HS Analysis | The dispute between Canada and India over the suspected assassination of a Sikh separatist is also spilling over into the United States

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau made a baffling allegation on Monday that has muddled superpower relations: The Indian government appears to have been involved in an assassination attempt on Canadian soil over the summer.

A person who moved from India to Canada with a false passport in 1997 was the target of the assassination Hardeep Singh Nijjarwho has since become a Canadian citizen.

He was a 45-year-old father of two, a plumber, a Sikh temple leader and an activist who promoted Sikh separatism in the Punjab region. Nijjar was shot dead by two masked men in a parking garage in Surrey, near Vancouver, on June 18.

The accusations are harsh also because Canada has not arrested anyone as a suspect in the murder: thus, the conclusion about India’s involvement has been made by following other clues. According to the Reuters news agency, Canada received intelligence assistance from the United States when investigating the murder.

of India intelligence services and security forces have been suspected of assassinations in the past, especially in Pakistan. However, according to the AP news agency, an assassination in distant Canada would be a completely exceptional act.

So extraordinary that it is an “absurd” lie, said India. The anger was emphasized by the fact that India expelled a high-ranking Canadian diplomat on Tuesday. On Wednesday, India also issued a warning to its citizens on their trips to Canada.

Canada had already on Monday ordered out of the country an Indian diplomat who, according to Indian media reports, has made his career in the security forces of Punjab, located in northwestern India. He served as Director of India’s Foreign Intelligence Service in Canada in Ottawa.

Actual a mess, especially from the US perspective.

President Joe Biden it is in the administration’s interest to maintain as close a relationship as possible with the sometimes unpredictable India, as India is a “critically important strategic partner” to larger concerns – Russia and China.

At the same time, the United States must take into account that Canada is its most significant close ally, along with Britain, and also a very important country, when it comes to, for example, the raw materials needed by high technology, such as rare earth metals.

So world political interests and the murder of a rather marginal person are at odds. Experts interviewed by The New York Times said that the murdered NIjjar was not a well-known figure in Punjab and that his project for an independent Sikh state of Khalistan had been thwarted decades ago.

“No one remembers him here, and no one talks about him,” said the Punjabi MP Rama Arora.

Prime minister Trudeau must consider Canada’s roughly 770,000-strong Sikh population, which was outraged by Nijjar’s murder. One must also consider other Canadians who believe that political assassinations are not acceptable under any circumstances.

Canada has shown that it is capable of pursuing a very principled or stubborn foreign policy. For example, it has cooled its relations with China on many fronts in recent years.

Canada has, among other things, lectured its parliament with a resolution on the “genocide” against the Uyghur minority in China, angered China by arresting the daughter of the founder of the IT giant Huawei, and ordered Chinese mining companies to abandon projects related to critical minerals in Canada.

In May, Canada expelled a Chinese diplomat, to which China responded by expelling a Canadian diplomat. The actions were related to the oppression of the Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province.

Thus, it is possible that Canada will offer a cold ride to India as well. However, Trudeau sought to ease tensions over the assassination on Tuesday, saying Canada has no desire to “escalate” its dispute with India.

of the United States so it’s not worth angering either side of the conflict, but the neighborhood obliges us to cut corners alongside Canada. A representative of the US State Department had stated on Tuesday that the US is “quite concerned about these accusations”.

Biden has tried to fraternize with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s with recently, although Modi’s Hindu nationalist and increasingly authoritarian policies cause concern about India’s flagging away from the circle of democratic countries.

In June, Modi made it to a state dinner at the White House, and recently, Biden and Modi appeared like best buddies at the G20 meeting in Delhi.

The United States has a long tradition of cooperating with very questionable partners, if India were to be decided as such for a moment – for example, in the minds of Canada.

In 2018, the United States became angry with Saudi Arabia when it was revealed that Saudi agents had murdered a Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi and dismembered this body at the Turkish consulate in Istanbul.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that the assassination was ordered by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman. However, this did not stop the then president Donald Trump from meeting bin Salman.

Published in 2020 by Bob Woodward according to the book, Trump had actually bragged about how he managed to protect bin Salman after the dismemberment. “I saved his ass. I was able to keep Congress away from him,” Trump had said.

While striving for the presidency in 2020, Biden promised that he is ready to put Saudi Arabia in the pariah position where he thinks the country belongs.

But coming to power changed the thoughts. Last year, Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia to visit bin Salman and did a friendly fist shake with the crown prince. The G20 meeting in August saw an even warmer handshake.

The reason is, among other things, that the United States wants to keep close to Saudi Arabia, which China is wooing with increasing vigor as a friend. Biden sought a balance between “human rights, oil and security”, the AP news agency titled its story about last year’s meeting.

Canada’s Trudeau also sat down to lunch with bin Salman during the Apec meeting held last year.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt is reported to have said in 1939 of the Nicaraguan dictator of Anastasio Somoza Garcíathat “he may be a bum, but he’s our bum”.

Tokaisu reminds us that the US’s embrace has always been big for very motley partners. If it can accommodate the likely person who ordered the dismemberment murder, it can also accommodate another party connected to the suspected assassination.

Sources: The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC, Global News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, AP, Reuters, BBC, Al Jazeera.

Correction 9/20/2023 at 6:55 p.m.: China expelled a Canadian diplomat, not a Chinese diplomat, as was erroneously written in the story at first.

Correction 20:10 at 11:41: Clarified that the dictator of Nicaragua in 1939 was Anastasio Somoza García.