Features
Saints, Dacoits, and Development-Wallahs in Pakistan

by Jayantha Perera
In 1994, the Pakistan Government received financial support from the World Bank to build a reservoir in the swamp-filled depression called Makhi Dhand in the upper Sindh. Its purposes were to encourage sedentary, irrigated agriculture in place of transhumance practices (moving livestock from one ground to another in a seasonal cycle) among scattered, mobile communities and develop the most backward area in Sindh by building roads, schools, hospitals and decent dwellings for settlers. The name of the proposed reservoir was Chortiari. My task was to make the residents in Makhi Dhand aware of the project, conduct a socio-economic survey in the area, and prepare a resettlement and income improvement plan for their benefit.
In 1909, Sir Edward Cox, a British official, stated that notorious criminals found refuge in secret recesses of Makhi Dhand. Local villagers sympathised with those ‘Robin Hoods’ by supplying weapons, food and other necessities. When I visited the area in 1994, Makhi Dhand had the same notoriety. It was known as the breeding ground of dacoits and ‘miscreants.’ Households were scattered, and the people were subsistence farmers and herdsmen. There were no schools or hospitals in Makhi Dhand. The nearest town was Sanghar, where villagers obtained medical help and other assistance. In villages, I found a community that, despite the odds, had not given in to abject poverty and marginalised life but had shown remarkable resilience.
In the 1860s, a family of pirs (saints) in Sindh claimed they were direct descendants of the holy men of the Sufi faction of Islam in Arabia. In the latter part of the 19th century, Zasir Pir organised people in Makhi Dhand and Thar Pakar Desert into a brotherhood called Jamiat, which had two tiers: salims – people who venerated pirs and depended on them for subsistence; second farqis – diehard pir followers, who formed an anti-colonial revolutionary group called ‘Hur.’ Its membership spread to Thar Pakar Desert, and Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Bengal provinces. At that time, Zamindars (landowners), Haris (tenants) and cattle herders in rural Sindh supported the group out of fear and respect.
Makhi Dhand was the epicentre of several anti-British colonial uprisings in the 20th century. Its residents maintained a close relationship with Afghans during the Kalifat movement in Sindh in the early 20th century, a pan-Islamic movement in North India and Afghanistan to preserve the status of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph and ensure his control over the Ottoman Empire.
My socio-economic survey team members were from Sanghar town. They knew influential personalities in Chortiari. One of them was Variyam Fakkir, a Pir. Variyam told me that although people worshipped him as a Pir, he was only a second-tier Sufi saint who had not yet reached full pirhood. He was a religious man and a political leader in the area. He owned a large area of land in Chortiari, and his followers cultivated it as his haris.
Variyam told me his great-granduncle led the 1910 rebellion against the British from Makhini Dhand. When the uprising failed, he served a lengthy jail sentence at the Hyderabad prison. He lost all his permanent and movable property when the British confiscated them. Two decades later, the British captured Pir Pagaro, Varyam’s granduncle, when he, too, organised a revolt against them. The British kept him in Prison for several years. When released from Hyderabad Prison in 1936, he rekindled the revolutionary zest among his followers. He organised a fresh uprising against the British. The British imposed martial law in 1942 and enacted the ‘Special Hur Act’ to deal with ‘miscreants’. Variyam told us that the army and the air force did not spare even their pots and pans after dynamiting and looting their communities. They raided their cattle and goat pens and stole gold jewellery. He could not continue his story as he was distraught, and he wiped his eyes with his shawl several times.
After Pakistan was created in 1947, Salims and Farqis joined together. They dropped their resistance to the new state because it was an Islamic state and were happy to become citizens of a new nation. Their transition from resistance to acceptance was a testament to the community’s adaptability. Variyam became a strong ‘vote bank’ for national and local politicians. Regional or national political parties depended on him for votes during local and general elections.
Villagers in the Chortiari project area were proud people. They delighted in talking about their past adventures and bravery, including their century-long resistance (1850 to 1948) to the British administration, especially its police personnel. The villagers’ pride in their history was palpable, which evoked a deep respect for their heritage. They ascribed their current rampant poverty and marginalised social status to the imposition of the Criminalized Tribes Ordinance in 1871 by the British. The British used such laws and regulations to control their movement, subjugate Pirs, and confiscate or destroy their property, crops, and animals.
I explained to Variyam the importance of converting Makhini Dhand into an irrigation reservoir. Irrigation water would enable them to cultivate two crops yearly, giving them a regular household income. I told him the World Bank would also build roads, schools, and hospitals for the benefit of the local people.
For three weeks, I stayed with my socio-economic survey team at an abandoned circuit bungalow (guest house) built in the 1890s by the British. The house did not have doors or windows. It was built on the principle of cross-ventilation. Two large dirty punkas (cloth fans) hung from the roof in the large bedroom and dining area to fan visitors. A cook and a punka vallah (fan operator) arrived from Sanghar to serve us. Punka vallah was a lazy man and pulled the fans for us for about two hours after dinner. As a result, we suffered the unbearable heat and mosquito bite through the night. He disappeared at 10 pm and re-emerged in the late morning of the following day.
The cook was a fine man with a Sindhi cap and a well-preened large black moustache. He dressed differently from the punka vallah, perhaps to emphasise his higher status. He served us parathas or ghee rice, a watery lentil curry, fried okra and palla (local salmon) fish for all three meals. He brewed strong tea with crushed cardamon and powdered brown sugar. We relished his syrupy tea, especially in hot afternoons with local biscuits. He identified himself as a Pathan from North-East Province. He had spent ten years in the army.
After sunset, we occasionally lay on charpoys (cots) in Variyam’s spacious compound. We listened to his breathtaking stories while drinking hot tea and munching local sweets. We were happy to lie down on charpoys with rough hemp ropes interwoven into small, squared nets to enjoy the cool desert breeze. After sunset, the compound was dark, and we could not see each other. I feared dacoits, and I thought that they would emerge from tall grass patches to kidnap us. Variyam assured us that nothing would happen to us because we were his guests.
In the evenings, a giant comet covered a part of the dark sky. Variyam interpreted its appearance as a bad omen and predicted that India might attack Pakistan. He wanted to know when the Chotiari Reservoir would be built. Variyam lamented that constructing a reservoir would wipe out archaeological sites and forests. He wanted to know our genuine thoughts about the proposed reservoir. He told us he could stop the project overnight by calling his followers.
He repeated his concerns regarding the state’s encroachment into his peoples’ land. He explained how the British established permanent settlements in Sindh by bringing loyal tribes and communities from Punjab, Rajasthan, and Bengal. At the same time, the British restricted the movement of the original inhabitants in the area and erected guard posts to supervise them. In some locations, villagers were relocated into new settlements. They needed passes from the military to leave their area. He wondered whether the same would happen to them with the construction of the reservoir and the arrival of outsiders with the state’s patronage.
Variyam loved to dramatise from his charpoy how his granduncle, as a 12-year-old boy, took part in the 1920s uprising. He imitated how the British cannons boomed – “boom, boom, boom” and the sound of machine guns – “truck, truck, truck.” The Delhi Government dispatched platoons of soldiers to Sindh to control chaos when the locals attacked police stations and government offices. The young Pir Pagaro organised his followers in Thar Pakar and central Sindh and harassed the government until the British captured him in 1927.
Ali Jinnah, a famous lawyer from Bombay and the future founding father of Pakistan, defended him at a sessional court in Karachi. Jinnah pointed out to the judge that with the imposed draconian laws, the people could not live in Makhi Dhand as human beings. The court sentenced the young man to eight years in Prison. He told us with a broken voice that in 1943, the British hanged Pir Pagaro at the Hyderabad Jail with several others for high treason after their failed insurrection in the early 1940s.
We walked to village settlements with local guides through tall savannah grass patches. At some settlements, there were only three or four households. Most residents believed they were pastoralists. They pointed out the idea of land ownership was alien to their culture and pleaded not to destroy traditional pastoralism in the name of development.
Most villagers first refused to talk to us, but later responded when we told them we were their pir‘s friends. A man told us not to waste time visiting houses because each household had the same story of poverty, discrimination, and wounded pride. Several old people were waiting for the second coming of Pir Pagaro, who had sacrificed his life to redeem them from their agony and destitution. They were worried the World Bank and foreign workers might disturb his second coming. One man told us a descendant of Pir Pagaro would bring sweeping changes, including independence and economic prosperity, to Makhi Dhand. He opined that our patchwork of development might betray his grand plan.
The government officials, who had refused to join the survey in Makhini Dhand for security reasons, told us that villagers, including Variyam, did not own any land there. The British had confiscated all their land under martial law in the early 1940s. They asked me if the state would compensate the land acquired for the reservoir. This was a critical issue that I had to deal with when formulating the resettlement and income improvement plan. In the plans, I recommended compensation for land and other assets acquired regardless of their ownership status.
One day, I completed an interview with a farmer before 4 pm in a remote settlement. I waited with the translator for other team members to return to go back to the guest house. Two unknown young men emerged from the forest and walked towards us. They talked to the translator. Then, they approached me and asked what I was doing in their village. The translator translated the question and winked at me. I did not know why he winked at me. I told them we were meeting villagers to collect information and to tell them about the proposed reservoir.
One man raised his voice and asked me, “Have you obtained our permission to build a tank on our land?”
“Yes, we have already talked to your pir and several other elders, and they think the project would benefit all villagers,” I told him.
“But you did not talk to us about the tank.” he retorted.
“We plan to talk to all households before building the tank,” I told him. The two men talked to the translator again. The translator told me, “Please be careful with these two fellows. They can harm us.”
I smiled and asked him, “Where are their guns if they are dacoits?”
My response annoyed the translator. He talked to the two men again. All three laughed, and one man went to a nearby hut and returned with an AK-47 rifle.
The translator said, “Didn’t I tell you to be careful. Now they have an AK-47 rifle. They can take us wherever they want. Especially, they might like to take you with them to demand a ransom.”
Fortunately, at that moment, the other survey team members returned. One of them recognised the two men. They talked to each other and shook hands. Before leaving us, the gunmen told me through the translator, “Do not roam in our area after 12 noon.”
I told Variyam about my encounter with the dacoits. He thought for a minute. In a sad voice, he said, “The problem with my people is their impatience and foolishness in making enemies from outside.” He asked me not to report the incident to the police or government officials in Sanghar or Hyderabad. He reassured no one would harm us while we were in Makhi Dhand. On the same evening, he organised a musical party for us and served delicious food. The songs focused on their ancestors’ bravery, the purity of Sufism, and the pan-regional spread of the Hur brotherhood. Sometimes, the singer cried and waited for the audience to respond to his wailing.
I sat next to Variyam, and he told me how his father had organised similar evenings and got special cakes from Bombay called ‘Bombay cakes’ for such occasions. It had a generous sprinkle of dried raisins on the top, and its crust was thick and hard. He had not seen a Bombay cake for about 30 years. He asked me to get a Bombay cake for him. I asked a friend in Bombay to bring a Bombay cake for me whenever he visited his uncle in Karachi.
After three months, my friend delivered a Bombay cake to my residence in Hyderabad. The cake was large, nicely wrapped, and placed in a decorated box. My friend told me the cake would stay fresh for two weeks as it was a ‘dry’ cake. Purkahn, my driver, and I drove eight hours with the cake to Chortiari. Variyam was delighted to see me and the cake. We ate a small piece of it, and I saw tears in his eyes. He wanted me to come back to Chortiari so that he could tell me the whole story of his ancestors. I promised that I would revisit him, and I left his house with a feeling of respect and gratitude.
Features
The Hegemon and his Henchman

by Rajan Philips
Musk behind The Resolute Desk. Who is the boss?
America has a hegemon; and the hegemon has a henchman. Americans elected Donald Trump as president by a slender majority, but the whole world has to suffer him without having any say in the matter. Both America and the world have also to suffer Elon Musk, Trump’s unelected henchman. Just who is who – between the hegemon and the henchman – seems to be the question that is deliberately being provoked in political circles, hoping to trigger Trump’s ire against Musk. Inasmuch as Musk appears to be outdoing the president. Time magazine’s cover page placing Musk behind the president’s desk is amusing even as it might be provoking Trump. CNN’s Jack Tapper has started calling Musk, the President’s “First Buddy,” arguably more significant than the traditional First Lady.
For now, Trump seems to be giving Musk the long leash as Musk and his young software interns run amok through federal government departments and their projects, in Washington and elsewhere, including far flung places throughout the world. All in the name of eradicating government ‘waste, fraud and corruption.’ And all discovered in a matter of days by teams of Musk’s X employees, some of them in their teens, and all of them with a worldview that pretty much starts and ends at their laptop and tablet screens. It is as if the old ‘revenge of the nerds’ is being played out for real in the theatre of the American state in Washington DC. With the difference that the nerds roaming Washington have a hegemon to back them up.
President Trump is all hell bent on demolishing Washington institutions even as he has taken to calling Gaza a “demolition site.” He did that without any touch of irony at a joint White House press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza’s demolitionist-in-chief. Netanyahu had completed Gaza’s demolition before Trump started his second term, and he was rewarded for that with the honour of being the first foreign leader to be invited to the White House for presidential audience.
Trump’s description of Gaza as a demolition site is no accident, but a natural projection of his real estate mind. At the press conference, as a befuddled Netanyahu stood and stared, Trump rambled on about redeveloping Gaza into a Riviera in the Middle East, where the poor Palestinians will be allowed to work to support all the (rich) people of the world gathering for their holidays.
The horror of this scheme is the presumed eviction of the already displaced residents of Gaza to unknown desert tracts in Egypt, Jordan, and any other host country in the Arab world. These countries will have to just receive the displaced Gazans and shelter them just because Donald Trump has said so, even as the Trump Administration is rounding up ostensibly illegal but organically integrated immigrants in America and deporting them in handcuffs by military aircraft to their home countries. Even as far away as India.
The new Secreatary of State, Marco Rubio, a right wing Cuban American with more blind loyalty to Trump than any gravitas in world affairs, and other similarly inconsequential minions in the Administration, tried vainly to soften their president’s dangerous fantasy about Gaza. But Trump doubled down and summarily said that the Palestinians of Gaza will have to leave, Gaza will be redeveloped for the amusement of the rich under Israeli security, and all enabled under American laws. Whatever those laws are!
While there is little chance that a Riviera will ever be built on the Gaza waterfront, Trump’s outlandish speculations are only going to further aggravate the already turmoiled situation of the Palestinian people and rule out any possibility of a fair and durable resolution of a conflict that is as old as the UN. Trump has even worse contempt for the UN than he has for Gaza.
Imperial Illusions
President Trump’s Gaza musings are also indicative of a significant new dimension to his second term in comparison to his first. He seems to be labouring under the illusion that his second term could be the beginning of a new era of American expansionism. There were rambling allusions in the inauguration speech to a new United States that “expands our territory … and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons … and … pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”
The first step in the flight to Mars is to impose tariffs on earth. All countries of the world, no matter friend/neighbour (Canada, Mexico) or foe (China) or everyone in between (India) must pay an admission fee for the privilege of entering the coveted American market. The revenue generated by import tariffs will be used to support the massive tax cuts that Trump is determined to give the wealthiest in America. The entrepreneurs of the world are welcome to locate their businesses and factories in the US and enjoy the world’s lowest taxes, or stay where they are (that is “your prerogative,” Trump said to a virtual session in Davos) and pay the world’s highest tariffs. All of this seems to be Trump’s new economic gospel, if not philosophy.
Trump is not alone in this American economic thinking, but he is alone among America’s political classes to think that America can do this unilaterally and the rest of the world will fall in line either without political demur or under economic duress. Trump’s external thrust has surprised almost all serious political observers in America. There are overtones of 19th century imperialism in Trump’s garbled rhetoric. There are also multiple points of contradictions between his new expansionist thrust and his old isolationist insistence. Even the madman theory that he has tried to tout on his own behalf has few followers because crazy unpredictability is second nature to him and unreliability is what his fellow transactors expect of him.
Allies, Adversaries and the Rest
Then there is the peculiarity of Trumpism in configuring the positions of America’s traditional allies and adversaries in this expansionary vision. His expansionism provides for the annexation of Canada as America’s 51st state; renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America; threatening the takeover of Greenland; and taking control of the operation of Panama Canal. Turning to Europe, Trump wants to impose tariffs on EU exports to America, has no abiding interest in NATO, and just this week indicated that he would be repudiating all of Biden’s commitments to Ukraine and force Ukraine to negotiate peace with Russia on Putin’s terms.
In other words, the Trumpian vision of American expansionism has no place for America’s traditional allies and suggests the annexation of at least one of them, Canada. Trump would rather have America contending for the world with its traditional adversaries, China and Russia. That would be a contest which, presumably in his understanding, will create all the opportunities for maximizing wealth and profit within market capitalism, without any of the inconveniences of state regulations, legal hurdles and overall accountability whether at the national or global level. It will be a system of hegemons and their henchmen carving up the planet as they please.
In such a set up, there is no place for American involvement in the World Health Organization (WHO), or continuing with the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump has withdrawn America from both using two Executive Orders that were among the very early ones issued following his inauguration. He is keeping America in the UN for now, mostly to exercise the US veto at the Security Council in support of Israel, America’s only ally in the world organization. He has again pulled the US out of UNHRC in Geneva, and stopped funding to UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency among the Palestinians.
There is then the rest of the world – excluding the US, the West minus the US, China and Russia. Trump’s main interaction now ‘with the rest of the world’ countries is in the humiliating deportation of their citizens after apprehending them as illegal aliens in America. A second interaction is through the abrupt closure of the USAID agency and the myriad of programs that the agency has been conducting in hundreds of countries throughout the world.
Many of these programs help in saving lives, improving health, and avoiding starvation. The Trump Administration may legitimately question the policy premises of these programs, but there is nothing wasteful, fraudulent or corrupt about them as alleged by Musk and marauders. Unilaterally closing them has been the most unkindest act so far by the Trump Administration.
The countries where USAID presence has been insensitively terminated are now fertile grounds for Chinese engagement. Even though Trump is quite triumphant about killing BRICS with his 100% tariff threat, the membership in the organization is bound to swell as Trump tries to reorder the world, and BRICS itself is bound to emerge as a force to reckon with by post-Trump America. Equally, European countries will similarly try to strengthen their economic ties with China to make up for what Trump might deprive them through reckless tariffs. Yet there is no country in the world that seems ready to push back on Trump and call his bluff. With every country so much dependent on global trade, no government is prepared to poke the madman and risk inflicting economic pain on its people.
Columbian President Gustavo Petro tried to protest the forced deportation of Columbian immigrants from the US, but was quickly forced to retreat by Trump’s tariff threat. South Africa has been singled out for harsh treatment mostly for prosecuting Isreal at the International Court of Justice, on charges of genocide in Gaza. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and often uses his X platform to accuse the South African government of genocide against White South Africans, may have had a hand in this. At the same time, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has reached out to Elon Musk apparently to help address “issues of misinformation and distortions about South Africa” in Washington.
In the midst of it all, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Washington, after a stopover in Paris, to cap what had been a tumultuous first three weeks of Trump’s second presidential term. Both Trump and Modi acknowledge the good chemistry between them, and they used the meeting to highlight their mutual benefits even if the talks were more symbolic than substantive. American media picked on the protocol of Prime Minister Modi meeting with Elon Musk before arriving at the White House. For his part, Trump offered to help India and China resolve their “skirmishes on the border which are quite vicious,” and expressed the hope that “China, India, Russia and US, all of us can get along. It’s very important.” That seems to be Trump’s preferred world order. Each country has its own hegemon, and they all have their henchmen.
Features
Anura Bandaranaike was an exemplary and honourable leader

The 76th birthday of the Late Mr. Anura Bandaranaike fell on February 15
by Gamini Gunasekara
Mr Anura Bandaranaike, an Honours graduate in History of the University of London, was a formidable and prestigious leader who engaged himself in gentlemanly politics. He was never accused of any wrongdoing. From whatever angle one views his career, it would be fair to name him a man of unblemished character, in the fullness of the meaning of that phrase- a person who enjoyed the respect of everyone who lived in this country, be they political supporters or opponents and a leader of prestige here and abroad.
He was a rare person who had the good fortune to associate with foreign leaders at the highest level from his childhood and to enjoy their affection. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the only political leader in Sri Lanka who has had that fortune. From his childhood he was able to associate closely with the leaders of many countries such as India, Pakistan, Japan, China, America, Russia, England, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, the Middle-Eastern countries and countries of Europe. In consequence no other leader in Sri Lanka could claim the international contacts that he had.
At the same time the extreme facility with which he could handle the English language was always combined with his erudition. The knowledge that he possessed of a wide range of subjects including international politics, modern and ancient history, the world economy, classical Western literature, modern world trends etc etc is immense. He was second to none as a person who shone in debates both in Sinhala and English, in our legislature. His absence is acutely felt when one looks at the Parl iament today.
Anura Bandaranaike was born on 15th February15 , 1949 and passed away on March 16, 2008, saddening many a Sri Lankan heart. A large concourse of people converged on Horaglla Walawwa, where his body lay, in long queues from all corners of Sri Lanka, until the day of the funeral. I met that day even people who had come all the way from such far off places as Trincomalee. I recall that many such people standing in the queues were in tears. I attended that funeral along with Minister Sarath Amunugama.
I was Mr. Bandaranaike’s Media Secretary at the time. Dr. Amunugama and I associated closely with Mr. Anura Bandaranaike. Often when Mr. Bandaranaike wanted some assistance from Dr. Amunugama I acted asthe medium.When Dr. Amunugama wanted some assistance from Mr. Bandaranaike also I acted in similar fashion. My association with Mr. Bandaranaike was that close. It is the same with my association with Dr.Amunugama.
Mr. Anura Bandaranaike was a leader who always sincerely felt for the people. A significant feature of his character was that he never craved for wealth or power. We should remember that he donated to members of his household staff, portions of the commercially very valuable Horagolla Walawwe land which was his ancestral inheritance. It must also be placed on record that Anura Bandaranaike was a very distinguished Speaker of the Sri Lanka Parliament. He was also the youngest Leader of the Opposition in the Commonwealth at the time ( 1983- 1988).
The Late Gamini Dissanayake once told me that Mr Bandaranaike as the Leader of the Opposition played his role extremely competently, against a very strong Government. The degree dissertation of a female undergraduate of the Peradeniya University last year, was the role played by Mr. Anura Bandaranaike, as the Leader of the Opposition. She consulted me too on some matters. Mr Bandaranaike as the then youngest Speaker in the Commonwelth, conducted himself in international relations also preserving the prestige of Sri Lanka, by expressing his views fairly and fearlessly.
Anura wasthe only son of Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandararanaike and the world’s first female prime minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike. His family has a long history in our country’s political and social arenas. His grandfather was Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Mudaliyar of the Governor’s Gate. His mother’s father i.e. his maternal grand father was Rate Mahattaya Barnes Ratwatte Dissaswe.
At the time Anura was born his father S W R D Banadaranaike was the Minister of Health and Local Government who later became the fourth Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and was assassinated on September 26, 1959, when Anura was just 10 years old. His mother became the first woman Prime Minister of the world in July 1960 establishing a record, after assuming the leadership of the party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, that her husband had founded.
Anura, after being appointed the leader of the youth wing of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, built up the SLFP youth wing into a formidable force in all districts including in the North and East. At that time he was the most popular youth leader in Sri Lanka. He contested Nuwara Eeliya- Maskeliya multi member
constituency as the SLFP nominee in the 1977 parliamentary general elections. While the SLFP suffered an ignominious defeat in that election, we must remember that Anura secured the Second MP position relegating Mr. Thondaman to third place.
Anura has told me that he devoted only two weeks at Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya at that campaign. The rest of the time he was campaigning for the party all over the country. He secured more than 49,000 votes in the Nuwara Eliya – Maskeliya multi-member constituency. Gamini Dissanayake was elected the First member. These two were friends. I was also fortunate enough to be able to associate closely with Mr. Gamini Dissanayake.
Truly, the country has now been orphaned by the loss of such political leaders. Most people are unaware that Mr. Anura Banadaranaike delivered lectures on South Asian politics in foreign universities. He often quoted writers from Shakespeare and T S Eliot in his lectures. He inherited that talent from his father. People doing politics today should read the biographies of leaders like this. The lessons one can learn from such reading is immense.
(The writer is the President, Education Friendship Guild)
Features
The US in a brave new world

By Uditha Devapriya
Washington’s systematic gutting of government funded foreign aid has given rise to a flurry of debates. On the one hand, critics of the move say it both undermines the humanitarian work that the US has poured billions of dollars into and undercuts US national interests vis-à-vis its rivals, which in the present context includes China and Russia. On the other hand, as Elon Musk tweets every hour on what institutions like USAID were spending money on, critics contend that such programmes have served no purpose and retrenchment of these institutions would be in everyone’s interest, including the affected countries.
Donald Trump’s dismantlement of foreign aid signals what I see as the third wave of the US conservative right’s attack on the Kennedy-Johnson consensus that guided US foreign policy for much of the last half-century. In the first wave, during the Reagan years, Washington did away with many of the domestic programmes which had been set up by John F. Kennedy at the heyday of Keynesian economics. In the second wave, which I trace to both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, domestic social programmes were again singled out for attack, with welfare and healthcare facing much of the brunt.
President Trump’s attacks on foreign aid programmes, barely five years after Joe Biden revived them, including in countries like Sri Lanka – a good example being Peace Corps – are as radical and far-reaching as they are going to get. Over the last two decades, going back to the Tea Party movement, Washington has lurched so far to the right that older generation of conservatives identified by Trump supporters as warmongers and establishment folk – the likes of Liz Cheney and her father Dick, the Bushes, and so on – resemble in no way their critics in the Republican Party. Musk’s battle of the tweets with the likes of conservative commentators like Bill Kristol and Republican senators like Liz Cheney is telling in that sense because it underscores a pivotal ideological shift in US politics.
This shift mirrors a broader lurch to the right that continues to characterise the anti-woke right in much of the Global North and, I would say, parts of the Global South. In the US, the anti-woke right has been incensed by what they frame as the doling out of taxpayer dollars to divesiry, equity and resilience (DEI), climate resilience, and gender initiatives in countries like Sri Lanka, programmes which in their view have served no one. As more and more disclosures about what USAID programmes were used for here – prominently in media and democratic governance NGOs, to say nothing of parliamentary committees – come to light, it becomes easier to see why the right has become so angry. That the likes of Victor Orban have been openly happy at Trump’s ongoing retrenchment of foreign aid is understandable, if you factor in Orban’s and Vladimir Putin’s past attitudes to USAID and even private donors.
In that sense, what of the contention that US national interests will be undermined by these developments? The argument, in my view, has some merit for two reasons. First, it is an admission of something the Left, particularly the anti-imperialist Left, has voiced for years if not decades: that organisations like USAID were used as tools and instruments of US foreign policy, as a means of entrenching American hegemony.
In response to Musk’s criticism of her involvement with USAID, Liz Cheney declared that she was “proud” of having helped defeat the Soviet Union via such institutions. This goes to show that, far from being a benevolent bequest, foreign aid has very much been linked to the geopolitical ambitions of powerful countries. To say this is to remember that, during the Kennedy years, institutions like the Alliance for Progress, while doing necessary, good work in a postcolonial world, was shaped by that administration’s priority of economic stability in countries which seemed vulnerable to Communism.
There were times when such organisations were used in more explicit ways to achieve these geopolitical objectives. Costa-Gavras’s beautiful and searing film State of Siege, a fictional account of USAID employee Dan Mitrione, who taught torture and interrogation techniques to the Uruguayan police before being kidnapped and killed by left-wing guerillas there, is a stark case in point. Yet even if one concedes this point, it is possible to acknowledge the good work such institutions have done on the humanitarian front – as liberal commentators like Nicholas Kristof have constantly reminded us today.
The second reason as to why the national interest argument has merit is that once the US withdraws from the multilateral order vis-à-vis foreign assistance, it theoretically becomes possible for countries like China and Russia to take their place. I say “theoretically” because, for all the rhetoric about Beijing filling the gap that the US will leave behind in institutions like the World Health Organisation, it is questionable whether those countries will, in fact, devote their budgets to financing them in the long run. I believe it is in everyone’s interests, not least of all China’s, that they do. This is precisely what the older conservative right in the US, represented by the likes of Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell, fear.
But really, such fears are unwarranted. In a context of growing tensions between the US and the rest of the world, these developments will be bemoaned by the liberal and conservative establishment yet accepted as necessary collateral damage by the hardcore, Trumpist right. Until now, the US political establishment took great pains to distinguish between ally and enemy – even if, as was seen during the Reagan years, the government engaged in verbal gymnastics (“autocratic” versus “authoritarian”) to justify its foreign policy. Today, no such distinctions exist – Elon Musk continues to attack elected heads of state, while both the US President and Vice-President support the work he is doing as “good” and “necessary.” What we are seeing now is a return to the days of naked big stick diplomacy, with Trump as symbol of the pre-Wilsonian phase of US foreign policy.
The writer is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific-focused foreign policy think tank based in Colombo and accessible via www.factum.lk. He can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.
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