Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visits India in his first overseas trip as leader, a top Taliban leader is assassinated in an unclaimed bombing attack, and the Adani Group’s port operator withdraws a request for U.S. funding.
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Sri Lanka’s President Visits India
In his first overseas trip since taking office, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited India this week, meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a far-ranging joint statement, the two leaders agreed to step up economic, energy, and defense cooperation. Dissanayake also invited Modi to visit Sri Lanka.
Perhaps most importantly, Dissanayake assured Modi that Sri Lankan territory won’t be used “in any way that is detrimental” to India’s interests, a possible reference to Indian concerns about Chinese research vessels docking in Sri Lanka and conducting surveillance. Dissanayake’s predecessor instituted a one-year moratorium on such vessels from any countries in January, but that will soon end.
India faces a challenge with the arrival of a few new leaders in its neighborhood who it sees as pro-Beijing, including Dissanayake. But his visit reasserted a long-standing partnership with India, and it offers a reminder that China-friendly leaders are not necessarily China-leaning leaders—they just want to balance ties between the two Asian powers better.
For all the talk of Dissanayake’s leftist politics and his party’s Marxist past, which suggest that he might align with China ideologically, he has consistently signaled his commitment to partnership with India. In February, Dissanayake traveled to India while still a presidential candidate and met Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar; they met again in Colombo in October.
Dissanayake has said little publicly about his China policy, but he has stated his intention to strengthen ties with Beijing and New Delhi. China is also a key commercial player in Sri Lanka, especially through its large infrastructure projects. Dissanayake surely wants to at least maintain that support. He will visit Beijing in January, and a senior Chinese delegation met with him in November, likely for preparatory meetings.
Dissanayake’s desire to balance ties with both powers mirrors the approach of his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe. The former Sri Lankan leader strengthened economic links with China and embraced its position on a few key issues, including calling the security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States a “mistake” and labeling the term “Indo Pacific” an “artificial framework.”
But Wickremesinghe also imposed the moratorium on Chinese research ships and encouraged investment in Sri Lanka from Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who is close to Modi.
Dissanayake’s balancing policy is similar to that of another China-friendly leader in the region: Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu. This year, Muizzu expelled the Indian military presence from the Maldives and signed new defense deals with China. But he has never stopped stressing the importance of the country’s partnership with India, particularly on economic matters.
In terms of new neighborhood headaches, Dissanayake is arguably the least of India’s concerns. Muizzu appears committed to deepening military ties with China. Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli broke with diplomatic tradition and visited China before India in his fourth term; he signed a deal that could bring Chinese Belt and Road Initiative projects to Nepal for the first time.
In Bangladesh, interim leader Muhammad Yunus, a strident critic of India, has signaled a desire to strengthen ties with China and Pakistan. But even Oli and Yunus have said that they are keen to make relations work with India. After all, most South Asian states are committed to partnership with New Delhi because of economic dependence, strategic imperatives, or historical and cultural ties.
The India-Sri Lanka relationship does face challenges, chief among them New Delhi’s concerns that Adani’s recent U.S. indictment could lead to deeper scrutiny from Colombo about other Indian investments. Dissanayake also hasn’t indicated a desire to extend Wickremesinghe’s research vessel moratorium, and there are also long-standing tensions over fishing issues.
But relative to India’s concerns about its other neighbors—including a relationship in crisis with Bangladesh and rapidly worsening conflict in Myanmar—these obstacles are all manageable.
What We’re Following
Top Taliban leader assassinated. Last week, a suicide bombing in Kabul killed Khalil Haqqani, Afghanistan’s minister for refugees and a senior leader of the Haqqani Network (a feared faction of the Taliban). No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred inside the ministry Haqqani worked at, though the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) is a likely candidate.
IS-K, an Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic State, is a bitter rival of the Taliban that has staged attacks in Afghanistan partly to undercut the regime’s narrative that its return to power in 2021 restored stability in the country. Not claiming responsibility could help fuel speculation that the killing was an inside job, suggesting internal divides among the Taliban.
Haqqani was the uncle of the Haqqani Network’s top leader. His prominence and influence make the assassination arguably the biggest blow to the Taliban since it took back power. Aside from periodic IS-K attacks, the Taliban has faced few threats to its rule. The death of Haqqani is a rare case of the group being (briefly) put on the back foot and left without a key leader.
Adani withdraws request for U.S. funding. Last week, Adani Ports—part of the billionaire Adani’s business empire—announced that it withdrew its request for funding from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for a port development project in Sri Lanka.
In 2023, the DFC agreed to provide $553 million for the project, which U.S. officials saw as countering China’s commercial influence. Adani Ports gave no explanation for its decision and indicated that it will draw on its own internal funding instead. The move is clearly tied to Adani’s recent U.S. indictment for a bribery scheme.
It is a striking decision, given that Adani has taken a defiant stand on the charges against him and his companies, as well as previous fraud accusations made by activist short-seller Hindenburg Research. Adani rejected all the allegations, pushing forward with operations and pointing to recent commercial successes.
Likewise, it would be uncharacteristic for Adani to pull out of the DFC arrangement just for damage control. He might have been prompted by other motivations, perhaps seeking to send a signal that his company remains self-sufficient or to preempt the possibility of the DFC withdrawing the offer itself.
Ambani finalizes Rosneft energy deal. It has been a better week for another Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani. On Dec. 13, Ambani’s Reliance Industries announced a 10-year deal with Russian energy giant Rosneft. Reliance will import somewhere between $12 billion and $13 billion of oil from Rosneft per year.
Reliance will take around half of Rosneft’s total seaborne oil exports from Russian ports—an immense amount, given the size of Rosneft in Russia’s energy markets (and given how big a player Russia remains in the global energy trade).
It is worth watching how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responds to the deal. Trump is unlikely to take serious issue with India’s partnership with Russia, given his own relatively restrained views on Moscow. But as a businessman himself, Trump may feel that India should be looking more to the United States as a seller.
Just three years ago, India was the top destination for U.S. oil exports, but it has since capitalized on cheap prices and increased oil imports from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Under the Radar
A delegation of Pakistani senators, sponsored by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, recently traveled to the United States to advocate for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a 52-year-old university-educated neuroscientist serving an 86-year sentence at a U.S. federal prison in Texas for the attempted murder and assault of U.S. security personnel at a jail in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani delegation met with members of Congress, U.S. State Department officials, and Siddiqui herself. The visit follows an October letter from Sharif to U.S. President Joe Biden requesting a pardon for Siddiqui. The letter said that there are indications that Siddiqui has been mistreated in prison.
Siddiqui, who was convicted in 2010, has long been a cause célèbre in Pakistan, where many people see her as a victim of damaging U.S. policies in Afghanistan and the U.S. justice system. U.S. officials, meanwhile, have accused Siddiqui of links to al Qaeda.
Pakistani officials have often sought Siddiqui’s release, even offering in 2012 to push the Taliban to free a U.S. prisoner of war if the United States freed her. U.S. authorities have rejected past reports of a proposed swap of Siddiqui for Shakil Afridi, a doctor who Islamabad alleges helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden and who is imprisoned in Pakistan for treason.
Biden isn’t about to pardon Siddiqui, but Pakistan’s leaders may see the delegation as a potential political boost, since the case still has strong public support back home.
The visit could have awkward implications: Politically connected supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan might propose to the incoming Trump administration that the United States should release Siddiqui if Pakistan releases Khan from prison. Richard Grenell, tapped to serve as Trump’s presidential envoy for special missions, called for Khan’s release on Dec. 16.
However, Trump is unlikely to consider any such arrangement; he isn’t one to take pity on accused terrorists such as Siddiqui. Pakistan’s leadership, which has no intention of releasing Khan, likely wouldn’t consider it either.
The post In India, Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake Reasserts Partnership appeared first on Foreign Policy.
