Border Line Case

The story of a map and how India should learn from its old mistakes

Washington, February 13, 2007: The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) releases its report on US-India relations. The report is meant for members of the US Congress. On the last page of this document is a map of India (right inset). It is a two-tone map showing India in yellow and the neighbourhood in brown. This brings into sharp focus what the CRS considers to be India. It is an India with its crown, Jammu and Kashmir, knocked off substantially. The entire Gilgit and Baltistan region of Kashmir is shown as a contiguous part of Pakistan right up to the Karakoram Pass on the Chinese border. The map depicts Aksai Chin as an ‘Indian claim'. The report is on the internet. So apart from the Congressmen reading this report, thousands of others who would have seen this map would have concluded that this is how India looks on the map.

New Delhi February 14, 2007. There is no visible reaction to the depiction of this map.

Brussels, May 8, 2007. The Pakistani Ambassador, under instructions from Islamabad, writes to European Union Rapporteur on Jammu and Kashmir Baroness Emma Nicholson claiming that the ‘Northern Areas of Pakistan' were not a part of J&K in August 1947. There must have been some very good reason for this deliberate distortion of history. It was not the negative impact of the contents of the report that seemed to have led the Ambassador's preemptive letter. Instead, the entire letter concentrated on trying to establish that Gilgit and Baltistan were part of Pakistan and India was in illegal occupation of Siachen.

Brussels, May 22, 2007. Baroness Nicholson refutes the Pakistani Ambassador's claims. She cites historical evidence right from the 1909 maps to Maharaja Hari Singh's letter to Mountbatten on October 27, 1947, to show that Gilgit and Baltistan were a part of the Riyasat of J&K. She also adheres to the traditional reference to the area as Gilgit and Baltistan instead of using the Pakistani formulation of ‘Northern Areas of Pakistan'.

Brussels, May 24, 2007. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the EU releases its report on ‘Kashmir: Present Situation and Future Prospects'. The report is also a severe indictment of Pakistani neglect of areas under its control including Gilgit and Baltistan. The document refers to the "considerable evidence that over many years Pakistan has provided Kashmiri militants with training, weapons, funding and sanctuary and has failed to hold militants accountable for atrocities…" It adds that meaningful demilitarisation can only take place in parallel with genuine action to neutralise the threat of infiltration of J&K by militant outfits operating from Pakistan.

New Delhi, February May 24, 2007. There is a subdued reaction in some of the main newspapers, but there is no exultation that the report castigates Pakistan.

From the 1970s, Pakistan began trying to detach Gilgit and Baltistan from the rest of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). By 1982, General Zia was suggesting that while the question of Kashmir could be examined afresh, Gilgit, Hunza and Skardu were an integral part of Pakistan and were separate from POK. Pakistan gradually tightened its hold on the region. Dissent and nationalism have been suppressed with singleminded ruthlessness. There has been systematic discrimination against the locals and Sunni Pathans imported to offset the Shias of Gilgit and Baltistan to change demographic patterns.

In the early 1980s, Pakistan made serious attempts to move from Skardu towards the Karakoram Pass near Aksai Chin. This intended linking with Shahidullah on the Kashgar-Shigatse road that goes through Aksai Chin and runs parallel to the Tibet-India border would have enabled an outflanking of India in Ladakh. Alarmed at this, India asserted that the Karachi Agreement of 1949, which stipulated that the Line of Control (LoC) would run north towards the glaciers from Pt NJ 9842, be fully implemented. North meant the true north and also meant the Siachen Glacier, not the Karakoram Pass, which is north-east from NJ 9842. Troops had to be sent to the Saltoro Ridge to ensure this. Later, in 1994, the Lahore High Court ruled that administrative separation of these areas from the rest of POK was illegal; the Pakistani authorities had the Supreme Court overturn this in 1996.

There are good strategic reasons why Pakistan has followed this policy. The mighty Indus that irrigates Pakistani Punjab passes much of its distance in India through Ladakh and then Baltistan and Gilgit. Imagine for a moment if today the entire J&K were with India. We would have a border with Afghanistan and the Wakhan Corridor would have provided access to Central Asia. India would have had a border with Chitral, Swat and Hazara districts of the NWFP. The Karakoram Highway, which enters China at the Khunjerab Pass and through which Pakistan has acquired strategic material, would not have been built. Pakistan would not have had direct access to China. Pakistan may have its own reasons to keep the Kashmir issue alive. But it wants the world to assume that Gilgit and Baltistan is a settled issue - settled in favour of Pakistan.

China, too, would be interested that Pakistan has total control over Gilgit and Baltistan. Otherwise the $ 298 million investment in the development of Gwadar is a financial or strategic waste. Xinjiang is only 2,500 km away from the Arabian seaport of Gwadar. On the other hand, it is 4,500 km away from the Chinese east coast. A fully developed port at Gwadar would help in the economic development of Xinjiang. Gas and oil pipelines from Gwadar to Xinjiang and Tibet would enable China to overcome the uncertainty of sealanes from the Persian Gulf through the Malacca Straits patrolled by the US. There
will be a special SEZ for China in Gwadar.

China has set aside $ 150 million to upgrade the Karakoram Highway and widen it from 10 metres to 30 metres for heavy vehicles in all-weather conditions. A rail link is also planned in the region with technical advice from an Austrian firm to connect Pakistan and China. This link will be connected further south into the main Pakistani rail grid. Fibre optic cables are being laid. An Islamabad Kashgar bus service will start from August 1.

Both China and Pakistan are getting ready for an economic boom that will include transit trade to Central Asia. The Pakistani Army's National Logistics Cell, which has a near monopoly, will handle this freight traffic all the way up to Kazakhstan and Xinjiang. There is money to be made. Thus development of both Gwadar and control of Gilgit and Baltistan are interlinked and the Pakistani Army will gain financially from both. In fact, it is going to be a financial bonanza for the already huge corporate interests of the Pakistani Army. All this is being done by using territory that we say is an inalienable part of India.

In retrospect, it can be said that it was a mistake to have halted our troops at Uri and Gurez in 1948. It was a blunder to have then gone to the UN for succour. But it would be a strategic catastrophe to withdraw from Siachen without the entire issue of J&K satisfactorily and unequivocally resolved. Since distortion of facts is possible, a mere signing of documents about the Agreed Ground Position Lines would not be an adequate guarantee enabling troop withdrawals.

History is very unforgiving to those who do not learn from its lessons. The CRS map and the Pakistani Ambassador's letter tell this story.

Source: The Hindustan Times , 7th June 2007

India in the Neighbourhood

Leo Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina begins with the famous sentence: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Indian subcontinent is somewhat like this. A collection of unhappy neighbours – unhappy with each other and unhappy among themselves.
Nepal is troubled but may return from the edge as it experiments with democracy, Bangladesh remains sullen, violence prone and increasingly radicalised, Myanmar is aloof and distant but showing some signs of thaw, Sri Lanka is troubled and helpless unable to come to terms with its minority and Pakistan continues to be inimical and increasingly radicalised. Our largest neighbour, China, is powerful, aggressive and ambitious. Further away, in the extended neighbourhood, to our west, Iran is becoming regionally powerful and strategically important for India and Afghanistan, at war with itself, is slipping away into perpetual chaos.
The South Asian region holds the largest concentration of the world’s poor, all its religions are represented here, but also has the largest concentration of Muslims. In today’s context of events in the neighbourhood, a general anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, given the behaviour pattern of some of our neighbours in using terrorism as a tool of foreign policy or as a force equaliser and a sense of rising expectations in an economically resurgent India, disequilibria of various kinds could occur. Handling these could be India’s major challenge.
India cannot help its size and has to live with the title of a regional hegemon or even a bully. We are at times accused of being arrogant and intrusive or on other occasions of being haughty and indifferent. It is an imperfect world.
An economically resurgent India is now an accepted reality, only the pace and range can change. It is legitimate to wonder what the consequences could be for India’s neighbours. There has been unequal economic and political development all over Southern Asia, including Iran and Afghanistan. Therefore, it is politically and economically heterogeneous and varied. India’s rise is not a threat to her neighbours but can have positive consequences depending upon how leaders of these countries view this – as a threat or as an opportunity.
Even before the current Indian reforms kicked in a big way, Bhutan had shown the way. India financed and built the Chukha hydel power plant and India now buys electricity from Bhutan. As a result, the per capita income of the Bhutanese is higher that the Indians living across the border.
Nepal could easily opt for a similar project for its rivers that flow into India but refuses to do so and the rivers run through their course without adding any value to Nepal’s economy except for minor irrigation and it earns nothing from India. Like other smaller countries it has often played the “China Card” while dealing with India. And China has played the Nepal card in dealing with India.
Bangladesh shows similar reluctance and prefers to keep its people unemployed and poor rather than cooperate with India in spheres of sharing the gas, transit rights and so on. Perhaps if it did not have the option of letting its people illegally migrate to India it may have been more cooperative and looked less at distant shores for support. A Bangladesh-Myanmar tie up to supply gas to China in preference to India has been made possible because of Chinese money power and its closeness to Myanmar.
After years of isolation under the military regime of Ne Win, Myanmar had emerged from this in a rather dramatic way in 1988. India had at that time missed an opportunity to get a toe-hold in this neighbour and let China take the lead. China had moved into the vacuum post-1988 and since then it has been an uphill climb for India. China is today Myanmar’s main weapons and military supplier and the close economic ties provide China with a strategic access to the Bay of Bengal. However, the Mekong Ganga Cooperation initiative of six countries – India and Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam for cooperation in tourism, telecommunications education and culture are important beginnings. The BIMSTEC agreement where Myanmar became a member in 1997 could bring Myanmar and India closer through regional frameworks.
Iran is an important component in India’s economic rise. As the economy gathers further momentum the demands for energy will increase in an energy deficient country. Iran is strategically important for India not only for the energy supplies that it has but also as it provides access for Indian trade with Central Asia denied to us by a recalcitrant Pakistan. Iraq used to be a major supplier of oil but no longer. Besides, India cannot remain solely dependent on sources like Saudi Arabia who have used their petro-dollars to fuel insurgencies in the region. India’s dependency on Iran will increase with passage of time. Today Iran is the most powerful state in the Gulf and despite massive US military presence in region it is Iran that really calls the shots in Iraq and the US is only second in the power structure. Even Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria, the Lebanon and the Palestinians are more beholden to Iran that to any one else. A withdrawal from Iraq by the US – it is only a question of how and when – will leave the Arab and Muslim world ‘victorious’ against the infidel for the second time in less than two decades. It would be treated as a victory of the faith by radical elements threatening not only apostate regimes in their own regions but be ready to take on others. This would include India.
Afghanistan remains a difficult case for India because of lack of direct access. Grafting democracy in an essentially tribal and strongly ethnic hierarchical society was never going to be easy. Economically, Afghanistan like all other countries would seek to benefit from access to Indian resources and expertise but this is unlikely to happen so long as Pakistan considers Afghanistan its private preserve and prevents a strong independent government from emerging in Kabul. Afghanistan may thus remain unaffected by India’s economic gains that other countries in the region will derive — apart from the monetary assistance that India may be able to render from time to time. As of now it seems to show little promise of recovering from the mess it is in.
Continued US and NATO involvement is an unfortunate necessity but the present system only encourages a belief among the radical Islamic elements that the West does not have the stomach for a long haul and that they are beatable. Deployment will have to be on a larger scale because the existing troop deployment will not secure victories against a resurgent Taliban force that threatens to continue their campaign even in the winter. Obviously they are well endowed. Yet either way it will be a victory for the jehadists – staying on means more anti-American anger in the country and leaving now means giving the jehadists another victory in the region. This is probably Pakistan’s calculation.
China‘s ambition extends beyond Asia and increasingly sees itself as the only challenge to the US. It would therefore want the US recede from Asia as the first step. As a corollary to this it would not allow India to become its peer competitor. However, India-China relations remain on the upswing with the year ending with a visit by President Hu Jintao in December. Although there were no surprises, none were really expected. The surprise was that there was no surprise in Pakistan and the much talked of China Pak nuclear energy deal did not materialise – at least not overtly. This needs to be watched considering that Hu went to Pakistan at a time when anti-US sentiments were at their highest in recent years, he has, wisely chosen to watch how the India-US deal plays out before committing to civil nuclear energy for Pakistan.
The next issue is how might India-Pakistan relations evolve in the context of continuing Indian economic and political success. This largely will depend on how much maturity, farsightedness and realism, Pakistan’s leaders show in the years ahead. The other important question is how might Pakistan itself evolve in the years ahead. So long as its rulers keep the mainstream democratic forces stifled and lean heavily on the mullah nexus for their own survival, Pakistan will inevitably slip towards Talibanisation. In its relations with India:
• The first reality is that the Pakistani establishment must understand that only sovereignty is equal, not power. Unfortunately for the subcontinents history, off-shore balancing and force equalisers over the years have given Pakistani leadership the impression that it can attain parity with India.
• The second reality is that unofficial trade between India and Pakistan is at least twice as much as the official trade. So if it shows maturity and farsightedness, it would seek closer economic ties with India in trade and even manufacturing. This would give Pakistan access to the vast Indian markets that the Chinese want to grab as well as access to cheaper India goods instead of having to import them from else where.
• It must think of MFN, transit rights and trade with India. Its refusal to grant this will not slow down India’s growth but Pakistan will have missed an opportunity. The mullah-military tie up that stifles democracy and has over the years inculcated a jehadi mindset and its single-point agenda is likely to remain a stumbling block. It is their choice. India has begun to look east – to Southeast Asia and Japan.
There is also an impression that a successful resolution of the Kashmir issue is necessary for India to be able to play a global role. This is one fallacy. We have the example of China, whose current disputes with Japan and India and with other neighbours earlier, have not prevented it from attaining its present position. In fact US-China political relations are not the best and can sour from time to time. The converse is equally true—good economic relations can submerge political differences some of the time but not in perpetuity. The continuation of the jehad in Kashmir and other indiscretions with the Taliban despite all promises have for some time now been showing clear signs of a blow back in Pakistan. The other fallacy is that we hope that a solution will be given to us by Pakistan. We have to find it in Kashmir. One has only to read the latest Baroness Nicholson report to the European Parliament to understand how the West now considers Pakistan’s role in POK to be tenuous and intimidating. Similarly, the latest Human Rights Watch report of September 2006 is a severe indictment of the Pakistani establishment in POK.
There is a very real fear in the Pakistani ruling establishment that a secular and successful India on its borders would undermine both Islamic Pakistan and the two-nation theory. This in turn would undermine the primacy of the Army. Pakistan’s equality is illusory and largely contrived with assistance from outside. This has led to years of adventurism and the feeling that Kashmir would be available to Pakistan. A ruling class that seems reluctant to assist its present benefactor to the extent it can or should, is hardly likely to do so for arch-enemy India unless it knows that the country has a price to pay. The Pak Army is the strongest political party in Pakistan and in our region anti-incumbency is a strong factor. This is bound to happen in Pakistan one day and that would affect the entire country where the political systems have been cramped for so long. The assassination attempts, suicide attacks and events in Balochistan and Waziristan, Bajaur are not a happy signal for the Pak Armed Forces. The anti-incumbency factor as we call it here can afflict the Pakistan Army as well.
As the Indian economy picks up momentum, there will inevitably be inequalities in India’s various regions but there will also be opportunities for all of India’s regions and neighbours. A booming national economy with its 300 million middleclass will only lead to greater integration of regions including Kashmir, draw the average Kashmiri into the Indian mainstream and lessen the appeal or fear of radical Islamic terrorists wishing to Talibanise Kashmir. Pakistan must understand or get the message that Kashmir and India may seem caught up in an unhappy marriage today but a marriage it is and it is not going to be annulled. This understanding and then acceptance is long way away in Pakistan.
In a globalised world, interaction between economies and countries will necessarily change. An India closer to the US and China with a Pakistan closer to Russia and even Israel is a possibility. But an India that pulls away from Russia in its new found friendship with the US can only be described as pursuing short term and shortsighted strategic policies. So far the tendency has been, especially in Pakistan, to oppose India at every forum and for China to exclude India from the corridors of international power. The edges would hopefully get diffused and there would be greater mutual confidence of learning the value of living with each other, rather like France and Germany.
Another question asked quite often is how would the smaller South Asian States react to an economically successful India. Undoubtedly there will be disequilibria and inequalities. Bu these will be there within India and the next few years will be crucial as India must stay the course. There will be for instance demographic pressures on India both internally as populations move to the cities for employment and those from neighbouring countries move to India also for new opportunities. This will lead to greater integration but is bound to create local tensions as well. It is going to be a question of managing these and other contradictions emanating from rising expectations. Sri Lanka and Bhutan have seen the opportunity in this but Pakistan and Bangladesh have not.
The Failed States Index for 2006 prepared by the Washington-based Fund for Peace, lists Pakistan (9), Afghanistan (10), Myanmar (18), Bangladesh (19), Nepal (20) and Sri Lanka (25) as the most dysfunctional states in the world — six of our neighbours rank in the top 25. It will be agreed that this is not a comforting scenario. Refugee flows, rising demographic pressures, factionalised elites, a legacy of groups seeking vengeance, deteriorating public services, a security apparatus that operates like a state within a state, and criminalisation or delegitimisation of the state are some of the symptoms. A dysfunctional state has considerably reduced ability to provide basic security and good governance to its people and has lost control over the use of force within its boundaries. It is not that these countries will eventually collapse and will do so in the order that has been listed. The choice whether or not to continue to slide down the scale and become totally dysfunctional is also the individual choice of the states.
We have seen how the influx of Bangla immigrants to the extent that they may be about 15-20 million in the north east and spreading to the rest of India have caused considerable socio-economic tensions and have also changed the ethnic component of several districts. India also does not have the capacity to bolster the sagging systems in all these countries for all times. The possibility of a failed state in the neighbourhood is a nightmare for India. India cannot afford to have an influx of refugees or the induction of jehadi warriors from across its borders.
Added to this, India continues to face multiple sources of terrorism — from the Pakistan-led Islamic terrorists in Kashmir and now in the rest of the country; Maoist rebels in a huge north-south belt right through India; ethno-nationalist separatists in our north-east with boundaries with Tibet, Myanmar and Bangladesh. There are no easy answers to this. But it is self-evident that India has to pay more attention to strengthening its internal security systems and institutions as there is unlikely to be any appreciable let up in the activities of terrorists.
The year gone by has been difficult in many ways for our neighbours and, therefore, for us despite many positive developments as India gets a higher profile on the world stage and its economy begins to grow. But the year ahead is not going to be easy either.
There is still a question mark on the possibility of elections in Pakistan about their nature and independence. A good deal will depend on how General Musharraf handles the Afghanistan and Taliban issue, how he handles the domestic fallout of this, and what sort of elections are held. If they are without the mainstream politicians we will see a stronger bonding of the mullahs and military despite what he says on TV interviews to gullible audiences, and whether he goes beyond platitudes on Kashmir and actually gives India satisfaction by winding down the terror establishment. This remains doubtful. This will determine whether Musharraf is an enlightened moderate or merely moderately enlightened in the grip of those who believe in permanent hostility with India. Away from the Kashmir issue, 2007 may well be a violent year with the areas west of the Indus showing signs of ethnic and religious turbulence. Political parties, disappointed at their exclusion could add to this.
Bangladesh is the big worry of 2007. The country has been through considerable violence in the run up to the election in January with the two ladies deeply suspicious and distrustful of each other. Some doubts have begun to arise whether or not free and fair elections will be held in Bangladesh in January and what would be the result. And if held will these be the last elections, will the Army step in and will Bangladesh turn increasingly radical, pro-Pak and inimical to India with repercussions in our northeast and east. Bangladesh, surrounded on three sides by India and crucial to India’s economic development, has the choice either to become the birthplace for the next Islamic revolution or a modern economic state. Closer ties with India would generate employment and trade within its own boundaries. In that sense India needs to become an important stakeholder in Bangladesh’s economic prosperity. There is just too much politics in Bangladesh’s economic decisions.
The same principle applies to Nepal. Both these countries suffer from the small country syndrome and there is very little India can do except to reassure them that India has enough of its own problems and would not want to seek to add to them by being a hegemonic power. Nepal struggles to get to terms with the new power equation. The relevance of the King, the status of the mainstream political parties importance of the Maoists in the politics and future of Nepal will possibly be finally determined in 2007 when the Constituent Assembly meets to decide the country’s future. The fear is that if the Maoists assess that their influence is waning and that their “constitutional revolution” is not giving them what they want, then the present peace may not last long.
Sri Lanka has a majority problem in as much as the majority Sinhala is unable to give the minority Tamils their place in the sun while India has a Tamil problem in as much as Tamil Nadu politics prevents India from playing a more active role in helping solve the island’s problems. Sri Lanka has to sort out the Tamil question and India must begin to play a bigger role here before we get swamped out of reckoning.
Afghanistan faces a bleak future. The Taliban are resurgent and NATO forces are unequal to the task. There are growing number of suicide attacks, there is increasing palpable hostility towards the West, chiefly the US and there are larger numbers of Pushtoon fence sitters waiting for the end game. Next year will be another bumper year for opium production – therefore heroin. Opium trade may account for 50% of the country’s economy but there are much larger global interests that keep this trade continuing. There is a huge and lucrative underworld economy of narcotics traffickers, arms smugglers, human traffickers and money launderers and the suppliers of the drug on the streets of Europe and the US, who thrive in lawlessness and insecurity who want this trade to thrive. Pakistan may well be asked to take the country on sublease once NATO and the US find continuance to be an unacceptable cost. One could easily see an Afghanistan Study Group next year.
No dramatic changes in India-China can be expected in 2007. China will doubtless watch India’s growing relations with the US and will seek to strengthen its position in the SCO and in Southeast and E Asia. India will be seen as a competitor but not admitted to be anywhere near a peer competitor although there will be competition in Eurasia for resources and markets elsewhere. At the same time, while the border remains unresolved, bilateral trade will soar although as far as India is concerned it needs to correct the content of its exports. Thus, while there will be border tranquility, both friendship and competition will shift into higher gear.
There are no easy solutions. Restoration of responsive and responsible governments, economic development and so on are often the recommendations but what we also need in the region are institutionalised arrangements for problem/conflict resolutions. This is particularly relevant in a nuclear neighbourhood. But so long as some feel that democracies do not get rewarded and dictatorships do not get punished, there is little chance of this happening. Perhaps an enlightened self-confident leadership in these countries would lead to a realisation that the future of the South Asian subcontinent is inextricably interlinked.

By vikram Sood

Source : Indian defence review jan-Mar 2007

Intelligence reform or Perish

Unless someone has the wisdom of a sage, he cannot use spies; unless he is benevolent and righteous, he cannot employ spies; unless he is subtle and perspicacious, he cannot perceive the substance in intelligence reports. It is subtle, subtle, subtle.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
This quotation has been cited by Philip Knightley in his book, “The Second Oldest Profession.” The book is about spies and spying in the twentieth century and not necessarily something that is very complimentary to the trade although Knightley also quotes a former CIA counsel, Michael J Barrett who said “Espionage is the world’s second oldest profession and just as honourable as the first.” GC “Gary” Saxena, Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing in the 1980s quoting others used to say that intelligence was a game nations played and that it was a dirty game best played by men of honour.
Espionage is indeed as old as history. Chandragupta ran his espionage service for his Emperor, Ashoka, so did Emperor Akbar where he had his 4000 spies some of who reported to his National Security Council every evening. Delilah, the original honey trap, was a spy for the Philistines but later Mata Hari was a failure; Moses ran his espionage service and, at the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham ran a security service free of cost to Her Majesty. Yet later in history, major powers went to war without an intelligence service. When the French went to war with Germany in 1870 it had no secret service because it had no money for this sort of activity. Two days after the war started, the French allocated 1 million francs to start an espionage service but Colonel Rollin, the man asked to start this remarked, “It was too late. Such a service cannot be improvised. It must be built up in the leisure of time.”
This is a fundamental truth very often forgotten by political masters. Intelligence is something vague and intangible for a politician to pay too much attention. It is neither a vote catcher, nor can it exhibit success in a way that a politician’s fortunes could soar. It is not like building a bund or a road that every can see. Only those who have a strategic vision and security consciousness understand this game.
The United States went through the Second World War without a formal human intelligence service. In fact it was the last major power to have a formal and proper intelligence service. And when it did have a formal intelligence service it missed out vital clues and could not predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union or even Pokhran II or the September 11 attacks. After the War, in pursuit of its global interests, the intelligence set-ups in the US and the Soviet Union expanded phenomenally as they fought their Cold War. US intelligence became known more for its covert actions across the globe and by the end of the 1970s more than 200,000 persons were employed in the business of collection of intelligence US.
The process of intelligence collection and its targets have changed with the revolution in technology, communications and the changing nature of threats. The covert action option is more readily exercised by major powers in protecting or enhancing its state interests. The traditional spy was in Graham Greene’s novels or in those much earlier by John Buchan, where the spy was either a “static” or “stationary” in a foreign country or was an “itinerant” who moved in and out of the target area. The task of such a spy usually was to cover docks, bridges, telegraph lines or whatever, pinch a document if possible and prepare reports with an essentially military objective. Today, with communications and transport revolution the handler no longer has to be in the same place as the agent being run by him. Internet, satellite phones and cell phones have ensured that. Satellite imagery and satellite communication monitoring has meant that all activity in target areas is totally covered - twenty-four hours, seven days a week. Technical espionage with the more glamorous gizmo has burgeoned to overtake human intelligence (HUMINT). Consequently, over time HUMINT considered to be a stodgy poor relation and old fashioned and definitely more difficult, took a back seat creating a vast gap not only in the collection of vital information but also in assessment and analysis.
External and internal intelligence are two essential ingredients of statecraft of any government. The former is the sword and the latter is the shield. Their effectiveness depends on how they are used not just by the government of the day but over a sustained period of time. This in turn depends on whether or not a country and its government have a strategic security concept or is interested merely in keeping crime off the streets, has no regional or other goals and really has no secrets to hide. In such cases all a country needs is a local criminal investigation department to hunt criminals and solve crime. The US did not have a formal internal intelligence service when Sep 11, 2001 happened but that was under the belief that the US was so secure and so immensely popular in the world that it had no internal threat. What it had was an investigation agency in the FBI and the gigantic and super-secret National Security Agency for technological snooping along with a host of other agencies – 19 in all.
In India, intelligence at the time of independence symbolised ultimate and secret imperial power that helped its masters hunt Indian nationalists or kept a watch on Indian dissidents. It was a government agency that had been run by the British with Indian employees to serve imperial interests and was therefore viewed as a successor to imperial power. It was something nasty and hateful. Soon after independence and for many years after that, there was suspicion, fear or contempt about intelligence activities.
The main charter in the early days for Indian intelligence was the Communist threat as it was in the British system and Pakistan became the new add-on. The Telengana uprising and the Pakistani misadventures into Kashmir immediately after independence bolstered these two threats. The 1962 and 1965 wars with China and Pakistan eventually led to the creation of the R&AW, just as years later, the Kargil war led to the creation of the Defence Intelligence Agency, the National Technical Facilities (renamed Research) Organisation and several other organisations meant to smoothen intelligence coordination and assessment.
Since the R&AW was born of the IB, in the initial years officers from the IB who were, almost without exception, from the Indian Police, manned it. Like in every service some made superb and successful external intelligence officers and some did not. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the R&AW’s founding fathers, Rameshwar Nath Kao and Sankaran Nair, who repeatedly stressed that the R&AW should not become just another police organisation, and should have talent from wherever they could find, including other services of the Government of India. Recruitment to what would be a new service began in 1971 and many other lateral entrants later got absorbed in a service that became their new life. The R&AW went through its roller coaster fortunes with Morarji Desai the impractical moralist who single handedly went about denigrating and curtailing an agency barely six years old and a successful one at that. It set back the agency by several years and a restive staff added to their problems. It began to get back into recognition from the mid-80s because the good fortune of both – an able organisational leadership and a political leadership that had a strategic mindset that felt the need for a sharp external service.
Inevitably, as it happens in India, success brings envy and suspicion. We are particularly adept at damaging our own instruments of power and governance. The R&AW was subjected to reviews and committees periodically and the attempt has been to progressively exercise external control. The professionals in the organisation would accept controls and supervision if other professionals exercise it. Instead, the consistent attempt has been to tinker in the name of reform and exercise control. The result has been increasing bureaucratisation of a profession, which, by nature has to be unconventional, and needs imaginative handling far removed from stodgy bureaucrats who feel comfortable working in carefully structured and rigid systems. On the other hand, the head of an intelligence organisation must have the freedom to deploy and re-deploy men and material according to perceived threats. Such agencies must have what they call a “surge capacity”; that is an ability, flexibility and freedom to surge the forces in one direction if need be. Of course, there have to be some checks and balances as it cannot have an intelligence agency out of control like in Pakistan.
Quite often the role of India’s two agencies, the IB and R&AW are considered as having common objectives and methods and therefore assumed that personnel are interchangeable. This is not so. The IB is the internal service, operating within the country also called the Security Service while the R&AW is the external service operating outside the country and often referred to as the Secret Intelligence Service. The former operates within and armed with the law of the country while the latter operates outside the realm of law of the country to which assigned. The Internal service makes patriots out of ordinary and sometimes extraordinary persons; the latter suborns and makes traitors out of ordinary citizens. The former has the protection of law, the latter does not. The former may not need to learn a new language or adjust to alien customs, the latter is useless without this ability. The two professions are similar in that they are secret and relate to security and espionage. But the talent required and the environment is totally different.
The biggest dangers to intelligence services in India are subversion by external forces and the politicisation of the agencies where the internal agency assumes that security of the state is the same thing as the security of the government while the external agency gets policised. The Security Service of the UK (better known as MI 5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI 6) are what their names signify. The former has more police functions, provides security to the State and not to a Government against its domestic political rivals and the latter has no police functions and provides intelligence about the external enemies of the State. Sourcing for recruitment is different.
If there is one lesson from September 11, 2001 – and there are many – and that is that one may have innumerable intelligence agencies including the behemoth called the NSA, the world’s largest, most secret, and most advanced spy organisation, no technical input will be enough without humint and interpretation of this technical intelligence. James Bamford describes it best in his book (“The Body of Secrets”) when he says that in Crypto City, scientists work on the largest collection of hyperpowerful computers, there are advanced mathematicians and language experts covering all parts of the globe. Time in Crypto City is measured in femtoseconds – one million billionth of a second. Scientists work in secret to develop computers that will perform more than one septillion operations every second. A septillion is the figure 1 with 24 zeros. Mercifully India does not need such an expensive arrangement as our interests are nowhere near as global as the US. But did all this elaborate arrangement prevent 9/11? Will it in the future? The answer to both is a definite no in the first case and a probable no in the second. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the chances of detection would improve with a better humint capability.
This brings us to the subject of recruitment and in house maintenance of the intelligence cadres. Recruitment will have to depend on the nature of evolving and existing threats. The technological revolution that the world has witnessed since the 1990s, and there is no knowing where it will lead us in the future, means that the threat has altered considerably from what existed in the 1990s. Cheap and advanced technology is now available virtually on the streets. The threats ahead are technology and nano-technology based; catastrophic terrorism, cyber terrorism, remote control missile attacks and virtual wars are the new threats. International trade and commercial transactions have become faster and more intricate; banking transactions move at the speed of lightning. IT-driven globalisation also covers the criminal world. Interaction between narcotics smugglers, arms merchants, human traffickers and terrorists is much easier, faster and safer. They all have access to sophisticated denial and deception techniques. One is not even talking about radical religious terrorists.
The age of the generalist and the bird of passage is surely over. An officer on deputation comes without area expertise, language skills and does not necessarily have the attitude, time or incentive to acquire these skills during his tenure long or short. The chief motive of such an officer on deputation is to hope for a comfortable foreign assignment without adding much to the experience basket of the organisation. Officers on deputation these days come with additional baggage – most are politicised or unwanted in the states. It is, therefore, a fallacy to assume that salvation of intelligence organisations lies through greater induction from existing services.
An intelligence agency can be effective in its national effort only if it is manned by men and women of talent, ability, commitment and expertise. Unfortunately this talent and expertise or commitment is no longer available in the civil service. The R&AW and the IB need more and more professional intelligence officers who are home grown, who are assisted by a never ending supply of qualified economists, scientists, computer whiz kids, mathematicians, and experts in international banking and finance. Area and subject expertise gets built in-house over a period of time. Such talents do not come cheap; nor do security or preservation and enhancement of the country’s interest. Recruitment has to be from the open market offering competitive remunerations, fast tracks for the efficient and an exit for others. The need is for a thoroughly professional intelligence corps and not one that functions on the basis of its origins, which is normally a recruitment examination passed several years ago or served by those who consider the R&AW to be a temporary safe haven from uncomfortable state cadres.
Recruitment to the civil services is not a selection process but merely an elimination process and not an assessment of merit or aptitude. Besides the wages are not attractive enough nor is career advancement any better. The civil service is no longer the career of first choice for most. The civil service age limit is high, by the time a probationer becomes an officer he is quite often in his late 20s. If he joins the R&AW after three years’ service elsewhere, he is nearly thirty or more; besides being married and father/mother of at least one child. Such a person is just too distracted, too old to be molded into anything new and it is not his/her fault. The esprit de corps required in a secret organisation just does not get cultivated with people who are already set in their ways and lives. In secret organisations, honour and élan are the two most important motivations, especially because there is no public recognition of achievements and there is general public skepticism about such organisations. There is usually envy for the external and fear of the internal service, which is why bashing the external boys is so much easier and appears self-justified.
Speaking of honour, Rabinder Singh and Ujjwal Dasgupta fell because they were not men of honour. They fell because they were weak. One cannot say that men and women disgrace themselves merely because they are in touch with foreigners; external intelligence cannot be collected without access to foreigners. External liaison is legitimate if officially authorised and need not lead to a person being suborned; it is when intelligence liaison is unauthorised that it becomes illicit and dangerous.
We are going to make a grave mistake by adhering to archaic practices just because that has always been the case. There is need to change all this given the new and other enhanced threats. If we do not, we will ultimately have a non-functioning agency that will fail the government and the people every time. We simply must professionalise or perish.

Vikram Sood

Courtesy : Indian defence review Jul- Sep 2006