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It is also unclear whether the Sikh diaspora, which Milewski emphasizes will not and should not forget the “vicious pogroms which took thousands of Sikh lives” in India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, will show up to vote, in what numbers, or how they will vote if they do.
To be clear, choosing to support an independent Khalistan in no way renders one an extremist, and opposing that same proposition does not define one as a racist. But whatever the results may be, the only predetermined “winner” in this plebiscite will be Pakistan itself. A Pakistan that, according to Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani Ambassador to Washington, has supported Khalistani extremism and other Islamist terrorist entities, primarily “to bleed India”.
It is hardly a surprising allegation. Pakistan frankly is a state that has adeptly proven itself quite proficient at literally bleeding others — and Canadian citizens have been amongst the victims who have bled at the hands of Pakistani enabled terrorism.
The regime’s strategic penchant as an accelerant of extremism and violence is therefore a threat to all sides of the Khalistani equation, and Pakistan should be given no place in this debate. That being said, Canada has very good reason to give the Pakistani regime a prominent place on Canada’s list of state sponsors of terrorism with all the ignominy entailed in such a listing. Pakistan is already listed on the FATF’s “grey list” for concerns over terrorism financing, and Milewski’s report should provide further impetus for Canada to add Pakistan to Iran and Syria, on its list of states that utilize the scourge of terrorism as a preferred form of statecraft.
Daniel Eisen is founder of the Canadian Coalition Against Terrorism.