By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
Published in Hindustan Times, Edit Page, Platform Slot, on Tuesday, 23
May 2006
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1703816,00120002.htm
Thanks, But No Thanks
On US offer for tackling militancy in the North East, and intelligence
cooperation with USA
International Copyright, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, May 2006
Reproduction and forwarding strictly prohibited without prior
permission
International Publishing Rights in all media with Hindustan Times,
http://www.hindustantimes.com
Written and Submitted to Hindustan Times on Wednesday, May 17, 2006
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
CellPhone: {91}(0) 98 117 56789, {91}(0) 987 12 45678 Fax: (011) 25
26 68 68
2@r67.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published in Hindustan Times, Edit Page, Platform Slot, on Tuesday, 23
May 2006
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1703816,00120002.htm
Thanks, But No Thanks
Written and Submitted to Hindustan Times on Wednesday, May 17, 2006
by Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
Parliament should seriously debate the offer made in Agartala on
Tuesday, 16 May 2006, by Henry V. Jardine, the US consul general in
Kolkata, that the US would like to assist India in tackling militancy
in the northeastern states. In October 2004, there was a political and
diplomatic furore when US Ambassador to India David Campbell Mulford
had offered the FBI's assistance in investigating bomb blasts in the
northeastern states. Mulford had then written directly to the chief
ministers of Assam and Nagaland: "The US has considerable expertise
in investigative techniques in areas such as forensic analysis of
explosive residues...The Federal Bureau of Investigation would be
pleased to provide technical support for your investigation..." It is
not known whether Jardine had the consent of the Ministry of External
Affairs when he made the offer while speaking to reporters in Agartala
on Tuesday.
Indian and American intelligence agencies began cooperating in a
limited way in the early 1950s on issues such as communist and
secessionist activities in and around India. This intensified after the
1962 China War. US intelligence agencies have long been interested in
the unstable and secession-prone northeastern states for several
reasons. In addition to pursuing their own agenda of destabilizing
India while ostensibly cooperating to fight communism, from the early
1950s to the late 1970s, they used the northeastern region as a base
for electronic and signal surveillance of Communist regimes of China,
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Their influence faded in the 1980s due to
the degradation of their HUMINT (Human Intelligence) capabilities.
While assessing Jardine's offer, the Indian government would do well
to recall the guidelines which Ram Nath Kao, the founder of the
Research and Analysis Wing, had formulated to govern cooperation with
foreign intelligence agencies:
* "Each and every instance of intelligence cooperation with a foreign
country should be with the personal clearance of the prime minister,
who should be kept constantly informed of all actions taken."
* "All intelligence cooperation should be only through the Research
and Analysis Wing, which would act as the nodal agency, maintain
written records of all contacts with foreign intelligence agencies, and
act as the interface between foreign intelligence agencies and Indian
agencies needing their assistance."
* "Foreign intelligence agencies should not be allowed to interact
directly with any government department, agency or individual officer,
bypassing the R&AW under the pretext of facilitating counter-insurgency
or counter-terrorism cooperation."
.....
Following Kao's guidelines, R&AW maintained detailed records of all
interactions with foreign intelligence agencies in one secure location,
periodically reviewed the usefulness of the intelligence cooperation,
and kept the prime minister continually informed.
While intelligence cooperation with the US has intensified in recent
months, India has had some unfortunate experiences with US intelligence
agencies.
Immediately after the Mumbai explosions of March 1993, India sought the
assistance of experts from Austrian and US agencies for examining
hand-grenades of Austrian origin and a chemical timer of US origin
recovered from the blast sites.
The Austrian experts examined the grenades at the blast sites itself.
The Austrian government gave India a signed official report that these
grenades had been manufactured in a Pakistani ordnance factory with
technology and machine tools sold by an Austrian company to Pakistan's
Defence Ministry. Austria also told India that it was free to use this
report to build its evidence about the complicity of Pakistan's Inter
Services Intelligence in the Mumbai blasts.
But the US experts insisted that the chemical timer could be examined
only in a particular specialized forensic laboratory in USA. They
repeatedly insisted that Indian forensic laboratories lacked the
necessary technology and equipment. Indian intelligence officials
became suspicious because the US claims were excessively vehement, and
were therefore reluctant to cede possession of the timer. Then senior
functionaries of the US government gave their personal word of honour
to their counterparts in the Indian government that the timer would be
returned intact to India after examination, whereupon India permitted
them to take it.
After several weeks, they sent India an unsigned report which stated
that the timer was indeed of US origin and was part of a consignment
given by USA to Pakistan's ISI for being passed on to the Mujahideen
during the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. But
USA specified that India should not use this unsigned report for any
purpose.
India pointed out that this timer was the clinching incontrovertible
evidence which it had been long seeking about ISI's sponsorship of
terrorism in India.
But the US officials retorted that there were widespread diversions or
thefts of weapons from Pakistani Army arsenals to hundreds of arms
dealers, and that Dawood Ibrahim and the other suspects in the Mumbai
blasts "very probably obtained the timer from one of these hundreds
of arms dealers without even one single ISI officer being aware of
it."
When the Indian officials asked the US officials to return the timer,
the latter claimed that the timer had been "accidentally destroyed
during testing by a young scientist."
Several Indian intelligence officials were of the view that this timer
was not of Afghan war vintage of the early 1980s but was made around
1990-92, and would have exposed to India the close involvement of US
agencies with ISI.
In sharp contrast to this experience with USA was that of the
cooperation India received from the West German government when Dubai
captured the Khalistani hijackers of an Indian Airlines flight. The
revolvers recovered from the Khalistani hijackers were of West German
origin. India and Dubai sent these revolvers to Germany for forensic
examination. The German government provided India a signed report that
these revolvers were part of a consignment which a West German company
had sold to Pakistan's Army.
Like the Austrians, the German government told India that it was free
to use this report to build its evidence about ISI's complicity in the
Khalistan secessionist movement.
Soon after the timer incident of 1993, Indian intelligence officials,
under the orders of then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, provided
USA a detailed dossier of Pakistan's involvement in terrorism in
Kashmir and Punjab. India had then wanted USA to notify Pakistan as a
state sponsor of terrorism.
But the US officials refused to accept this dossier, stating that a
large portion of the evidence collected by India was based on
interrogation of captured militants: "We all know how your Indian
police use torture to extract confessions."
However, there also have been many happy instances of cooperation with
the US intelligence agencies especially in areas such as email
surveillance, interception of communications, digital forensics,
decryption, cybercrime, money laundering, drug trafficking, and
financial frauds. A dramatically successful joint operation was the
capture of Aftab Ansari in United Arab Emirates for masterminding the
attack on the American Centre in Kolkata. The FBI also assisted India
in tracking down Abu Salem Ansari in Portugal.
However, there is a growing feeling in Indian intelligence circles that
India is providing far more information to USA in the War on Terror
than it is receiving in return. India has provided USA with vast
quantities of communications intercepts of terrorists in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, as well as detailed photographs of terrorist training
camps, but has not received information of commensurate value, although
USA has provided some help in decryption and pattern recognition.
Other areas where India is giving much more than it is receiving from
USA are high-altitude warfare, jungle warfare, urban warfare, and
close-combat warfare. It would be difficult for US forces to gain
practical experience in these areas from any other country. US forces
gained a great deal of valuable experience in high-altitude warfare
during joint exercises conducted in Leh, and in jungle warfare at
India's Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare Centre in Mizoram.
While India should tap America's technological expertise in tackling
militancy in the northeast, India should not allow US intelligence
agencies to acquire significant contacts in that sensitive region, nor
to develop long-lasting relationships with local security and police
personnel. The interactions between local police personnel and the
Americans should be strictly for specific objectives, and be under the
direct supervision of the chief ministers of those states.
by Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
The author, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon and IIT Kanpur, heads a group
on C4ISRT (Command, Control, Communications and Computers Intelligence,
Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targetting) in South Asia.
=========================
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
CellPhone: {91}(0) 98 117 56789, {91}(0) 987 12 45678 Fax: (011) 25
26 68 68
2@r67.net
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
19, Maitri Apts, CIS Off Society # 19
A - 3, Paschim Vihar
New Delhi 110 063
CellPhone: 98 117 56789, 987 12 45678 Fax: (011) 25 26 68 68
2@r67.net
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
Published in Hindustan Times, Edit Page, Platform Slot, on Tuesday, 23
May 2006
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1703816,00120002.htm
Thanks, But No Thanks
On US offer for tackling militancy in the North East, and intelligence
cooperation with USA
International Copyright, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, May 2006
Reproduction and forwarding strictly prohibited without prior
permission
International Publishing Rights in all media with Hindustan Times,
http://www.hindustantimes.com
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
.
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