How R&AW buildup the LTTE?

Photo: R&AW building in Delhi

[BOOK REVIEW] Slightly over-the-top on some issues, but insider accounts of the rot within are always a good read

By: V.K. Singh

Raman’s credentials are impeccable. Having joined RAW at its inception in 1968, he spent 26 years with the agency, seven of them in Paris and Geneva.

Raman is not sure who coined the term ‘Kaoboys’, but among the three persons he mentions, T.N. Kaul seems the most likely. The book covers a wide gamut of events under seven PMs. His adulation for Indira and Rajiv Gandhi are matched only by his veneration for the first five RAW chiefs.

This often results in hard-to-digest claims and conjectures. Raman claims for RAW a major share of the credit for the creation of Bangladesh, the biggest coup being the tip-off from a mole in Gen Yahya Khan’s office about a pre-emptive strike by the Pakistani air force on December 3. RAW immediately alerted the IAF and informed Indira Gandhi. Thanks to the warning, the strike failed, he writes. Modern armies do not depend on moles to warn them of enemy attacks; they have other means, like air defence radars etc. In ’71, preparations for war had begun in April itself. Significantly, Mrs Gandhi was in Calcutta on December 3 when the war began.

Read between the lines, and the book has interesting inferences: for instance, the government paid a commission of $6 million to an Iranian middleman to get a soft loan of $250 million from the Shah of Iran. How then can the government treat commissions paid in deals like Bofors as crimes? Again, based on RAW-IB inputs, all Sikhs entering Delhi during Asiad 1982 were stopped and searched. The humiliation drove many into the arms of Khalistani terrorists. The situation rapidly deteriorated. Who took the decision to ban the entry of Sikhs? Besides, if most PMs were better informed than RAW or IB, as he writes, it’s a sad reflection on the agencies.
To be fair, Raman has listed the failures of RAW along with its successes. In ’69, RAW and IB assessed that 2,100 Naga hostiles had gone to Yunnan for training. Sam Manekshaw and Maj Gen M.N. Batra, the director of military intelligence—Sam’s designation and Batra’s rank in the book are wrong—told the joint intelligence committee that the number was around 450, which later proved correct. Among the other lapses are the failure to prevent Mujibur Rehman’s assassination in ’75; not sharing with IB the information received from MI-5 that could have prevented the arms drop in Purulia; ignoring warnings from IB about unusual activity in Pakistan’s Northern Areas which led to the Kargil fiasco; and giving Rajiv Gandhi incorrect advice in the Bofors cover-up.

Raman acknowledges the culpability of the intelligence agencies in the Indira-Rajiv assassinations. After Operation Bluestar, R.N. Kao, then senior advisor, decided that no Sikhs would be deployed for the PM’s close proximity security. When she expressed her misgivings, the orders were cancelled. Had Kao stood his ground, the tragedy could have been averted. In ’91, intelligence agencies knew Rajiv was under threat from Khalistani terrorists and the LTTE. Yet nothing was done, on grounds that the SPG Act did not cover an ex-PM’s security. After the assassination, RAW’s monitoring division was able to track down the conspirators by intercepting and decoding LTTE communications. Had its earlier monitoring been as systematic, Rajiv would have been alive today.

Raman’s reluctance to give names, even of well-known personalities like Quattrocchi, is baffling. His book reveals the indiscipline, nepotism and corruption in RAW. Trade unionism led to a strike in 1980 when police had to rescue officers ‘gheraoed’ by the strikers. Nepotism was so common that the agency was facetiously called the Relatives & Associates Wing. RAW officers posted abroad lived in style and were the only ones who could afford a Mercedes. "How do they manage to find the money," asked Narasimha Rao, then foreign minister.

Raman makes a strong case for parliamentary oversight.He says major debacles like Kargil and Rabinder Singh’s escape could have been pre-empted by a suitable monitoring mechanism for RAW, on the pattern of the CIA and Mossad. He blames the political establishment for its apathy to intelligence issues. Coming from an insider like Raman, the advice should be taken seriously.

(The author is a retired major general and former joint secretary of the RAW.)