Editorial

This issue of the India Quarterly speaks to concerns over the genesis and future of Islamic radicalism even as it moves into a more defensive position, to the need to strengthen peacekeeping in Africa and liberal peacebuilding processes in South Asia and to open foreign policymaking to stakeholders outside foreign policymaking bureaucracies. An additional paper provides insights into the India–Africa oil partnership. Clearly while war and conflict grab headlines, concerns over the institutions and processes that contribute to stability and better policy also keep pace.

In Iraq, Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State last year, and in Syria, the ISIS is seemingly in its last throes. But the war against the ISIS has been almost phyrric. The sight of ancient cities reduced to rubble, the daily horrors of local populations in Syria have only now evoked a response from the United Nations (UN). Yet the affinity with the ISIS across the Muslim world has not ended and there is reason to believe that as the ISIS flees from Syria it is already finding fertile ground in other regions such as Central Asia, South and South East Asia. Two papers in this issue of the India Quarterly look at the ways in which radical Islam has sustained affinities across national borders, even disrupting the notion of political borders by reviving the idea of an ummah or community based on Islamic sectarian identity and the revival of the lost Caliphate. In this, it has dealt a death blow to the older notion of Pan-Arab Nationalism. Much of the genesis of this phenomenon, as the papers argue, rests on an internal alienation of publics from the state. For the rest, external actors must take the blame. In the South Asian context, the common front between Islamic political parties against a ‘Hindu’ India speaks to the belief that religious affinities define national interests. There is, however, a push back to this radical Islamic ideology, not just from the military onslaughts of opposing powers but also from nation states and the more secular definition of national interests, as both authors argue. For the moment though the chief challenge will be in peacebuilding and peace keeping in these factionalised and war torn societies.

In Africa, this concern has become paramount as states deal with conflicts emerging from poor governance, the nature of its resource-based political economy, the reality of failing states and the rise of forces organised around Islamic militancy. However, the institutional structures for peacekeeping remain weak and politically and financially unsustainable. In keeping with these concerns, a paper on financial constraints in the South African Development Community (SADC) argues that African states need to establish a sustainable and viable mode of funding regional peacekeeping activities on the continent. However, it is constrained by the fact that states are poorly resourced, that because of the many regional institutions that already exist consensus on policy is hard to come by. In the circumstances, the author suggests a hybrid peacekeeping model, which establishes a UN and regional association partnership, the engagement of citizens and private entities in the region and, more radically, a new and urgent demarcation of the continent. A paper that looks at India’s relationship with Africa from the prism of transactions over oil confirms the argument about Africa’s resource-based political economy. The article finds that India’s oil-based relationship with specific parts of Africa needs to be diversified even though it has shown a healthy expansion. If the potential of the Africa–India growth corridor is even partially met, this relationship could diversify into more productive sectors as well. In South Asia, the focus on liberal peacebuilding has revealed the differences between the approaches of external stakeholders and India as one paper argues. India needs to devise a policy around norms and processes of peacebuilding in the region if it is to play an effective part in building peace in the region and create the institutional structures that make it sustainable.

A final article looks at the need to broad-base foreign policymaking. It suggests ways of closing the gap between academics who write on foreign policy and the bureaucracies who make policy.

This issue has a book review and a review essay. The first addresses women’s participation in post-conflict societies and finds that on the whole women have less say in rebuilding conflict-ridden societies today than they had a decade and a half ago. The second is in the nature of one foreign secretary’s assessment of the memoirs of three others from South Asia. In a South Asia that is divided by territorial boundaries, texts may still have the ability to create dialogues.