India's Ex Intelligence Officers Blame Kulbhushan Jadhav For Getting Caught in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

India's former RAW officers, including one ex chief, have blamed Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, arrested by Pakistan in 2016, for getting caught in Pakistan as a "result of unprofessionalism", according to a report in India's "The Quint" owned and operated by a joint venture of Bloomberg News and Quintillion Media. The report that appeared briefly on The Quint website has since been removed, apparently under pressure from the Indian government.

The Quint Story:

Indian Agent Kulbhushan Jadhav

The story quotes a former RAW chief as saying that the “proposal to recruit Jadhav for operations, whatever it’s worth, was ridiculous.”  However, the report said that "(Jadhav's) recruitment was approved by a joint secretary as the supervisory officer.  The RAW has a special unit which also undertakes parallel operations in certain crucial target countries for which it seeks out its own recruits".

Several experienced RAW hands told the Quint that the usual practice is to “have a Baloch or a Pakistani national” do the “intelligence gathering job for us", adding that it was “foolish for to set an Indian the task to obtain intelligence from a country as hostile as Pakistan.”

This is only the second story in the Indian media to acknowledge Jadhav's status as a covert RAW operative in Balochistan.

Karan Thapar's Questions: 

An earlier story by Indian journalist Karan Thapar pointed out several flaws in the Indian narrative claiming that Jadhav was an innocent Indian businessman kidnapped from Chabahar by Pakistani agents.

Writing for the Indian Express, Thapar debunked the entire official story from New Delhi  by raising the following probing questions:

1. Jadhav's Two Passports:

Thapar asks why does Jadhav have two passports, one in his own name and another in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel?

According to The Indian Express, the second passport was originally issued in 2003 and renewed in 2014. The passport numbers are E6934766 and L9630722. When asked, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson would only say that India needs access to Jadhav before he could answer. But why not check the records attached to the passport numbers? Surely they would tell a story?

Additionally, The Times of India claims that since 2007, Jadhav has rented a Bombay flat owned by his mother, Avanti, in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel. Why would he use an alias to rent his own mother’s flat? Perhaps Jadhav changed his name after converting to Islam? But then, why did he deliberately retain a valid passport in his old name? Indeed, why did the government let him, unless he deceived them?

2. Abduction From Iran:

If Pakistan did abduct Jadhav, don’t we need to ask why, asks Thapar? Doesn’t that raise the question of what was so special about him that made them do this? After all, there are 4,000 Indians in Chabahar, Iran — and no one else has been abducted.

If Jadhav was indeed abducted from the Iranian soil, then why did India not pursue the matter with Iran, but, as the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson admitted, they don’t seem to have responded or, perhaps, even conducted an investigation yet. India seems to have accepted that. Odd, wouldn’t you say, asks Thapar?

3. Timing of Jadhav's Arrest:

Both The Indian Express and Asian Age suggest that Jadhav has links with the Pakistani drug baron Uzair Baloch who's also accused of terror in Pakistan.  Did Jadhav play dirty with him and get caught in a revenge trap set by the drug mafia? Given that Jadhav was arrested a month after Baloch was taken into custody by Pakistan, this could be part of the explanation?

4. Jadhav's Pursuit of RAW Employment:

The Indian Express has reported that between 2010 and 2012, Jadhav made three separate attempts to join the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The paper suggests he also tried to join the Technical Services Division. What more do we know about this? Even if the media doesn’t, surely the government does? A. S. Dulat, a distinguished former chief of RAW, has unhesitatingly said Jadhav could be a spy. As he put it, if he (Dulat) was in the government, he would hardly admit it.

Summary: 

The Quint story and Karan Thapar's article dismantle the false narrative that the Indian and western media have been pushing since Kulbhushan Jadhav's arrest in Balochistan in March, 2016.  These reports are beginning to essentially confirm that Jadhav's confession on orchestrating murderous attacks in Pakistan is factual.

Here's Kulbhushan Jadhav's video confession:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVp62OinTeU

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Karan Thapar Dismantles Official Indian Narrative on Kulbhushan Jadhav

Why is India Sponsoring Terror in Pakistan? 

Indian Agent Kubhushan Yadav's Confession

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Ex India Spy Documents Successful RAW Ops in Pakistan

London Police Document Confirms MQM-RAW Connection Testimony

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Ajit Doval Lecture on "How to Tackle Pakistan" 

Chabahar Port

[Riaz Haq]

What the Kulbhushan Jadhav Saga Reveals About India and Pakistan’s Balochistan Problems
India’s Quint published and deleted a story alleging that Jadhav was indeed spying for India. What does that tell us?

https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/what-the-kulbhushan-jadhav-saga-rev...

This weekend, a report in India surfaced that confirmed Kulbhushan Jadhav was an asset of Indian intelligence. Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, is currently on death row in Pakistan for spying, having been captured in Balochistan in early 2016. Until now, New Delhi has publicly denied that Jadhav had any relationship with the Indian state since his retirement from the navy. To the contrary, New Delhi alleged that Jadhav was a legitimate businessman kidnapped from Iran by Pakistan’s intelligence services.

The “legitimate businessman” façade has slowly been chipped away over 18 months. Leaving aside major complications in India’s story, such as Iran’s silence in the face of this ostensibly daring violation of its sovereignty, even reporters closely tied to India’s security establishment revealed that Jadhav offered to spy for Indian intelligence “several times” between 2010 and 2012, only to be rebuffed. What was new about this weekend’s report, however, was that for the first time, an Indian outlet essentially confirmed Pakistan’s version of events. In the report, both serving and retired Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officers claimed that Jadhav was indeed spying for India in Balochistan.


The reaction was swift. Minutes after being published, the article was vociferously denounced by Indian journalists and analysts on social media, and in the comments section by readers, as being irresponsible and treacherous. Hours later, the article was taken down entirely. Though an archived version of the article still exists, there is otherwise no trace of it ever being written. The author and editor in question have not publicly explained why or how the article was published or taken down. There has been no follow up to the article’s startling admission by major newspapers or television channels.
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South Asia is no stranger to the phenomenon of external actors intervening in their neighbors’ domestic conflicts. Most famously in 1971, during Pakistan’s civil war, India corralled, trained, and supplied the Mukti Bahini, which became strong enough to be one of the very few rebel groups to win a secessionist war and change an international border. Pakistan, for its part, has repeatedly sought to spark or fuel rebellion in Kashmir, most prominently in the early 1990s, as well as other secessionist hotspots, such as Punjab in the 1980s or the Indian northeast in the 1960s. Bangladesh and Myanmar have hosted militants targeting India’s northeast. India has returned the favor with each, and supported Tamil militants taking on the Sri Lankan state in the 1980s too.


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Unlike India, the country most beset by secessionism, Pakistan does not have manifold separatist movements threatening its territorial integrity today. With the loss of East Pakistan in 1971, and the dampening of Sindhi and Pashtun nationalism in the last four decades, Pakistan finds itself much closer to Sri Lanka than its eastern neighbor: facing one, and only one, major separatist movement. 

[Riaz Haq]

#India’s secret war against #Pakistan. by Praveen Swami #KulbhushanJadhav #Balochistan #RAW #ajitdoval

http://www.frontline.in/the-nation/indias-secret-war/article1005512...

he implications of the questions raised by the Kulbhushan Jadhav case go far beyond Jadhav’s fate. It is time India reflects seriously on its expanding programme of covert action and its long-term consequences. By PRAVEEN SWAMI
FOR six hours, the hired car had driven through a forest of shadows, cast by the mountains of Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province—for generations, a refuge for smugglers, insurgents and spies. Heading towards Saravan, a town of 50,000 some 20 kilometres from the border with Pakistan, the car was carrying a businessman from Mumbai to a meeting. The men he wanted to meet were waiting, but there were others, too: like every spy story, this one ended in betrayal.

India knows something of what happened next: Kulbhushan Jadhav is now on death row, awaiting execution, after a hurried trial by a military court in Pakistan which found him guilty of espionage.

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Ever since 2013, India has secretly built up a covert action programme against Pakistan, seeking to retaliate against jehadists and deter their sponsors in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. Led by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, and now by Research and Analysis Wing’s (RAW) Anil Dhasmana, the programme has registered unprecedented success, hitting hard against organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad. But the story of the man on death row illustrates that this secret war is not risk-free. Lapses in tradecraft and judgment, inevitable parts of any human enterprise, can inflict harm far greater than the good they seek to secure.


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the Kulbhushan Jadhav case ought to raise questions about whether India’s intelligence bosses are devoting the kind of granular attention that the issue requires to insulate the country from the potential risks. The questions over Jadhav’s passports, the opacity of his business operations and, most important, the lack of transparency about his connection to the Indian Navy, have all made it difficult for the government of India to dissociate itself from his cause—the usual, necessary fate of the spy. It is also not clear why, if he is indeed a spy, he was not withdrawn after Uzair Baluch’s arrest, an elementary precaution.

Perhaps more importantly, there ought to be a serious political debate cutting across party lines on the possible consequences of covert action.

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Precedents do exist to resolve situations like this. Gary Powers, the pilot of a CIA espionage flight shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960—and reviled by his colleagues for not committing suicide—was eventually exchanged for the legendary KGB spy Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher.

In both New Delhi and Islamabad, there are rumours the two capitals are working on just such a deal—possibly involving former ISI officer Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Zahir Habib, alleged to have been kidnapped by India—or a wider deal, which could see the release of multiple espionage convicts.

Both countries have much to gain from a dispassionate conversation on the case—on the norms that ought to govern covert activity of the one against the other, and on the inexorable consequences of the secret war Pakistan has long run.

For that, the Kulbhushan Jadhav case needs to be elevated above prime-time ranting and opened up for rational discussion.

[Riaz Haq]

In one of the most unusual books to be published in recent times, Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani, who was chief of Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1990s, has collaborated on a set of espionage dialogues with A.S. Dulat, the former head of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). by Barkha Dutt


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/22/a...

. Durrani and Dulat’s book, “Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace” has garnered enormous scrutiny on both sides of the fence.


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The book’s central premise is that old political formulas have failed, civilian governments in Pakistan are hardly empowered, and it is time to allow an institutional line of dialogue between spies on both sides. Dulat, whom I have known to be an indefatigable optimist, opened secret talks with militants and secessionists in Kashmir and later admitted to me in an interview that both India and Pakistan paid money to try to influence them, conceding wryly that “corrupting someone with money is more ethical than killing them.”

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Contrary to official accounts in both his country and the United States, Durrani claimed that Pakistan directed the U.S. Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in 2011. “I have been giving my assessment right from the 3rd of May, 2011, just a day after the raid,” Durrani told me in an interview. “It just so happens that most of the investigative journalists — at home and abroad — came to nearly the same conclusion.....

Durrani’s other big reveal was about the Kashmir conflict. India has long documented how Pakistan has patronized terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-a-Mohammed to create unrest in the Kashmir valley. Intriguingly, when asked in the book to say what he thought was the biggest failure of the ISI, Durrani replied: “When the Kashmir uprising happened we did not know how far it would go. We didn’t want it to go out of control, which would lead to a war that neither side wanted…. ISI’s leverage on the Kashmir insurgency turned out less than successful.” Durrani was ISI chief in 1990-1992, during the insurgency’s early years. When I asked him whether the direction Kashmir has taken has proved difficult for both nations, he said, “True, it wasn’t easy to keep a handle on it — as the Indians too must have concluded over time.” But taking a swipe at India, he added sarcastically, “Oh, I think Pakistan knows what to do with it; sit back and watch.” Dulat’s answer to the question of RAW’s failures with Pakistan was just as candid: “That we have not been able to turn an ISI officer at a level where it counts.”

There are other valuable nuggets for watchers of a region that President Bill Clinton once called “a nuclear flash point.” Dulat shared how a border cease-fire was brokered in 2003 as a result of secret meetings between the head spooks of either side. He revealed that a tipoff from RAW saved the life of former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and said Musharraf had even conveyed his gratitude.

As army chief, Musharraf pushed Pakistani soldiers into India in 1999 leading to the Kargil war. His hard-line statements and actions made him a deeply contentious figure in India. Yet, Dulat insisted, “There has been no more reasonable Pakistani leader than General Musharraf.”

But it’s the no-holds barred description about key officials in both countries that’s got everyone talking. “Get Doval to Lahore; he loves Pakistan,” said Dulat of the Indian National Security adviser, Ajit Doval, regarded as a hard-liner in Pakistan. Durrani was less than complimentary about Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who he said has the “acumen of a camel” on international relations. And on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Durrani said: “A fox. Modi is smart.” 

[Riaz Haq]

#Indian General H.S. Panag believes #India's aggressive assertion of claims on #GilgitBaltistan are making #China extremely suspicious of Indian threat against China-#Pakistan Economic Corridor (#CPEC) of great strategic importance to #Beijing. https://theprint.in/opinion/china-believes-india-wants-aksai-chin-b...

China is extremely suspicious of India. It believes that in the long term, India’s strategic aim is to restore the status quo ante 1950 by recovering Aksai Chin and other areas captured/secured by China. India’s alignment with the US, the presence of Tibetan government-in-exile in India, and the aggressive claims on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Gilgit Baltistan — through which the prestigious China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes — only strengthen China’s suspicion.

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In the absence of any government or military briefings, there are speculations galore about the details of the incidents on the LAC and the political/military aims of China. More so, after the two informal summits between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi — at Wuhan in 2018 and Mamallapuram in 2019 — wherein both leaders had committed to maintain peace and tranquility on the LAC and give strategic directions to their militaries on border management.

The starting point of any conflict between two nations is the political aim. Military actions are merely the means to achieve that aim. I will reverse the process and analyse the military situation and strategic importance of the areas of the India-China ‘face-offs’ to derive the political aims.

At the outset, let me be very categoric — just like in 1962, 1965, and 1999, we have once again been surprised both at the strategic and tactical levels. The manner in which we had to rush reinforcements from other sectors gives a clear indication that we were surprised. At the strategic level, it was the failure of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) to detect the build-up of the PLA formations from the rear bases to replace the border defence units. Our tactical surveillance with UAVs and patrols has been inadequate to detect this large-scale movement close to the LAC. The ITBP mans the border and ironically is not under the command of the army.

As per unconfirmed reports, the PLA has crossed the LAC and physically secured 3-4 km of our territory along Galwan River and the entire area between Finger 5 and Finger 8 along the north bank of Pangong Tso, a distance of nearly 8-10 km (the areas are marked in this Indian Express sketch in its 2017 report). There also seem to be minor incursions in the area of Hot Springs, in Ladakh’s Chang Chenmo River valley and at Demchok.

My assessment is that the PLA has deployed maximum one brigade each in Galwan River valley and along the north bank of Pangong Tso. Precautionary deployment would have been done at likely launch pads for offensive and other vulnerable areas along the LAC. Reserves would be on short notice to cater for Indian reaction/escalation. The airfield at Ngari has been upgraded and fighter aircraft have been positioned there. It is likely that additional troops have been deployed at Depsang plains, Hot Springs, Spanggur Gap, and Chumar.

It is pertinent to mention that the intrusion by regular troops is not linear like normal border patrols going to respective claim lines. If a brigade size force has secured 3-4 km in Galwan River, it implies that the heights to the north and south have been secured, thus securing a total area of 15 to 20 square km. Similarly, along Pangong Tso, the PLA brigade having secured 8-10 km on the north bank would have also secured the dominating heights to the north to physically control 35-40 square km. And if China subsequently realigns its claim line based on the areas secured, the net area secured would increase exponentially.