Is India ready for the Arab Winter?

The United Nations recently approved by an overwhelming and enthusiastic vote (138 to 9, India contributing), the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) regime as the legitimate government of a “non-member observer state”. Without getting lost in the technicalities of status, the nations of the Arab Spring consider the UN resolution on Palestine a major victory, while Israel and the Western bloc are outraged at an equally major loss of face. The vote has triggered a high-voltage controversy between the Western bloc and the countries of the Arab Spring, in which India has been sensible enough to stand on the sidelines and avoid any direct involvement. It is important for India to maintain a balanced view of events in West Asia, particularly the confrontations in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas, and the incomprehensible civil war in Syria with its horrendous slaughter of civilians (more than 30,000 at last report), and avoid the knee-jerk reactions of an earlier era, because this time around India is also a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as its current rotatory chairperson. An impression of objectivity on the Palestine issue is essential to dispel impressions of any tilt in India’s political perceptions which may be interpreted as a legacy the earlier Nehruvian era.
However, it would also be well for India to note that there has never been any reciprocal support for India from the PLO in any international forum, particularly the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) on the touchstone issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, in some senses, for India, support on Jammu and Kashmir from the PLO in the OIC would be even more significant than at the UN, but the PLO has generally sided with Pakistan, as a co-religionist Islamic country, rather than with India as a friend of long standing from the Nehru-Arafat era. This lack of support from the PLO on Kashmir is a factor India must always remember when calibrating its relative relationships between Israel and the PLO.
The situation in Gaza and Syria is almost Gangetic in its murkiness, which makes it imperative for India to keep a watchful eye on the situation, particularly on any linkages that may seem to emerge between the more radical of the West Asian Islamic groups, like the Ansar al-Sharia, which claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate at Benghazi, and their lookalikes in South Asia, like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the Hizbul Mujahideen, or the Haqqani group of the Taliban, which attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul and other Indian interests in Afghanistan with the covert sponsorship of the Pakistan Army and the ISI.
Israel, on the other hand, has always strongly supported India on the Kashmir issue, including in the UN, but it is also undeniable that Israel’s wilful and almost obtuse rigidity on the issue of a Palestinian state has often exasperated the goodwill of even their staunchest supporters. India of course carries little influence with Israel and attempts to sermonise on Gaza and Hamas would only serve to make India look ridiculous. That notwithstanding, Israel, though always a ferocious bargainer, has frequently obliged India with its most modern weapons technologies without any strings attached (provided, of course, the price was right). The latest example of this is the billion-dollar Indian contract said to be in the pipeline for acquiring the third generation Spike anti-tank missile, after India was unsuccessful in obtaining its first choice, the Javelin missile from the United States, which refused transfer of technology and also imposed other restrictive conditionalities.
The Syrian war provides an important and significant military campaign study regarding the offensive and defensive employment of information warfare in a medium-intensity internal conflict, in which the Internet became a powerful weapon system both for the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the Syrian government which used it against them. The campaign featured an unprecedented use of popular social media, like Skype and Facebook, to control and manipulate information and disinformation often through hijacked and penetrated websites of major news agencies, as also the use of computer viruses and hacking systems in which pro-regime hackers hid malware in fake Web pages, to project alleged atrocities on either side. It would be a fascinating study, whose lessons require to be examined for application in the Indian environment, and indeed it is to be expected that the concerned establishments in the Indian government would already be undertaking such a study. It would be disappointing if this is not already in progress.
The Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile system defending Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centres apparently notched up major successes against both wobbly, spluttering home-made Qassam rockets manufactured in neighbourhood garages by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as also smuggled, factory-built Fajr-5 missiles of Iranian origin whose induction was said to have been facilitated by Hamas networks extending into Sudan as well as a supportive neo-Islamist regime of the Muslim Brotherhood recently installed in Egypt.
But the most significant outcome of the recent conflicts in West Asia would be the establishment of Iran as a major player in the region where its auxiliaries Hamas and Hezbollah can exercise a decisive influence in the ultimate outcome of the Arab Spring. The effects are likely to be long term, and end results not yet foreseen.
The dogs of war are gathering across entire West Asia, where the Syrian rebel forces of assorted leadership and configuration are attracting assorted jihadis from all corners of the world, in a manner reminiscent of mujahideen in the First Afghan War in 1979-89. The full impact on India of this “second coming” of the mujahideen is as yet unknown. But the lessons emerging from Gaza and Syria require to be analysed and incorporated into India’s own strategic and operational contingency.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament