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Posted on 07/14/2003 4:57:59 PM PDT by Pokey78
NEW DELHI, July 14 — In a sharp blow to America's postwar plans, India refused today to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq.
The Bush administration had hoped that India would send a full army division of 17,000 or more soldiers to serve in the Kurdish region around Mosul, and it had exerted considerable pressure on the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to do so.
That would have made the Indian contingent second in numbers only to the United States in the occupation force and given a more international texture to a coalition that consists primarily of American and British troops. It would also have relieved hard-pressed American troops, who could either go home or be redeployed to more volatile Sunni Muslim areas in the center of the country.
India's refusal will not affect the scheduled rotation of forces, which will bring 17,000 allied troops to Iraq over the summer.
But following several months of uncertainty and debate, the government's Cabinet Committee on Security met in a two-hour meeting this afternoon and voted not to send the troops.
"Our longer-term national interest, our concern for the people of Iraq, our long-standing ties with the gulf region as a whole, as well as our growing dialogue and strengthened ties with the U.S. have been key elements in this consideration," India's foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, said in a brief statement read to journalists after the meeting.
The reasoning, Indian political observers said, was relatively simple: the war in Iraq is extremely unpopular here.
Even as American troops were approaching Baghdad in early April, India's Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the war as unjust and calling on the United States to withdraw. News reports spoke of antiwar demonstrations in hundreds of cities and towns. A poll in the current issue of the weekly newsmagazine Outlook showed 69 percent opposed to sending troops to Iraq. Other polls have put the figure as high as 87 percent.
The political considerations loomed larger with elections coming up this fall for five state legislatures, four of them in the Hindi-speaking heartland that is controlled by the opposition Congress Party. These elections are expected to set the tone for national elections in September of 2004.
"Public opinion is sharply critical of the war," said Praful Bidwai, a prominent journalist. "It just doesn't make sense for Indian soldiers to be basically used as cannon fodder when the U.S. is getting bogged down and taking casualties."
The Americans had pressed hard to get India to send the troops. When the deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, visited Washington in the spring he got a protocol upgrade that saw him greeted by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfield, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and even President Bush, news reports here said. The officials all urged India to participate in what the Americans described as a "stabilization" effort.
Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal recieved similar treatment in Washington, meeting with Ms. Rice and the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, a main architect of the Iraq strategy. The Pentagon dispatched a special team here to assist in planning the Indian deployment. The Indians themselves dispatched emissaries to Iraq and neighboring countries to assess the situation.
Some in the government argued for the deployment, contending that a closer relationship with the only superpower would strengthen India's international position — particularly in relation to rival Pakistan, which has tied itself to Washington in the war on terrorism. India and Pakistan have a bitter dispute over Kashmir that goes back to independence in 1947. Some also suggested that India could get a lucrative slice of postwar reconstruction contracts.
A retired general, Satish Nambier, for example, argued in an essay in Outlook that sending a force to Iraq would in "considerations of realpolitik" give India a chance to be a major player on the world scene. Still, he hastened to begin the essay by underscoring his "total opposition to the unilateral" American operations in Iraq.
Writing in the same magazine, the columnist Prem Shankar Jha expressed a more prevaling view, suggesting that the situation in Iraq was changing for the worse.
"To send troops now — without knowing what they will be called on to do, how long they will have to stay, and when and how their task will be completed — would be to push many of them to a pointless death," he wrote.
"Iraq has not been liberated, but invaded and occupied," he continued. "The Iraqis know it, resent it and are preparing to resist it. If India sends its troops to Iraq now it will be as part of an occupation force. Stabilization will mean oppression."
Some within the ruling Hindu nationalist coaltion were strongly opposed to sending forces to Iraq, including the defense minister, George Fernandes, and other military and security officials. And two left-leaning former prime ministers, Indar K. Gujral and V. K. Singh, issued a statement against deployment.
"We believe irreparable damage will be done to India's reputation and good name if Indian troops were sent to prop up the occupation of Iraq," they said. "Above all, it will be unwise and unfair to our army to send them on a mission to risk their lives where no national interest is at stake."
The government statement said that "careful thought" had been given to the matter and that India "remains ready to respond to the urgent needs of the Iraqi people for stability, security, political progress and economic reconstruction," adding that India was planning, with Jordan, to set up a hospital in Najaf as a "concrete gesture of our support to the Iraqi people."
The statement added that "were there to be an explicit U.N. mandate for the purpose, the government of India could consider the deployment of our troops in Iraq.
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I agree. Actually, this should have come as no surprise. India's best interests are clearly served by not getting involved -- regardless of what public opinion might be in their country.
His office will be getting a call in the morning.
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