Very recommendable! India, a rising superpower!
Reminder: Indians refer to the Middle East as West Asia! Geography is destiny!
"At the G20 Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Joe Biden, and other world leaders unveiled the India-Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEEC), a trade highway to bring Indian goods by sea to the United Arab Emirates, overland to the Mediterranean, and then onward to Europe. ...
India-Iraq trade has more than doubled since 2020 to more than Rs 250,000 crore ($30 billion), largely on the back of Iraqi oil exports but also due to other opportunities. Indian companies, for example, have taken the lead on the Basra sewage system, and on compressors to enable the Beiji refinery to operate. Following its success with Beiji, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. has moved to help Sulaymani, the second-largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, upgrade its own power generation. ..."
What is missing in India’s approach, however, is a third way that increases India’s trade security. After all, the trans-Iran North-South corridor need not be the only alternative to IMEEC. In many ways, Iraq could be a natural partner for India to augment its trade security beyond IMEEC and Iran.
Iraq is no stranger to India. Almost three crore Indians supported the British Army in Iraq during World War I, most in non-combatant roles, but others in more direct military roles. For years, Indian laborers and expatriates helped the Iraqi railways run. The numbers of Indian officers in Iraq declined from two thousands to just a few dozen after the British mandate ended, but relations rebounded upon India’s independence.
In 1952, India and Iraq signed a “Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Friendship” and, despite Iraq’s neutrality in the 1965 war and its more overt support for Pakistan six years later, India and Iraq developed cordial military ties, leading to the Indian Air Force training Iraqi MiG-21 pilots, and the Indian Navy supporting a Naval Academy in Basra. Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, the Indian presence in Iraq soared to more than 80,000. It plummeted under sanctions but, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, began to rebound. US contractors recruited thousands more to provide various services to military bases.
In May 2010, the number of Indian workers increased greatly in the Iraqi Kurdistan region after New Delhi lifted its travel advisory. Today, Indians are spread across the country. More than 5,000 Indians work at the Karbala Refinery Project, and another 25,000 have worked from Basra in the south to Baghdad in the centre, to the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil in the north. Ministry of External Affairs statistics today count only 18,000, but that is more than four times the number of Indians in Iran and more than ten times the number in Turkey, both far larger countries.
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