SPY VS SPY: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

B.RAMAN

A spook spends his  working life in a cloistered world---protecting himself, his relatives, his feelings and his joys and sorrows from unwanted curiosity.

The special bonds that one develops in this world last till one makes one’s peace with the Maker.

Amar Bhushan is one of the  officers of the R&AW with whom I developed special bonds of friendship, professional regard and affection.

He joined the Indian Police Service almost a decade after I did and retired from the R&AW 11 years after me.

He was my junior colleague in my division for some  years after he set foot in the organisation. Thereafter, he moved to other divisions with which I had nothing to do, but the special bonds between us remained strong and unrusted.

He was a man of tremendous personal and professional integrity, with an eye for thoroughness in whatever he did---- a professional to his finger tips.

After a  distinguished career during which he became a highly valued expert on Bangladesh, he retired as Special Secretary in 2005.

Amar wore many hats in that capacity. One of them was as the R&AW’s Czar of counter-intelligence responsible for preventing, detecting and neutralising attempts of foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate the R&AW and subvert the loyalty of its officers.

Under that hat, he played a commendable role in detecting, with the help of his junior colleagues, the penetration of the R&AW by the USA’s  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through Maj.Rabinder Singh, a retired officer of the Army who joined the organisation in the 1980s.

One does not know when Rabinder became a mole of the CIA? Was he already a mole when he was in the Army? Or was he recruited by the CIA after he joined the organisation? If so, when?

What role his sister, who was a US citizen and who was a US Government public servant, played in facilitating the penetration of the R&AW by the CIA through her brother? Was it wise and professional on the part of the R&AW to have taken into the organisation someone many of whose relatives were US citizens and at least one of whom was a public servant of the US?

What damage did he cause to the organisation and the country during the period he was a CIA mole in the sanctum sanctorum of the R&AW?

Penetration by a foreign intelligence agency is an occupational hazard in the intelligence profession.

Rabinder was not the first mole of the CIA in the Indian intelligence community.

We had another in the Chennai office of the R&AW detected in the 1980s.He was allegedly being run by a CIA officer working under Consular cover in the US Consulate-General in Chennai.

We had one at a very senior level in the Intelligence Bureau detected in the 1990s. If he had not been detected in time,he might have become the head of the IB. A woman officer of the CIA working under cover in the US Embassy in Delhi for maintaining liaison with the Indian intelligence had allegedly become close to him by exploiting her frequent meetings with him for sharing intelligence on counter-terrorism.

We reportedly found a mole even after the detection of Rabinder in the National Security Council Secretariat, which is  part of the Prime Minister’s Office. A woman cyber security expert of the US had allegedly played a role in this case.

These were the detected cases. One does not know how many undetected cases are there.

Of the four detected cases, that of Rabinder was unique. Whereas the other three were detected and acted against without their being able to run away from the country. Rabinder was the one that got away evading the surveillance that had been mounted on him.

His getting away was made possible by the active assistance reportedly given by the CIA to him and his family.

In the other three cases, the CIA merely withdrew its officers working under cover in India after it came to know that its moles in the Indian intelligence community had come under suspicion by the Indian counter-intelligence.

It did not try to help them to get away.

Only in the case of Rabinder, even at the risk of an adverse impact on the State-to-State relations with India, the CIA seems to have moved heaven and earth to help him get away into the safe sanctuary of the US.

Why did it do so? Was it in gratitude for the invaluable services that he might have rendered to the CIA? Or was it due to fears that if arrested and interrogated by the Indian counter-intelligence, he might under duress reveal the identities of other CIA moles in the Indian intelligence community of whom he possibly had knowledge?

So many questions without answers in the public domain.

When Aldrich  Ames, the notorious spy of the KGB in the sanctum sanctorum of the CIA, was detected and arrested in the 1990s, there were detailed enquiries in-house in the CIA as well as by the Congressional oversight committees.

The entire history of Ames as a KGB mole was traced. How was he recruited? How did he manage to evade detection for many years? What were the deficiencies in the CIA’s CI set-up which he and the KGB exploited? What damage did he cause?

Many of the details of these enquiries were made available in the public domain. You can find them in the Congressional records.

In India, any scholar who wants to reconstruct L’Affaire Rabinder Singh on the basis of authentic data will not be able to do so because nothing is available in public domain.

Whatever we have are speculative reports carried by the media.

In this context, one has to welcome reports carried by sections of the media on July 15,2012, that Amar has written a semi-fictional narrative of the case ( Escape To Nowhere), which is being published this week and will be launched in Delhi on July 23.

Knowing the central, active and leading role that Amar played in this case, one can be certain it will not be just a semi-fiction as it has been projected to be.

It will be a critical analysis incognito.

Amar needs to be hailed for writing this. It will be an important contribution to the meagre history of Indian intelligence available in public domain.

It will throw welcome light on a sad chapter in the history of the R&AW.

Strength to you, Amar. (16-7-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), R&AW )

UNWISE TO LIFT BAN ON PAK TV PROGRAMMES

B.RAMAN

In 1989, widespread demonstrations, some of them leading to violence, broke out in Jammu & Kashmir against the Government of India.

2.That was the time when East Europe was in turmoil with large-scale demonstrations  against their Communist regimes by the people of the then East Germany, Rumania etc.

3. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence acquired visuals of these massive demonstrations in East Europe and started beaming them through Pakistani TV to the people of J&K, with appeals to emulate the people of East Europe and come out in the streets to demonstrate against the Government of India.

4. Shri V.P.Singh, the then Prime Minister, and Shri Vinod Pandey, the then Cabinet Secretary, convened an emergency meeting of the Secretaries’ Committee to discuss how to counter this.

5.The head of the R&AW was directed to take whatever measures were necessary to prevent Pakistani TV programmes from being receivable in J&K and authorised to procure the necessary equipment for this purpose. The equipment was acquired on an emergency basis and the Pakistani TV’s  programmes were effectively jammed.

6. Since then, we have been careful to see that Pakistani TV programmes are not receivable in India for the following reasons:

·        

 To prevent dissemination of programmes that could incite sections of our population to violence

·         

To prevent dissemination of wrong information that could cause communal violence.

·         

To prevent attempts to subvert the loyalty of any section of our population to the Government of India.

7.After the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, many Governments have armed themselves with powers to ban TV programmes that could tend to incite their population to take to violence or terrorism. For example, there is a ban in many Western countries on the Al-Aqsa TV channel of Hamas.TV channels of Iran are not allowed to be shown in many countries.

8. On July 7,2010, the Agence France Presse (AFP) disseminated the following report: “On July 7, 2010, the French government instructed its broadcasting authority to take Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV off the air. The satellite channel was broadcast on Eutelsat, a French satellite company headquartered in Paris. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said that the instruction was given when France received a warning from the European Commission that the channel repeatedly violated European laws by showing programs which incited hatred or violence for reasons of religion or nationality, mostly against Israel and Judaism.”

9. At a time when we are still grappling with  the evil of jihadi terrorism emanating from Pakistan, through State-sponsorship and other means, it will be extremely unwise on our part to  remove existing curbs on the airing of Pakistani TV programmes in India and to allow Pakistani TV channels to beam their programmes to India.

10. Some sections of our media have reported that the Government of India is considering relaxing some of the existing restrictions. Such action will be seriously detrimental to national security and should be opposed by public and political opinion. (15-7-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

SINDHI NATIONALISTS PROTEST AGAINST PUNJABI SHENZHEN

B.RAMAN

( To be read in continuation of my article of June 7,2012, titled ZARDARI IN CHINA: FOCUS ON SINDH  available at http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.in/2012/06/zardari-in-china-focus-on-sindh.html )

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was in Beijing from June 5 to 7,2012, to attend the summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) of which Pakistan, like India, Iran and Afghanistan, is an observer.

2.During Zardari’s stay in Beijing, officials of the two countries signed three  memoranda of understanding (MoUs) covering supply of water from Tarbela to Islamabad, the establishment of a Special Economic Zone in the proposed new city Zulfikarabad in Sindh and the building there of 6,000 flats   on private-public partnership basis. They also signed  an agreement for Chinese assistance in the  de-silting of canals and barrages in the Sindh province.

3. After Mr.Zardari’s return from China, it was reported that he  has directed the Sindh Government to identify amillion acres (4,000 km²) of land near the coast in Thatta district for the development of the proposed new city, in  memory of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The proposed location of the city would be near Jherek in Thatta district.

4. It was also reported that Mr.Zardari sought Chinese assistance to make Zulfikarabad into a major special economic zone patterned after Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong province where China’s first SEZ was set up and where the Chinese economic miracle started.

5. Reports about Mr.Zardari’s plans to create, with Chinese assistance, a Pakistani Shenzhen in the Thatta area of Sindh have caused serious concerns among sections of the Sindhi nationalists, who fear that the Chinese-aided project might result in the eviction of the Sindhi peasants from the area and the ingress of a large number of Punjabi businessmen and ex-servicemen into the area to make the city a Punjabi Shenzhen in the heart of Sindh.

6.The protesting Sindhi nationalists claim that the Chinese-aided construction of the Gwadar port in Balochistan resulted in the ingress of a large number of Punjabi businessmen and construction companies into the area, transforming Gwadar, which was essentially a Baloch fishing village, into a Punjabi colony in the heart of Balochistan.

7. Many Sindhis fear that a similar fate might befall Thatta and that the Punjabis would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the project. Mr.Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which strongly supports the project, has undertaken a campaign to educate the Sindhis that the project would benefit Sindh and the Sindhis and that the fears voiced by the Sindhi nationalists were baseless. The inauguration of the construction of the project, originally due in the last week of June, has reportedly been postponed for giving time to address the concerns of the Sindhi nationalists.

8. In their campaign to remove the fears of the Sindhi nationalists, PPP leaders have been saying that the proposed  SEZ  would have  a special regulatory regime to ensure that the  locals have the priority over jobs and other opportunities, that the inflow of people from other parts of the country is controlled by introducing  work permits and that land could only be leased with ownership  remaining  with the locals.

9.PPP leaders have also been promising that as part of the Chinese-aided project, the road, rail and port (Keti Bunder) infrastructure in the area will be upgraded and a number of technical and vocational training institutions will be started to train Sindhis to take up jobs in the SEZ and to start their own small and medium scale industries

10. Despite this, Sindhi nationalist parties such as the Jeay Sindh Qaumi  Mahaz (JSQM)   have started a protest movement against the project. On July 12,2012, the JSQM took out a protest rally against the proposed project in Karachi. JSQM leaders had planned to march to the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi to hold a demonstration, but the police prevented them from going there.

11. The protesters then  staged a sit-in on the National Highway and destroyed over  1000 SIM cards of their Chinese mobile sets. Dr.Niaz Kalani, the acting Chairman of the JSQM, who led the protest rally, announced that more protest rallies and sit-in demonstrations against the Chinese Government would be held from July 18.An appeal was issued to the Sindhis to boycott Chinese goods and a Chinese cell phone service provider. Among other JSQM leaders who participated in the protest were Mr.Asif Baladi, Mr.Sagar Hanif Burrdi,Mr. Sarfraz Memon and Mr. Maqsood Qureshi. ( 15-7-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

PAK TALIBAN ON COME-BACK TRAIL IN NON-TRIBAL AREAS

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 755

B.RAMAN

On June 24,2012, about 100 followers of Maulana Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader who used to operate from the Swat Valley of the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa Province of Pakistan and who have since taken sanctuary in the Nuristan area of Afghanistan after they were driven out of Swat by the Pakistani Army in 2009, infiltrated into the Dir Area of Pakistan and ambushed a Pakistani military convoy and captured 17 soldiers. They then retreated into Nuristan. On June 29, they disseminated a video showing the pictures of the heads of the kidnapped soldiers and their army identification cards.

2.They  announced through Sirajuddin Ahmad, Fazlullah’s cousin and spokesman, that their jihad against the Pakistan Army was continuing despite the set-back suffered by them in the Swat Valley and expressed their determination to re-establish their control over the Swat Valley. In the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah had become well known as Mulla FM radio  because he used to address the residents of the valley and conduct Friday prayers through an FM radio station.

3.Commenting on the brutal massacre of the 17 kidnapped soldiers by the Pakistani Taliban group headed by Fazlullah, the “Daily Times” of Lahore wrote in an editorial titled “Murder Most Foul” as follows:” The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants now, it seems, have found sanctuary in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, which, ironically, are under the Haqqani network’s control. All along, our establishment, to the detriment of the nation, has been giving safe havens to its proxies and now these same proxies seem to be returning the favour by giving shelter to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the enemies of the Pakistani state. It seems like our policy of waging proxy war by using these jihadi murderers has boomeranged to hit us hard.”

4.On July 10,2012, six Pakistani soldiers and a policeman were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Pakistani Army camp in Wazirabad in Punjab's district of Gujrat, 150 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Islamabad. The Pakistani Taliban was later reported to have claimed responsibility for the attack. A few hours before the attack, an anti-NATO procession to protest against the Government’s decision to lift the ban on the movement of NATO supplies from Karachi to Afghanistan had passed through the area on its way to Islamabad. The Army camp had reportedly been set up to prevent any untoward incident.

5.Commenting on the incident, the “Friday Times” wrote: “That the insurgents, once tools of the ‘deep state’, have now turned against their mentors has exposed the blinkered policies followed by the Generals over many years. The severity of the event, if seen together with the recent upper Dir attacks, is enough to ring alarm bells on a future, not too far away, where an unruly situation awaits Pakistan. The spate of attacks, that too on multiple targets across Pakistan, is an indication that the insurgents can no longer be considered to be confined to just the tribal regions. Hinting at its future course of action after striking the military camp in Wazirabad, the TTP has indicated it is activating its Punjabi Taliban wing, meaning more attacks in Punjab.”

6.And the threatened attack by the Punjabi Taliban came early on the morning of July 12,2012, when unidentified gunmen entered a private hostel in Lahore and killed nine policemen working in the prison department of the Khyber Pakhtunkwa province who were staying there. They were undergoing training in the National Academy of Prison Administration in Lahore run by the Federal Government.

7. Since the Academy could not provide accommodation to all the trainees in its premises,28 from the KP province and three from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir  (POK) had been put up in a private hostel. According to an IGP of Lahore, about 10 terrorists reached the hostel at about 5-30 AM in a car and three motor cycles, indiscriminately opened fire and threw hand-grenades and escaped in their vehicles.

8.According to the Agence France Presse (AFP),one Ehsanullah Ehsan, who claimed to be a spokesman  of the Pakistani Taliban, rang up the AFP office and said  that the attack proved “no place is beyond our reach”. He claimed that five attackers had targeted the policemen because Taliban inmates were tortured in prisons and added that the raid was “part of chain of attacks” that started in Punjab’s Gujrat district on July 9 and would continue.

9.After the May 22,2011, attack by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan on the PNS Mehran, the base of the air wing of the Pakistan Navy in Karachi, there was a lull in the attacks of the Pakistani Taliban on governmental targets, particularly in the non-tribal areas. However, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ( LEJ), which is considered as identical with what is referred to as the Punjabi Taliban, has kept up its attacks on Shia targets in Balochistan. It is reported to have killed about 80 Shias, mainly Hazaras, in Balochistan since the beginning of this year, without any action being taken against it by the Pakistani authorities. Mr.Rehman Malik, Interior Adviser to the Pakistan Government, has been periodically blaming the LEJ for some of the violent incidents in Karachi.

10. While the followers of Fazlullah, who operate from Nuristan in Afghanistan, and those of Hakimullah Mehsud, who operate from North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, are referred to as the Pashtun Taliban, the cadres of the LEJ, who operate from sanctuaries in Pakistani Punjab, are referred to as the Punjabi Taliban.

11. After a lull of a little more than a year, these elements have resumed their attacks on Governmental targets. The resumption of the attacks cannot be attributed to the resumption of NATO transit supplies, since the attack in Dir took place before the NATO supplies were resumed and the ban was still in force. The reasons for the resumption of the attacks on Governmental targets in the non-tribal areas are not clear. ( 14-7-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

IS CHINA CREATING A CAPABILITY FOR COPTER-BORNE OPERATIONS ACROSS TIBET?

B.RAMAN

Has the Chinese Army (PLA) created for itself a capability for helicopter-borne operations across Tibet in Arunachal Pradesh?

2.That is a question that needs to be examined by Indian analysts and experts in the light of a report carried by the “PLA Daily” on July 12,2012, which is annexed.

3.It makes three important points:

·        

 The PLA Army Aviation Force, which was initially raised for giving ground support to the Army in its operations, has now been upgraded to enable it to play an independent assault role.

·         

The combat areas of the PLA army aviation force have expanded from plain to plateau.

·         

As a result, the PLA army troops possess the capability for launching  air-to-ground precision strike in  high altitude areas. ( 13-7-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

ANNEXURE

PLA army aviation force shifts from support type to main-battle-assault one

　As an air-confrontation drill conducted by an army aviation force under the information-based conditions was unveiled at a place in the south of China’s Yangtze River on the day, June 11 is a day destined to be remembered in the history of the army aviation force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). A PLA army aviation brigade, which was just upgraded from a PLA army aviation regiment, dispatched the PLA’s new-type helicopters for the first time to participate in the actual-troop drill and made its debut by dispatching the PLA’s largest helicopter fleet for emergency combat drill before tens of PLA generals.

　　The troop unit’s shift from a “pupa” to a “butterfly” is a miniature of the transformation and development of the PLA army aviation force. According to the briefing, after it was put under a group army from an army aviation regiment directly under a military area command in 2003, the brigade initially realized the shift from the support type to the main-battle-assault one in its over-nine-year transformation and development period, becoming the “iron fist in the air” in the joint strikes for victories.

　　In the summer of last year, a ground-and-air joint combat drill was conducted on the snow-covered plateau, marking that the combat areas of the PLA army aviation force have expanded from plain to plateau. As a result, the PLA army troops possess the capability for launching the air-to-ground precision strike in the high altitude areas.

　　The “lying on the ground” army troops really begin to fly， said a leader of the Army Aviation Department of the PLA General Staff Headquarters. He added, “The ‘two reductions and two additions’, namely, the establishment of the PLA Army Aviation Force soon after the one-million disarmament in 1985 and the establishment of the PLA Army Aviation Academy after the 500,000 disarmament in 1999, allowed the army aviation force building to take the “express train” of our times. As a result, the army aviation force has gradually developed into a powerful combat force with air-ground integration and air-sea integration capabilities.”

　　Today, the PLA army aviation force has established its own operation theory systems supported by the 19 monographs, which are developed from scratch and from weak to strong, and its main plane-model development realized the leap from the imported ones to the independent innovation and mass-production ones.

Editor:Zhang Tao