Jamil Chughtai
The history of information gathering is as old as the beginning of human civilization itself. From the day humans started living in communities in the course of societal evolution, their distinct mental and ideological features started producing feelings of jealousy, envy, suspicion and distrust for the people living on other side of their mental or physical frontiers. These complex sensitivities were not limited to the neighbours who stood better-off in terms of riches or prosperity, rather the ones with equal or even lower fortunes were also made victim of intolerance in variety of ways.
To satiate such uncalled-for prejudices, the respective ‘close-bys’ were used to be physically intruded into whenever possible, yet mostly they were subjected to covert intrusions through operatives, informers, spies or the secret agents. In the middle ages, during Christian-Muslim wars under Crusades, the strategy of spying had become order-of-the-day, as both the parties made full use of their informers and operatives to pry on the status of morale, logistics and likely tactics to be employed by the opponent. Spying acts in the contemporary modern world are associated with the ‘Cold War’ era involving a strategic tug-of-war between USA and USSR, where these global powers had been thoroughly engaged in secret buying and selling of sleuths and double-agents in each others’ country.
Interestingly, throughout the history of such clashes of interest, the spying aspect remained restricted to gathering of vital information or crucial data about the rival. However, India of today has the singular distinction to give spying altogether new and brutal contours, that is ‘spying for terrorism’ in the countries of neighbourhood. Being aggressively intruding and interfering by her very fibre, India has over the years been meddling into internal affairs of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China and every so often in Pakistan to further her mean and nefarious designs. In case of Pakistan especially, India’s unfounded rancour and unilateral animosity have gone to her head like a behavioural disorder – not allowing her to act gentlemanly at all.
During the span of seven decades, Pakistan has remained focal point for India’s vicious spying. When it comes to carrying out undercover work in Pakistan by Indian spies, their task invariably includes fanning terrorism, supporting violence, and creating as well as financing insurgencies in the country. Starting from high-profile Indian spies of 1970s and 1980s namely Gopal Das and Ravindra Kaushik to much famed spy-come-saboteurs of later years Surjeet Singh and Sarabjit Singh involved in the string of blasts in Faisalabad, Lahore, and Multan in 1990s, India continued to invest heavily to sponsor terror and subversive activities in Pakistan through terror-agents and their facilitators.
The latest incident that has yet again exposed India’s nefarious designs is the arrest of a serving Indian Naval officer and RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan by Pakistan’s security forces in March 2016. Jadhav openly confessed that during his stay in and around Pakistan he contacted and funded various Baloch separatist leaders and insurgents, including Dr Allah Nazar Baloch, to cause damage to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC) as well as Gwadar Port, create unrest in Karachi and Balochistan by extending support to elements working against Pakistan’s solidarity. Besides undermining CPEC, the mission of terror-spy included establishing a ‘Tiger force’ in Karachi aimed at triggering sectarian rift in the city. Upon his voluntary confessions of committing the acts of terror and espionage inside Pakistan, Jadhav was sentenced to death by a military court in April 2017. As expected, India first denied having anything to do with Kulbushan Jadhav, but soon moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in May the same year against the verdict.
Being a staunch follower of the supremacy of law, Pakistan has not only deferred Kulbhushan’s execution till adjudication of the case but also decided to prove his criminal doings before the ICJ. The stage is now all set at Hague as the designated ICJ Bench is initiating its proceedings on Jadhav from 18 to 21 February 2019 with councils from both the sides making initial-submissions and closing-submissions alternatively during the four-day hearings. While Jadhav’s written/oral confessions and his valid Indian passport having Muslim name (Mubarak Hussain Patel) are Pakistan’s strongest evidence against him, India would surely try to hoodwink ICJ hiding behind the provisions of the Vienna Convention on consulars as well as prisoners-of-war.
Irrespective of what comes out of the ICJ’s proceedings this week, there is no denying the fact that the confessions of all the Indian spies nabbed by Pakistan over the years proved that Indian RAW has been audaciously indulged in terror-spying in and around Pakistan. More absurd has been the Indian response every time a RAW agent is caught red-handed in Pakistan. Initially India always refuses to accept them to be Indian citizens at all, yet after few weeks each one of them abruptly becomes the “proud son of the soil” for both Indian officials and media – Kulbushan Jadhav is the case in point. Indeed, India must do a sincere soul-searching and introspection, at least for once in her national life-time, to make herself realize that putting next-door neighbour’s house on fire means nothing less than torching your own home consequently. Especially, when insurgent air inside your very courtyard merely needs a tiny spark from outside to become an outraging inferno of disintegration.
