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Canada's fight with India over Sikh assassination heats up again
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What is the role of the United Nations in the Israel-Gaza war?
Well, it's actually quite a few roles. One, the General Assembly and the Security Council are principle places where you get to see how the various countries around the world respond to the war, what their political positioning is, so the comparative isolation of the United States on the Security Council, for example, what countries do, don't stand with Israel, the Palestinians of the 194 member states around the world? Secondly, the UN is the principal organization that delivers humanitarian aid on the ground in Gaza, staffed overwhelmingly by Palestinians, thousands of them. That's been controversial because a number, something like seven or eight, have been found to have been involved in the support for the attacks on October 7th, the terrorist attacks. And then, finally, you have UN peacekeepers, thousands of them, on the ground in southern Lebanon, with many countries around the world participating. That's the Security Council that's responsible for that but has not been particularly effective at ensuring that the Security Council resolutions, creating a buffer zone, pushing Hezbollah back, and not allowing them to strike Israel, have actually been implemented. So lots of places that they have a role, you learn a lot about the world as a consequence, but it's not like they have a lot of power or a lot of money.
Why did Canada expel Indian diplomats?
Well, it's a fight that's been going on for over a year now with the assassination of this Sikh terrorist that India was found to be behind on sovereign Canadian territory. There had been a conversation between Modi and Trudeau on the sidelines of recent G20 Summit. It looked like facilitated by the United States, that that relationship was improving. It has fallen apart again. One of the things, I mean, there's more information that's come out in Canada about what India's role has been interfering with Canadian politics and citizens, but also the fact that Trudeau is in really tough shape domestically. He's thinking that a fight with India right now may help him in terms of popularity. I don't think it's going to work, but that certainly is not irrelevant.
How important is Elon Musk in the US election?
I don't think he's very important to the outcome. Obviously, Twitter/X is significantly oriented towards the right in terms of both Elon and what's being algorithmically promoted, but it's a lot smaller for US citizens than TikTok, which is younger and is more focused to the extent there's a political slant on the left. So if you ask me, which is going to matter more? I suspect TikTok will bring out more voters than Twitter/X, will. I think you on, is important in the election because he has personally done so much to promote disinformation, and it's making it harder for the average American to know what they can trust, what's a trusted source of media, what's a trusted source of information, what they should believe around vaccines, around FEMA response to a hurricane, around whether or not the election is free and fair. And I'm worried deeply that there's much greater likelihood of violence in the United States on the back of his personal decision of how to run Twitter/X than there would've been otherwise. We'll be focused on this very closely.
Biden wants to take away Modi’s license to kill
Before Narendra Modi became prime minister, he said India should be quicker to kill terrorists outside its borders – carrying out extrajudicial assassinations on foreign soil, giving his spies the license to kill, James Bond-style.
An indictment unsealed in New York on Wednesday suggests that Modi did do that, and then angrily denied responsibility for an assassination in Canada.
Modi is popular enough in India that this should not dent his popularity or threaten his reelection bid next spring, but the news raises challenges for him internationally, not least with Canada, whose leader has been vindicated.
The US indictment alleges that on June 9 an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, arranged for a payment of $15,000 to an American hitman to carry out a $100,000 murder contract on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader who lives in the United States. The problem for Gupta, and Modi, is that the “hitman” was an undercover officer with the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Eight days later, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist leader, called Pannun, who was his lawyer, to tell him that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had just warned him his life was in danger. The next day, Nijjar was gunned down by a team of killers outside his gurdwara in Surrey, B.C. That night, the indictment says, Gupta sent a video of Nijjar’s bullet-riddled corpse to the fake hitman he had hired.
The next day, he messaged again — “we have so many targets” — and urged him to take out Pannun.
Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic later in June on murder-for-hire charges.
The indictment alleges an Indian government official — presumably a senior spy — “directed the assassination plot from India” and that three more assassinations were planned in Canada.
This indictment makes everything that India has said since look ridiculous. When Justin Trudeau announced in September that Canada suspected Indian involvement in Nijjar’s death, Modi’s government responded with furious denials and expelled 41 Canadian diplomats. India’s media attacked Trudeau, even accusing him of being coked out in New Delhi for the G20 meeting, an entirely made-up allegation that nonetheless went viral around the world.
Joe Biden’s government was put in an awkward position by Trudeau’s accusation. Washington confirmed that it had intel that seemed to back Trudeau’s claim but also sought to calm tensions between its closest ally and India, whose cooperation it needs in containing China.
Behind the scenes, the Americans were exasperated, says Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Eurasia Group’s practice head for South Asia, who lives in New Delhi. “I’ve heard that the Americans have yelled at both sides and said the world has some serious problems going on right now. This is just bullshit. Let’s get this off the table very quickly.”
But India kept applying pressure to Canada, motivated by long-standing resentment of Canadian inaction on Sikh separatism.
Both Nijjar and Pannun had been helping organize a diaspora referendum calling for the creation of “Khalistan,” a majority Sikh state in northern India, which enrages the Indian government. There is little support for that idea in India, but it lives on in the hearts of Sikhs around the world, and India believes Canadian Sikhs finance terrorist attacks in India.
A Canadian inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people, blamed poor intelligence and policing for failing to prevent it, and nobody was ever convicted. India regularly complains that Canada does not do enough to crack down on separatists, alleging, for instance, that Nijjar was running a terrorist training camp. They accuse the Liberals of failing to crack down because they need Sikh votes.
India has legitimate complaints, but it now seems clear that Trudeau was entirely right and Modi entirely wrong about who was responsible for killing Nijjar.
It is easy to understand Trudeau’s moves now. He came under heavy criticism for taking the impolitic position he did, instead of trying to resolve the matter quietly, but he knew all along he would be vindicated. It’s much harder to understand Modi’s moves, especially after Gupta was arrested, and after both Trudeau and Biden raised this issue with him at the G20 meeting in September. How did he think this would end?
Biden has invested a lot of time and energy in wooing Modi, cultivating him as a crucial Asian ally in the soft-power struggle with a rising China. Wednesday’s news will inevitably raise questions about how useful an ally he can really be.
But India has now promised to investigate the matter. “The Biden administration is pushing the Indian government to make a commitment not to carry out such targeted killing on ‘friendly soil’ and against citizens of friendly countries,” says Chaudhuri.
“I suspect they have already told the Indians in no uncertain terms that this cannot happen again,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's global macro-geopolitics practice. “But Washington needs New Delhi on a range of high-priority issues, and New Delhi knows that.”
Despite this ugly business, the Americans have continued to engage on all fronts and will keep doing so. The same day the indictment came down, NASA announced it would train an Indian astronaut.
Biden is signaling that India and the United States need one another so much that the relationship will continue to deepen, whether or not Modi reins in his bumbling assassins.