Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Sri Lanka’s presidential election approaches with the economy as a focal point, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal steps down after being released from prison on bail, and U.S. President Joe Biden will host this year’s Quad leaders’ summit in Delaware.
Sri Lanka’s Post-Crisis Election
Sri Lanka holds a presidential election on Saturday, with results expected by Sunday night. The vote will be the first since a catastrophic economic crisis in 2022 that triggered a default and acute food and fuel shortages. Sri Lanka is still trying to shake off its effects.
Unsurprisingly, the economy is a prime focal point of the election, but it will also be a referendum on the nature of Sri Lankan politics. Many voters are fed up with the dynastic and corrupt leaders that have dominated the country—and pursued the policies that precipitated an economic meltdown. In 2022, mass protests ousted Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, bringing an end to the powerful Rajapaksa family’s rule.
Current President Ranil Wickremesinghe served out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term. He is running for reelection on the remarkable economic turnaround that he claims to have engineered. Between August 2022 and August 2024, inflation in Sri Lanka fell dramatically from 70 percent to 0.5 percent. The nation’s currency has stabilized, it has stabilized its foreign reserves, and important creditors have deferred debt repayments until 2028.
But Wickremesinghe is vulnerable on two key fronts. First, the economic recovery he trumpets is deceiving. Despite plummeting inflation, the cost of living is still high while average household incomes remain low. Higher taxes imposed to meet the conditions of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) package finalized in 2023 have exacerbated public hardship and worried businesses.
Second, Wickremesinghe is allied with the Rajapaksa family and has served six previous terms as prime minister. He is an entrenched part of the political system that many Sri Lankans deplore.
Wickremesinghe’s vulnerabilities provide an opening for another top candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake. He wants the IMF deal to be renegotiated to provide more economic relief. He condemns corruption and aligns himself with Sri Lankans who seek change and reject “the agenda of the old, failed, traditional system.” His coalition played a major role in the protest movement against Rajapaksa.
Dissanayake’s views resonate with Sri Lankan youth—a key voting bloc in a country where around one-fifth of the population is between the ages of 15 and 29. However, Dissanayake isn’t exactly a revolutionary: He supports economic liberalization and trade and accepts the need for IMF support—positions that can help his cause with the business community.
Despite his wide appeal, Dissanayake has a controversial past. He heads a Marxist party that waged a bloody campaign against who it labeled imperialists and capitalists in the late 1980s and backed the government’s brutal tactics against Tamil separatists during Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 2000s. Dissanayake has apologized for his party’s past violence and proposed a mechanism to probe wartime abuses. But his historical baggage could still undercut his electoral prospects.
The third top candidate, Sajith Premadasa, has sought to carve out a middle ground. The current opposition leader and the son of a former president, Premadasa is very much a product of Sri Lanka’s old system. But he has turned on his former ally Wickremesinghe, lambasting his economic plans. Like Dissanayake, Premadasa is calling for the IMF deal to be renegotiated, with more taxes on the rich.
Furthermore, Premadasa enjoys support from multiple ethnic and religious minorities. He criticizes Wickremesinghe for policies that discriminate against Muslims and advocates on behalf of the Tamil community (even though his father was assassinated by a Tamil separatist in 1993). Premadasa endorses demands for devolution policies that would give Tamils more power in the north and east, where the group is the ethnic majority.
Many experts expect a close race that could be determined by Sri Lanka’s ranked choice voting system. There is a lot at stake in this presidential election—with the direction of one of the world’s most battle-scarred economies hanging in the balance.
What We’re Following
Delhi chief minister steps down. Arvind Kejriwal, the head of India’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), announced Tuesday that he would resign from his post as chief minister of Delhi. The news came days after he was released from prison on bail. He served five months on corruption charges. Kejriwal said he plans to focus his efforts on running for reelection in Delhi’s assembly polls, which are scheduled for February.
Another top AAP leader, Atishi Marlena (who uses the mononym Atishi), will serve out Kejriwal’s term. With other party leaders facing legal troubles in recent months, her political profile has grown. Atishi, 43, becomes India’s youngest chief minister—and only the second current female chief minister. (The other is West Bengal’s long-serving chief minister, Mamata Banerjee.)
Kejriwal, a former tax bureaucrat who rose to prominence on an anti-corruption platform, doesn’t have nationwide clout—but he has become one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sharpest critics. Kejriwal and two other AAP leaders were jailed on charges that the party dismisses as politically motivated.
Kejriwal likely wants to spend his time campaigning to build voter support, leveraging his travails as a target of Modi’s ire. For its part, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lambasted Kejriwal’s decision as a “publicity stunt.” But the BJP’s underperformance in national elections this year has emboldened its opponents to capitalize on the ruling party’s perceived vulnerabilities.
Biden to host Quad leaders’ summit. The White House announced last week that U.S. President Joe Biden will host this year’s Quadrilateral Security Dialogue leaders’ summit in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., on Sept. 21. This is a major boost for the Quad, which comprises Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.
The group was facing the prospect of not holding a leaders’ summit this year—it’s meant to be an annual affair—because of busy political schedules. Modi, who was scheduled to host this year’s summit, was occupied with India’s elections in the first half of the year. And with the U.S. election on Nov. 5, there were fears that Biden wouldn’t have time to travel to India in the last months of 2024.
In the end, New Delhi ceded its hosting duties to Washington, with Biden taking advantage of the other leaders being in New York this month for the annual United Nations General Assembly meetings. India is now expected to host next year’s summit, affording itself the opportunity to welcome the new U.S. president to India early in their term.
This year’s Quad leaders’ summit, according to the White House, will focus on maritime security, infrastructure, technology, and clean energy. These issues have become cornerstones for cooperation as the Quad works to counter China’s influence and investments in the Indo-Pacific. The Saturday summit may also mark the final time that Biden meets with Modi as president.
U.S. officials in South Asia. It’s been a busy few days for U.S. diplomacy in the region. John Bass, the acting undersecretary of state for political affairs, visited Pakistan on Monday and met Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Army Chief Asim Munir. A senior U.S. delegation was in India and Bangladesh last week.
In India, Donald Lu—the assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs—and Jedidha P. Royal—the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs—participated in a 2+2 dialogue with Indian counterparts, part of an ongoing high-level dialogue between the two countries’ top diplomatic and defense officials.
The Dhaka stop marked the first high-level U.S. visit to Bangladesh since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned under pressure last month. The officials present—from the State Department, the Treasury Department, and USAID—attest to the range of issues covered. Washington’s main message revolved around providing economic and development support to Bangladesh’s interim government and backing institutional reforms ahead of elections.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- The Biggest Question About the Hezbollah Pager Attack Is Why Now by Colin P. Clarke
- The Art of Punishing Putin by Keith Johnson
- The Coming Clash Between China and the Global South by James Crabtree
Under the Radar
The Afghanistan-based Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) has claimed responsibility for a machine-gun attack that targeted Hazara Shias in central Afghanistan and killed 14 people last Thursday. The tragedy is the latest reminder of the threats to the Hazara Shia community.
Hazaras are both an ethnic and religious minority in Afghanistan, where they face persecution and violence—as in neighboring Pakistan, too. The community has long been one of IS-K’s main targets in Afghanistan.
Thursday’s attack is also a tragic reminder of the continued threat posed by IS-K in Afghanistan. In recent months, attacks carried out by the terrorist group had declined within Afghanistan, even as IS-K attempted more outside the country. But its violence in Afghanistan is starting to pick up again, including an attack in Kabul this month and another in Badakhshan province in May.
The Hazara community certainly won’t trust the Taliban with their security, even though the regime condemned Thursday’s attack as a “barbaric action” and pledged to protect Afghans. As with previous governments in Afghanistan, the Taliban have failed to provide security measures that adequately address Hazaras’ concerns.
Additionally, while the Taliban publicly reject acts of terror, the group carried out massacres of Hazaras in the 1990s. Human rights groups and researchers have also found evidence of Taliban abuses against Hazaras since the group returned to power in 2021, including forced evictions and targeted attacks.