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Former Pakistan Army Chief General Retired Mirza Aslam Baig says Iran and Pakistan under
siege of western conspiracies
Tuesday, 08 July 2008
Former Pakistan Army Chief General ''Retd'' Mirza Aslam Baig on Tuesday said that Iran and Pakistan are under siege of western conspiracies.
He said that intelligence agencies of allied forces are very active in Afghanistan and working against the interests of Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia.
"There are set-ups of United States in Jiwani and Kot Kalmat, in Balochistan province from where they carry out different operations in the area," he said.
He said that the United States is also providing training facilities to the people of Jundallah, in Balochistan so that these people could create unrest in the
area and affect Iran-Pakistan relations.
General (Retd) Baig termed the act of the United States as a conspiracy and said that this should be stopped.
He lauded the decision of the Pakistan government for handing over the people of Jundallah to Iran and said that those who are working against the
interests of both countries should be dealt with with iron fist.
He said that the activities of people of Jundallah should be stopped and for this Iran and Pakistan have to tighten the security at Pakistan-Iran border.
He believed that in past both Pakistan and Iran had made mistakes but now it is right time to look forward and build strong relations.
General (Retd) Baig said that Pakistan should have supported the stance of Iran during Iran-Iraq war.
He was of the view that Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan should have worked together after the withdrawal of Russian army from Afghanistan.
He stressed the need for making a comprehensive strategy to strengthen Iran-Pakistan relations.
"We should forget the past and make a strategy to guard our national interests," he said.
He said the richness of Balochistan in mineral resources is one of the attractions for the international powers but the strategic location of Balochistan is
more important to the US and its allies.
General (Retd) Baig said that it is the responsibility of both countries to make the area free of danger and take the conspiracies as a challenge.
He said the American policy-makers are very much active in Balochistan since 2001 while India too has gained considerable influence in the province
since then.
SOURCE: Daily.PK
Over 10,000 schemes to be scrapped
By Mubarak Zeb Khan
ISLAMABAD, July 7: The government is reported to have decided to wind up the Rs25 billion Khushal Pakistan Fund and abandon more than 10,000
community-based poverty reduction and employment generation schemes launched by the previous government.
The KPF was established as a limited company on Sept 19, 2005 under public-private partnership to finance schemes like providing clean drinking
water and sanitation, building district link roads and infrastructure and improving health and education facilities.
A finance ministry official told Dawn on Monday that the first meeting to discuss the fund’s future was held on July 3 and to review the legal, administrative
and financial ramifications of its closure.
“We have asked the KPF to provide details of schemes before the next meeting,” he said.
The KPF has already spent Rs4 billion on various projects in three provinces and about 7,500 small infrastructure schemes are nearing completion in
Balochistan.
The schemes in Balochistan, meant to benefit about a million people, were launched in March 2006 and every district was provided Rs100 million, the
official said.
In September 2007, the KPF initiated 2,500 schemes through the Rural Support Programmes in the NWFP and Sindh and the fund was to release the
remaining Rs2 billion.
The official said that more than 1,000 schemes had been launched in Sindh after the election, mostly in PPP legislators’ constituencies.
The KPF was ready to launch 6,000 schemes in Punjab for which it had called for allocating Rs15 billion.
The public exchequer might lose Rs342.286 million if the ongoing schemes were not completed through rural support organisations, the official said.
Partner organisations might sue the KPF for breach of contracts, he added.
Under the terms of reference, 30 per cent of the operational cost will have to be reimbursed to partner organisations, even if the schemes are not
initiated. It might result in a loss of Rs51.5 million because the leftover balance of the committed KPF share was Rs1,715.446 million, the official said.
During a meeting of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee, Rs5 billion was earmarked. But the recommended allocation was deleted on May 31 in
the working paper prepared for the National Economic Council meeting held on June 2 by merging the same in People’s Works Programme (formerly
called the Khushhal Pakistan Programme).
According to sources, the finance division also froze all KPF accounts last month, which resulted in the shutting down of its logistics and communication
facilities because of non-payment of liabilities.
SOPURCE: DAWN
Bush pushes US-India nuclear deal
By DEB RIECHMANN,
President Bush defended a languishing deal his administration negotiated to sell India nuclear fuel and technology, saying he reassured India's prime
minister that the pact was important for both countries despite heavy opposition on both sides.
Bush's meeting on Wednesday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was one of a series of one-and-one sessions the president scheduled on
the final day of the three-day G-8 summit of economic powers.
"I respect the prime minister a lot," Bush said, speaking with reporters after their meeting. "I also respect India a lot. And I think it's very important that the
United States continues to work with our friend to develop not only a new strategic relationship, but a relationship that addresses some of the world's
problems. We talked about the India-U.S. nuclear deal — how important that is for our respective countries."
Singh said, "In this increasingly interdependent world that we live in, whether it the question of climate change or whether it is a question of managing the
global economy, India and the United States must stand tall, must stand shoulder to shoulder."
If ratified by Washington and New Delhi, the pact would reverse three decades of U.S. policy by allowing the sale of atomic fuel and technology to India,
which has not signed international nonproliferation accords but has tested nuclear weapons. In return, India, would open its civilian reactors to
international inspections.
U.S. critics worry the agreement could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia and weaken international efforts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
In India, critics say it would undermine India's weapons program and give Washington too much influence over Indian foreign policy.
Singh's communist allies withdrew their support for his four-year-old coalition government on Tuesday to protest the government's plan to push forward
with the nuclear deal.
Bush is trying to prod Congress to approve the pact before time runs out on his administration in January.
Before returning home late in the day, Bush was also meeting separately with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Hu Jintao
and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Many South Koreans have protested the recent resumption of U.S. beef imports. Both China and South Korea are important players in the international
effort to get North Korea to scale back its nuclear weapons program.
SORCE:
siege of western conspiracies
Tuesday, 08 July 2008
Former Pakistan Army Chief General ''Retd'' Mirza Aslam Baig on Tuesday said that Iran and Pakistan are under siege of western conspiracies.
He said that intelligence agencies of allied forces are very active in Afghanistan and working against the interests of Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia.
"There are set-ups of United States in Jiwani and Kot Kalmat, in Balochistan province from where they carry out different operations in the area," he said.
He said that the United States is also providing training facilities to the people of Jundallah, in Balochistan so that these people could create unrest in the
area and affect Iran-Pakistan relations.
General (Retd) Baig termed the act of the United States as a conspiracy and said that this should be stopped.
He lauded the decision of the Pakistan government for handing over the people of Jundallah to Iran and said that those who are working against the
interests of both countries should be dealt with with iron fist.
He said that the activities of people of Jundallah should be stopped and for this Iran and Pakistan have to tighten the security at Pakistan-Iran border.
He believed that in past both Pakistan and Iran had made mistakes but now it is right time to look forward and build strong relations.
General (Retd) Baig said that Pakistan should have supported the stance of Iran during Iran-Iraq war.
He was of the view that Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan should have worked together after the withdrawal of Russian army from Afghanistan.
He stressed the need for making a comprehensive strategy to strengthen Iran-Pakistan relations.
"We should forget the past and make a strategy to guard our national interests," he said.
He said the richness of Balochistan in mineral resources is one of the attractions for the international powers but the strategic location of Balochistan is
more important to the US and its allies.
General (Retd) Baig said that it is the responsibility of both countries to make the area free of danger and take the conspiracies as a challenge.
He said the American policy-makers are very much active in Balochistan since 2001 while India too has gained considerable influence in the province
since then.
SOURCE: Daily.PK
Over 10,000 schemes to be scrapped
By Mubarak Zeb Khan
ISLAMABAD, July 7: The government is reported to have decided to wind up the Rs25 billion Khushal Pakistan Fund and abandon more than 10,000
community-based poverty reduction and employment generation schemes launched by the previous government.
The KPF was established as a limited company on Sept 19, 2005 under public-private partnership to finance schemes like providing clean drinking
water and sanitation, building district link roads and infrastructure and improving health and education facilities.
A finance ministry official told Dawn on Monday that the first meeting to discuss the fund’s future was held on July 3 and to review the legal, administrative
and financial ramifications of its closure.
“We have asked the KPF to provide details of schemes before the next meeting,” he said.
The KPF has already spent Rs4 billion on various projects in three provinces and about 7,500 small infrastructure schemes are nearing completion in
Balochistan.
The schemes in Balochistan, meant to benefit about a million people, were launched in March 2006 and every district was provided Rs100 million, the
official said.
In September 2007, the KPF initiated 2,500 schemes through the Rural Support Programmes in the NWFP and Sindh and the fund was to release the
remaining Rs2 billion.
The official said that more than 1,000 schemes had been launched in Sindh after the election, mostly in PPP legislators’ constituencies.
The KPF was ready to launch 6,000 schemes in Punjab for which it had called for allocating Rs15 billion.
The public exchequer might lose Rs342.286 million if the ongoing schemes were not completed through rural support organisations, the official said.
Partner organisations might sue the KPF for breach of contracts, he added.
Under the terms of reference, 30 per cent of the operational cost will have to be reimbursed to partner organisations, even if the schemes are not
initiated. It might result in a loss of Rs51.5 million because the leftover balance of the committed KPF share was Rs1,715.446 million, the official said.
During a meeting of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee, Rs5 billion was earmarked. But the recommended allocation was deleted on May 31 in
the working paper prepared for the National Economic Council meeting held on June 2 by merging the same in People’s Works Programme (formerly
called the Khushhal Pakistan Programme).
According to sources, the finance division also froze all KPF accounts last month, which resulted in the shutting down of its logistics and communication
facilities because of non-payment of liabilities.
SOPURCE: DAWN
Bush pushes US-India nuclear deal
By DEB RIECHMANN,
President Bush defended a languishing deal his administration negotiated to sell India nuclear fuel and technology, saying he reassured India's prime
minister that the pact was important for both countries despite heavy opposition on both sides.
Bush's meeting on Wednesday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was one of a series of one-and-one sessions the president scheduled on
the final day of the three-day G-8 summit of economic powers.
"I respect the prime minister a lot," Bush said, speaking with reporters after their meeting. "I also respect India a lot. And I think it's very important that the
United States continues to work with our friend to develop not only a new strategic relationship, but a relationship that addresses some of the world's
problems. We talked about the India-U.S. nuclear deal — how important that is for our respective countries."
Singh said, "In this increasingly interdependent world that we live in, whether it the question of climate change or whether it is a question of managing the
global economy, India and the United States must stand tall, must stand shoulder to shoulder."
If ratified by Washington and New Delhi, the pact would reverse three decades of U.S. policy by allowing the sale of atomic fuel and technology to India,
which has not signed international nonproliferation accords but has tested nuclear weapons. In return, India, would open its civilian reactors to
international inspections.
U.S. critics worry the agreement could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia and weaken international efforts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
In India, critics say it would undermine India's weapons program and give Washington too much influence over Indian foreign policy.
Singh's communist allies withdrew their support for his four-year-old coalition government on Tuesday to protest the government's plan to push forward
with the nuclear deal.
Bush is trying to prod Congress to approve the pact before time runs out on his administration in January.
Before returning home late in the day, Bush was also meeting separately with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Hu Jintao
and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Many South Koreans have protested the recent resumption of U.S. beef imports. Both China and South Korea are important players in the international
effort to get North Korea to scale back its nuclear weapons program.
SORCE:
South Asia Awaits Another
Secret War
Sunday, 20 July 2008, 6:31 pm
Column: J. Sri Raman
by J. Sri Raman,
The Kabul blast of July 7, which targeted India's embassy and took a heavy toll of human lives, may trigger yet another secret South Asian war.
As noted in these columns (Blasts That Shake South Asia, July 12, 2008), the attack elicited a far-from-routine official Indian reaction. India's National
Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan did not stop with blaming Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the blast. He went on to issue an ill-veiled
warning: "We should pay them back in their own coin."
The outrageously irresponsible observation has gone almost unnoticed, but a significant indication of what it may signal has been forthcoming. The
espionage agency of Pakistan has never enjoyed a saintly image. But it is not as if India's own secret warriors haven't used the coin of terrorism that all
too often reveals two sides. And the coin may become their currency again, to go by non-official national security advisers who know the business of
blasts.
Before coming to all that, a word about the ISI. It was set up in 1948, just a year after Pakistan's birth. The ISI remained just one of the country's many
intelligence agencies until its time arrived with the US war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The ISI rose to the peak of its power in Pakistan
during the military rule of Zia ul-Haq (1977-88), which covered the larger part of the lacerating war (1978-89) with long-term consequences for the
region.
The war of the eighties witnessed a dramatic enhancement of ISI covert-action capabilities by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Young men
from the ISI went west to the US for training in covert techniques and the CIA loaned cloak-and-dagger experts for assistance to its friends in the killing
fields of Pakistan's tribal frontier. The ISI became a conduit for the CIA's financial aid for the Pashtun warlords on the anti-Soviet side and found this a
profitable position.
Initially, the ISI was given mainly internal tasks - to snoop on the small, Sindh-based Communist Party and monitor political parties, especially the
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. After the war, the ISI returned to domestic politics, trying to prevent Benazir Bhutto's re-election as
prime minister.
Former BBC correspondent Owen Bennett Jones, in his book, "Pakistan: Eye of the Storm," writes: "A former director-general of the ISI, Lt.-Gen.
(Retired) Azad Durrani, has recorded in a Supreme Court affidavit that he was instructed by Zia's successor as chief of army staff, Gen. Aslam Beg, to
provide logistic support to disbursement of funds to Benazir Bhutto's opponents.... According to Durrani, the ISI opened cover bank accounts in Karachi,
Rawalpindi and Quetta and deposited money into them. The sums were not small. One account in Karachi was credited with over $2 million and
smaller amounts were then transferred to other accounts ... "
Jones goes on to say that a sum of $58,000 went to a politician later associated with Pakistan's nuclear bomb, and a fortune of $83,000 went to a
fundamentalist party, and so on. We will keep that story for another day, but the point here is that the ISI was always flush with funds for its activities,
even when these were extended to operations of much greater importance to the military and the militarists.
Especially important, for evident reasons, were the operations in and against India. The ISI is known to have been involved in the eighties in the
separatist movement in the Indian State of Punjab (which was not without local causes and catalysts as well). In fact, in the late sixties, the agency
reportedly assisted a London-based Sikh Home Rule Movement, which was to be transformed into the secessionist Khalistan campaign.
The ISI has been even more deeply involved in the insurgency in the India-administered State of Jammu and Kashmir (again with its local causes and
catalysts as well). Jones recalls: "On 31 July 1988, Srinagar (capital of Jammu and Kashmir) rocked to a series of explosions. They were claimed by
the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) ... The JKLF, it was true, had laid the bombs but the materials had been provided by the Pakistani
state, more precisely the ISI."
He adds: "In 1987, the ISI and the JKLF had, with General Zia's approval, struck a deal. The JKLF agreed to recruit would-be militants in India-held
Kashmir, bring them across the Line of Control and deliver them to ISI trainers. The ISI, in turn, agreed to provide the JKLF fighters with weapons and
military instruction. The young men were then sent back across the line so that they could mount attacks."
The ISI has been blamed for several bomb blasts in other parts of India as well, though New Delhi has not always shared evidence with the nation. The
most notable instance, perhaps, was the series of 13 blasts in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on March 12, 1993, that took a toll of over 300 lives. The
other major examples include the Mumbai serial train blasts of July 11, 2006, and the Jaipur explosions of May 13, 2008.
The Indian counterpart of the ISI, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), may figure less in the Western media, but is equally infamous in this part of
the world. Unlike the Pakistani apparatus, the RAW is only an external intelligence agency, but the similarities between the two on other counts is
striking.
Set up in 1968, mainly as the result of a years-long security review following India's military fiasco of 1962 against China, the RAW had the US and the
CIA presiding over its birth. Organizationally modeled on the CIA, the RAW has worked closely with the superpower's snoopers, especially on subjects
of common interest such as China and Pakistan-related nuclear issues.
Officially, the RAW functions on an annual budget of around $150 million, but all one knows really is that funds have posed it no problem.
Constitutionally a "wing" of the Cabinet Secretariat, it suffers from no agency-like accountability to India's parliament, and its activities lie outside the
ambit of the country's recently acquired Right to Information Act.
In public pronouncements, the RAW claims to be particularly proud of its role in the creation of Bangladesh after an India-Pakistan war. Its former
officials and fervent admirers, however, shower more fulsome praise on its past exploits in Pakistan. Many of them believe that its return to the days of
anti-Pakistan blasts, again in the eighties, as not just something to be devoutly desired. To them, it is the demand of the hour.
Narayanan, obviously, had the RAW in mind, when he talked of paying back the ISI in its own coin. What even a hawk like Narayanan could not spell out
has found explicit expression subsequently.
An op-ed article in a respected national daily with a particular reputation for sobriety (Fighting Pakistan's "informal war," July 15, The Hindu), speaking
for the RAW and "advocates of retaliation," elaborates on Narayanan's enigmatic statement. It says: "If a Pakistan-based terrorist group carries out
strikes against civilians in Mumbai, the argument (of the Narayanans of India) goes, India must be able to assassinate its leaders and their financiers."
The crusaders for a covert offensive or counteroffensive, quoted in the article, derive confidence from a specific past operation aimed at striking dread in
the enemy camp. "In the mid-1980s," it is recalled, "the RAW unleashed two covert groups, CIT-X and CIT-J (Covert Intelligence Teams given
alphabetical identities), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. A low-grade but steady campaign of
bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore, followed." The blast series of the eighties included the Bohri Bazaar tragedy in Karachi,
still etched in the memory of a large number of survivors. Both these groups are said to have used the services of cross-border traffickers to ferry
weapons and funds.
The series came in for special praise in 2002 from former RAW official B. Raman, who said: "The role of our covert action capability in putting an end to
the ISI's interference in Punjab by making such interference prohibitively costly is little known and understood." The "advocates of retaliation" are quoting
him repeatedly now.
This is not the first time the demand for revival of the days of "retaliation" through civilian-targeting detonations has been raised. Nostalgia for the RAW's
heroic age was voiced even during the period of Pervez Musharraf as a military ruler. Some blasts, it was suggested then, would give a fitting answer to
his frequent charge of India's involvement in Balochistan combined with a continuation of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. The threat of blasts,
meanwhile, sounds tame, compared to crueler punishment envisaged in the same article for Pakistan. It says: "Pakistan has long feared a nightmarish
future where a hostile India dams its water resources in Jammu and Kashmir and throws its weight behind irredentist forces. Each terror bombing
against Indians, paradoxically, is bringing that nightmare one step closer to realization."
The waters can be a matter of life and death for Pakistan. Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, India has rights over the waters of the Ravi, Sutlej and
Beas rivers, while Pakistan has rights over the waters of the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum. All the rivers flow from India to Pakistan.
In May 2005, the World Bank appointed a neutral arbitrator in the dispute after Pakistan made a demand for an adjudicator. The next month, Pakistan
told India to suspend work on a dam on the Chenab. On December 6, 2006, Pakistan put on record its fears that the dam could be used to choke off
water supplies at times of crisis. The issue is supposed to be under discussion as part of the India-Pakistan peace process.
The "advocates of retaliation" are also arguing for efforts to set up a common front with Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the Riyasat-e-Amniyat-Milli
(RAM). The CIA, as they see it, cannot but side with such a front.
If they have their way, South Asia may soon witness a stepped-up secret war, which will spell more blasts and deaths in bazaars and metros. They
should not be allowed to have their way.
*************
A freelance journalist and a peace activist in India, J. Sri Raman is the author of "Flashpoint" (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular
contributor to Truthout.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00196.htm
Secret War
Sunday, 20 July 2008, 6:31 pm
Column: J. Sri Raman
by J. Sri Raman,
The Kabul blast of July 7, which targeted India's embassy and took a heavy toll of human lives, may trigger yet another secret South Asian war.
As noted in these columns (Blasts That Shake South Asia, July 12, 2008), the attack elicited a far-from-routine official Indian reaction. India's National
Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan did not stop with blaming Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the blast. He went on to issue an ill-veiled
warning: "We should pay them back in their own coin."
The outrageously irresponsible observation has gone almost unnoticed, but a significant indication of what it may signal has been forthcoming. The
espionage agency of Pakistan has never enjoyed a saintly image. But it is not as if India's own secret warriors haven't used the coin of terrorism that all
too often reveals two sides. And the coin may become their currency again, to go by non-official national security advisers who know the business of
blasts.
Before coming to all that, a word about the ISI. It was set up in 1948, just a year after Pakistan's birth. The ISI remained just one of the country's many
intelligence agencies until its time arrived with the US war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The ISI rose to the peak of its power in Pakistan
during the military rule of Zia ul-Haq (1977-88), which covered the larger part of the lacerating war (1978-89) with long-term consequences for the
region.
The war of the eighties witnessed a dramatic enhancement of ISI covert-action capabilities by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Young men
from the ISI went west to the US for training in covert techniques and the CIA loaned cloak-and-dagger experts for assistance to its friends in the killing
fields of Pakistan's tribal frontier. The ISI became a conduit for the CIA's financial aid for the Pashtun warlords on the anti-Soviet side and found this a
profitable position.
Initially, the ISI was given mainly internal tasks - to snoop on the small, Sindh-based Communist Party and monitor political parties, especially the
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. After the war, the ISI returned to domestic politics, trying to prevent Benazir Bhutto's re-election as
prime minister.
Former BBC correspondent Owen Bennett Jones, in his book, "Pakistan: Eye of the Storm," writes: "A former director-general of the ISI, Lt.-Gen.
(Retired) Azad Durrani, has recorded in a Supreme Court affidavit that he was instructed by Zia's successor as chief of army staff, Gen. Aslam Beg, to
provide logistic support to disbursement of funds to Benazir Bhutto's opponents.... According to Durrani, the ISI opened cover bank accounts in Karachi,
Rawalpindi and Quetta and deposited money into them. The sums were not small. One account in Karachi was credited with over $2 million and
smaller amounts were then transferred to other accounts ... "
Jones goes on to say that a sum of $58,000 went to a politician later associated with Pakistan's nuclear bomb, and a fortune of $83,000 went to a
fundamentalist party, and so on. We will keep that story for another day, but the point here is that the ISI was always flush with funds for its activities,
even when these were extended to operations of much greater importance to the military and the militarists.
Especially important, for evident reasons, were the operations in and against India. The ISI is known to have been involved in the eighties in the
separatist movement in the Indian State of Punjab (which was not without local causes and catalysts as well). In fact, in the late sixties, the agency
reportedly assisted a London-based Sikh Home Rule Movement, which was to be transformed into the secessionist Khalistan campaign.
The ISI has been even more deeply involved in the insurgency in the India-administered State of Jammu and Kashmir (again with its local causes and
catalysts as well). Jones recalls: "On 31 July 1988, Srinagar (capital of Jammu and Kashmir) rocked to a series of explosions. They were claimed by
the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) ... The JKLF, it was true, had laid the bombs but the materials had been provided by the Pakistani
state, more precisely the ISI."
He adds: "In 1987, the ISI and the JKLF had, with General Zia's approval, struck a deal. The JKLF agreed to recruit would-be militants in India-held
Kashmir, bring them across the Line of Control and deliver them to ISI trainers. The ISI, in turn, agreed to provide the JKLF fighters with weapons and
military instruction. The young men were then sent back across the line so that they could mount attacks."
The ISI has been blamed for several bomb blasts in other parts of India as well, though New Delhi has not always shared evidence with the nation. The
most notable instance, perhaps, was the series of 13 blasts in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on March 12, 1993, that took a toll of over 300 lives. The
other major examples include the Mumbai serial train blasts of July 11, 2006, and the Jaipur explosions of May 13, 2008.
The Indian counterpart of the ISI, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), may figure less in the Western media, but is equally infamous in this part of
the world. Unlike the Pakistani apparatus, the RAW is only an external intelligence agency, but the similarities between the two on other counts is
striking.
Set up in 1968, mainly as the result of a years-long security review following India's military fiasco of 1962 against China, the RAW had the US and the
CIA presiding over its birth. Organizationally modeled on the CIA, the RAW has worked closely with the superpower's snoopers, especially on subjects
of common interest such as China and Pakistan-related nuclear issues.
Officially, the RAW functions on an annual budget of around $150 million, but all one knows really is that funds have posed it no problem.
Constitutionally a "wing" of the Cabinet Secretariat, it suffers from no agency-like accountability to India's parliament, and its activities lie outside the
ambit of the country's recently acquired Right to Information Act.
In public pronouncements, the RAW claims to be particularly proud of its role in the creation of Bangladesh after an India-Pakistan war. Its former
officials and fervent admirers, however, shower more fulsome praise on its past exploits in Pakistan. Many of them believe that its return to the days of
anti-Pakistan blasts, again in the eighties, as not just something to be devoutly desired. To them, it is the demand of the hour.
Narayanan, obviously, had the RAW in mind, when he talked of paying back the ISI in its own coin. What even a hawk like Narayanan could not spell out
has found explicit expression subsequently.
An op-ed article in a respected national daily with a particular reputation for sobriety (Fighting Pakistan's "informal war," July 15, The Hindu), speaking
for the RAW and "advocates of retaliation," elaborates on Narayanan's enigmatic statement. It says: "If a Pakistan-based terrorist group carries out
strikes against civilians in Mumbai, the argument (of the Narayanans of India) goes, India must be able to assassinate its leaders and their financiers."
The crusaders for a covert offensive or counteroffensive, quoted in the article, derive confidence from a specific past operation aimed at striking dread in
the enemy camp. "In the mid-1980s," it is recalled, "the RAW unleashed two covert groups, CIT-X and CIT-J (Covert Intelligence Teams given
alphabetical identities), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. A low-grade but steady campaign of
bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore, followed." The blast series of the eighties included the Bohri Bazaar tragedy in Karachi,
still etched in the memory of a large number of survivors. Both these groups are said to have used the services of cross-border traffickers to ferry
weapons and funds.
The series came in for special praise in 2002 from former RAW official B. Raman, who said: "The role of our covert action capability in putting an end to
the ISI's interference in Punjab by making such interference prohibitively costly is little known and understood." The "advocates of retaliation" are quoting
him repeatedly now.
This is not the first time the demand for revival of the days of "retaliation" through civilian-targeting detonations has been raised. Nostalgia for the RAW's
heroic age was voiced even during the period of Pervez Musharraf as a military ruler. Some blasts, it was suggested then, would give a fitting answer to
his frequent charge of India's involvement in Balochistan combined with a continuation of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. The threat of blasts,
meanwhile, sounds tame, compared to crueler punishment envisaged in the same article for Pakistan. It says: "Pakistan has long feared a nightmarish
future where a hostile India dams its water resources in Jammu and Kashmir and throws its weight behind irredentist forces. Each terror bombing
against Indians, paradoxically, is bringing that nightmare one step closer to realization."
The waters can be a matter of life and death for Pakistan. Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, India has rights over the waters of the Ravi, Sutlej and
Beas rivers, while Pakistan has rights over the waters of the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum. All the rivers flow from India to Pakistan.
In May 2005, the World Bank appointed a neutral arbitrator in the dispute after Pakistan made a demand for an adjudicator. The next month, Pakistan
told India to suspend work on a dam on the Chenab. On December 6, 2006, Pakistan put on record its fears that the dam could be used to choke off
water supplies at times of crisis. The issue is supposed to be under discussion as part of the India-Pakistan peace process.
The "advocates of retaliation" are also arguing for efforts to set up a common front with Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the Riyasat-e-Amniyat-Milli
(RAM). The CIA, as they see it, cannot but side with such a front.
If they have their way, South Asia may soon witness a stepped-up secret war, which will spell more blasts and deaths in bazaars and metros. They
should not be allowed to have their way.
*************
A freelance journalist and a peace activist in India, J. Sri Raman is the author of "Flashpoint" (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular
contributor to Truthout.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00196.htm