Diplomatic challenges: Fissures in the Gulf test India’s foreign policy

Dipak Kurmi

(The writer can be reached at dipaknewslive@gmail.com.)

The death sentence pronounced on eight former officers of the Indian Navy by a Qatari court has shocked India. However, the government, having intervened diplomatically earlier, seemed shell-shocked, perhaps having accepted Qatari advice to await the trial’s conclusion. The opacity, and often the vagaries, of the judicial processes in the Gulf nations should not have been ignored. The geopolitical fault lines in the Gulf, as well as the known predilections of the ruling Al Thani clan, should have been noted as other worrying elements.

The Thanis of Qatar and the Sauds of Saudi Arabia are ruling families with shared origins in the Nejd interior, the font of ultra-conservative Wahhabism. The former ruler, Hamed bin Khalifa Al Thani, even claimed, to the annoyance of the Saudis, that their family was related to Al Wahab, the founder of Wahhabism. As Qatari wealth grew, especially after diversification into gas exports, these past rivalries worsened.

The UAE’s relations with Qatar also have a colourful past. After the British withdrawal from the Gulf region in 1971, when the former protectorates known as the Trucial States were regrouping as a new federation called the United Arab Emirates, the then ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Ahmad, favoured joining it. When he was in Dubai in 1972, the present Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad’s grandfather overthrew him in a coup. The deposed ruler found sanctuary in the UAE and attempted many abortive coups.

The 2011 Arab Spring exacerbated these fault lines, destabilising many Arab regimes. Qatar’s partiality towards the Muslim Brotherhood, whose government succeeded the military dictatorship of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, drove the UAE and Saudi Arabia into open hostility with it. US President Donald Trump endorsed it during his Riyadh visit in 2017, his first official visit abroad. Egypt, by then again under military rule, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE cut off relations with Qatar and imposed a blockade. Their justification was Qatar’s support of radical Islamist elements. Qatar’s television channel, Al Jazeera, also irritated autocratic Arab regimes with its widely viewed reporting. The blockade ended only in January 2021, after President Joe Biden assumed charge in Washington.

Qatari Wahhabism is less stringent than its Saudi version. In addition, Sheikh Hamad, the present ruler’s father, who deposed his own father to capture power in 1995, had begun liberalising Qatar at a pace the other Gulf rulers found inconvenient, if not threatening. He told US television in 2013 that he supported democracy and a functioning parliament. A WikiLeaks report quotes Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the current UAE President, as saying that Qatar was “part of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The newly-elected BJP government in 2014 stepped into this fragmented world. The development of “special” relations with the rulers of the UAE and Saudi Arabia carried the risk that nations distrusting them may reassess their relations with India. Qatar had granted citizenship to the iconic Indian artist M.F. Husain in 2010, when he was living in Dubai in self-exile, threatened by far-right Indian groups. It also reacted strongly to the Islamophobic remarks by a BJP spokesperson.

Qatar has provided shelter to all manner of Islamist leaders, including those of Hamas. It played peacemaker in Yemen in 2007, an accord that later collapsed, and successfully in Lebanon in 2008. It is now at the centre of the hostage negotiations in the Israel-Hamas standoff. Thus, Qatar is not a small Gulf nation that can be cajoled or browbeaten. The fact that Israel is being mentioned as the recipient of information allegedly passed by the former Navy officers facing the death penalty complicates the issue, as strong anti-Israel feelings prevail in practically all Arab nations now.

India-Qatar relations are mutually beneficial. The Indian diaspora there numbering over eight lakhs and India importing 48 percent of its LNG from Qatar limits India’s leverage to apply diplomatic pressure. Thus, it would be sensible to first monitor and assist the appeal to the Higher Judicial Council. Meanwhile, the ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamas Al Thani, can be quietly approached to make the case for a pardon or at least a reduced sentence. A signal from that level can put the reviewing court on a positive track. Direct engagement at the highest level can be counterproductive as it would not leave space for a face-saver for both sides.

The employer of the Indians is Dahra Global Technologies, etc., an Omani company headed by Khamis Al Ajmi. He was also detained but let go last year. The company’s businesses go beyond defence. It seems highly improbable that all eight former Indian Navy officers could have conspired as a group. They are former mid-level naval officers who understand the implications of leaking classified information.

That’s why receiving proper legal advice and ensuring a fair trial are absolutely necessary.

In 2002, a Jordanian journalist with Qatari television was entrapped and sentenced to death for espionage. What secret information could a journalist have passed on that impinged on Qatar’s national security? Clearly, like in any family-ruled autocracy, the definition of sedition can be pretty wide. Criticism of a regime can be so construed, as many are discovering in India.

The saga takes on yet another dimension. Pakistan has bought MG-110 midget submarines from an Italian company called Cosmos. Qatar signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Fincantieri SpA in 2020, another Italian company, for similar vessels. After Qatar was blockaded in 2017, it increased its reliance on Iran and Turkey. The new alliance of sorts has put Qatar in a camp that Israel views suspiciously. Even India would have been concerned about Pakistan’s possible role.

In this complicated scenario, did someone mislead our former naval officers? It is important that the highest levels in Qatar convey these possibilities and the absence of any desire to harm Qatar. However, getting across to those with access to the ruler is unlikely to be a straightforward diplomatic exercise. It took this writer two years to find the path in the UAE to the real decision-makers, bypassing their foreign ministry. India’s then-external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, extended the writer’s term by one year, realising this.

Indian diplomacy is now facing a major test, as the charges are extremely serious and the geopolitical situation is very complex. Fortuitously, India has quickly reverted to its balanced position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with noticeable caveats like the latest abstention during the UN General Assembly vote.