The Sharm el-Sheikh declaration is perhaps the shortest, the most perplexing and worrying piece of drafting that has been signed by two heads of government. It now exists as a document that would be the basis for continued acrimony between India and Pakistan and among Indians. Never have so few led the country so astray as in this document.
One of the sentences that has generated considerable debate is when it states that “Both leaders agreed that the two countries will share real time, credible and actionable information on any future terrorist threats.” It is information that will be shared not intelligence; information being something that could well appear in the newspapers but intelligence presumes that information which has been gathered from secret sources. The sentence does not talk of ISI and RAW co-operation. Presumably, therefore, the reference is to exchange of information about terrorist acts.
Although Pakistan has been sponsoring jihadi terrorism against India for decades it does not consider this to be terrorism. The instruments have been Lashkar-e- Tayyaba or Jamat-ut-Dawa is it is now called, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and a host of other jihadi organisations that keep mutating according to the needs of the ISI. Since this is a low cost foreign policy option against India and since the Pakistan Army also believes in jihad as a doctrine it is unlikely that it will co-operate with India or share any real time credible actionable information following any Indian request. On the contrary, one should now expect a great deal of ‘information’ about Indian agents active in Pakistan. General Mirza Aslam Beg’s bizarre allegations of multilateral co-operation between the CIA, the R&AW, the MI6, Mossad and the German BND, all working to destabilise Pakistan and Afghanistan, will now acquire respectability.
Besides where is the trust that is so essential before such sharing begins. Even PM Gilani admitted this after his return from Sharm el-Sheikh. There have been contacts between the heads of ISI and RAW in the past but these never led to anything substantial. This was before the ISI went berserk with its jihadi agenda on Kashmir and the rest of India in the 1990s. This has only sharpened with time and one can hardly visualise the ISI leading the Indian intelligence agencies to terrorists hiding in Pakistan or planning terrorist acts against India. In their book they are mujahideen, ghazis and fidayeen but not terrorists and instead Baloch nationalists are the terrorists.
An establishment that has handled Hafiz Saeed with kid gloves, has never handed over any of the terrorists like Masood Azhar or mafiosos like Dawood Ibrahim, is hardly likely to co-operate. Besides one is not even sure whether or not the Indian intelligence agencies would be willing to share all the details with their Pakistani counterparts for fear of exposing their sources of intelligence thereby jeopardising an operation or a source. The present DG ISI Lt Gen Shuja Pasha is known to described the Taliban as Pakistan’s assets while Pakistan’s military spokesman Gen Athar Abbas was quite categorical in his CNN interview when he said that in the Taliban context Pakistan expected some concessions from Washington over his country’s concerns with India. Given this frame of mind, co-operation on terrorism aimed against India is likely to remain either frozen and lead mostly to one-up man ship with misleading and frustrating results. Although an India Pakistan intelligence co-operation between the two intelligence services may be desirable more as a means to keep channels of communication open, nothing extra-ordinary should be expected from this. The level of trust is just not there. This has to be built and this is not available at the flick of a switch.
Besides trust, intelligence co-operation, like any other co-operation but on a far higher plane of understanding, needs an identity of interests and targets. India and Pakistan have not identified the common threat or targets despite the Havana Declaration. There is no congruence of interests beyond noble pronouncements and naïve assumptions when leaders meet. Seeking Pakistan’s assistance in tackling terrorism in India is like asking a murderer to help investigate in the murder he has committed. He might, under duress, but there is no evidence of that being attempted by India.
Intelligence co-operation covers various bilateral interests like tackling terrorism, insurgencies, geo-political studies and assessments, training and supply of equipment. This is the standard practice and quite often intelligence agencies serve as the secret and reliable means of communication between two countries with adversarial relations; they act as the ice breakers or deal makers.
The Iran Contra deal of 1980 could not have been worked out without the active and discrete cooperation of the CIA, the Mossad, the French and the Iranian intelligence and other reliable but not always desirable intermediaries. In fact, legend has it that George Bush senior himself flew into Paris on 18 October 1980 along with CIA Director –designate William Casey to work this deal out just three weeks before the US presidential elections. This was a co-operation that served various needs – political, military and operational where the contracting parties got what they wanted. Reagan got acclaim for the release of the American hostages, the Iranians got the weapons they needed to counter Iraq, Israel sold their weapons and the Nicaraguan Contras got the money. A win-win situation for all.
There is another kind of need based strategic-tactical co-operation that is open ended. The ECHELON scheme is a multilateral sigint co-operation between the five Anglo Saxon countries - US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Originally put together to spy on the Soviets, it later landed itself in some controversy when the Europeans complained that this was being used for industrial espionage in Europe. In the intelligence game, liaison and co-operation does not preclude spying on friends or trying to suborn them.
The surveillance operation had been stepped up after the September 11 attacks and according to James Bamford, the author of the book ‘Body of Secrets’ and an intelligence expert, the US and British intelligence agencies intercept millions of telephone calls, emails and faxes every hour. Working together, the National Security Agency, the US eavesdropping organisation, and its British counterpart, GCHQ, remain the largest espionage organisations the world has ever known which can eavesdrop any conversation virtually anywhere in the world. This capability has been further refined and upgraded with the outsourcing of a substantial portion of techint collection in the US. All this requires a high level of mutual trust and identity of interests.
India and Pakistan are a long way away from this kind of identity of interests.
Source : Mail Today , 25th July 2009
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