UAE at the core of India’s Middle East outreach

By inviting the heads-of-state of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) nations for his swearing-in ceremony in May 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a clear statement of intent — that New Delhi was keen on forging better ties with its neighbours. Thereafter, in the last 32 months, South Block’s earnestness in pursuing a robust foreign policy doctrine has become all too apparent, with Modi’s frequent visits to countries far and near being the clearest indicator of a new blueprint.

While it is still too premature to make a final comment on the long-term efficacy of this new outreach programme by India, there is no debate on at least one count — unlike the previous dispensation at the centre for the last two decades, led by Manmohan Singh — that the current government is making an all-out effort to be better heard and understood on the global stage.

From that perspective, if inviting then US President Barack Obama for India’s Republic Day parade on January 26, 2015, marked one end of a vibrant foreign-policy arc, then, undoubtedly, extending an invitation to His Highness Shaikh Moahmmad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, to be the Chief Guest at this year’s Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi constitutes the other end of that same robust policy arc.

Modi referred to the US president by his first name at the media conference at Hyderabad House, and the visit marked a high-point in Indo-US ties — perhaps signalling, for the first time, that India’s foreign-policy agenda and objectives do not necessarily constitute a staid, straitjacketed, copybook response to the menu and that an effective, muscular diplomacy can cut through nuances and protocol and make a deep impact.

If trying to redraw the parameters of Indo-US ties on a new template has been the hallmark of the Modi-led government’s foreign policy outreach, then equally significant are the ways in which the current Indian establishment is trying to redefine and bolster its ties with countries in the Arabian Gulf and Middle East. Since the summer of 2015, the Indian prime minister has visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar and Turkey and each of these trips have been extremely significant in ensuring that New Delhi commands a broader bandwidth and better traction among countries in the region, to be able to put its point across in a more coherent manner

Modi, in fact, is the first Indian Prime Minister to have visited the UAE after a hiatus of 34 years. In comparison, during his decade-long tenure as prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh visited the region only four times — two of those being for non-aligned summits in Egypt and Iran, in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

Security concerns

While development of trade and commerce and enhancement of people-to-people interactions have always been areas of shared interest between India and countries in the Gulf and Middle East, it is mutual concern over security that has added a new dimension to this time-tested paradigm. The proliferation of terror outfits in and around the Indian subcontinent has been an issue that New Delhi has grappled with for long. With the emergence of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), India’s urgency to seek a potent strategy to counter extremist threats has become all too obvious.

Faced with such a challenge, India’s Middle East outreach in the last two years has been one of the most definitive cogents of its foreign policy doctrine. New Delhi has already inked crucial security cooperation pacts with the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — according highest priority to issues of public safety and well-being.

Modi’s visit to the UAE in August 2015, followed by Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed’s reciprocal tour of India last February, have marked a new chapter in UAE-India bilateral relations that have always been granted a special status since the time of the UAE’s founding father, the late Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan. With the leaderships in Abu Dhabi and New Delhi jointly acknowledging the threat of terrorism as an area of mutual concern and highlighting the need for greater intelligence-sharing and cooperation in defence and counter-terrorism, the two countries have sent out a very strong message to the wider world: That terror in any form and from any source is reprehensible and will be dealt with appropriately.

The UAE’s strong statement, expressing solidarity with India, in the wake of last September’s deadly suicide attack on an Indian Army base in Uri bore testimony to Abu Dhabi’s commitment to stand by a friend in its hour of crisis.

Mutual understanding

Shaikh Mohammad’s ongoing visit to India, his second since last February, is expected to further enhance and facilitate India’s deepening and immersive ties with the region, even as the UAE continues to be one of the most favoured destinations among India’s expatriate community.

With about 2.6 million Indians residing in the UAE — constituting almost 30 per cent of the country’s population — relations between the two countries continue to scale new heights of mutual understanding and cooperation. Annual remittances to India from the UAE are estimated to be around $14 billion (Dh51.49 billion), with India being the UAE’s largest trading partner and the UAE being India’s third-largest trading partner after the US and China.

While the UAE has been at the centre of India’s efforts at recalibrating its foreign-policy objectives in the Middle East, Modi’s parleys with leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey over the last two years have all contributed towards infusing a new level of energy and freshness in policy formulation and execution in one of the most strategically important areas of the globe.

If trying to walk off the beaten track is the new marker of a successfully recalibrated Indo-US partnership, then exploring the Middle East in terms of its intrinsic details and sensitivities is the new benchmark of India’s Middle East policy postulation

source : gulfnews