New Middle East conflicts touch India; security and diplomatic establishments must work together
The bottomline of a terror attack in broad daylight in the heart of New Delhi can only be this: a security failure. When that attack takes place in the diplomatic zone close to the prime minister’s residence and the heavily guarded Israeli embassy, the magnitude of that failure gets amplified. Monday’s bomb attack on the car of Tal Yehoshua-Koren, on the Israeli mission staff and wife of an Israeli defence department official at the embassy, happened in a zone with several CCTV cameras and police personnel. Yet it’s anything but easy to wrest evidence from grainy footage, especially when the attacker was reportedly on a moving vehicle — as manoeuvrable as a motorbike — who may have turned a corner and sped off. Therefore, it’s necessary to look at what preceded this security breach. The government has said the bomber was “well-trained” and the target deliberately chosen. In other words, the attacker(s) had been in the vicinity before, made observations and planned the attack.
The nature of the attack — the first ever in India where a bomb is supposed to have been attached to a target car — and the nature of the target expose a new vulnerability in India’s internal security. As security agencies probe the attack, and as Israel and Iran trade allegations, New Delhi has to walk a diplomatic tightrope. It enjoys friendly relations with both Israel and Iran, as it does with several Arab states also not on the best of terms with Tehran. These relationships are not mutually exclusive and India’s interests are tied up with all of them. Israel is a vital ally — this year marked the 20th of diplomatic ties — making enormous contributions to India’s defence; almost 50,000 Israelis visit India annually. India’s political class may have found itself divided over Israel but there has been no violence against Israeli or Jewish targets in India until the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, perpetrated through imported terror.
That’s why Delhi cannot afford the Middle East’s emerging conflicts — whether between Israel and Iran or Saudi Arabia and Iran — to spill over onto Indian soil. But this challenge will not be met with mere diplomatic niceties. The geopolitics of the Middle East is changing and, although it’s not known who’s responsible for this attack, India’s internal security establishment has to gear up for this new reality.
