No Names, Please

The Subrahmanyam Committee on Kargil has come down hard on the army and intelligence agencies for the Pakistani intrusions last year. While no individual officers have been named, the army units stationed in the sector have been taken to task. Sources at army headquarters say that senior generals are looking into the charges levelled at the army in the report. A similar exercise is also being carried out by the Research and Analysis Wing (raw), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI).

According to reliable sources at army HQ, some of the main findings of the panel are:

But the most significant observation of the committee is with regard to the absence of an agency that can grasp the implications of the intelligence inputs received from field units. The committee has pointed out that there is no central agency to collate and formulate an actionable plan following the assessment of "raw" intelligence. In a way, it has obliquely pointed to the lack of coordination between the various intelligence units controlled by different heads and ministries.

Sources in various intelligence units say that one positive fallout of the committee’s report could be the setting up of an inter-services, multi-disciplinary agency to gather specific intelligence on Pakistan and China. This agency is likely to include military officials and operatives of both raw and IB and may also co-opt officials from the ITBP and BSF wherever necessary.

Currently, raw is the principal provider of intelligence to the military, drawing up projections for six-month periods with a 30-day warning of imminent hostilities, though each arm has its own intelligence set-up. But often, single-service intelligence wings lack the resources, equipment and expertise in information gathering. Worse, inter-service rivalry is legion in the intelligence fraternity. Operatives of raw, MI and IB are often at loggerheads and work at cross-purposes.

Army officials are distinctly uneasy about whether the civilian security agencies, particularly raw, will ever "allow" a new defence intelligence agency to be formed, given the mutual antagonism and suspicion that dominates their relationship. For example, for years raw has reportedly been supplying arms to Karen rebels in Myanmar which ultimately found their way across the porous border to Indian separatist groups fighting the army in the Northeast. The web of deceit, intrigue and rivalry between the civil and military intelligence emerged after two successful military operations against gun runners in 1998 led to the seizure of large quantities of arms meant for anti-government rebels in Myanmar.

The Subrahmanyam committee may have pointed out the lack of coordination between the different intelligence agencies. However, it is a moot point whether another separate agency will overcome the inefficiency shown by the authorities in Delhi or add to the original problem of multiplicity of authorities.