Chapter 15
1. The Persian Gulf countries are Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
2. At the time of India’s independence, among the Persian Gulf countries, only Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran existed as sovereign states. The Sultanate of Oman, in its present shape, came into being in the 1950s. Kuwait became sovereign in 1962; Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
3. See http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Foreign_policy/fp.htm
4. http://www.iags.org/n0920300.htm
5. http://www.contrystudies.india/middleeast.htm
6. See Sandy Gordon, India’s Rise to Power in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 282.
7. Pakistan was largely successful in cornering India in her relations with Riyadh. The rejection of India’s application for membership of the OIC at Rabat 1969 was largely because of Saudi opposition at the behest of Islamabad. Pakistan had also sought to sabotage India’s attempts to obtain financial assistance for the Rajasthan canal from Riyadh on the grounds that it would be a strategic asset.
8. The enormity of this neglect is borne out by the fact that Jaswant Singh’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2001 was the first visit ever to the kingdom by an Indian Minister for External Affairs.
9. See C. Rajamohan, Crossing the Rubicon: the Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Viking, 2003). Also, Gordon, op. cit.
10. Gordon, op. cit., p. 282.
11. Pakistan and Iran share a long boundary with Afghanistan. Any increase of Pakistani influence in the region is therefore regarded as strongly against Tehran’s interests. This was true as much in the 1970s as in the late 1990s. The ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan with support from Islamabad was, for instance, a useful factor in drawing New Delhi and Tehran closer behind the Northern Alliance of Burhan al-din Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Masood.
12. http://www.countrystudies.india/middleeast.htm
13.This policy was almost a mirror image of Pakistan’s policy in the Iraq–Iran war. Taking the ideological position that Pakistan should not take sides in a conflict between two Muslim states, Islamabad tried to remain friendly with both Baghdad and Tehran. See Raheela Kokab, ‘Pakistan and the Gulf Crisis: Internal Dynamics and the Impact of the US Factor’, www.statsvitenskap.uio.no/ansatte/serie/rapport/fulltekst/0193/golfkrisen_Pakistan.html
14. http://www.iags.org/n092030htm
15. See, V.P. Dutt, India’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1999), p. 169.
16. Nearly 50,000 workers, technicians and engineers used to be employed till the early 1980s. After the outbreak of Iran–Iraq War, there was a veritable exodus that left less than 9,000 behind on the eve of the Gulf War.
17. Dutt, op. cit. p. 269.
18. Ibid., p.270.
19. On 31 October 1991, the Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Salem al-Sabah, expressed his dismay at India’s response while speaking to a group of Indian journalists visiting Kuwait: ‘India did not support Kuwait. We had expected you to support us…. We are grateful to [Pakistan] that it supported us.’
20. Ninan Koshy, ‘India’s “Middle Path” Through War in Iraq: A Devious Route to the US Camp’, Foreign Policy in Focus, 14 April 2003, http://www.fpif.org/pdf/gac/ OUS0304india.pdf
21. Ibid.
22. On the eve of the war, US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwell claimed in a statement that the US and Indian positions were the same.
23. Both France and Germany had come (along with Russia) to conclude several memoranda of understanding and agreements with the Saddam regime that were to allow them considerable contracts for oil exploration and reconstruction projects once the UN sanctions against Iraq were lifted. India too had come to commercial arrangements under the Oil-for-Food Programme with the Saddam regime, and had been supporting calls for an end to sanctions on Iraq as late as 2000. India’s silence over US intervention in Iraq becomes more significant in terms of its changed pro-US leaningin this context.
24. Koshy, op. cit.
25. Sushil J. Aaron, Straddling Faultlines: India’s Foreign Policy Toward the Greater Middle East, CSH Occasional Paper No. 7 (New Delhi: French Research Institute, 2003).
26. C. Rajamohan, ‘India’s Decision Time on Iraq’, Hindu, 26 May 2003.
27. Ibid.
28. Amitav Ghosh, ‘Lessons of Empire’, Hindu, 24 June, 2003.
29. Prakash Karat, ‘Misleading the People’, Hindu, 1 July 2003.
30. ‘National Honour Cannot Be Sacrificed‘, Hindu, 5 July 2003.
31. ‘Advani Flays Opposition for Opposing Troops in Iraq’, 11 June 2003, http:// news.indiainfo.com/2003/06/11/11advani2.html
32. The point was driven home in early 2004 when Washington gave Islamabad the status of ‘non-NATO ally’.
33. B. A. Robertson, ‘South Asia and the Gulf Complex’, in Barry Buzan and Gowher Rizvi, eds, South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers (New York: St. Martin’s Press), p. 175.
34. Sushil J. Aaron, op. cit., p. 64.
35. See Ibid.; C. Rajamohan, Crossing the Rubicon.
36. See Aaron, op. cit., pp. 13–22; Rajamohan, op. cit., pp. 226–27.
37. Aaron, op. cit., p.12; Rajamohan, op. cit., 228–32.
38. The oil pool account refers to India’s transactions with the petroleum-exporting countries in the petroleum sector. The two most crucial components of this account are India’s expenditure on account of her petroleum imports and her foreign exchange earnings in terms of remittances sent by expatriate Indians in the petroleum-exporting countries. Understandably, if the expenditure increases, or remittances decrease, the deficit in the oil pool account increases proportionately.
39. The Farsi offshore exploration block, measuring 3,500 sq km, is located in the Persian Gulf with an average water depth of 20–90 m. Five wells have been drilled on three prospects, out of which two wells produce about 3,300 barrels per day. Reserve expectation from the block is about 540 MMbbls. The project is an exclusive Indian consortium; the partners and their participating interest in this exploration project are OVL (40 per cent), IOC (40 per cent), and OIL (20 per cent).
40. The block has a reserve expectation of about 645 MMbbls. The estimated (proved + possible) reserves in Abu-Khema of this block is about 54 MMbbl.
41. V. P Dutt, op. cit., p. 283.
42. Times of India, 21 April 1995.
43. The proposed 56-inch diameter pipeline would span over 850 km in Iran, 700 km in Pakistan and 1,120 km in India.
44. For an excellent examination of the pipeline issue, see Sharmila N. Chaudhary, Iran to India Natural Gas Pipeline: Implications for Conflict Resolution and Regionalism in India, Iran and Pakistan, Trade and Environment Database Case Studies, Washington D.C.: American University, 2000. Available at http://www.americanedu/TED/iranpipeline.htm
45. ‘A Pipe of Peace’, Economist, 12 July 2001.
46. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 168–69.
47. Aaron, op. cit., p. 45.
48. The Indian government was split over this vote. Aiyyar was pushing for New Delhi to vote with Iran, while Foreign Minister Natwar Singh wanted India (typically) to abstain. A few days before the vote, Shyam Saran was summoned by a State Department official in Washington, and was given a strong hint that India’s budding relationship with the US would be largely influenced by this vote. Once the Prime Minister’s Office was informed of this, Manmohan Singh immediately decided to override both the Foreign Minister and Aiyyar, and instructed the team at the IAEA for India to side with Washington.
49. Rajamohan, op. cit., p. 228.
50. V. P Dutt, op. cit., p. 283–84.
51. Muhammad Azhar, ‘Economic Cooperation Between India and the United Arab Emirates in the 1990s’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3, July 2003, pp. 127–43.
52. V. P Dutt, op. cit., p. 280.
53. Ibid., 280–81.
54. Sushil J. Aaron, op. cit., p. 54.
55. According to the proposed route, goods from India will be disembarked at Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf and be sent to Bandar Anzali via Tehran, and then to the Russian port of Astrakhan, en route to St. Petersburg. ‘North South Corridor Will Save Freight and Time’, The Hindu, 26 January 2003.
56. For an insightful analysis on the nature of the crisis in the Gulf, see F G. Gause III, ‘The Gulf Conundrum: Economic Change, Population Growth and Political Stability in GCC States’, Washington Quarterly, Winter 1997, pp.145–65.
57. http://indemb-oman.org/whatsnew/india-gccmumbaideclaration.html
58. http://in.news.yahoo.india-gcc.html
59. http://indemb-oman.org/whatsnew/india-gccmumbaideclaration.html
60. Rajamohan, op cit., p. 230.
61. Gujral defended himself by saying that his primary consideration was ensuring the safe return of Indians stranded in Iraq and Kuwait, which was ensured over a period of time.
62. The Islamabad–Riyadh axis emerged partly as an offshoot of USA’s Cold War politics in the West Asian theatre, and partly because of an anomalous situation that originated in Saudi Arabia. The House of Ibn Saud had co-opted the Saudi ‘ulema into the ruling establishment by extending patronage lavishly, courtesy oil revenues. The resultant surge in Islamic theological studies began to churn out more people trained to become ‘alim than the Saudi state could accommodate. This prompted the Saudi state to export these ‘ulema to other Islamic countries—partly in order to extend Saudi influence abroad, and partly to keep them from fomenting discontent with the Saudi authority back home. In the 1970s, Pakistan was one of the few countries that proved willing to accept these ‘ulema, because they filled in a major vacuum in the Pakistani educational apparatus, especially among the economically less privileged sectors of the people.
63. Iran was the only Gulf country that seriously tried to develop industrial capability from the early 20th century. Also, being the most populous country in the region, Iran consciously chose to refrain from purchasing Western capital-intensive technology, except where it was absolutely necessary.
64. See Reference Model Regulation (Law) for the Promotion of Foreign Investment in the GCC States, available at www.ggg-sc.org/soon.html
65. For a text of the Unified Economic Agreement of the Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, see www.ggg-sc.org/Economic.html
66. India was unfortunately a victim of this trend, despite her careful distance from the theatre of conflict. Three Indian truck-drivers working for a Kuwaiti firm were abducted by Iraqi ‘hostiles’. India therefore was in the anomalous situation of having to urge Iraqi intermediaries to have hostages released.
67. Standing armies of Saddam’s Iraq (429,000), and Iran (545,600) with an average of over 10 million people capable of military service in emergencies were the military giants of the Gulf; Oman’s standing army is 43,540 strong, that of Saudi Arabia 105,500, United Arab Emirates 64,500, Yemen 66,300.
68. See http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook.html; http://www.studentsofthe world.info/menu.infopays.html
69. New York Times, 14 November 2006; The Washington Diplomat, 13 November 2006.