Pakistan is Giving RAW Credit for lot More Than it is Capable of

RAW’s problem is its pacifist DNA, writes former intel officer Amar Bhushan after BBC’s report on India funding MQM.

The BBC report of RAW’s alleged support to MQM, a political party and eyesore to PPP and PML(N) and reverberations of this hyped disclosure in London, Islamabad and Delhi are hardly anything to agitate over. It is of no consequence which agency is funding or arming which groups of activists or parties to serve its national security interests, because intelligence agencies are created precisely for this reason. What remains a matter of worry is why RAW is not doing enough to use every means to punish the offending state.

All intelligence organisations, be it the CIA, MI6, Mossad, ISI or FSB (formerly KGB), routinely fund and train disgruntled nationals, rebel and separatist groups to destabilise and weaken governments, perceived as hostile to their security. One doesn’t have to look far to find evidence of this state policy. Afghanistan has been turned into a killing field by the CIA, western agencies and the ISI to ensure that they have their surrogates to serve their strategic interests.

Going further to the west, see what FSB has done to Georgia and Ukraine, preparing ground for the army to annex Crimea and a strip from Novoazovsk to Luhansk respectively. Will the MOIS (Iranian intelligence service) be worth its salt if it does not fund and arm the Shias in Pakistan to prevent the cleansing of their community? Or for that matter, will Mossad just brood as Hamas and Hizbollah attack Israelis and their facilities?

Operational Justifications

Each country justifies its subversive activities by essentially resorting to subterfuge and hypocrisy. The common refrain is that in doing so, they protect their national security interests, the connotation of which widely vary, depending on the muscularity of the nation concerned. A US ambassador would threaten to withdraw the accreditation of an Indian diplomat, unless the latter stopped meeting leaders ‘hostile to Pakistan’ but its acerbic Assistant Secretary of State would be squeamish in defending Taliban’s grooming in Pakistani army barracks in the early 90s.

The UK openly provided sanctuary to Sikh and Kashmiri terrorist leaders in the name of championing their human rights, completely disregarding India’s security concerns. This kind of duplicity is practised not so much to protect human rights as to keep Indian security situation perennially tense and fragile. In the heydays of Sikh militancy, it was interesting to see how western countries, barring Canada, would refuse to share any input on activities of Sikh militant leaders and Kashmiri separatists, arguing that their laws did not allow disclosure of any information on their residents. One cannot find fault with them. Why would they not provide sanctuary when they could use them to keep India weak and worried? This position has changed since 9/11, albeit very little.

RAW Merely Reports

But that is not the case with RAW. While Lashkar-e-Taiba boys burn down Mumbai’s Taj Hotel, terrorists go on killing security forces in J&K, Parliament is attacked by ISI volunteers and Pakistani flags are unfurled defiantly in the valley, RAW prefers merely reporting on what Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan’s current army chief General Raheel Sharif squeak, how Hafiz Sayeed abuses or the boyish Bilawal Zardari screams his heart out over Kashmir. How many times will Delhi be content to hear about Pakistani generals vowing to wrest Kashmir? How will it help us know from RAW that real power vests in the Pakistan army, a trite and tired formulation that keeps getting reported to mandarins in South Block? Does it really matter what name Hafiz’s outfit dons or how many terrorist camps for Kashmiris are being run in Pakistan? Is it that we blissfully believe that someday American drones will destroy those camps or bury Hafiz in the debris?

One wonders why can’t RAW punish Pakistan by instigating political instability and attacking its economic infrastructure, since security forces cannot undertake cross-border raids, lest it snowballs into a limited war. A dour, gritty and combative army chief once asked a high ranking RAW official in exasperation as to what had gone wrong with the agency’s ‘dirty wing’ and why it was not retaliating against terror attacks in Kashmir. The official replied sheepishly that the army chief must have noticed smoke billowing all over Pakistan and claimed that the fire for it was ignited by the ‘wing’. The truth, however, was different. RAW never had a dirty wing and the fire was the Pakistanis’ own making.

The question really is whether it is enough to talk and persuade disgruntled groups of people in Sindh, Baluchistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir to violently oppose an oppressive regime? What actually is needed is to send a message to Islamabad that training camps are not sustainable, harbouring Dawood Ibrahim involves paying a price and every attack on Indian economic and political institutions will promptly evoke a matching covert response.

That RAW can do this is indeed doubtful. Except for arming and training Bangladesh’s Mukti Bahini, its track record of providing sustained support to dissenting groups has been dismal. The word retribution is missing in its lexicon. Malir Rao Anwar, the handsome SP of Karachi, is giving needless credit to RAW. It also does not make sense for the Scotland Yard investigator to travel to Pakistan, unless he is trained to believe in confession, extracted from Mohajirs under extreme physical hardship.

Neutered Agency

Sadly, an array of confused and hesitant political leadership and cautious chiefs has defanged RAW’s bite over the years. You mention killing a terrorist on foreign soil, pat will come a rebuke. You threaten to avenge the attack on Parliament, a deafening silence will greet you. And, you talk of building a network to destroy Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure, it will not even be discussed. The problem is actually with RAW’s pacifist DNA.

Going against its ascetic grain, a few operatives did try to teach Pakistan a lesson. They were the organisation’s Bhagat Singhs who went after the objective without bothering about the means that they employed. However, unlike Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame, they were left high and dry and quickly withdrawn from the job.

The half-hearted approach of reaching out to the likes of MQM’s Altaf Hussein is catastrophic. The support has to be lethal and sustained and if it is not ensured, it will only give a handle to Islamabad to torture Mohajirs and subject them to extra-judicial killings. Recall how we lost Rajiv Gandhi by pursuing our hot and cold support to LTTE. Let RAW not sit smugly and pat itself for the BBC report that it has trained thousands of MQM activists, provided funds and assisted them in handling arms and fabricating explosives.

It must find ways to substantially help before their resilience runs dry. It is never too late to build modules for this purpose but a beginning must be made. RAW must thank BBC for giving it a wake-up call, for Pakistan would never behave responsibly unless it bleeds from within. If the fear is that India will be labelled as a state sponsor of terrorism, then Delhi should take a few lessons from Pakistan in statecraft which has hardly suffered despite its well documented terrorist credentials. It knows how to make western countries dependent on its support, extract backing from the Chinese, defy counselling from the UN and continue terrorising India and exporting terrorists to other parts of the world merrily.

(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat)