India loses a key Kashmir ally with fall of Syria’s Assad

Analysts say New Delhi also fears extremists exploiting the collapse of Assad’s regime to rally support for Islamic militancy

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Kashmiri demonstrators hold an Islamic state flag in Srinagar, India, in 2014. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:00pm, 15 Dec 2024

For India, the upheaval in Syria marks the loss of what analysts call a crucial Islamic “voice of support” on one of its thorniest issues: Kashmir.

While New Delhi has long maintained that the Kashmir dispute is a bilateral matter between itself and Pakistan, Syria’s consistent backing at the United Nations and elsewhere was seen as a quiet but significant win.

“This voice of support from within the Arab Islamic world was important,” said Kabir Taneja, a Middle East expert and deputy director at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in Delhi. Under Bashar al-Assad, Syria had repeatedly affirmed that Kashmir was an internal matter for India to settle itself without outside interference.

Now, with Assad gone, the future of that support is uncertain.

Opposition forces seized the Syrian capital last weekend, forcing Assad to flee and ending his family’s decades-long rule over a country that had been torn apart by a civil war that killed over half a million people and displaced millions more.

The dramatic turn of events took Delhi by surprise, according to Indian media reports. India had hosted a delegation of Syrian officials just weeks before.