books
A typical Track-II should include the dialogue partners ’ frank assessment of intentions , capability and vulnerability of both countries to allow people to judge , even in posterity , whether a real confrontation between them was in the offing . It is good that Durrani had rev ealed that there was no possibility of an India- Pakistan war when the ‘ Gates Mission ’ in May 1990 had triggered fears of a nuclear confrontation . This was in the wake of a sudden spurt in the Kashmir insurgency , Pakistan ’ s Zarb-e-Momin exercises and India ’ s retaliatory action .
But Durrani is not as revealing on other issues , which had deeply disturbed India even when he was holding office . Kiessling wrote that Durrani headed the ISI ( August 1990 to March 1992 ) during “ a period when Kashmir , Afghanistan and internal affairs were the ISI ’ s main concerns ”. Yet he does not reveal how and why turbulence had suddenly burst open in Kashmir in December 1989 , after Rubaiya Sayeed ’ s abduction just prior to his taking over as ISI chief .
EVEN the late Hamid Gul had frankly told the then RAW chief , A . K . Verma , in the 1980s , during their initial secret Track-I meeting in Amman , that Pakistan was backing Sikh terrorism as it was afraid of India . He said that they would stop supporting terrorism if India made enough movements towards confidence building measures ( CBMs ). On his part , he did make certain movements which had benefited India . That type of frankness was absent in Durrani . On May 5 , 2011 , he was quoted by Reuters as saying , “ Terrorism is a technique of war , and therefore an instrument of policy ”. He had made the statement when the Guantanamo interrogation documents , connecting the ISI with terrorism , were leaked .
Although he denied ISI ’ s K-2 operation ( Kashmir-Khalistan ) as beyond Paki stan ’ s capability , he tells Dulat that “ this is not the right time to start playing the Sikh card , the Kashmir card , the ULFA card ”, adding that the “ idea was to keep it on a leash ” as neither ‘ side ’ wanted a war . He is also ambivalent on official Pakistani involvement in 26 / 11 .
Durrani claims that no ISI man had
Naseerullah Babar , a creator of the Taliban along with Col Imam
‘ def ected ’, like from RAW . Quite true . The last big defector , Rabinder Singh , could flee due to RAW ’ s own intransigence of not handing over the investigation to the IB . But then , no other official espionage agency has been in the swim with terrorists as the ISI . The classic example is ISI stalwart Col . Imam ( Sul tan Amir Tarar ) who , along with Naseerullah Babar , had created the Taliban in 1994 with the help of then DGMO Pervez Musharraf , by giving them the entire Pakistani arms cache in Spin Boldak on the Pakistan-Afg ha nistan border . RAW could monitor this dev elopment , taking advantage of an open conversation between President Farook Leghari and Babar . The same Col . Imam was brutally killed in February 2011 by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan ( TTP ). Dulat should have asked Durrani how the ISI keeps the integrity of its cadre when faced with such dangerous elements .
Yet , the dialogue should be very interesting for Indian readers as we are yet to dev elop a culture of studying intelligence as a tool for formulating policy . Cons equently , we have produced only motivated or vainglorious intelligence literature , fit for Bollywood thrillers . At the same time , their remarks on current decision makers
No other official espionage agency has been in the swim with terrorists as the ISI . The classic example is ISI ’ s Col Imam , a creator of the Taliban , later brutally killed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban . or ‘ hawkish ’ career foreign service officials ( Part IV : Kabuki ) might excite the media , but do not help either country in finding solutions .
A comparison with another book , jointly written by CIA-KGB operators , and moderated by a US journalist during the US-Russia bonhomie during the Yeltsin presidency ( 1991- 1999 ), may be relevant . In 1997 , Yale University managed to produce a mammoth book , Battleground Berlin-CIA Vs . KGB in the Cold War , jointly written by David Murphy ( CIA ) and Gen . Kondrashev ( KGB ), who were in charge of rival Berlin stations . Like Aditya Sinha , this dialogue was moderated and recorded by American journalist George Bailey .
The book reproduced 250 secret file extracts and 87 photocopies of original documents . For the first time , it was possible to compare both services together , how they worked and fought with each other . It divulged that the Soviet services had access to the “ highest reaches of the American , British and French governments ”. It revealed how Gen . Donovan , father of American foreign intelligence , was deceived by NKGB in 1943 during the Second World War when he visited Moscow for proposing intelligence cooperation . Moscow happily agreed . What Donovan did not know was that his personal staff officer , Duncan Chaplin Lee , was already on the payroll of the NKGB !
Finally , the take-away : The Chronicles refer to Dulat and Durrani ’ s common paper on ‘ Intelligence Cooperation ’ published in The Hindu and Dawn simultaneously ( July 14 , 2011 ). It recommends that both agencies should serve as ‘ back-channel ’ for their governments to pave way for political dialogue . In Chapter 31 , they have recommended the institutionalisation of ISI-RAW representatives ’ meetings . Former Union home minister P . Chidambaram had tried this out in 2010 .
This would be similar to the secret , deniable ‘ Gavrilov channel ’, which CIA and KGB had established in the 1980s to set limits “ on certain extremes of behaviour by agreeing on unwritten rules of the game ”. O ( The writer is a former special secretary , Cabinet Secretariat )
70 OUTLOOK 18 June 2018