India News:

Oil, Islam and diplomacyGeopolitical realities can’t be ignoredby G. Parthasarathy

OVER the past two decades, India has crafted an imaginative “Look East” policy. This has resulted in growing economic integration with its economically dynamic eastern neighbourhood, while ensuring that it is a constructive partner and participant in evolving an inclusive security architecture for the Asia-Pacific region. Sadly, our horizons, as we look westward, appear to end with our “AfPak” neighbourhood, with little effort for pro-active diplomacy in the oil-rich Gulf region, where over 4 million Indians reside and work and from where we get over 70 per cent of our crucial oil imports. Moreover, with India’s trade deficit growing rapidly, our balance of payments is crucially dependent on the increasing remittances we receive from overseas Indians—$46.4 billion in 2008-2009.


Our Persian Gulf neighbourhood contains two-thirds of the world’s proven petroleum reserves and 35 per cent of the world’s gas reserves. Moreover, as energy demands increase worldwide, it is these countries maintaining 90 per cent of the world’s excess production capacity, which alone can meet the growing demand of the rapidly emerging economies like China and India. Our major suppliers of oil from the Gulf are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE and Yemen. Iran provides 17 per cent of our oil imports, with some key refineries dependent on Iranian crude. Moreover, Iran remains our transit point for trade with Central Asia and through the Caspian, with Russia. With Pakistan denying us transit to Afghanistan, we have cooperated with Iran for reducing Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistan, by development of infrastructure for Chah Bahar port. Iran is also providing political, diplomatic and material backing to the forces in Afghanistan which share our misgivings about the Taliban. At the same time, however, unlike their Arab neighbours, the Iranians have been unreliable in fulfilling signed contractual commitments with India, on supplies of LNG.
The Persian Gulf remains the crucible for ancient civilizational and sectarian Shia-Sunni rivalries between the Persians and the Arabs. The depth of these animosities was exposed when, alluding to King Abdullah, WikiLeaks revealed the “King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”. The Saudi monarch reportedly told the Americans “to cut off the head of the snake (Iran)”. Riyadh has even reportedly offered over-flight facilities to Israeli warplanes, in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Interestingly, even before Iran attacked the Osirak nuclear reactor in September 1980, the Director of Israeli Military Intelligence, Mr. Yehoshua Saguy, publicly urged the Iranians to do so. Less than a year later, on July 7, 1981, Israeli F-15s bombed and destroyed the Osirak reactor, after overflying Saudi territory. More than the Americans, the Israelis have astutely played on Arab-Persian rivalries to ensure that they remain the sole nuclear power in the Middle-East. Moreover, despite all talk of their solidarity with the Palestinians, a number of Arab countries maintain covert and not-so-covert ties with Israel’s Mossad.


The sectarian dimensions of the rivalries in the Persian Gulf also cannot be ignored. Iran has consistently stirred up Shia minorities in Yemen and Kuwait and the Shia majority in Sunni-ruled Bahrain. This rivalry is also being played out in Iraq, where the Shia majority has accused its Sunni Arab neighbours of backing extremist Sunni groups. Paradoxically, after endeavouring to follow a policy of “dual containment” of both Iran and Iraq for over a decade, the Americans are now finding that their ill-advised invasion of Iraq has only brought Iran and Iraq closer together, with a number of Iraqi political and religious figures beholden to Tehran for the support they have received. While Arab regimes may be dependent on American support, the mood in Arab streets is distinctly anti-American a phenomenon the Iranians are cleverly exploiting.


India’s relations with Arab Gulf States have shown a distinct improvement after the visit of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in January 2006 and Dr Manmohan Singh to Riyadh in February-March 2010. India has received Saudi assurances of meeting of its growing requirements for oil. The desert kingdom and home of Islam’s holiest shrines appears to recognise the need to reach out to countries like India and China even as it maintains its strong security ties with the US. Moreover, our relations with Oman, the UAE and Qatar have expanded significantly, with Qatar emerging as an important supplier of LNG. We, however, seem to have run out of ideas in fashioning a new relationship with Shia-dominated Iraq even as China seals lucrative deals for oil exploration in a country that has the greatest unutilised capacity to boost global oil production. Our efforts to train Iraqi-professionals on petroleum-related matters could, however, serve us well in the long run.


While a partnership with the US certainly has its merits in developing our relations with the Arab Gulf countries, we have given an impression of behaving like an American client State in dealing with Iran. This was evident in the unseemly and hasty manner in which we cancelled our partnership with Iran in the Asian Clearing Union——-an arrangement advocated and supported by ESCAP since 1974. This action seriously disrupted payments for oil supplies at a time when even American allies like Japan have ensured the continuity of their oil imports from that country.


One sincerely hopes that the lure of World Bank and IMF patronage is not unduly affecting such decisions. Moreover, if we have reservations about the Iran-Pakistan- India gas pipeline because of legitimate doubts about the security of energy supplies through the volatile and violent Balochistan province of Pakistan, why are we hastily joining the proposed a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline? Is Taliban-infested Afghanistan a haven for peace and stability? Or is it because of the diktats of others?


Our relations with Iran should be based on hard-headed assessment of national interest and calculations of Iranian reliability on issues of energy supplies and not on sentimentalism about the so-called “civilisational affinities”. Persian Emperor Nadir Shah did not exactly endear himself to the people when he invaded, pillaged and occupied Delhi. With Israel and the US now agreeing that Iran won’t be able to build a nuclear weapon till 2015, there is an opportunity for India to work with others in the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council to craft innovative measures to deal with the Iranian nuclear impasse. Similarly, while our principled support for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians should continue, our relations with the Gulf Arab countries should not inhibit our ties with Israel. These relations should be determined and fashioned by the larger geopolitical realities.

(source: the tribune, chandigarh)

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