Author: Indrani Bagchi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: Jul 15, 2006
URL: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOI/navigator.asp?Daily=TOIM
Israel's offensive against Hizbollah in Lebanon
and its backers in Syria on Thursday has left policymakers here scratching
their heads because India has enormous political, economic and strategic stakes
in the right power balance in the region. As oil and gold surged northwards
in the international markets, the fear is that the Middle East crisis might
hit India where it hurts.
The bottomline for India's position is clear:
the situation should be controlled and not allowed to escalate. There, at
least, the UPA government is on safe ground. It is on nuancing its policy
in the Middle East that the government will once again find its foreign policy
constrained by vote politics in India.
After Hizbollah fired rockets into the Israeli
city of Haifa, Israel extended its air raids into Lebanon on Thursday. India
joined the rest of the world community in criticising Israel's acts of bombing
Beirut airport and other civilian targets in Lebanon. Israeli jets also bombed
the highway between Beirut and Damascus, the action piling up civilian casualties
in Lebanon and Syria.
However, India will have to "balance"
its criticism of Israel because it's impossible not to condemn the Hizbollah
action of abduction of Israeli soldiers. The abduction (and possibly torture)
of the soldiers will remind the Indian establishment of the abduction by Pakistan
of five of its own soldiers during the Kargil conflict, and what followed:
Pakistan returned the bodies weeks later, tortured and killed. There is no
way any government in India can look the other way on soldier abductions by
extremists.
In the wake of Mumbai blasts, Manmohan Singh's
government cannot possibly criticise the "firm" action by Israel
against fundamentalist elements. Neither Hizbollah nor Hamas represent forces
in the Middle East that India is comfortable doing business with, and even
if it doesn't articulate it in as many words, the foreign office is very clear
on this score.
And India wants to do a lot of business in
that region. Described as India's economic hinterland, the government has
reenergised India's stakes in the region, with free trade deals, investment,
political and energy connections and most important-the adopted home to millions
of Indian diaspora that gives voluminous remittances that are holding up India's
$163 billion forex reserves.
But the flip side of the coin is where the
government's difficulties lie. Criticising actions of the extremist Hizbollah
and Hamas opens it to charges of being anti-Muslim and at a time when the
Congress is actively courting the Muslim vote in UP, this will be the proverbial
hot potato for the government. Although the PM doesn't really believe in the
existence of a Muslim vote-bank, senior Congress managers do. They also subscribe
to the theory that India's actions vis-a-vis other Muslim nations affects
Indian Muslims-a theory that is alarmingly similar to the argument that is
put forward by hardliners and which gained strength after many Muslims turned
their back on Congress in Assam and Kerala polls. Their annoyance with Congress
was perceived to be a retaliation against UPA government's attempt to strengthen
the "strategic engagement" with the US and its stand against a nuclear-armed
Iran.
