During her recent visit to Srinagar, Mrs. Gandhi said that she had not expected much from the recent meeting of non-aligned countries, including India, in Belgrade. This is an unexceptionable statement provided it is not an expression of hopelessness and a desire to let Iraq and Iran slug it out as long as they can or wish to. India just cannot afford to sit idly by as the war undermines the long-term well-being of two friendly countries.
Passions are running high in both Baghdad and Teheran. Each is convinced that it is the wronged party, Iraq because the Iranians had and have been calling upon its people, especially the Shias, to overthrow the “infidel” Saddam Hussein and Iran because it has been attacked.
Both Iran and Iraq are also possessed by a sense of mission. The Iranians, it need hardly be said, sincerely believe that they have blazed a new trail for Muslim peoples all over the world to follow, that rulers in other Muslim countries are not being true to the faith, and that anyone who opposes them is an enemy of Islam.
When the war started, several commentators felt that this would lead to a revival of Iranian nationalism and subordination of the Islamic fervour to it. They have turned out to be mistaken. The Iranians doubtless insist that Iraq must withdraw from all their territory before they can agree to a ceasefire. But they are fighting in the name of Islam and not only Iran’s territorial integrity.
Mission
The Iraqi mission is equally obvious. In all probability President Saddam Hussein would not have gone to war if he was not suffering from a sense of humiliation over the 1975 agreement on the Shatt-El-Arab estuary and if he had not felt threatened by the Iranian appeals to his people to topple him. But he is fully convinced that he is fighting for the good of all Arabs. Indeed, he was so offended by Algeria’s willingness to look after Iran’s interests in the United States and help the two sides negotiate a deal over the release of the American hostages in Teheran that he opposed even its participation in the non-aligned meeting in Belgrade. Libya and Syria challenge his claim. But that does not weaken it in his own eyes.
Commentators have also turned out to be wrong on the duration of the war and the willingness and ability of the two countries to live with prolonged hostilities at a certain level. Even after the Iraqis had failed to win the spectacular and complete victory which they probably expected and the Iranians had failed to follow up their heroic resistance in Khorramshahr with a counter-offensive at any point on the fairly long front, it has taken the commentators several weeks to conclude that the two countries can and perhaps will continue low-level hostilities for a very, very long time.
Even now such analyses must in the nature of things be tentative. No one outside the small circle of President Saddam Hussein’s confidants can, for example, be sure about his intentions, military capability and strategy. Despite the little progress the Iraqi forces have made in the last fortnight, reports from Baghdad say not only that life there has returned to normal as if there is no war but also that the authorities are remarkably confident as if things are going according to plan. And there are also reports that the Iraqis are constructing roads from the border to Ahvaz, capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province, and Dezful, which controls the communications, including pipelines, between Khuzestan and northern Iran.
The implications of the two sets of reports are not necessarily contradictory. But the difference is obvious. While the first would suggest that the Iraqis are content with the limited gains they have made because these secure for them control over the Shatt-El-Arab and the small disputed territories along the border, the second imply that they have not given up their objective of detaching Khuzestan from Iran and thereby weakening the enemy country greatly, possibly even fatally. This means that we cannot be sure that the present stalemate is certain to continue.
Strength
We also face great difficulties in assessing the military capabilities of the two countries. We have little choice but to depend on Western intelligence estimates as leaked to Western correspondents. Though these sources are convinced that the Iraqis have been preparing for war for almost two years and storing arms and ammunition for the purpose, they are no less sure that Iraq’s supplies of ammunition will not run out earlier than Iran’s despite all that has been happening to the military establishment there during the same period. On top of it, the Pentagon has strongly contended that both Iraq and Iran are receiving military supplies from the Soviet Union and France.
As if this was not enough to make it virtually impossible for the non-aligned group to evolve some formula which can serve as the basis of a ceasefire, the power struggle between the modernist elements, including those headed by President Bani-Sadr, and the religious groups appears to have been resumed in Teheran. The arrest of the former foreign minister, Mr. Ghotbzadeh, by the Islamic guards on the orders of the Teheran public prosecutor and the delay in his release despite President Bani-Sadr’s intervention in his behalf speak for themselves.
Quite candidly, the scope for optimism regarding an early ceasefire is very limited. The prospect is bleak. It looks as if Iran and Iraq will go on bleeding each other for a pretty long time. But if there is any group which can be helpful to the two combatants at some stage in mitigating the tragedy, it is only the non-aligned one. The Islamic group does not have a chance to mediate in the dispute. Individual governments like Cuba’s and leaders such as Yassir Arafat have even less of a chance. The two superpowers do not appear to be interested in an early end to hostilities. That is presumably why neither has taken any initiative in the UN Security Council and outside.
The possible calculations of the superpowers are in fact one powerful reason why the non-aligned group must persevere, another important one being the fact that this is the first time that the movement has taken an initiative in such a matter since 1962 when representatives of some non-aligned governments met in Colombo and made proposals which, in their opinion, could serve as the basis of peace between India and China. It is important for the movement that the effort succeeds because otherwise both Iran and Iraq can come under the sway of the superpowers. The consequences can be easily imagined.
The United States was alarmed when it appeared that the war might spread to other Gulf countries and disrupt oil supplies. It is now assured that there is no such danger. The emasculation of Iraq suits it, though it would never acknowledge this to be the case. It denies the Arabs the ability to wage war against Israel in the foreseeable future and it takes the pressure off President Sadat, America’s close ally in West Asia. Indeed, the chances are that in the new context, oil-rich Gulf countries would wish to resume relations with him. They are already better disposed towards the growing US military presence in the Gulf than they were before the Iran-Iraq war.
In publicising his willingness to unfreeze military supplies worth 220 million dollars as part of a deal with Iran over the release of hostages, President Carter was clearly influenced a great deal by electoral considerations. But implicit in his decision was in all probability also the belief that the Arabs were too divided to retaliate and that the more influential among them too much in need of US protection even to show resentment over the deal.
Mullahs On Top
President Carter’s advisers perhaps calculated that resumption of military supplies would strengthen the position of the armed forces and the modernist political elements in Iran at the cost of the religious groups. This calculation was ill-founded. Recent events have completely knocked it down. The Ayatollahs are firmly in command in Iran. But the hostages issue apart, America can bide its time in the confidence that it has made impressive gains among Arab countries in the Gulf.
The Soviet interest focuses on Iran. The Kremlin was prepared to live with the release of American hostages and US military supplies to that country. It is apparently willing to ignore moves against the left, including the pro-Soviet Tudeh party, in the twin calculations that Islamic revolution serves its long-term interests inasmuch as it foments discontent in Arab countries against the ruling regimes and that prolongation of hostilities will in the long run leave little choice to Ayatollah Khomeini and his colleagues but to tilt towards it. Meanwhile Moscow has concluded a treaty with Syria in order to increase its options or at least to reduce its losses in the region.
The Gulf has been on the way to becoming the focal point of Russo-US rivalry for quite some time. The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan accelerated this process. The Iran-Iraq war has accelerated it still further. This means the end of the Indian dream of the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. Surely we cannot accept this as a fait accompli and begin reconciling ourselves to it even before we have explored and exhausted the possibility of averting the disaster.
The Times of India, 12 November 1980