About the film
Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter, scheduled for release in the coming weeks, investigates the twin forces that have shaped India’s security dilemma – foreign‑fuelled Wahhabi radicalism and Cold‑War geopolitics. The documentary traces the spread of “love jihad”, land encroachment and no‑go zones, tallying the loss of thousands of lives on account of widespread Madrasa-led extremism that has triggered riots and terrorism. The film puts forward the urgent and reasoned case for reparations. While it acknowledges the forward-looking vision of MBS’s NEOM project and his commendable efforts to distance governance from the rigidity of Hadith-based orthodoxy, it raises a critical question: can such ambitious reform truly address the long shadow cast by decades of Wahhabi-driven radicalisation—often funded by Saudi petrodollars? With financial priorities now shifting away from ideological export, the damage may no longer be deepening, but the wounds remain. The documentary thus argues that reparative measures are essential for genuine healing and regional reconciliation.
Bankrolling Terror, Penalising Trade: The Double Standards of American Policy
In the unforgiving arena of realpolitik non-aggression is often read as weakness and India, with its restrained posture, has long been an easy target for stronger powers. The United States in particular has tended to lean on nations that avoid overt confrontation and India was frequently cast as a diplomatic whipping boy. The economic cost ran deep: by fuelling an arms race in South Asia Washington compelled New Delhi to divert billions of scarce foreign-exchange dollars into urgent purchases of aircraft, missiles and other hardware, widening poverty and straining an already fragile economy.
In 2019 former US President Donald Trump branded India the “tariff king”, insisting that Harley-Davidsons were stymied by import duties while Indian goods entered the United States almost duty-free. He demanded parity. Facts, however, tell a different story. In the 1980s Washington channelled billions of dollars in military and covert aid to Pakistan to bleed the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia matched these contributions, directing its petrodollars to the same pipeline that armed and trained Islamist militias. Training camps sprang up across the Durand Line and radical sermons soon justified attacks on temples, markets and public transport in India — the infrastructure of terror bankrolled, in large part, by American and Saudi funds.
The list of major terror strikes on Indian soil is long and devastating. In 2001 terrorists stormed the Indian Parliament in Delhi, killing nine and nearly paralysing the heart of the world’s largest democracy. In 2006 Mumbai’s suburban train network was ripped apart by seven coordinated explosions that left 189 dead during peak rush hour. The carnage returned in 2008 when ten armed men from Pakistan laid siege to Mumbai, killing 166 civilians, foreigners and policemen across iconic landmarks including the Taj Mahal Hotel, CST station and a Jewish outreach centre. In 2019, 40 Indian paramilitary personnel were killed in Pulwama when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into a CRPF convoy. These are only the best-known among hundreds of coordinated attacks.
Add to this the casualties of conflict such as the 1999 Kargil War, where over 500 Indian soldiers died defending their territory against Pakistani intrusions. The cumulative toll—whether in terror strikes or cross-border skirmishes—has deeply altered India’s internal security priorities, economic planning and social cohesion. This continuum of violence is powerfully portrayed in ‘Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter’, which documents how these incidents are not just episodes but outcomes of long-standing foreign alignments.
From 2000 to 2024 terror violence claimed 47,130 Indian lives (SATP). Kashmir’s seventy-eight-day shutdown in 2016 erased ₹16,000 crore ≈ $2 billion from the Valley’s economy. The post-Article 370 curfew cost ₹17,800 crore ≈ $2.2 billion. India now spends ₹7 lakh crore ≈ $83 billion on defence each year, money redirected from schools and hospitals to armour and surveillance.
Mr Trump cannot be expected to track every casualty ledger yet India’s strategic community should have reminded him that American funding of Pakistan translated into Indian funerals and budgetary strain. Instead New Delhi was left parrying threats over motorcycles made in Milwaukee while poverty indicators at home worsened under the weight of security spending.
Washington’s largesse went beyond covert cash. In 1983 the United States approved 40 F-16A/B fighters for Pakistan at a package cost of about $3 billion. A second tranche of 18 F-16C/D jets plus mid-life upgrades worth another $2 billion followed in the 2000s. Islamabad also received Harpoon missiles, P-3C maritime patrol aircraft and M-109 howitzers under Foreign Military Financing. Each new delivery forced New Delhi to counter-balance with imports from Moscow and Paris—MiG-29s then Su-30MKIs then Mirage-2000Hs then Rafales. India’s cumulative capital outlay on foreign hardware has exceeded ₹15 lakh crore (approx. $180 billion) since the late 1980s. The arms race was rooted in Washington’s Sinophile and Pakistan-tilted diplomacy of the Nixon-Kissinger era. American enthusiasm for Pakistan’s military leadership was often amplified by its diplomatic corps, which included high-profile female envoys whose access and influence helped smoothen defence flows. Today the same Capitol Hill complains about American motorcycle sales and trade imbalances.
Two Allies, One Pattern – How Washington and Riyadh Acted in Tandem
For much of the Cold War, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operated along a shared strategic arc. Washington backed Islamabad with military aid and opened ties with Beijing to counter Soviet influence. Riyadh, meanwhile, financed the global spread of Wahhabi ideology to insulate the Muslim world from communism. One supplied fighter jets, the other exported doctrine — and Pakistan became the conduit. The battlefield, however, was India. This pincer of American hardware and Saudi-funded radicalism pushed New Delhi into an arms race it could ill afford and unleashed extremist networks that still bleed its cities.
Among the most dangerous byproducts of this strategy was Osama bin Laden — a creation of the US-backed jihad in Afghanistan, who would later turn into its deadliest nemesis. It was a costly, near-suicidal miscalculation that rewrote the global threat map.
The slogans differed — “freedom” in Washington, “faith” in Riyadh — but the outcomes converged: lives lost, security budgets swollen and development deferred.
A New Dawn over Riyadh – and an Unpaid Debt
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has clipped the religious police and allowed women to drive, opened cinemas and declared that most Hadiths contradicting reason can be set aside. The ₹124 lakh crore ≈ $1.5 trillion NEOM project signals a forward-looking kingdom. Hindu temples in Abu Dhabi and Dubai mark fresh pluralism.
These reforms are historic. Yet between the late 1970s and the early 2010s Saudi charities channelled an estimated ₹8 lakh crore ≈ $100 billion into exporting Wahhabi doctrines. That money financed madrasas and literatur
e which validated “land jihad” , “love jihad”, no-go neighbourhood riots and armed terror inside India. ‘Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter’, portrays how these ideological exports translated into real-world violence that continues to affect India’s internal security and social fabric.
Though the funding pipeline may now be drying up, the violence it fuelled has not abated. Crimson Crescent highlights how the long shadow of that funding still haunts communities across India — where the scars of radicalisation run deep. Who accounts for the losses already borne? The desecrated shrines, the families forced to flee, the neighbourhood businesses devastated by bomb blasts, curfews and recurring fear — all remain unanswered questions. The film asks: who will take responsibility for the damage already done?
The Case for Reparations: who Pays for Decades of Foreign-Funded Terror?
Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter makes its case with clarity and conviction. The film documents how decades of externally funded radicalisation — fuelled by Saudi petrodollars and Pakistani networks — have imposed a heavy cost on India: over 47,000 lives lost, economic disruption and deep cultural dislocation. The call for reparations is not a rhetorical flourish but a serious demand grounded in international precedent — from Germany’s compensation to Holocaust survivors to American payouts to Vietnamese civilians harmed by Agent Orange, a toxic chemical sprayed during the Vietnam War and to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. By focusing on communities in India still living with the fallout — displaced families, ruined businesses and desecrated shrines — the film poses a direct question: will the world apply the same moral standards to Indian victims or does justice stop at India’s borders?
A comparable mechanism is overdue for India. Restoration must begin with tangible support. Gulf countries that once financed radical networks should now help rebuild the temples and marketplaces damaged by sectarian violence over decades. This is not charity but responsibility. Rehabilitation should follow as a structured programme—perhaps through a crude-oil levy or defence-contract offset—to create an India Terror Victim Fund. Such a fund could assist with education grants and long-term trauma recovery for those affected by ideologically motivated violence. Finally, there must be recognition. Both Washington and Riyadh should consider formal public acknowledgements of the role their past policies played in fuelling radicalisation in South Asia.
The Road Ahead
Saudi Arabia is building NEOM, a futuristic city along the Red Sea coast projected to feature AI-managed infrastructure, airborne taxis and a 170-kilometre linear city called ‘The Line’ with mirrored walls. This skyline of drones and glass reflects Saudi Arabia’s ambitious reforms. Simultaneously, Washington continues to court India as a strategic ally. Between NEOM’s neon and Capitol Hill’s marble lie unacknowledged Indian casualties – civilians and soldiers whose deaths are often counted in reports but seldom remembered in global discourse. Reform without reparations leaves that ledger open and the trust deficit unresolved.
Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter presents not just statistics but a structural argument. It raises the invoice that history has long held back. The film is a reckoning – not with faiths but with policies, not with peoples but with power equations that repeatedly placed India on the frontline of someone else’s war. The world must now decide: will it pay back what was extracted in blood and treasure or will it continue to speak of partnership while forgetting the price one side alone was made to pay?
The film releases in a few weeks and with it begins a necessary conversation—one India has waited decades to have.
Watch the Promo of the film: https://youtu.be/A4z_JIW6eYc
