Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

Riyadh, October 31

In a turn of events that could add to India’s diplomatic heft in West Asia and the Arab world, India and Saudi Arabia will do their first-ever joint naval exercise next year.

The two countries are working to have a white shipping information-sharing agreement and New Delhi is looking to sell military-grade vehicles and equipment to Saudi Arabia.

The two sides have had discussions on how the growing Indian defence industry can be roped in to provide the needs of Saudi Arabia. A delegation of Indian industry that included Bharat Forge, Ashok Leyland and L&T among others has been hosted in the Kingdom in the recent past.

The General Authority of Military Industry has visited India. “Initial talks, have been conducted to see what all cooperation is possible,” sources on the Indian side said.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest importer of weapons and equipment. Data released in March 2019 by Swedish think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, titled ‘Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2018’ says: “Saudi Arabia imported 12 per cent of all global arms sales during the period 2014-2018.”

Global arms sales are estimated close to US $ 280 billion-290 billion. There are no data on countries like China and North Korea, hence the estimation.

US supplied 68 per cent of these weapons, arms and platforms, followed by the UK at 16 per cent and France at 4.3 per cent, respectively. India itself is the second largest importer but has ambitions of export.

The sharing of information about all cargo vessels in Saudi Arabian waters would entail the Indian Navy getting a wider picture to its west. New Delhi has such agreements with countries to its east and also the west. Information is then collated at the information fusion centre at Gurugram and manned by the Indian Navy.

The naval exercise will be a path-breaker. It’s the first such engagement; the complexity and scope would be decided at a meeting in December, sources said.

For the Indian Navy, the northern parts of the Arabian Sea are important. Since 2008, Indian naval warships have been patrolling the waters off the Gulf of Aden (south of the Arabian Peninsula) as part of its anti-piracy patrol. In June-July this year, naval warships escorted dozens of Indian-flagged cargo and crude vessels through the Persian Gulf when the Iran-US tensions flared up after the Iranians allegedly shot down a US drone. The Indian Navy already has permission to use the facilities at Duqm port in Oman located on the southern side of the Arabian Peninsula.

Successive Indian navy chiefs have defined India’s ‘area of interest’ between Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Malacca–that means largely the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

The Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca are the world’s busiest shipping choke points, carrying crude oil and cargo.