Now that Manila has started to make preparations to withdraw Filipino workers from West Asia, New Delhi must think of following suit. For both countries this should be yet another reminder that no nation that lives on exporting manpower and on the remittances of its foreign workers can have any claim on the respect of either its own citizens or of the world.
Lost in “Howdy Modi” intoxication, the prime minister may wonder at the superpower status that was promised India for 2020. Instead, with the worst economic performance in a decade under the management of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, he should ask someone well informed in his entourage to recall for him what exactly happened during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm exactly 29 years ago.
Inder Kumar Gujral breathed defiance at the United States and refused to support the coalition that George W Bush had assembled to punish Saddam Hussein, until Washington cut off aid to Yemen for not supporting Bush’s military preparations. That was enough for Gujral to realise that near-bankrupt India would have to toe the line. After that, India voted with the US every time though Gujral tried to salve his conscience and save face by still refusing to personally abuse and condemn the Iraqi president whom Bush called the "Asian Hitler”. This time round the minister of state for external affairs, V Muraleedharan, tried to imply (without actually saying so) that India had not stopped buying oil from Iran under Donald Trump’s orders, but other reports indicate that India did do so after the American waivers granted to eight buyers expired.
That may not be the only consequence of the undeclared war that President Trump initiated with the murder in Iraq of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (Quds Force) leader, Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was certainly not a UN-designated terrorist and to whom New Delhi referred in a face-saving device as a "senior Iranian leader". While this neutral term is unlikely to appease the Americans who did not take “Howdy Modi” into confidence before (or after) launching their drone attack in Baghdad, people may be justified in wondering about the outlook for India's Chabahar port project which is critical to connectivity with Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan.
The rising price of oil (already up by four per cent) and possible disruption of supplies if there is any military action in the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water through which a quarter of the world’s oil and a third of its natural gas passes, should add to Indian concern. Higher oil prices would automatically mean further inflation in India, with analysts already worried about higher food prices at a time of rising unemployment and falling GDP.
As in 1990-1991, some eight million Indians live in the West Asian region. Not only would their lives and livelihood be in danger if hostilities broke out, but an already damaged economy would be in dire straits without their remittances. The vast majority of these workers are in the Arabian Gulf. Conflict would put them all in danger, as it did at the start of the 1990s, when the US went to war with Iraq and New Delhi had to arrange the airlift of more than 1,10,000 Indian citizens to start with in an operation that invited comparison with the 1961 Berlin airlift.
The evacuation of the 2,00,000 Indian workers (1,70,000 in Kuwait and 30,000 in Iraq) meant the end of the nearly $600 million they sent back annually. Exports to Iraq, worth $300 million, were jeopardised. So was an outstanding $800-million construction bill and the prospect of further exports and building contracts. With 15 per cent inflation and foreign exchange reserves down to $3 billion － not enough for forty days' imports － India faced economic ruin. The Arab Monetary Fund calculated that while the region lost $676 billion in oil revenue and structural damage, the poorest nations, including India, lost about $23 billion.
India was Asia’s third biggest consumer of oil. Kuwait and Iraq provided nearly 45 per cent of imports and every dollar increase in the price added $22 million to the import bill. The Bengali-speaking senior state department diplomat, Teresita Schaffer, told the US bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian affairs that an incalculable multiplier effect would pull down India’s "vigorous rate of export growth of recent years" into negative figures.
With their jobs gone, the eight million stranded workers will have to return home. Where will they go? Many are Kerala Muslims, and the state is already trying to come to terms – like the Philippines – with the prospect of an influx of repatriated unemployed workers. A sudden jolt would put pressure on the places Indians return to, to say nothing of the lost $40 billion in remittances from West Asia – more than 50 per cent of the total.
This crisis has been in the making ever since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. One of his first acts in the international field was to undo the Iran nuclear agreement that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had painstakingly forged with the European Union. Instead, and supported by his close allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel, and possibly egged on by his fervently Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, President Trump pivoted to a policy of sanctions and covert strikes aimed at punishing Iran for what he saw as irresponsible actions around the region, including expanding its influence over neighbouring Iraq. The situation has already been poised on a knife’s edge a couple of times over the last few years, after Iran attacked oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and also shot down a US drone. However, global fears of a wider conflagration sparked by Washington’s expected retaliation turned out to be false on both occasions. In June, President Trump called off airstrikes on Iran at the very last minute. However, recent events like a rocket attack in Iraq that killed an American contractor, a retaliatory strike by the US, an Iran-supported Iraqi militia storming the US embassy in Baghdad, and now the killing of Qassem Soleimani are expected to lead to even more conflict.
It was said in the West that V K Krishna Menon led the Indian army which overran Goa on 17 December 1961 to impress voters in the North Bombay Lok Sabha constituency which he won in a landslide victory, getting nearly double the number of votes as his adversary, the veteran Acharya J.B. Kripalani. With Republicans clamouring for war against Iran, Soleimani’s killing may be even more directly linked to the 2020 re-election campaign that President Trump has by all accounts started unusually early.
The writer is the author of several books and
a regular media columnist.
