Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: The rape and killing of a trainee doctor in Kolkata triggers mass doctors’ protests in India, terrorist attacks kill dozens of people in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, and the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan casts a long shadow three years later.
Sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.
Sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.
For more than two weeks, doctors and medical workers have been protesting across India—the longest-running such movement in recent memory. The demonstrations were triggered by a horrific case of sexual violence at one of India’s oldest hospitals: On Aug. 9, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor was raped and killed at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.
The doctor had just completed a 36-hour shift and was resting in a seminar room. Police have arrested a hospital volunteer; however, the victim’s family alleges that she was gang-raped. In response to the killing, thousands of Indian doctors went on strike, declining to provide nonemergency medical care. In Kolkata, as protests continued this week, police responded with tear gas and water cannons.
Sexual violence is a long-standing problem in India, but the Kolkata case has prompted unusual outrage, which protesters attribute to the shocking circumstances of the crime: The victim, sworn to caring for others and exhausted after a long shift, was targeted in a space where safety should have been guaranteed. Some female doctors say the tragedy underscores the prevalence of abuse of women in India’s medical system.
In 2012, mass protests broke out in India when a 23-year-old woman died after being gang-raped on a bus in Delhi. Back then, demonstrators made the same demands heard on the streets this month: stronger laws, swifter police responses, better treatment of women overall. That more than a decade later Indian women still face such a pervasive threat has clearly galvanized the ongoing protests.
The violent crime in Kolkata has triggered an unfortunate political spat—when the serious policy challenge demands a united response. Kolkata is located in West Bengal, where the state government is led by rivals of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mamata Banerjee, who has led the state as chief minister for 13 years, is one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most bitter foes.
In the wake of the killing, the BJP opposition in West Bengal has pounced, demanding that the government step down due to its perceived failure to rein in sexual violence and its poor handling of the case. (It is worth noting that national government data from 2021 showed that Kolkata recorded the lowest number of rape cases among 19 major Indian cities.)
With the case becoming politicized, observers may welcome the Indian Supreme Court’s willingness to weigh in. It called for a task force to look into strengthening workplace safety for doctors; the group met for the first time on Tuesday. Yet experts attribute India’s persistent sexual violence to many factors, including poorly enforced laws, low rape conviction rates, and pervasive misogyny.
The Supreme Court has previously stepped in to address sexual violence, including in 1997, when it issued a decision mandating stronger efforts to reduce workplace sexual harassment. Its intervention is a move in the right direction, but it can only do so much to eliminate a complex and entrenched problem—and the understandable outrage it unleashes.
Deadly attacks rock Balochistan. The Pakistani province of Balochistan is reeling this week after a series of deadly terrorist attacks on Sunday night and Monday morning local time. At least 74 people were killed in bombings and shooting assaults that targeted police facilities, rail infrastructure, and—in the deadliest incident—migrant workers traveling from neighboring Punjab province.
The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which coincided with the anniversary of the death of a prominent separatist figure. Pakistan’s military said a rapid security response to the attacks killed 21 militants.
Balochistan lies in Pakistan’s southwest. It is home to a long-running separatist insurgency, which often seeks to prevent perceived outsiders, from Punjabi laborers to Chinese infrastructure workers, from engaging in projects that separatists see as unjustly exploiting the province’s rich natural resources. However, the scale of this week’s attacks is unusual.
In June, Pakistan announced a reinvigorated counterterrorism strategy largely prompted by concerns about growing militancy farther to the north. After this week, the national government will focus more attention in Balochistan—where its past counterterrorism operations have used repressive tactics, including targeting peaceful government critics, presenting risks for local communities.
The long shadow of the U.S. in Afghanistan. Friday marks three years since the chaotic final U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed two weeks after the Taliban returned to power in Kabul. An unsettling reminder of what it left behind: Last week, the Taliban regime announced a new ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public, among other restrictions.
The botched U.S. withdrawal and the realities of Taliban rule have made Afghanistan—rarely mentioned in Washington—an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Republican nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump first excoriated President Joe Biden for the withdrawal and then Vice President Kamala Harris after she replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket.
The Trump administration signed the 2020 deal with the Taliban that paved the way for the U.S. withdrawal, but it was Biden who implemented it the following year. The United States has since achieved some goals in Afghanistan: It has negotiated the release of one of the few remaining U.S. citizens held captive there, delivered large amounts of humanitarian aid, and carried out an operation that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul.
But on many other levels, it has fallen short. Significant numbers of Afghans who worked for the U.S. military and face threats to their lives remain stuck in the country. The Afghanistan-based Islamic State-Khorasan has become a serious global threat, and the United States—along with the rest of the international community—has failed to rein in the Taliban’s brutal policies.
U.S. policy options are severely constrained in Afghanistan. U.S. sanctions against top Taliban leaders hamper efforts to provide economic assistance beyond humanitarian aid to the country, and the absence of U.S. forces deprives Washington of leverage in Kabul.
Bangladeshi terrorist leader released on bail. On Monday, Bangladeshi terrorist leader Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani was released from prison on bail. Rahmani, the head of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), was arrested in 2013 on charges under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act.
ABT was influenced by the views of al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki; the group was implicated in attacks against bloggers and other liberal Bangladeshis between 2013 and 2016. (ABT is officially banned in Bangladesh and also known as Ansar al-Islam.)
Rahmani was also released on bail back in January, but he returned several days later after another militant said Rahmani was planning fresh attacks. Authorities could end up arresting him again, but local media reported this week that some charges against him were withdrawn.
The development will intensify concerns that the protest movement that forced out Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina this month has galvanized Islamist actors who opposed her government. That the interim government has said nothing about Rahmani’s release is striking, suggesting that it doesn’t want to bring attention to the case or is under pressure not to.
The fifth and final national election set to take place in South Asia this year is rapidly approaching: Sri Lanka will elect its next president on Sept. 21. The country has faced a rocky few years politically. In 2022, then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned amid mass protests against economic mismanagement; the country had defaulted on its debt. A Rajapaksa ally, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has served out the remainder of his term.
Many Sri Lankans are keen to see a leader with no connection to the powerful Rajapaksa family that dominated the country’s politics for years. Such sentiment provides a possible opening for the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, a coalition that associates itself with the protest movement against Gotabaya Rajapaksa and says it represents the working class.
In an interview this week, NPP presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake said Sri Lankans “have a great expectation for a change” and want to move away from “the agents of the old, failed, traditional system.” Dissanayake has recently polled well, but he faces challenges: notably, that Wickremesinghe, to his credit, has stabilized the troubled economy.
Furthermore, some of the NPP’s policies—which include calling for the nationalization of natural resources—could attract concern from key constituencies in Sri Lanka’s business community. Still, for those voters tired of the corrupt and dynastic figures associated with the old politics, Dissanayake and his allies may offer a breath of fresh air.
In South Asian Voices, researchers Syed Ali Abbas and Amna Saqib discuss how Pakistan should respond to India’s recent pledges to strengthen military cohesion among its armed forces. “An essential part of Pakistan’s response to India’s military advancements should be proactive international diplomacy,” they write. “Building partnerships and engaging with regional and global powers are important to ensure that Pakistan’s concerns are understood and considered by the international community.”
In the Kathmandu Post, Ph.D. candidate John Narayan Parajuli laments Nepali citizens’ lack of confidence about foreign policy. “Many people doubt whether Nepal’s democratic governments of the post-1990 era can formulate a coherent foreign policy,” he writes. “The psychological outlook we’ve inherited as citizens of a country sandwiched between two giants and the chaotic nature of our foreign policy establishment fuel this scepticism.”
The Print political editor D.K. Singh argues that Modi’s third term has been marked by a series of policy U-turns, which he views as a “crisis of conviction.” The BJP “looks all the more confused. That’s what these U-turns in governance reflect,” he writes. “It’s undermining Brand Modi as strong and decisive, which is the BJP’s only [unique selling point] today.”
The post Doctor’s Killing Galvanizes Protest in India appeared first on Foreign Policy.
