Daily Times

During the last three decades, there have been tenacious efforts in India to introduce security sector reforms in order to bring intelligence agencies under democratic control, but notwithstanding the last reform proposals of the Naresh Chandra Committee report (2012), democratic governments in the country could not succeed to bell the cat. Since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990s, internal conflicts in India deeply impacted the performance of its intelligence mechanism, and terrorist groups introduced new tactics. The emergence of sectarian mafia groups, and new terrorist organisations like the Daesh and Taliban further embroiled Indian intelligence agencies in unending domestic violence.

The three-decade fight of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) with domestic separatism and international terrorism brought about many changes in the attitude of its stakeholders and policy makers to control their self-designed operational strategies that caused misunderstandings between India and its neighbours. In states like Kashmir, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Assam several separatist and terrorist groups emerged with new tactics, while the recent Pathankot terrorist attack generated a new debate about failed strategies, a weak security approach, and power politics within the intelligence infrastructure. These and other incidents showed that intelligence review committees, reports and political parties were right in their criticism of the operational flaws of the agencies.

The Mumbai attacks unveiled a number of terrorist tactics that prevailed in the country. Those tactics and the way terrorists targeted civilians and the police were new to RAW and the IB. In Delhi, intellectual circles and policy makers started debates with the assumption that counterterrorism operations had been influenced by weak intelligence analyses in the country. They also raised the question of check and balance, while the bureaucratic and political involvement further added to their pain. The exponentially growing politicisation, radicalisation and sectarian divides within ranks of all intelligence agencies including RAW and the IB, and violence across the country painted a negative picture of the professional intelligence approach to the national security of India. The perception that the agencies decide whatever they want without restricting themselves to the advisory role caused a deep misunderstanding between the citizens and the state. Political rivalries, poor coordination, sectarian and political affiliations, uncorroborated reports, and lack of motivation are issues that need the immediate attention of Indian policy makers.

Moreover, numerous intelligence committees like the Henderson-Brook Committee on the Indo-China war and India’s defeat in 1962; B S Raghavan IAS Committee on the failure of intelligence during the 1965 Indo-Pak war; L P Singh Committee; K.S Nair Committee; the 1999 Kargil Review Committee; and the Ram Pradham Committee on the intelligence failure during the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai have taken place after every big perceived intelligence failure.

In addition to these committees, several investigative reports were prepared to spotlight the failure of RAW, MI, IB and other civilian and military agencies in response to major terrorist attacks against India. Lack of legal and parliamentary oversight has been a very complicated issue since the Kargil war as several stakeholders refused to allow the judiciary and parliamentary committees to investigate the ooze. More than 70 percent of Indians do not know about the basic functions of their country’s secret agencies, because the cover of secrecy often serves as a blanket of immunity from legal action, accountability and misuse of taxpayers’ money.

The operational incompetence of the Indian intelligence has now become legendary as it failed to defend the country during the Kargil, Mumbai and Pathankot attacks. They even get away with failures in violence-infected regions such as Kashmir and Assam. This way of intelligence mechanism has raised many questions including waste of money and resources. The alleged involvement of intelligence agencies in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal generated controversial stories in print and electronic media. In Afghanistan, there are speculations that Indian intelligence agencies use the country against Pakistan, and recruit Afghans and Pakistanis to carry out terrorist attacks in Balochistan. Afghan military and political leadership has also expressed the same concern in their private meetings that their country serves the interests of India in the region.

Terror attacks, whether in Assam or Kashmir, have exacerbated by the day, which lead policy makers to the conclusion that the involvement of intelligence agencies in proxy wars across borders causes major terror incidents in the country. Amidst all these failures and incomplete intelligence stories, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to bring his own team of experts in order to introduce reforms of security sector and bring intelligence under democratic control, but he also needs to understand the difficulties faced by his predecessors. He also needs to find out why RAW and the IB lack cryptanalysts who break enemy codes and ciphers despite India’s aggrandisement in the field of computer technologies. This deficit is in a stark contrast to regional trends where state agencies have been hiring an ever-greater number of experts. In an Indian Express article in 2014, Praveen Swami noted: “India’s over five-year efforts to monitor encrypted traffic — run by mainly military-staffed National Technical Research Organisation — has failed to make progress in decrypting even chat programmes used by terrorists, like Viber and Skype.”

The Kargil Review Committee found that human intelligence aspect of Indian intelligence agencies was weak. During the Kargil war, RAW succeeded in intercepting the telephone conversation between General Musharaf and his then Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Aziz, which provided crucial evidence to international media that the operation was being controlled from military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Experts perceive it as a major intelligence success. Moreover, the Kargil Review Committee also criticised military intelligence for its failure related to the absence of updated and accurate intelligence information on the induction and de-induction of military battalions, and the lack of expertise to spotlight military battalions in the Kargil area in 1998.

The committee further criticised lack of fresh information, which makes it impossible for an intelligence agency to make an accurate judgement of the looming threat. According to Indian intellectual circles, rivalry among the intelligence agencies and the issue of appointment in war zones or violence-infected areas has badly affected counterterrorism efforts across the country. In a country like India where credit-snatching influences intelligence analyses, there is no way to judge the accuracy of collected intelligence information.

The writer is the author of Fixing the EU Intel Crisis, and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com