Amid Assad regime ouster in Syria, Jaishankar speaks about challenges in West Asia
New Delhi, December 9. Amid the ouster of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke about the challenges in West Asia ranging “from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria”.
He said this while speaking at the 20th IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Sunday. The Manama Dialogue is a forum for ministers, policymakers and decision-makers to debate West Asia’s most pressing foreign-policy, defence and security challenges. The theme of this year’s event was ‘Whither Regional Strategic Cooperation’.
Presenting New Delhi’s relationship with West Asia, he emphasised on the region’s critical importance for India’s economic and strategic interests.
“First of all, obviously you cooperate in political-diplomatic way and what we do in my business is essentially try to address the challenges of the day as collectively and as effectively as possible,” Jaishankar said. “And this today would extend from Gaza to Lebanon and now to Syria as well. But at the same time, we have to be realistic about competing interests in this region. So, diplomacy is often easier said than done and one of the interesting evolution of the world today is actually on different issues, sometimes in the same region, you have a different combination of countries that are working together and that to me is a characteristics of our era.”
His comments came even as the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) overthrew the decades-old Assad family regime in Damascus earlier in the day.
“The second political-diplomatic cooperation that we can think of is really at a time when the world is polarised if not downright violent, how do you prevent an escalation of tensions, how do you prevent conflict from spreading further,” Jaishankar said. “In recent times, for all of us, the relationship or absence of it between Israel and Iran has been particularly a source of concern, so some of our diplomatic efforts have focused on that particular aspect. There has been the situation in the Red Sea as well.”
Beyond political-diplomatic trend, he spoke about the importance of strategic regional cooperation in the security domain. He said that there have been very significant security challenges in this area “with a very deep and disastrous impact for trade in Asia”.
“So when we look at the diversion of maritime routes and the insurance costs, and the shipping costs and the container costs and the delay that it has imposed, obviously, you know, India, but not just India, we have an interest in trying to mitigate that situation,” he stated.
The External Affairs Minister said that India has had a naval presence in this region in the Gulf of Aden, Somalia, Northern Arabian Sea.
“Over the years, it has been roughly about 30 ships, the peak was about 12 ships at one point of time which were deployed there,” he said. “And in the last year we have actually responded to 24 actual incidents, escorted 250 ships, rescued 120 crew members.”
He said that India is also a member of the combined maritime force which is centered in Bahrain. This involves Combined Task Force 150 (CTF150), a multinational coalition naval task force under a 34-nation coalition, working with the European Union Naval Force (EUNAVFOR).
Jaishankar said that India intends to increase its bilateral exercise both in the Gulf as well as in the Mediterranean.
“So in the Gulf, I think the Gulf countries have been our fairly regular partners by now and in almost every case we have seen an uptick in our shared activities,” he said. “In the Mediterranean, particularly, apart from Israel, with Greece, with Egypt, we have had significant exercises this year.”
Jaishankar also spoke about connectivity projects including the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral (IMTT) highway, the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC).
“And in fact, one day, when these corridors are done, the IMEC will bring the Atlantic to India, the IMTT will actually take that connectivity from India to the Pacific,” he said. “So you can actually envisage a connectivity corridor from the Atlantic to the Pacific going through southern Europe, going through the Arabian peninsula, cutting through the southern part of the Asian continent.”
The External Affairs Minister also highlighted the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), innovation and start-ups in today’s era of multilateral cooperation.
Highlighting that India is today almost a $4 trillion economy, he said: “Our trade is today around $800 billion, that too should at least double this decade. So I again cannot overstate the stakes that we have because this region is the immediate for us the world beyond our borders that immediately awaits us. So whatever happens here, historically, culturally, civilisational wise, economically, connectivity wise matters a lot.”
