India dropped its customary caution to agree late this evening to a unanimous United Nations’ Security Council vote imposing sanctions against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, including a travel ban and a freezing of the assets of his inner circle, as well as a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC). India is not a member of the ICC.
The 15-0 vote at the Security Council came despite objections by the Chinese and the Russians, who sought to dilute critical language in the prepared text against Gaddafi, but dropped these when the Arab League issued a strongly worded statement against the Libyan leader, and Libya’s permanent representative to the UN, Abdurrahman Mohammed Shalgham, strongly supported the UN move.
India held off directly criticising Gaddafi, however, citing concerns over the security of its nationals, even as the government mobilised passenger ships in the Indian Ocean and ordered three naval ships, the INS Jalashwa, as well as two destroyers, to embark for the Libyan port of Benghazi and evacuate the Indian citizens. The operation, codenamed ‘Safe Homecoming’, also saw the first batch of 530 Indians return home in two Air India flights over the last couple of days.
‘Internal affairs’
But as the wave of democratic protests continued to sweep West Asia and North Africa, where nearly 5.4 million Indians work to send more than $18 billion home in remittances every year, external affairs minister S M Krishna, on a visit to Kuwait to celebrate its freedom from Iraq in the first Gulf war (1991), seemed fearful of expressing open support for the revolutionary Arabs.
“India does not believe in interfering in the affairs of another country. We will take the cue at an appropriate time, depending on how they want India to help. India will be willing to be of some assistance to them. But let the situation arise,” Krishna said.
Although the Arab revolutions have not begun targeting any of the immigrant populations, Indian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Indians could only work in such large numbers in the region because of the largely secular nature of the dictatorships involved.
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“The alternative is worrisome,” the officials said, echoing concerns about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
But independent analysts felt the circumspection seemed misplaced, not only because of India’s own democratic credentials, but also because India’s silence, especially in the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, has begun to sound deafening.
Considering the thousands of Indian soldiers had laid down their lives across northern Africa, especially Libya and Egypt during the second world war, fighting for the cause of democracy, for India to turn a blind eye to Gaddafi’s strafing of his own people was “totally unacceptable,” the analysts said.
Indian officials defended their pragmatic position by invoking the plight of the 18,000 nationals at stake, pointing out that China had also raised concerns about its 30,000 nationals in Libya before it went along with the UN Security Council resolution.
As Indian Navy ships set sail for Benghazi, the Chinese diverted a modern warship, the Xuzhou, from anti-piracy operations off Somalia to the Libyan coast to protect passenger vessels evacuating its own nationals. Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, called it China’s “biggest civilian evacuation operation”.
The presence of Indian and Chinese naval ships engaged in protecting their respective business interests and the lives of their nationals in Africa is a new phase in the indirect rivalry that was sparked off some years earlier for the exploitation of the continent’s fabulous natural resources.
Libya’s ‘sweet and light’ crude oil remains on top of the chart (Libya produces 1.7 million barrels of the world’s daily output of 80 billion barrels), especially for the Europeans, whose refineries are particularly geared towards the low-sulphur content it is famous for. As the price of oil touched $112.75 per barrel, Saudi Arabia promised to pump more – India imports as much as 21 per cent of its oil requirements from there – but the European distaste for its high sulphur content at least partially explains why the West wants the Libyan revolution to end sooner than later.
Italy is Libya’s biggest oil importer, but so is Britain, with BP admitting it helped push a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in 2004 in exchange for business interests in the North African country. A $7-billion pipeline under the Mediterrenean supplies crude to Europe worth $100 million every day.
Indian concerns
India’s oil interests in Libya are minimal, especially as ONGC Videsh Ltd shut down and returned two oil blocks to the Libyan government only last month, finding these dry. Only a couple of OVL staffers remained in Libya when the troubles began less than a fortnight before. But analysts note that even though India doesn’t do any direct oil business with Libya, the political situation will naturally have an enormous impact on its oil bill. India imports as much as 70-80 per cent of its crude requirements.
Petroleum minister Jaipal Reddy has already said the volatility in crude prices will force him to refer a likely increase in petrol prices (formally not under state control) to an empowered group of ministers after the Budget.
China is clearly ahead of India in the Africa sweepstakes, but even Beijing has been put out by the turmoil. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Ma Zhaoxu, pointed to Beijing’s “great attention to the continued unrest” in Libya, though he continued to describe it as Libya’s “internal crisis.”
Meanwhile, National Security Advisor Shiv Shanker Menon is headed for Teheran next month, to assess for himself the rapidly changing situation in the Persian Gulf and West Asia. As Bahrain continued to be battered by democratic protests – 350,000 Indians work here – mostly by the Shia underclass, Shia-dominated Iran remains watchful. The Saudis are separated by Bahrain only by a motorable causeway, and southern Saudi Arabia is also predominantly Shia. Menon’s trip is expected to not only focus on bilateral interest, which includes the still-dormant Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline, but also the extent to which the Ahmadinejad regime has control over its subjects.
The first glimmer of protest was also seen in the normally peaceful kingdom of Oman over the weekend, but analyts say that at least for the time being, the monarchies of the region are safe. In contrast, dictators like Hosni Mubarak who held on to power for 30 years and Muammar Gaddafi who refuses to give over after 42 years, are the ones in trouble.
Meanwhile, today, a final irony seemed to cap the revolutions rapidly unfolding in the region. As Operation ‘Safe Homecoming’ got underway, as many as 88 Indian nationals, all of them working for Punj Lloyd, crossed over by road from Libya to Ras Jedir in Tunisia – the country where the spark of democracy was first lit just over a month before.