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News18
6 days ago
- Politics
- News18
India's Voice Is Strategic, Not Silent
To say India has 'lost its voice,' as some critics argue, is to misunderstand what that voice sounds like today. In moments of war, outrage is easy. Diplomacy is not. And in the shadow of the Gaza crisis, with bombs falling, civilians dying, and global opinion fracturing, the urge to take a moral stand can feel overwhelming, especially for a democracy like India, long seen as a voice for the voiceless. But to say India has 'lost its voice," as some critics argue, is to misunderstand what that voice sounds like today. It's not the voice of X (previously Twitter) diplomacy. It's not always loud. But it is deliberate, strategic, and deeply shaped by history. India was one of the earliest champions of the Palestinian cause. In 1974, it became the first non-Arab country to officially recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). By 1988, it had recognised the State of Palestine. This was not just foreign policy, it was an extension of India's own story: a nation born from anti-colonial struggle, standing in solidarity with others seeking the same. And while the headlines may focus on India's growing defence partnership with Israel, its support for Palestinian civilians has been steady and substantial. Since the conflict began, India has sent nearly 70 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including 16.5 metric tonnes of life-saving medical supplies delivered in two separate tranches. This aid went directly to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) and the Palestinian Ministry of Health. That's not all. In 2024 alone, India disbursed $5 million to UNRWA, matching its contribution from the previous year. These funds support education, healthcare, and emergency services for Palestinian refugees, many of whom have nowhere else to turn. India's diplomatic engagements also underscore its commitment to the Palestinian cause. In September 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the Summit of the Future in New York, expressing deep concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and reaffirming India's steadfast support for the Palestinian people India's policy is rooted in a clear position: firm support for a negotiated two-state solution. Since the Hamas–Israel war erupted in October 2023, the UN General Assembly has voted 13 times on resolutions related to Palestine. India voted for 10 of them. It abstained on just three. That's not indifference, it's discernment. India isn't choosing sides. It's choosing balance. In 1992, as the Cold War order gave way to new alliances and economic pragmatism, India established full diplomatic ties with Israel. India wasn't walking away from Palestine. It was stepping into a multipolar world, where relationships needed to reflect not just ideology, but national interest, security, and innovation. Israel offered what India urgently needed: advanced defence technology, agricultural innovation, counter-terror expertise. And for Israel, India became a key democratic partner in the Global South, vast, stable, and increasingly influential. Today, the relationship is multifaceted. Israel supplies India with drones, radar systems, and missile technology. Intelligence cooperation runs deep. For a country facing cross-border terrorism, complex insurgencies, and a volatile neighbourhood, this partnership is neither optional nor ideological, it is essential. India lives with the daily reality of terrorism. Its foreign policy can't be built on ideals alone, it must function in a world of asymmetric threats, complex alliances, and 1.4 billion people watching. And yet, India has not abandoned the Palestinian cause. India continues to support a two-state solution. It sends humanitarian aid to Gaza. It engages with both Israeli and Palestinian leadership. This is not fence-sitting. It's calibration. And it's exactly what a rising power is supposed to do. It has consistently called for restraint, civilian protection, and de-escalation. India's commitment to peace remains unchanged. What's evolved is its approach: quieter influence, strategic action, and diplomacy that prioritises outcomes over optics. And then there's Iran. India's ties with Tehran run deep. Strategically, Iran gives India access to Afghanistan and Central Asia through the Chabahar Port. Economically, Iran has long been a vital source of energy. India's engagement with Iran remains active and strategic, anchored by the Chabahar Port, a project critical to New Delhi's regional connectivity and geopolitical balancing. In May 2024, India and Iran signed a 10-year agreement granting India Ports Global Ltd. (IPGL) the rights to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal. India committed $120 million in direct investment and extended a $250 million credit line to upgrade infrastructure. Jointly managed by IPGL (a JV between Jawaharlal Nehru and Kandla Port Trusts) and Iran's Aria Banader, Chabahar offers India a crucial alternative trade route to Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Russia bypassing Pakistan and countering China's influence through Gwadar Port and the Belt and Road Initiative. As tensions between Iran and Israel escalate, India is closely monitoring risks to both Chabahar and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multimodal trade network linking India to Eurasia via Iran. These tensions are not abstract for India, they are tied to real infrastructure, energy flows, and diplomatic alignments. And they sharpened dramatically after October 7, when Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. India responded immediately and unequivocally: it condemned Hamas's actions as terrorism. But condemnation did not mean abandonment. India's support for Palestinian self-determination, anchored in decades of principled diplomacy remains intact. To some, that duality may look like fence-sitting. In truth, it's strategic autonomy: a deliberate choice in a volatile world. This is not appeasement. It's agency. India has always believed in peace but not performatively. It acts. Quietly. It evacuated its citizens from Israel and Iran during the height of tensions. It sent aid to Gaza. And it remains one of the few countries that can still speak to all sides, Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States, the Gulf. That, too, is power. The world is not binary. India knows this better than most. To expect India to echo talking points is to ignore the reality of a multipolar world. India doesn't follow anymore. It positions. Predictably, much of the moral outrage over India's foreign policy comes not from the global South or West, but from India's own opposition benches, especially the Congress Party, which now seems more committed to performative critique than constructive diplomacy. Whether it was the Balakot airstrikes, the abrogation of Article 370, or India's engagement with Israel, Congress's pattern has remained consistent: question first, assess later. From surgical strikes to border skirmishes, Congress's instinct has been reflexive doubt, especially when national interest clashes with its preferred narrative. At best, it's ideological rigidity. At worst, it's political self-sabotage. Either way, it does not align with India's 21st-century realities. After the October 7 Hamas attacks, India unequivocally condemned terrorism. Congress chose to frame this as a deviation from India's principled foreign policy, overlooking the fact that condemning terrorism and supporting Palestinian rights are not mutually exclusive. This tendency to politicise foreign policy choices, often in the face of cross-party consensus, undermines both credibility and coherence. Moreover, by portraying strategic partnerships as ideological compromises, the party risks disconnecting from the lived realities of a rising India, one that must engage with a multipolar world on its own terms. Foreign policy isn't theatre. It's triage. India today is balancing multiple priorities, deepening ties with Israel, managing energy dependencies with Iran, building strategic infrastructure in Chabahar, and remaining a voice for de-escalation in West Asia. That balancing act is fragile. It cannot afford to be derailed by outdated moral binaries or domestic political point-scoring. top videos View all In a world that's fracturing into camps, India is refusing to be boxed in. It is doing what serious nations do, preserving space to speak to all sides. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. About the Author Natasha Jha Bhaskar Natasha Jha Bhaskar is Executive Director at Newland Global Group, Australia's leading corporate advisory firm focused on strengthening India-Australia trade and investment ties. She is also the UN Women More tags : israel-gaza war Israel-Iran tensions Narendra Modi view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: June 23, 2025, 11:55 IST News opinion Opinion | India's Voice Is Strategic, Not Silent Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. 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Business Standard
15-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Hostile Homelands: Azad Essa's book traces India-Israel ties before BJP era
Chintan Girish Modi Mumbai Listen to This Article Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel Published by Westland Books 274 pages ₹599 India's support for the Palestinian cause has grown so feeble in the last decade that soon it might be hard to remember that India was the first non-Arab state to recognise the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Though the shift in India's foreign policy is often seen only through an ideological lens, the real picture is more complex. South African journalist Azad Essa talks economics in his book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel. The author, who is based in New
Morocco World
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Morocco World
Sudan Army Battles RSF Assault in El Fasher
Rabat – Yet another major escalation of violence gripped the Sudanese region of Darfur over the weekend, with a battle over the besieged city of El Fasher. This is the first time that the RSF fighters have entered the city since the battle began 15 months ago. The battle between the insurgent Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces and the city's defences lasted for seven hours. On Friday, RSF captured the city's cattle market, prison and military base while broadcasting their assault and forcing their way into the city's center. On Sunday the military was successful in pushing the RSF further out of the city in a violent retaliation that led to shooting and shelling in the city's residential areas. The RSF fighters have been engaged in similar actions, guarding and surrounding the city for around 15 months with large trench fortifications This recent incident marked their 220 th offensive and proved most successful. The RSF was able to take control of the largest commercial area – the city's livestock marketplace – which has closed for several months. They took videos of themselves throughout the conquered territories, posting them on social media. Shalla Prison and the military's Central Reserve Forces headquarters were also captured for some time. However, the army was able to remove them from all vital areas. The city has been branded recently by the Norwegian Refugee Council as a death trap , with the president of the council saying, 'We are hearing its horror stories and terror weekly shelling attacks on civilian infrastructure.' Al Fasher is the capital of Northern Darfur, a region which has suffered from constant violence since the civil war began in 2023 in the world's largest humanitarian crisis . Since the conflict began 150,000 people have been killed and 12 million have fled their homes and become refugees. The city has also had its communications cut off for the past few months. This civil war twenty years after the Darfur Genocide led by Omar Al-Bashir in a massive attack against local civilians, which led to his imprisonment by the ICC in 2019. The International Criminal Court has said this weekend that there are very ' reasonable grounds ' to believe that serious war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in the region. Within the civil war, the ICC and various other international actors believe that the RSF have carried out a genocide against the non-Arab population. There are several refugee and displacement camps near to the city such as Zamzam camp on the city's outskirts and Tawila near to the area. Around 379,000 people have moved to these areas for safety. Both of these camps have reported horrific stories about their conditions, with reports of cholera and harsh weather conditions. There are no hospitals or medical personnel, and many have died due to these conditions. This conflict has led to a massive escalation and destabilisation in the civil war. Tags: civil warRSFSudanSudanese armySudanese civil warSudanese genocide
Boston Globe
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
ICC cites evidence of ‘war crimes' in Sudan's Darfur
Most of Darfur is held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), but the besieged city of El Fashir and a couple of surrounding towns are held by the military and its allies, the Joint Forces, a group of former rebels who have now allied with Sudan's government. Advertisement The areas held by the RSF have been indiscriminately bombed by the military, and non-Arab ethnic civilians there have been subjected to rape and ethnic cleansing by the RSF, the United Nations and other organizations have found. In El Fashir, RSF forces are preventing food from entering the city. An RSF attack on the sprawling Zamzam displacement camp nearby, previously home to 400,000 people, killed 11 aid workers. Advertisement One woman, speaking to The Washington Post, described the RSF attack on Zamzam in April and how she had sought shelter in the Sheikh Farah Mosque. 'Soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces stormed the mosque and started taking men from inside,' then shooting them, she said. Of 16 men and boys, 14 died immediately, including her brother, a blind man, and the son of the mosque sheikh. The soldiers shot her in the foot when she tried to help her brother. 'The soldiers went to the Relief International center,' she said. 'I heard them discussing things with the team. Minutes later, I heard gunfire, killing nine people, including a woman and doctor.' Two other aid workers died later of their injuries. In a report released this month on the attack, Doctors Without Borders said 'survivors of ground operations have reported systematic looting, the random or deliberate killing of civilians, and the burning of civilian buildings including private houses and markets. Sexual violence has been perpetrated on a large scale.' 'Abductions … have been a source of income for the RSF and their affiliates,' it added. That trend has been documented by The Post by speaking to families whose relatives — including children — were seized for forced labor, sexual slavery, or ransom. One woman who recently escaped from Zamzam to El Fashir, almost 10 miles away, said she had been stopped by RSF soldiers on the way. 'They called us 'town women,' meaning army women,' she said. She had been molested, and others had been taken away and raped. 'They were doing whatever they wanted to the women after killing the men.' Advertisement Most of the water towers and water pumps in El Fashir and Zamzam have been destroyed or don't work anymore, the report said, fueling disease outbreaks. Hospitals in the city have been repeatedly bombed and shelled, and all but one have stopped functioning. Doctors Without Borders warned that mass, ethnically based killings of civilians are likely if El Fashir falls. 'The RSF and their allies have deliberately targeted non-Arab communities,' the humanitarian group said. 'Witnesses report that RSF soldiers spoke of plans to 'clean El Fashir' of its non-Arab, and especially Zaghawa, community.' When the city of Geneina fell to the RSF in 2023, the UN reported, 10,000 to 15,000 people were killed in similar circumstances. Starvation is also spreading in Darfur. Since war erupted in April 2023, Sudan has become the scene of the world's largest humanitarian crisis. More than 30 million people need aid, but both warring parties frequently block access for humanitarian groups. Warehouses full of aid have been looted, and aid workers kidnapped and murdered. Last month, five drivers were killed as the World Food Program tried to deliver a convoy of food to El Fashir. The UN has called for an investigation. In its fight against the RSF, the military has relied on often indiscriminate aerial bombings that have frequently hit markets, homes, and infrastructure. Human Rights Watch found that bombings of the city of Nyala hit residential and commercial neighborhoods and a grocery store, killing dozens of civilians each time. A bombing of Turra village, about 25 miles northwest of El Fashir, killed at least 126 people in March, according to the Darfur Victims Support Organization, a local human rights group. Advertisement For decades, the military has used 'barrel bombs' —barrels filled with fuel, shrapnel, and explosives — to target civilian areas. The market at Turra was hit by 10 such bombs on its busiest day, the organization said. An Amnesty International investigation into the military's December bombing of Kabkabiya also found that dozens of people were killed.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
Sudan plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a vicious struggle for power broke out between its army and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It has led to a famine and claims of a genocide in the western Darfur region. More than 150,000 people have died in the conflict across the country, and about 12 million have fled their homes in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Here is what you need to know. Sudan is in north-east Africa and is one of the largest countries on the continent, covering 1.9 million sq km (734,000 sq miles). It borders seven countries and the Red Sea. The River Nile also flows through it, making it a strategically important for foreign powers. The population of Sudan is predominantly Muslim and the country's official languages are Arabic and English. Even before the war started, Sudan was one of the poorest countries in the world - despite the fact that it is a gold-producing nation. Its 46 million people were living on an average annual income of $750 (£600) a head in 2022. The conflict has made things much worse. Last year, Sudan's finance minister said state revenues had shrunk by 80%. The civil war is the latest episode in bouts of tension that followed the 2019 ousting of long-serving President Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989. There were huge street protests calling for an end to his near-three decade rule and the army mounted a coup to get rid of him. But civilians continued to campaign for the introduction of democracy. A joint military-civilian government was then established but that was overthrown in another coup in October 2021. The coup was staged by the two men at the centre of the current conflict: Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country's president And his deputy, RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as "Hemedti". But then Gen Burhan and Gen Dagalo disagreed on the direction the country was going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule. The main sticking points were plans to incorporate the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new force. The suspicions were that both generals wanted to hang on to their positions of power, unwilling to lose wealth and influence. Shooting between the two sides began on 15 April 2023 following days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat. It is disputed who fired the first shot but the fighting swiftly escalated, with the RSF seizing much of Khartoum until the army regained control of it almost two years later in March 2025. The two generals fighting over Sudan's future The RSF was formed in 2013 and has its origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur, where they were accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the region's non-Arab population. Since then, Gen Dagalo has built a powerful force that has intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya. He also controls some of Sudan's gold mines, and allegedly smuggles the metal to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The army accuses the UAE of backing the RSF, and carrying out drone strikes in Sudan. The oil-rich Gulf state denies the allegation. The army also accuses eastern Libyan strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar of supporting the RSF by helping it to smuggle weapons into Sudan, and sending fighters to bolster the RSF. In early June 2025, the RSF achieved a major victory when it took control of territory along Sudan's border with Libya and Egypt. The RSF also controls almost all of Darfur and much of neighbouring Kordofan. It has declared plans to form a rival government, raising fears that Sudan could split for a second time - South Sudan seceded in 2011, taking with it most of the country's oil fields. The military controls most of the north and the east. Its main backer is said to be Egypt, whose fortunes are intertwined with those of Sudan because they share a border and the waters of the River Nile. Gen Burhan has turned Port Sudan - which is on the Red Sea - into his headquarters, and that of his UN-recognised government. However, the city is not safe - the RSF launched a devastating drone strike there in March. This was retaliation after the RSF suffered one of its biggest setbacks, when it lost control of much of Khartoum - including the Republican Palace - to the army in March. "Khartoum is free, it's done," Gun Burhan declared, as he triumphantly returned to the city, though not permanently. Some analysts say the conflict is in a strategic stalemate and the army still does not have total control of Khartoum, despite deploying newly acquired weapons from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Iran. The city is a burnt-out shell: government ministries, banks and towering office blocks stand blackened and burned. The tarmac at the international airport is a graveyard of smashed planes, its passport and check-in counters covered in ash. Hospitals and clinics have also been destroyed, hit by air strikes and artillery fire, sometimes with patients still inside. The army has also managed to win back near total control of the crucial state of Gezira. Losing it to the RSF in late 2023 had been a huge blow, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee its main city of Wad Madani, which had become a refuge for those who had escaped conflict in other parts of the country. El-Fasher is the last major urban centre in Darfur still held by the army and its allies. The RSF has laid siege to the city, causing hundreds of casualties, overwhelming hospitals and blocking food supplies. Month after month of blockade, bombardment and ground attacks have created famine among the residents, with the people of the displaced camp of Zamzam worst-hit. Many Darfuris believe the RSF and allied militias have waged a war aimed at transforming the ethnically mixed region into an Arab-ruled domain. In March 2024, the UN children's agency, Unicef, gave harrowing accounts of armed men raping and sexually assaulting children as young as one. Some children have tried to end their own lives as a result. In the same month, campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was possible that the RSF and allied militias were carrying out a genocide in Darfur against the Massalit people and other non-Arab communities. Thousands had been killed in el-Geneina city in a campaign of ethnic cleansing with the "apparent objective of at least having them permanently leave the region", it said. HRW added that the widespread killings raised the possibility that the RSF and their allies had "the intent to destroy in whole or in part" the Massalit people. As this could constitute a genocide, it appealed to international bodies and governments to carry out an investigation. A subsequent investigation by a UN team fell short of concluding that a genocide was taking place. Instead, it found that that both the RSF and army had committed war crimes. However, the US determined in January this year that the RSF and allied militias have committed a genocide. "The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys - even infants - on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence," then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said. "Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan," he added. This led to the US imposing sanctions on Gen Dagalo, followed by similar measures against Gen Burhan. Sudan's government filed a case against the UAE in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of being complicit in the genocide by funding and arming the RSF. However, the ICJ refused to hear the case, saying that it had no jurisdiction over it. The UAE welcomed its ruling, with an official saying that the Gulf state "bears no responsibility for the conflict". The RSF also denies committing genocide, saying it was not involved in what it describes as a "tribal conflict" in Darfur. But the UN investigators said they had received testimony that RSF fighters taunted non-Arab women during sex attacks with racist slurs and saying they will force them to have "Arab babies". How do you define genocide? There have been several rounds of peace talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain - but they have failed. BBC deputy Africa editor Anne Soy says that both sides, especially the army, have shown an unwillingness to agree to a ceasefire. UN health chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also lamented that there is less global interest in the conflict in Sudan, and other recent conflicts in Africa, compared to crises elsewhere in the world. "I think race is in the play here," he told the BBC in September 2024. The International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank has called diplomatic efforts to end the war "lacklustre", while Amnesty International has labelled the world's response "woefully inadequate". Humanitarian work has also been badly affected by the decision of the Trump administration to cut aid. Aid volunteers told the BBC that more than 1,100 - or almost 80% - of the emergency food kitchens have been forced to shut, fuelling the perception that Sudan's conflict is the "forgotten war" of the world. 'I lost a baby and then rescued a child dodging air strikes' Sudan in danger of self-destructing as conflict and famine reign From prized artworks to bullet shells: how war devastated Sudan's museums Go to for more news from the African continent. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica Focus on Africa This Is Africa
