Home

Featured Articles

Apr 13, 2026
Ramaharitha Pusarla

Why Pakistan for US-Iran ceasefire talks?

The much-awaited US-Iran peace talks in Islamabad failed to accomplish a ceasefire. Touted to play the role of mediation, the process was roiled in controversies and elicited sharp rebuke even before the negotiations could begin in Pakistan. The conditional ceasefire, which was announced on April 8th, showed signs of tottering just a couple of hours later as Gulf countries- Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE reported strikes. Soon, it was confirmed that Iran launched retaliatory strikes on Gulf countries in response to an attack on the Lavan Island refinery. Before these escalations could simmer down, Israel launched one of the largest attacks on Lebanon, killing 240 people. An enraged Tehran warned of a ceasefire collapse over Israeli strikes on Lebanon. Israel defended its action, stating that Lebanon is beyond the ambit of the ceasefire. Washington backed Israel’s position. The confusion over Lebanon soon put Islamabad in a spot. Though PM Shahbaz Sharif sought the refuge of his tweet as an alibi, indicating the ceasefire applied to EVERYTHING, soon parties accused Islamabad of sharing different versions of ceasefire agreements. The ‘double game’ and accusations complicated the diplomatic process. Even before accusations could subside, revelling in the new global role, Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Sharif called on Muslim countries to unite against enemies- India and Israel. In a chest-thumping exuberance, Khwaja Sharif tweeted, “Innocent citizens are being killed by Israel, first Gaza, then Iran and now Lebanon, bloodletting continues unabated. I hope and pray that the people who created this cancerous state on Palestinian land, to get rid of (sic) European Jews burn in hell”. This triggered an immediate backlash from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Casting serious doubts on Pakistan’s role as mediator, the Israeli envoy to India emphasised that it could be a mere facilitator. Pakistan officially doesn’t recognise Israel, a major stakeholder in the US-Iran peace talks. Ironically, the US delegation, comprising Jews, travelled to Islamabad, whose “annihilation” the Pakistani defence minister has called for. Pakistan is anything but a neutral arbiter. Trump’s choice of Pakistan for reaching out to Iran has resonated with his penchant for tinpot despots like Field Marshal Asim Marshal. Pakistan has always been a useful vassal for the United States. Customarily, Nordic countries have been preferred mediators for their neutral and objective stand. Strategic talks and mediation warrant subtle diplomacy and exchange of notes beyond the prying eyes of the media. Mediation is a craft. Tempered with secrecy, neutrality and commitment, talks yield the outcomes when it is low profile. On the contrary, Pakistan turned this into an event to brandish its global image. The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and sections of the media even requested a Nobel Peace Prize for PM Sharif and Field Marshal Munir. Given Trump’s fraught relations with European countries and with transatlantic relations teetering on the edge, Washington relied on Middle East allies for the job. Initially, Washington coopted regional allies-Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to push for de-escalation. But Pakistan emerged as the primary mediator. Pakistan shares a 900 km-long border with Iran, has close ties with China, and a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. China, seemingly neutral, is calling the shots. China has been the largest customer of Iran’s discounted oil. The Strait of Hormuz blockade has severely impacted its energy supplies. China is Iran's most important political partner. The signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) runs through the Iranian territory. Over the years, China has invested significant effort in building strategic ties with GCC countries as well. Hence, any direct involvement in talks would jeopardise its partnership with the region. China’s trade with the UAE and Saudi Arabia is $100 billion, against $41 billion with Iran. On March 31st, China and Pakistan proposed the five-point initiative to restore stability in West Asia. Around the same time, Beijing is facilitating talks between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban. China has been silently making its moves. Wielding decisive influence without being at the table, China has propped up Pakistan’s mediation role. China remains the largest buyer of Iranian oil while continuing its trade with the Gulf countries. China is also supplying sodium percholate for Iranian missiles. Pakistan has been flexing its muscles ever since President Trump pronounced it as a communication channel with Iran. Trump’s choice of Pakistan hardly raised any flak despite its unvarnished history as a state sponsor of terror. It wasn’t surprising given a marked upswing in the US-Pakistan relations in Trump’s second term. Needless to say, the point of interest has been commercial. Trump’s family and Witkoff’s offspring sealed a crypto investment agreement with Pakistan in April 2025. Subsequently, Trump announced a critical mineral exploration deal with Pakistan. Islamabad has also offered to the United States to use the Pasni harbour. A sequence of events has critically changed the trajectory of US-Pakistan ties, which has suffered a blowback over Washington’s involvement in the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. President Trump’s nagging rant and incoherent claims of India losing jets during Operation Sindoor, and his claims of trade leverage in halting India’s offensive to favour Pakistan, have irked India. Pandering to Trump, Pakistan has recommended the Nobel Peace Prize for Trump for his non-existent “decisive diplomatic intervention”. Later, Trump invited the Field Marshal for a luncheon at White House. This unusual privilege, usually reserved for civilian leadership, drew sharp reactions. Warming up to Trump, despite domestic backlash, Pakistan accepted the invitation to join the Board of Peace for Gaza’s post-war reconstruction. At the inauguration, PM Sharif offered glowing praise to Trump. Trump’s unprecedented overtures and the sudden momentum in U.S.–Pakistan ties are rooted in Islamabad’s aggressive lobbying. Reportedly, Pakistan hired 13 lobbying firms to secure direct access to Trump’s office. Prominent lobbying firms included Javelin Advisors, co-founded by Trump’s former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, and ex-Trump Organisation executive George Sorial, and Seiden Law LLP. Pakistan has shelled out $5 million in 2025 to lobby the current administration. The returns on investment for Pakistan have been rather quick. Brushing aside India’s fierce objections, the IMF approved a $1 billion loan to Pakistan at the height of Operation Sindoor. Coinciding with the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, the US government signed an agreement to renovate and redevelop the Hotel Roosevelt in New York, owned by Pakistan’s flagship carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), in February 2026. In December 2025, under pressure from the IMF, cash-trapped Pakistan was forced to privatise the airlines. To retain the prime property in New York frequented by Pakistani leaders, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated a deal between Pakistan and the US General Services Administration (GSA). Steve Witkoff’s son, Zachary Witkoff, is a partner in the cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial (WLF). The other key partners of the WLF deal signed in April 2025: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Zachary Folkman. Amenable to both Washington and Beijing, Pakistan has positioned itself as the most convenient pawn for two powers with direct stakes in West Asia. Given its subservience to its masters, Pakistan can at best be a courier. What is striking, however, is the glaring hypocrisy of Washington, which justifies its attacks on Iran while embracing Islamabad. Pakistan embodies nearly every trait the U.S. condemns in Tehran: both are designated state sponsors of terrorism, pursue destabilising nuclear programs (in fact, Pakistan is a Muslim-nuclear power), empower non-state actors, and crack down on domestic subjects. Tehran has the vilest form of surveillance, the enforcement of hijab and an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent. Islamabad embodies one of the most intolerant strains of religious fanaticism, where religious minorities- Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and even some sects of Muslims, like Ahmadiyas and Shias, face persecution. Diplomatic values have sunk to rock bottom under the present US dispensation. Entrusting the task of de-escalating the war that has disrupted global supply chains to a state synonymous with terrorism is nothing short of diplomatic bankruptcy. Pakistan’s neutrality is already under scrutiny. Islamabad has activated the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SDMA) by deploying 13,000 troops and fighter jets to Riyadh. Additionally, Islamabad has its own axes to grind with Iran on the Balochistan insurgency issue. The 21-hour-long trilateral talks in Islamabad have failed, and both delegations left Pakistan immediately. While JD Vance announced that talks have stalled, Iran noted, “diplomacy never comes to an end”. As of now, no date, location, or format for talks has been set. The choice of mediator matters. If nations are serious about resolving this conflict in the long term, prudence must guide the selection of facilitators. History offers a sobering reminder: the 1993 Islamabad Agreement, brokered by Pakistan, barely lasted for a few weeks. Signed on March 9, bombardment resumed on May 15.

Apr 13, 2026
YagnaSri

West Bengal Chronicles: The Red Curtain — Institutionalised Violence Under the Left Front (1977–2011) Part 2

The 34-year tenure of the Left Front in West Bengal represents a remarkable and deeply troubling case study in what political scientists call "sub-national authoritarianism" — the capture of a state's democratic institutions by a single party that uses them not to serve all citizens, but to perpetuate its own dominance. The violence of the Left Front era was qualitatively different from the chaotic street-fighting of the 1970s. It was systematic, incremental, and organisationally sophisticated — what the opposition would come to call "Scientific Rigging" translated into the domain of physical coercion. I. The Architecture of Control: Party-Society The foundational concept for understanding Left Front-era violence is what the political theorist Partha Chatterjee termed "Party-Society" — the near-total identification of the CPI(M)'s organisational machinery with the functioning of the state's civil and administrative life. Unlike a conventional political party that competes for votes and then governs, the CPI(M) operated as a parallel state — one that mediated every interaction between citizens and government. At the village level, this meant that the local party committee secretary wielded more effective power than the Panchayat Pradhan — often because they were the same person, or because the latter owed his position entirely to the former. Access to fertilisers, loans, land title documents, PDS rations, and government employment flowed through this party filter. Voting against the CPI(M) was not just a political act; it was an economic risk of potentially catastrophic proportions for a poor rural family. "Area Domination" was the operational name for this control. Weeks before elections, party cadres would conduct "Route Marches" through villages — not as a security measure, but as an unmistakable display of power designed to communicate to every resident that the opposition had no presence, no protection, and no future in that area. Those who defied this message did so at considerable personal risk. II. The Marichjhapi Massacre: The First Betrayal (1979) The earliest and most morally devastating act of violence under the Left Front was the forced eviction and killing of Dalit Hindu refugees who had settled on Marichjhapi island in the Sundarbans. The backstory is a tale of systematic betrayal. During their years in opposition, Left leaders — including the Forward Bloc's Ram Chatterjee and, according to some accounts, Jyoti Basu himself — had explicitly encouraged refugees from the Dandakaranya resettlement camps in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha to return to West Bengal, promising them homes in the islands of the Sundarbans if the Left Front came to power. The refugees were primarily Namasudra (Dalit) Hindus who had fled persecution in East Pakistan after partition. They had been dumped in the inhospitable rocky terrain of Dandakaranya — an environment entirely exotic to their rice-farming and fishing culture — and had suffered there for decades. When the Left Front won in 1977, approximately 40,000 refugees converged on Marichjhapi island in the Sundarbans, which they renamed "Netaji Nagar." With extraordinary self-reliance, they built mud homes, established schools and clinics, dug fish ponds, and created a functioning community on what had been an uninhabited island. The Left Front government's response was to declare the settlement an illegal occupation of reserved forest land and impose a complete economic blockade beginning January 24 1979, enforced by thirty police launches patrolling the island. Food, water, and medicine were cut off. Children began dying of green dysentery from consuming contaminated water. When desperate refugees attempted to break the blockade on January 31 1979, police opened fire. The official death toll was placed at two to eight — a figure universally regarded as a grotesque underestimation. Independent researchers and survivors' accounts suggest hundreds, and possibly thousands, died through gunfire, starvation, disease, drowning, and — in some survivor testimonies — deliberate brutality, including rape. No independent commission of inquiry was ever constituted. Journalists who attempted to investigate were prevented from reaching the island. Jyoti Basu himself dismissed the media coverage as exaggerated. The Marichjhapi massacre remains one of the most thoroughly suppressed incidents in Indian political history — a particularly cruel irony given that its perpetrators were a self-proclaimed government of the oppressed. III. The Nanoor Massacre: Political Violence as Routine (2000) By the turn of the century, with the Trinamool Congress emerging as the first credible challenger to Left hegemony, the CPI(M)'s response to this threat revealed the machinery of violence that lay beneath the surface of its administrative state. The Nanoor massacre of July 27 2000, in Suchpur village, Birbhum district, stands as the most documented instance of this phenomenon from the Left Front's middle period. Eleven landless agricultural labourers — Trinamool Congress supporters — were murdered by CPI(M) activists in what was described as a systematic execution. The incident was not a spontaneous clash but a deliberate act of political elimination—a warning to those in the district who had aligned with the opposition. The subsequent investigation and trial took a decade to conclude. In 2010, a court convicted 44 people, including key CPI(M) members, sentencing them to life imprisonment — one of the few instances in the Left era where convictions were actually secured for political violence. IV. Singur and Nandigram: The Violence That Broke the Left (2007) The Left Front's final decade saw the CPI(M) attempt a pivot toward industrial development under Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This pivot — symbolised by the Tata Nano plant at Singur and a proposed chemical hub at Nandigram — required land acquisition at scale, and the method used was coercion. The result was political suicide. At Nandigram in East Midnapore, farmers resisting land acquisition for a proposed special economic zone organised themselves into a formidable resistance movement. The Bhumi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee brought together an unlikely alliance of peasants, Trinamool activists, far-left Maoists, and civil society leaders. On March 14 2007, police opened fire on protesters, killing 14 villagers. The images of the dead — many of them women — became the defining visual of the Left Front's moral bankruptcy. The government's response compounded the catastrophe. In November 2007, armed CPI(M) cadres — the "Harmad Vahini" — were deployed to "recapture" Nandigram from resistance forces. Reports of systematic arson, assault, and sexual violence against women emerged. Even the state Governor condemned the action. Mamata Banerjee, who had made Nandigram her cause, emerged from the crisis with her political credibility transformed. V. The Netai Massacre: The Last Shot (2011) In January 2011, just months before the assembly elections that would end Left Front rule, nine villagers were shot dead in Netai village in West Midnapore. The firing came from the roof of a local CPI(M) leader's house. The Netai massacre was the final act in a 34-year drama of institutionalised violence — and its timing was catastrophic for the Left. It consolidated the anti-Left sentiment that had been building since Nandigram, ensuring that the 2011 verdict would be a landslide. VI. The Analytical Ledger In assessing the Left Front's record on political violence, an honest analyst must acknowledge both the genuine achievements of the early years — land reform, panchayati raj, and the bringing of a degree of stability after the chaos of the 1970s — and the systematic terror that underpinned them. The stability was, in large part, the peace of the subjugated. An opposition that cannot file nominations, cannot hold meetings, cannot mobilise voters without risking their livelihoods or physical safety, is not an opposition in any meaningful democratic sense. The CPI(M)'s great institutional achievement — the organisation of Bengal's peasantry was simultaneously its great political crime, the capture of that organisation by a party apparatus that used it to foreclose democracy. The party's internal language of "rectification" and "counter-revolutionary threats" provided ideological cover for what, in practice, amounted to the systematic elimination of political competition through fear. The Left Front did not merely win elections; it made losing elections structurally difficult for anyone who was not part of, or aligned with, its machinery.