COVER STORY

Was there an intelligence failure?

India perhaps paid no attention to trans-border surveillance in the Northern Areas of Pakistan under the assumption that infiltration from this sector into the Drass-Kargil-Batalik areas was unlikely.

B. RAMAN

ONLY a detailed retrospective study, after the ejection of all the Pakistani invaders in the Drass-Kargil-Batalik sectors of Jammu and Kashmir, could bring out the complete picture of what went wrong with India's national security management in this area before May 6, 1999 and how Pakistan's proxy invasion remained undetected until that day.

However, even at this stage one could make certain observations of relevance. The first is that Pakistan's proxy invasion took place in a sector which received low priority from the managers of national security for many years.

India has a system of holding a periodic review of border security management in different sectors along the Indo-Pakistan and Sino-Indian borders in order to identify gaps in trans-border security and take corrective action. It was as a result of such reviews that projects were undertaken to fence India's borders and the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan in Jammu, Punjab and upper Rajasthan, to intensify desert surveillance in Rajasthan and Bhuj and to step up coastal surveillance off Gujarat.

Unfortunately, such reviews were essentially preoccupied with trans-border security in the Sindh, Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Equal attention was not paid to trans-border security in the Northern Areas of the Pakistan sector, consisting of Gilgit and Baltistan.

This was the result of an assumption that Pakistani infiltration from the Northern Areas into the Drass-Kargil-Batalik areas was the least likely in view of (a) the difficult terrain and the high ridges; (b) difficulty of access to these ridges from the Pakistani side; and (c) the unsympathetic attitude of the local population on the Indian side, mainly Shias and Buddhists to Pakistan. Hence, the infiltrators would not get local support.

The recent events have, however, proved this assumption wrong. Consequently, focus on trans-border surveillance in the Ladakh area was concentrated across the Sino-Indian border and little attention was paid to trans-LoC developments in the Northern Areas.

The second observation is that there were major gaps in India's knowledge of the Northern Areas. Indian intelligence was better informed on POK but had difficulty in collecting human intelligence from the Northern Areas because:

(a) There is very little trans-border traffic across the LoC in this sector in the form of relatives exchanging visits or traders and smugglers clandestinely crossing the LoC with their goods;

(b) Officials posted in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad or visitors from India are not allowed to visit this area;

(c) The Government of India too follows a very restrictive policy by not allowing the people of these areas to visit their relatives and friends in the Kargil tehsil. As such, no one approaches the Indian High Commission to obtain visas;

(d) The Northern Areas has very limited facilities for higher education. As a result, migration from there to earn a living abroad is not common. The Mirpuri diaspora in the United Kingdom and the United States, which is a useful reservoir of intelligence recruits for monitoring developments in POK, has practically no migrants from the Northern Areas.

These difficulties leave little scope for collection of human intelligence and hence, one has to depend on technical intelligence. Unfortunately, till recently, not only successive governments but the intelligence community itself gave low priority to these areas even for strengthening the technical intelligence capability.

Development of human sources in Chinese society is very difficult. It is comparatively easier in Pakistan, except in the Northern Areas and in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). As a result, in the allocation of resources to strengthen the technical intelligence capability, technical surveillance of China was always given top priority, followed by Sindh, Punjab and POK areas of Pakistan. The Northern Areas hardly received any attention.

Since no infiltration or invasion from the Northern Areas was apprehended, no detailed thinking went into gathering information about the areas either by the intelligence community or the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) or the inter-departmental committees concerned. Alternative ideas, such as taking advantage of the presence of a large Ismaili community in the Northern Areas which is well looked after by the Aga Khan Foundation, the only non-governmental organisation allowed by Pakistan to work in this area, have not been explored.

Gilgit and Baltistan have a large population of Punjabi and Pakhtoon settlers, many of them ex-servicemen, who were brought in by the Zia-ul-Haq regime in order to reduce the Kashmiri Shias to a minority. Until 1992, the Najibullah Government in Kabul, with good contacts among the Pakhtoon settlers of the Northern Areas and POK, was a good source of information regarding the goings-on in these areas. But after the overthrow of Najibullah in April 1992, this source dried up. India's present intelligence focus in Afghanistan is non-Pakhtoon centric.

THE third observation is not specifically related to Indo-Pakistan relations and Kargil, but is of great relevance to toning up the work of the intelligence community in order to prevent similar surprises in the future. This is about the good performance of the intelligence community on strategic intelligence and its unsatisfactory record in the matter of tactical or preventive intelligence.

Strategic intelligence alerts the Government to changes in policy and strategy among other administrative decisions, but tactical intelligence gives details of action actually taken in the implementation of changes of policy, strategy and so on. Strategic intelligence makes one wiser but does not help in preventing disasters. Some examples in illustration would be in order:

* The intelligence community alerted the Government in 1988 that Rajiv Gandhi was on the hit-list of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and hence there was a threat to his life. But it could not collect tactical intelligence regarding the action actually taken by the LTTE to carry out its plan.

* The intelligence community reported in the second half of 1992 that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had directed its surrogates in India to emulate the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and concentrate on economic targets and that the first attack might be on economic targets in Mumbai, but could not get details regarding the how, where and when of the attack. As a result, the Mumbai blasts of March 1993 caught them napping.

* The intelligence community had been telling the government since 1994 that Tamil Nadu was becoming a major centre of the activities of the ISI and Islamic fundamentalist parties, but was clueless about the preparations for the Coimbatore blasts of February 1998.

* Intelligence knew the background of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the new Pakistani Chief of the Army Staff, and his reputation as a rogue elephant and his links with Islamic extremist organisations, but could not forecast his Kargil adventure.

Indian intelligence's poor record in tactical intelligence is owing to its poor progress in penetration operations. Unless one penetrates the ranks of an adversary, whether it is another country, a terrorist organisation or a religious extremist group, one cannot get details of the adversary's plans of action. Apart from the Pakistani Army regulars, the present invaders in the Kargil sector consist of the cadres of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Laskar-e-Taiba, the Al Badr, the Al Qaeda and the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Of these, the Laskar has its presence as far down South as Hyderabad and has been taking local recruits for training in secret camps in Kashmir or in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Had any Indian intelligence agency penetrated this organisation by taking advantage of its recruitment pattern, we would have been better informed of its plans in Kashmir.

Why this difficulty in penetration? Is it because of defective recruitment of intelligence officers, inadequate training and poor modus operandi, or are there other reasons? These questions have not received the attention they deserve. The Indian intelligence community is supposed to have had the longest period of interaction with the LTTE, but despite this it has not been able to penetrate it.

THE fourth observation relates to the capability in technical intelligence, generally considered the most authentic form of intelligence. There are certain forms of technical intelligence capability that help in the collection of strategic intelligence, and certain others that help in tactical intelligence. The recently released recordings of the telephone conversations of Musharraf from Beijing are a good example of strategic intelligence collection through technical means. These recordings gave clinching evidence about the Pakistan Army's involvement in Kargil. All international telephone calls pass through satellites and it is relatively easy to monitor them if one has the equipment. No penetration of the adversary's set-up is required in order to monitor wireless communications or telephonic communications through satellites.

Land-line telephone communications, such as a telephonic conversation between a General in Rawalpindi and his subordinates in Skardu, are a more important source of tactical intelligence, But it is much more difficult to intercept land-line communications inside a country than to intercept international telephone calls made through satellites. For interception of internal telephone calls one may require physical access to the line to be monitored. Unless one is able to penetrate the telecommunications or military set-up of the adversary, one may not be able to get useful tactical intelligence through technical means.

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Signalmen maintaining ground-based communication lines to Nathu-La in the eastern sector. Land-line telephone communications constitute an important source of tactical intelligence.

The fifth observation relates to the lack of adequate attention paid in the intelligence community to the need to diversify its sources of procurement of technical equipment and to indigenise capabilities. Diversification and indigenisation have made satisfactory progress in respect of equipment for electronic monitoring, but not in respect of aerial reconnaissance, for which dependence on Western sources is disturbingly high, particularly since the Sino-Indian war of 1962.

Such equipment and expertise may come with an informal condition or at least an understanding that what is procured could be used only for the surveillance of China and not Pakistan, which is not desirable.

Over the years, the defence forces have either indigenised their equipment or benefited from the friendly relations with the former Soviet Union and the present Russian Federation for reducing their dependence on Western equipment and expertise. But similar efforts have not been made by the intelligence community. As a result of their close interactions with their Western counterparts in the past, they let themselves be infected by the basic Western suspicions of Communist countries and this has stood in the way of their diversification.

THE sixth observation relates to relative threats to the nation's security from China and Pakistan. China's nuclear and missile capability, its military linkages with countries such as Myanmar, and its historic irredentist impulses make it a high priority area for intelligence focus, but it is not a threat to India's national security in the same sense as Pakistan is. After China gave up in 1979 its policy of supporting the insurgencies of foreign Communist parties, destabilisation and balkanisation of India has not been a motivating factor in its policies towards India.

In the case of Pakistan, not only religious extremist organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Laskar-e-Taiba, but even the state, its armed forces and intelligence agencies are motivated in their actions by a compulsive urge to promote destabilisation and balkanisation of India. This urge poses the greatest threat to India's national security and will continue to be a matter of major concern for many years, whatever be the cosmetic improvement in bilateral relations. By overlooking this urge in moments of unwarranted euphoria or misplaced generosity, India will be doing a great disservice to national security, as has already been done in Kargil.

The seventh observation is that feelings and noble sentiments have no place in intelligence policy formulation; it has to be based on a clinical and unemotional analysis of the nation's interests and threats to national security. For nearly 50 years, the intelligence policy on Pakistan was based on the assessment that the greatest threat to national security arises from Pakistan's Punjabi mindset and laid stress on the need for close interactions with the non-Punjabi sections of the Pakistani population for intelligence collection and for inducing restraint in the behaviour of the Pakistani Army in Kashmir.

In its uncritical enthusiasm for Nawaz Sharif after he returned to power in February 1997, India diluted this policy in order to befriend the Pakistani Punjabis in general and Sharif in particular; it has paid the price for it in Kargil.

The most important components of the national security management apparatus are the assessment and follow-up machineries. Even the best of intelligence collection agencies cannot protect national security if the assessment and follow-up action are not up to the mark.

This was the main lesson brought out by the Lord Franks Committee of the U.K., which inquired into allegations of intelligence failure with regard to the Argentine occupation of the Falklands. It exonerated the British intelligence community and the Navy and held the Joint Intelligence Committee exclusively responsible for the disaster.

One need not be surprised if a post-mortem into the Kargil invasion brings out a similar conclusion.

Whatever be the ultimate finding, one cannot deny that attention to the micro aspects of the functioning of the Indian intelligence needs immediate attention.

B. Raman is a former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.