A Middle Eastern secret war played out on Indian soil could derail our economy and ignite violent sectarian passions here. Hence, it needs our security and foreign policy establishments to shun the easy shibboleths of the times. Some influential internal security bosses and analysts, impatient with the nuances and complexities inherent in a security situation, seem to favour the use of the bludgeon. They are deaf to any plea for addressing the social, cultural or economic root causes of the alienation that might breed violent and terrorist activities. They suffer no qualms in the stereotyped profiling and indiscriminate rounding up of people as terror suspects under draconian laws till they prove their innocence, instead of looking at them as individuals and treating them as innocent until proved guilty. Such persecution, by further alienating populations, has not only extended the catchment for violent ideologies, it has also dulled our security reflexes, blinding it to other phenomena, such as Hindutva terror.
In dealing with the alleged Iranian attack on an Israeli diplomatic staffer in Delhi too, our internal security establishment should avoid the trap of equating opposition to western and Israeli policies in Palestine and the rest of the Middle East as militant jehadism. Nor should it fail to take into account the causal chain of Middle Eastern conflicts. It’s important to recognise that the present incident is a part of an ongoing secret war between two sides. While it’s important to solve the present crime and bring its perpetrators to justice, it’s equally important to be seen as being even-handed in tackling the hostile activities in India of agencies of all the sides in the conflict.
More importantly, India’s Middle Eastern diplomacy must avoid the trap of considering our strategic interests as divorced from their impact on the lives of Indians. With regard to Indian options on the Middle East in the Security Council or other international fora, certain strategic affairs analysts always exhort the government to act in tune with the US and the West (and its binary projections like constitutionalism versus terrorism, democracy versus autocracy, theocracy versus secularism), forgetting that the Western alliance often pits one kind of terrorism against another, one kind of autocracy against another and one kind of theocracy against another in the Middle East for its own interests. For its diplomatic choices in the Middle East, India is asked to disregard its own cultural continuum with the region that engages the passions of some sections of its population. Worse, India is even exhorted to disregard its vital economic interest of energy dependence and external security requirements, which tie it in a complex matrix of business and strategic relations with conflicting countries of the region. India’s ties with the Middle East impact the lives of the people here. Any misstep there can cause existential upheavals here. Like China, India’s policy choices in the Middle East must be autonomous of the US alliance. It calls for deft footwork with the major players in the region.
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