The Indian government’s floundering in making any headway in securing the release of 39 Indian workers abducted in Mosul in Northern Iraq raises crucial questions — on the major lacuna in our diplomatic expertise, and the shortcomings in our intelligence networks.

On June 18, we learnt about the abducted Indians. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, surely aided by womanly intuitive skills in handling delicate issues, did a fine job of quickly meeting the relatives of the missing workers and assuring them that their dear ones were safe and the Government would secure their release soon.

On Sunday she met Indian envoys from six Gulf countries and told the media that a quick resolution could come only through “direct negotiations” with the kidnappers. But there is no evidence that the dreaded ISIS terrorists who have kidnapped the Indian workers have begun any negotiation at all.

Major drawbacks

So far there seems to be no demand for ransom money. Perhaps with enough wealth in the captured areas, the ISIS needs immediately skilled and trained labour to cook, wash and clean for them, as stated by the worker who managed to escape.

A bigger problem is that as the militiamen keep moving, in greedy search for more territory to conquer, the abducted Indians too are being moved.

That after nearly two weeks the Indian government is clueless about the exact whereabouts of the Indian workers, and failed to establish a communication link with the abductors surely points to a failure in our diplomacy skills.

This is puzzling. Indians who’ve travelled to Islamic countries in West Asia and Africa, as also Afghanistan, surely know about the esteem, affection and goodwill for India in these countries.

So even though Sushma has done well to reach out to other Gulf countries for any possible help to get back the abducted workers, it is certainly a failure in networking, diplomatic skills and intelligence gathering that for nearly two weeks India has been shooting in the dark.

MEA spokesman Syed Akbaruddin’s statement that the government was knocking on all doors —“the front doors, the back doors and the trap doors” — only confirms this. Till now, the families are placated that people in power — the Minister herself — are willing to talk and listen to them. But surely their patience will snap, if results don’t come fast.

The nurses in Tikrit are also causing a lot of anxiety but it is heartbreaking to hear that relatives of many of the 46 nurses trapped in Tikrit actually want them to continue working there. This is because at home, Kerala in particular, nurses are neither valued, nor paid adequately.

Fortunately, the majority of the nearly 10,000 Indians said to be working in Iraq, are confined to the Shia areas in the south such as Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf, where India has acted with speed in establishing contact points so that those who want to return home can be quickly given the necessary papers and evacuated.

Islamic Caliphate

Meanwhile, on Sunday the ISIS declared parts of northern Iraq — Mosul, Tikrit, etc. — and Syria, under its control an “Islamic Caliphate”. As these deadly militia members unleash a reign of terror in Iraq, once again alarm bells have been sounded across the world about Islam being a religion of violence. With the Sunni ISIS desperate to take control of not only Baghdad, but also holy Shiite cities of Najaf, Samara and Karbala, Shia militias are regrouping to help Iraq’s Maliki government.

But as Iraq plunges into a sectarian, civil war, a lot of the turmoil in this region is related to geo-politics, greed and total misreading of local cultural and religious ethos by western superpowers such as the US and Britain who have played dangerous games here for decades.

Britain, of course, has been an older player in the region than the US. And it should have known better than believe, along with the US, that in 2003, its soldiers would be hailed by the Iraqis as “liberators” and showered with rose petals.

How could it forget that the 12-year sanctions against the Saddam regime had deprived of the Iraqis much needed medicines and resulted in the death of nearly half a million children?

Veteran commentator on West Asia, Robert Fisk, points out the irony of the West supporting the Shiite Maliki government against the Sunni Isis, even while being on the side of Syrian Sunni rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad!

In 2003, by taking away the Saddam regime, the allies “donated to the Iraqis two poisonous gifts. First, we gave them freedom and anarchy — as opposed to the dictatorship and security they enjoyed before — and then we created one of those oh-so-perfect governments,” he writes in The Independent daily.

A greater backlash?

We all know what happened in the corrupt Maliki government where power was concentrated in a few Shia hands, sending the Sunnis, including former Baathists of the Saddam era, into the arms of the ISIS. With even the al-Qaeda disowning the extremely violent and ruthless breakaway group ISIS, Muslims across the world will have to brace up for an even bigger backlash against Islam.

I’ve just seen a video clip where commenting on the murder of a British solider in the UK by two Islamists last month, British writer and comedian Pat Condell spews venom on Islam and its “scripturally mandated doctrine of armed violent jihad”. Rejecting the notion of “moderate and peaceful Muslims”, he says there is “nothing moderate or peaceful about your religion and you know it.”

When a bigot preaches violence and terror in mosques, Muslims should report him, and the British police should remove their “politically-correct tinted glasses, enter the mosque without removing their shoes and arrest that person,” he urges.

Pretty incendiary stuff, some of it twisted too, and bound to infuriate Muslims. But then the violence unleashed by the Taliban, ISIS, al-Qaeda and rest of the militia gangs, all in the name of Islam, and particularly against women, are not adding glory to the religion.

Anyway, for moderate, peaceful Muslims, the category Condell claims does not exist, the security queues and questionings at airports have just got worse.

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