Brahma Chellaney, OPEN magazine

 

When on October 7 more than 1,000 Hamas militants entered Israel and carried out terrorist atrocities against largely civilians and took more than 200 hostages back to the Gaza Strip, they not only exposed perhaps the worst security and intelligence failure in the country’s 75-year history but also set in motion developments beyond their own control.

In stark contrast to the restraint India exercised in response to the 2008 horrific Mumbai terrorist attacks that were devised by the Pakistani military intelligence, Israel has treated the Hamas slaughter as a kind of Pearl Harbor moment. While India under then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chose to impose no costs on Pakistan, thereby emboldening the Pakistani military establishment to stage further major cross-border terrorist attacks, Israel wasted no time in planning and launching a massive military operation to “wipe out” Hamas and thereby help deter others in the neighbourhood from launching daring terror strikes against Israeli targets.

Today, as Israel pummels Gaza, its military offensive is deepening a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip while raising the prospects of a geopolitical reordering in the Middle East. Yet, despite satellite imagery indicating that a quarter of all buildings in northern Gaza have already been wrecked by Israeli strikes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected global appeals for a ceasefire, including from allies like France and Australia, describing them as calls for Israel to “surrender to terrorism”.

Israel has gone to war with Hamas several times before, including in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2021. The scale of the present war is unprecedented, as underlined by Israel’s mobilisation of 360,000 reservists and the evacuation of 250,000 Israelis from their homes. With Israeli airstrikes flattening entire neighbourhoods in Gaza and killing thousands, the global horror at the barbarism of Hamas’ actions against children, women and the elderly is in danger of giving way to international revulsion over the growing human toll of the Israeli bombing campaign, which has become one of the most intense of the 21st century.

Hamas, though, has long used human shields in conflicts with Israel, and its armed militants remain embedded among Gazan civilians.

More ominously, with the Israeli military currently engaged in low-level fighting on three additional fronts—Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank—the risks of a widening war cannot be discounted. It is to avert a wider conflict that US President Joe Biden has deployed additional American naval and air assets in the Middle East. A wider war would undermine US interests, including by increasing the strategic space for China and Russia.

Biden’s new military deployments in the Middle East are in keeping with the interventionist foreign policy that he has pursued since taking office. Biden’s first military action (in Syria) came barely five weeks after he entered the White House.

Most members of Biden’s national security team are considered “liberal interventionists”, or hawks on the left who cheered America’s past wars and who have helped deepen US involvement in the current war in Ukraine. It was the liberal interventionists who, under President Barack Obama, engineered the disastrous US-led interventions in Libya and Syria. Today, the ruling alliance of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives (neocons) in Washington is pushing Russia into an alliance with China.

It did not take long for the neocons and liberal interventionists in Washington to define the Hamas atrocities against Israel as an attack on American interests and call for a larger war to take on Iran. On Biden’s orders, the US military on October 26 carried out strikes on purported “Iranian proxies” in Syria. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin described them as “precision self-defence strikes” against two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliates.

Biden’s new military deployments in the Middle East are in keeping with the interventionist foreign policy that he has pursued since taking office. It did not take long for the neocons and liberal interventionists in Washington to define the Hamas atrocities against Israel as an attack on American interests and call for a larger war to take on Iran

Meanwhile, unlike many wartime leaders, the increasingly unpopular Netanyahu is struggling to rally Israelis to his side, given the scant public trust in his leadership. Netanyahu’s effort to pin the blame for the Hamas surprise attack on the heads of Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence service, triggered a political backlash, forcing him to delete his post on X. “Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas”, his post had read. “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement”.

To be sure, the Hamas attack took even the US by surprise. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in an essay published in the Foreign Affairs journal just before the October 7 attack, boasted that “we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence”. After the Hamas atrocities, the journal allowed Sullivan to remove such lines from the online version of the essay.

Whatever the outcome of the Gaza war, the political career of Netanyahu, who has been in power for 14 of the past 16 years, seems doomed. Biden’s re-election prospects also have dimmed.

Biden’s approval rating, even before the conflict flared in the Middle East, had sunk to the lowest level since he took office. But Biden’s “unwavering support” for Netanyahu’s Gaza war has split the Democratic Party at home, antagonised America’s allies and partners in the Islamic world and, by alienating many young Americans and progressives, seriously set back his re-election chances. If he faces voters with the US still involved in two separate wars, he would likely lose.

THE ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT

Almost everything about the Israel-Palestine conflict is contentious, including its roots. Some experts trace the origins of the conflict to Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration during World War I in support of the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a minority Jewish population. Named after the then British foreign secretary, the declaration fostered Jewish-Palestinian enmity. Other experts, however, trace the roots of the conflict to the late 19th century, when the rise of Zionism encouraged Jewish migration to the Holy Land.

The Israel-Palestine problem, like continuing conflicts elsewhere, including in the Indian subcontinent and Africa, is the direct legacy of British colonialism. The “divide and rule” policies of the world’s biggest colonial power, Britain, extended even to its exit strategy. For example, Britain ensured that not only would a united, strong India not be possible but also that an independent India would be perpetually weighed down by serious challenges.

Hundreds of millions in the world still suffer from the lingering consequences of British colonialism. As then-South African President Thabo Mbeki put it in 2005, colonialism left a “common and terrible legacy of countries deeply divided on the basis of race, colour, culture and religion.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged in 2011 that the legacy of British colonialism was responsible for many of the world’s enduring problems. “As with so many of the problems of the world, we are responsible for their creation in the first place,” Cameron said in Pakistan, a British-created state that still defines itself by what it is against—India—rather than by what it is for.

There may be no direct link between the two raging wars, yet each could impinge on the other. After the start of hostilities in the Middle East, ‘Ukraine fatigue’ in the West has become more apparent. Just as the Ukraine war led to soaring international food and fuel prices and hyper-inflation, the Gaza war, if it widens, could disrupt oil supplies

British colonialists liked redrawing political frontiers, as they did in the Middle East after World War I. Indeed, it was British colonialism that laid the foundation of the State of Israel in the period between December 1917 (when the British army occupied Jerusalem) and May 14, 1948, the date on which David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the birth of Israel with US support. In that period, while mollifying Palestinian élites by offering the prospect of an independent Palestine, Britain quietly encouraged Jewish migration to Palestine and subsidised Jewish settlements and defences against native Palestinians.

Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel, Israelis and Palestinians have been at war. Israel’s creation sparked the first Israeli-Arab War, which ended in 1949 with 750,000 Palestinians displaced and the sub-region divided into three entities: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.

The biggest turning point came in June 1967 when Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt and Syria and dramatically changed the political and water map of its sub-region. In just a six-day war, Israeli forces captured vast swaths of territory, seizing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria. As a result, Israel more than tripled the size of the area under its control—from 21,000 square kilometres to 67,000 square kilometres.

The Six-Day War, as it is known, still stands out for the successful Israeli grab of the sub-region’s water resources. By seizing control of the water-rich Golan Heights and the aquifer-controlling West Bank, Israel reaped tremendous water spoils: the war left it in control of sizeable groundwater resources and all of the Jordan River’s headwaters.

The clash of the two coalitions increases the significance of the Global South as a ‘swing’ factor in geopolitics. The weight of the Global South is growing while the power of the West is weakening. The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region is a key front in the struggle between the two coalitions for influence in the Global South

Groundwater is a larger source of supply than surface water in this sub-region. And the West Bank sits on substantial groundwater in the form of a multi-aquifer system, with the groundwater outflow to Israel estimated at a sizeable 325 million cubic metres a year. In 1981, Israel formally annexed the strategic Golan Heights, which not only serves as the headwaters of the Jordan River but also controls Israel’s major water sources, including those that feed its main freshwater lake, Tiberias (also known as Lake Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee).

Simply put, Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation since 1967, with Israel usurping Palestinian natural resources and tightly regulating any expansion of the water infrastructure in Palestinian areas.

Israel has made peace with some of its Arab neighbours, including Egypt, with which it signed the 1978-79 Camp David Accords and returned the Sinai Peninsula. Israel also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994 but without returning the West Bank and East Jerusalem. After Egypt and Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords to become the third and fourth Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel.

Israel’s conflict with Palestinians, however, has persisted, despite the 1993 Oslo I Accords and the 1995 Oslo II Accords. The Fatah party led by Mahmoud Abbas controls the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank, while Hamas, until Israel recently declared war on it, was de facto governing the Gaza Strip after winning parliamentary elections in 2006.

Over the years, Palestinian frustration and anger have triggered a recurring cycle of violent protests and Israeli crackdown. In 1987, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rose up against the Israeli occupation in what is known as the first Intifada, which lasted until 1993. Then in 2000, after then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa mosque—the third holiest site in Islam—the second Intifada began, lasting until 2005. During the height of that uprising in 2002, Israel began constructing a concrete, 712-kilometre barrier wall around the West Bank that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2004 was violative of international law. Israel, however, ignored the ICJ’s call for dismantling the wall.

More fundamentally, Israel has gradually consolidated its regional pre-eminence, with the outcome of past wars precluding any real challenger. Its peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt have helped reinforce the message to others in the Arab world that it is too powerful to be taken on militarily, thus leaving only diplomatic options. Before the latest war began, even Saudi Arabia was discussing with the US a deal that would normalise its relations with Israel.

Today, Israel, despite a small population of 9.4 million, surpasses the combined military strength of its Arab neighbours—Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It has one of the world’s most powerful militaries, with vast air power. And Israel enjoys a nuclear-weapons monopoly in the Middle East that only Iran is seeking to clandestinely challenge. Another key fact is that Israel’s $564 billion economy is larger than that of all of its immediate neighbours combined.

Hamas emerged out of an Israeli-financed Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. Arafat called Hamas ‘a creature of Israel’. Israel, like the US, may have been guided by the proverb ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. This is not an Arab but a Sanskrit proverb. But, as history attests, ‘the enemy of my enemy’, far from being a friend, has often openly turned into a foe sooner or later

HOW THE CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST

The outrage over the atrocities against Israeli civilians by Hamas has helped obscure Israel’s role in the rise of that terrorist militia. In the 1980s when the CIA trained and armed “mujahideen” (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, thereby spawning Al Qaeda and international terrorists like Osama bin Laden, Israel aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.

The first Intifada that flared in 1987 as a spontaneous protest movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands shook Israel. To divide and undermine the nationalist Palestinian movement led by Arafat, Israel lent support to the anti-PLO Hamas that was formed under the leadership of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic and partially blind cleric, in the early days of the Intifada uprising.

The fundamental Israeli objective was to thwart the implementation of a two-state solution centred on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. By aiding the rise of a terrorist group whose charter rejected recognising the Israeli state, Israel sought to undermine the idea of a two-state solution, including curbing Western support for a Palestinian homeland.

In fact, Hamas emerged out of an Israeli-financed Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev disclosed that, as Israel’s military governor in Gaza during 1981-86, he routed Israeli government funds to the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the dominant Palestinian secularists.

US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer said in late 2001 that, “Israel perceived it to be better to have people [Palestinians] turning toward religion rather than toward a nationalistic cause,” resulting in the growth of the Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories “with the tacit support of Israel”. And a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman, said, “Israel started Hamas,” adding, “It was a project of Shin Bet [the Israeli domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO”.

Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel, Israelis and Palestinians have been at war. Israel’s creation sparked the first Israeli-Arab War, which ended in 1949 with 750,000 Palestinians displaced and the sub-region divided into three entities: the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Arafat, for his part, called Hamas “a creature of Israel”, telling the Italian newspaper L’Espresso in late 2001 that “Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel”. A former Israeli religious affairs official who was involved in Gaza for more than two decades, Avner Cohen, echoed Arafat’s words in 2009, saying, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation”.

The spy agency, Mossad, was also involved in Israel’s divide-and-rule game in the occupied territories. In a 1994 book, The Other Side of Deception, Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky explained the rationale for aiding Hamas: “Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region”.

About seven years before the killing of bin Laden by US special forces in a helicopter assault on his hideout near Islamabad, Israel assassinated Hamas founder Yassin by a missile strike in 2004. But by then Hamas had emerged as a major terrorist menace after becoming the first Islamic group to embrace the use of suicide bombers.

The plain fact is that Israel’s tacit ties with Islamists paralleled America’s use of jihadists against communism and Soviet influence. As then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted in 2010, “We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden… And it didn’t work out so well for us”.

America’s troubling ties with Islamist rulers and groups were cemented when President Ronald Reagan’s administration employed Islam as an ideological tool to spur jihad against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several mujahideen from Afghanistan, Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”

The Six-Day War still stands out for the successful Israeli grab of the sub-region’s water resources. By seizing control of the water-rich Golan Heights and the aquifer-controlling West Bank, Israel reaped tremendous water spoils. Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation since 1967

Israel, like the US, may have been guided by the proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. This is not an Arab but a Sanskrit proverb that gained currency some 1,000 years before Prophet Muhammad. But, as history attests, “the enemy of my enemy”, far from being a friend, has often openly turned into a foe sooner or later.

Yet, Israel and the US have both declined to draw appropriate lessons from the Western roots of international jihadist terrorism. While Obama was in office, the US and its allies toppled Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, effectively creating a jihadist citadel at Europe’s southern doorstep. They then moved to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fuelling a civil war that enabled the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), many of whose foot soldiers were CIA-trained, anti-Assad jihadists.

Israel likewise persisted with its dalliance with Hamas even after the 1993 Oslo Accords and its military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In fact, Qatar, a long-time sponsor of violent jihadists, funnelled some $1.8 billion to Hamas between 2012 and 2023 with the consent of Israel, which naïvely believed that such regular flow of funding would discourage Hamas from challenging the status quo.

Former US President Jimmy Carter told an interviewer in 2013 that he met Hamas leaders several times and they appeared willing to accept the existence of Israel but that Netanyahu’s determination to impose a “one-state solution” precluded any meaningful negotiations.

Netanyahu, for his part, reportedly told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in 2019 that “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” adding, “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank”.

The Hamas surprise attack on Israel holds lessons for other countries on the frontlines against international terrorism, including India. The first lesson is to never rest on one’s oars as terrorists will innovate by crafting new means for launching surprise attacks. Another lesson is to impose sustained costs on state sponsors of terror. Israel, unfortunately, allowed Qatar to keep funding Hamas

By doing whatever it could to undermine the Palestinian Authority, Israel continued to empower Hamas until the chickens came home to roost recently.

Israel’s current military operations cannot crush Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood or destroy Hamas’ terrorism-glorifying ideology. Hamas’ capability, however, can be sufficiently degraded in the current war so that it no longer poses a potent threat to Israel.

A GEOPOLITICAL REORDERING?

The present confluence of international crises, conflicts and wars poses a growing global danger and highlights geopolitical churning at a time when the world is at a crossroads, with the United Nations (UN) in irreversible decline. The war in Gaza, like the war in Ukraine, is making the world more divided, including accentuating the North-South and East-West divides.

This trend portends greater international divisiveness in the coming years. The hardening gridlock at the UN Security Council, ironically, may increase the role of the traditionally weak UN General Assembly, which on October 27 adopted a resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” and an end to Israel’s Gaza siege, which has largely prevented food, medicine, fuel and other essential goods from entering that enclave. While the US and Israel voted against it, the resolution was adopted with the support of 120 countries, including some of Israel’s Western allies like France and Spain.

In modern history, wars, not peace, have shaped the international order and international institutions. The present US-led global order, including the monetary order as symbolised by the Bretton Woods institutions, emerged from World War II. And so did the UN. This explains why meaningfully reforming the UN in peacetime has proved virtually impossible.

The present wars in the Middle East and Europe could lead to major shifts in the international order, especially if Israel’s war drags on or triggers a wider conflict.

There may be no direct link between the two raging wars, yet each could impinge on the other. For example, after the start of hostilities in the Middle East, ‘Ukraine fatigue’ in the West has become more apparent, signalling that Western support for Kyiv seems set to erode. Just as the Ukraine war led to soaring international food and fuel prices and hyper-inflation, the Gaza war, if it widens, could disrupt oil supplies.

What is clear is that the world is on the cusp of major geopolitical change. Such change could also potentially reshape the global financial order and trade patterns.

After all, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza essentially are great-power conflicts, pitting two major coalitions against each other. On one side are the US and its allies that are supporting both Israel and Ukraine. And on the other side are China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The deployment in Israel of US military officers with vast experience in urban combat, including a Marine Corps general, shows how deeply the Biden administration is involved in Israel’s Gaza war.

The clash of the two coalitions increases the significance of the Global South as a ‘swing’ factor in the global geopolitical competition. Countries in the Global South reject a return to the with-us or against-us approach of the Cold War era. For example, they have generally declined to participate in Western sanctions or otherwise isolate Russia.

The weight of the Global South is growing at a time when the power of the West is weakening. The world’s fastest-growing economies are largely in the Global South, which has long been frustrated by the sidelining of its interests in global discussions. The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region is a key front in the struggle between the two coalitions for influence in the Global South. But America’s support for Israel’s Gaza war has set back US diplomatic interests in the largely Islamic MENA.

Israel has made peace with some of its Arab neighbours, including Egypt, with which it signed the 1978-79 Camp David Accords. Israel also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. The UAE and Bahrain agreed in 2020 under the Abraham Accords to normalise relations with Israel. Israel’s conflict with Palestinians, however, has persisted, despite the 1993 Oslo I Accords and the 1995 Oslo II Accords

Israel’s war would likely have a significant impact in MENA, a region long blighted by Western military interventions. With the exceptions of Iran, Egypt and Turkey, every major power in the Greater Middle East is a modern construct created largely by the British and the French. Today, failed states like Libya and Yemen epitomise the enduring costs of foreign military interventions.

Make no mistake: The outcome of what Israel calls a “self-defence war” is likely to shape its own future. Without prudent and limited military objectives achievable without continuing mass civilian casualties in Gaza, Israel risks worsening its regional security environment. Directly occupying densely populated Gaza would impose major military and economic costs on Israel at a time when its armed forces are already overstretched and its economic growth is taking a beating.

More broadly, the Hamas surprise attack on Israel holds lessons for other countries on the frontlines against international terrorism, including India. The first lesson is to never rest on one’s oars as terrorists will innovate by crafting new means for launching surprise attacks. Too often, counterterrorism strategies seek to prevent a repeat of past types of attacks without looking ahead at innovative new techniques that may be applied by terrorists. Another lesson is to impose sustained costs on state sponsors of terror. Israel, unfortunately, allowed Qatar to keep funding Hamas.

Meanwhile, with the US now involved in two separate wars and its stocks of munitions already running critically low, Biden is working to mend ties with China, in the hope of averting a third war—over Taiwan. After sending a string of cabinet officials to Beijing since May, the White House effectively suspended the 2022 US controls on exports of semiconductors and chip-making equipment to Beijing by granting South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix in October an indefinite waiver to export such technology to China.

Even before the Gaza war began, the US sought to partly address its dwindling reserves of munitions by shipping cluster bombs to Ukraine, as Biden acknowledged in a CNN interview. But now US munitions transfers to Israel are further depleting American stockpiles, even as a war over Taiwan can scarcely be ruled out. So, seeking desperately to stabilise Sino-US relations, Biden will hold a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meeting, which will be held in San Francisco during November 12-18.

Before moving against Taiwan, Xi would like the Israel and Ukraine wars to last as long as possible so that US military stocks are furthered drained. If and when he moves on Taiwan, he could goad China’s ally, North Korea, to open another front. A two-war scenario in Asia, with simultaneous conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula, would be a geopolitical and military nightmare for the US.

Israel’s war, meanwhile, is increasing the salience of Qatar, the gas-rich speck of a country that has transformed itself from a regional gadfly into an international rogue elephant by funding violent jihadists across the MENA region—from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas. Qatar hosts two major American military bases. And the US last year rewarded Qatar by designating it as its ‘Major Non-NATO Ally’ (MNNA), a status enjoyed by 17 other countries, including Pakistan but not India. Qatar played a key role in the US-Taliban accord that eventually returned that terrorist militia to power in Afghanistan.

Today, Qatar is leveraging its ties with Hamas to serve as a go-between for Israeli-Hamas negotiations, including over the hostages. As an Israeli official put it on October 25, “Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions. Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.”

The US and Israel may have cosy ties with Qatar but that has not stopped Qatar from jailing eight Indian former navy men for allegedly spying on the Qatari submarine programme for Israel. After a secret trial, the eight were recently awarded the death penalty. The reported charges against the eight seem bizarre as Qatar’s naval expansion is taking shape in foreign shipyards, mainly in Italy and Turkey. Without being tamed, this rogue elephant could become a bigger threat to regional and international security.

Israel’s war, meanwhile, has sparked a debate over a key question: “Is it a war crime to kill civilians?” Experts are citing the laws of war, which consist of four 1949 Geneva Conventions, their two Additional Protocols of 1977, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, as well as various weapons conventions. Lost in the debate is a harsh truth: International law is powerful against the powerless but powerless against the powerful.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of two award-winning books on water: Water, Peace, and War; and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent claim that India’s government might be linked to the fatal shooting of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil has sent bilateral relations into a tailspin. Even if the current diplomatic ruckus eases, Canada’s refusal to rein in violent Sikh separatism will continue to fuel bilateral tension with India.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

Rarely have two major democracies descended into as ugly a diplomatic spat as the one now unfolding between Canada and India. With the traditionally friendly relationship already at its lowest point ever, both sides are now engaging in quiet diplomacy to arrest the downward spiral, using the United States, a Canadian ally and Indian partner, as the intermediary. But even if the current diplomatic ruckus eases, Canada’s tolerance of Sikh separatist activity on its territory will continue to bedevil bilateral ties.

The current dispute began when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sensationally claimed that there were “credible allegations” about a “potential link” between India’s government and the fatal shooting in June of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist and Canadian citizen, on Canadian soil. India’s government fired back by demanding that Canada reduce its diplomatic staff in India, suspending new visas for Canadians, and accusing Canada of making “absurd” accusations to divert attention from its status as “a safe haven for terrorists.”

Nijjar was hardly the only Sikh separatist living in Canada. In fact, the country has emerged as the global hub of the militant movement for “Khalistan,” or an independent Sikh homeland. The separatists constitute a small minority of the Sikh diaspora, concentrated in the Anglosphere, especially Canada. Sikhs living in India – who overwhelmingly report that they are proud to be Indian – do not support the separatist cause.

With British Columbia as their operational base, the separatists are waging a strident campaign glorifying political violence. For example, they have erected billboards advocating the killing of Indian diplomats (with photos), honored jailed or killed terrorists as “martyrs,” built a parade float on which the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was re-enacted, and staged attacks on Indian diplomatic missions in Canada. They have also held referenda on independence for Khalistan in Canada.

But, much to India’s frustration, Canada has been reluctant to take strong action to rein in Sikh separatism. Trudeau’s first official visit to India in 2018 turned into a disaster after it was revealed that a convicted Sikh terrorist who had spent years in a Canadian prison following the attempted assassination of a visiting Indian state cabinet minister had made it onto the Canadian guest list. At last month’s G20 summit in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave Trudeau a dressing-down for being soft on violent extremists.

It was against this tense backdrop that Trudeau made his allegations about Nijjar’s murder. When countries have linked foreign agents to a domestic death – for example, in 2010, when the Dubai police chief accused Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, of killing a Hamas commander in a local luxury hotel – they have typically presented video, audio, or forensic evidence. And they have mostly avoided blaming the government that the foreign agents represent.

Trudeau, by contrast, cast blame directly on the Indian government without presenting a scintilla of evidence. He says the allegations are based on credible intelligence, apparently from a “Five Eyes” partner country (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States), but refuses to declassify the information or share it with Indian authorities.

Trudeau apparently has not provided “any facts” even to Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, a member of the Privy Council. And, according to the premier of British Columbia, the province where the killing occurred, the intelligence briefing he received on the matter included only information “available to the public doing an internet search.”

Meanwhile, Canadian investigators have not made a single arrest in the case. This has left many wondering to what extent Canada’s powerful but unaccountable intelligence establishment controls its foreign policy.

In any case, there is no doubt that Sikh radicals wield real political influence in Canada, including as funders. Trudeau keeps his minority government afloat with the help of Jagmeet Singh, the New Democratic Party’s Sikh leader and a Khalistan sympathizer. According to a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau’s government, action was not taken to choke off financing for the Khalistani militants because “Trudeau did not want to lose the Sikh vote” to Singh.

Canada must wake up to the threat posed by its Sikh militants. Rising drug-trade profitability and easy gun availability in British Columbia have contributed to internecine infighting among Khalistan radicals in the province. The volatile combination of Sikh militancy, the drug trade, and gangland killings has serious implications for Canadian security, but it is not only Canadians who are in danger.

Under Trudeau’s father, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s reluctance to rein in or extradite Sikh extremists wanted in India for terrorism led to the 1985 twin bombings targeting Air India flights. One attack killed all 329 passengers, most of whom were of Indian origin, on a flight from Toronto; the other misfired, killing two baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. With Khalistani militants continuing to idolize Talwinder Singh Parmar – the terrorist that two separate Canadian inquiries identified as the mastermind behind the bombings – history is in danger of repeating itself.

By reopening old wounds, not least those created by the Air India attacks, Trudeau’s accusations have created a rare national consensus in fractious and highly polarized India, with many calling for the government to put sustained pressure on Canada to start cleaning up its act. But more bitterness and recriminations will not restore the bilateral relationship. For that, both sides must use effective, cooperative diplomacy to address each other’s concerns.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2023.

For nearly four decades since the deadly Air India flight bombing, New Delhi has put up with the Anglosphere countries’ sheltering of violence-espousing extremists from India. Now a critical moment has been reached when India needs to demonstrate the political will to keep these countries under sustained pressure so that they begin cleaning up their act at home.

Brahma Chellaney, OPEN magazine

The Khalistan movement may be practically dead in India but it is alive and kicking in sections of the Sikh diaspora living in the five Anglosphere countries, thanks to those nations tolerating the operations of extremist Sikh groups that are promoting or glorifying terrorism against the Indian state and its diplomats and citizens. These English-speaking countries, which are tied together by the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership, receive the bulk of Indian students studying abroad and also are home to large Indian immigrant communities.

Notwithstanding the absence of any real support for Khalistan in India and the rejection of religious secessionism by the majority of overseas Sikhs, violence-espousing separatism has grown among Sikh radicals sheltered by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and, to a smaller extent, New Zealand. Worse still, these foreign-based militants are aiding, financing or orchestrating violence in Punjab and elsewhere in India. In cases where such extremists entered India to stage terror attacks, a number of them were arrested or killed by police in shootouts.

Abroad, the modus operandi of Khalistanis is to take control of cash-rich gurudwaras, using them as a base both for stoking militancy among other Sikhs and for funding terrorist activities by diverting proceeds from narcotics trafficking and worshippers’ donations. To win political protection, such foreign-based militants also contribute, at times generously, to political parties’ electoral campaigns, especially to help preferred candidates win. Canada is a prime example of that.

Control of gurudwaras, no less importantly, gives such militants cover as supposed religious figures. For example, the slain Canadian terrorist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who had an Interpol red corner notice against him since 2014 in connection with multiple terrorism cases in India, has been described in the Canadian media as “president” of a gurudwara and “a Sikh preacher”. Such labels help obscure the fact that Nijjar was a terrorist fugitive from India when he entered Canada on a fake passport under the name Ravi Sharma, before he eventually become the Canada-based head of the Khalistan Tiger Force.

The foreign-based Khalistanis also draw recruits from Punjab by financing their emigration or non-immigrant relocation to an Anglosphere country. Malleable youths in Punjab are sponsored for non-immigrant visas, including for work in gurudwaras. Once abroad, the youths, after indoctrination and financial help, serve as “foot soldiers” of the local Khalistan brigade.

Making things murkier is increasing evidence of an unholy nexus between some Anglosphere security or intelligence agencies and prominent Khalistanis. Key extremists are not just being shielded by such agencies; some also serve as intelligence assets, including possibly Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, an American-Canadian dual citizen who recently made headlines by ordering Hindu Canadians, on pain of punishment, to flee from Canada. It is telling that Pannu, like some other Anglosphere-based Khalistani terrorists wanted in India, continues to operate with impunity.

After Nijjar’s killing in June, Khalistanis in the US, especially those residing in California (where many Sikh radicals are based), received warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about potential threats to their lives. According to one report, FBI agents individually contacted such radicals to warn that their lives could be at risk.

It is such shielding of the militants, without reining in their growing violence-endorsing extremism, that resulted in twin attacks on the Indian consulate in San Francisco this year. The first occurred in March just hours after Khalistani militants stormed the Indian high commission in London and pulled down the Indian flag. And the second attack came less than four months later, with the Khalistani arsonists quickly posting online a video of the blazing fire they set inside the consulate compound.

Yet, having failed again to protect the consulate, the US merely condemned the attack. And, despite the fire the militants set inside the compound, it qualified the attack as “reported vandalism” and “attempted arson”.

How would the US have reacted had some militants staged twin attacks on one of its consulates in India, setting ablaze some structures, and India did little more than condemn the attack, including seeking to downplay it by calling it reported vandalism and attempted arson? Or how would Canada react if India sheltered gun-toting Quebecois who pursued violent anti-Canadian separatism from Indian soil?

The US inaction, for example, has led India’s anti-terror agency to issue a reward for information over the attacks on the San Francisco consulate. And the Indian government has been constrained to issue a travel advisory warning Indians of the “growing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate crimes and political violence in Canada”.

Meanwhile, Britain, despite an Indian-origin prime minister at the helm, remains a hotbed of anti-India Sikh and Islamist militancy. In fact, as if seeking to emulate its colonial-era “divide-and-rule” policy in India and elsewhere, Britain has long hosted Sikh and Kashmiri secessionists from India, doing little to contain their violent separatism.

Today, Britain has become a safe refuge for Indian financial fraudsters and those accused of terrorism and other crimes in India. London’s failure to protect Indian diplomatic missions and diplomats from militant assaults has led to copycat attacks elsewhere in the Anglosphere, including in San Francisco. The attack on the Indian high commission in London in March was not the first storming: On India’s Independence Day in 2019, for example, extremists from India and Pakistan attacked the high commission, smashing windows and causing other damage.

Oddly, in shielding leading Khalistanis, Western intelligence services are implicitly aiding Pakistan’s efforts to destabilize India. Pakistan’s rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has actively aided the Khalistan movement, including facilitating military training. For example, the ISI-trained Nijjar went on to establish a training camp for new recruits near Mission, which is about one hour east of Vancouver by car. At this camp, new recruits were trained to use AK-47s and other weapons.

India’s concerns about the operations of Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists from the Anglosphere countries actually go back to the 1980s, when an Indian diplomat was murdered in Birmingham in Britain and a bomb downed an Air India flight from Toronto, killing all 329 people on board. Organized by Khalistani extremists operating out of Canada’s British Columbia province, the Air India bombing, until 9/11, was the worst act of terrorism in the sky.

Today, by continuing to shield dangerous Khalistani terrorists or extremists, the Anglosphere countries are imperilling Indian interests and security. It is as if some Western governments wish to employ the Khalistan card as political leverage against India. Allowing provocations from the Khalistani diaspora in the Anglosphere to go unchecked could even impinge on the interests of Sikhs in India by affecting the traditionally harmonious Hindu-Sikh relations and close bonds.

Canada is ground zero for Khalistan militancy

Canada is both a refuge and a haven — a refuge for migrants from many countries, and a haven for activists, militants and even international terrorist fugitives, including from major democracies like India.

On India, Canada has come full circle: From the early 1980s, it ignored India’s protests over the growing operations of violent Khalistanis from Canadian soil, including the evidence it received from New Delhi, thereby emboldening the extremists to carry out the 1985 Air India flight bombing and a couple of other attacks. In more recent years, by disregarding the detailed intelligence dossiers New Delhi has presented about how Canadian Khalistanis are fomenting terrorism in India, Ottawa brought bilateral ties under increasing strain, before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dealt a grievous blow to the Indo-Canadian relationship by hurling a bombshell accusation at New Delhi.

Trudeau’s wilful tolerance of violent Khalistanis has followed similar indulgence of Sikh terrorists by his late father. In 1982, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau turned down the request of the Indian government headed by Indira Gandhi to extradite Babbar Khalsa chief Talwinder Parmar. Permitted to stay ensconced in Canada, Parmar went on to become the mastermind of the Air India flight bombing.

Two separate Canadian probes identified Parmar as the chief terrorist behind the bombing of Air India Flight 182. The main probe, a commission of inquiry led by former Supreme Court justice John Major, submitted its report in 2010—25 years after the bombing. The commission of inquiry was set up belatedly—only after a probe led by Bob Rae, an independent adviser to the minister for public safety, submitted its report in 2005. Ottawa extended little cooperation to New Delhi in investigating a bombing whose victims were largely Indian-origin Canadians and Indian nationals. In fact, in the period after the bombing, damning evidence about Canada’s sins of commission and omission was destroyed.

Despite the findings of the two inquiries, Justin Trudeau’s partner in keeping his minority government afloat, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, told CBC Television in 2017 that he doubted that Parmar was the true architect of the Air India bombing. He also refused to denounce Canadian Sikhs who glorify Parmar as a martyr. Jagmeet Singh—“a committed Khalistani,” in the recent words of another prominent Canadian Sikh politician, Ujjal Dosanjh—was denied an Indian visa in 2013 over his “anti-India” activities.

Meanwhile, the growing nexus between Sikh militants and criminal and drug networks has contributed to increasing gangland killings in British Columbia. Indeed, Nijjar’s murder came amid sharpening inter-gang rivalries among Khalistanis, largely driven by mounting profitability from the drug trade and easy availability of guns.

Against this backdrop, Canada today serves as ground zero for Khalistan militancy, with British Columbia the global headquarters of Sikh extremists promoting or glorifying terrorism. In per-capita terms, there seem to be far more Khalistanis in Canada than any other country, including India, Britain or the US.

Ominously, money and muscle have helped the Khalistan movement to rapidly enlarge its footprint among Sikhs in Canada, currently estimated to number about 7.7 lakhs. Indeed, such is the growing sway of Khalistanis that they already dominate Sikh politics in Canada, drowning out the voices of moderate Sikhs that do not support secessionism. The majority of Canadian Sikhs, however, remain peaceful and uninterested in violent religious separatism.

But, with Canadian authorities looking the other way, the Khalistani extremists have incited hate and violence, held a Khalistan-linked referendum, and glorified then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s 1984 assassination through a parade float in Brampton, Ontario, that sought to immortalize her assassins. The Khalistanis have also issued death threats and announced cash rewards for attacks. Their targets include Indian diplomats, not just in Canada but also elsewhere, including the current Indian ambassador to the US, who is a Sikh.

Still, internecine infighting among rival factions continues to plague the Khalistan movement in Canada. The toxic intersection of violent separatism, drug trade and gun culture holds significant implications for Canada’s own long-term security. Yet Ottawa remains reluctant to crack down on this nexus.

Trudeau’s political blunders, including cultivating the vote of radical Sikhs and turning a blind eye to the hate and violence they incite, have now extended to personally meeting with and honouring a Nazi war criminal, before arranging for this Canada-based Nazi veteran from Ukraine to receive a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament in the presence of a cheering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The tribute to the Nazi veteran, without vetting his background, and the Trudeau-initiated diplomatic spat with India are both helping to shine a spotlight on Canada’s unenviable status as a safe haven for terrorists, war criminals and other extremists from multiple countries. Canada has long been home to international fugitives, with Pierre Trudeau once famously saying that he chose not to prosecute Nazi war criminals in Canada lest it inflame European expat communities.

Meanwhile, on Justin Trudeau’s watch, there has been a steady diminishment of Canada’s place in the world, thanks to his missteps and blunders.

For example, Justin Trudeau inadvertently highlighted his cosy ties to Khalistanis by including a convicted Sikh terrorist, Jaspal Atwal, on his 2018 trip to India. The visit was marred by revelations that Atwal, who went to prison after being convicted in 1986 of the attempted assassination of an Indian state cabinet minister visiting Vancouver Island, was formally invited to a reception in honour of Trudeau at Canada House, the official residence of the country’s high commissioner in New Delhi. During the earlier Mumbai leg of the visit, Atwal was photographed posing with Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, as well as Canadian cabinet ministers and MPs.

In fact, during Trudeau’s disastrous 2018 trip to India, the then chief minister of Punjab, Amarinder Singh, made a point of handing the Canadian PM in Amritsar a list of terrorism-promoting Khalistani operatives based in Canada. Nijjar was one of the names on the list. Earlier, while voicing concern that Sikh extremists were “infiltrating” Trudeau’s cabinet, Amarinder Singh famously snubbed Trudeau’s then defence minister, Harjitt Sajjan, when Sajjan visited India in 2017.

Take another disquieting example: Canada has given refuge to a key assassin of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has repeatedly urged Trudeau over several years to extradite Nur Chowdhury, who is thought to have personally fired the bullets that killed her father. Chowdhury was convicted in absentia. But Trudeau continues to drag his feet over the issue.

The latest blunder in Ottawa in honouring a Nazi war criminal further dents Canada’s international image—and Trudeau’s standing at home.

Canada must start cleaning up its act at home, or else its growing reputation as a sanctuary for international fugitives would become indelibly etched in the collective consciousness of the world. India has already officially labelled Canada as “a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists, and for organized crime”, as the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson put it.

Trudeau bites off more than he can chew

Let us be clear: Trudeau’s September 18 statement in the House of Commons was not about Canadian security agencies finding evidence of India’s role in Nijjar’s killing but, as he put it, “credible allegations” of a “potential” India “link” to the murder. Months after Nijjar’s killing, Canadian police have not been able to arrest a single suspect in connection with the shooting.

With no arrests, let alone any evidence, Trudeau aired just allegations, knowing that such a step would seriously damage Canada’s relations with the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The phrase “credible allegations”, in fact, is an oxymoron. There is credible evidence, but any allegation is simply an allegation.

When India sought to share intelligence with Canada after 2014 on the violent Sikh separatists operating from Canadian soil, Ottawa refused to take it, contending that “intelligence is not evidence”. That contention is correct: Intelligence is not evidence but mere information whose authenticity and evidentiary value must be established.

Yet, in an ironical twist, Canada’s prime minister has now levelled serious allegations against India on the basis of intelligence that Ottawa will not even share with India. As the Indian external affairs ministry has categorically stated, “No specific information has been shared by Canada on this case, either then or before or after”.

Look at another jarring paradox: Since taking office some eight years ago, Trudeau has refused to cooperate with New Delhi to help address longstanding Indian concerns over the growing Canadian Sikh extremism directed against India. But Trudeau now, with US backing, insists that India cooperate with Canada in probing the Canadian government’s allegations, without Ottawa declassifying the claimed intelligence about the India link to the killing or confidentially sharing the intelligence with New Delhi.

If Trudeau had any convincing intelligence linking India to the killing, he would by now have declassified it, instead of repeatedly airing mere suspicions. The absence of hard evidence, in fact, has led the Trudeau government to plant stories in the Canadian media about intercepts of communications between Indian diplomats after Nijjar’s murder. The intercepts might be about celebratory chatter over a dreaded terrorist’s death, but such conversations can hardly attest to an Indian government role in the killing.

Indeed, with Trudeau having already rushed to a conclusion before Canadian security agencies have managed to collect evidence, we may never know the truth about Nijjar’s killing. One critical eyewitness to the murder, Malkit Singh, who was Nijjar’s gurudwara aide, has suggested that the killers were Sikhs. “He described them as wearing ‘a Sikh get-up’, with hoodies pulled over small pughs [pagris] on their heads and masks over their ‘bearded faces’,” according to a Washington Post report.

Contrast Trudeau’s evidence-free allegations against India with the video, audio or forensic evidence other countries have presented in the past while linking foreign agents to a killing on their soil. And also contrast Trudeau’s direct linking of the Indian government to the killing with the restraint other countries have often exercised, casting the blame on foreign agents for a murder but not the governments they represent so as not to preclude the involvement of rogue elements.

For example, when 11 Israeli agents assassinated Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room in 2010, the United Arab Emirates painstakingly collected a trove of investigative evidence before publicly releasing compelling surveillance footage and photographs of the agents—but without accusing the Israeli government or Mossad of involvement.

The US government’s reaction to Trudeau’s allegations against New Delhi was initially muted to help protect America’s relationship with India. But after the American and Canadian media reported that Canada had received no support from its Western allies in its diplomatic spat with India, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken chipped in. But their grating words for New Delhi could only have ruffled Indian feathers.

Sullivan, for example, stated that was no “special exemption” for any country in the matter of extra-territorial killings and that there has to be accountability, which is why the US, he said, was in touch with India at “high levels”. But why would India, to defend its interests, seek any “special exemption” from the Big Daddy of extra-territorial assassinations? While India has never before been accused of assassinating anyone on Western soil, the US is the longstanding world record holder in extra-territorial assassinations.

Here is the reality check: America’s siding with Canada shows that its relationship with any of its Five Eye allies will always take precedence over its ties with India. After all, the Five Eye countries are America’s closest allies and bound together by treaty arrangements, while India is just a strategic partner.

But the fact that the intelligence Washington shared with Ottawa, however sketchy, helped embolden Trudeau to pick a geopolitical fight with India could have a bearing on the direction of U.S.-India ties, not least by reinforcing India’s imperative for preserving its strategic autonomy. The task of building mutual trust becomes harder.

Less clear is what Ottawa and, implicitly, Washington have sought to achieve against India through allegations arising from the murky world of espionage, where the line between information and disinformation gets easily blurred for geopolitical ends. Can vague, unsubstantiated allegations about a “potential” India link to a terrorist killing serve any purpose, other than to make New Delhi rethink its nascent foreign-policy tilt toward the West?

More fundamentally, Trudeau’s gambit, instead of putting India in the international dock, appears to have boomeranged. At home, Trudeau has faced increasing pressure to come clean and present hard evidence to back his allegations against India.

Furthermore, his allegations, instead of creating international solidarity against India, are only helping to focus global attention on what prominent Canadians have long expressed concern about—Canada’s role as a safe haven for terrorists, war criminals and other extremists. India’s longstanding concern over Ottawa’s reluctance to rein in the Khalistan movement and extradite extremists wanted in India for terrorist acts is now getting attention even in the Canadian media.

New Delhi, however, should not expect Trudeau to back down. Trudeau’s track record shows that he never admits that he was wrong. Instead, he seeks to palm off blame to someone else. Even in the tribute-to-a-Nazi case, he has refused to take responsibility, with the House of Commons speaker becoming the fall guy.

The truth about Trudeau, however unpalatable, is that he is a serial hypocrite. For example, while shedding crocodile tears over the killing of a dreaded Sikh terrorist that his government long shielded, including by rebuffing New Delhi’s demand to send him over for prosecution, Trudeau has cited the importance of a “rules-based order.” But in August 2022, Trudeau extolled the US assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, a 71-year-old retired terrorist living with his children and grandchildren in a Kabul apartment, hailing the hit-job as “a step toward a safer world”.

Trudeau has accused New Delhi of interfering in Canada’s internal affairs. Yet, illustrating his blatant interference in India’s domestic affairs, Trudeau in 2020 cheered on anti-government Indian farmers blockading highways near New Delhi. While defending protesters’ rights half a world away, Trudeau declared a national emergency in Canada last year to crush peaceful protests against his mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, calling their blockades a security threat akin to terrorism. The gun-toting terrorists in Canada, meanwhile, remain untouched by his government.

It is such stunning hypocrisy that has contributed to plunging Indo-Canadian relations to their lowest point ever. Not surprisingly, India today identifies terrorism as the core issue troubling its ties with Ottawa, with its travel advisory warning Indian nationals that Canada is plagued by “politically condoned” violence. 

Canada’s indulgence of Sikh separatists, in general, and Sikh terrorists, in particular, has increasingly rankled India. During his term in office, Trudeau has employed freedom of expression as a cover to allow rising anti-India activities of Sikh extremists, as if Canada has no laws against hate or incitement to violence. The extremists openly espouse political violence as a legitimate tool to achieve Khalistan.

With the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) content to look the other way, Canada has done little to ensure that its territory is not used for terrorist financing. Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director Ward Elcock has raised the question whether Ottawa is wilfully “tolerating terrorist groups operating from Canada”. As Elcock put it, “There is a history in this country of Sikh extremism verging into terrorism”. Cutting off terrorist financing would help choke the Khalistan movement in Canada.

But make no mistake: The rising concern over Canada’s harbouring of terrorists and extremists is not just about Indo-Canadian relations or Indian security; it also holds implications for wider security. A day may come when Canadian Khalistanis carry out a major terrorist strike in Canada or a third country.

After all, Ottawa appears to have learned no lesson from the 1985 Air India flight bombing. Nor is there recognition in Ottawa that it is easier to damage a bilateral relationship with a fellow democracy than to rebuild it.

The emergence of Canada as the international epicentre of Khalistan militancy, however, should not obscure the broader role of the Anglosphere in sheltering and shielding Sikh extremists fomenting terrorism in India. Still, good relations with the Anglosphere countries are pivotal to the wider pursuit of India’s diplomatic interests. India must leverage access to its huge market, including trade deals, as well as geopolitical and military cooperation to bring the Anglosphere countries under sustained pressure to stop tolerating violent Khalistanis.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of two award-winning books on water: Water, Peace, and War; and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

Under Trudeau, Canada has become Khalistani extremism’s global hub. He cannot cite free speech law to defend inaction as Canada has other laws against hate and incitement to violence that should be invoked.

Brahma Chellaney, The Times of India

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tried to deflect attention away from his cosy political ties to radicals and his government’s indulgence of violence-espousing Khalistanis by seeking to put India in the dock with an astounding allegation. Trudeau’s evidence-free claim should not obscure a larger problem confronting India — the five Anglosphere countries’ sheltering of Sikh extremists that endorse violence as a legitimate tool to achieve Khalistan.

The Khalistan idea has few takers among Sikhs in India, as the highly regarded, Washington-based Pew Research Centre highlighted in a poll released in 2021. The survey found that 95% of Sikhs are “very proud to be Indians”. In fact, 70% of Sikhs believe “a person who disrespects India cannot be a Sikh”. Even in Canada and other English-speaking countries, Khalistan supporters make up just a fraction of the Sikh diaspora.

Yet an unholy combination of two factors is keeping Khalistan militancy alive overseas. The first is Pakistan’s funding, support and possible training of Khalistanis in a bid to destabilize India, as a Hudson Institute report brought out.

More surprising is the role of Canada, Britain, the US, Australia and, marginally, New Zealand, as if no lesson has been learned from the 1985 bombing by Khalistani extremists of an Air India flight from Toronto that killed all 329 people on board. These countries continue to look the other way as Sikh radicals step up their militancy from Western soil, including issuing death threats and calls to violence. The inaction has emboldened the extremists to vandalize Indian diplomatic missions and Hindu temples and threaten Indian diplomats.

Long before Trudeau’s allegation plunged Indo-Canadian ties to their lowest ebb, New Delhi was urging the Anglosphere countries to rein in the rising tide of Khalistani militancy directed at India. Instead what India got were nasty surprises — from militants storming the Indian High Commission in London and dual attacks on the Indian consulate in San Francisco to an anti-India parade in Canada seeking to immortalize Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassins.

Khalistani militancy is particularly acute in Canada, which explains why its British Columbia province has become the global hub of the Khalistan movement. With India’s patience wearing thin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a frosty meeting with Trudeau during the G-20 summit, gave him a dressing-down for being soft on Sikh terrorists.

To keep his minority government afloat, Trudeau depends on support from the New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, a Khalistan sympathizer. With the tail wagging the dog, Trudeau has pandered to hardline Canadian Sikhs. Take just one example: Trudeau cheered on Indian farmers blockading highways near New Delhi and then later, in the style of an autocrat, declared a national emergency in Canada and crushed peaceful protests against his COVID-19 vaccination policy, calling their blockades a security threat akin to terrorism.

Yet Trudeau refuses to act against the real terrorists in Canada that threaten Indian security. Harbouring violent extremists also threatens Canadian and international security because a day may come when Canadian Khalistani militants carry out a major terrorist strike within Canada or another Western country.

Canada’s record of shielding Khalistani terroristsis a case of“like father, like son”. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, turned down Indira Gandhi’s 1982 request for extradition of Babbar Khalsa chief Talwinder Parmar who, according to Canada’s official probe, went on to become the mastermind of the Air India flight bombing. Today, the growing nexus between Khalistani extremists and criminal bands in British Columbia has spawned gangland killings.

In this light, Trudeau’s allegation against India clearly seems a diversionary tactic to help obscure sordid facts, including the continued cover he is giving to operations of Khalistani militants in the name of free speech. His allegation is based not on any police-collected evidence but on purported inputs from the murky world of espionage. In the spy games, geopolitics often trumps facts.

India should not allow Trudeau to deflect attention from Canada’s answerability on becoming a safe haven for militants promoting or glorifying terrorism. Canada cannot cite free speech law to defend inaction because it has other laws against hate or incitement to violence that ought to be invoked. Without curbing its Khalistani militancy, Canada could undermine its internal security, becoming one day the Pakistan of the West.

Indian diplomacy must also exert sustained pressure on the other Anglosphere countries to stop countenancing the rising anti-India activities of extremist Khalistani groups operating from their territories. The paradox is that even as a tilt toward the West is becoming apparent in Indian foreign policy, the Anglosphere countries seem to be looking at the violent Khalistani extremists they shelter as potential leverage against India. Mutual respect and mutual security are indispensable to an informal alliance between the West and India.

For starters, Canada and India must arrest the downward spiral in their relations through quiet diplomacy. With no significant conflict of strategic interest, these two major democracies ought to be close partners. Trudeau can secure India’s cooperation on the murder probe if he is willing to clean up his act at home — in Canada’s own long-term interest.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist.