Nurses freed, but Indians still in danger in Iraq
Now that the 46 Indian nurses who had been held hostage by militants in Iraq have been freed, we can heave a sigh of relief. Hopefully, they will all return home to safety by the end of this week. However, this does not mean that the overall humanitarian crisis is over for India — far from it, 40 Indian construction workers are still in captivity in that strife-torn country and there is not a minute to rest for the authorities until the safety of all Indian nationals has been ensured. But with the hostage crisis involving the 46 nurses, all of whom are women from Kerala, heading towards a speedy resolution, it is hoped that armchair critics of the Government will take a break from complaining about the state's supposed failure to protect its citizens. There is also a need for people, who have been hyperactive in offering their ‘expert opinions’, to tone down their shrill rhetoric. Unless it has constructive criticism to offer, the commentariat should let the Government do its job and refrain from whipping up unnecessary public frenzy. A case in point is the translocation of the abducted nurses from Tikrit to Mosul on Thursday. It was a worrying development, no doubt, but without concrete information, it was irresponsible to proclaim the worst. Some people even labelled it a ‘Kandahar-like’ hostage situation while others tossed around callous accusations about how the Ministry of External Affairs was just not doing enough. Reports of one of the abducted nurses telling a journalist that the Government had so delayed the rescue mission that it should now simply give up and send coffins to pick up the bodies, added more fuel to fire. Another report that a different nurse had requested the Indian media not to make a ‘breaking news' spectacle of their plight speaks volumes in this case.
Stepping away from the immediate crisis, it is important to make three points. First, it is naïve to believe that the Government is not doing anything just because it has not listed every single step it is taking, at the daily Press briefing. Indeed, much diplomacy and statecraft in such cases happens away from the public glare — for instance, the External Affairs Ministry is working with its friends in West Asia as well as calling upon other important stakeholders in the region to tide over the crisis. Second, the Government faces major limitations in manoeuvring around Iraq. Despite New Delhi's long standing ties with Baghdad, it has almost no connection with the new terror group, which now calls itself the ‘Islamic State’. While this is no excuse in case of an inadequate response, the problems it poses must be acknowledged in any meaningful discourse. Third, the Government of India has a successful track record in carrying out such rescue operations and, perhaps, the public can take some comfort from it.
In the past decade alone, it has removed its citizens en masse at least thrice — first, from Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, then from lebanon in 2006, and from libya in 2011 in the wake of the Arab Uprising. Before that, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, 1,10,000 Indian citizens were airlifted from both countries in nearly 500 flights over a period of two months. It was the biggest civilian rescue mission in history.