is beyond human endeavour.

Defence AND security alert

45

Shia-Sunni cleavage TENSIONS IN PAKISTAN

Sectarian Tensions in Pakistan

and its Geo-political Challenges The stalemate in Syria does not help Pakistan. Nor does the inflammatory politics between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is equally a battle for regional influence. The Saudi-Qatar conflict is evidence of a power struggle, not a sectarian divide. It is important that any authority in Pakistan must not commit itself to either side of the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide in the world and instead mediate between the two regional powers to abate the parlous situation.

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@dsalert

T

he second largest Muslim country in the world, Pakistan, has a predominantly Sunni population and is also home to the second largest Shia population in the world. This puts Pakistan in a unique dilemma; that is, caught in a Saudi-Iran sectarian tug of war. Pakistan’s exclusionary policies of Sunnicentric Islamisation, violence against Shias by Sunni sectarian militants in Pakistan and the wider region as well as State patronage given to such outfits are sensitive issues in geopolitics in the Middle East and Pakistan’s policy towards Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Security Context The geopolitics of the Middle East is intensifying the sectarian identities and ideologies of particular groups of Sunnis and Shias all over the world. This portends more trouble for Pakistan. The attacks on Barelvis claimed by the Islamic Sate (IS) and its allies, such as the attack on the shrine of Shah Noorani in Balochistan in November 2016 and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sindh in February 2017, is evidence of the growing influence of IS. One of the primary messages of IS is declaring all those who do not subscribe to its message as heretics.

groups. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in particular has its raison d’etre as an anti-Shia organisation, with ethnic cleansing of the community part of the group’s manifesto. On 25 April 2017, a deadly attack carried out by a pro-Islamic State (IS) terrorist group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) targeting the Shia Muslims in the same Kurram tribal region that killed 14 people. The JuA, which splintered from the Pakistani Taliban in 2014, propagates a poisonous anti-Shia ideology and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic StateWilayat Khurasan (IS-WK) in August 2014. In the last two years, JuA has synergised with the IS to target Shias across Pakistan. The emergence of IS in Pakistan and IS-linked attacks in league with anti-Shia militants, such as JuA, Jundullah and Lashkar-eJhangvi al-Alami (LeJ-A), are sinister developments, especially where Sunni-Shia sectarian relations are concerned.

Portia B. Conrad The writer is working as a consultant with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

The Arab-Islamic-American Summit in May 2017 does provide Pakistan with an opportunity to separate itself from what is perceived to be an anti-Shia coalition Geo-political Challenges

The recent attack on Shias in Parachinar in Kurram Agency, FATA on 23 June 2017, which killed at least 80 people, portrayed the perpetual sectarian tensions of the area bordering Afghanistan.

Shia Muslims, who form a majority in Kurram Agency, have been the direct target of many of the attacks launched by Sunni jihadist

At the heart of these troubling formations is the Syrian conflict.

Syria is home to a number of holy sites endeared by Shias, including the shrine of Zaynab, the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad. This, among other factors, makes Syria an important country for Shia Islam; and an attack on Syria is seen as a direct threat to the Shia sect

August 2017

Defence AND security alert

47

Shia-Sunni cleavage TENSIONS IN PAKISTAN

itself. In light of this, the April 25 incident cannot be divorced from the December 2015 attack by LeJ-A in Parachinar, a warning to local Shias to stop supporting the crimes against Syrian Muslims by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian government. Added to this is the Saudi-Iran rivalry something which has sectarian undertones and is partly responsible for the continuing Syrian civil war.

Pakistan finds itself caught in a tug of war between its oil-rich ally, Saudi Arabia, and its neighbour, Iran. While Shia extremist groups associate with the larger Shia community in particular Iran. Likewise, the Sunni extremists and Islamist groups in

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Pakistan identify themselves with Saudi Arabia, underscoring the divide of Muslims in the country.

This puts Pakistan in a paradox where any sign of closeness towards Saudi Arabia or Iran serves to only exacerbate the sectarian fault lines within its borders.

Pak-Saudi Entente Cordiale Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have traditionally maintained strong ties based on reciprocity, whereby the Saudis’ oil and finances have helped Pakistan in times of need, while Pakistan has provided its military capabilities to help the custodians of the two Holy Mosques achieve their military objectives.

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Saudi Arabia had recently conferred the country’s highest civilian honour - the King Abdul Aziz Sash - to Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Much to the surprise of the Saudis and their subordinates in Pakistan, this changed when the Pakistan government chose to remain on the sidelines instead of joining the Saudiled coalition against Yemen in 2015 – a decision that irked the Saudis and their Arab allies. However, with the appointment of Pakistan’s former Army Chief Raheel Sharif as head of the 41-nation Islamic military alliance against terrorism there were signs that Pakistan might join the fight in Yemen after all. The exclusion of Iran and other Shia majority Muslim States from this alliance gives it a distinctive Sunni character, and lends itself to being interpreted as an effort by the Sunni States to gather against Shia Iran and its allies in the Middle East.

Raheel’s Gambit

The Arab countries have cut ties with Qatar for supporting terrorism

Raheel Sharif’s attempt to assuage Shia concerns by setting conditions on his appointment, which included making Iran a member State in the alliance failed. The Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, has been more bellicose in his tone towards Iran than before effectively ruling out any chance of peace with Iran. The ongoing QatarGulf rift is also evidence of the deep rooted rivalry.

On the other hand, Iran is Pakistan’s neighbour. Given that the two countries have a complicated history of bilateral relations, it is important for Pakistan not to antagonise its neighbour, especially when, as over the past year, ties with Afghanistan and India have deteriorated. Since in international relations, States may choose allies but not neighbours, Pakistan needs to strategise with prudence.

August 2017

Trump’s Dose Of Venom This dilemma has become even more complicated in light of the recent Trump-led Arab Islamic American Summit in May. Not only did Trump sign a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia but he also slandered Iran by calling it a nation that “fuelled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror”. President Trump’s visit is important because it shows that the US has picked a side in this rivalry for regional supremacy. However, the side-effects of this act are dangerous.

By appealing to the Sunni States, President Trump has implicitly disregarded Shia Islam and added more fuel to sectarian tensions.

The stalemate in Syria does not help Pakistan. Nor does the inflammatory politics between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Persian-Arab conflict goes far back in history. However ,it is equally a battle for regional influence. The Saudi-Qatar conflict is evidence of a power struggle, not a sectarian divide. It is important that any authority in Pakistan must not commit itself to either side of the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide in the world and instead mediate between the two regional powers to abate the parlous situation.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not given the opportunity to speak at the Arab-IslamicAmerican Summit in May 2017.

Many deemed it embarrassing- some called it downright insulting. Be that as it may, it does provide Pakistan with an opportunity to separate itself from what is perceived to be an antiShia coalition and instead undertake a carefully balanced foreign policy towards the Middle East, given the geopolitical challenges on the issue.

Defence AND security alert

49

Shia-Sunni cleavage TENSIONS IN PAKISTAN

Gains For India On the pretext of Islam fraternity, Pakistan always expected that the Gulf countries should help Pakistan, particularly with the Kashmir situation, but did not get it.

On the contrary, these countries are further cozying up their relationship with India.

Saudi Arabia had recently conferred the country’s highest civilian honor - the King Abdul Aziz Sash - to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as compared to ignoring, in a rather humiliating way, the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during the recent Riyadh Summit. Similarly, UAE has not only allowed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address a large gathering of Indians in UAE, an occasion used by Modi to give a tacit message to Pakistan but also donated a large piece of land for the construction of a Mandir in UAE.

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August 2017 dsalert.org

Pakistan’s regional posture is Indiacentric, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also enunciated on several occasions a policy of encircling and isolating Pakistan regionally and internationally. Along those lines, India has substantially increased its influence in Afghanistan, and it has recently, too, started stepping up its engagement with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Pakistan, instead of countering Indian engagement in Iran, is directing its ire at Iran and Saudi Arabia in different ways. This has facilitated India’s position in its relation with the two countries vis-à-vis Pakistan.

Disclaimer: The views expressed/ discussed in this paper are for the purpose of generating an informed discussion and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of Ministry of External Affairs on the subject.

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US President Donald Trump during his recent visit to Riyadh

July 2017

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call us at: +91-11-23243999, 23287999.

Write to us at: Subscription department, Food and Beverage Buzz (FnB Buzz), Prabhat Prakashan Tower, 4/19 Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi - 110002, INDIA.

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