Today, the ��bad guys�� in Washington who are pressing for pre-emptive
military action against Iraq are our ��good guys��, influential India-wallahs.
But there are greater ironies, indeed tragedies.

We have to pity poor, rich Iraq � the repository of the second largest
oil reserves in the world � the US picks up 90 per cent of Iraq�s output
� and the most advanced Arab country, socially, till about two decades
ago. We have to pity Muslim, secular Iraq � for centuries the confluence
of various cultures.

The ideology of Saddam Hussein�s Baath Party was the brainchild of Michel
Aflaq, a Christian intellectual from Syria. Saddam�s interlocutor with
the world is Tariq Aziz, an Iraqi Christian.

Saddam�s full name is Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, indicating his origins
in the historic town of Tikrit, the birthplace of the most outstanding
figure of medieval Islam: Saladin, a Kurd. Kurds, who predominate in
the oil-rich northern Iraq, constitute about 20 per cent of its population
and have been the target of a genocide by Saddam (and Iran, Turkey).

Although only about 80 years old as a modern state, Iraq is heir to
the brilliance of the Mesopotamian civilisation that flowered over 4,500
years ago on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates and with which
our own Indus Valley civilisation appears to have had close contacts.

Every school child in the world learns about Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar,
about Ur, Babylon, Nimrud and Nineveh. In the last two centuries of
the first millennium and in the four centuries thereafter, Islam�s intellectual
vigour reached its zenith starting with the Abbasid Caliphate with its
glittering capital at Baghdad. It was to this court that Arab traders
took the Hindu ideas of zero and numerals where they were studied by
such luminaries like the great Uzbek/Persian astronomer Al-Khowarizmi
who gave us algebra.

From here, Hindu contributions were taken by Arab merchants to Cordoba
and Granada, from where an Italian Leonardo Fibonacci brought them to
Pisa in the early 13th century and changed the course of history.

What would Mumbai be without the contributions of the distinguished
Baghdadi Jews who made India their home in the late 18th century? Sir
David Sassoon was a leading light of the city in the early 19th century
and many monuments to him still survive, including the well-known public
library. The Gateway of India was completed in 1924 with generous grants
from Sir Jacob Sassoon. Iraq is also home to Najaf and Karbala, sacred
places for the Shias.

Without Saddam, there would have been no Gulf crisis in 1990-91. No
external payments crisis, no bankruptcy, no Rao-Manmohan reforms of
1991-92. But that apart, Iraq has been our staunch ally, among the three
or four Islamic countries who have consistently supported India. It
was also a major source of oil supplies. In the 1980s, about 35,000
Indians worked there. In 2000, Iraq handed over two new oilfields to
ONGC for further development.

Given the unique position that President Musharraf now occupies in the
US and given the tectonic shifts taking place in US policy on J&K in
our favour, we have to be very skilful. We need not emulate Tony Blair,
but we cannot afford to repeat the mistake that I K Gujral made in August
1990 with his warm embrace of Saddam that lost us many friends.

Running with the UN hare and hunting with the US hound has to be our
approach. This will call for sophisticated hypocrisy but our primary
concern has to be the long-suffering people of Iraq. We have to keep
all options open.