PM Modi's first stop in January 2022 is trusted allies UAE and Kuwait

Just like Singapore in the East, Abu Dhabi is fast emerging as India’s hub of diplomatic activity in the Middle-East with close ties in trade, defence, cyber security and internal security areas.

Published on: Dec 7, 2021, 12:11:30 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to open his 2022 foreign visit calendar by trip to trusted allies United Arab Emirates and Kuwait early next month.

From left: Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmed al-Sabah, PM Modi and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

While PM Modi will visit Dubai 2020 Expo, the real purpose of the visit is to thank both the allies for standing with India during the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic as well as taking care of the huge Indian diaspora in these two emirates. The UAE has no less than four million Indian passport carrying Indians and Kuwait has nearly one million Indian diaspora, who contribute to Indian economy through remittances as well as in times of need.

Even though the government is tight-lipped about the entire visit, PM Modi may travel to these two countries in the first 10 days of January 2022. Special emphasis is being paid to these two foreign trips as both nations are at the heart of India’s foreign policy towards Middle-East.

Since his first visit to UAE at the invitation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in August 2015, PM Modi is totally focused on cementing ties with Abu Dhabi with foreign minister S Jaishankar returning from the UAE last Sunday. UAE is India’s third largest trade partner after US and China with the trade volumes touching over USD 60 billion. The January 2022 trip would be PM Modi’s fourth visit to the UAE, a sea change from the time that the last PM to visit the UAE was Indira Gandhi, 32 years before PM Modi.

India and the UAE today have cemented their ties to a new level with the latter cleaning up all anti-India criminal and economic activity from the Gulf nation with intense cooperation in fields of cyber-security, counter-radicalisation, defence and intelligence sharing. “Just as India is focused on Singapore as a hub of diplomatic activity in the east, Abu Dhabi is the other hub in the Middle-East region for getting investments into India,” said a former foreign secretary. India recognises that UAE over the years not only has developed global infrastructure but also is a hub of diplomatic activity in Middle-East. It is also a major regional defence power as was evident when last week UAE decided to purchase 80 Rafale fighters and 13 heavy lift helicopters from France.

Like the UAE, Indian ties with Kuwait are very special with the latter supplying oxygen cylinders and other medical equipment in large numbers during the second wave of pandemic in India. In fact, EAM Jaishankar flew to Kuwait with a personal letter from PM Modi to Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmed al-Sabah for thanking Kuwait for its support and future objective of deepening ties in energy, trade, information technology and manpower sector.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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