Day: September 5, 2006

Happen to read the book , Inside RAW. Here are some of the excerpts from the book. Just to inspire Nationalistic view on our nation’s intelligence agency.

Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, was created on September 21, 1968 by Rameshwar Nath Kao.

Major successes of RAW   

Creation of Bangladesh: The Bangladesh operation, beginning with sowing seeds of dissension, leading to the Agartala Conspiracy, creation of Mukti Bahini and under its cover sneaking into East Pakistan for guerrilla operations to blow up bridges and other
installations damaged the morale of Pakistani troops and India won the war even before the
    battle began, thanks to RAW as its agents had infiltrated every nook and corner of
    erstwhile East Pakistan. The paragraph entitled: ‘RAW takes shape’, in the initial part
    of this article, amply demonstrates the causal chain of events.   

Plan to assassinate General Zia-ur-Rahman: According to the September 18-24, 1988 issue of the weekly Magazine Sunday (Calcutta), RAW was on the verge of assassinating
Bangladesh’s President General Zia-ur-Rahman (with Mrs Gandhi’s approval) when the  Congress government fell. RAW briefed the new Prime Minister Morarji Desai about it who
was appalled at the idea and stopped the murder. General Zia continued to rule Bangladesh
for many more years. He was assassinated after Indira Gandhi returned to power but RAW pleads innocence.   

Poornima: Project Poornima was the name given India’s Nuclear Programme. The task to
    keep it ‘under tight wraps of security’ was given to RAW. This was the first time that
    RAW was involved in a project inside India. The rest is history as India managed to
    surprise the world on 18 May, 1974 by detonating a 15-Kiloton plutonium device at  Pokharan.   

Kahuta’s Blueprint: According to the September 18-24, 1988 issue of the weekly Indian
    Magazine Sunday, RAW agents claim that in early 1978, they were on the verge of obtaining
    the plans and blueprint for Kahuta nuclear plant that was built to counter the Pokharan
    atomic blast, but the then Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai not only refused to
    sanction the $ 10,000 demanded by the RAW agent, but informed Pakistan of the offer.
    According to the report, Pakistanis caught and eliminated the RAW mole.   

It must be noted that the author of ‘Ham Jang Nahin Hone Denge’ held the external
    affairs portfolio at that time.   

Sikkim: Encircled by Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and West Bengal in the Eastern Himalayas,
    Sikkim presented a lucrative target to the Indians. It was ruled by a Maharaja. The Indian
    Government had recognized the title of Chogyal (Dharma Raja) for the Mahraja of Sikkim.
    After their kill in East Pakistan, in 1972, RAW was given the green signal to go ahead
    with the operation of installing a pro-Indian democratic government there. In less than
    three years, with the manipulation of RAW, Sikkim became the 22nd State of the Indian Union on April 26, 1975.   

Maldives: To bring the smaller Independent States/countries in the Indian sphere of
    influence with the use of RAW, the case of Maldives makes an important example. In
    November 1988, the Eilam Peoples’ Liberation Front comprising about 200 Tamil
    secessionists on the pay roll of RAW were tasked to stage the drama of an uprising on that
    peaceful island. At the request of the President of Maldives, Mr Mamoon Abdul Qayyum,
    Indian Armed Forces ‘quelled’ the insurgency engineered by themselves and thus tried to
    sneak into the administrative mechanism of that peace-loving country.   

Operation Chanakya: This was the codename given to the RAW operation in Occupied
    Kashmir to create rifts among the various Kashmiri Mujahideen groups, suppress the
    uprising and bring the Kashmiris under total Indian subjugation. According to Tariq Ismail
    Sagar’s book RAW, (Milli Book Depot, Lahore, 1997) in 1991, RAW operatives entered the
    Srinagar Valley in the guise of freedom fighters. They resorted to loot, rape and arson of
    Kashmiri Pundit families to give the popular non-communal uprising a bad name. Operation
    Chanakya gained momentum when Mossad provided its experienced Katsas to train RAW
    operatives. They did gain initial successes but when later actions of Operations Chanakya
    failed, RAW commenced an intensive propaganda to blame ISI.   

Monitoring Pakistani Telecommunication: Raw operatives boast that at one time its
    monitoring complex had managed to break through Pakistani Telecommunications and were
    listening in to all telephonic conversations held by important Pakistani leaders.

RAW’s Failures   

Although RAW has had many successes, it has also committed a number of blunders. Some
    of these are discussed below:   

Promulgation of Emergency: Whereas the IB Director, A. Jayaram had advised Mrs Indira
    Gandhi against promulgating the Emergency, Kao, Mrs Gandhi’s handpicked man and RAW’s
    head, supported it. This proved to be a fatal mistake. He continued to feed the PM reports
    of its popularity and that no excesses were committed. How disastrous it proved for Kao’s
    benefactor is a matter of history.   

Operation Blue Star: This was the codename given to the storming of the holiest Sikh
    shrine, the Golden Temple of Amritsar in 1984. Although it was a domestic matter and IB’s
    concern, yet RAW was pulled in under the pretext of a foreign element’s (allegedly
    Pakistani) involvement. RAW failed miserably as it could not assess the strength of
    Bhindranwale’s forces. What was to be a 5 hours’ operation stretched to 5 days and tanks
    had to be brought in and Indian Army suffered heavy casualties. Ultimately Indira Gandhi
    had to pay with her own life as she was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguard in retaliation
    to Operation Blue Star. Kao, the Prime Minister’s Security Adviser resigned within 24
hours of her assassination.   

— Ghalib

Mujib-ur-Rahman’s Assassination: RAW operatives claim that they had advance
    information about Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rahman’s assassination but they failed to prevent it.
    It is interesting to note that despite its role in the creation of Bangladesh, RAW failed
    to annex it.   

It was a classic case of the cropping up of a double dilemma: Yak na shud do shud.   

Mauritius: Mrs Gandhi was so keen to see Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam continue as the
    Prime Minister of Mauritius that RAW was tasked to oversee his reelection campaign.
    Despite heavy investments, RAW failed by a wide margin.   

Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka had been marked for special attention after it had permitted
    Pakistani aircraft to land for refuelling there after India had stopped the over flight
    rights of Pakistani flights to and back from East Pakistan. Sri Lankan President Junius
    Jaywardhene’s aim of turning his country into an Asian Tiger did not suit India at all.
    Stung by its failures in the Indian Punjab, RAW attempted to make up in Sri Lanka. RAW
    started training militants to destabilize the Pearl Island but in the bargain, such a
    monster was unleashed that even the landing of Indian troops as a peacekeeping force in
    Sri Lanka failed badly. Eventually, Rajiv Gandhi became a victim of the muddling in Sri
    Lanka.   

RAW seems to be a congenital enemy of the Gandhi family.   

Soft Target: Zuhair Kashmiri and Brian Mac Andrew’s well-known book Soft Target (James
    Lorimer and Comp., Publishers, Toronto, 1994) provides details of RAW’s botched
    operations in Canada to malign the Sikhs there for their role in the Khalsa movement and
    make them suspect in the eyes of the Canadian authorities. On 23 June, 1985 Air India’s
    Flight 182 was blown up near Ireland and 329 innocent lives were lost. On the same day
    another explosion took place at Tokyo’s Narita airport’s transit baggage building where
    baggage was being transferred from Cathay Pacific Flight No CP 003 to Air India’s Flight
    301 which was scheduled for Bangkok. Both aircraft were loaded with explosives from
    Canadian airports. Flight 301 got saved because of a delay in its departure. Initially RAW
    was successful in pointing the finger at Canadian Sikhs but the Canadian authorities soon
    concluded that it was a RAW ploy.