:: Nihal Singh

India, West Asia stand on the cusp of opportunities

S. Nihal Singh

Is there a method in the sudden explosion of visits between India and what Americans call the Greater Middle East? It is simplistic to suggest that the Congress-led coalition is wooing the Muslim vote ahead of elections. Rather, the answer lies in a conjunction of circumstances and the world economic crisis to concentrate the Indian mind on a simple truth: there are overwhelming reasons of trade, employment and energy resources to make India’s extended neighbourhood a priority area.

President Hosni Mubarak’s rare visit to India is a reminder that harking back to the golden era of non-alignment and the Nasser-Nehru rapport no longer has a resonance. Both the countries and the world have moved on. Egypt is no longer the centre of the Arab world that it was but remains an important country in the region by virtue of its size, location and soft power. Its reconciliation with Israel in what has turned out to be a cold peace resulting in a $2 billion annual US aid help line is an obvious factor in Cairo’s worldview.

Syria’s President Bashar Assad, who came visiting India earlier, is seeking to break out of the Western isolation imposed on it because of its close ties with Iran, its policies towards Lebanon and links with two movements, the Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy took the initiative in reaching out to Damascus, followed by Britain’s foreign secretary paying a visit. Interestingly, Turkey is playing the mediator in indirect talks between Syria and Israel over the return of the occupied Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s own visit to Oman and Qatar was a belated acknowledgement of the importance of the Gulf states grouped in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The GCC employs nearly five million Indians, a simple supply and demand equation, with the oil-rich countries with small populations creating opportunities for surplus Indian labour. Besides, the GCC, which includes Saudi Arabia and the United Aran Emirates, is a major source of India’s oils and gas supplies. The India-Qatar security agreement is a precursor of how an economic and manpower relationship can be strengthened by a synergy in the defence field.

Dr Singh was quite candid in placing his cards on the table during his brief Gulf tour by declaring his attempt at leveraging the oil-rich region’s bulging cash reserves in India’s insatiable requirements in the infrastructure fields. With the US and the western world in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, it is to the mutual advantage of India and the Arab world to turn towards each other, instead of putting all the oil money in US bonds and other investments in the West.

The transition hiatus in the US administration implies that after the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement, the next phase of the relationship will take time to materialise. This is an added incentive for India to look at its extended neighbourhood to repair and enhance relations. Of particular interest in this regard was the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, coming on top of a series of ministerial visits, most recently of its foreign minister. Ankara’s signal is clear. Despite its Cold War proximity with Pakistan, it is consciously setting about enhancing its relationship with India for a host of political and economic reasons.

Turkey is a fascinating country for its domestic developments and for the new regional role it is seeking to play. It is to the credit of the ruling AK Party, with its Islamic roots, that it has sought to rein in the traditionally dominant Army’s political role by tempering its rigid definition of secularism. The ruling party represents a democratising influence through its support base in Anatolia, as opposed to the Army and civilian elite that has ruled Turkey since the days of Kemal Ataturk.

The AK Party’s domestic difficulties and battle with Kurdish rebels are far from over but it has the confidence to play an activist role in the region and further afield. It aspires to be an energy hub for Russian and Central Asian oil and a bridge not merely between the West and the Muslim world but between Russia and the West. Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union, a distant prospect at best, is running parallel with its cultivation of Central Asian republics with their Turkic roots, and its own view of itself as the regional superpower.

Turkey might not always measure up to the romantic western view of a model of a moderate Muslim-majority country keeping pace with the modern world and the 21st century, but it does occupy a unique place in a volatile region. A long-standing member of Nato, it maintains good relations with Israel though the Islamic regime in Iran broke off the trend set in motion by the Shah of Iran. Iran, of course, is not Arab in an overwhelmingly Arab world. Indeed, a new government in Tel Aviv might well turn to Ankara for help over Iran in the future.

For the better part, of course, dealing with the Greater Middle East means relations with the Arab world. In acknowledgement of this fact, the Arab League in the shape of its secretary-general, the former Egyptian foreign minister Amr Musa, will be visiting Delhi. The League is more important for its symbolism than for any great collective clout it wields. It is a clearing house and appeals to the sense of the "Arab nation", an idealised concept that includes all the Arab countries.

But the Arab League does serve the purpose of being a sounding board of Arab opinion. For instance, Saudi Arabia has used it to reiterate its peace proposal on resolving the seminal Palestinian-Israeli conflict, damned by Israel with faint praise. As long as the United States and Israel are not ready for a just peace, the Arab League, as most of the Arab world, must perform a balancing act in giving lip-serve to a Palestinian state bereft of Israeli occupation and the continuing suffering and subjugation of millions of Palestinians.

It remains to be seen what India makes of the new intensive phase of its interaction with the Greater Middle East, but it is on the cusp of great opportunities and promise.