Opinion | White Is Always Right: What West’s Moral Bombast on Terrorist Nijjar Tells Us

On July 31, 2022, a retired physician residing with his grandkids in Kabul, was seated on the balcony of his house, enjoying the morning sun. As the CIA would later reveal, Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, liked to read alone in the morning. To know what happened next, let’s quote from a press statement released two days later by the Pentagon.

“Zawahiri was killed in an over-the-horizon operation in downtown Kabul, where he was residing as a guest of the Taliban. The house was struck by two Hellfire missiles in a precision, counterterrorism operation at 6:18 a.m. Kabul time on Sunday. Zawahiri was the only casualty… His death deals a significant blow to al-Qaida (sic) and will degrade the group’s ability to operate, including against the US homeland.”

New York Times called Zawahiri “one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists”, while Al Jazeera referred to him as an “Egyptian surgeon.” Maybe it is a matter of perception.

Interesting to note on that very day, August 2, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheered the CIA drone strike on Zawahiri, congratulating the US for carrying out an extrajudicial, unlawful killing of an Egyptian national on foreign soil. In a tweet Trudeau, devoid of any moral compunctions that he has shown over the killing of a Khalistani terrorist, claimed, “The death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a step toward a safer world.”

It is said that hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue. The escalating diplomatic crisis between India and Canada reveals the blatant duplicity that lies at the heart of the West’s ‘rules-based order’ that runs on the unwavering principle of ‘White is always right’.

When it comes to the West, their enemies are “terrorists” who enjoy no human rights, nor do the nations where they find shelter have any claims to sovereignty. After killing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria, Donald Trump boasted: “He died like a dog… God bless America.” The West clapped in unison.

These “rules” click in place, however, when a member of the Global South is affronted. While the West’s concerns are “non-negotiable”, and the “terrorists” they are going after are traced to the far corners of the earth and hunted down accompanied by instant justification of their actions by the Western media — even legitimate concerns of, say, India “are subject to the rules set by the West” that never seem to match the bar.

Suddenly, the terrorists who carry out targeted killings, fund terror and narcotics networks and carry out secessionist activities are mere “community activists”, “plumbers”, “temple leaders”, “fatherly figures” living an honest life and victims of state repression. As Seema Sirohi wrote on ‘X’, these are rules-based order with Western characteristics.

The same Trudeau who celebrated the taking out of Zawahiri, became the protector-in-chief of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar due to domestic political compulsions. Even though New Delhi had shared with Ottawa a dossier containing relevant details of over a dozen criminal cases filed against Nijjar and intelligence on other terrorist activities he had been involved in against India over two decades, the Trudeau regime kept ignoring the evidence, kept cold-shouldering extradition requests and virtually gave Nijjar a free hand to make Canada the staging ground for a revival of the Khalistani movement aimed at violently ripping India apart.

As AEI’s Michael Rubin points out in 1945, while “Within the United States, Pakistan’s efforts to promote a Khalistan separatist narrative largely manifest themselves in a few gadflies and conspiracy-addled activists… In Canada, however, the campaign has grown more malevolent. Khalistani militants regularly extort money from the Sikh business community under threat of violence. Their tactics mirror what the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Tamil Tigers did in the 1980s and 1990s among the Kurdish and Tamil diasporas in Europe.”

Evidently because Khalistanis were getting political protection, even encouragement from the Canadian political establishment. Nijjar’s Khalistani antecedents were well-established. Dossiers on him shared with Ottawa by New Delhi, which are now emerging in the public domain, paint an unflattering picture.

No matter what the Canadians would have the world believe, Nijjar was a terrorist, an extortionist, a racketeer and a murderer. He ran militant camps in Mission Hills, British Columbia, where he trained Khalistani extremists on using AK-47s, sniper rifles, and pistols, and was designated as an ‘individual terrorist’ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs in 2020.

According to reports in Indian media quoting from the dossier prepared by Indian intelligence, Nijjar was radicalized by Pakistan-based KTF (Khalistani Tiger Force) chief Jagtar Singh Tara and cultivated by the ISI. His activities are a long, exhaustive list of targeted assassinations of political leaders and cops, ransom and kidnappings carried out through the KTF module whose members were spotted, trained, funded and operationalized by Nijjar. Videos abound in social media of Nijjar boasting about the ‘Khalistani legacy’ of assassinating former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Along with gangster-turned-terrorist Arshdeep Singh Dala, whose agents killed a local Congress leader in Punjab’s Moga district last Wednesday, Nijjar also operated an immigration racket and extorted money from businessmen in Punjab. The NIA lodged several cases against him, the Interpol had a notice issued against his name and he also carried a cash award on his head.

Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, a soldier and a military historian, writes in Indian Express that “Government of India has on quite a few occasions raised the issue of Canada providing shelter to anti-India elements in that country. Those involved in heinous crimes of terrorism and killing are provided “political asylum” there. When I met Trudeau as Chief Minister of Punjab on behalf of the Government of India in February 2018 at Amritsar, I handed over a list of nine A-category terrorists to him for action. But the Canadian government chose to ignore the list completely.”

Nijjar’s acquiring of Canadian citizenship is an equally intriguing story. Reports in Indian and Canadian media reveal that Nijjar fled to Canada in 1998 on a forged passport in the name of ‘Ravi Sharma’, but his application for political asylum through fabricated stories of police torture was rejected by the Canadian authorities on grounds that the doctor’s report misspelt injuries as “intesticlals”. The ‘honest plumber’ proved quite resourceful in a foreign land. He arranged for another application within 11 days of that setback by entering a “marriage agreement” with a divorced Sikh woman. This application, too, was rejected over suspicion that it was fake.

The ’community activist’ then lodged another appeal, and to quote from Canadian media outlet Globe and Mail, “Neither Balraj (his son) nor Pannun (his lawyer) could say what exactly happened next, and there are no public records that detail precisely how he became a Canadian citizen. But federal immigration minister Marc Miller confirmed this week that Nijjar acquired Canadian nationality on May 25, 2007 (Miller first said this took place in 2015 before correcting the date).” Nothing to see here.

Incidentally, Nijjar, whom an Interpol notice calls a “key conspirator” in the 2007 bombing of a cinema in Ludhiana, has also been named in the plots to kill Hindu religious leader Kamaldeep Sharma in Jalandhar and a temple explosion in Patiala. Why was this criminal mastermind being shielded from deportation to India and was even receiving protection from Canadian intelligence officers, with whom he had regular meetings?

Worth noting that though Canada consistently rebuffed Nijjar’s extradition attempts despite both country being signatories of a treaty, the Khalistani terrorist was put on a ‘no-fly’ list by Ottawa in 2017-18, a move replicated by the United States in 2019.

The relevant question then becomes why would Trudeau go to the extent of levelling an extraordinarily serious charge of complicity in murder against a sovereign nation without furnishing even a modicum of proof, and in the process making an adversary out of a key economic power and a fellow democracy for the sake of a bona fide terrorist?

After all, it is the same Trudeau who uttered not even a pipsqueak when a dissident Pakistani human rights activist, Karima Baloch, who was granted asylum in Canada in 2016 was “found dead” in Toronto four years later. The indications that Baloch, who was involved in an insurgency movement in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province, was killed by Pakistani agents were strong, but Trudeau did not open his mouth, let alone levelling allegations against Pakistan.

Some have suggested bruised ego as part of Trudeau’s motivation, but the reason goes deeper. In a previous piece, I had laid out the reasons behind Trudeau’s protective arm toward Khalistani elements in his party and constituency and why the Canadian prime minister’s political survival is tied to appeasement of Khalistani votebank.

There’s more evidence of that phenomenon from a former foreign policy advisor to Trudeau, on how the Canadian PM — whose ratings are now well below his rival Pierre Poilievre according to the latest opinion poll — is critically dependent on the Khalistani votebank which he is loathe to lose to Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Omar Aziz, who served the government in 2017, writes in Canada’s Globe and Mail, “Canada should have at least begun to take steps to ensure our land was not used for terrorist financing – a reasonable demand… The only problem was, Trudeau did not want to lose the Sikh vote to Jagmeet Singh. So we dug in our heels… What I saw in government was how Canada’s ethnic domestic battles were distorting our long-term foreign policy priorities, and politicians, who never understood South Asia or India anyway, were pandering in lowest-common-denominator ways in B.C. and Ontario suburbs, and playing up ethnic grievances to win votes.”

Yet the Khalistani vote-bank is only one part of the story. A far more consequential development that has gone totally under the radar due to the Trudeau-induced diplomatic crisis with India, is the charge from Canada’s opposition that Trudeau is a China sympathizer. The country that stands to gain the most from Canada’s fracas with India is China.

Conservative leader Poilievre, whose star is on the rise, has mounted stringent criticism against Trudeau that he has turned a blind eye to Chinese government’s intervention in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections, allegations that have emerged in Canadian media quoting national security documents. Beijing has denied all charges. The Opposition leader, according to a report in the Canadian outlet CBC, has “accused Trudeau of working in China’s interests and against Canada” and of “covering up, even encouraged it to continue.”

After a lot of ultimately unsuccessful stalling tactics, Trudeau, on September 7, was forced to launch a public investigation into whether China or Russia had anything to do with Liberal Party’s gains in 2019 and 2021 that led to Trudeau retaining power, bowing to Opposition’s relentless pressure. China was not amused, and threatened Ottawa with “consequences” through a stern statement.

A few days later, after returning home from a disastrous trip to New Delhi for the G20 summit, Trudeau made a dramatic announcement in the Canadian Parliament, bringing malicious charges against India while refusing to share any evidence, and the entire China issue that had been an uncomfortable episode for Trudeau, was forgotten. Dead and buried. It may not be a coincidence.

Suddenly, the issue of China opening “police stations” in Quebec through which Chinese Canadians “have been victims of the possible activities conducted by these centres”, a matter that is being probed by the Canadian police, is forgotten. Trudeau did not make it an issue, a tactic he had steadfastly employed while China had taken two Canadian citizens as hostage to release Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Trudeau’s reticence to call out China was noted, and he had been at the receiving end of barbs from the Opposition.

Could that explain why Trudeau decided to go ballistic on India, so that Beijing — that stands to gain if he remains in power — is moved out of focus?

Tasha Kheiriddin, A Canadian columnist, writes in National Post that “For over a year now, Trudeau has been on the defensive about foreign interference in Canadian elections by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In response, he criticized leaked intelligence documents for containing “inaccuracies”… Our public inquiry into foreign interference finally kicked off — and suddenly, they’re not the focus anymore. There are other bad states doing bad things. The crisis also torpedoes Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, unveiled in November 2022, which criticized Chinese policies and sought to build stronger ties with India. Now, that hope is dead, and with it, a small part of India’s plan to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.”

While Trudeau ups the ante against India through media leaks about possessing intelligence on India’s alleged involvement with the murder that refers to “communications involving Indian officials themselves, including Indian diplomats present in Canada”, he has crucially refused to release any real evidence, and has demanded that India cooperate in the probe.

In an interview to New York Times published Saturday, Trudeau made some incendiary remarks, claiming that he would like to see “a number of people thrown in jail, convicted. A series of lessons learned and changes made to the way the Indian government and the intelligence services operate,” to a question on the Nijjar issue.

India has refuted the allegation in strongest of terms, clarified that not a single proof has been shared with New Delhi, and in rare departure from strategic ambiguity, has called Canada “a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists, and for organized crime” that should be worried “about its international reputation.”

While both sides take confrontationist positions, with Canada seemingly boosted by back-to-back statements from America, a few points must be made clear.

First, Canada needs to share clear, actionable intelligence with India on the allegations, not empty bombast over “credible allegation” and “potential links”. Ottawa unfortunately has refused to share evidence but still wants India to “cooperate”, which leads to fantastic conclusion that India will gather proof against itself so that Trudeau’s theory is proven. As of now, Canada has failed to provide any evidence of India’s direct involvement in the Nijjar case.

Second, if Ottawa chooses to play the media game through “leaks”, it must know that two can play this game. Such insinuations prove nothing.

Third, the burden of the proof, especially in light of these outrageous and malicious charges, lies entirely with Trudeau. Whether or not India has indeed carried out the execution will depend on evidence, not moral bombast. India has totally rejected the charges so the issue is hypothetical. Still, it must be made clear that the West’s sermonizing on “transnational repression”, as Antony Blinken put it, is a classic case of pot calling the kettle black.

If, and it is a big IF, India was forced to bring the terrorist to justice, it would be a morally and legally justified way of conducting statecraft, that is more common than the theatrical western outrage, where the grievance seems to be not that India has done it, but that it had the audacity to do it against a ‘FVYE’ nation.

I have some news for the ‘shocked’ western leaders. Countries put self-interest ahead of ideals and values. When it comes to territorial integrity, India has no space for bargaining. Read the first paragraph of this piece again.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.