NEW DELHI, 16 July 2003 — The decision by the Indian government not to send troops to Iraq has sparked a virulent debate in the country. The crucial decision was taken on Monday at a crucial meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Foreign Minister Yeshwant Sinha announced after the meeting that India would not send troops to Iraq unless they went under a United Nations mandate, although it was ready to help in the reconstruction of the country.
Even though the United States has emphasized that India’s decision will not have a negative effective on bilateral ties, there is little doubt that Washington is hardly pleased with India’s stand.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher conceded that it was “a decision that each country needs to make on its own depending on its interests and its concerns about the situation in Iraq.” But he made it clear that Washington did not agree with India’s position that a specific UN mandate was required for the force.
With crucial elections around the corner, pleasing the US would have amounted to angering the public at home. Had the US not insisted on a quick response from India over its demand for 17,000 Indian troops for the “stabilization force” in Iraq, sources indicate, New Delhi would have continued vacillating on the issue.
In an exclusive interview to Arab News retired military official Maj. Gen. Afsar Karim said, “At the moment the United Nations is not in Iraq. Neither is there an Iraqi regime. If Indian forces went there as an occupation force, they would face confrontation with the people. We cannot accept this diplomatically or militarily under any circumstances.”
The media and opposition yesterday hailed the government’s decision, with the press indicating the prime minister himself had pulled the plug on the controversial proposal. Vajpayee had initially been open to Washington’s request, but he eventually rejected the demand after it became clear the troops would probably have to stay at least two and a half years and faced a high risk of deaths and injuries, the Hindu newspaper said.
Vajpayee also feared there would be bad publicity for his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of key state and national elections if Indian soldiers started coming home in body bags, the daily said.
Resistance to the proposal from India’s main opposition political leader, Sonia Gandhi, and similar reactions from Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Turkey, clinched the decision for Vajpayee, it said.
“Both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the leader of the opposition, Sonia Gandhi, were against the idea, perhaps the only time in recent years when the two have held the same view,” the report said.
Members of India’s ruling coalition were not prepared to accept a situation “where the troops would get killed doing some other power’s dirty work”, it added.
The Congress Party said the government decision vindicated its opposition to the proposal. “This was the only sensible option under the circumstances,” said Congress spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy.
The Hindustan Times said the army had kept an entire division on standby in case the government gave the go-ahead. The air force was also prepared to go to Iraq.
The Hindu described the decision in an editorial as “right and sensible”, saying there was no reason to stake the lives of soldiers spending huge national funds for “an illegitimate act of aggression”.
It added that India should not feel obliged to send troops even if the UN took the helm of the peacekeeping operations in Iraq.
“Having taken the right and sensible decision, the Indian government must now act in conjunction with other countries to put pressure on the US and UK to disengage from Iraq — by agreeing, among other things, to give primacy to the United Nations in the task of rehabilitation and reconstruction,” it said.
The Times of India said the United States had provided no clear answers to the two main issues for India — whether Washington had a clear road map for transferring power to a democratic Iraqi regime and the level of autonomy Indian troops would enjoy. It added that the growing number of attacks on US troops in Iraq made a strong case for them to leave.
“For New Delhi to become a party to this political mess would have required not statesmanship but an impossible faith in the American commitment to do right by Iraq.”
But the Indian Express newspaper criticized the government decision, saying it had taken refuge behind the “fig leaf of a UN mandate” rather than acting as a responsible power interested in helping war-torn Iraq. “We must of course support the UN but the UN is not a mantra for the pursuit of our national interests. Unfortunately, the way we handled Iraq reflects poorly on our ability to act as a major power,” it said.
— Additional input from Agencies
