Libya’s smoke signals

Libya: Someone else’s war, in someone else’s country, and Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi a strange figure about whom not much is known in India.
India has no real major strategic concerns in Libya other than of economic outreach. Here, an undoubtedly significant Indian presence has been built up in terms of investments in the oil, petrochemical, information technology

, construction and road building sectors, along with an attendant diaspora of an Indian workforce. It comprises both skilled professionals as well as unskilled labour. Given this background, how significant is the unrest in Libya in a purely India-centric perspective? Are there any smoke signals emanating that India would be advised to take note of?
On March 19, 2011, “breaking news” about North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (Nato) preemptive attack on Libya in Operation Odyssey Dawn, flashed recall of Operation Deliberate Force/Joint Endeavour (Bosnia/Kosovo 1992-1999), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan 2001) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq 2003). The air campaign was of some topical interest because jet fighters, namely the French Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon — both contestants in the multi-billion dollar Indian acquisition programme for 126 fighter aircrafts, were making their operational debuts, though in relatively benign combat environments.
United Nations Resolution 1973 had excluded entry of “foreign occupation forces” into any part of Libyan territory, mandating an exclusively air and naval presence to protect the civil population against Col. Gaddafi’s forces. Thus, shaping Odyssey Dawn on the pattern of Bosnia and Kosovo, rather than Iraq or Afghanistan. With casualties inevitable even in an asymmetric ground war, Nato has been relieved from dirtying Western “boots on the ground” on what is really an internal security mission. But granted that Bosnia/Kosovo 1992 and Libya 2011 are in completely different worlds, it would nevertheless be well to recollect that even the full might of Nato airpower delivered on the recalcitrant protagonists in Bosnia/Kosovo failed to prevent horrific sectarian massacres and ethnic cleansing of civilians at Racak, Srebenica, Banja Luka and many other places.
Meanwhile, as is inevitable in any air war, collateral civilian casualties and damage to civil infrastructure in Libya are mounting. There are reports that within Nato, Britain and France are dissatisfied with the pace and conduct of the campaign and wish to intensify the tempo. However, the future course of events in Libya is still unfolding, albeit spasmodically, and the endgame is not visible.
The situation is violent, messy and unpredictable. But India has few options. It can only live with it and ride out the storm while attempting to protect and preserve its substantial economic stake in Libya. Undoubtedly, there is anxiety regarding the future. The big question that arises is whether these workers, relatively well paid by Indian standards, will ever be able to return and resume their earlier vocations in a Libya which might have changed beyond recognition, and not necessarily for the better?
So what are the driving forces behind the surges for democracy in West Asia? Earlier regimes in the region might well have been despotic and corrupt, but their harsh governance had also kept radicalised religious influences in check. The frenzied churning now in progress appears to create space for hardline radical Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood to emerge, not only in Egypt but in other Arab countries as well.
The conflict in the Arab world is acquiring an added dimension in the Gulf region as well. Here a new intra-Islamic Shia-Sunni Great Game between Saudi Arabia and Iran is developing concurrently. It is being played out in Bahrain. In Bahrain, the majority Shia population is in confrontation with its ruling minority Sunni Khalifa government. The government has requested military assistance from Saudi Arabia to control civil disturbances against Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Sunni-majority Pakistan has also received a similar request for two divisions of the Pakistan Army to garrison Bahrain and to provide a security shield to the Saudi monarchy.
While Pakistan’s Fauji Foundation — run by former officers of Pakistani armed forces — is recruiting exclusively Sunni ex-servicemen for lucrative service in the Bahrain National Guard, Saudi Arabia is under strong internal pressures from two quarters. The people’s movements are demanding greater democracy and religious extremists are targeting the autocratic royal family of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud for its perceived unIslamic lifestyle. There is disaffection too in the major oil-rich eastern regions of Saudi Arabia contiguous with Bahrain that are largely populated by Shia Muslims.
The Saudi-Bahraini invitation to Pakistan for enhanced military deployment thus creates a significant external power factor in the Gulf region. Surely, it is a matter of concern for India. The possibility of hardline radical organisations taking over the democracy movement in West Asia is another imponderable that is adding to the uncertainty in the region.
Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya has once again brought out that though the Cold War may officially be over, its ashes are not yet cold. Also, the traditional adversarial attitudes amongst the permanent members remain deeply ingrained. Resolutions of the UN Security Council continue to be shaped by internal power plays, the dichotomy clearly reflected in the separation between the “West and the rest” in the voting pattern on the Libya resolution. Col. Gaddafi still remains a hate figure in the West.
For India, the most important lessons from Libya go beyond Libya itself to Odyssey Dawn and America’s doctrine of “unilateral humanitarian intervention” (UHI) on which it is based.
UHI is being propagated consistently and aggressively by the United States and applied selectively to situations of choice where the national interest of the US is involved. It has the potential to threaten India’s own sovereignty in some yet indeterminate future and may even turn existential. Such contingencies, howsoever unthinkable and even farfetched at present, must be considered seriously and planned for. China has developed a robust “Anti-Access/Area Denial” (A2/AD) strategy on similar premises, based on airpower, submarines and “fleet buster” ballistic missiles like DF-21 to deter the possibility of UHI built up around Taiwan or other “issues of opportunity”.
India, too, must fashion similar doctrines of deterrence. In a hard neighbourhood, there are no soft options.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament