The Hindu : Govt.'s decision-making 'revealed'

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Thursday, Jul 17, 2003

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Govt.'s decision-making 'revealed'

By Inder Malhotra

The Vajpayee Government's decision not to send Indian troops to Iraq, except under an "explicit U.N. mandate", has not only been widely welcomed but also sheds revealing light on the decision-making processes in New Delhi. Even at the best of times these have been ad hoc, slapdash, usually painfully slow and at times astonishingly fast, indeed precipitate. This time around the pattern has been a mixture of several of these attributes.

There have, in fact, been three distinct phases in the making of policy on the United States' request for at least a division of the Indian Army to help the occupation forces control the volatile situation in Iraq. When the request was first received, the collective reaction of the Government was to "seize the opportunity", rush the troops and to win the "rewards" that prompt compliance with the wishes of the sole superpower mired in difficulty would entail.

But there was a problem. How to justify a decision that was a clear negation of Parliament's unanimous resolution "deploring" the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq and demanding immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from there? Should India be seen to be bolstering illegitimate forces of occupation? The answer of those wanting to go along with the U.S. was that the issue should be decided in national interest in terms of cold-blooded realpolitik, and considerations of morality and high principles must not be allowed to divert attention from the essentials. The United Nations Security Council's Resolution 1483 also came in handy to those anxious to go to the aid of the U.S. The world body, they said, had conferred post-facto legitimacy on the war waged by the U.S. and Britain. Countries such as France, Russia and Germany had reversed their earlier opposition to the U.S. This should be enough for this country, too. Provided, of course, that issues such as the autonomy of the Indian troops operating in northern Iraq and an acceptable command structure were satisfactorily resolved.

That is when brisk consultations began both in New Delhi and Washington. Those who say that there was no American pressure for Indian military participation in "stabilising" Iraq are being economical with the truth. Accounts of the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani's unscheduled meeting with the U.S. President, George W. Bush, are more telling than either side has cared to admit so far. Remarkably, the pertinent questions raised by this country were not adequately answered by the American side, as became evident during the vital visit to Washington of the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal.Meanwhile, the second phase of the search to find a way to help the U.S. had begun. Indian public opinion, strongly opposed to sending Indian soldiers to Iraq from the word go, had grown vastly more hostile to the idea for reasons for which the Americans must accept the bulk of the blame. Through their utter insensitivity towards the Iraqi people they had aroused widespread resentment and hostility across most of Iraq. That American soldiers continue to be killed in ones and twos almost every day, even after the formation of an Iraqi interim council of sorts, speaks for itself. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, alone was sensitive to the public mood. He recognised its intensity and told his colleagues that a positive response to the U.S. request could be possible only on the basis of a national consensus, not otherwise. However, the protagonists of the doctrine "all the way with the U.S." did not give up. They thought that after the Prime Minister's June 5 meeting with the Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, there could perhaps be a meeting of minds with the Congress and this should be enough. But it turned out to be a vain hope.

Thus began the third phase of decision-making when the Government realised that it could in no way say "yes" to the U.S. For, it was becoming obvious that "stabilisation" of Iraq was turning into pacification. And yet New Delhi did not want to say a blunt "no" to America either. But then a wishy-washy approach could not last indefinitely. The clear-cut decision to say "no" was therefore clinched well before the formality of Monday's meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security. In the available space only one more point can be made. During the three-month interval between the initial impulse to take the plunge and the eventual decision to stay out of the mess the U.S. has made in Iraq, several in the higher echelons of the Government, most prominently Mr. Advani, have changed their stand 180-degrees. In Washington he had publicly declared that those back home who opposed the despatch of troops to Basra were ignorant of "all the facts". Once back in Delhi, he became aware not only of Mr. Vajpayee's position but also of the domestic dimension of the issue. What would happen to the BJP and its allies if the Iraqis started looking upon Indian soldiers in Iraq as an "appendage" to the American forces and shooting at them as well? And, that too, in an election year? Nothing concentrates the mind so effectively as an oncoming election.

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