Indian Intelligence Agencies Embezzling Hundreds of Crores

Guidelines for intelligence operatives were framed by the Union government in the Financial Power Rules, 1958.

Although accounting is informal, an officer is supposed to be held liable for every little expenditure he authorises.

A register has to be maintained with the date and amount of each bill, even if it is something intangible, like paying an informer.

A controlling officer audits all operations and funds annually and submits a certificate to the accountant general by August 31.

However, the fund cannot be scrutinised by any auditing authority, including the CAG.

Everything around seems infected by the corruption curse, so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. It almost seems too good to be true—secret service funds (SSF) running into hundreds of crores, cloak-and-dagger operations, no questions asked, no audit reports required. It’s one of the many privileges our intelligence agencies are entitled to. But what happens when funds from the SSF are used for personal, and not national, interest? An ongoing RTI tussle to reveal details about one such instance from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) has met with stiff resistance—all in the guise of protecting “security interests”. An embarrassed PMO, to which the NTRO reports directly, has washed its hands of the query and passed it on to the organisation, which in turn claimed last month that it was exempt from the RTI.

The present controversy concerns a Maruti Baleno car, purchased by a special secretary using money from the fund in 2005. According to an NTRO source, the officer and his wife allegedly kept the vehicle even after he retired in 2006 as there was no purchase record (in keeping with the way these funds are spent). Unfortunately for him, another special secretary spotted the car at the Delhi Gymkhana Club in 2007 and identified it as of the NTRO. He immediately had the car recovered. But the man who spotted the car was no better. Retiring in ’09, he took the same Baleno home! RTI queries seeking details about the car (which, predictably, have met with evasive replies so far) finally put an end to the vehicle’s misuse and it was finally returned to the NTRO.

This isn’t just a stray case involving the misuse of funds. A far more embarrassing one occurred during the NDA’s reign when A.B. Vajpayee was the PM. A former bureaucrat who was tasked with handing over Rs 15 crore of SSF money to a top Bangladeshi leader during elections there allegedly chose to keep some of it for himself. A probe wasn’t carried out because it came from the ‘secret funds’. Later, the same bureaucrat, who was tipped to take over as head of one of the intel agencies, was not promoted.

Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is another one who has pointed out abuse of the SSF, details of  which he passed on to the Nanavati-Mehta commission inquiring into the Gujarat riots. His note reads: “I am privy to details regarding the exact roles of Narendra Modi, Amit Shah as well as advocates attached with certain law offices in Ahmedabad and Delhi regarding the misuse of public funds (from the SSF) amounting to Rs 10 lakh.” He claims to have witnessed money changing hands between Modi and Shah on April 11, 2002, to bribe the lawyers.

Amar Bhushan, who retired as special secretary, RAW, says there is a thin line between the use and misuse of SSF. “That thin line is governed by conscience. Unfortunately, there are many people in the agencies nowadays with little or no conscience,” he says. The situation is especially worrisome because the SSF can easily go up to 25 per cent of the average budget of intelligence agencies. So, if the budget of one such agency is Rs 2,000 crore, the SSF part of it is usually around Rs 500 crore. All this money remains unaudited, only an annual certificate of full use has to be given by the organisational head.

Rana Banerji, ex-RAW special secretary and now member of the taskforce on national security,  in a report written for the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), had this to say about the SSF: “Several disreputable financial practices have thrived under the grab of operational secrecy, including purchase of capital equipment like cars in violation of standard prescribed norms of the government or the indiscriminate hiring of safehouses which more often than not are properties belonging almost exclusively to in-house employees at different levels of seniority. It has often been revealed that a common misuse of SSF includes renting out of safehouses—that are paid for under SSF—at exorbitant rates.”

The issue is something even India’s lawmakers are grappling with as demands grow to make the intelligence agencies accountable in some way. Congress MP and now minister for I&B Manish Tiwari had introduced a private member’s bill, ‘The Intelligence Services (Powers and Regulation) Bill, 2011’, in the Lok Sabha in which he had brought up SSF misuse as a major concern. The bill is still pending but Tiwari is non-committal about its passage. “As a legislator, one tries to initiate many projects but as an executive there are many other responsibilities too. The issues are important but experts will have a better understanding of the same. I want the experts to look into it and give it final shape,” the minister says.

Very rarely has the abuse of SSF been scrutinised. One rare instance came from Jharkhand in 2009 where, on the orders of the then governor Syed Sibtey Razi, the state government sought replies from DGP V.D. Ram and additional DGP (Special Branch) Rajiv Kumar about the non-submission of utilisation certificates of SSF. As per the accountant general’s records, no certificates were provided for two withdrawals. Of these, DGP Ram had withdrawn Rs 5.60 crore in cash and ADGP Rajiv Kumar Rs 2.50 crore, both in the same year 2006.

In another incident, the Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra state to produce records of the SSF of its crime investigation department in 2006 when former IPS officer Jayant Umranikar headed it. A division bench comprising Justice B.H. Marlapalle and Justice U.D. Salvi was hearing a PIL filed in August 2009 by the Citizens’ Organisation for Public Opinion, alleging funds misappropriation by Umranikar, a former Pune police commissioner. The petition stated that in 2006 Umranikar withdrew money from the SSF to book air tickets for himself, his wife and daughter from Pune to Delhi and back. “If the funds were taken out and then reimbursed, it is perfectly legal. But there must be some record to suggest it was really done,” said Justice Marlapalle.

Former RAW man Rana Banerji adds in his report that usage of SSF in the past was “tempered by higher standards of personal probity. But today not all of these hire or purchase powers are exercised with total judiciousness or are even warranted by strict operational needs…. Another recent practice has been to routinely engage retired employees even in non-specialised categories and keep them employed indefinitely on hefty salaries paid from the secret service fund, totally bypassing the laid down government rules and regulations”. Personal probity, that seems to be the key phrase missing in today’s intel services.

 

Now the Bangladeshi Army Being Blamed for the Delhi Blasts

Times Now, a 24-hour English language news channel based in Mumbai has plotted story
http://www.timesnow.tv/videoshow/4387019.cms against the Bangladesh army to twist the focus of Delhi blast into different direction.

Times Now had systematically presented a particular point of view in the news ‘Bangladesh Army link to Delhi blast?’ to create a platform for wider ‘media trial’.

The report said “Months after this strike in the heart of theNew Delhi, the hunt for the terror masterminds continues.

A doctor from Jammu and Kashmirhas now emerged as the key conspirator and his interrogation adding a fresh twist to the National Investigation Agencys (NIA) case. Highly placed sources in the NIA have told TIMES NOW that in his interrogation Dr Wasim Akram Malik revealed the name of a Bangladeshi Army man, a deserter by the name of Major Yassir.

According to high level sources, it was 36-year-old Major Yassir may have been the brains behind the terror strike in the capital”.

While a highly placed source in RAW told William’s desk that that there is connection between Bangladesh army and the Delhi blast .The source also said NIA is not competent enough to deal with foreign intelligence issues.

The source told William’s desk that there is a strong relation between Bangladesh-India army and recently joint military exercise held in Bangladesh. The source also told that the Bangladesh PM’s office special unit directly helping the RAW officials in Bangladesh on high priority issues and combating terrorism is one of the priorities

Indiais facing an enormous problem of violence, often government attributed those to  Maoists/ Naxalites or Hizbul Mujahideen. But the root cause of violence in Indiais Indian government’s own attitudes and deep-rooted systems of operation

Waseem’s father Reyaz-ul-Hassan who is government official said “My son is innocent and has nothing to do with Delhiblast case”. He said his son on the day of the blast was in Jammu, and had drawn the cash from ATM and made shopping in various malls where CCTV cameras are present and the footage can be assessed to prove his presence in Jammu.

Internal security of India is facing serious threats while the government is wasting a large amount of people’s tax by waging war on its people on Jammu and Kashmir. Delhi bomb blast is the naked explosion of poor crime control and law and order in India.

Waseem’s case is not an isolated case which was plotted by Indian government with the help of the corrupted judiciary and law enforcement agencies. In the process notable numbers of corporate media played a successful role and help the forces in plotting ‘media trial’.

Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who was convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India in 2004, did not receive a fair trial and was subject to a frame up of corrupt and inefficient police work.

Now Indian government finds out another Afzal Guru and corrupt and inefficient Indian police is framing false charges.

India: Key Problems of RAW

From Outlook/ India

Intelligence reforms in India have usually been an area that always sees a piecemeal approach, mostly crisis-driven and not based on a real assessment of need. Now, for the first time, a task force of the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (idsa) has come up with a comprehensive set of recommendations by examining the processes that have plagued India’s intelligence community.

Making a strong pitch for greater accountability via a parliamentary oversight board, the task force has suggested the government also look at strengthening financial accountability as a measure to prepare Indian intelligence agencies for the challenges of the 21st century.

“About a year ago, vice-president Hamid Ansari pointed out that there is a need for statutory oversight of our intelligence agencies. That was the spark needed…for us at idsa,” director-general N.S. Sisodia said.

In a first, the think-tank decided to look at preparing recommendations that examine the critical processes of national security “to promote a healthy debate and help the government take an informed decision”, says Sisodia.

The task force examined the efficacy of the current operational structure, recruitment, ability to process raw inputs into actionable intelligence, technology upgrades and better intelligence coordination between the agencies (currently riven by turf wars). Led by R. Banerji, a well-regarded former special secretary in raw, with P.K. Upadhya and Brig Raj Shukla as its members, it held a series of consultations with the strategic community, including former nsa Brajesh Mishra, the recently deceased K. Subrahmanyam and a host of ex-IB and raw chiefs before preparing its report.

Some of the key problem areas identified by the task force are:

• Lack of national intelligence coordination: Acknowledging that turf wars have proved to be a major impediment, the report notes that they have “taken a toll by slowing down or even completely blocking reform”. The task force also felt that proposed organisations like the National Counter Terrorism Centre (nctc) have the “potential to intensify turf battles among existing agencies”. Hence, it has recommended that the government appoint a national intelligence coordinator to end turf battles and assist the national security advisor in preventing a repeat of intelligence failures like Kargil and the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008.
• No financial accountability: The task force felt that “to improve efficiency… there can be no getting away from introducing some sort of external supervision and control, including legislative oversight”. It also examined critical lacunae in current procedures where there is no accountability of secret service funds. In fact, it observed that unlike other government budgetary allocations, funds here never lapse at the end of a financial year. “Ironically enough, the secret service funds portion has been steadily increasing and it is that portion which is never surrendered whereas other portions of funds allotted do lapse if schemes remain unimplemented.” It feels these “aberrations need to be controlled and scrutinised”.
• Press reports passed off as secret intelligence: The task force did not mince words where “very common examples of misuse of operational practices” such as “artfully cloaking” news reports from “international publications such as the (International) Herald Tribune, Le Monde or foreign magazines such as Der Spiegel as source reports”. Many intelligence operatives would then source these news reports to their “non-existent human source assets” and even claim secret service funds. As a result, Indian intelligence has been plagued by spectacular failures on several occasions.
• Poor recruitment policies: The task force noted that raw suffered from the “tail-end syndrome” where the “bottom of the entrance lists” of those appearing for the upsc examinations were offered jobs. Even the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which used to have an excellent earmarking system, has now “diluted” its standards. Both agencies seem to have confined their “deputation quotas” to the Indian Police Service. As a result, specialised requirements such as science and technology or intake of defence service officers have suffered. The task force has strongly recommended open recruitment to ensure that the most talented professionals are recruited. It noted that this is the current practice in frontline intelligence agencies of countries like the US, the UK and Israel.
• Archaic training: The “training curriculum in raw”, the report notes, “remains archaic and too police-centric”. Training methods have not even incorporated “modern technological advances in methods of communication” for running a source. In the IB, training schedules have been ‘shortened” to meet operational needs, far short of the ideal two years needed to produce good intelligence operatives. The task force also points out that an earlier recommendation to establish a common training centre for all intelligence agencies “was not accepted”.
• Poor analysis and drift in operational work: “Many breaches of national security occurred in the past and continue to occur today, not for want of intelligence, but due to poor analysis and inadequate follow-up action.” The task force analysed the problem and said operations is an area that needs urgent attention. It recommends that analysts be trained in modern prescriptive work which can then ensure better supervision in operations.
• Lack of cover jobs: A major problem for raw operatives has been the inadequate cover they get when posted abroad. Sadly, the report says, “in India efforts were made earlier to experiment with non-official cover by setting up a travel agency or a security wing thereof with operations overseas. But these proposals did not get off the ground due to last-minute bureaucratic obstacles”. The current diplomatic cover “limits access to spot real targets” and causes issues on handling “high-value assets”. It also restricted gathering intelligence in specialised fields like economics and technology. “While working on the report, we noted that a balance must be maintained between operational efficiency and oversight mechanisms,” Banerji told Outlook. “All major democracies have gone in for several tiers of accountability and oversight and it empowers intelligence agencies to produce sharper results.”

The last major institutional and systemic reform in India’s national security was undertaken in the aftermath of the Kargil war.

But in 2008, when LeT terrorists attacked Mumbai, it revealed that much of the improvements envisaged had failed to materialise. Now, an attempt has been made to address the needs of India’s intelligence community rather than take a crisis-driven approach. Hopefully, those responsible for India’s security will approach the recommendations with an open mind.

Indian Diplomat Falls in Love with the ISI

The female spinster Indian diplomat Madhuri Gupta was caught in an illegal act of exchanging valuable information to the Pakistani source by the Indian police confirmed Home Secretary GK Pillai.

Madhuri appointed as a female diplomat posted at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad worked as a second secretary in the Press and Information Wing was found guilty in an illegal act of disclosing crucial information to Pakistan since 2007.

In consequence to her involvement in spying for Pakistan, Madhuri was reportedly summoned back to India on Apr 23 under the pretext of preparing for the SAARC Summit and was arrested from her home in New Delhi after a stress of interrogation by a special group comprising members of different agencies like the Intelligence Bureau, RAW and Delhi police. On account of this an FIR has been registered against her. She was produced in a court in East Delhi where her residence was, and remanded to ten days police custody. 

The matter is currently under investigation. And Mandhuri is now cooperating with the Indian authorities.

She is reported to have confessed to the crime.

Madhuri is said to have passed on only “routine” information to her Pakistani handler as she was keen to teach IFS officers a lesson for treating her shabbily.

Government sources said it would have been difficult for an official of her rank to pass on “sensitive” information. She was hoping for a plum diplomatic posting in either London or Washington. “I should get London or Washington,” a confident Gupta reportedly told PTI few months back. She had earlier served in the Indian mission in Baghdad and said she was looking forward to another good posting sometime later this year.

Indian government sources say Madhuri had been spying for Pakistan since September 2008. “We have reasons to believe that she was not recruited inside Pakistan,” says a senior officer in RAW. “Possibly she was picked up and nurtured either in Baghdad or Kuala Lumpur where she was posted earlier.” The agency also says this could have been a reason why she was keen for a Pakistan posting — usually a last choice among Indian diplomats and intelligence officials.

 ”At 53, she was bored, alone and attractive. Single, but definitely one step ahead to mingle.” That’s how the man who led the operation to bust Madhuri Madhuri, the first Indian diplomat to be found spying for Pakistan, described her.

For most of her two years in espionage, Madhuri was a lone-wolf, conducting a classic spy operation from her base in Islamabad. Old-school “dead drops,” in which she passed off information without even meeting her Pakistani handlers, were her signature style. Yet it was a silly indiscretion — sending e-mails to her spy bosses from her office computer — that finally led to her arrest.

Investigators have identified Madhuri’s handler as Mudassar Rana, a Pakistani internal intelligence official, who is not from ISI. Madhuri, however, admitted that she knew Rana as a Pakistani army captain with ISI links. She denied any physical relationship with her handler. But she claims she was romantically involved with “Rana,” but she was also being blackmailed by him into sharing information.

Madhuri’s questioning also threw up five more names with whom she was in touch. Madhuri was introduced to 56-year-old Rana by one of her journalist friends in Pakistan. Well versed in Sufism and Urdu, Madhuri was on study leave at JNU before her Islamabad posting where she did research in Urdu language.

Officials said Madhuri used to meet her contact in the Jinnah Market, and IFFI Cafe in Islamabad. Sources said that a few months back, another official posted at the Islamabad mission was called back by the MEA after Madhuri’s role came under the scanner. This official, who is believed to be under the watch of intelligence officials, will soon be questioned by Delhi Police.

Madhuri, a Grade-B officer, is said to be receiving large amounts of money from the ISI which she deposited in a Pakistani bank and then transferred to Indian banks.

Interestingly, Madhuri has accused RAW station chief R K Sharma of being a spy. This apparently has prevented authorities from giving Sharma a clean chit. Sources, however, said it was Sharma who had first brought to light Madhuri’s association with Rana and the possibility that she might have been giving information to him. Sharma first disclosed this to officials in the Indian mission about five months ago.

Sharma admitted that he initially became friendly with Madhuri but later got suspicious as she started to insist on acquiring information on India’s intelligence operations in Pakistan.

While authorities are examining Madhuri’s email accounts and call details, it would have been difficult for her to hand over sensitive information to her handler. They denied that any sensitive information pertaining to India’s operations in Afghanistan could have been passed on to the ISI operative.

“One possibility is that she told her handler all information which she gathered from documents which she was given to translate in Urdu. However, it was mostly related to appointments, travel schedule and public dealings of the high commission. We believe not much has been lost even though she did have some information which a person of her rank should not have had,” said a highly placed government official. Madhuri also denied that she made any attempt to bug offices in the high commission by planting transmitting devices.

Meanwhile, an Indian army officer is also said to be under the scanner for links with Madhuri, but this is not confirmed. Madhuri is said to have been in touch with the officer who belongs to Rajouri in J&K and also his relatives with whom she purportedly exchanged emails. The security agencies are zeroing in on this couple residing in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir who were in regular touch through e-mail and telephone with the arrested diplomat in Islamabad. The Rajouri-based woman had gone to Pakistan several times. The senior Army officer used to visit the Rajouri couple while he was posted in the region. He is related to the couple but his frequent visits to them have aroused suspicion of the security agencies. Some of the e-mails exchanged between Madhuri and the Rajouri woman are part of the documents being held as evidence against the diplomat, who is in the custody of the Delhi Police Special Cell.

She was a promotee officer of Ministry of External Affairs, and 53-year-old, and worked in the Mission for nearly three years as an Urdu expert and translator. Her main task was to monitor and record daily reporting in the Urdu press.  She used to prepare a daily report and send it to her superiors. She was also tasked with keeping tabs on Urdu media reports on the arrest of LeT operatives David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, both accused in the 26/11 attacks of Mumbai. These reports and other details of the Indian mission’s activities were being passed on to Rana for the past two years.

Madhuri also the liaisine officer between Indian and other embassies in Islamabad.

“She was in the information wing, which is isolated from the political wing and not in the most vital departments and could not have been privy to the most sensitive of documents. However it is a penetration. We earlier had a penetration by East Europeans, but this is a first from Pakistan,” said former MEA secretary K C Singh.

Gupta was apparently being tracked for nearly a year by the Indian government both in Islamabad and in New Delhi at her residence, before being carefully brought over to India on the excuse of SAARC related work. 

Madhuri’s colleagues in the mission, led by a Joint Secretary — an IB officer — inside the Islamabad mission started suspecting her around October 2009 and reported back. The IB launched a massive counter-intelligence operation, in which even its counterparts in RAW were kept out of the loop.

Over the next six months, Madhuri’s every step was monitored. She was found to be taking undue interest in informal discussions among the senior embassy officials regarding important policy matters, including India’s strategic plans in Afghanistan and resuming a dialogue with Pakistan and taking “extraordinary interest” in matters not related to her job. She was even fed with incorrect information to be passed on to her Pakistan handlers, suspected to be from the ISI.

 Some of her Indian neighbours in the diplomatic enclave had seen her with “mysterious people”.

Sensing that her activities were being noticed she relocated to F-8  in Islamabad. The move was reported to have been opposed by the high commission’s administrative wing.

Although Indian agents in Islamabad had been trailing her for months, her surveillance, including the tapping of telephone calls and scanning of her email, was increased after her relocation.

It is unclear if she was involved in leaking any crucial information or was instrumental in facilitating intelligence operations of the spy agency inside the mission.

The arrest has led to speculations that Madhuri might not have been acting on her own and there could be a larger racket at work in the mission.
According to Indian media reports, New Delhi has already launched a hunt for her collaborators.

Indian high commission officials over the weekend rummaged through Madhuri’s home in her absence, without a warrant, and seized several items. The chief of the mission’s security later left for Delhi with the material for assisting the probe against his former colleague.

Her bank account records are being scanned, her official computer and personal laptop have been brought back to Delhi for analysis, and her personal relationship with a Pakistani intelligence officer, identified thus far only as “Rana,” is being investigated. 

The IB investigator says the only sensitive material that Madhuri managed to pass on to Pakistan concerned “partial information on India’s strategic plans in Afghanistan.” That has come as a relief to Delhi, though investigators are still checking whether Madhuri was used to plant bugs in the Indian mission in Islamabad.

Prior being posted at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, she worked as assistant director with the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), better known as Sapru House, that is attached to the Ministry of External Affairsa and a foreign policy think tank, in 2006-2007 as assistant director. She has also served in Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Islamabad.

She was fluent in Urdu which she learnt in New Delhi shortly before she was posted to Pakistan.  She hired a Muslim woman as a private tutor to teach her. “She taught me from scratch. I didn’t even know my ‘alif-bays’,” she Gupta, who had earlier learnt another foreign language at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s school of languages. She spoke perfect Urdu and could have easily passed off as a Pakistani because of her accent.

She was “desperate” to go to Pakistan, suggesting she may have had cross-border links for some time. The only sensitive material that she managed to pass on to Pakistan concerned “partial information on India’s strategic plans in Afghanistan.”

Madhuri made friends easily and was great with small talk. She could talk about clothes, hair styles or Pakistan’s Urdu press – “where the real news was” – with equal ease. “English newspapers are boring. They always pick up news a day late. If you want to read real news, real gossip, read Urdu newspapers,” she told PTI correspondents Raza and Namat in Islamabad once.

 Like locals, she was always well dressed, make-up in place, her hair coloured and looked younger than her age.

Madhuri sometimes came across as brash and fearless, especially when she regaled friends with tales of driving to India via the Islamabad-Lahore motorway, often at breakneck Most Indian diplomats travel in groups or with their families on such drives to the Indian border, a report said on Gupta’s exploits. The small Indian community of diplomats and staff of the High Commission in Islamabad would also bank on Madhuri for getting them firecrackers or Holi colours on her trips to India. “I will get natural colours, they won’t harm your skin,” she announced before a planned Holi celebration to those who didn’t want to play with colours.

When she returned from her last trip to India, she told friends: “I am so tired. There is so much to do when you are in India. There is no time to relax. I feel I am back home now.” She was quick to notice the expression on her friends’ faces following her remark. “Home is where you live. Good or bad, this is home,” she laughed out loud.

“I am not trying to discriminate on the basis of class, but a person who has not been properly trained and brought up in the values of the services can perhaps be more susceptible to foreign inducements easily. Nevertheless, given the fact that all those working in Islamabad know that they are under watch and being targeted by Pakistani intelligence which is on the lookout for chinks – that they were able to penetrate the embassy is shocking,” said Union minister Kapil Sibal. He said it was imperative to ascertain what information had been leaked.

It is unlikely that she was a lone spy operating on her own. But there is so far no confirmation of any others arrested or interrogated.

Consequently, the station head of RAW in Islamabad, Rajinder Kumar Sharma, posted as a counsellor in economic and commercial wing, is said to be a close friend of Madhuri who frequented his house. R K Sharma has also come under the scanner, official sources said. Madhuri was taking information from the RAW station chief in Islamabad, which was passed to the Pakistani spy agencies.

The role of Sharma had also come under scanner for abusing his position and passing information to Madhuri. However, it is unclear as to whether he knew the woman officer’s real designs.

The internal security establishment is extremely cagey about the role of Indian diplomats abroad. RAW is reluctant to reveal exactly what kind of information Madhuri was privy to. The Indians apprehend that Madhuri may have been on the pay-role of the Pakistani establishment, and was passing on crucial strategic information belonging to Pakistan.

This is the first-ever case of a senior Indian diplomat being arrested for such a crime. What is more, Indian agencies believe that Madhuri was just a part of a massive Pakistani spy ring and there may have been others in the Indian diplomatic establishment also engaged in counter espionage. Currently the exact nature of the inducements to Gupta for her services is not known.

Strategic affairs expert Mahroof Raza said, “The Indian government would have found it extremely difficult to hold an Indian officer in the High Commission if she was working for the Pakistani government. She would be having patrons in the Pakistani system who would make it extremely difficult to get her back and put her through legal and administrative proceedings. This is perhaps the first time an Indian diplomat has been caught spying overseas and working against Indian interests. This gives a completely different dimension to Pakistan’s desire to know what India is up to on foreign policy.”

Madhuri is not the first Indian diplomat to have been accused of spying for Pakistani agencies. In the 1980s, an Indian military attaché posted in Islamabad faced a similar charge. The military official was sent back but was not tried for espionage.

Pakistan has refused to comment on the case, but analysts in Islamabad saw her arrest as an attempt to scupper upcoming planned talks between India’s and Pakistan’s PMs. The timing was supposed to send a signal that India is not ready to talk to Pakistan yet. India has not moved beyond its post-Mumbai  phase. It is not looking for talks with Pakistan any time soon.

Madhuri now faces dismissal from service, an in-camera trial and a maximum of 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.

Pakistan is the Epicenter of Terrorism But Most Terror Attacks Happen Here

By Peter Chamberlin

Up until now, the United States has been able to exert control over most of the earth just by controlling the narrative that reflects popular opinion about the war on terror. Whatever government spokesmen or reporters have said happened on a particular day, was what really happened; it was validated by popular consent. The ability to shape people’s thoughts and opinions is a power that every tyrant has dreamed about. Global trust in the good intentions of the people of the United States moves individuals and entire nations to give American leaders the benefit of the doubt, even when common sense cautions against it. Until fairly recently, popular opinion did not often call into question the American or allied version of events.

Widespread civilian “collateral damage” from air strikes and disagreements between the Pakistani and American military have opened the door to questions about the very nature of this war and the leadership, or lack thereof, displayed by Western decision-makers.

The US has decided that to win the war in Afghanistan, it must attack its closest ally in the war, because allegedly, Pakistan is the state sponsor of the Afghan Taliban.

The Pak Army refuses to fight all the militants in Pakistan at one time, because their numbers are so great and tribal connections run so deep that it would be suicidal.

American leaders claim that such a nationwide Pakistani offensive is the only way that the war can be won. Pakistan, on the other hand, maintains that the US, India and Israel are the state sponsors of the “Pakistani Taliban” terrorist outfit which is waging war against the people of Pakistan. Since the United States controls the narrative, the whole world holds Pakistan accountable for all the terrorism in the world.

The CIA has done much worse than merely fumbling their appointed tasks, they have demonstrated malice and outright criminality in their multi-layered covert war, which goes far beyond targeting any real or imagined enemy, as the plan moves forward to wage war against the entire human race, in order to accomplish their Imperial goals.

Clearly, there are assets in key security positions who facilitated the Yemen attack, just as there were complicit facilitators who made the 911 attacks happen. It is no coincidence that there seem to be crossovers between militant groups and the security agencies which are tasked with pursuing them. This is because the militant groups are all children of various intelligence agencies, most of them working under contract for the CIA, knowingly or not, at some point.

Pakistan is allegedly the “epicenter of terrorism,” but if that was true, then why do most terror attacks in the world happen in Pakistan?

Do not forget that the CIA provides 50 percent of the ISI’s budget. The ISI is a primary American contractor, as is India’s RAW.

Western popular opinion fully accepts the American/Indian narrative, that only Pakistan sponsors terror. This ignores revelations by former Indian spy chiefs, who have confirmed that India did sponsor thousands of terrorists within Pakistan in the past, under a program called “Counterintelligence Team X,” but this allegedly ended in 1998.

Contrary to Indian and American statements, India is still a primary state sponsor of terrorism within Pakistan, but Western apologists help hide that fact, because the CIA is a partner in the current operations.

In the past, India’s RAW and the CIA have been adversaries. Up until the era of the India/US nuclear agreement that hostility prevailed between the agencies. The ongoing controversy over American spy David Headley is not the only public embarrassment that RAW has suffered at the CIA’s hands.

In 2004, RAW spy chief Rabinder Singh was caught obtaining documents for the CIA and meeting with a female agent at a local motel. He escaped to the US, where he was located in New Jersey in 2006. The Indian government tried to extradite him, appealing the charges against him, he claimed that he quit the agency and fled to the United States after being ordered to “participate in an assassination plot against a senior religious Sikh leader.” Sometime after the extradition papers were filed, the following document was posted on the Internet.

That document, called Summer Offensive Report was on the operations of “Counterintelligence Team X,” Singh had formerly ran the “Counterintelligence Team J,” which terrorized the Sikhs in Punjab.

The Report gives no clue as to who ran the “X” Team, but the name Alok Tiwari comes-up in another paper, titled “Operation Blue Tulsi.” The Summer Offensive Report claims to describe Indian/Israeli operations against Pakistan in 2004, centered around the town of Wana. A new operation did begin in Wana that year, the beginning of the “Pakistani Taliban” (TTP) project.

That operation began with the killing of Nek Muhammad on June 17. Arguably, it probably began in with the Ilyas Kashmiri attack upon Musharraf. After being picked-up by the security services, the former Pakistani Special Forces commando/militant was captured was allegedly tortured until his release in early ’04. The experience left him a shattered man and he retired from the jihad until 2007. The guided missile attack that killed Nek set in motion the events that would bring Baitullah Mehsud to power.

He inherited a ready-made army from his cousin Abdullah Mehsud, which formed the hardcore Uzbek center of the TTP. After his sudden release from Guantanamo to Afghanistan in 2002, Abdullah suddenly amassed thousands of Uzbek and Northern Alliance fighters and became endowed with millions of dollars in cash and tons of the most advanced weapons.

Until now, researchers have consistently charged that the Pakistani Taliban were sponsored by India and Israel, but have had nothing to prove this other than photos of tons of Indian/Israeli/American arms. The following from Summer Offensive Report reinforces those charges:

“The summer offensive includes establishment of 57 training camps in Occupied Kashmir, East Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Assam to train and launch terrorists inside Pakistan. Trainees are generally drawn from the Indian hatched dissident groups of MQM, Jiye Sindh Mohaz (JSM), Jiye Sindh Students Federation (JSF) and Balochi nationalists and other nationalist groups from various parts of Sindh, Balochistan and Tribal Areas.

For Pakistan RAW centers at London, Dubai, Iran, and South Africa operate against Pakistan jointly with Israeli MOSSAD. India has opened Consulates (IOC’s) in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, besides having an oversized diplomatic mission in Kabul. Kandahar and Jalalabad are near the borders of Pakistan, which insinuates many things.

The ongoing Wana operation is being fed cash, weapons and ammunition indirectly by RAW operatives under cover of Al-Qaeda. MOSSAD and AMMAN have also contributed heavily towards the funding and material requirements for these operations.

The direct result of this was the effective slaying of 121 Pakistani regular infantry soldiers on Nov 8th’2004, just 3 days after the infusion of war material and assistance in logistics and planning operations of the tribals by operatives of RAW.

The summer offensive of RAW includes working on ethnic, regional, parochial and secular themes, which include Sindhu Desh Movement in Sindh, Saraiki Movement in Punjab, Tribal Balochis in the name of Greater Balochistan and taking advantage of Northern Alliance Government in Afghanistan and using its tentacles at Kabul, Jalalabad, Khost, Kandahar and Spin Boldak, the tribals in Waziristan and Balochistan are continuously being kept activated for fomenting trouble – while Taliban and Al-Qaeda are getting the blame and Pakistan gets the rap for “not doing enough” by US and “FRIENDLY” Afghan authorities.

After the Indian consulate in Karachi was wound up. RAW started maintaining contacts in their sources/links in Pakistan through their consulates at Zahidan and Dubai. Most of the staff at Indian Consulate in Zahidan is from intelligence/security organisations including RAW, Intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence.

The sizeable cover staff in their Embassy at Dubai under the pretence of tourist traffic. The set-ups are dedicated units mainly responsible for promoting ethnic unrest in Pakistan.

They continue to provide financial and material support to various regionalist/sectarian parties in Sindh and Balochistan UAE is being used as a launching pad for terrorist activities in Pakistan. Agents are getting hold of young, disgruntled elements and after carrying out their proper brainwashing, they are dispatched to Dubai.

Indian Consulate in Dubai is issuing temporary passport to these activists for getting training/briefing. After completion of their formal training, they are launched into Pakistan to carry out their terrorist/sabotage activities.”

About the content: I checked the Fata timeline and found the following—The Report claimed that “121″ soldiers were killed near Wana in a large attack sometime between Nov. 4 and 8, 2004–the timeline doesn’t list anything like that, but it does report that 140 soldiers and scouts were killed in or near Wana between March 16 and Dec. 9, 2004.

Beginning in November, the Report list dozens of rocket, mortar and land-mine/IED attacks around Wana.

The report author claims that the Indian embassy in Zeheden is the source of attacks in Iran, attacks that have probably been attributed to “Jundullah.”

Jundullah did begin around Wana in ’04. The Report also mentions Amman, Jordan as a participant with Israel in the Wana effort.

The suicide bomber who recently targeted the CIA drone base in Khost, Afghanistan was a Jordanian intelligence officer, related to King Abdullah, from the same hometown as “al Qaida in Iraq” leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The Jordanian attacker was sent by Hakeemullah Mehsud, the commander of the Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan, from Wana. It was a revenge attack for the killing of Baitullah. more about “CIA Khost Bomber and Hakeemullah Mehsud“, posted with vodpod

Another document, which continues the alternative narrative since 2006 is the report titled, “Operation Blue Tulsi,” which began in early 2001, marking the start of Israeli/Indian operations against and within Pakistan.

By mid 2001 eyebrows were being raised over R&AW and Mossad’s cooperation and in July 2001 Janes Information Group reported that RAW and Mossad are cooperating to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats.

In addition, bombs would be exploded in trains, railway stations, bridges, bus stations, cinemas, hotels and mosques of rival Islamic sects to incite sectarianism. At the same time the Balochistan Liberation Army rose out of dead like a second incarnation and Balach Marri a Moscow graduate declares himself as the leader of BLA.

Within weeks in Balochistan numerous training camps sprouted with each camp reported to be training up to a hundred militants. Agents from RAW, Mossad and CIA operating in Afghanistan started moving in.

In mid 2001 reports appeared that Special Operations Division of Mossad, also known as Metsada, specializing in assassinations and sabotage, has been based in India since May 2001 to train RAW operatives and Mossad and Shin Bet or Shabak were operating a number of teams in Indian Held Kashmir and were also operating a delicate spy network from Indian soil.

In July 2001 RAW increased its budget for Indian consulates in Afghanistan by nearly 10 times. Late in 2002 US and India signed an agreement on cooperation in disarming Pakistan’s nuclear assets and the two-player offensive team of OperationBlueTulsi found a third partner in the form of CIA. As a result of this deal Abdullah Mehsud was freed from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Pakistan with millions of dollars in cash.

By mid 2004, the government had ample evidence that BLA and some Baloch leaders were conspiring against the government, aided by foreign countries. On 13 August 2004, the Chief Minister of Baluchistan, Jam Muhammad Yousaf is quoted by The Herald (Sep 2004-Karachi) as saying: “Indian secret services (RAW) are maintaining 40 terrorist camps all over the Baloch territory”.

Jan. 1, 2005 was the starting date. The local agents got the signal and the operation started with the ominous rape of a female doctor in Sui on 2 January 2005. As expected the incident created headlines all around and culprits not being found created a widespread indignation. This was shortly followed by the firing of hundreds of small rockets at gas installation in Sui on 7 January 2005 which put a hole in the supply of gas to the rest of the country for an entire week. Starting March 2007…,the numbers of ‘Pakistani Taliban’ in Swat surged and just their ammunition and their military hardware did. Some of this hardware was more advanced to what the Pakistani soldiers used. A portion of this military hardware ended up in the ill-fated Lal Masjid.

While intelligence and military were busy keeping Musharraf’s seat safe in Pakistan, a new political game started in the UAE. Rehman Malik enthusiastically started pursuing the goal of NRO. He became instrumental in the final deal between Benazir Bhutto, US and Pervez Musharraf and NRO.

Near the end of 2007, the intelligence and the military were convinced that a conspiracy had been hatched in the country with the sole aim of removing Musharraf from power. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, simultaneous riots throughout the country, terrorist activities occurring in every province, all of this had considerable similarities to the Bush Administration-backed Color Revolutions.

In order to keep Musharraf in power the government kept giving into one demand after the other. As a result Rehman Malik becomes head of Interior Ministry, Yusuf Raza Gilani becomes the Prime Minister of Pakistan and sweeping changes are made in the security and intelligence community. Still, the government saw the war finally over when in one move Gilani puts ISI under the Interior Minister on 27 July 2008.

The entire Wana-centric destabilization plan can be seen in the so-called Tehreek Taliban Pakistani movement, the Punjabi-Taliban influence and the leadership succession. In addition, it traces the roots of the entire “Islamist” psyop that grew from CIA/ISI operations against the Soviets and the Iranians. Anti-Shia sectarian terror outfits were formed in Pakistan, then sent into Afghanistan, where they slaughtered both Soviets and Shiites. After the Soviet defeat, they turned against the Iranian-sponsored Northern Alliance troops, before being fought to a standstill by the forces of legendary rebel leader Ahmed Shah Mahsoud. (Mahsoud was eliminated by a suicide bomber on September 10, 2001, his forces taken over by Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum with the aid of one Amrullah Saleh, who is now the head of the Afghan secret police (NDS) and might be working for Iran.)

In ’07 the British operation in Helmand, Afghanistan, which had been centered around recruiting the brother of militant Mullah Dadullah, Mansoor was merged with the Indian/American/Israeli hotbed of terrorism in S. Waziristan. Baitullah was promoted to top dog in the militant hierarchy, as Benazir Bhutto was killed and Mansoor Dadullah took the blame.

The Afghan Taliban transferred Dadullah’s forces to Mehsud, conferring legitimacy upon the operation, Mullah Omar not yet realizing that Baitullah was really anti-Taliban. Mehsud’s Swat operation under radical disc jockey, Mullah Fazlullah, was the opening front of the Wana-trained forces against the Pakistani Army. It is no coincidence that there was not a single Predator attack against Fazlullah’s forces, and all drone attacks from that point on were against Baitullah Mehsud’s main adversary, Mullah Nazir in Wana. Nazir was the head of the Pak Army supported tribal lashkars who had run the Uzbeks of Mehsud out of Wana.

In 2008 Bush signed a secret order authorizing operations inside Pakistan and the Pakistani Army secretly acquiesced to American Predator show attacks upon former Guantanamo alumni. This provided a means to keep up the show for the American audience. It also opened the door to covert commando strikes in conjunction with action by the Pakistani Taliban. The rest is history. On August 6, 2009, Baitullah Mehsud was mistakenly killed by an American guided missile, tracking a Pakistani-planted transmitter. It is likely that the CIA was tricked into killing Pakistan’s primary enemy.

Ten days later, the tribal rival of Mehsud, Maulvi Nazir, who very likely had planted the tracking device, is killed by black-clad Special Forces type commandoes near Wana; probably payback from the United States. The “AfPak” zone of conflict is a land of smoke and mirrors intended to put-on a show and simultaneously obscure the action on the ground. Beginning in 2007, the action obscured was a covert Indian/American war upon the people of Pakistan.

All the usual voices will chime in here, saying—“We didn’t create al Qaida; we didn’t sponsor Abdullah Mehsud, or Baitullah; we don’t create terrorists”! No matter how much they yell, the truth remains to be seen in these militants and their actions. After his release from Guantanamo, Abdullah Mehsud did not kidnap or kill Americans; he went straight after America’s greatest competitor, the Chinese. Likewise, in the case of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, the leader of “al Qaida in Iraq,” after his release from Jordanian prison, his victims were usually Iraqi Shiites, not Americans.

After being captured, abused and then released, both of these guys went after our enemies, no matter what the press has reported otherwise. Were they brainwashed, “Manchurian candidates,” or were they merely paid-off? US Rep. Mark Kirk has raised the issue that most of the militant leaders in southern Afghanistan were formerly held at Guantanamo and Bagram. Is that also a coincidence, or by design? “Islamists” are primarily a product of the intelligence agencies. American/Israeli/Indian/Iranian/British hands are all extremely dirty after taking a walk on Dick Cheney’s “dark side” in Pakistan and they owe a heavy penalty to both Pakistan and Afghanistan for what they have done there. It is high time to drag all the spooks out of their closets and air their dirty linen to the world. Only such a complete CIA housecleaning as this will redeem the United States of America in the eyes of the world. Anything less would do no good at all, and would also be a grave insult to those who have fallen in our poisonous shadow.

The January 2010 Delhi Seminar Compares Balochistan with Kashmir

by Pakistan Alert Press

While the Jang Group has signed an agreement with the Times of India media group to promote peace between Pakistan and India with the title Aman Ki Aasha , the Indian intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) is staging a seminar at New Delhi’s India International Centre from January 10 to January 12, 2010. 

The seminar, titled ‘India-Pakistan Conference-A Road map towards peace” is being hosted by a RAW-run organization Focus on Global South.

Only a handful of organizers and participants know about this conference. There has been no publicity about the event made by the organizers and even few people from amongst the Delhi-based local and foreign journalists have been informed and invited to the said seminar. 

Even the official website of the India International Centre (IIC) does not indicate that the said seminar is amongst the event, listed to place on the said dates at IIC. 

One particular segment of the seminar that targets Balochistan province of Pakistan, titled “ Issue of Autonomy: Kashmir and Balochistan” has been introduced on special request from RAW’s analysis wing.[

Mr Iqbal Haider has written an article “greatly appreciating this initiative” of India. This is the height of ill judgment. In 2007, another federal minister and rights activist Ansar Burney lobbied to release an Indian terrorist from Pakistani jail. The terrorist returned to India to admit he was sent by the Indian intelligence to kill Pakistanis by planting bombs in public places, which he did in early 1990s and killed more than a dozen Pakistanis. 

These so-called Pakistani liberals often act as apologists for the Indians. 

The aim is to draw a comparison between the freedom movement in Indian Occupied Kashmir and the RAW-sponsored separatist movements in Balochistan. 

For the Balochistan part of the seminar, no senior journalist or intellectual from Pakistan has been selected to speak but merely one nationalist journalist from Balochistan who runs a separatism nationalists Online newspaper from Balochistan and got his Journalism degrees from India and is known for toeing the RAW lines regarding Balochistan has been invited from the Media side. 

The Pakistani Baloch journalist, Siraj Malik Akbar, has graduated from Asian College of Journalism at Chennai India while Chennai is known as the hub of RAW-run think tanks. 

The invitees to the seminar include:

ü  former Information Minister (PPP) Ms. Sherry Rehman,

ü  former Law Minister (PPP) Iqbal Haider,

ü  Human Rights activists Aasma Jehangir,

ü  Pakistani journalist Malik Siraj Akbar,

ü  Senator Hasil Khan Bazinjo,

ü  some Farooque Tarique of some Pakistan Labour Party,

ü  some economist Akbar Zaidi [This gentleman was among the few Pakistanis who attended a music and cocktails party organized by the Indian envoy in Islamabad when the country was mourning close to 100 dead in terrorist acts on Dec. 8, 2009.]

ü  defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqua,

ü  and women rights’ activists and theatre artist, Madeeha Gauhar, 

All of them are known for having a soft corner for India and having a pro-India mindset. 

However the speakers for the main target and rather the nucleus of the seminar that would be focusing on Balochistan, the “selected” speakers from Pakistan include, Asma Jenagir, Malik Siraj Akbar and Senator Hasil Khan Bizenjo. 

RAW plans to draw parallels between the freedom movement in Indian Occupied Kashmir and the RAW funded separatists’ drives in Balochistan. However, surprisingly the organizers have neither invited anyone from among the officials of Pakistan government or Delhi-based Pak diplomats nor have they opted to invite anyone from amongst the Pakistani Baloch tribes that confront the militant Indian-backed elements. 

Different foreign agencies have remained actively involved in the formation of different militant and separatist outfits like 

-         Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)

-         Balochistan Rights Movement (BRM)

-         Balochistan Republican Army (BRA)

-         American Friends of Balochistan 

In one such endeavor, on June 27, 2006, when Pakistani security forces were gaining immense success in restoring peace and disarming the militants in Balochistan and hundreds of mercenaries started surrendering to the government authorities, a UK based so-called think tank Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) organized a seminar titled ‘Balochistan at the crossroads’. 

The FPC organized the said seminar with open collaboration of Balochistan Rights Movement .

It was chaired by Hugh Barnes of FPC and someone who goes by the name Mehran Baloch, an active member of BLA and a senior activist of Balochistan Rights Movement, Mr. Sanaullah Baloch, whose close association with warlords of Balochistan and militant outfits like BLA are known to everyone, Dr. Naseer Dashti another associate of Bugti and Marri and BLA, Fredric Grare of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

All of them expressed their views and analysis about situation in Balochistan. All the participants of the said seminar blamed Pakistan government for ‘usurping’ the human rights in Balochistan. They also declared Balochistan to be a separate state and accused Pakistan of illegally occupying it. They accused Pakistan government and people of Punjab of trampling the rights of people of Balochistan and portrayed the terrorists as heroes of the Pakistani Baloch people. 

When the Delhi seminar ends, it is likely to come up with similar conclusions as the Balochistan session was chaired by former Indian Judge Rajendra Sacchar whose views are close to the Indian establishment.

RAW & IB Operate Against Pakistani Agents in Nepal

August 4, 2008. Outside the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, the local police and Indian intelligence sleuths waited behind a low wall with Himalayan patience. Their quarry: tall, young Fayaz Ahmed Mir, arriving by the PIA flight from Pakistan that afternoon. Mir, the sleuths had been briefed, planned to travel to India after a short break in Kathmandu, where he was to be put up in one of the safe houses of the Pakistani ISI. He was no small fish. A trained Lashkar-e-Toiba militant fluent in many languages, Mir’s brief was to organise surgical strikes in India.

The wait was worth every second of it. As soon as Mir stepped out of the airport, the sleuths scaled the wall and moved towards him. He ran for his life, but was not fast enough. The intelligence men whisked him away in a matter of seconds. Days later, they surfaced in India with their man. From here, the story takes a strange twist.

On August 11, the Anti-Terrorist Squad of the Uttar Pradesh Police produced him in court claiming that they had arrested the ‘Pakistani national’ from Ghaziabad.

In a letter written from jail, Fayaz claims that he is from Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir and had crossed over to Pakistan at the age of 16. “I was arrested outside the airport in Nepal and then blindfolded,” he writes. “After a day’s travel, I was kept in a house without windows.” He was then taken in a vehicle the following day. “The vehicle stopped at a border entry point and I saw a hoarding with big letters, Welcome To India.”

Welcome, indeed, to the biggest success story of the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing in a foreign land. It is an extraordinary story. It concerns the compelling account of a massive covert operation by the IB and RAW to flush out terrorists planning strikes on India from their hideouts in Nepal.

What’s more impressive, the terrorists—around 400 till date according to a top officer involved in the operation—were clandestinely brought to India for questioning, thanks to the absence of an extradition treaty between India and Nepal. Their interrogation revealed the sinister plot their handlers in Pakistan had designed for India, targeting key installations and prominent people including cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly and former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

The latest catch has been Mohammed Omar Madni, Lashkar’s main man in Nepal, who was arrested from ‘Delhi’ on June 4, 2009. Said to be very close to Lashkar founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Madni, according to the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police, had recruited many youths from across India.

Others picked up and brought to India include Mohammad Hassan alias Abu Qasim of Punjab in Pakistan (nabbed from Nepal on April 15, 2007), who was planning a fidayeen attack on Delhi on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of India’s first war of independence in 2007, and Asif Ali alias Anas, who was arrested from Hotel Jagat in Thamel area of Kathmandu on July 11, 2006. The operation, which continues to this day, has been so successful that India is replicating it in Bangladesh. India’s bonhomie with the Bangladeshi agencies has resulted in the arrest of top ULFA functionaries like Arabinda Rajkhowa and militants like T. Nasir, wanted in several terror-related cases in India.

Nepal’s emergence as a terror transit point started in the late 80s.

First it was the turn of the Khalistan militants at the height of the Sikh unrest in Punjab, when they were hosted by the ISI in hotels, gurdwaras and residential areas in Muslim-dominated areas of Nepal. The turning point came on December 24, 1999, when five Pakistani terrorists hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC814 to Kandahar. The Delhi-bound flight carried mostly Indians returning after enjoying their holidays in Nepal. They were released on December 31, after India agreed to set free three top terrorists including Maulana Masood Azhar, who went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed.

“The hijack was the terrorists’ biggest success and mistake,” says former RAW chief Vikram Sood. “It was a defining moment for the intelligence agencies.” In an atmosphere of urgency and desolation, Indian intelligence agencies proposed and won approval for what a senior IB officer called a ‘Soft Op’, a secret operation classified at the highest level to find and destroy terror hubs in Nepal. Within the IB and RAW, it is considered their biggest and the most successful covert operation against terrorism.

The IB’s former joint director M.K. Dhar, one of the creators of the rendition programme, said that the axis of terror spreading from Pakistan and Afghanistan to India was often bridged by an unstable Nepal, which was not prepared to deal with the problem of such proportion. “The rendition programme’s goal was to take in people who were planning to target India or have been involved in terrorist attacks in India,” says Dhar. “We had done that with the Sikh militancy. We picked terrorists and brought them to India but the rendition was limited.” According to Dhar, the ISI had made strategic advances into Nepal between 1985 and 2001. “At one time there were over 150 Kashmiri militants in Kathmandu alone,” says Dhar.

In a complex arrangement with Nepal’s intelligence agencies, RAW and the IB started closely monitoring the movement of suspected terrorists in Nepal. The intent was there, backed by necessary action. Post IC814 hijacking, Nepal also woke up to the ISI operations on its soil. It was not news to the Nepali administration that there were safe houses for terrorists all round the country. Most of them were in Jhapa, Ilam, Tapleganj, Panchthar, the Tarai region, Birganj and Kathmandu city.

It was in 1997 that the needle of suspicion began to point at the Pakistan embassy in Nepal. In August 1997, Sikh militant Bhupinder Singh Bhuda of the Khalistan Commando Force was arrested from a hotel in Kathmandu. He was secretly brought to India and during interrogation he gave details about the ISI network in Nepal.

Two months later, six more terrorists were arrested in Nepal and brought to India. During interrogation they dropped the name of Pakistani diplomat Mohammad Arshad Cheema (reportedly then ISI unit chief in Kathmandu) as their point man in Nepal. “Cheema had been running a tight network in Nepal,” says Dhar. “From educational institutions to business firms, he used different ways to gain influence against India. He was kept under surveillance and once his connections with terrorists became evident, the Nepal government deported him.”

According to Sood, there was no commercial justification in having four direct PIA flights a week between Nepal and Pakistan. “Our information was that the ISI was using the PIA flights to bring weapons from Pakistan to Nepal, which would then be passed on to the different terrorist groups in India,” he says.

Mirza Dilshad Beg, a Nepali parliamentarian who had close links with the ISI, played a significant role in the spread of the ISI network in Nepal. With deep contacts in the Nepali establishment, he provided hideouts and other logistics for the terrorists till he was killed by ‘unidentified gunmen’ in 1998. In a report given to Nepalese authorities in 2000, India had revealed the details of Pakistan’s dangerous game in Nepal. Indian intelligence officers have long been aware of the ISI’s activities to fuel anti-India feelings in Nepal, which was all the more evident when actor Hrithik Roshan’s comments on Nepal were played again and again on a local TV channel just to flare up passions against India. The channel, the Indian agencies later came to know, had been funded by the ISI.

The Nepal Police’s former additional inspector-general Rajendra Bahadur Singh admits that terrorists have been using Nepal as a hideout. “But we have cooperated fully with Indian agencies,” he says. “Every time India has brought a case to our notice, we have taken action. It has been a very special relationship.” That relationship froze when the Maoists came to power briefly.

Interrogation of terrorists arrested from Nepal foiled many terror attacks and led to the arrests of their contacts in India. For instance, Mohammed Hassan, one of the terrorists picked up from Nepal, revealed the whereabouts of his commander in India whom he knew by the name Ammar. The information led to Ammar’s encounter killing in the Doda region of Kashmir three months later in April 2007.

In the high-security Tihar jail is housed one of India’s bigger catches, Lashkar militant Tariq Mehmood, who was arrested from Nepal in 2001. In a letter written to the trial judge some time ago, Mehmood had claimed that he was befriended by an Indian spy in Nepal, who brought him to India through the India-Nepal border.

Upon arrival, he was arrested on December 20, 2001, by the Special Cell of the UP Police. Mehmood allegedly told his interrogators that he was sent to India to abduct Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly and seek the release of Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami founder Nasrullah Langriyal, who is currently lodged in a Rajasthan jail. Langriyal’s name also figured in the list of terrorists to be released in exchange of passengers aboard IC814 but India refused to play ball. According to the chargesheet, Mehmood and his team were also planning to assassinate then Defence Research and Development Organisation chief A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and attack the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

“Mehmood’s interrogation helped security agencies arrest six Pakistani terrorists besides the local operatives from different parts of India,” claims a police officer. Apparently, Omar Sheikh, one of the three terrorists released in the Kandahar drama, trained Mehmood and others in Indian lifestyle and food habits besides giving them a crash course in Hindi.

There are  at least eight suspected terrorists in Tihar who were picked up from Nepal. Three former detainees who were held in jails in Bihar and UP state that they were made to sign papers showing they were arrested from within India. They said they had helped provide logistics to terrorists but were never directly involved in any terrorist attacks.

The agencies go to great lengths to protect the secrecy of the rendition programme. “We’ve got an understanding with the Nepal government,” said Dhar. “We share information with them and get them on board [before operations]. We take their cooperation and when they feel satisfied about the information provided they allow us to take the terrorists to India.” Taking suspected terrorists to India is a cakewalk once Nepal cooperates. Some are flown in at the middle of the night. Some, like 32-year-old Jaish activist Fayaz Ahmed Mir, are brought by road.

The programme follows a standard procedure, says an officer. Once a person is suspected with anti-India intentions, he would be picked up with the help of the Nepal Police, blindfolded, handcuffed and in some cases given sleeping pills. Once in India the first destination would be either an interrogation centre operated by the one of the intelligence agencies or one of the police stations referred to in classified documents as ‘black sites’. The interrogation could last a day or take many months. Once the questioning is over, their arrest is recorded and are produced in court.

According to RAW’s former deputy chief Lt-Gen. V.K. Singh, a variety of factors has prompted the ISI to set up base in Nepal. “The long, porous border touching Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim makes it ideal for terrorists to enter India through Nepal,” he says. Going by the data obtained from the Union home ministry, as many as 5,571 smugglers have been arrested from the Indo-Nepal border since 2001. It is not clear whether they were just criminals or terrorists. “It is hard for us to verify the identity of a person,” says K.M. Cariappa, spokesman for the Shasastra Seema Bal, the paramilitary force that guards the border.

The success of the operation has not slackened the vigil. “Suspected terrorists are still being rendered,” said a senior Nepal home ministry official. “There are people around here who keep watch on everything. Our joint mission is to refuse to give any space to terrorists.” According to Guna Raj Luitel, a senior Kathmandu-based journalist, Nepal has become a playground of spies. “An impression is gaining ground in Nepal that India is pressuring the police to hand over suspects wanted in India,” he says. “You really don’t know who is doing what here.”

As is the case with most wars against terrorism, human rights violations happen on a regular basis. A case in point, according to human rights organisations in Nepal, is that of two missing Kashmiri brothers, Mohammad Shafi Rah and Mushtaq Ahmed Rah, who were allegedly taken away from their residence in the Samakhusi area of Kathmandu on the night of August 27, 2000, by plainclothesmen. “They were handed over to Indian security agencies,” said one of their relatives. There has been no news about them since.

A senior officer involved in the programme did not deny excesses. He said that he was bothered neither about his legacy nor about what others might think of him. “We are expected to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists so as to avoid further atrocities against civilians,” he says. “In Nepal, what we did was in the cause of India’s war against Pakistan-backed terrorism. We prevented so many terrorist attacks. We saved so many lives.” As they say, all is fair in war and love.

Crackdown on Baloch Students to Obtain Confessions

After Pakistans accusation of Indian involvement in subversive
activities with the nationalist movement in Balochistan province, the
law enforcement agencies reacted heavily against the students of the
province who have sympathies with nationalist movement. The
Para-military forces, particularly, the frontier constabulary (FC)
started arresting people, keeping them in incommunicado in unknown places. There are reports of arrests of dozens of young persons, but due to poor communication problems, the AHRC was not able to collect all the details. Some cases are as follows:

An activist of the Baloch Student Organisation-BSO (Azaad), Mr Sami
Baloch, was abducted at midnight of July 19 and 20. He was returning
home from a tuition center near the Satellite Town of Quetta. He was
abducted by Frontier Constabulary, a Para- military force of the
Pakistani Army. Mr. Sami Baloch is a M.A. student in Geology in
Balochistan University and a member of the organizing body of BSO
(Azaad) Balochistan University unit. His whereabouts are still
unknown and it is feared that he is undergoing brutal torture in a
Pakistani army camp.

In another case, Pakistani intelligence agencies allegedly abducted
another Baloch resident. This occurred in front of the Huddah
district jail in Quetta, on July 16, 2009. According to information received from his family, Fazal Khan Marri, 25, went to visit one of his relatives in the Hudda jail. As he came out of the main gate of the prison, he was abducted by personnel from the Pakistani intelligence agencies in a jeep with no registration number. Fazal Khan Marri is a resident of New Kahan . He is a daily wage earner and the father
of two children.

Mr Fazal Baloch,19, son of Sher Muhammad, a student at Bolan
University in the Commerce Faculty was arrested on 3rd July 2009 by FC from Luc Pas, Quetta. Fazal Baloch, a 19 year old resident of
Proom village, Punjgur district, was traveling to Punjgur by bus. He
also was a member of B.S.O Azaad. According to his father, after his
son was arrested, he was tortured. His physical and mental condition
remains serious. After the torture he was admitted to the Civil
Hospital for two days after which he was handed over to the Crime
Branch of anti terrorist force (A.T.F.) from Quetta. In the hospital he told to his relatives that he was forced to confess that India is funding Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

Mr Iqbal Baloch, 21, a student of Khuzdar College, Khuzdar district,
was arrested by frontier constabulary (FC) on 18 July, 2009. His
whereabouts are unknown. The district police are denying his arrest.

The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the government of Pakistan, especially the Balochistan province, to stop the arrest of students and young people and the keeping of them in incommunicado.

The law enforcement agencies need to operate according to civilian laws which allow for proper methods of investigation before arrest and warrants for arrest.

ISI Tells the Indians to Talk to ISI Directly

by Nirupama Subramanian and Siddharth Varadarajan

Days before PM Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Gilani met in Egypt, the head of the ISI floated a suggestion that India deal not just with Pakistan’s civilian government but also directly with its Army and intelligence agency.

Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha made the out-of-the-box overture during a meeting earlier this month with the three Indian defence advisers representing the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force attached to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

The sit-in at Lt. Gen. Pasha’s office in Rawalpindi on July 3 took place entirely at his initiative, though it was ostensibly convened in response to a request made by the Indian High Commission “years before.” It is normal for defence advisors attached to various diplomatic missions in Islamabad to seek and be granted calls on the ISI director-general — a wing of the ISI is the co-ordinating agency for them — but Indians have rarely had an audience.

During their discussion, Lt. Gen. Pasha and the defence advisors did not refer to the Mumbai attacks or the investigations into it, either on the Indian or Pakistani side. Nevertheless, senior officials in Delhi saw the interaction as an attempt by the ISI to “reach out” to India in the run-up to the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting of the two Prime Ministers.

During the course of the extremely cordial meeting, Lt. Gen. Pasha came clean in stating that the ISI and the Pakistan Army were involved in framing Pakistan’s India policy, along with the Foreign Office. He made the oblique suggestion that India deal directly with these three institutions if it had a similar three-way mechanism.

In their effort to understand the genesis of this idea, Indian officials sought to establish whether the ISI chief — who has a reputation for speaking his mind freely — had merely made an off-the-cuff remark or was floating a trial balloon after consultations with all other “stakeholders” in the Pakistani establishment.

Ministry of External Affairs officials asked Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik about the ISI chief’s suggestion, but the envoy was unaware that the meeting had even taken place. This led the MEA to conclude that the Pakistani foreign office may not be in the loop.

Major-General Athar Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said he had no knowledge of the meeting. Officials at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad also refused comment.

Highly placed South Block officials said that India is not averse to talking to the Pakistani military or the ISI even as it engages with the civilian government but there were two problems with the suggestion. First, any proposal to open new lines of communication must come from the Pakistani government. And second, the power structures in India and Pakistan cannot really compare with each other.

Although Prime Minister Singh and PM Gilani agreed the ISI chief could come to India in the immediate aftermath of last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Islamabad quickly backtracked. Since then, no formal proposal for interaction between the ISI and an Indian intelligence agency has been made. Indeed, Mr. Gilani told The Hindu at Sharm el-Sheikh that the question of an intelligence chiefs’ dialogue did not come up in his meeting with Dr. Singh, a fact confirmed by Indian officials.

But apart from form, it is the question of structure that poses an obstacle. “The Research & Analysis Wing operates within the law and is subordinate to the government,” a senior intelligence official told The Hindu. “There, the government is subordinate to the ISI, which is a law unto itself.”

South Block officials said the Indian High Commissioner and his officers could and should be in touch with the Pakistani army and intelligence chiefs. “But I wonder what would be the point of the Indian Army Chief talking to his Pakistani counterpart … their job definitions are so different.”

Operation Blue Tulsi: Destroying Pakistan’s Nuclear Assets

PPP government was dismissed in 1996 because Rehman Malik, DG FIA and Asif Zardari had promised Indians and Israelis access to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. 

In 1994-95 Rehman Malik was working in tandem with this immediate boss Ghulam Asghar, head of the FIA, and under the auspices of Asif Zardari, collecting information about Pakistan’s nuclear installations. Malik offered the Indians direct access to Kashmiri and Afghan fighters he would capture.

 In July 2001 Janes Information Group reported that RAW and Mossad were cooperating to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats.

In the late eighties, two junior intelligence officers one Pakistani other Indian faced each other on opposite sides of the law. The Pakistani intelligence officer had caught the Indian agent on Pakistani soil with incriminating evidence. Indian agent knew his life had come to an end. However, everything has a price. And his freedom was worth a little less than half a million rupees. A few days later the Indian agent was sitting back at home, free as a bird. And life went on for several more years until the fateful year of 1994 when the two old “chaps” met again. This time officially. The Indian agent had climbed the ladder to an important post in the government. At this side of the border the junior Pakistani agent, against all odds had become one of the top bosses at Federal Investigation Agency. Of course, this was the infamous Rehman Malik.

The Indian side wanted Pakistani Government’s help in reducing cross-border terrorism. But Rehman Malik offered a lot more than mere reduction in “cross-border”. He had been appointed as Additional Director FIA and yielded immense power through the country. Additionally he had become the right-hand-man of Asif  Zardari, stashing his looted money all over the world. He offered them direct access to the jihadists which he would capture. Somewhere along the line Israel also became a party to the deal and soon Mossad agents were carrying out investigations of the captured (ISI backed) jihadists on Pakistani soil. There were millions to be made from the deal and of course Rehman Malik was working in tandem with this immediate boss Ghulam Asghar, head of the FIA and under the auspices of Asif Ali Zardari. ISI, Pakistan Military and top brass quietly kept a close watch. Although painful but capture of a few foot soldiers was bearable in the bigger national interest.

By 1995 in a little over a year the Benazir Bhutto government had expelled 2000 Arab mujahidin of the Afghan-Soviet War and imprisoned number of Pakistani mujahidin.

Secondly and more significantly, Benazir Bhutto on her official visit to US in April 1995 met in secret with an Israeli delegation. On her return she faced stiff resistance from a block of military and civilian bureaucracy which had generated great suspicions of her dealings with India and Israel. Just four months later she thwarted a coup attempt against her headed by Major General Zahirul Islam Abbasi. Director General of Military Intelligence Major General Ali Kuli Khan tipped-off General Abdul Waheed Kakar who immediately ordered Chief of General Staff Lt. General Jehangir Karamat to suppress the coup. A total of 36 army officers and 20 civilians were arrested from Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Then in November 1995 Egyptian Embassy blast occurred. Al-Qaeda was quick to claim it. Although the real reasons of the handlers of bombers remain hidden to this day, but in the next few days a silent but significant event happened. General Abdul Waheed Kakar who was given an extension in his tenure he refused it and Lt. General Jehangir Karamat was appointed as the Army Chief by the then President Farooq Leghari on December 18, 1995. Lt. General Jehangir Karamat was the senior most general at the time, therefore the least controversial within the military. The other three generals who were in the position to become COAS were Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, Lt Gen Naseer Akhtar, and Lt Gen Mohammad Tariq. Lt. Gen. Ghulam Muhammad Malik had already retired in October 1995.

Maj Gen Naseem Rana was heading the ISI at the time, taken his charge in October 1995. Lt Gen Shujat Ali Khan was heading the ISI’s Internal Wing.

In the backdrop of these events in Pakistan, in March 1995 Israel’s Air Force chief had visited India with an entourage that included key Mossad officials. It was at this point that in a meeting Pakistan’s nuclear program was discussed. A year later Indian nuclear and missile program head, Abdul Kalam had a “top secret” visit of Israel in June 1996. It was “top secret” because no one knew about it. As it turned out, everyone knew about it even before he left India. All the much publicized secrecy and visit of such a top level official achieved the aim and nearly nobody bothered with the entourage which included a manager from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) – Alok Tiwari. The “top secret” meetings between Abdul Kalam and his Israeli counterparts were related to purchase of UAVs. However, in every single one of those “top secret” meetings Alok Tiwari was missing.

Just a few days later, after coming back to India Tiwari accompanied Air Chief Marshal S. K. Sareen to Israel in Israel in July 1996. In fact this was his third trip. He had also visited Israel in April 1996 along with India’s first Defence Attaché to Israel.

First Wave

In late July 1996 MQM organized a province wide strike. Simultaneously a large bomb exploded at Lahore airport and a second at Faisalabad railway station. On 14th August 1996 12 SSP activists were gunned down during an Independence Rally by unidentified gunmen. By end August Punjab had been engulfed in sectarian violence, Shias and Sunnis were being gunned down in broad daylight. The political and security situation worsened by the murder of Murtaza Bhutto and reinstatement of Manzoor Wattoo as Chief Minister of Punjab. The country seemed in a political and economic turmoil with violence erupting throughout the country. At the same time, out of blue Ataullah Mengal returned from his self-imposed exile.

While everyone was busy with the current crisis a team of agents working directly under Rehman Malik were gathering information on Kahuta and A.Q. Khan. Beginning November 1996 ISI saw an increase in Indian troops movement, which finally sent alarm bells ringing through the echelons of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Suddenly, all the pieces fell in place and Ghulam Asghar and Rehman Malik’s shenanigans seemed a lot deeper than mere money grabbing tactics. By fourth of November a thick load of evidence had been gathered on Ghulam Asghar and Rehman Malik working with the consent of Asif Zardari towards gathering information on the progress of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

On November 5, 1996, Farooq Leghari dissolved Benazir Bhutto’s government. At the other side of the border, this caused the immediate visit of Israeli naval chief Vice-Admiral Alex Tal to India. Back at home, Ghulam Asghar and Rehman Malik were imprisoned on undisclosed charges.

Second Wave

In February 1997, Indian Defence Secretary T. K. Banerji led a high level defence delegation to Israel to discuss the “exchange of technology” between two countries. Other than the official purpose the most important topic was Pakistan’s nuclear program. By the end of the visit the two countries had decided to do “whatever” it takes to neutralize the threat.

In March next year the BJP won Indian elections and one of the immediate policies adopted was to tackle Pakistan’s nuclear issue by any means possible. With such enthusiastic approach the government even decided to take the most extreme measures if needed. In the next two months the official and diplomatic delegations between India and Israel came to a halt, however, there was a sudden rise in non-diplomatic delegations between the two countries. The last official visit was of Gen. Prakash Malik to Israel in March 1998, who was also the first serving Indian Chief of Army Staff to visit Israel since normalization. In April 1998 two out-of-the ordinary incidents happened. Air India announced its discontinuation of Tel Aviv flight on 1 April 1998 and early April the Confederation of Indian Industry announced an unplanned “Study Mission” to Israel. This was the prelude to the second wave which officially started on 11th May 1998 when India exploded its nuclear bombs.

Night of 27-28 May

Pakistan resisted testing its nuclear bombs for nearly two weeks until 27th May 1998. On 27 May 1998 in a top level meeting Lt. Gen. Naseem Rana, (DG ISIP briefed the PM Nawaz Sharif and army chief of the increasing intelligence reports of possible Indian attack on Pakistan’s nuclear installations. However, the panic this created was nothing compared to the next two meetings.

The first report pertained to the sighting of an unidentified F-16 aircraft at the periphery of Pakistan’s airspace on 27th May. Knowing India did not have F-16, the obvious suggestion was presence of Israeli Air Force in the area (especially with the reports of Indian COAS visiting Israel just a month ago).

And the second report coming just before 1am on 28th May recorded unusual movements of Indian aircrafts just across the border which suggested India was preparing for preventive airstrikes against Pakistan. The obvious response of nuclear tests on 28th May.

The tests confirmed once and for all that Pakistan has nuclear capability.

Deduction

It seemed probable that BJP Government had decided to fire its nuclear bombs to force Pakistan into test firing its – if it has any. After a delay of two weeks, doubts had started rising in nearly every analytical discourse that Pakistan did not have the nuclear capability otherwise it would have responded. This was the golden opportunity to take out Pakistan/Pakistan’s nuclear installations before that Pakistan got the capability. The important visit of Indian COAS to Israel in March – in the light of proceeding events – could only be regarding Israel’s support for the planned attack. Whatever, the reasons and aims, the end result was establishment of Pakistan as a nuclear state, which completely changed the Great Nuclear Game.

Third Wave

Pakistan’s test firing of nuclear bombs was a shock for the rest of the world. No one expected, in the first place for Pakistan to have the capability and secondly to fire them if it had. For India and Israel, who were two top most interested parties in destroying Pakistan’s nuclear assets, this meant a complete overhaul of their strategy.

A year later Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra came to meet Barak in September 1999 and this time he was accompanied with a familiar face – Alok Tiwari. Within a year, Alok Tiwari and another security analyst finalized a document based on their discussion the preceding year.

In June 2000 L. K. Advani visited Israel in which new deals related to Mossad and Shabak espionage and cooperation with RAW are finalized and as a result Israel was allowed to establish its own network to operate from India.

By July 2000 a heavy deployment of Israeli agents in Indian Occupied Kashmir was reported. Near the end of 2000 Israel’s top intelligence officers were reported to have visited India and discussed amongst other issues, Kashmir and Pakistan’s nuclear assets. By the end of the visit the top spies of the two country had agreed to cooperate on the operation detailed inside the thick volume titled: “Operation Blue Tulsi”.

Operation Blue Tulsi: Preparation

Preparation for the mega Operation Blue Tulsi began fervently in early 2001. By mid 2001 eyebrows were being raised over RAW and Mossad’s cooperation and in July 2001 Janes Information Group reported that RAW and Mossad are cooperating to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats. In addition, bombs would be exploded in trains, railway stations, bridges, bus stations, cinemas, hotels and mosques of rival Islamic sects to incite sectarianism.

At the same time the Balouchistan Liberation Army rose out of dead like a second incarnation and Balach Marri a Moscow graduate declares himself as the leader of BLA. Within weeks in Balochistan numerous training camps sprouted with each camp reported to be training up to a 100 militants. Intelligence of RAW, Mossad and CIA agents operating in Balochistan started coming in.

In mid 2001 reports appeared that Special Operations Division of Mossad, also known as Metsada, specializing in assassinations and sabotage have been based in India since May 2001 to train RAW operatives and Mossad and Shin Bet or Shabak were operating a number of teams in Indian Held Kashmir and were also operating a delicate spy network from Indian soil. In July 2001 RAW increased its budget for Indian consulates in Afghanistan by nearly 10 times.

Within days after Sep 11, a story was leaked into press that Pakistan is dismantling and spreading its nuclear assets to safer places implying that it would be much more difficult to pinpoint them and much more easier for extremists to get hold of. These news stories were shortly followed by another piece on 28 October 2001 which stated that Pentagon was looking into plans to dispatch an elite unit into the Pakistan to disarm its nuclear arsenal. The special unit which was trained to slip into foreign countries to ferret out and disarm nuclear weapons and operated under Pentagon control with CIA assistance and would be getting special help from Israel’s Sayeret Matkal also known as Unit 262.

In December 2001 Indian PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, while addressing the parliament said, “the question was not whether there should be or should not be a war, the question was under what circumstances there will be war … and whether there will be a war.”

In December 2001 Benazir Bhutto while visiting India said in her interviews, “President, Musharraf, as an army general, had planned the Kargil invasion in Jammu and Kashmir while I was the PM.” Later she also said, “Pakistan army as an institution had brought back Osama bin Laden”.

This rhetoric of Benazir Bhutto was perfectly in line with the agreement signed by US and India in 2002. Late in 2002 US and India signed an agreement on cooperation in disarming Pakistan’s nuclear assets and the two player offensive team of Operation Blue Tulsi found a third partner in the form of CIA. As a result of this deal Abdullah Mehsud was freed from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Pakistan with millions in cash.

Benazir Bhutto’s statements in India were the major reason Musharraf’s declaration of Benazir Bhutto as a “security risk” during a chat with Pakistan’s leading editors and correspondents in April 2002. Pakistani security agencies already had a great deal of intelligence regarding Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari and Rehman Malik’s involvement with Mossad and India in 1995-96 and their collaboration against Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

In January 2002 under orders from L. K. Advani RAW and other intelligence agencies submited a detailed report on military options for solving Kashmir issue and in case of a full-fledged war, for neutralizing Pakistan’s nuclear assets. One major outcome of the report was creation of Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) in March 2002 with the authority to conduct external operations supported by a huge budget.

Also, a Lawyers’ Struggle surfaced in October 2003 under the leadership of Hamid Ali Khan (now drowned under the infamous Lawyers’ Movement). The first prominent protest of the “struggle” was held on 15 October 2003 in which the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Hamid Ali Khan said, “Musharraf’s very presence within the army and holding of other important offices and Shaikh Riaz Ahmad’s continuation as chief justice after his retirement are undoubtedly illegal and unconstitutional… Let’s think collectively, move forward collectively and act collectively to outs usurper generals and judges (who had collaborated with Musharraf including Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. However, like a B-grade movie twist, four years later Iftikhar Chaudry becomes the hero to these same lawyers who wanted to oust him. Like a script from past, this protest had followed a “Long March”. And the “struggle” then moved to other cities one by one asking Musharraf, Riaz Ahamad and among others Iftikhar Chaudhry’s removal from office. At this point along with Hamid Ali Khan, Kazim Khan was at the forefront. Lacking the charisma and cunning of their successors, assassination of a leader, and shortage of “unlimited” billions of rupees their names and their Lawyers’ Struggles has been confined to the dusty pages of history with their names ascribed against the words, “traitors”.

Also, there is no evidence to support that assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf were somehow related to the timing of the Lawyers’ Struggle.

By mid 2004 the government had ample evidence that BLA and some Baloch leaders were conspiring against the government, aided by foreign countries.

On 13th August 2004 the Chief Minister of Baluchistan, Jam Muhammad Yousaf is quoted by The Herald (Sep 2004-Karachi): “Indian secret services (RAW) are maintaining 40 terrorist camps all over the Baluch territory”. While this was happening on ground, there was talk of “Peace Talks” everywhere in the air. And Jan Muhammad Jamali had become a laughing stock of the media for his suggestion of foreign agents operating in Balochistan, which despite the ground facts forcefully opposed such thoughts.

Operation Blue Tulsi: Start

1st January 2005 was the starting date. The local agents got the signal and the operation started with the ominous rape of a female doctor in Sui on 2nd January 2005. As expected the incident created headlines all round and culprits not being found created a much supported backlash. This was shortly followed by rocketing of gas installation at Sui on 7th January which put a hole in Pakistan’s gas supply for nearly a week.

2005 was a busy year with Baloch terrorists continuously creating havoc in Balochistan and adjacent areas and ended with assassination attempts on Musharraf in December. After President Musharraf escapes a rocket attack on his life in December 2005 and the Inspector General Frontier Corps survives an assassination attempt, Navtej Sarna, the Indian External Affairs Ministry’s spokesman said, “The Government of India has been watching with concern the spiralling violence in Balochistan and the heavy military action, including use of helicopter gun-ships and jet fighters by the Government of Pakistan to quell it… We hope the Government of Pakistan will exercise restraint and take recourse to peaceful discussions to address the grievances of the people of Balochistan”.
The Indian Government had realized that the two assassination attempts would surely result in backfire on the Indian assets in Balochistan, which it needed to safeguard for its final aim, especially Akbar Bugti. Just as suspected, the Government of Pakistan intensifies its operation against Baloch militants.

And in April 2006 Government of Balochistan is setup with its offices in Jerusalem under Azaad Khan Baloch. In a laughingly stupid mistake, Azaad Khan Baloch who is representing Balochis of Pakistan decided to spell his name according to Hindi transliteration with double “a” in Az”aa”d, rather than a single “a” as used in Pakistan, i.e. Azad. Or more probable, “Azad Khan Baloch” is not a Pakistani.

Meanwhile in Balochistan the government operation against Akbar Bugti intensified who took shelter in the rugged mountain range and coordinated the activities of his militants from there. Ultimately the military found him and during the process of capture Akbar Bugti died because of cave-roof collapse on 26 August 2006.

Starting March 2007, every incident occurring in the country was tied to the aim of ousting Musharraf, including the much profitable Lawyers’ Movement. Intelligence agencies were having a field-day bringing in pile after pile of reports proving involvement of CIA, RAW, Mossad and MI6 towards Musharraf’s ouster. True to some extent but unlike analyzed, ouster of Musharraf was just one milestone towards the main goal, which every agency completely missed. Thus, all their efforts went into controlling the situation to secure Musharraf, while in the backdrop, silently the wheels kept turning. While Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan were burning Swat was sitting quietly, unnoticed and out of radar. Within a period of few months, the numbers of “Pakistani Taliban” in Swat surged and just as well their ammunition, latest military equipment a country like Pakistan would dream of. A portion of this ended up in the ill-fated Lal Masjid. While intelligence and military were busy keeping Musharraf’s seat safe in Pakistan, a new political game started in UAE.

Rehman Malik enthusiastically started pursuing the goal of National Reconciliation Ordinance. He became instrumental in the final deal between Benazir Bhutto, US and Pervez Musharraf and NRO. Since Benazir Bhutto did not have much to lose without NRO she was never  interested in it. That was the reason two options were thrown at Musharraf, i.e. either eliminating the two term condition or NRO. Rehman Malik on the other hand was vehemently pursuing NRO, as of the three (Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto and Rehman Malik) the Government of Pakistan only had clear evidence against Rehman Malik and it was enough to put him in jail for life (i.e. involvement in espionage and working with Mossad and RAW). However, at that point no one knew the real motivations of Rehman Malik other than that he was working to get the path clear for Benazir’s return. Amazingly, FBI also was putting its weight behind NRO rather than eliminating the two term condition. While, if US had really wanted Benazir Bhutto as PM, logic dictates that they would want the two term condition eliminated to assure her easy succession to the premiership. It needs to be noted here that Rehman Malik had also tried to do a similar deal in 2005, which never materialized. This time it did.

Near the end of 2007, intelligence and military were convinced that a conspiracy had been hatched in the country with the sole aim of removing Musharraf from power. Assassination of Benazir Bhutto, simultaneous rioting throughout the country, terrorist activities occurring in every province had considerable similarities to the Bush Administration backed Color Revolutions. In order to keep Musharraf in power the government kept giving into one demand after the other. As a result Rehman Malik becomes head of Interior Ministry, Yusuf Raza Gilani becomes the PM and sweeping changes are made in the security and intelligence community. Still, the government saw the war finally over when in one move Gilani puts ISI under Interior Minister on 27 July 2008. Until that time ISI and top brass had thought all Rehman Malik wanted was to get-rid of extremist elements from ISI and Pakistan’s establishment.

It was the end of July 2008 when the alarm bells started ringing again in the high echelons. Intelligence machinery went into extra high gear and millions later it came back with the name: Operation Blue Tulsi.

Operation Blue Tulsi: the Revelation

The Establishment, only now realized the full extent of the operation which they had been witnessing since the beginning of 2000. More worryingly, the current operation had eerily similar modus operandi to the 1995-96 debacle – which left the country tethering onto its nuclear assets – just that this time it was vastly more sophisticated and greater in size. In matter of hours the priorities changed. Keeping Musharraf in power suddenly paled in comparison to the real threat.

In 1995-96 India came up with a plan to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear facilities before that Pakistan developed a nuclear capability. The plan was prepared by a RAW agent Alok Tiwari (who has recently been compromised). At that time Mossad was already active in Pakistan and once it heard about the project for elimination of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities jumped in by first streamlining the project further and then using its assets in Pakistan. Somewhere in early 1996 the operation was given go-ahead. At that point FIA Director General Ghulam Asghar and his ADG Rehman Malik in a deal with India and Israel were hunting down Pakistan based Kashmiri and Arab militants. These two proved to be the front line in the operation and when contacted by Indian agents fully agreed to supply all the necessary information regarding Kahuta and A. Q. Khan’s operations. Towards mid 96 demonstrations and chaos erupted throughout the country. The aim was to destabilize the country enough that when the two confirmed Pakistan did not have any nuclear capabilities India would go-ahead with all out assault. General Jehangir Karamat who was already weary of the two chaps and Asif Zardari’s complicity took immediate action and Benazir Bhutto’s government was dissolved. The duo of Asghar and Malik and Zardari had already come into military’s radar the year before when they tried to lure General Abdul Wahed Kakar.

Then five years later, Alok Tiwari submited an updated version of his older report. Israel was again consulted and this time L. K. Advani vehemently pursued it. Towards the end of 2000 a delegation of top Mossad brass visited India and the combined operation titled: Operation Blue Tulsi was finalized and put into operation which had only one aim:

Destroy Pakistan’s nuclear assets followed by its Balkanization.

Approach

Resurrect Baloch insurgency. Pakistan was fine with it, as it had 30 years of experience with it, starting with the Afghan-Soviet War.

Buy officials in military, bureaucracy, politics and law. ISI was fine with it, as it had 60 years of experience in dealing with traitors.

Plant agents in top positions in Taliban, FATA and NWFP. A shocker for everyone.

Taliban were the foster child of ISI and the agency had no contingency for enemy agents in top positions. The best option they came up with was to buy back the agents with more money and as a result they were deceived time and again and again. Top on the list, Baitullah Mehsud. The twenty million dollars he got in suitcases was one of the stupidest moves in the world espionage history and ISI top brass to this day are vengefully pursuing him.

Milestones

Friendly political government. Asif Zardari in place, Aslam Raisani in Balochistan (though first choice Akbar Bugti unfortunately dead, MQM’s omnipresence in Sindh, Fazlur Rehman and ANP in NWFP)

Friendly judiciay. Iftikhar Chaudhry, Munir A. Malik, Atizaz Ahsan

Friendly Civil Society. Ansar Burney, Asma Jehangir

Unrest in NWFP and immediate threat of Taliban taking control of Islamabad. Back in 2002 US had agreed with India that if ever Pakistan seemed to destabilize or falling into the hands of extremists, it would help India in destroying Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. The situation they agreed upon is well defined by the Pakistani media’s current theme song of “Taliban are coming to Islamabad”

Immediate Countermeasures

By August 2008 the operation was too deep rooted and it was clear if attention was diverted towards saving Musharraf there was more than a probability of loosing nuclear capability in near future. With Musharraf gone, ISI estimated a window of opportunity of 18 to 20 months before either Taliban or Asif Zardari with his shenanigans destabilized Pakistan. In the greater interest Musharraf decided to step down peacefully.

Operation Blue Tulsi: In Operation

Musharraf stepped down and Asif Ali Zardari took over, but by then the order had been sent and the agents in Swat Valley and FATA who had been preparing for the day for the last eight years launched an all out assault on the military with a single aim of destabilizing Pakistan.

In the eventful month of December 2007 Baitullah Mehsud had already announced officially the formation of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Although right after the victory of PPP Baitullah Mehsud has negotiated peace with the government which led to the great debacle of US$ 20 million by August 2008 he was again involved with the military in a full on battle. ISI and military by this time had realized the foremost importance of ridding the Taliban off foreign agents and assets by any means and costs.

At one end Pakistan military still is trying to safeguard its own assets while tracing out and eliminating foreign agents, while at the other end US is trying its best to safeguard its prime asset of Baitullah Meshud who had taken over after the death of Abullah Mehsud. Until  recently, there had been not a single drone attack on Baitullah Mehsud, while ISI aligned Taliban had been bombed repeatedly, as a result of which many have turned their backs against Pakistan. Only in the recent months four drone attacks on Baitullah Mehsud’s territory have been reported.

Operation Blue Tulsi and Future

Currently the entire country is gripped by the ongoing operations of military against the Taliban. Media which once championed itself as the sympathizers of the Taliban and were chanting “Taliban are coming to Islamabad” have suddenly changed their tunes, especially after being declared by the Taliban as kafirs and thus “killable”.

The economy is in doldrums and corruption is rampantly high but the top brass knows Pakistan is first and for Pakistan nuclear assets come first. Thus, until the country is cleansed of all the foreign agents in FATA and Taliban, the military and intelligence has only one goal, to stop Operation Blue Tulsi at this stage, making sure it never goes into Phase TWO – attacking and destroying Pakistan’s nuclear assets because extremist elements have destabilized Pakistan.