India has once again ended up in embarrassment thanks to none else than its ‘premier’ intelligence agency – RAW. According to Canadian investigative journalist Stewart Bell, Indian intelligence agencies attempted to use money and disinformation to covertly influence Canadian politicians. According to a highly sensitive government document obtained by the journalist, Canadian security officials suspected India’s RAW along with Intelligence Bureau had asked an Indian citizen to sway politicians in Canada into supporting Indian government interests. One of his tasks was also to convince politicians that funding from Canada was being sent to Pakistan to support terrorism. Identified in court records only as ‘AB’, the man was the editor-in-chief of an unnamed Indian newspaper, with his wife and son being Canadian citizens.
This is not the first case of RAW having left New Delhi red-faced by having been caught with its hand in the cookie jar. It has a long and unenviable history of committing costly blunders to its credit. Be it creation of Bangladesh or murder of Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, proclamation of ‘fatal’ emergency by the then Indian Premier Indira Gandhi in 1975 or ‘Operation Blue Star’ against Sikhs in 1984, RAW has always failed to assess the situation and give an authentic analysis to the Indian leadership. While Indian politicians and media call 2016 Uri and Pathankot terror incidents sheer intelligence failures, assassination of Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi at the hands of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1991 and 1999 hijacking of an Indian plane are also some of the major security lapses of the Indian security establishment.
Pakistan has also captured many RAW operatives involved in anti-state acts on its soil, with the latest and the most high-profile being Indian navy commander Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, who was captured by Pakistani military in Balochistan in 2016.
During custody, Jadhav confessed to being a serving Indian Navy Officer (Navy No 41558Z), who had also been carrying a fake passport under the name of ‘Hussein Mubarak Patel’, and had been deputed by RAW to carry out terrorism activity throughout Balochistan and Karachi. Specifically, Jadhav confessed that he had been deputed by India to disrupt CPEC in Pakistan, and to provide militancy support to the Baloch separatists.
What followed in the months to come was a saga of India’s counter-claims, confessions and accusations, and a Field General Court Martial trial for Jadhav on espionage, sabotage and terrorism charges, awarding him death sentence, until the case landed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which also upheld the sentence.
New Delhi is very much convinced that a direct conflict with Islamabad will be disastrous because of Pakistan being a nuclear state. Therefore, it has shifted the covert war theatre to other states as a means of inflicting violence and endanger Pakistan’s territorial integrity. Afghanistan had been badly embroiled in a war with India’s friendly state Soviet Union, therefore, was an ideal soil for Indian inimical objectives. India turned Afghan chaos into its favour and unleashed a relentless proxy war against Pakistan. However, the world is now fast waking up to India’s terrorist bases in Afghanistan, especially after an Indian national launched a terrorist attack on a Sikh Gurdwara on March 25, 2020.
After recent revelations by the Canadian journalist, it has been now established beyond doubt that India is planning to build some sort of a grand international coalition against Pakistan, especially to make Pakistan suffer at platforms like FATF by painting it a state supporting terrorism in the world. However, once again, New Delhi has fallen flat on its face and its ulterior motives have been exposed before the world. It is also a bitter truth that India has always tried to stay away from any peaceful settlement of all outstanding issues in the subcontinent despite Pakistan repeatedly pushing for dialogue on all issues of bilateral concern.
Since the deceitful nature of New Delhi stands exposed before the world after the recent revelations, it is now up to the international community to launch an international investigation and make an example out of India to avert any further such moves by it or any other country. RAW also needs a ‘refresher course’ if it does not want to end up embarrassing New Delhi over and over again.
Footnote: In the book ‘The Spy Chronicles, RAW, ISI and Illusion of Peace’, co-authored by former ISI director general Lt Gen (r) Asad Durrani, ex-RAW chief AS Dulat has very candidly admitted: “Our biggest failure against Pakistan is that we’ve not been able to turnaround an ISI officer or have an ISI officer working for us. Or not to my knowledge, at a level where it counts. If you go back to the Cold War, what was the main task of a CIA officer? It was to somehow find a defector. If a CIA guy found a defector, then for the rest of his career he didn’t need to do anything, because he had done what was supremely required. On our side, I don’t think we’ve even imagined it properly and I don’t think we’ve succeeded.”
