Ep. 120: At year-end, diplomatic action in full swing: in Qatar, Saudi, Russia, and so on

India is asserting its soft and hard power in support of its national interests, instead of mouthing vague platitudes

A version of this essay was published by Firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-from-qatar-and-saudi-to-russia-and-us-indian-diplomacy-in-full-swing-13578762.html

India is apparently playing geopolitics and geoeconomics games better these days. That is the conclusion from a flurry of activity as 2023 draws to a close. 

First was the release of Vishnu Dev Radhakrishnan from a Saudi jail after 5+ years of imprisonment on charges of ‘blasphemy’. The son of a retired Air Force officer from Kerala, he was an engineer at Aramco in Saudi Arabia. It appears that he had been provoked on twitter into a mild criticism of things held holy by Muslims (as a reaction to similar criticism of Hinduism), and that he had been reported to the authorities by Muslim Kerala workers in the kingdom.

Furthermore, as of December 19th, Zahack Tanvir, a non-extremist Muslim Indian working in Saudi Arabia, has been similarly denounced (possibly by Pakistanis) and has been arrested by the authorities. There is no further news about him, but he has been a prominent advocate of Indo-Arab relations and a critic of, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood. The Indian authorities need to take up his case. 

In Vishnu’s case, it was not clear why the Indian foreign service had not been able to prevail upon the Saudis, as a friendly nation, to release him into Indian custody. I wonder about Zahack the same way now: he has been a voice of reason in an often-fraught relationship between Muslim and Hindu Indian expatriates in the Middle East, and deserves help and support. 

The fact that Vishnu has finally been released is a positive sign about the ability of Indian diplomacy to make things happen. There have been many criticisms about the Indian foreign service, including their lack of manpower as well as their lack of support for Indian businesses in the countries that they serve in. If, finally, diplomacy is becoming a force multiplier, that is good news. 

Source: Indian Express. Indian and Qatari rulers meet

The big story in West Asia is of course the case of the eight former Indian Navy men sentenced to death by Qatar in October. They were working on contract to an Omani-owned company and advising Qatari entities. To begin with, they were arrested in August 2022 on unspecified charges after having worked for five to six years reportedly on the induction of small Italian submarines into the Qatari Navy. They were held in solitary confinement and even denied access to families and to the Indian embassy. 

Then came the bombshell on October 26th: they were sentenced to death for allegedly “spying for Israel”. Since this happened in the aftermath of the October 7th invasion of Israel by Hamas, and India’s declaration of support for Israel, it could be surmised that India was being ‘punished’ by Qatar, which of course hosts senior Hamas leaders, and has been trying to play an intermediary role in the conflict and ceasefire. Maybe they were being over-zealous.

But there is another intriguing possibility, which is that it was part of the US Deep State’s continuing assault on India. There was the Justin Trudeau “credible allegation” that Khalistani Hardeep Singh Nijjar was executed on command from India, and then there was the allegation that an Indian drug dealer named Nikhil Gupta had put out a hit on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. There was a slew of action and lots of noise around all this, and allegations that Pannun was himself an “asset” of the Five Eyes intelligence network. 

Qatar hosts one of the biggest US military bases anywhere, and it has been alleged that the rulers of Qatar know that the US has a threat hanging over its head: they could withdraw support, in which case the tiny, rich country would be immediately taken over by random adventurers. Therefore, whatever the US Deep State wants, Qatar will oblige. Incidentally, Qatar has donated about $4 billion to US universities, which some have called a carrot to professors.

In any case, there must have been a flurry of diplomatic action. India duly paid $2.5 million, the second tranche of its annual contribution of $5 million to the UNRWA, the relief agency for Palestinian refugees. Whether there were other, hidden, contributions to mollify Qatar is not known. 

The other shoe also dropped: which was geoeconomics. I have long been a proponent of ‘buyer power’: someone who is a big customer has power over the supplier. India is Qatar’s third biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), buying $8.32 billion-worth of the stuff this year, over half of its LNG imports. 

But there are other suppliers available. Notably, India holds 30% (through ONGC Videsh, Oil India and Bharat Petroleum) in a large LNG project in Mozambique. There were prominent  recent announcements from India about this project, and how soon this might come online. It had been put on hold because of an insurgency, but should go onstream in a while, and could supply a large portion of India’s needs.

Secondly, Russia is a big exporter of LNG. The recent visit by Dr Jaishankar to Moscow was conspicuous: it was a dog-whistle to Qatar (as well as to the US, of course). The effusiveness with which President Putin met the MEA (he almost never meets anybody below the head of state, and he invited PM Modi to visit) was meant for media consumption. After all, India is a major consumer of Russian oil, ignoring Ukraine-related sanctions. 

There are other factors in play in Qatar as well. It employs 700,000 or so Indian citizens, and can ill-afford to have them pack up and leave (the experience of Idi Amin’s Uganda is salutary here) because they probably run a significant portion of day-to-day operations in the country. Unlike what others have said, it is not as though India is a supplicant to Qatar; it also has ‘supplier power’. Indeed, India also sells quite a bit of agricultural products to the country. 

In this context, the case of the Italian marines is also instructive. They shot and killed two Indian fishermen in 2012 off the coast of Kerala, allegedly mistaking them for pirates. They were charged with murder, but the death penalty was waived in India. After years of litigation and arbitration, they were returned to Italy in 2014, and compensation of Rs. 10 crores was paid to the families of the fishermen in 2021. 

Similarly, the fact that the Indian navy men (accused of vague crimes) have had the death penalty dropped, and that they have been or will be returned to India, is a reasonable compromise outcome that all can accept. 

India is asserting its soft and hard power in support of its national interests, instead of mouthing vague platitudes as in the NAM days. This is good news. The fact that people like Zahack Tanvir are being hounded shows how much further India will have to go to gain automatic respect for its citizens. 

1144 words, 31 Dec 2023