Irina Tsukerman on Canada’s Counterterrorism Vulnerabilities, Sikh Separatist Networks, and Diaspora Financing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/05

Part 1 of 4

Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security attorney based in New York and Connecticut. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in National and Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006, followed by a Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She operates a boutique national security law practice. She serves as President of Scarab Rising, Inc., a media and security strategic advisory firm. Additionally, she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider, which focuses on foreign policy, geopolitics, security, and human rights. She is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the American Bar Association’s Energy, Environment, and Science and Technology Sections, where she serves as Program Vice Chair in the Oil and Gas Committee. She is also a member of the New York City Bar Association. She serves on the Middle East and North Africa Affairs Committee and affiliates with the Foreign and Comparative Law Committee. 

In this 4-part interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Tsukerman on Canada’s ongoing vulnerabilities in counterterrorism and extremist financing. Tsukerman traces the problem back to porous financial oversight, weak cooperation with allies, and the persistence of diaspora networks sustaining separatist and militant causes abroad. From the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar to the activities of Samidoun and Tamil separatist charities, she highlights how groups exploit hawala, cryptocurrency, and fraudulent charities. Tsukerman also assesses landmark Canadian cases, such as R v. Khawaja, and explains why cartels like Sinaloa and MS-13 are now classified as terrorist entities. The discussion underscores Canada’s lagging enforcement and geopolitical consequences.

Interview conducted August 22, 2025.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This was a brainstorming session on some issues. I have been doing interviews today, and one topic that has been on my mind is our discussion about counterintelligence, terrorism, funding, propaganda, and related concerns. I was thinking about this in the Canadian context, which is your area of expertise. It is not necessarily that the Canadian government itself is funding such activities, but rather that entities within Canada, operating inside the country’s territorial and legal framework, may send money abroad or receive funds from overseas and then distribute them in particular ways. These funds may be converted into cryptocurrency to obscure their origins, routed through informal banking systems such as hawala, or laundered through shadow banking networks. The money can flow through religious cults, extremist organizations, terrorist groups, or what might be called “grey zone” actors—where some governments classify them as terrorists, while others recognize them as activists.

This is the sort of thing I have in mind. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on how Canada is addressing this issue. I am acutely aware that our systems can be quite porous—so porous, in fact, that we had the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh leader in Surrey, British Columbia, widely attributed to the involvement of the Indian government. That incident underscored failures in Canadian counterintelligence services. What is your assessment of the Canadian landscape here?

Irina Tsukerman: In general, it is disastrous—and it has been disastrous for a long time. There was a Canadian journalist, Stewart Bell, who wrote extensively on terrorism financing, organized crime, and extremism, including in his 2007 book Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World. Even then, he outlined the severity of the problems. Since then, the situation has only worsened.

Even in the late 2000s and early 2010s, experts were already raising alarms. For example, Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst specializing in counterterrorism, has repeatedly highlighted the risks of Canada being used as a haven or staging ground for extremists. He was the one who first pointed me toward Bell’s work, and I did not realize at the time how much worse the situation would become in the following decade.

The Nijjar case highlights one of Canada’s most underappreciated national security challenges. While the direct intervention of the Indian government was highly inappropriate for obvious diplomatic and legal reasons, the deeper scandal is that their frustration was not entirely unfounded: Canada had been slow to cooperate with India on addressing extremist networks operating within Canada’s borders.

Nijjar himself was a pro-Khalistan activist. Indian authorities accused him of links to violent separatist groups and of involvement in the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing—the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history, which killed 329 people, most of them Canadian citizens. Although Nijjar was never convicted in Canadian courts, India and some counterterrorism experts considered him part of a network of Sikh separatists who had either supported or justified violent attacks.

It is important to note that not all Sikh separatists are violent. In fact, many Sikhs in both India and the diaspora are loyal and law-abiding citizens. However, factions within the Khalistan movement have historically and currently employed violent methods. These groups have engaged in mob violence within India and have targeted not only the Indian government but also rival Sikh factions and other communities. In diaspora communities, including in Canada, some individuals have been involved in plotting or financing violent operations in India, while also creating tensions in their host countries.

Tsukerman: Some of these individuals ended up in Canada, the UK, Australia, and the United States—those being the major destinations, mainly due to historical reasons tied to immigration and diaspora settlement. The United States proved somewhat more cooperative with India than Canada, though not substantially so. There was even an attempted attack in the U.S., which resulted in a trial and controversy. Eventually, during the Trump administration, some progress was made: one individual accused of involvement in extremist activity, who had long been under investigation and should have been extradited much earlier, was finally deported to India.

Under the Biden administration, however, there was no follow-through on other extradition cases, for reasons that were never clearly explained. U.S. courts had found at least one suspect eligible for extradition, but the administration ultimately did not proceed with the extradition. This created frustration in India, though the United States overall managed to contain the issue more effectively than Canada.

In Canada, the situation dragged on unresolved. Matters escalated under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who publicly accused India’s intelligence services of involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey in 2023. He made this statement without presenting public evidence. Two possible explanations exist: one, that the Canadian government lacked concrete evidence and was relying only on assumptions about the most likely scenario; or two, that evidence existed but could not be revealed without compromising intelligence sources and methods. The latter is the more likely explanation, but if that were the case, Trudeau should not have gone public, as it made him appear reckless and undermined Canada’s credibility.

Fundamentally, Canada never provided a convincing explanation for why individuals suspected of involvement in violent attacks—some of which were financed from Canada, executed on Indian soil, and even resulted in the deaths of Canadian citizens, such as in the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing—were neither properly investigated nor prosecuted.

Adding to the complexity, there are Canadian political parties and officials who have courted elements of the Sikh separatist movement. In India, some of these figures are regarded as violent extremists, while in Canada, they have been treated as persecuted members of an opposition movement. Of course, if individuals are nonviolent, they should be free to hold political views, even separatist ones, as long as they remain peaceful. The problem is that not all actors are nonviolent, and it is not always easy to distinguish between those who are and those who are not.

The level of counterterrorism cooperation between India and Canada eventually fell to an all-time low. The situation was further complicated by China, which sought to exploit the tensions. Beijing amplified anti-India narratives, provided political cover to Sikh separatist groups abroad, and in some cases offered material support—all for strategic reasons tied to undermining India.

It is important to stress, however, that not all Sikh separatists are violent. Many within the movement are peaceful and exercise their right to political expression in a lawful manner. The issue arises with those factions that cross into militancy and violence, and with governments failing to address that distinction responsibly.

Not all of these individuals are even committed separatists, though many are. One of them was part of Prime Minister Trudeau’s coalition and later left, not because of this issue, but due to disagreements over economic policy. Still, the situation became an international scandal that spilled over into the UK and other countries.

The Five Eyes alliance felt compelled to present a united front against foreign interference. However, the problem was that interference cut both ways. On the one hand, the Indian government believed it had to act independently because official channels were failing. On the other hand, some of the separatists—who were also dissidents and members of the opposition—had in fact been directly involved in terrorism. The fact that this was not the familiar pattern of Islamist jihadism made it less visible to Western governments, but that did not mean it was any less deadly, potent, or ideologically motivated.

To this day, the matter remains unresolved. The United States and India signed a counterterrorism cooperation agreement in early 2023; however, its long-term impact remains unclear, particularly in light of the ongoing political instability in the U.S. In Canada, although relations improved under Prime Minister Mark Carney, it remains unclear what his actual position is on the issue or whether any meaningful measures have been taken to investigate or disrupt the remaining violent factions within the separatist movement. The problem extends beyond the individuals formally named by India in the Nijjar case, and yet these concerns are not being publicly addressed.

This remains one of Canada’s least-discussed but most serious national security issues. It has led to deaths, and India’s concerns are not merely paranoia or baseless targeting. The methods India has used in counterintelligence may be problematic, but the underlying concern about extremist violence is legitimate.

This dynamic is particularly acute in Canada. While Sikh separatist networks exist in other countries, they are most politically visible in Canada. In the UK, the community is more integrated and less politically active in this respect. In the U.S., Sikh separatists form only a small fraction of the broader Indian-origin population, which is predominantly Hindu. A few individuals have been investigated, but they continue to be a marginal presence. In Canada, however, Sikh separatists are far more numerous, with formal political parties and significant influence. That visibility makes Canada the epicentre of the issue—the “worst kept secret” in national security circles.

The roots of this situation go back to the Cold War. During that era, the Soviet Union supported a unified Indian state, and the Indian government was a Close ally of the Soviet Union. In response, Western countries—including the United States, Canada, and others in the Five Eyes alliance—extended tacit or even open support to Sikh separatist groups, much as they had backed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The logic was the same: weakening Soviet influence by empowering opposition movements, regardless of the long-term consequences. This short-term geopolitical calculation helped lay the groundwork for the challenges of today.

It was not necessarily a brilliant position to take, but that was the logic of the Cold War. After the Cold War ended, no one really re-evaluated that policy, so it continued along the same political lines.

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