The release of ex-Navy officers should be our prime concern. All options, including, diplomacy, must be employed, regardless of our stand on Gaza
Eight Indian Navy veterans have been awarded the death penalty by a court in Qatar and that has come as a shock for the people of India. There's an international job market for veterans who want to deploy the skills of our soldiers, but at times it can prove to be brutal. Most of the well-trained veterans are under-employed and undervalued domestically. Trained professionals in various fields, except management (MBA), are not given a fair deal within the domestic folds and hence are forced to look for jobs elsewhere.
However, coming to the issue at hand, Al Dahra security company had some arrangements with the Qatari authorities for facilitating training to the latter’s naval personnel. The said company was an established player in the Middle East. Being a company staffed with Indian Navy veterans, it made a name for itself in the last decade or so. For the last 5 years or so, this Indian-staffed company has faced a tremendous amount of competition from retired British Navy officers and other players, including Pakistani Navy officers, who wanted to get employed in similar roles.
The company with Indian Navy veterans on its payroll was primarily dealing with providing bridge work and radar navigation training to cadets of the Qatari Navy. Indian Navy officers are renowned for their bridge-laying skills and are highly competitive when it comes to watchkeeping at warships. Indian Navy officers have also been very successful captains of merchant ships over the decades.
Dealing with military cadets requires the teacher to get to know them at various levels. Most of the military bonding goes beyond professional association; such is the nature of training. Personal motivation and professional training need to go hand in hand. Perhaps, long-term association with the Qatari Navy cadets led to the formation of bonds beyond classroom lectures and probably some Qatari cadets spilled work details and shared their gripes with these ex-servicemen. Though nothing is clear or being shared, it is alleged that some ex-officers were 'found' to have access to 'some' information they were not supposed to have. It is another matter that working for over a decade with the Qatari Navy training establishment would have led to a trove of daily talk, work-related complaints and a steady stream of inputs coming their way anyway which obviously can’t be quantified as such.
The Indian Navy veterans may have had some knowledge of the bridge and navigation equipment used on Qatar Naval vessels, however, they were totally isolated from the weapon radar and armament package. Now, the problem is, when we look at an actual warship, the Navigation, Weapons and Sensor systems are collocated in a 20 sq feet cramped workplace. This makes it impossible to have quality training sessions and to prepare a cadet to handle a massive sensor load along with communication systems without comprehensive knowledge of each individual platform including the armament section. These platforms are linked anyway. It is only fair to say that this assessment of unauthorised knowledge of advanced battleship platforms by these officers is speculative and the exact nature of the charges is unknown. However, whenever a private company that has foreign nationals on its payroll is employed by a country for training its military personnel, the onus to check the flow of information lies with the establishment of that country. So, the restrictions on knowledge sharing along with the checks and balances to implement these restrictions should have been in the open domain and could be made public even now.
Though the matter is extremely sensitive, access to a top-class legal team needs to be provided to these ex-servicemen at the earliest. It is shocking that these ex-servicemen have been sentenced to death (no less) by a lower court in a foreign country. They have also been in solitary confinement for more than a year now.
The ex-navy officers served India well and needed to come back home as soon as possible. They should not become a tool of larger geopolitics being played out in the Middle East. Geopolitical pulls and pressures related to the war in Gaza could also have an impact on the manner in which Qatar proceeds in this case. Qatar has been mediating between Israel, the US and Hamas to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas. It has been able to secure the release of four hostages till now which has earned the Qatar government some goodwill. The release of these officers on priority must remain disconnected from the position India takes on various geopolitical developments in the Middle East and for this, independent legal as well as diplomatic efforts may be carried out. Since a legal appeal in the current situation may take a long time or could hit a roadblock, the other option for India is to employ diplomacy.
The diplomatic effort could work on prisoner exchange, with some Qatari citizens convicted in India being allowed to return to their country. India has good bilateral relations and strong trade ties with Qatar, this should facilitate some headway in this sensitive case. Most of the other countries in the West may not be able to help India in its diplomatic endeavour due to the situation in the Middle East, however, our good relations with Russia may come in handy to provide us the much-needed diplomatic push in this case.
(The writer is an expert on geopolitics and international Affairs. The views expressed are personal)
