“Equivalence became, secretly, the theme.  When the ISI sends men to strike in Manipur, Karachi finds itself fighting fires.  When Amritsar was ungovernable, Lahore succumbed to blasts and riots” –

That was B Raman, Additional Secretary of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India and head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research and Analysis Wing, in a conversation with Investigative Journalists, former award-winning writers and foreign correspondents for The Sunday Times and The Guardian, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark as quoted in their revelatory book “Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of The RAW and the ISI” (page 25).  The authors reveal that taking a leaf out of the CIA and the ISI’s way of functioning, the Research and Analysis Wing – R&AW – India’s external intelligence agency experimented with proxies who were routed through CIT-X and CIT-J, two of its counter-intelligence units.  CIT-X worked on Pakistan and CIT-J targeted Pakistan backed groups operating within India, trying to destabilise the country. 

The above is an example of one such operation of R&AW revealed by the authors amongst many by both the ISI and R&AW in their supposedly explosive work.  What was once a matter of gross speculation, with the advent of free electronic media, the internet and the social media, a topic of inconsequential cacophony across news studios is now proven. A part of what seems to be a well investigated, collated and an authoritative source backed compilation of history of two intelligence agencies.  The authors have relied on their personal discussions over a period of time with many of the people in action, taped interviews, a host of open-source reports, articles and various books by esteemed authors.

The reader of this book can be an Indian or India’s supporter, a Pakistani or Pakistan’s supporter or a person who is neither Indian nor Pakistani nor a supporter of any of the two nations.  The conclusions arrived after reading this book can thus be subjective.

Like any book on espionage or on the work of intelligence agencies, this book offers a thrilling read and cannot be put down owing to the revelation of some of the hitherto unknown missions, espionage real events and back channel machinations. It has it all.

However, upon reading the book the first striking impression is that the authors are comparing two external intelligence agencies whose objectives, ways of functioning, organisational structure and responsibilities are totally different.  At this point in time the ISI is an agency of a failed state and the R&AW, an agency of a vibrant democracy, its opaqueness notwithstanding though.  The R&AW reports to a democratically elected Prime Minister.  In his enlightening book on espionage titled “The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights into Espionage”, the author Vikram Sood (former chief of R&AW) explains that “ISI is more than just a conventional military intelligence collection agency of Pakistan’s armed forces.  Nominally meant to be an inter-service military intelligence agency, it works under the close supervision of the army chief.  It is like a parallel powerful army strike corps totally loyal to the army ethos with its own chief high in the pecking order.  The ISI’s forte is in managing the jihad on both frontiers and in managing internal politics.  This is the ISI’s strategic capability.  There can be no objective comparison between the ISI and any other intelligence agency operating in a democratic environment”.

Even the title of the book is misleading.  Except for the actions of the R&AW on India’s western border and inside Pakistan, no other details with respect to the missions of R&AW in any other part of the globe is narrated.  R&AW was surely not formed to be only Pakistan-centric!  The role of R&AW in merging of Sikkim with India, creation of Bangladesh, in the successful nuclear tests of 1974 and 1978 etc, could have been dealt with to give an insider’s view of the agency.

Chronicling espionage does require a lot of sources; named, unnamed and names changed.  While there are a host of sources relied to narrate the story of the ISI – ranging from Iftiqhar (a prominent ISI officer!) to former President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf, the sources relatively dry up when it comes to R&AW except for Monisha (an Analyst!), Rajinder Khanna (former Chief of R&AW) and Syed Asif Ibrahim (former Head of Intelligence Bureau). 

Further inconsistencies can be seen in the way a particular source of information is used or chosen not to be used.  To illustrate this, the author quotes (note 113 page 319) Sameer Joshi’s article titled “8 pieces of clinching evidence that show how IAFs Abhinandan shot down a Pakistan F-16” appearing in The Print on August 20, 2019 when they highlight the downing of the PAF F-16 post-Balakot strikes by the IAF.  Further the authors quoting the article titled “India’s strike on Balakot: A very precise miss?” by Marcus Hellyer, Nathan Ruser and Aakriti Bachhawat, ASPI, The Strategist, March 27, 2019 casts aspersion on the IAF strikes itself.  However, it is utterly surprising that the authors have missed a superlative article by the same Sameer Joshi conclusively proving the success of the Balakot raids by the IAF, appearing on the web portal ‘medium.com’ titled “Hell for Leather” (the article can be accessed at https://sameerjoshi73.medium.com/hell-for-leather-e8d607efb854).  Sameer Joshi is a former fighter pilot with extensive experience on the Mirage 2000 and MiG 21 aircraft of the IAF. He has seen combat in the 1999 Indo-Pak Kargil conflict. He writes on military subjects and his article on the Air War in Syria, won the best military aviation submission at the 2017 Paris Airshow.  

The role of ISI post 9/11 terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York aiding in fulfilling the objectives of the war on terror with the CIA finds a lengthy narration and in fact occupies a major part of the book.  From this stems the conclusion that ISI as an agency is grossly misunderstood.  The authors take pain to drive home the point that a generational change is required within the ISI and the Pakistan armed forces to cleanse the radical thinking amongst the officers and the emanating terror ideology there from.  At some point one gets a feeling that they are exonerating the role of ISI in spreading and exporting radical Islamic terror by highlighting the agency’s unwilling but obligatory fight to destroy their Frankenstein’s monster.  Further the authors taking the reader through various events during the war on terror proves that at various points in time ISI was not really in control of many of the terror outfits including outfits like the Jaish and Al-Qaeda.  To this effect the authors quote that “after the IC814 affair, R&AW hit back repeatedly and secretly at the ISI and its proxies.  It commenced dizzying information wars that billowed like stage fog over the region, building a narrative about Rawalpindi being the prime manipulator of regional terror.  In this version India was a perennial victim and, as a result, many Western nations would also start to perceive Pakistan as toxic”.  Subjective!

The authors also appear to be hastily concluding on the issue of existence of ‘Hindu terror and Hindu terror outfits’ and those accused of plotting ‘Hindu terror’ activities though they have been cleared by the judiciary.  Without considering the internal politics in India and the interplay of varying and diversified forces operating within, along with a history of subjugation and minority appeasement, concluding based on a report is premature.

The authors also go on to highlight the sectarianism growing within Indian intelligence agencies and tries to equate the phenomenon to what is prevalent in the ISI which is short sightedness at best.  Aspersions are also cast on the Parliament attack itself, the judicial process initiated subsequently and the judgement thereon. Subjective again!   

While a long list of books referred is appended, a cursory glance on the notes section where the authors refer to the sources of their narration and conclusions drawn does not inspire confidence since most of them are against the present Indian dispensation.  The readers are free to judge for themselves.

In a book divided into three lengthy chapters and various sub-chapters within, the reader is often made to juggle back and forth between various dates and events with no particular order taken to narrate. 

A reader can easily conclude as to what is the narrative the authors are trying to build when they conclude the book by exclaiming that ‘brute power is disguised as patriotism and individual rights and facts are trumped in the region’.  It is anybody’s guess as to who is building this narrative and where it is being built! 

A book to be read by those ready to accept subjective judgements and conclusions and arrive at subjective judgements and conclusions! Also, this is a book to be read for what is written as also for what is not!

Image source: Cure18