R&AW: AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

B.RAMAN

The R&AW has been the target of considerable criticism in sections of our media over what they have perceived as its serious blunder in disseminating a HUMINT report regarding plans of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Pakistani terrorist organisation, to carry out major acts of catastrophic terrorism in Gujarat and Mumbai. There has even been a campaign of ridicule against the organisation which has been sought to be projected as nincompoop.

2. “The Hindu” of May 11,2012, has carried an eight-column report on Page 15 under the title
“R&AW Left With Egg on Its Face As Terror Plot Unravels” contributed jointly by Praveen Swami, who enjoys a tremendous reputation in media circles of New Delhi, and his colleague Muhammad Ali.

3. To quote from the first para of the report: “ The Research & Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence service, is facing allegations of incompetence after three Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives who, it claimed, were about to conduct  a suicide squad operation in Western India turned out to be living at their home in Lahore and to be businessmen, not terrorists.” This gives the essential gist of the story.

4.There has been a negative projection of the R&AW not only by “The Hindu”, but also by others. Along with its HUMINT report, the R&AW had disseminated pics of the three alleged terrorists of the LET who, according to it, had infiltrated into India along with two others to carry out the feared acts of terrorism. The Mumbai Police correctly released to the public the salient points of the report along with the pics as received from the R&AW. These pics were carried by a journal of Delhi on its web site. The three persons concerned, living in Lahore, thereupon appeared in public in Lahore and sought to ridicule the R&AW.

5. The definite embarrassment to the R&AW has been sought to be exploited  in Pakistan for discrediting it. It has been projected as an example of the kind of baseless reports which the agency disseminates regarding terrorism allegedly emanating from Pakistan. The main objective of the campaign in Pakistan has been to discredit the R&AW in the eyes of the Indian public and the international community and to project its reporting on Pakistan-based terrorism as untrustworthy.

6. The brunt of the criticism in the Indian media has been over what many have seen as the propensity of the R&AW to disseminate uncorroborated reports and create false alarms and its perceived naivete in walking into a trap laid from Pakistan.

7.There are certain standard operating procedures followed by intelligence and security agencies all over the world regarding the handling of HUMINT or TECHINT reports which speak of an imminent act of terrorism. The most important point of this procedure is: Act on the report as if it is true until or unless it is proved to be false. Hence, all intelligence agencies immediately disseminate such reports with appropriate qualifications and simultaneously undertake a verification to establish the veracity of the report. If the veracity is not established, they call off the alert.

8. That is exactly what the R&AW has done and it would be totally uncharitable and unprofessional to find fault with it and ridicule it for doing what it was expected to do under the standard operating procedures. If one reprimands and ridicules an agency for doing what it was required to do because its report proved to be incorrect, it could hesitate in future to sound alerts on the receipt of HUMINT reports and that could prove catastrophic.

9. That is what those orchestrating the anti-R&AW campaign from Pakistan--- whether the Inter-Services Intelligence or the LET or both—want---- to create in the R&AW a mental hesitation in disseminating future HUMINT reports so that they can take advantage of it for carrying out an act of terrorism. The R&AW officers should not let themselves be inhibited from future reporting because of this campaign against it in Pakistan as well as in sections of the Indian media.

10. At the same time, there are some disturbing follow-up questions arising from this incident that need to be attended to. The first question is who was the human source--- is he a trans-border source or one based in Pakistan or some third country? If he is a trans-border source, is he based in India or Pakistan? The second question is, is he a new and untested source or is he an old and tested source?

11. If he is a new and untested Pakistani source, all that the R&AW has to do is to discard him. If he is an Indian source, there could be reason to suspect that he is a Pakistani mole. He would need to be arrested and interrogated .

12. If the source---whether Indian or Pakistani---is an old source all his past reports need to be re-examined in order to see whether any action had been taken against  any Indian national on the basis of reports from this source who has now turned out to be tainted.

13. The other aspect needing attention is how did those behind the campaign in Pakistan notice so quickly the pics released by the Mumbai Police, unless they were expecting this to happen, and exploited it to embarrass the R&AW. This would clearly show a well-planned and well-executed operation to damage the reputation of the R&AW.

14.Normally, it may not be possible to carry out such operations without the support of accomplices in India. Are there such accomplices who played a role in this?

15.Incidents such as these are occupational hazards in the intelligence profession. This is not the first time this has been happening. We have had such incidents in the days of  Khalistani  terrorism. This is not the last time this will be happening.

16. There is no need for the R&AW to be defensive or be apologetic about it. It should take it in its stride and hold a thorough enquiry into the whole affair to avoid the possibilities of such incidents in future. ( 12-5-12)

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

MRS.CLINTON & KOLKATA’S YOUTH: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AT ITS BEST

B.RAMAN

Thousands of TV  viewers in India----and possibly in the US too----- watched enthralled on the morning of May 7,2012, what the Americans describe as a Town Hall meeting between Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State who was on a visit to Kolkata, and some youth of the city in a historic local school moderated by Barkha Dutt, India’s well-known TV journalist.

2.It was an exercise in grass-roots democracy in which sections of the public have an opportunity of questioning a political leader in public about issues of interest and concern to them. It was also an exercise in public diplomacy in which a political leader takes advantage of the opportunity provided by such interactions to explain his or her thinking and views on issues of public concern.

3.The tradition of Town Hall interactions, which was common in the initial years after the birth of the United States of America, was revived during the presidency of Bill Clinton and is increasingly followed by travelling US leaders during their travels inside the country as well as abroad. It provides an opportunity to the public to assess the mettle of the leader.

4. The Town Hall meetings differ from other gatherings and interactions in the sense that the interacting leader, who exposes himself or herself to the public, has to answer their questions and participate in a discussion with them without the help of aides. It is largely an extempore interaction in which only a well-informed and articulate leader can impress the public and carry conviction to them.

5.The format of Hillary Clinton’s Town Hall meeting had an opening statement read out from a prepared script, a warming-up discussion with Barkha and discussions with individuals in the audience moderated by Barkha.

6. The success of a Town Hall gathering as an exercise in grass-roots democracy and public diplomacy depends on the self-confidence of the leader, who chooses to expose himself or herself to the Town Hall, as well as of the moderator. Without a skillful moderator, who prepares himself or herself well for the interaction and who does not allow himself or herself to be overawed by the occasion, Town Hall meetings can prove to be damp squibs

7.I have seen on TV many of the Town Hall meetings of Bill and Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and have no hesitation in saying that Mrs.Clinton’s Kolkata Town Hall was one of the best one has seen.

8.The US Consulate in Kolkata needs to be complimented for requesting Barkha to moderate the Town Hall discussion. One cannot think of any other Indian TV personality who would have had the required knowledge and self-confidence to moderate the discussion in a manner that kept the focus on the personality of Mrs.Clinton, her command of facts and the intelligence of the young audience, which did not show any sign of nervousness in questioning the visiting US leader.

9.Both Mrs.Clinton and Barkha are epitomes of panache and poise which were evident throughout the interaction that lasted nearly 75 minutes. I did not notice a single question –however controversial---that was sought to be evaded by Mrs.Clinton. She was inoffensively frank and charmingly diplomatic at the same time. Whenever her replies seemed incomplete – as on the issue of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s opposition to foreign direct investment in the retail trade---- Barkha politely prompted Mrs. Clinton to come out with her mind on the issue.

10.Mrs.Clinton, Barkha and the youthful audience made it into a scintillating exercise. One only hopes that our leaders, who tend to be public shy and tongue-tied, watched it on the TV. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were very good in extempore interactions with the public ---whether in urban or rural areas, whether outside their house or during their travels.

11.In my younger days I remember seeing Gandhiji and other leaders of our Independence struggle interacting with the public. Traditions of such interactions have disappeared from our political landscape. Our political leaders of today---baring a few exceptions---- give the impression of avoiding the public which put them in power.

12.It is hoped that the Town Hall meeting of Mrs.Clinton would create in them a desire for more direct interactions with the people. They should come out of their shell and expose themselves to the gaze and relentless questioning of the people.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.of India )

FRANCOIS HOLLANDE---THE NEW FRENCH PRESIDENT

B.RAMAN

When Francois Mitterand, the then leader of the French Socialist Party, was elected the French President in 1981 defeating Giscard d'Estaing from the right of the political spectrum,Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, had reasons to be concerned.

2.The French Right always had greater warmth for her and India than the French Left. She remembered how Georges Pompidou, who succeeded Gen.Charles de Gaulle as the President, and his Minister For Culture, Andre Malraux, stood by her and India during the exodus of millions of refugees from the then East Pakistan to India in 1971.Pompidou sent Malraux on a visit to the refugee camps as a mark of humanitarian solidarity with India.

3. She also remembered with gratitude the first steps towards a strategic partnership between India and France under the Presidentship of Giscard. The two flagships of this partnership were the close Indo-French co-operation in the nuclear and space fields and the co-operation between the external intelligence agencies of the two countries in collecting intelligence about developments in the Indian Ocean region.

4. She also remembered ---but with embarrassment--- how the French Left---particularly the Socialists--- was embarrassed by her proclamation of the Emergency in 1975 and went out of its way to help George Fernandes and his wife Leela when they tried to evade arrests by her Government.The French Right too was embarrassed by the Emergency, but it did not show it in public and .did not allow it to affect the relations between the two countries.

5. Of the French leftist parties, only the Communist Party, taking its cue from Moscow, kept quiet on the Emergency,but the Socialist Party mde no secret of its discomfort over the violations of human rights and the trampling of democracy  by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency.

6.It was, therefore, not surprising that when Mitterand became the President in 1981, there was an ill-concealed unease in both New Delhi and Paris as to what impact the lingering bad taste of the Emergency in the French Socialist Party circles would have on bilateral relations. It spoke well of the political maturity of both Indira Gandhi   and Mitterand that they did not allow this to come in the way of the developing bilateral relations.But there was a difference.

7. Warmth and substance were the defining characteristics of Indo-French relations under Pompidou and Giscard. The warmth continued under Mitterand too, but the substance became less noticeable.The  co-operation in the nuclear and space fields continued, but the intelligence co-operation tended to get diluted.

8.Mitterand developed a good personal equation with Indira and Rajiv both of whom paid successful visits to France which were reciprocated by him.Mitterrand understood the importance of India as a market for the French aircraft  industry. He was attracted and he admired the Indian democracy. He was uncomfortable with what was going on in China particulrly after the Tianenmen Square massacre.India stood as a shining light in comparison with China.

9.But, still, he was not convinced of the importance of a substantial strategic relationship between India and France.In bilateral relations, warmth alone is not sufficient.Without substance, warmth serves only a  limited purpose.

10.Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy who succeeded Mitterand after he completed his term in 1995, restored the badly-needed substance to Indo-French relations.They attached as much importasnce to India as they did to China---if not more.They supported India's aspirations in the nuclear and space fields.Chirac refrained from creating difficulties for India after it carried out the 1998 nuclear tests.

11.Sarkozy became a very unpopular leader in France.He was hated because of his perceived arrogance, lack of sensitivity and other negative qualities. It is said that Francois Hollande has now been elected by the French people as the President not because he is Hollande, but because he is not Sarkozy.

12.But, Hollande is an unknown quantity even to the French. He has hardly held any important Government position. He has hardly ever made any important political statements on international relations. He has never been known as a man of vision. He is a good man, a noble soul.But that alone is not sufficient in leadership. The ability to think far ahead and to give practical shape to one's thinking is important too.

13.He is equally an unknown quantity for us in India too. The Fench are a warm people---unusually warm if you can speak to them in French.One can expect with hope that he will be warm towards India like Sarkozy, Chirac,Mitterand, Giscard and Pompidou.But will he neglect the substance that was the characteristic of the days of the Right and let it be frittered away due to less interest in India?

14.One has to wait for the days to come to find a comforting answer to this question. (7-5-12)

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

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OBL IN ABBOTTABAD: AN ARM-CHAIR AMIR WITH WANING INFLUENCE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.748

B.RAMAN

During the years he fled from the jihadi battle-front in the Af-Pak region and took shelter in his hide-out in Abbottabad in Pakistan (2005-2011), Osama bin Laden was reduced to a pathetic Amir in arm-chair who exercised little authority or influence over the global jihad being waged by Al Qaeda and its associates. His advice was often sought by his jihadi associates out of respect for his past contribution and “achievements”, but rarely followed. The new post-9/11 crop of jihadis waged their jihad in their own way without paying heed to his words of caution and advice. After he moved to Abbottabad, he was neither the commander-in-chief nor an ideologue par excellence, but a senior jihadi who counted less and less.

2. That is the conclusion that comes out loud and clear from a tiring study of 17 of the documents found in his Abbottabad hide-out by the Navy Seals and since de-classified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and handed over to the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) of West Point which has got them translated from Arabic to English and published them in a compilation titled “Letters from Abbottabad”. This compilation was released by the CTC to the public on May 2, coinciding with the first anniversary of the death of OBL. (http://www.ctc.usma.edu/ )

3. On its web site, the CTC describes itself as “an independent, privately-funded research and educational institution situated at West Point that informs and shapes counter-terrorism policy and strategy.” It describes the documents released to the public as electronic or draft letters---possibly indicating thereby that while some of them were recovered from the computer hard and soft ware seized from OBL’s hide-out, others were in a manuscript form.

4. I have studied these documents keeping in view the possibility that the de-classification and release of these documents might be part of the CIA’s PSYWAR against Al Qaeda. While I do not rule out the possibility of some motivated editing before the documents were made available to the public, I have no reasons to suspect that the documents might have been fabricated. They seem to me to be largely genuine.

5.My impression of their being genuine is strengthened by the fact that some of the conclusions emerging from a study regarding the declining authority and influence of OBL negate the assessments disseminated by the US during those years projecting OBL as the all-powerful head of the global jihad. It now turns out that he was not and that the earlier assessments were wrong.

6.The earliest of the documents is dated September 2006 and is a communication to OBL from one of his supporters in Saudi Arabia ( apparently influential) sounding a wake-up call that the popularity of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Umma had started declining because of what was projected as its strategic folly of attacking Saudi Arabia and Yemen and targeting the Saudi oil riches. According to the originator of this communication, this policy had very little support from among Arab intellectuals and other elite and even from the common man.

7. A recurring theme of the communications exchanged between OBL and his associates is the wrong tactics adopted by the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Pakistani Taliban called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which came into existence after the raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad by the Pakistani security forces in July 2007.

8. The documents clearly show that OBL and some of his senior associates were disturbed by what they viewed as the pollution of the jihad by the Islamic State of Iraq and the TTP. They saw signs of this pollution in the attacks on Christians---particularly Catholics--- in Iraq and in the indiscriminate suicide attacks carried out by the TTP in mosques during prayers. The degeneration of the jihad in Iraq and Pakistan from targeted attacks on identified enemies of Islam to indiscriminate suicide attacks that killed the identified enemies and many innocent Muslims who had nothing to do with them was a matter of growing concern to OBL and his senior associates.

9. They even drafted a declaration on the subject deploring such attacks to be issued by OBL but for some reasons not clear, it was not issued. What is revealing and clearly indicative of OBL’s declining authority and influence is the cruel fact that OBL’s displeasure and admonitions over this pollution had practically no effect on the Islamic State of Iraq and the TTP. They continued with their acts of pollution unmindful of OBL’s feelings and concerns

10. In his famous Fatwa of 1998 issued from Kandahar where he was then based, OBL had projected the global jihad as directed against the Crusaders and the Jewish people---meaning essentially against the US and Israel. It subsequently turned into a jihad not only against the US and Israel, but also against even Islamic rulers seen as collaborating with the US.

11. The realisation that this was a tactical and strategic mistake with negative consequences for the global jihad is writ large in the declassified communications. The need to revert to the primary focus against the US---in the US Homeland itself as well as in non-Islamic countries having a US presence--- is repeatedly underlined  in the communications. To kill a snake one must crush its head and not its tail is an expression that finds eloquent expression in the communications.

12. Those who exchanged these communications felt that Al Qaeda should focus on Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia where victory was within its grasp and should not fritter away its energy in other areas. But neither their ideas nor their assessments nor their caution and advice had much of an impact on the jihadis who had started increasingly waging the jihad in their own style, only paying lip-service to their loyalty to OBL.

13. The documents speak very little of the leadership style and likely strategy of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the present Amir of Al Qaeda. There are some tantalising tit-bits indicative of his growing influence at the expense of that of OBL, but the evidence on this score is sketchy.

14. There are other interesting tit-bits about OBL wanting to have President Barack Obama and Gen.David Petraeus, the then US Commander in Afghanistan, assassinated in Afghanistan through Ilyas Kashmiri, the Pakistani commando turned jihadi terrorist, but those are not  of present significance now that OBL is no more. ( 5-5-12)

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

AL QAEDA: WEAKENED, BUT NOT DECIMATED

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.747

B.RAMAN

(Written at the request of the “Hindustan Times”. An edited version of this was carried by it on May 2,2012 at http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Chunk-HT-UI-ViewsSectionPage-TopStories/Down-but-not-out/Article1-849128.aspx )

A year after the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the US Navy Seals at Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2 last year, the central command and control of Al Qaeda based in Pakistan continues to be in a state of disarray.

It has not been able to recover from the severe leadership losses inflicted on it by the US Drone (pilotless plane) strikes  after the death of OBL. The lack-lustre leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new Amir of Al Qaeda, who is also believed to be operating from hide-outs in Pakistan, has not been able to restore the elan and the motivation of its central command and control.

The disruption of its central command and control appears to have affected its ability to plan and launch catastrophic terrorist strikes in far way places like the US Homeland. However, its affiliates like the Talibans of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Haqqani Network of Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba ( LET) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) of Pakistan, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen; al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in Algeria and Mali; al Shabaab of Somalia; and Boko Haram, of Nigeria have maintained their capability for sporadic acts of terrorism involving mass fatalities in their respective areas of operation.

While the global reach of Al Qaeda has been affected due to the inability of its present leadership to plan and carry out terrorist strikes on a global scale, its regional command and control, regional cadres and regional ability to carry out strikes remain unimpaired.

The affiliates of Al Qaeda continue to use the multi-modus operandi and multi-target operations that they had learnt from Al Qaeda. This was evident from the recent commando style attacks on different targets in Afghanistan by the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. Mass casualty terrorist attacks carried out during the last one year by affiliates of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Nigeria highlight their continuing motivation and ability to strike when an opportunity presents itself.

The death of OBL has not only weakened the lethality of   the central command and control, but it has also blunted its Net-based PSYWAR campaign on which Al Qaeda was dependent for winning new recruits and for imparting online training and for disseminating online instructions. As a result, there has been a decline in the flow of Arab recruits with a capability for global attacks and in attacks launched by Net-motivated “lone wolf” jihadis.

There are also indications that after the death of  OBL, who was a Saudi of Yemeni origin with influential family connections n Saudi Arabia, there has been a decline in the flow of funds to Al Qaeda from so-called charity organisations and affluent Saudi families. The shortages caused by this decline have not been made good by the money earned from narcotics smuggling.

The weakening of Al Qaeda as a global terrorist organization should not be taken to mean that dangers of a catastrophic or mass casualty act of terrorism of the kind practised by Al Qaeda before the death of OBL are less likely now. The dangers will remain high so long as the intelligence agencies of the world are not able to identify and neutralize the operatives of Al Qaeda trained and placed in sleeper cells in different parts of the world by OBL when he was alive.

The central command and control of Al Qaeda has been disrupted, but not its global network of sleeper cells. If a new leader emerges who is able to rally them around and motivate them to act, we may still face new acts of mass casualty terrorism.

So long as Al Qaeda’s global network of sleeper cells is not disrupted, dangers of maritime terrorism, acts involving weapons of mass destruction material and mass disruption of the internet have to be guarded against through international co-operation in intelligence collection and sharing and physical security.

The 9/11 strikes by Al Qaeda in the US Homeland led to a decade of close international co-operation against global terrorism. We cannot afford to let this co-operation weaken till Al Qaeda is decimated beyond recovery. Al Qaeda has presently been weakened, but not decimated.

India has to maintain a high state of vigilance and preparedness  against commando-style, complex terrorist strikes of the kind launched by the LET in Mumbai on 26/11 and by the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan recently.  The LET has not repeated its 26/11 style terrorist strikes in Indian territory after 2008. But, its training camps in Pakistani territory have been as active as ever and the anti-India radicalization of its leadership shows no signs of abating.

There are no indications of any change in the use of terrorism as  a strategic weapon against India by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

If the US and other NATO forces carry out their plans to thin out their presence in Afghanistan in the coming months, the US is expected to transfer its holdings of arms and ammunition to the Afghan Security Forces. There will be dangers of the leakage of some of them into the hands of the jihadi terrorist groups in the Af-Pak region.

With the thinning down of the NATO presence, the jihadi terrorist organisations now operating in Afghanistan will find at their disposal surplus jihadis well-trained and motivated. India has to be prepared to the possibility of some of these cadres and weapons being diverted to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) to re-kindle terrorism and the Pakistan-sponsored proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir.

At a time when there is an urgent need for revamping our intelligence collection , follow-up action and physical security capabilities through close co-operation between the central agencies and the State Police and through fresh instruments such as the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), it is  worrying  that the differences between the Centre and the States on the NCTC are threatening to come in the way of the exercise to strengthen our counter-terrorism capability.

Stability in the Af-Pak region is years away. Till a modicum of stability is established, the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan will continue to be the epi-centre of the attempts to revive global terrorism and to keep India bleeding. The international community---and particularly India and the US, which face the maximum threats from the terrorists based in the Af-Pak region---cannot afford to slacken their vigilance.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Research & Analysis Wing.He was the head of its Counter-terrorism Division for six years)