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| Presented By Leaf Filter |
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| Axios World |
| By Dave Lawler · Mar 23, 2023 |
| Welcome back to Axios World. - Tonight's edition (1,656 words, 6 minutes) starts with a massive manhunt in India and the painful history it's bringing back. It ends with some pasta.
- Ramadan Mubarak to all those celebrating.
Heads up: Axios' second annual What's Next Summit is this coming Wednesday in D.C. Check out our great speaker lineup and watch live here. |
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| 1 big thing: Manhunt in India for Sikh separatist leader |
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| Amritpal Singh walks with aides and gunmen on March 2. Photo: Sameer Sehgal/Hindustan Times via Getty Images |
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| Authorities in the Indian state of Punjab blocked mobile internet for 27 million residents and arrested at least 154 people while conducting a massive manhunt for a Sikh separatist leader who was relatively unknown until recently: Amritpal Singh. The big picture: The manhunt has gripped the country since Saturday and awakened memories of a decade of bloodshed in the 1980s and 1990s when Sikh separatism, known as the Khalistan movement, was violently suppressed. Singh, 30, seized national headlines in February when he and dozens of supporters — many wielding swords and some carrying guns — surrounded a police station in Punjab and demanded the release of one of his associates, allegedly injuring several police officers in the process. - Politicians and commentators around the country demanded Singh and his colleagues be arrested, with the local leader of the opposition Congress Party urging the government to "nip the evil in the bud" before another separatist uprising could begin.
- Police say when they attempted to arrest Singh on Saturday, he eluded them in a car chase.
The following day the furor went international when protesters at India's High Commission in London pulled down an Indian flag, smashed windows and waved Khalistan banners. A similar incident followed on Monday at the Indian consulate in San Francisco. - Indian politicians and commentators fumed that separatists in the diaspora were being allowed to run riot. New Delhi summoned a senior U.K. diplomat, and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan put out a statement condemning the "acts of violence."
- Back in Punjab, the authorities deployed thousands of paramilitary soldiers and blocked roads. Singh apparently remains at large.
The backstory: Singh has openly advocated for an independent Sikh state since reportedly returning from Dubai last year and taking the helm of an organization called Waris Punjab De (WPD). - WPD was founded by actor-turned-activist Deep Sidhu to advocate for greater autonomy for Punjab — a largely agricultural region on the border with Pakistan, and the Sikh religion's historical homeland — and to support the 2020-2021 farmers protests, in which Sikh farmers played a prominent role.
- While the Khalistan movement is outlawed in India on national security grounds, a more radical generation of leaders like Singh has started to push separatism more openly, says Milan Vaishnav, director of the Carnegie Endowment's South Asia program. Some local politicians "have sort of played footsie" with separatist groups to win votes in Punjab, he says.
- While the extent of separatist sentiment in Punjab is hard to gauge, there is certainly discontent with the state's economic stagnation and growing drug epidemic. "People feel like okay, India is booming, but Punjab is declining," Vaishnav says. The farmers protests also inflamed tensions with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
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| Part II: Crackdown brings back painful memories |
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| Police forcefully remove supporters of Amritpal Singh who had been demonstrating against the arrests on March 21. Photo: Sanjeev Sharma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images |
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| Sikhs account for less than 2% of India's overall population but are the majority in Punjab. The largest Sikh diaspora populations live in Canada, the U.K. and U.S. - "Talk of Khalistan is much more robust, much more open in the diaspora, the reason being exactly what we're seeing in Punjab. Amirtpal Singh talked about Khalistan and the entire state shut down," says Balpreet Singh, legal counsel and spokesperson for the Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization (WSO).
- Singh says WSO's tweets raising the alarm about the crackdown in Punjab were blocked inside India. He warns that the "draconian methods" being used in Punjab are reminiscent of the '80s and '90s, when thousands of Sikhs were killed or disappeared.
- Along with tweets denouncing the government's harsh methods, there have been others showing Sikh counterprotesters waving Indian flags. Singh notes that Sikhs aren't monolithic and some do oppose separatism, but says some may feel the need to display their patriotism because they fear the sorts of anti-Sikh reprisals that took place in the 1980s.
Flashback: Amritpal Singh is a visual reminder of that violent era. He dresses like and idolizes Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh religious leader who was killed in 1984 when the Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple complex — the holiest site for Sikhs — in which he and his supporters had barricaded themselves. - Sikh bodyguards for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassinated her after the bloody raid. "That set off a huge chain of events and basically a decade of civil war," says Aidan Milliff, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford who has researched the Punjab crisis.
- More than 3,000 Sikhs were killed in mob violence, mostly in Delhi. "The violence was targeted basically by profiling people who wore turbans, people who had Sikh names," Milliff says.
- In Punjab, the government waged a decade-long campaign to put down the separatist insurgency.
The bottom line: "There's this simmering worry that this separatist movement will come up again, and I think that worry is behind a lot of what's happening now," Milliff says of the government response. |
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| 3. Global news roundup |
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| Fire and rubbish in Paris as protests and strikes continue over President Macron's pension reforms. Photo: Stefan Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images |
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| 1. Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail for defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi by implying in 2019 that he was a thief. Gandhi is currently free on bail. 2. Syria and Saudi Arabia are restoring ties, Reuters reports. The U.S. still wants Bashar al-Assad to be frozen out, but the region seems to be moving on. 3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today that he won't suspend his judicial overhaul plan despite the most dramatic 24 hours of protests and infighting yet. Go deeper. 4. The Ethiopian parliament lifted a terror designation for the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed a senior member of the group as acting leader of Tigray. Both steps are part of a peace deal to end the civil war. 5. The release of a Winnie the Pooh slasher movie was canceled in Hong Kong this week... presumably because of the running joke that the bear looks like Xi Jinping. |
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| Bonus: Where in the World |
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| Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios |
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| Today's theme is A to Z. I provide a clue and a letter, you provide the two countries whose names begin with that letter to which it applies. - A: These two countries have fought multiple wars over Nagorno-Karabakh
- C: These two countries have experienced sharp political divisions between French and English speakers
- D: These two island countries share the first 8 letters of their names
- E: The names of these two countries refer to their latitudinal position
- H: These two countries have the lowest GDPs per capita in the Americas
- I: These two countries fought an 8-year long war in the 1980s
- K: The U.S. intervened militarily in these two countries in the 1990s
- L: These two tiny European states are among the richest countries in the world.
- M: These two countries, one massive and one tiny, have the world's highest and lowest population densities.
- R: These two countries are dominated by presidents who were inaugurated for their first full terms 15 days apart in 2000. Both have recently intervened militarily in neighboring countries (one denies it).
- S: These two countries split in 2011, making one of them the newest UN member state
- Z: These two countries share Victoria Falls.
Scroll to the bottom for answers. |
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| 4. Uganda passes "world's harshest" anti-gay law |
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| A Ugandan transgender woman watches a TV screen showing a live broadcast of Parliament's session on the anti-gay bill on March 21. Photo: Stuart Tibaweswa/AFP via Getty Images |
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| Uganda's parliament passed a bill Tuesday that criminalizes merely identifying as gay and stipulates that people must report gay family members or community members. Why it matters: More than 30 countries in Africa, including Uganda, already ban same-sex relations. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill goes further by criminalizing merely identifying as LGBTQ, Axios' Ivana Saric writes. - Activists report that some in the LGBTQ community have already been faced threats and blackmail.
- The ban prohibits the "promotion of homosexuality" by individuals or organizations. It calls for life sentences for anyone engaging in gay sex and carries the death penalty for some crimes, such as same-sex sexual assault of children or disabled people.
What to watch: The White House has threatened economic repercussions if President Yoweri Museveni, who has a history of anti-gay remarks, signs it. |
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| 5. Data du jour: Ukrainians expect total victory |
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| President Zelensky visited the frontline in Bakhmut today. Photo: Ukrainian Presidency handout via Getty Images |
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| 97% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine will win the war, just 3% believe Ukraine will lose any territory as a result of the invasion, and 74% believe Ukraine will retake Crimea, according to new polling from the International Republican Institute. Why it matters: Those numbers suggest that even if President Volodymyr Zelensky (who gets a 91% approval rating in the poll) wanted to negotiate a peace deal, he has little space to make concession to Russia. |
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| 6. What I'm reading: "Everything I knew about Italian food is wrong" |
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| Spaghetti carbonara, just like nonna didn't used to make it. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
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| Nothing says "tradition" like Italian cuisine — pasta just the right width, time-tested recipes that can't be altered, cheeses that must be made just where and just how they've always been. It's a bunch of modern fiction, the FT's Marianna Giusti (herself an Italian) finds after dining with Alberto Grandi, an academic and podcaster who "has dedicated his career to debunking the myths around Italian food." - Take carbonara, a Roman staple for hundreds of years, always made with pig jowl, never the belly. Or, in fact, a dish first made for U.S. troops in 1944 that didn't settle into its current (now-unalterable) recipe until the 1990s.
- Pizza was made in a few southern Italian towns before the war, Giusti writes, but pizzerias took off in New York before any Italian cities. What we now know as "Italian" cuisine developed on both sides of the Atlantic.
- "The grandparents knew it was a lie," Grandi tells Guisti. "Their 'tradition' was trying not to starve."
Read the piece |
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| 7. Stories we're watching |
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| Earthquake survivors break the first fast of Ramadan in Adiyaman, Turkey. Photo: Mehmet Kacmaz/Getty Images |
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- U.S.-Israel relations in crisis mode
- The one UN climate report graphic you need to see
- Xi and Putin stick to same Ukraine positions after summit; What to know about Putin's arrest warrant
- China would "resolutely oppose" forced sale of TikTok; Bans spread globally
- Paris trash piles become a symbol of protest
- Lebanon's economic woes worsen
- Japan beats U.S. to win 2023 World Baseball Classic
Quoted: "There are so many Russians here now that we built kind of a cabang, it means a small Moscow." — A Russian expatriate in Bali, speaking to the WSJ. Tens of thousands of Russians have traveled to the paradise island since the invasion of Ukraine, the Journal reports, and some are overstaying their welcome. |
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| Answers: A. Armenia and Azerbaijan; C. Canada and Cameroon; D. Dominica and Dominican Republic; E. Ecuador and Equatorial Guinea; H. Haiti and Honduras; I. Iran and Iraq; K. Kosovo and Kuwait; L. Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; M. Monaco and Mongolia; R. Russia (Vladimir Putin) and Rwanda (Paul Kagame); S. Sudan and South Sudan; Z. Zambia and Zimbabwe. Key: A. Nagorno-Karabakh; C. French and English tensions; D. Same first 8 letters; E. Latitudinal position; H. Poorest in Americas; I. War in 1980s; K. U.S. interventions in 1990s; L. Small rich European states; M. Most and least dense; R. Same presidents since 2000; S. Split in 2011; Z. Victoria Falls. |
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