TRAGEDY IN KABUL: A policy for the security of Indian diplomats abroad is needed

War on Terror

10 Jul 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

TRAGEDY IN KABUL: A policy for the security of Indian diplomats abroad is needed

By K.P. Nayar    Vadapalli Venkateswara Rao made the highest sacrifice that any diplomat can make for his calling and for his country. Rao, 44, who died in the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday, is only the second diplomat in independent India that anyone can recall to fall victim to terrorism.   Twenty four years separate the kidnapping and murder of Ravindra Mhatre in Birmingham in 1984 and the terrorist bomb that took Rao's life this week. Sadly, Rao will not be the last Indian diplomat to make the ultimate sacrifice for the country as India widens its national interests, adding economic and strategic clout to its geographic destiny.   It was in early 2003 that an agitated joint secretary in charge of South Block's administration was in the outer office of the foreign secretary with the minutes of the foreign service board that decides the postings of Indian diplomats. The board had just decided on a long list of postings, and one of those was to send Rao as first secretary to the Indian embassy in Washington. She could not comprehend why Rao did not want to go to Washington.   He has just done three years of demanding political work in Kathmandu, the joint secretary attempted to rationalize with herself. Nepal had been in turmoil and Indian diplomats in Kathmandu did not have an easy time when the world's only Hindu kingdom — then — was in ferment. In addition, the Nepalese government had hosted the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which meant a thankless additional workload for the Indian mission in Kathmandu. What is wrong with him, declining one of the most coveted postings in the Indian Foreign Service, the joint secretary kept asking in the hope that someone — even a visitor waiting in the outer office to see the foreign secretary — would give an answer that would satisfy her logic.   Eventually, Rao did go to Washington, where he was immediately thrown in at the deep end in the mission's commerce wing. Economic work at the embassy in Washington is divided between a minister who is usually an Indian Administrative Service officer with experience in an economic ministry back home, and an IFS officer, also with the rank of minister, but who is on deputation to what is a post of the commerce ministry.   Around the time that Rao arrived in Washington, the IAS post had been vacant for some time. This meant that his boss, the minister for commerce, had to double as the economic minister as well. To make matters worse for Rao, the boss, V.S. Seshadri, a rare breed of applied mathematician who joined the IFS, was constantly being called to New Delhi and to trade policy meetings involving India, to advise the commerce minister on matters related to the World Trade Organisation. For a country of India's size and economy, the government has experts — some say experts with intellectual honesty — on WTO matters who can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Seshadri is one of them, having worked earlier as joint secretary in the commerce ministry dealing with the WTO.   Rao made the easy transition from the sound and fury of Nepal's politics to dealing with the corporate boardrooms in America. Because he died a victim of terrorism and as a ready volunteer in promoting India's deeply entrenched, but challenging, interests in neighbouring Afghanistan, his role in promoting India's economic interests in the United States of America is less likely to be remembered.   Told about the deaths at the Indian premises in Kabul on board his special flight to Japan on Monday, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was horrified by the tragedy. The name V.V. Rao, however, did not mean anything to him and the prime minister did not mention Rao by name. But as someone who covered Singh's landmark visit to the White House in 2005, this columnist can attest that with Rao's energy and perseverance at the embassy in Washington, the prime minister's visit was fuller for its economic content, which Singh values much more than politics.   Rao was one of four backroom diplomats at the embassy in Washington without whom a prime ministerial visit on that scale would not have been glitch-free. Two of these diplomats had worked with different prime ministers in their office before being sent to the US. One of them had similarly run the office of the external affairs minister. And Rao had already dealt with most of India's neighbourhood and that had made him street-smart in diplomatic terms. It was Rao's commitment to serving in the neighbourhood that made him volunteer for Kabul. It was that commitment which puzzled the joint secretary to whom Rao said he did not want to go to Washington in 2003.   These diplomats are all in their mid-to-late 40s. Together, they represent a new brand in Indian diplomatic style and content. It is perhaps not a coincidence that their collective presence in Washington was also the most productive time ever in Indo-US relations.   In addition to the nitty-gritty of what Rao was entrusted with in terms of Singh's visit, there was an avalanche of new economic initiatives which were coming to the desks of Seshadri and Rao at that time. The high-profile CEOs' Forum which the prime minister set rolling jointly with the US president, George W. Bush, the reactivation and redefining of the Indo-US High Technology Cooperation Group that, in a way, eventually led to the nuclear deal, the Trade Policy Forum — the list goes on and on as the proof of the economic pudding that is now shared by India and the US.   Nearly two years after Rao's departure from Washington, at a condolence meeting at the Indian embassy on Monday, Seshadri's successor at the mission, Banashri Bose Harrison, acknowledged that her work had been made easier upon arrival in the US because of the detailed and comprehensive status report on key Indo-US commercial matters that Rao had left on each file.   When the IFS Association met in New Delhi on Monday to mourn Rao, there were not many among its members who had been friends of Mhatre, the diplomat who had been murdered in Birmingham. But there were several IFS officers who knew T.P. Sreenivasan, India's former high commissioner in Nairobi, and who still deal with him in his retirement. Sreenivasan and his wife, Lekha, were brutally attacked in their official residence one night in 1995, an attack that was obviously meant not to kill, but to leave them alive to tell their story.   The official spin about the Nairobi attack was that it was a burglary, a spin that was designed to protect the Indian community in Kenya from any racial fallout of the incident. Sreenivasan now admits that Kenya's domestic politics and his role as Indian envoy there had everything to do with the attack at his home.   In its dignity and wisdom, the IFS Association's meeting on Monday made no references to previous attacks on Indian diplomats, obviously because it was called specifically to condole the loss of lives in Kabul, but the thread that runs through the three attacks is the same. That ought to make the government's security establishment sit up and do some soul-searching about protecting Indian government personnel abroad before any more lives are lost.   Security at the Indian embassy in Kabul has been an issue since the time J.N. Dixit was ambassador to Afghanistan. But luck was on India's side and that, more than anything else, prevented any incident on the scale of this week's attack on the mission. That luck ran out with the suicide attack on Rao and others there.   It is urgent that a comprehensive, uniform approach to security at Indian installations abroad is worked out instead of the piece-meal localized measures that are now in effect. Because of the current approach, security at missions such as in Canada and the United Kingdom were virtually outsourced until recently to the local governments. Now is the time to change it before the country ceases to have the luxury of being relaxed about this issue.   http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080709/jsp/opinion/story_9524136.jsp