Reema Shaukat
Whereas India always keeps on spitting venom against Pakistan, it is now pertinent hint that India has never accepted Pakistan since its inception and time and again certain roguish activities and blame game against Pakistan make captions. Recently when some official promotions took place in military set up of Pakistan, India did not waste a chance to create propaganda about the Pakistan’s world class intelligence agency ISI and its newly appointed head.
While going through some historical facts, it is very important to highlight that why Pakistan’s such state-of-the-art organization is considered as the best. The reason obviously is very clear that it has never remained involved in damaging sovereignty of any other country nor it sabotages any other country’s authority. On the other side, India while neighbouring Pakistan is always there to create disturbance with not only Pakistan but other South Asian countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. It was not first time when India’s spy KulbhushanYadav was arrested in Pakistan. Prior to that Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval who has always sputtered about Pakistan was working clandestinely for 7 years in the Pakistani territory. Moreover cases of RavinderKaushik, Gopal Das and Kashmir Singh also tell the plotted tale of RAW.
This shows that India has a well-established network of espionage in Pakistan and RAW keeps on funding certain elements to tremor Pakistan’s stability. When the case of KulbhushanYadav was brought into light and Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan was summoned upon alleged activities of RAW in Pakistan, Indian media as usual turned up in favour of its agent.
The New Indian Express newspaper in their very own report claimed Yadav as a businessman who owns a small ship and has nothing to do with the Indian intelligence agency RAW. But their so claimed statement proved wrong when Yadav confessed about his identity as serving naval officer and admitted that he rendered his services to RAW.
Recently, India also appointed its new RA&W and IB chiefs. Samant Kumar Goel and Arvind Kumar have taken charge. Both persons have strong intelligence background and are believed to have played a key role in planning February, 2019 surgical strikes in Balakot to take revenge from Pakistan for the Pulwama incident. Kumar during his stay in IB has handled various desks on Kashmir and promoted left-wing extremism apart from other nefarious acts on poor Kashmiris. Though both were due to retire soon but considering their past work as spies, they were granted extension. While Indian intelligence agency R&AW may be misusing every evil trick and tactics to poke its nose in internal affairs of India’s neighbours, the agency has been faced with embarrassing messes and national security failures, especially senior officials are found in state of confusions and hopelessness. It was reports that on 17 April 2016, three officers of RA&W willingly fled to a western country which has a history of accepting and facilitating such disappearances of Indian intelligence officers.
All were posted on senior levels and had shifted their families to that western country much before they themselves disappeared. Two of the officers were handling two South Asian countries, while the third was handling a large East Asian country.
It was later disclosed that all three were working on the agenda of western countries and before their disappearance, they disclosed many secrets of Indian agency to that hosting country. This was not the first time that officials left jobs without any notice and disappeared. As per official records, since the creation of the agency in 1968, nine such instances have been reported with the famous absconding case of Rabinder Singh who was joint secretary in RA&W, and deserted to the United States in 2004.
RA&W is also afflicted with other problems like bureaucratization of system, favouritism and corruption. Apart from this the whole India faces ethnic imbalances and religion based identity. Misuse of resources for taking families to excursions, complaints of harassment by females and inhumane treatment to lower class are few other loopholes of organization. Another de-moralizing factor is low wages. It has been reported that salary and other benefits of intelligence officials are at par with the state police and clerks.
Moreover, risk allowance in both the Intelligence Bureau and R&AW has been reduced to 15 per cent whereas Central agencies like CBI get at least 25 per cent risk allowance. Indian government under BJP’s first term has tried to appease the growing frustration in the ranks of R&AW and IB officials by announcing a revision of their pay structure, however, the claim still need materialization in the second tenure of Modi.
It was also disclosed by the Indian officials that domestic intelligence agency is facing a shortage of over 7,000 skilled professionals to generate and disseminate crucial intelligence input. According to government figures released in 2013, IB had only 18795 personnel against the authorised strength of 26,867 officers. External spy agency R&AW has strength of around 9,000 officers, including field agents while in 2012 the agency was forced to seek the help of Department of Personnel & Training to rush over the manpower shortage.
RA&W by overlooking its own systematic flaw, focused on sinister plotting always. For Pakistan, proof of RAWs involvement in killing of Hazara community in Balochistan, sponsoring TTP and now Daesh and ETIM are known facts. RAW-NDS and Indo-Israel nexus are no more hidden connexions to cause damage. Under Modi’s first regime, organization believed more in fascism and followed policies of BJP blindly thus creating apprehensions among many workers of organization. The so-called spy agency which is often quoted as follower of “Ostrich-approach” must check themselves before pointing towards others and creating negative propaganda.
