B.RAMAN
( Written at the request of Editor, Rediff.com : http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-it-is-tough-to-trust-the-isi/20120814.htm
)
According to the “Express Tribune” of Pakistan, as
cited by Rediff on August 13,2012, a proposal, possibly originating from the
US, for an interaction between the chiefs of Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is
presently under examination by the Pakistani authorities.
2.Rediff has reported as follows: “The proposal is
among "numerous mechanisms" being explored to reduce the trust
deficit between the two neighbours, The Express Tribune quoted official sources
as saying. It quoted a source as claiming that the US was instrumental in
persuading the two countries to discuss the possibility of a meeting between
the heads of the Research and Analysis Wing and Inter-Services Intelligence. A
Pakistani official was quoted as saying that several proposals, including
regular interactions between the security agencies of the two countries, were
on the table.”
3. There is no way of knowing whether the report of
the “Express Tribune” is correct; if so, whether a similar proposal has been
received by the Government of India and what has been the reaction of New Delhi
to it.
4. Regular liaison relationships and sporadic
liaison interactions, without involving a regular relationship, between the
external intelligence agencies of even
adversary states are not uncommon. At the height of the cold war, the USA’s
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was reported to have had liaison interactions
with its counterparts in the erstwhile USSR and China
5.From the limited information available in the
public domain regarding these interactions, it appeared that these interactions
were used by the US as a mechanism for discussing sensitive issues away from
the glare of publicity and for providing the political leadership with
deniable means of remaining in touch with
its counterparts in the USSR and China without the media coming to know about
it. Though intelligence of mutual interest might have been exchanged during
these interactions, that was probably not the primary purpose of it.
6. Information is available in the public domain
regarding at least three past liaison interactions of a sporadic nature between
the chiefs of the R&AW and the ISI. Two of these were when Rajiv Gandhi was
the Prime Minister and the third when Chandrasekhar was the Prime Minister. The
initiative for these sporadic interactions, which were held at the height of
the Khalistan terrorist movement, came from the then Crown Prince of Jordan,
who was a good friend of Rajiv Gandhi and Gen.Zia ul-Haq, then in power in
Pakistan.
7. India was making serious allegations, in private
and public, regarding ISI assistance to
the Khalistani terrorists. The Crown Prince reportedly felt that it would be
better to discuss such allegations in deniable
meetings between the chiefs of the two agencies instead of voicing them
in public. These three interactions did not have any impact on the ISI’s
support for the Khalistan terrorist movement, which continued to be as strong
as ever.
8.The only seemingly beneficial outcomes of these
three meetings were the Pakistani expulsion of four Sikh deserters from the
Indian Army who had sought political asylum in Pakistan and informal
discussions on certain ideas emanating from the two sides on possible ways of
solving the Siachen dispute.
9. These three interactions were not followed up in
subsequent years due to strong misgivings in the minds of the political
leadership in India regarding the utility of such interactions from the point
of view of our national security. In the case of the US, the intelligence
agencies of the USSR and China were not engaged in attempts to destabilise the
US through the use of terrorism in the US territory as a strategic weapon.
10. In the case of India and Pakistan, the issue is
complicated due to the role of the ISI in fomenting terrorism against Indian
nationals and interests. Moreover, there was a fear that the ISI might exploit
liaison interactions and relationships to penetrate the Indian intelligence and
security set-up.
11. Proposals for the revival of the sporadic
liaison interactions between the heads of the R&AW and the ISI did come
from the US after the Mumbai blasts of March 1993, but Narasimha Rao, the then
Prime Minister, did not react to them positively. One understands that from
time to time the US continues to float suggestions for a revival of the liaison
interactions to reduce the hostility and suspicions between the intelligence
communities of India and Pakistan. There were reports of such ideas being
floated around after the ISI-backed Jihadi attack on the Indian Parliament in
December 2001 and after the ISI-backed terrorist strikes by the Lashkar-e-Toiba
I(LET) in Mumbai in the last week of November,2008.These ideas probably
remained a non-starter due to lack of enthusiasm from Islamabad as well as New
Delhi.
12.One finds it difficult to understand why the US
should revive these ideas now when there is a serious trust deficit between the
intelligence communities of the US and Pakistan. Over 60 years of intense,
formal liaision relationship between the ISI and the CIA did not come in the
way of the ISI stabbing the CIA in the back by giving clandestine shelter to
Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. The shelter given to OBL demonstrated clearly
the perfidious mindset of the ISI, whether towards friends or foes.
13. One should not now be open to such ideas as in
the past due to two reasons. The first is the incident relating to OBL. The
second is the book on the penetration of the R&AW by the CIA through Major
Rabinder Singh written by Amar Bhushan, the then No 3 in the R&AW who was,
inter alia, responsible for counter-intelligence.
14. Amar Bhushan has given his book titled “Escape
To Nowhere” the cloak of a fiction, but everyone reading it will know it is
about the way the R&AW’s then leadership, including Amar himself, dealt
with Rabinder Singh before he managed to escape to the US in May 2004 after
giving a slip to the R&AW’s surveillance teams.
15. Even though the book is a mix of facts and
fiction, any intelligence professional reading it between the lines would not
fail to notice that the CIA managed to penetrate the R&AW and ultimately to
whisk Rabinder Singh out of India right under the nose of the R&AW by
noticing and exploiting serious
weaknesses in the counter-intelligence
and security armour of the R&AW. One does not know whether these weaknesses
have since been addressed and removed and whether the R&AW and the rest of
our intelligence community are now in a better position to prevent penetration
of their set-up by hostile agencies like the ISI.
16. Unless and until these deficiencies are removed
and a professional culture of acting in unison becomes the accepted norm in our
intelligence community, we should not rush into reacting positively to any
ideas for liaison interactions and relationships with the ISI. ( 14-8-12)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi)
