Are covert ops the only answer to terrorism??

[KS]

Though this is an not-so-new article (posted on Feb 20 th 2010) I found it an interesting read.

Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's time to open the debate on covert operations

Last month an 11-member hit team dispatched by Israel’s Mossad travelled to Dubai and assassinated Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a Hamas military commander and number one on Israel’s list of most wanted terrorists.

Al-Mabhouh was clearly an unsavoury character, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, an abductor and murderer of Israeli soldiers and an organizer of terrorist attacks on civilians.

Few tears were shed in Israel over his death but there has been a minor uproar in England over the use of cloned British passports by the Israeli hit team. Normally, the Israelis just fake passports. But on this occasion, they cloned the real passports of Britons who have settled in Israel. The Brits say this is unacceptable. Why couldn’t Mossad have just faked the passports as usual?

What’s interesting is that very little of the outrage focuses on the assassination itself. By now, the West has accepted that Israelis will track down and assassinate terrorists no matter where in the world they hide. And, in the post 9/11 era, few people seem to mind. It is widely accepted that terrorists can rarely be brought to justice and convicted by courts of law. So, an assassination often seems like the most effective option.

All this has lessons for India. There are broadly, four ways of fighting terrorism. The first is that you guard every likely target. This is nearly impossible to do and no matter how many men you deploy, terrorists will slip through the cracks. The second is that you use intelligence to discover terrorist plots and then foil them. This too, is hardly a fool-proof strategy.

The third is that after terrorist attacks are committed you spare no effort in going after the perpetrators so that you deter would-be terrorists. The Israelis travelled the world in the aftermath of the Munich attacks in 1972 and killed every one of the terrorist masterminds.

And the fourth is covert action: you take the battle into the enemy’s camp. You infiltrate terrorist organizations, you kill terrorists before they can strike, and you dabble in the internal affairs of your opponents, financing and arming those groups that are likely to create trouble for your enemies.

Pakistan has always shown a willingness to use covert operations against India. Even if you take the line that the 26/11 terrorists did not have official sanction, nobody can deny that the Pakistanis have used assassination as an element of state policy. In Kashmir, for instance, important leaders have been bumped off by the Pakistanis when they refused to follow Islamabad’s line.

Equally, Islamabad has traditionally funded groups that are inimical to Delhi. Till the creation of Bangladesh, East Pakistan was used to provide arms and support to the Mizos and the Nagas. Since then, Pakistan has funded Sikh separatists, local jihadis and of course Kashmiri militants.

India’s record on covert operations has been lacklustre. We have preferred to fight terrorism either by relying on intelligence or by heightening security. When it comes to retribution, we prefer to go through legal channels rather than take direct action. We will wait for the Pakistanis to prosecute Hafiz Sayeed rather than eliminate him ourselves. And while we have funded Pakistani separatists in the past, this assistance has been feeble and more or less dried up after Inder Gujral made R&AW roll up its operations in Pakistan when he was PM.

It is now increasingly clear that Pakistan either cannot (the view of the doves) act against powerful terrorist groups or will not (the view of the hawks) prevent terrorists from attacking Indian targets. A similar lack of strength or willingness is reflected in its failure to effectively prosecute the likes of Hafiz Sayeed.

So what is India to do? Are we to rely on increased security and better intelligence? Or are we to step up our covert operations?

"Western nations do not finance terrorism. But equally, they do not consider themselves restricted by the niceties of the law."
Till recently, many Indians would have been appalled by the idea of covert operations. We reject the idea of moral equivalence with Pakistan and cannot see ourselves financing militants who engage in violence.

I once asked Manmohan Singh why we rejected the covert option and his answer summed up the mood in government: because of the manner in which it would brutalize the Indian state and damage our moral psyche. Indians simply do not do such things.

But I am now coming around to the view that it is time to reconsider. There are two kinds of covert operations. The first is the Pakistani style, whereby jihadis travel to India and kill women and children. The other is the approach increasingly favoured by the West (and pioneered by Israel) in the aftermath of 9/11.

Western nations do not finance terrorism. But equally, they do not consider themselves restricted by the niceties of the law. America has infiltrated terror groups, encourages them to fight with each other, kidnaps and whisks away important terrorists (‘rendition’) and sub-contracts the job of executing terrorists to friendly secret services.

There is a strong case for us in India to follow that example. Let’s take the instance of the three terrorists who were freed in Kandahar in exchange for the passengers on IC 814. They travelled to Pakistan where they were welcomed as heroes. Should we not have pursued them and taken them out? Would this not have served as a warning to other terrorists?

Similarly, we know who many of the 26/11 masterminds are and where they live. Should we wait for the Pakistanis to move against them – assuming that Pakistan is so inclined? Or should we just send a hit team? We know where Dawood Ibrahim, the man behind the Bombay blasts, lives. Should we mount a large-scale operation to eliminate him?

Similarly, should we not consider doing to Pakistan what it does to us? There are many Sindhis, Mohajirs, and yes, Baluchis, who have no affection for the Punjabi elite which runs Pakistan. Should we not finance them so that they can more forcefully express their discontentment? The more trouble there is for Pakistan from within, the more distracted the government in Islamabad will be.

Our answer to all these questions, so far, has been an unequivocal no. When Manmohan Singh agreed to include a reference to Baluchistan in the Sharm-el-Sheikh statement, we were appalled because the thought of any Indian involvement in Baluchistan was repugnant to us. We did not object on pragmatic grounds: why surrender the Baluchistan option when we can use it to create trouble for Pakistan?

As the Poona attack demonstrates, the terrorism is not going to stop. Pakistan is going to step up its efforts to radicalize and arm Indian Muslim groups so that it can then argue that the terrorism is indigenous. Should we just sit back and wait for this to happen while placing our faith in the power of dialogue? Or should we re-think our approach to the battle against terror?

I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are. But the time has come to open the debate on covert operations.

 

[KS]

I for one strongly believe in Covert Ops as a solution to terrorism.

Terrorism cannot be weaned away by pruning the branches(the footsoldiers)....it can be done only by striking at the root (the leadership).

Comments welcome.

 

[gogbot]

We don't do this already that is hard to believe.

 

[Srinivas]

Nice article
There is slight difference in terrorism in Israel and in India.

Hezbollah is supported by Palestinian people and they are willing to fight Israel in this case if you cut the head of the snake another one will grow.
But the terror coming from pakistan is purely state sponsored one with false propaganda. Most of the terrorists do not know the actual scenario. In this case covert operations like the Mossad will definitely work GoI should have eliminated the Kandahar terrorists and dawood Ibrahim by now .

 

[M8R]

Pakistan and India unlike Israel and Dubai are totally different countries.The difference is unlike Dubai Government which does not have the power to retaliate Pakistan can arrange several Diwali's in India.

 

[lhuang]

Pakistan and India unlike Israel and Dubai are totally different countries.The difference is unlike Dubai Government which does not have the power to retaliate Pakistan can arrange several Diwali's in India.

What ho, you'll nuke India for assassinations on your territory? But they're all non-state actors?

 

[M8R]

What ho, you'll nuke India for assassinations on your territory? But they're all non-state actors?

You don't need nukes to arrange Diwali here and there.Strictly covert op's.Would US be happy if Russia start killing it's spy's who have gone rouge and are in US or UK?

 

[Treatment]

What ho, you'll nuke India for assassinations on your territory? But they're all non-state actors?

Gud one, for one pakistan has a history of bending towards what suits its interests best.

 

[KS]

You don't need nukes to arrange Diwali here and there.Strictly covert op's.Would US be happy if Russia start killing it's spy's who have gone rouge and are in US or UK?

There is a difference between a spy and a terrorist.

US would give a damn if FSB assasinated a man accused of being the brain behind killing 166 Russians in Moscow.

 

[su-47]

You don't need nukes to arrange Diwali here and there.Strictly covert op's.Would US be happy if Russia start killing it's spy's who have gone rouge and are in US or UK?

My god, your support of terrorism knows no bounds does it? making a bombing into a 'diwali'. tell me do u enjoy the 'diwalis' in pakistan? i wouldnt actually be surprised if u do.

and ya, covert operations should srtcitly involve only killing of known terrorists and terrorist sympathisers/funders. no killing of innocents. because if we do that, we'd be stooping to ☪☪☪☪'s level

 

[Abingdonboy]

I think the pro-active method employed by the Isrealis is a very good idea as long as you are 100% sure of who you are taking out otherwise you run the risk of further fueling hatred towards you. Additionally does India have the reach and capability to do such raids through RAW or spec ops, whatever. Also how likely is India to start to engage in these operations? How many times does India have to be provoked before it acts.

Death by a thousand cuts.

 

[star123]

India should make it policy that 1 diwali in India should be 100 Eid in pakistan.

Some people understand only their language and frequency.

 

[Spitfighter]

Covert contestation

Covert contestation

PRAVEEN SWAMI

VIVEK BENDRE

Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rehman reviewing the Indian Army's farewell parade at the Dacca Stadium on March 12, 1972. The assets RAW had gained from the United States were put to good use during the 1971 war.

"THE water," General Zia-ul-Haq told his spymaster General Akhtar Malik in December 1979, "must boil at the right temperature." Pakistan's military ruler was referring to the need to calibrate carefully his covert services' activities in Afghanistan: to refrain from pushing the Soviet Union to the point where it would make it worth its while to launch a full-scale war against the mujahideen's covert sponsors. General Zia's orders were in line with the rules of engagement for one of the world's least-known, but most brutally fought, war.

Sarabjit Singh's story is just a small part of the untold - and, outside of the covert world, largely unknown - story of India's secret war with Pakistan: a contestation which has run unbroken since Independence; an arch of which the four full-blown wars of 1947-1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999 were just pillars.

When the British left India, the new nation was left with nothing resembling a functional covert service. Departing British officers had denuded the Military Intelligence Directorate in New Delhi of almost all sensitive information, leaving it without even a map of Jammu and Kashmir to which the first radio intercepts of the Pakistan-backed invasion of 1947-1948 could be correlated. The Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) was, for its part, in what Lieutenant-General L.P. Singh has described as "a tragi-comic state of helplessness", empty of everything but "office furniture, empty racks and cupboards". Its senior-most British-Indian official had chosen Pakistani citizenship and left for that country with what few sensitive files the imperial authorities had neglected to destroy.

Not surprisingly, Indian covert activity was limited in scope and intensity until the mid-1960s. Pakistan, by contrast, initiated offensive covert activity in Jammu and Kashmir soon after Independence, backing groups that bombed government buildings and bridges after its failure to take the State by force in 1947-1948. Major-General Akbar Khan, who commanded the Pakistani forces during that first India-Pakistan war, has also recorded in his memoirs that his country's covert forces supplied weapons to Islamist irregulars in Hyderabad. Indian responses were in the main defensive, relying on the counter-intelligence resources of state-level forces and local political deal-making to blunt Pakistan's covert offensive. In the 1960s, for example, the Jammu and Kashmir Police was instrumental in dismantling a sophisticated anti-India jihadist network, which came to be known as `the Master Cell'. Pakistan's covert services operated similarly in the east, training Naga groups in the Chittagong Hill tracts. No open-source archival material has so far surfaced that suggests that Indian intelligence even attempted offensive operations directed at Pakistan during this period.

India's covert capabilities, however, began to develop significantly in the wake of the 1962 war with China. Aided by the United States, the newly founded Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) developed sophisticated signals intelligence and photo-reconnaissance capabilities. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) instructors also trained Establishment 22, a covert organisation raised from among Tibetan refugees in India, to execute deep-penetration terror operations in China.

For a variety of reasons, the India-U.S. collaboration on China soured within just a few years, but the assets RAW had gained were put to good use during the 1971 Bangladesh war. India's eastern offensive was substantially aided by its new covert assets. While India's covert aid to the Mukti Bahini is well documented, few are aware that Establishment 22, operating under the command of Major-General Surjit Singh Uban, carried out deep-penetration strikes against Pakistani forces well under the RAW umbrella prior to the onset of the war. Using Bulgarian weapons to ensure that India could deny it was connected to their activities, General Uban's covert forces played a key role in drawing Pakistani troops forward, thus easing the conventional thrust towards Dhaka.

Pakistan's vivisection in 1971 seemed to have rendered the need for an offensive covert capability against that country redundant. Even prior to the war, Pakistan had proved hesitant to provide full-scale support to al-Fatah, a jihadist organisation that its covert services had set up in Jammu and Kashmir, fearing that the detection of this enterprise would provide India with a pretext for going to war. For over a decade after 1971, Pakistan proved resistant to entreaties from Kashmiri organisations such as the National Liberation Front for military assistance, afraid of the consequences of large-scale Indian conventional military reprisal.

RAW's attentions now turned east. It played a key role in bringing about Sikkim's accession to the Union of India, began backing Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka and began providing military assistance to groups hostile to the pro-China regime in Myanmar, such as the Kachin Independence Army. Pakistan's covert warriors turned their attentions west. In 1975, for example, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) backed an attempted Islamist coup against the left-wing regime of Mohammad Daud Khan in Afghanistan. Pakistan, it seemed to Indian covert strategists, was no longer a credible military threat.

The wheel soon turned, though, as wheels are wont to do. After the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq acquired both the strategic influence and the military resources needed to insulate itself against India's superior conventional military capabilities. Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, notably, received tacit consent from the U.S., allowing it to develop deterrent capabilities. The secret war now resumed. By the mid-1980s, the ISI had initiated supplies of Afghan war-surplus military hardware to Khalistan terrorists in Punjab. Five years later, similar support was made available to jihad groups in Jammu and Kashmir. On two occasions, in 1987 and 1990, India threatened to go to war in retaliation; both times, the threat of a widespread, possibly nuclear, war deterred its politicians. On both occasions, however, RAW and the ISI played a role in ensuring the water did not, to use General Zia's metaphor, boil over.

After the 1987 crisis, RAW chief A.K. Verma and ISI Director-General Hamid Gul met to discuss limitations for Pakistan's support for Khalistan groups, a negotiation brokered by the then-Jordanian Crown Prince, Hasan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. After the 1990 crisis, the ISI was again pushed to ensure that jihad groups in Jammu and Kashmir did not gain access to anti-aircraft missiles, after India made clear that the shooting down of an aircraft would lead to a full-blown war, notwithstanding the risk of escalation.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's regime did not, however, restrict itself to sending verbal signals to Islamabad. In the mid-1980s, RAW set up two covert groups, CIT-X and CIT-J, the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. Rabinder Singh, the RAW double-agent who defected to the U.S. in 2004, was among those who helped run CIT-J during its early years. Both these covert groups extensively used the services of cross-border traffickers like Sarabjit Singh to ferry weapons and funds across the border, much as their ISI counterparts were doing.

A low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore, followed. According to former RAW official and security analyst B. Raman, the Indian counter-campaign yielded results. "The role of our cover action capability in putting an end to the ISI's interference in Punjab", he wrote in 2002, "by making such interference prohibitively costly is little known and understood." While Pakistan has long complained of India-engineered terrorism on its soil, however, there is so far no coherent open-source account of either its scale or its course.

For reasons that are still unclear - some people believe Indian strategists did not wish to undermine the moral legitimacy of their complaints about Pakistani cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir - the covert offensive soon wound down. None of those in office at the time will, not surprisingly, discuss the issue on record, but Raman asserted in a 2003 article that the decision to terminate India's offensive covert capabilities directed at Pakistan was made by Prime Minister I.K. Gujral. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao is believed to have terminated RAW's eastern operations earlier as part of his efforts to build bridges with China and Myanmar. As violence in Jammu and Kashmir escalated, successive RAW and I.B. heads attempted to gain authorisation for aggressive operations, but without success. After the 1999 war, key intelligence officers, including a former I.B. Director, attempted to persuade Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to issue the necessary authorisations. "He didn't say a word," recalls one official present at the meeting. "He didn't say no; he didn't say yes."

Given that violence in Jammu and Kashmir has de-escalated since 2002, the Indian strategic establishment's chosen weapons - military coercion and international pressure - seem to have paid off, at least in part. Intelligence officials who discussed the issue with Frontline, however, believe the debate remains alive. "You prepare capabilities to deal with what might happen," one official said, "not just what is apparent."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I believe its time we wake up and smell the coffee. We need to hunt down these terrorists and butcher them for the crimes they have committed. We've done it before, and it worked. We need someone with a spine in office who isn't afraid to strike back hard.

We'll bleed, but we'll give better than we get. Let's see how long these terrorists can stand being fought like terrorists. If Pakistan can't stop them we should, regardless of the consequences. We have the resources, we have a reason. This is no longer a debate its a strategic necessity.

 

[illuminatidinesh]

I believe its time we wake up and smell the coffee. We need to hunt down these terrorists and butcher them for the crimes they have committed. We've done it before, and it worked. We need someone with a spine in office who isn't afraid to strike back hard.

We'll bleed, but we'll give better than we get. Let's see how long these terrorists can stand being fought like terrorists. If Pakistan can't stop them we should, regardless of the consequences. We have the resources, we have a reason. This is no longer a debate its a strategic necessity.

Excellent point... I think the NSG was also involved in some of the operations, cant confirm it though.

 

[IndianArmy]

Excellent point... I think the NSG was also involved in some of the operations, cant confirm it though.

Its MARCOS