As the Quad group meets with Annex, India has become more firm on the issue of terror financing, says Jaishankar in Manila Warning

This week, it was Manila that was hosting a message that India has been delivering in capitals for years with growing force one this time with greater tinderbox-like edges and a packed room. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at the 33rd ASEAN Regional Forum asserted that there could be no tolerance for terrorism and that any acts of terror would have consequences, in a sharp reminder, not as a diplomatic statement, but in a gathering where Pakistan's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, sat in the same room. It was impossible to miss the optics. No country has been named by India, but the timing and the setting has named it.

The second half of the sentence, which was rarely mentioned in the headlines, gave the statement its heft. But Jaishankar did not end with condemnations, he took the forum deeper into the financial architecture that enables terrorism to continue. Now it is necessary to cut off the funds that allow such networks to operate, he added, citing the role being played by the Indian Government in this regard, which is co-chairing the Experts' Working Group under the framework of the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus with Malaysia and developing a compendium of best practices for the member countries. This is a switch from the moral to the operational, and it is part of a general trend in Indian diplomacy over the last two years – the absence of grievance and an increasing focus on the mechanisms, compliance regimes and deficiencies through which terror financing remains within the confines of the sanctions regime on paper.

The context of recent history cannot be divorced from the subtext. Throughout the last year, India has been developing the case abroad that cross-border terrorism is not a bilateral irritant that can be dealt with discreetly but a threat that can be dealt with through financial plumbing that extends beyond national boundaries, shell companies and informal transfer networks. India wants that argument normalised and not just limited to South Asian diplomacy, and that is where multilateral forums like the ARF are meant to bring the dialogue.Multilateral forums such as the ARF, where over two dozen countries including China, the United States, Russia and the European Union at the same table, are where India wants that argument normalised. The global counter-terrorism financing architecture around the Financial Action Task Force is also welcoming to choking finances, with the region being an area of concern for India, which has long complained of the lack of uniformity in monitoring hawala networks and charity-based financing channels.

All of this did not occur by chance. The comments by Jaishankar come after a hectic two-day visit to Manila during which he met with his US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his counterparts from Australia and Japan in the second Quad ministerial meeting in less than three months. The Quad was reaffirming a free and open Indo-Pacific, and importantly, the centrality of ASEAN in its form, which is designed to ease Southeast Asian capitals' fears of being caught between Washington and Beijing, the joint Quad statement said. The ministers also discussed the critical minerals, technology supply chains and North Korea's nuclear programme, where India has started to build its presence beyond the typical maritime security discussion.

A more significant economic component here than is typically given its due. India-ASEAN trade has ended the FY 2025-26 at around 128 billion dollars or about 11 per cent of India's global trade, with both sides engaged in talks to modernise the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement to correct the imbalance that has been a long bugbear for New Delhi. Nearly 28 billion dollars of that trade is conducted between Indonesia and Japan, with the lion's share of it going to Indonesia, as coal, palm oil and mineral exports dominate the two-way trade. The security discussion in Manila and the economic discussion in New Delhi are not parallel tracks, but the same relationship and India's efforts against terror are part of an attempt to keep the investment and connectivity it has built in the region, which it has been pursuing for the past ten years through the Act East policy.

Maritime security was also on the agenda with Jaishankar referring to the Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region and naval deployments in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific as examples of India's operational measures for regional stability, rather than words. On the South China Sea, he proposed a legally binding Code of Conduct that is in line with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has different implications this year as fresh clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels over a shoal in the South China Sea occurred just two days prior to the forum. India's language was measured and careful, refraining from any direct criticism of Beijing, but the tilt towards Manila's view was evident.

Combined, the Manila outing can have the feel of a coordinated message: India doesn't want to treat terrorism as a matter of permanent diplomatic antagonism; it wants to make this case part of the multilateral agenda one on which Pakistan could not just dance; it wants this agenda to be backed by its economic and maritime strength in the Southeast Asian region rather than set apart from it. It remains unclear whether the sentiment will be translated to increased financial monitoring, and past compendia of best practices have fallen by the wayside. But the move from condemnatory rhetoric to enforcement mechanisms is a sign of India's growing sophistication in its counter-terrorism efforts, and one to watch beyond this week's headlines.