Diplomatic gulf

As the crisis in Libya rages on, tensions in other parts of West Asia threaten to boil over. Bahrain, Yemen and Syria are in the throes of upheaval influenced by the peoples’ uprisings in North Africa and the Western intervention in Libya. The latter, in particular, has vigorously stirred the pot. Ironically, it has emboldened both the allies and the adversaries of the United States. But for the ongoing military intervention in Libya, we would neither have seen Saudi Arabian troops in Bahrain nor increasing Iranian involvement in support of the Syrian government.

These developments, especially those in the Arabian Gulf, will be viewed with concern by New Delhi. Not only does India have major interests in the Gulf, but its presence in the United Nations Security Council places it at the centre ground of international diplomacy surrounding these crises.
These facts are sharply underlined by two recent high-level visits. In the past week, India has hosted influential Prince Bandar bin Sultan, secretary-general of the Saudi Arabian National Security Council, and Bahrain foreign minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed. The visits, at once, reinforced the urgency of these crises and the need for India to tread carefully in the political minefields of West Asia.
The current crisis in Bahrain goes back to the 1990s. That decade witnessed considerable political turmoil, including a low-level insurgency against the ruling Al Khalifa family. The anti-government protests stemmed from a combustible combination of political deadlock, economic decline and sectarian tensions. After a brief interlude between 1973 and 1975, Bahrain’s experiment with constitutional democracy was effectively suspended. The early 1990s saw plummeting oil prices, which imposed additional strains on an economy that did not have much oil to begin with. In consequence, the gilded benefit programmes that were used by other Gulf states to buy the loyalties of their peoples were increasingly unavailable in Bahrain. All of these accentuated the fault lines between the Shia majority (nearly three quarters of the population) and the dominant Sunni minority of Bahrain. The Shia in Bahrain — unlike in Kuwait, for instance — had been systematically relegated to the economic and political margins of the state.
Although the ruling family managed to curb the 1990s uprising by a combination of repression and minimal political reform, the underlying problems continued to simmer. The most recent wave of protests was triggered by events in North Africa, but the protesters’ demands hark back to those of the 1990s. The intervention by troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has undoubtedly complicated matters. Not least because it has the potential to draw in Iran, and so pull a local political problem into the vortex of the larger strategic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The latter has so far restricted itself to rhetorical warnings, but some Shia leaders in Bahrain are already worried that their agenda will be hijacked by Tehran. Unless a political settlement is quickly facilitated, Bahrain will be subject to prolonged strife. And the spiralling crisis could have knock-on effects in Saudi Arabia.
India has multiple interests at stake in the Gulf. The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) constitute India’s largest trading partner. The two-way trade currently stands at over $110 billion a year. The region is the main source for India’s rising and seemingly unquenchable energy requirements. Over 5.5 million Indians are employed in the Gulf, and their annual remittances to India add up to nearly $32 billion. Large numbers of Indians travel to the region not only for the Haj but for business and social visits. Reference to “historical ties” is an over-used cliché in international politics, but in this case it sits well with the facts of history. The Arabian Gulf was part of the British empire. The Gulf political residency (based in Bushehr, Iran) and its appendages in Bahrain, Muscat, Sharjah among other places, was an integral part of the commercial and political network of British India. This resulted in the presence of Indian traders and workers in these parts well before the oil boom of the 1970s.
To preserve these interests, New Delhi has in the past few years sought to build close ties with the Gulf countries. The crisis in Bahrain could cast a shadow on these efforts. For one thing, the United States is unlikely to apply any serious pressure either on the Al Khalifa family or on the GCC to roll-back their intervention. Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Central Command and the Fifth Fleet. American naval presence dates back to 1948, though it was only after British withdrawal in 1971 that the US came to acquire its present position. It is also worth recalling that during the “Tanker War” between Iraq and Iran in the mid-1980s, American forces relied on their base in Bahrain to strike Iranian assets. In the present context of US-Iran relations, Bahrain’s strategic utility to the US remains high.
To be sure, India would not want to embroil itself in the political crisis in the region. But it cannot afford to ignore the potential consequences of a major flare-up. The crises in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya forced the Indian government to safeguard its nationals in these countries by undertaking major exercises in evacuation. Given the number of Indians in the Gulf — they constitute the largest group of expatriates — a comparable effort would be almost impossible. Even if we did manage to extricate them, what would be our long-term plan for these people? Whether or not they are able to go back to the Gulf would depend on how the crisis plays out and which groups are in power. In any event, it would signal the unreliability of the Indian workforce.
New Delhi has struck the right stance in dissuading Indian expatriates from hastily leaving the Gulf and from involving themselves in local politics. But neither of these steps might suffice. India may well need to engage in quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy to help create conditions for a political settlement in Bahrain.

Srinath Raghavan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi