viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and the prime credit goes to Shri Hamid Ansari, former vice-president of
India. For nearly two decades he spent a considerable amount of his time
in sharing his knowledge and understanding of the vastly complex Middle
East.
We wish to register our gratitude to Director-General of IDSA
Ambassador Jayant Prasad for his continuous support in pursuing our
research. Special mention is reserved for Deputy Director General Maj.
Gen. Alok Deb (retd.), Meena Singh Roy S Kalyanraman, S. Samuel
C. Rajiv, Rajeesh Kumar, Adil Rasheed, P. K. Pradhan and Hitakshi in the
library.
D. Shyam Babu was instrumental in both suggesting, and then training
us in, the use of Zotero for collecting and organizing academic materials.
We are thankful to Dr. Saud al-Sati, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia to India, for his help in tweaking the subtitle of the book.
We thank the library staff of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Institute for
Defence Studies and Analyses and Indian Council of World Affairs. The
online MEA collection is an information mine.
We are grateful to a host of scholars, academics and diplomats who
directly or indirectly enriched our knowledge, including Professors
Girijesh Pant, Gulshan Dietl, P. C. Jain, A. K. Pasha, A. K. Ramakrishnan,
A. K. Mohapatra, and Bansidhar Pradhan and Ambassadors Ishrat Aziz,
Talmiz Ahmad, Sanjay Singh, and Ramaiah Rajagopalan. We are also
thankful to scholar friends, including Avraham Sela, Badrul Alam, C. Uday
Bhaskar, Efraim Inbar, Hayat Alvi, Hussein Solomon, Joseph Kechichian,
Muhammad Gulrez, Noor Ahmed Baba, P. K. Muraleedhar Babu, Rajesh
Rajagopalan, Santishree Pandit, Saud al-Sarhan, Saud al-Tamami, Sean
Foley, Sreeradha Datta and Vivek Mehra.
It is our privilege to have a host of well-wishers, especially Kalpana
Shukla, Jose Mathew, Alvite Singh and U. Marimuthu, who during differ-
ent times have encouraged our research pursuit.
We recognize a host of friends, including Minakshi, Dipanwita, Chetna
and Manjari, who were helpful in different stages. It is the persuasive
power of Sagarika Ghosh and her team at Palgrave which resulted in this
work reaching its logical conclusion.
Above all, the work could not have been completed without the uncon-
ditional love and support of our families and the dedication to work we
inherited from our parents.