Before Indians can be evacuated from Iraq, New Delhi needs to know who it's talking to

For the moment, the focus is on the 40 construction workers believed to have been kidnapped by militants in Northern Iraq – although there are some reports that they are not being held hostage. But they aren’t the only Indians in Iraq.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs, there are approximately 10,000 Indians currently in Iraq, 6,000 of whom are in the troubled north. The government hasn’t moved to start evacuating these citizens, but with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham militants continuing their steady southward progress, New Delhi will need to have rescue plans ready.

In fact, the demands have already begun.

Congress spokesperson Raj Babbar on Wednesday asked the government to explain what it was doing to safeguard Indian citizens there. “Why were they not evacuated?” Others have pointed out Prime MInister Narendra Modi’s past experience with evacuations. The External Affairs Minister is reported to have made a rather odd statement. “Once situation in Iraq improves, we will bring those stranded there back to India. Trust us,” one website quoted Sushma Swaraj as having said.

MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin on Thursday insisted there was no need for a mass evacuation. “Only when normal communication is not available would we look at other options,” Akbaruddin said. “Communications and airports both in Baghdad and Erbil are available. Flights of a commercial nature are flying out…If any Indian who wants to come back is having trouble, we will certainly help them.”

But just earlier this month, about 1,000 Indians were evacuated from Eastern Ukraine despite rail links remaining open. In fact, the MEA carried out the evacuation by booking the Indian citizens on trains going from Lugansk to Kyiv. Although that might have been done because the Indians were mostly students, the official travel advisories indicating the government’s position on the security situation in both cases were similar. The advisory note of the Indian embassy in Baghdad advises against all travel to Iraq and even asks citizens in the troubled north to “stay indoors as far as possible”.

There might be another reason why the government hasn’t made a decision to evacuate Indian citizens, even though the Air Force has put several planes on standby: it doesn't know who to talk to.

“Evacuations don’t happen without cooperation. Unless someone cooperates, how can you evacuate?” Manoj Joshi, a national security expert and a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, told Scroll.in. “They may not be getting cooperation from the government in Baghdad, and, of course, the other option is the militants. Either they have cooperation from Baghdad or the militants, otherwise you can’t do anything.”

In 1991, India airlifted more than 140,000 citizens out of the Middle East – the largest such operation since World War II. Days after Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Kuwait, external affairs minister IK Gujral’s infamously embraced the Iraqi president, a gesture attributed to the need to ensure India would be allowed to safely evacuate its citizens.

Aside from the difficulty of attempting to contact and establish relations with the clutch of militant forces headed by ISIS that now seem to be rampaging across the north, there have also been reports that India and other countries are having a difficult time dealing with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government. This might have been exacerbated by indications that the United States is blaming the current crisis on al-Maliki and are looking for a replacement.

The MEA announced on Wednesday that they would be sending Suresh Reddy back to Baghdad to help deal with the crisis. Reddy had just finished his tenure as the first Indian Ambassador to Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Part of his challenge, along with the new Ambassador Ajay Kumar, will no doubt be to open lines of communication with both sides. Reddy was instrumental in getting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to India last year — the first high-level bilateral contacts between the two countries in nearly four decades.

If they do manage to discuss an evacuation, the Air Force will be prepared. “The Air Force certainly has the wherewithal to carry out an operation like this, but it can only do that if orders are given," Manmohan Bahadur, a former Air Vice Marshal told Scroll.in. "They have the aircraft to do it, or we can divert civilian aircraft to carry it out."

He added: “What is necessary, though, is that you have to be very clear that the runway is available to you and that the aircraft would be safe.”

Indeed, India’s record on this is quite stellar: the 1991 Gulf War evacuation literally set a record — Air India got a Guinness entry for carrying out the biggest civil evacuation ever. Since then, India has used its civilian resources, the Air Force and Navy to pull out citizens whether in Iraq (again, in 2003), Lebanon in 2006 or Libya two years ago.

“The system has the experience, in Libya and in the Gulf War,” Joshi said. “So it’s not the lack of ability. The point is there have to be favourable circumstances.”