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Saturday January 28, 11:45 AM
Arabian nights in Delhi
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By Sreeram Chaulia
The dynamic needs of statecraft and the changing
texture of international politics generate the strangest of bedfellows.
The world has been amazed by the coming together of diametrically
opposed and diehard adversaries when circumstances warranted it. Images
of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with PLO leader
Yasser Arafat in Washington in September 1993 or of British Prime
Minister Tony Blair doing the same with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi
in Tripoli in March 2004 are living proofs of the old aphorism that
diplomacy is the art of the possible.
Closer to home, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
having a cheerful tête-à-tête with Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of
Pakistan's fundamentalist nerve-centre, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, in
Delhi in July 2003 was another bizarre deed attesting to the pragmatism
that governs the conduct of foreign policy. The just concluded historic
trip to India of the Saudi Arabian ruler, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud,
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's protocol-defying personal reception at
Delhi airport, and the visiting dignitary being honoured as chief guest
for the Republic Day parade fall within a similar category of events -
unimaginable absurdities until they were turned into reality.
The economic balance sheet between India and Saudi
Arabia conveys a normal, even healthy, relationship. The latter is
India's biggest supplier of crude, accounting for almost a quarter of
its fuel imports, and host to 1.5 million Indian migrant workers who
send back remittances worth an estimated $4 billion per annum. Indian
petrochemical, pharmaceutical, IT and telecom companies are licensed
operators in the desert kingdom, generating annual business worth $360
million.
The Bilateral Investment Promotion Agreement and the
Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement that were signed by the two sides in
Delhi carry forward the expansive vision of the February 2004 'Mumbai
Declaration' between leading businessmen of India and of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), of which Saudi Arabia is the bellwether.
Nearly identical economic pacts were signed by Abdullah's entourage in
China a few days ago, bold moves to ensure that GCC member states do not
slip out of Saudi hands and strike out bilateral bargains independently.
Abdullah's goal of ensuring complete mastery and
shepherding authority over the slippery GCC is being well served through
this new 'Look East' foreign economic policy.
The political balance sheet between India and Saudi
Arabia is what makes the recent state visit befuddling. For decades the
repressive House of Saud has been buying loyalty at home by diverting
terrorism towards external targets and financing the spread of rabid
Wahhabi ideology of holy war. Pick a place on the geographical map of
modern jehad - Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Chechnya,
Bosnia, Tajikistan, the Philippines, Kosovo, Algeria, Sudan, Thailand,
Indonesia or Bangladesh - and a Saudi connection will automatically
surface. Worldwide, Saudi-financed Islamic institutions and schools have
come under the scanner for spreading religious hatred and destabilising
multicultural states.
India has been at the receiving end of Saudi
governmental and citizen initiatives to bankroll terrorist outfits
active in Kashmir. In December 2005, the Organisation of Islamic
Conference (OIC), where Saudi Arabia is a principal player, declared
solidarity with Pakistan on Kashmir for the umpteenth time. King
Abdullah did say on his Delhi trip that he favours India getting
observer status at the OIC, but the catch was that the nomination be put
forward by Pakistan! The unwavering military and economic support Saudis
have given to Pakistan soured ties for a long time between Riyadh and
Delhi. It is an open secret that the Saudis funded the Pakistani nuclear
programme.
In the light of deep-rooted evangelistic foreign
policy orientations of the custodians of Makkah and Madinah, the
Agreement on Combating Terrorism and Crime inked in Delhi between Saudi
and Indian officials appears fanciful and empty. It does give Riyadh
brownie points with the US as an indicator of sincerity in cleaning up
its act as the fountainhead of global terror. The 'Delhi Declaration'
obviously has some mutually beneficial features in the economic realm,
but warrants healthy wariness on the counter-terrorism front.
A behind-the-scenes American role in propelling the
Saudi-Indian Strategic Energy Pact cannot be ruled out because of the
Iran connection. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has often
reiterated that Washington wants to help India explore 'alternative
sources of energy' so that the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline
is stymied and Tehran is completely cornered into conceding on its
nuclear programme. The language of the Energy Pact - 'reliable, stable
and increased volume of crude oil supplies through evergreen long-term
contracts' - offers India an alternative that could have repercussions
on the Iran pipeline's future. The economist in Manmohan Singh's shoes
has already set the cat among the pigeons by worrying aloud that the
Iran pipeline is fraught with risks and difficult to find insurers.
Saudi Arabia has for long been engaged in a fiercely
competitive rivalry with Iran for the post of the Middle East's great
power. Riyadh and Tehran wage an all-out battle for influence and power
by arming antagonistic terrorist groups and proxy zealots. Frequent
Iranian opposition to Saudi oil price setting at the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and recent Iranian gains in Iraq
through the 'Shia victory' rankle greatly with King Abdullah.
The race for who corrals the ravenous energy
appetites of rapidly industrialising China and India is not merely one
between Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC oil producer, and Iran, the
second largest producer but also between America's staunchest ally and
most inveterate foe.
(Sreeram Chaulia is a commentator on international
affairs. He can be reached at [email protected])
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