Page 2 of
2 BOOK REVIEW India's silent
warriors The
Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory
Lane by
B
Raman
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
goodwill in Africa through
subsequent negligence, ceding ground to China. In
1971, R&AW counterinsurgency specialists also
empowered the Sri Lankan government to crush the
uprising of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.
In the context of some R&AW reports on
Khalistani terrorists
proving wrong, Raman avers
that "lack of coordination in trans-border
operations, often resulting in inaccurate,
misleading and alarming reporting, continues to be
the bane of our intelligence community" (p 97).
Kao was crestfallen at the negligence and lax
supervision of senior staffers of the Intelligence
Bureau (IB) that allowed Indira Gandhi's
assassination in 1984.
Likewise, Raman's
cautions about a threat to the life of Rajiv
Gandhi from Sri Lankan Tamil extremists "were
treated with skepticism" by the intelligence
community with fatal consequences. "Everybody in
Delhi" was convinced that they "would never harm
Rajiv because he and his mother had helped them
more than any other Indian leader" (p 236).
Raman bluntly notes that Indian security
agencies "rarely admit their deficiencies. That is
why we keep moving from one tragedy to another" (p
244). The IB's jealousies, reservations and
prejudices against R&AW leave much to be
desired and fragment India's intelligence
faculties. Two parallel setups in the IB and
R&AW are a duplicating luxury that the Indian
taxpayer is burdened with.
Raman devotes
many words to weaknesses in R&AW's
counterintelligence capability that came to the
fore in the 1980s. The French intelligence agency
penetrated the Indian Prime Minister's Office, and
the CIA was found to be collecting documents in
R&AW's Chennai office. The recent defection of
R&AW's Rabinder Singh to the US after years of
undetected service as a CIA mole reflects the
sorry state of affairs. Last year, the CIA was
reported to have infiltrated India's National
Security Council Secretariat. Raman envisages a
day when "the sensitive establishments of this
country have been badly penetrated under the guise
of intelligence cooperation" (p 255).
Linguistic weaknesses of R&AW staff
often come in the way of analytical and
operational work in India's surroundings, thanks
to a "needless fascination for west European
languages" (p 130). MI5, now known as the British
Security Service, had "more
Punjabi-Gurumukhi-knowing experts than the IB and
the R&AW put together" (p 152). Raman also
finds fault with the structure of India's
national-security management under the governments
of Atal Bihair Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh,
wherein the chief of R&AW has been reduced to
a subordinate of the national security adviser
with little direct access to the prime minister.
Though Raman exonerates R&AW from the
charge of politicization in comparison with the IB
and the Central Bureau of Investigation, he admits
that R&AW officials gave "ideas" to prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi to cover up the
controversial Bofors kickback scandal. Bofors
"brought out some of the worst traits in our
intelligence and investigative agencies" (p 177).
Yet it was during Rajiv's reign that R&AW,
particularly its Pakistan division, regained
strong covert-action capacity that could "bite
again".
It was in the Rajiv era that
R&AW played a key behind-the-scenes role in
normalization of New Delhi-Beijing relations and
launched a hotline between its chief and his
Chinese counterpart. The political leaders of the
two countries could also use it to avoid the
normal diplomatic channel. During the first Gulf
War of 1991, Chinese intelligence offered oil
supplies to India to overcome any shortages that
might crop up. Overall, Raman considers R&AW
to be inadequate in analyzing data on China.
At the end of the Cold War, R&AW
harnessed its closeness to Russian intelligence to
secure assurances that whatever the changes in
political dispensation in Moscow, there would be
no wavering in its friendly stance toward India.
On India's fiasco in Sri Lanka between
1987 and 1989, Raman terms it Rajiv's folly and
not R&AW's. However, he does take many senior
officers of security agencies, including R&AW,
to task for "egging him on into more and more
unwise actions" (p 208). R&AW was outstanding
in the 1990s in intercepting communications and
naval arms smuggling of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam.
When the insurgency began in
Indian Kashmir in 1987, R&AW jammed Pakistani
broadcasts and telecasts and reverse-broadcast
Indian propaganda in Pakistani Kashmir. It
mobilized anti-Pakistan elements in the Muslim
community in India as well as the subcontinental
Muslim diaspora in Europe. It strengthened
networking with various segments of Pakistan's
political class and civil society that were "well
disposed towards India" (p 227). R&AW also
began building contacts with mujahideen leaders in
Afghanistan who were unhappy with the insidious
role of the ISI in their country.
After
the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, the first act of
mass-casualty terrorism on the ground in India,
R&AW pieced together credible evidence of the
direct hand of the ISI. Kao remarked at that time
in disgust that, in spite of solid proof, "the US
will never act against Pakistan for anything it
does to India". Raman adds wryly that "this is as
valid today as it was in the past" (p 277).
Raman concludes that R&AW is like "the
proverbial curate's egg, good in parts" and
requiring genuine improvements in crisis
prevention, intelligence analysis, and
coordination with fellow agencies in India.
A treasure trove of unknown information
and incidents that mark a much misunderstood and
maligned agency, this book is a frank account of
cloak-and-dagger agents who defend Indian
interests through deniable acts.
The
Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane by B
Raman. Lancer Publishers, New Delhi, August 2007.
ISBN: 0-9796174-3-X. Price: US$27, 294 pages.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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