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Colombo has demonstrated its own brand of strategic autonomy on issues from Russia’s war in Ukraine to China’s global footprint.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Sri Lanka showcases its own brand of strategic autonomy, recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan underscore the threat to Chinese workers and infrastructure in the country, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to sway voters in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Sri Lanka’s Strategic Autonomy

Most South Asian governments tend to have nonaligned foreign policies, balancing their relations with major powers. This maximizes their diplomatic flexibility and ability to operate independently on the world stage, also known as strategic autonomy. India and Pakistan are two prominent examples: They both balance their relations with the United States and at least one of its core rivals (Russia and China, respectively).

But it’s important not to overlook Sri Lanka: In the last two years, Colombo has quietly and successfully navigated global conflict and great-power rivalry. Like many other countries in the region, Sri Lanka has not condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine, even though resulting price shocks exacerbated its own economic crisis in 2022. Yet it has called for an end to the war and announced new measures that step up economic and energy ties with India.

This week, Sri Lanka’s government announced a $1 million donation to assist children in Gaza affected by the Israel-Hamas war, following the establishment of a national Children of Gaza Fund calling for contributions from the Sri Lankan public. The country has previously announced other aid commitments, expressed solidarity with Palestinians, and accused the European Union of “double standards” in its approach to Gaza.

But Sri Lanka is also a close friend of Israel, which supplied arms to the Sri Lankan military during its decades-long civil war. Since the Israel-Hamas war began, Sri Lanka has reached a controversial deal that enables Israel to hire Sri Lankan workers, and its diplomats in Israel have delivered assistance and donated blood. Colombo also joined the U.S.-led military campaign against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, making it the only South Asian country to do so.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has strengthened economic ties with China and already hosts many large Chinese infrastructure projects. Sri Lankan President RanilWickremesinghe has also embraced Beijing’s position on key issues, including the AUKUS security alliance between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, which he has labeled a “mistake,” and the term “Indo-Pacific,” which he has called an “artificial framework.”

However, last November, Colombo inked a $553 million deal with the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. to support a port development project in Colombo that is backed by India’s Adani Group. In January, Sri Lanka imposed a one-year ban on Chinese research ships entering its ports. The move came soon after Wickremesinghe rejected Indian allegations that Chinese spy vessels have docked in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s actions may be driven by a commitment to strategic autonomy, but its motivations are as much about practicality as principle. The country is emerging from an acute economic crisis, and it needs as much financial assistance as it can get. It’s easier to achieve that goal when it works with all the major powers. It’s not coincidental that China, India, and the United States were three of Sri Lanka’s most generous donors during its crisis.

Wickremesinghe must also proceed cautiously during an election year for Sri Lanka. Colombo’s deals with Beijing, including the latter’s 99-year lease on the Hambantota International Port, have led to increased anti-China sentiment in the country in recent years. But the president will also do everything he can to distance himself from his wildly unpopular predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who remains a political ally of Wickremesinghe.

Rajapaksa, who heavily courted Chinese investments while in office from 2019 to 2022, published a book last month that lambasts Beijing for providing loans that deepened Colombo’s economic crisis. This gives Wickremesinghe some incentive to show some love for China in order to distance himself from Rajapaksa’s position.

South Asia has become a battleground for geopolitical rivalry, which puts pressure on the region’s nonaligned governments to take sides. But to this point, Sri Lanka has navigated this state of affairs successfully, demonstrating the capacity of states in the global south to reinforce multipolarity in the current world order.

What We’re Following

China-Pakistan ties. Last week, five Chinese nationals working on a dam project in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were killed in a suicide attack on their way to the site. It was the latest incident underscoring that China has become the biggest foreign target for terrorists in Pakistan, despite being a key partner. The threat has grown with the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Also last week, militants attacked the Turbat naval air base in Balochistan; according to some analysts, China has operated drones from the base. And on March 20, Pakistani security forces repulsed an assault near the Gwadar Port, a linchpin of CPEC. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for both the Turbat and Gwadar attacks and cited Chinese investments in Pakistan as justification for its assault on the air base.

No group has claimed the attack on the Chinese workers; in 2021, Pakistani officials blamed Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) for an attack that killed Chinese nationals working on the same dam. But the BLA, the TTP, and the Islamic State-Khorasan all have China in their crosshairs in Pakistan. In recent years, militants have attacked the Chinese Consulate and a Confucius Institute in Karachi, as well as hotels hosting Chinese nationals in Balochistan.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly pledged to strengthen security for Chinese interests in the country, so the continued assaults should concern Beijing. It has demanded a thorough probe into the attack that killed the dam workers and sent its own investigators. China is unlikely to set red lines, such as threatening to suspend investments, but other tough measures can’t be ruled out if there are more attacks, such as halting work on projects in vulnerable areas.

Modi’s Tamil Nadu tactics. On Sunday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi blasted the main opposition Indian National Congress party—for a diplomatic decision made 50 years ago. In 1974, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi negotiated an end to a maritime border dispute by recognizing Sri Lanka’s claim over Katchatheevu, a small island 20 miles off the southern coast of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Modi denounced the decision as “callous” and said the Congress party has weakened India’s “unity, integrity, and interests … for 75 years and counting.” On Monday, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said Sri Lanka had detained more than 6,000 Indian fishermen in the last two decades, suggesting its possession of Katchatheevu has worsened the plight of communities in Tamil Nadu.

The comments are unlikely to cause tensions between India and Sri Lanka. They are clearly part of a tactic to appeal to long-standing grievances and secure votes in a Tamil Nadu, one of a few southern states where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has struggled to gain traction. This underscores how Modi—despite being heavily favored to win reelection in national polls that begin this month—is leaving no stone unturned on the campaign trail.

Imran Khan’s sentence suspended. On Monday, an Islamabad high court suspended the 14-year jail sentence handed down to former Prime Minister Imran Khan in January by another court on charges related to the alleged mishandling of state gifts during his tenure. Khan’s supporters describe the charges as politically motivated, and the sentence was announced shortly before Pakistan’s Feb. 8 elections.

However, Khan is unlikely to be released from jail anytime soon because he still faces many other charges. Khan has been in jail since August 2023, following a long confrontation with the country’s military leadership and a relentless crackdown on his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Notably, his sentence was suspended days after the emergence of a bombshell letter from six Pakistani high court justices to the Supreme Judicial Council.

The letter alleged that Pakistan’s main intelligence agency has interfered in Pakistan’s legal process, going as far as placing secret cameras in the living room and bedroom of a Pakistani judge. The timing of the Monday court decision could be coincidental, but it may hint at a tug of war between the security establishment and the judiciary behind the scenes.

Under the Radar

A recent study from the Paris-based World Inequality Lab has sparked debate and struck a nerve in India. Co-written by a group of prominent economists that includes Thomas Piketty, the provocatively titled “The Rise of the Billionaire Raj” argues that economic inequality in India has reached its highest level since the colonial era.

The study concludes that India’s top 1 percent income share is among the world’s largest—higher than that of the United States—and attributes this steep inequality to the structure of India’s tax code and a lack of public investment in education and health care, among other factors.

India’s government, which often rejects international studies and rankings that cast the country in a poor light, will likely bristle at the report’s conclusions. Some Indian analysts have already questioned its methodology. But the study, even if indirectly, flags some important challenges to India’s economic growth story in the long term.

India has massive numbers of young, working-age people, but the country is at risk of not capitalizing on its demographic dividend because of an insufficient number of skilled workers. There are also large numbers of Indians working in low-growth sectors, such as agriculture, and not enough people working in newer, high-growth sectors, such as technology and the services industry.

Regional Voices

In the Express Tribune, former Pakistani official Sahibzada Riaz Noor argues that Islamabad must make major changes to its economy to wean itself off reliance on the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “After 3 to 4 years of a hard slog can we hope to get out of the repeated IMF cycle? It will depend upon how seriously we buckle up to putting our own house in order,” he writes.

Journalist VirSanghvi writes in the Hindustan Times that restaurants in India are becoming more respected globally and showing up in rankings of the world’s top eateries. “If you stick to making the best food possible then you may have ups and (relative) lows but the world will be forced to acknowledge your commitment to excellence,” he writes.

A ProthomAlo editorial highlights Bangladesh’s major hassles during the Eid holiday, when there often aren’t enough trains to bring travelers home. “The number of trains can only be increased by ending the irregularities, corruption and black marketing of ticket[s]” within the rail system, it argues.

Michael Kugelman is the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. He is the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. 

This article was originally published on Foreign Policy.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.