Eye on the Middle East | Challenges and opportunities in Delhi-Doha ties

The bilateral snapshot

While India-Qatar trade stood at USD 13.46 billion in 2023, India has remained Qatar’s second-largest trading partner. However, the relationship has often been rocked by both internal and external challenges. The most recent case has been that of Qatar arresting eight former Indian Navy officers working for the Al Dahra consulting company on the charge of spying on Qatar’s submarine acquisition programme and then sentencing them to death. It took personal outreaches by PM Narendra Modi, in February 2024, supplemented by frantic backchanneling to secure their release. The chronology of events, however, followed a familiar script. By 2016, India owed Qatar $2 billion due to differences in volumes of gas shipments. High-level meetings between PM Modi and the Qatari Emir in 2015 and 2016 and diplomatic maneuvering, influenced Qatar to waive this debt, and slash its gas prices by half.

With Qatar now focused on expanding its natural gas supply to India, QatarEnergy and India’s Petronet signed their biggest LNG deal in February. The 20-year agreement worth $78 billion, helps India save at least $6 billion, even as Qatari gas prices remain linked to global oil prices. Moreover, India now seems keen on reviving an at least twenty-year-old effort to purchase 12 second-hand Mirage 2000-5s from the Qatar Emiri Air Force, to expand the IAF’s nuclear-capable Mirage fleet. While both sides are presently stuck on pricing issues, Qatar has come to the table on the back of an unsuccessful deal with Indonesia for the same jets (priced at $790 million), arguably providing India some negotiating room. Notwithstanding occasional rifts, India has arguably steered its Qatar relationship to its benefit — helped in no small part by the fact that Indian expats form about 25% of Qatar’s population (mostly comprising migrant workers). It is geopolitics then, that presents a new picture.

Doha’s geopolitical clout

As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues (more than 38,000 deaths according to Gaza’s health ministry), Qatar and Egypt continue to be the key mediators between Israel and Hamas. Qatar, in particular, has long played host to the Hamas leadership and thus occupies an inextricable role in the region’s quest for a ceasefire and stability. It is here, however, that the geopolitical picture becomes more interesting. Qatar, along with states such as Oman and Turkey, are noticeable absentees in the India- Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). While Turkey’s Erdogan has declared that there “can be no corridor without Turkey”, Qatar can more directly influence the outcome of the newest and most challenging obstacle to IMEC – the burst of instability in the Middle East which was gradually drifting towards stability through economic integration.

This is not to suggest, however, that Gaza is the start and end of Qatar’s stick. Doha is still fresh out of the turbulent diplomatic crisis that defined its relations with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other Gulf Arab states that imposed a blockade on the country from 2017 to 2021. In these three years, there has been little to suggest that Doha’s underlying differences with Riyadh have been fully reconciled. While Qatar remains (quietly) opposed to normalisation with Israel, the end of the Qatar blockade failed to incentivise Doha to rejoin OPEC. Qatar left the organisation in 2019 to focus on natural gas, even as its resentment against Saudi dominance of the organisation became increasingly public. In 2021, Qatar’s energy minister even declared that there is “absolutely nothing that would bring us back (to OPEC)”. Moreover, as Qatar is the fourth largest producer of natural gas, the IMEC’s pipeline risks undercutting its position if a potential Israeli gas pipeline part of IMEC begins supplying to India. Natural gas currently forms the springboard for the India-Qatar bilateral’s future – with Qatar supplying at least half of India’s natural gas imports in 2023.

What only adds to Doha’s growing geopolitical clout, is its emergence as the ground zero of global engagement with the Afghan Taliban (both pre and post-August, 2021). India, which had long played second fiddle to China, Russia, and Pakistan in terms of engaging the Taliban, held its first formal talks with the group in 2021 through its Ambassador in Qatar. Now, with India having a seat at the table, MEA Joint Secretary JP Singh has emerged as the point diplomat entrusted with New Delhi’s cautious outreach to Taliban-ruled Kabul and representation at meetings in Doha – the most recent being on the 1st of this month.

Essentially, even as the Gulf’s geopolitical lines were being redrawn prior to October 7, Qatar retained its own diplomatic space as a sui generis actor. As Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza rages (with Hamas continuing to hold Israeli hostages), Qatar holds both strategic and tactical cards that are crucial in determining the future of the Middle East, including India’s connectivity projects. New Delhi’s expansion of ties with the UAE and advancement on the India-UAE leg of the corridor is promising, but the question of what role states such as Qatar, Oman, and Turkey might play, remains open. In earlier intra-Gulf crises such as between 2017 and 2021, India’s deft diplomatic manoeuvring allowed it to isolate its relationship with the Gulf’s maverick, from other powerhouses such as Saudi Arabia and UAE. Now, India has a more prominent geopolitical objective at stake in the form of the IMEC — which goes beyond India-Qatar bilateral ties. Thus far, it has been the Gulf Arab states that have had a Qatar problem. While India does not, it might in the future — should Qatar not feel sufficiently accommodated.

Bashir Ali Abbas is a research associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi, and a South Asia Visiting Fellow at the Stimson Center, Washington DC. The views expressed are personal.