Ex Indian Intelligence Chief AS Dulat on Failed Agra Summit

“This is when L. K. Advani surprised Musharraf by asking for Dawood Ibrahim. This took Musharraf back and a shadow was cast thereafter on the Agra summit.” “As Mr. Mishra put it: “Yaar, hote-hote reh gaya … Ho gaya tha, who toh.”  Ex Indian Intelligence Chief A.S. Dulat

The above quote is from A.S. Dulat who has served as Chief of India's Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) and as Special Director of India's Intelligence Bureau. He was speaking with Indian Journalist Karan Thapar of India Today on a variety of subjects including Kashmir and Musharraf-Vajpayee Agra summit.

India Responsible For Failure of India-Pakistan Diplomacy: 

Dulat has essentially confirmed the fact that Indian hawks like the BJP leader L.K. Advani are responsible for sabotaging the India-Pakistan summit. Dulat has also debunked the myth promoted by Indian security analysts and politicians who regularly blame Pakistan for the failure of past bilateral diplomatic efforts by citing what they believe is the adverse role of Pakistani military in framing Pakistan's policy toward India. This rationale does not explain why the diplomatic initiatives undertaken by Pakistani military leaders from General Zia to General Musharraf have not borne fruit.

A more rational explanation for the policy failures has recently surfaced in secret US embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks and published by The Hindu. After a meeting with India's National Security Adviser and former Indian intelligence chief M.K. Narayanan in August 2009, American Ambassador Timothy Roemer concluded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was isolated within his own government in his “great belief” in talks and negotiations with Pakistan.

Another myth the Indian governments promote is that Dawood Ibrahim is hiding in Pakistan. This myth has been demolished by India's own Minister of State (Home) Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary who told the Indian parliament that the former Mumbai underworld don is not on Indian intelligence's radar, and it would only be possible to bring him back to the country once his whereabouts were discovered.

Who's Dawood Ibrahim:

According to a leaked US diplomatic cable from India, Dawood Ibrahim was the undisputed kingpin of the Mumbai underworld before he fled India in the 1980s. Indian security agencies believe he was involved in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed several hundred people. Vicky Malhotra is the right hand man of gangster Chhota Rajan, a fierce rival of Ibrahim. Rajan was once Ibrahim's lieutenant, but broke up with Ibrahim after the 1993 Mumbai bombings. The two have reportedly been fierce rivals since. Communal tensions between Ibrahim, a Muslim, and Rajan, a Hindu, were also believed to have contributed to the breakup. Rajan reportedly objected to the bomb attacks, which were part of a chain of violent retributions surrounding right-wing Hindus' destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992. Rajan was thought to be living somewhere in Southeast Asia, but recent press reports claim that he is now hiding in Europe. He and Malhotra are believed to have been responsible for the targeted killing of a number of Ibrahim's associates.

India's RAW Using Mumbai Underworld Figures:

While the Indians accuse Pakistan ISI of working with Mumbai underworld, it's been revealed that it is the Indian Intelligence that has been using Mumbai criminal gangs as their assets.  A 2005 US diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks shows that Ajit Kumar Doval, India's own ex-spook and current National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested by Mumbai Police in New Delhi while traveling in the same car with Mumbai underworld figure Vicky Malhotra . Ajit Doval was quickly released without any explanation.

Where Is Dawood Ibrahim:

While no one knows for sure where Dawood Ibrahim is today, there has been a lot of speculation and rumors about his whereabouts, particularly in the Indian media. Outside of India, there is a Japanese journlist named Yoichi Shimatsu who has said as follows about Dawood's whereabouts:

"Washington and London both agreed with India's legal claim and removed the longstanding "official protection" accorded for his (Dawood Ibrahim's) past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood's return. He simply knows too much about America's darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East."

Future of India-Pakistan Ties:

Unfortunately, there is very little hope for improved ties between India and Pakistan as long as Hindu Nationalist hawks are in charge in New Delhi and people like Ajit Kumar Doval are running India's Pakistan policy. Evidence of Indian funding of Baloch insurgents, TTP militants and Karachi's militant political party MQM is mounting every day. The pattern seems to fit the Indian strategy of proxy war against Pakistan that has been articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval  as follows: "How do we tackle Pakistan? .. You make it difficult for them (Pakistan) to manage their internal security... Pakistan's vulnerability is many many times higher than India's....Taliban have beheaded 23 of their (Pakistani) soldiers...funding can be countered by giving more funds...more than one-and-a-half times the funding they have available and they'll be yours..the Taliban are mercenaries...go for more of a covert thing"

Summary:

An American South Asia watcher Stephen Cohen says: "The alphabet agencies—ISI, RAW, and so forth—are often the chosen instrument of state policy when there is a conventional (and now a nuclear) balance of power, and the diplomatic route seems barren."

Clearly, "the diplomatic route seems barren" for now between the two South Asian neighbors.


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

MQM-RAW Connection 

Ex-Indian Spy Documents RAW's Successes in Pakistan

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Cover War Against Pakistan?

Pakistan's Political and Military Policy Response to Peshawar Attack

Taliban or RAW-liban?

Respecting Rights of Fellow Humans: Huqooq ul Ibad in Islam

Counter-insurgencyOperation ZarbeAzb

India's Abiding Hostility Toward Pakistan 

India's Israel Envy: Will Modi Attack Pakistan?

Who Killed Karkare?

CFR's View of the Taliban

Rising Religious Intolerance Threatens Pakistan's Future

Rise and Fall of Islamic Civilization

Dawood Ibrahim--the Mastermind of Mumbai Massacre?

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of The Japan Times, believes that the Mumbai attack was "a made-in-Mumbai production much like the Bollywood crime movies about D-Company’s many bloody gang wars". According to Shimatsu, a Hindu breakaway gang, in concert with Hindutva politicians and police officers, revived the turf wars in 2007 with a spike in shootings and arrests, along with gaining Pakistani approval for Dawood’s deportation. Then D-Company (Dawood's gang), with a few lowly recruits from Pakistan, stuck back.

Dawood Ibrahim's name shows up on top of the list of most wanted men Indian Government wants Pakistan to extradite to India. Did he do it? Is he in Pakistan? Is he in Dubai? Where is he? Is he dead? Shimatsu explains Dawood's whereabouts as follows: Washington and London both agreed with India's legal claim and removed the longstanding "official protection" accorded for his past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood's return. He simply knows too much about America's darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East.

The full text of Yoichi Shimatsu's article published by New American Media website is as follows:

The coordinated nighttime assault against seven major targets in Mumbai is reminiscent of the 1993 bombings that devastated the Bombay Stock Exchange. The recent attack bears the fingerprints of the same criminal mastermind – meticulous preparation, ruthless execution and the absence of claims or demands.

The eerie silence that accompanied the blasts are the very signature of Ibrahim Dawood, now a multi-millionaire owner of a construction company in Karachi, Pakistan. His is hardly a household name around the world like Osama bin Laden. Across South Asia, however, Dawood is held in awe and, in a twist on morals, admired for his belated conversion from crime boss to self-styled avenger.

His rise to the highest rungs of India's underworld began from the most unlikely position as the diligent son of a police constable in the populous commercial capital then known as Bombay.

His childhood familiarity with police routine and inner workings of the justice system gave the ambitious teenager an unmatched ability to outwit the authorities with evermore clever criminal designs. Among the unschooled ranks of Bombay gangland, Ibrahim emerged as the coherent leader of a multi-religious mafia, not just due to his ability to organize extortion campaigns and meet payrolls, but also because of his merciless extermination of rivals.

Dawood, always the professional problem-solver, gained the friendship of aspiring officers in India's intelligence service known as Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He soon attracted the attention of American secret agents, then supporting the Islamic mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Dawood personally assisted many a U.S. deep-cover operation funneling money to Afghan rebels via American-operated casinos in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Eager to please all comers, Dawood occasionally got his wires crossed, providing travel documents and other amenities to Islamist airplane hijackers. In response, Washington spymasters tried to unofficially "impound" his investment in the Nepalese casinos. Dawood's fury is legendary among locals. An honorable businessman, he held to the strict belief that a deal is a deal and there can be no reneging for any reason.

As Bombay moved into the league of Asia's premier cities – hotel rates and apartment rentals are the highest in the region – Dawood could have led a comfortable life as top dog. Instead he suffered a spasm of conscience, a newfound moral outrage, when rightwing Hindu nationalists destroyed a mosque in northern India in 1992, slaying 2000 Muslim worshippers, mostly women and children.

One day in the following May, his henchmen set off bombs across Bombay, killing more than 300 people. His personal convictions had – uncharacteristically - overcome his dispassionate business ethics. Reeling in shock, his top lieutenant, a Hindu, attempted to assassinate Dawood. A bloody intra-gang war followed, but as always Dawood triumphed, even while away in exile in Dubai and Karachi.

In the ensuing decade, at the height of violence in Kashmir, Dawood sent his heavily armed young trainees by boat from Karachi on covert landings onto Indian beaches. This same method was used in the Mumbai assault with more boats, seven craft according to initial navy reports.

Why the timing of this raid, on the dawn of Thanksgiving in America? The leader of India's opposition and former deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani had long sought Dawood's extradition from Pakistan, a move opposed by the then military government in Islamabad. With the restoration of civilian rule, the new Pakistani prime minister (Gillani) consented to New Delhi's deportation request.

Washington and London both agreed with the India's legal claim and removed the longstanding "official protection" accorded for his past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood's return. He simply knows too much about America's darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East.

As in the case of America's Afghan war protégé Osama bin Laden, the blowback to U.S. covert policy came suddenly, this time with spectacular effects in Mumbai. The assault on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel will probably go down as the first lethal blow to the incoming Obama administration. The assailants, who spoke Punjabi and not the Deccan dialect, went to a lot of trouble to torch the prestigious hotel, which is owned by the Tata Group. This industrial giant is the largest business supporter of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, and Tata is now planning to become a nuclear power supplier. The Clintons, as emissaries of Enron, were the first to suggest the nuclear deal with New Delhi, so Obama inherits the Mumbai catastrophe even before he takes office.

Dawood, ranks fourth on Forbes' list of the world's 10 most wanted fugitives from the law. After the new round of attacks that killed more than 100 people and laid waste top five-star hotels, Dawood can now contend for the No.1 spot in the coming months and years. In contrast to the fanatic and often ineffective bin Laden, Dawood is professional on all counts and therefore a far more formidable adversary. Yet some in Pakistan's military intelligence agency say that Dawood is dead, killed in July. This version of events is much the same as a variation of the bin Laden story. If true, then his underlings are carrying on the mission of an outlaw transfigured into a legend.

Yoichi Shimatsu. Former editor of The Japan Times in Tokyo and journalism lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Shimatsu has covered the Kashmir crisis and Afghan War.

Related Links:

Dawood Provided Logistics to Mumbai Attackers

Dawood Ibrahim Behind Mumbai Attacks

Solving Mumbai Puzzle

No One Knows Mumbai Better