Most intelligence assessments in India come only with the benefit of hindsight. Security analysts concede that the intelligence effectiveness of a country depends on the level of paranoia it indulges in. As events in Kargil have shown, it was the utter lack of comprehension,despite periodic warnings,that led to infiltrations along a 100-km stretch of the LoC over several months, exposing the weakness of a smug Indian security establishment.
Amidst all the recriminations, most fingers are pointing at raw, India's premier external intelligence agency, for missing out the buildup along the LoC. While raw officials privately admit that the Kargil incursions have been something of an unexpected body blow, also coming in for flak is the Joint Intelligence Committee (jic), India's apex intelligence-garnering agency, and its laidback methods of work in an area where laxity can only prove fatal.
Members of the shell-shocked intelligence community, while referring to Vajpayee's Lahore trip, now admit that while politicians and public personalities can afford to be congenial, security agencies can't let their guard down. 'There's no doubt it's a colossal intelligence failure. India failed to read Pakistan's changing mindset about its northern area, of which Kargil could be a part. This is the only sector in Kashmir where troops on both sides were not engaged, aside from periodic shelling. So one couldn't imagine that intrusions could be carried out from here,' says M.K. Dhar, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) additional director, who has himself been behind several successful operations in the Northeast.
The key to good and timely intelligence, officials say, lies in analysing and collating information. Operating from Delhi's Sardar Patel Bhavan, which also houses the Cabinet Secretariat, the jic functions with the help of a regular secretariat. Its weekly meetings include briefs prepared by raw, IB, Military Intelligence (MI) and information gleaned by smaller government agencies. The briefs have to be collated, and a larger picture drawn from it. Depending on the seriousness of the information, the jic chairman has to put forward his recommendations to the chairman of the National Security Council, in this case Brajesh Mishra, who can then assess their value and pass it on to the prime minister. In practice, however, according to one member, the nsc is no better than a debating society, with literally no wherewithal for tactical implementation on ground.
Was there prior information of Pakistani movement across the LoC? Yes, say intelligence officials, except that no one put the information together and offered worthwhile analysis. The JIC should've done it, it didn't. Consider this:
In 1996, the army repulses an attempted infiltration through Kargil, giving an indication of the Pakistani design;
In October last year, an MI dispatch points to military buildup in Skardu, across the LoC;
Even on its own, such information could be considered vital. But if not collated and analysed well, it would come to nothing. Which is exactly what happened. Says Sushant Sareen, executive editor of Public Opinion Trends (pot), an agency dedicated to monitoring news from Pakistan: 'What has happened is not an intelligence failure. It is an intellectual failure to read the writing on the wall.'
According to sources in the Cabinet Secretariat, though the jic met often and discussed broad academic issues relating to national security, it never considered the question of a Kargil buildup. 'Between December '98 and May '99, neither the PM nor the home minister was briefed even once by raw on the Kargil situation,' says a senior official of the Cabinet Secretariat.
Expected, given the fact that the jic has over the years become a low priority for the government and a dumping ground for officers it doesn't want. When V.P. Singh became PM, he downgraded Rajiv Gandhi favourite M.K. Narayanan from IB chief to jic chairman. Two other former IB chiefs,R.P. Joshi and D.C. Pathak,were similarly shunted out by PMs who took charge of new governments. Moreover, the jic has no real powers to demand information from the security agencies, it only gets what these agencies deem fit to pass on. And in most cases, it's never the entire information.
But more than the jic, it's raw's failure that's being put to question. One of the best-equipped agencies operating in the Leh region, raw has a strong Pakistani desk and a massive budget. It has a number of physical observation posts along the LoC, it reportedly runs what are called 'human assets', it has an air recce cell armed with Boeings and Lear Jets and, most importantly, it has a highly-organised signal intelligence unit which constantly monitors Pakistani radios to pick up stray conversation which can be sent to the cipher bureau for decoding. How the Pakistanis managed to evade this setup will remain one of the unanswered queries of the Kargil conflict.
Raw's troubles began at the very top. It's a nightmare for any intelligence agency if there's a tussle over who should head it. There was virtual revolt when raw chief Arvind Dave was to superannuate in April this year and the government appointed A.S. Dullat, an ips officer and a special director in the IB, as officer on special duty, ostensibly to succeed Dave as chief. While the Pakistanis were digging themselves up in Kargil, R. Rangarajan, raw's special director, sent a 13-page memo to the cabinet secretary protesting against Dullat's proposed appointment as head of raw, because Dullat was an ips officer while he, an officer of the raw Administrative Service, was a career intelligence man. In a quandary, the government did what it knew best: gave a three-month extension to Dave, who was already under an extension given by I.K. Gujral in February '98.
Raw's other problem, according to its former officials, is its indifference to senior field officers (sfos), operatives considered the 'cutting edge' of an intelligence organisation. Some sfos have been posted in one place for years without the benefits enjoyed by other government officers or police personnel. So bad was the situation that raw employees formed a union in 1980 and on July 5 that year went on strike. The allegations ranged from nepotism to officials opting for favoured postings in the west and in some cases settling their families there.
And apart from the general criticism that raw sends out more alerts on China than on Pakistan, officials admit they lack a solid 'source' in the higher echelons of the Pakistan administration. Reason: when a top raw operative from Pakistan offered to sell the Kahuta N-plant blueprint for $10,000 in '78, the then PM Morarji Desai scuttled the plan by informing Pakistani diplomats in Delhi. That was the last anyone heard of the operative and the last that raw could lay its hands on a serious mole inside Pakistan.
The Kargil lapses then, say intelligence operatives, stem from these problems.There are also indications of an intra-services fight in which agencies concerned refused to part with the kind of input required to tackle an intrusion of this magnitude. Then there's the usual Indian bugbear: intelligence heads tell their political bosses only what they wish to hear, not the ground reality. They aren't open to public scrutiny, nor subject to any parliamentary check. In the past raw has helped unsettle unfavourable state governments and spy on politicians opposed to the Centre. In the face of some committed and autonomous spying from across the border, Indian intelligence agencies clearly have a job cut out for themselves.
SUCCESSES
1971
This was RAW's first major operation after it was set up in 1968. It successfully trained Mukti Bahini guerrillas and provided accurate information on Pakistani troop movements
1975
The agency kept the government informed on the movement of the Chinese and insurgent groups in the Northeast; it had a large role in getting together all elements, leading to Sikkim's absorption into the Indian union
1992
It allegedly funded some key anti-Pakistani elements within the Mohajir Qaumi Movement
FAILURES
1991
The LTTE had been planning the Rajiv Gandhi operation for months. Yet RAW failed to provide advance information.
1996
In the Purulia arms drop case, British intelligence provided the information, but RAW's reflexes were slow. The agency informed the IB, which in turn alerted the state government. But by then it was too late.
1999
The buildup across the LoC went unnoticed because the Kargil area was regarded as 'soft'. This, despite RAW's large presence in Leh.
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