WE ARE VULNERABLE
Gauhar Ayub’s dramatic revelations are spectacular and shocking. He is not a powerful person in Pakistan and is known to be a hawkish anti-Indian. The allegations cannot be brushed aside simply as a marketing strategy for his forthcoming autobiography. Gauhar has almost pinpointed the identity of the Indian Brigadier and identified the channel through which the HAL was penetrated. If a person speaks in verifiable specific terms he deserves a critical hearing.
Initial reaction on either side of the border has been on the expected lines. The intelligence stealing country never admits of the act of theft and the robbed country stoutly denies that its security shield has been violated. Indian reaction varies from ashen face to anger to rejection of any possibility of Indian security shield being breached by foreign intelligence agencies. Such ostrich syndrome is a defensive mechanism.
Indian intelligence outfits have been penetrated in the past at fairly high levels by foreign intelligence agencies. Besides the murky affair of Rabinder Singh, a senior officer of the R&AW, we have behind us the famous cases of CIA penetration of K.V. Unnikrishnan, R&AW station chief at Chennai and the alleged recent penetration of Rattan Sehgal of the Intelligence Bureau. Penetration of Air Vice Marshal (Retd) K.H Larkins had proved beyond doubt the vulnerability of senior defence officers. The Kumar Narain espionage case educated us about deep penetration of sensitive government offices by foreign intelligence agencies.
With such background of repeated penetration of the Indian security edifices by foreign intelligence agencies there is requirement of introspection over the claims made by Gauhar Ayub. The intelligence agencies of Pakistan and other countries continue to make classical and unorthodox efforts to penetrate various levels of Indian defence establishment, intelligence edifices and tactically and strategically important segments of national activities. Indian counter intelligence agencies continue to unearth diplomatic Mission based intelligence operations and forward intelligence operations conducted from their home and third country bases.
The ISI and MI Directorates of Pakistan painstakingly target three major wings of the defence forces and other sensitive defence installations. In Delhi alone a couple of cases involving Mission based operatives and junior level Indian defence personnel are detected each year. Several cases go undetected for years together. Between 1980 and 2000 a few Pakistani non-diplomat intelligence operatives and under cover diplomats have been compromised and declared persona non grata. This is a perennial game played both by India and Pakistan. Intelligence stolen by foreign agencies through long-term resident agents and itinerary field unit operatives are numerous and encompass the whole of the country. The under cover intelligence operations by Pakistan transcend the limits of classical stealing efforts. New dimensions include sabotage, subversion, gunrunning, aiding ethnic insurgents and other militant groups and proxy war.
Gauhar Ayubs allegations are basically confined to the Indian armed forces. He has not treaded an alien path. The ISI and Pak Military Intelligence units specially target Indian defence establishments in a well-orchestrated manner. While the Defence Attaches in the diplomatic Mission represent the open face of the MI, several undercover MI personnel are posted to the Mission for carrying out field recruitment and cultivation activities. In any given year the assessed strength of MI operatives in the Mission is about 7 to 8. The ISI contingent is generally borne on the strength of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous and Joint Intelligence North, two prime units entrusted with general Indian and Kashmir affairs. Interrogation and categorisation efforts often do not reveal the identity of the mother unit to which an operative belongs.
Indian counter intelligence agencies are aware that at any given point of time 12 to 15 ISI operatives including a couple of undercover diplomats operate from the Mission premises. For operational efficacy tasks are assigned to penetrate diverse segments of the defence establishments dealing with ORBAT, troops and logistics movements, important postings and transfers and hardware manuals etc. Separate operational groups target the Naval and Air Force bases all over the country. A few cases of penetrations of the Naval bases in the Southern Peninsula had come to notice. Similar is the case with important Air Force bases, missile and radar installations. The panorama of intelligence operations by Long Term Resident agents, itinerary agents and third country-based agents is very vast. Only a few get detected at delayed intervals, as Indian counter intelligence units are not properly equipped to deal with the threat quantum.
However, the officer corps of the Armed Forces has virtually remained unaffected by intelligence penetration efforts by Pakistan and other countries. Some marginal contaminations are treated as individual aberrations. It is interesting to note that a Brigadier level Defence Attaché of Pakistan was compromised in 1989 while personally cultivating a Captain (Retd) of Indian Army. Such high level of handling of a secret agent in an alien country is a pointer to the importance attached by Pakistan in spotting and cultivating an officer of the Indian army. The Defence Attaché was later arrested for plotting a coup against Nawaz Sharif government.
The incident of 1989 and several other detected incidents amply prove that several layers of the Armed Forces have been usually targeted by foreign intelligence agencies with considerable success at lower formations and very rare penetration at higher level. The rules of the game are difficult but it is not an impossible and improbable game. Stealing of the ORBAT is considered as prime achievement. The details of periodical Army, Navy and Air Force exercises are also monitored meticulously. The ISI and the MI attach supreme importance to acquisition of maps of missile deployment and offensive and defensive radar installations.
Similar efforts are also made by India. However, in the game of intelligence stealing ‘deniability’ is a part of the tradecraft. “Deniability” is both positive and negative in nature. By stout denial one confirms the degree of high probability of the act of stealing having taken place. In all such cases of open allegations, specially the one made by the scion of a former ruling family having access to the kernel of the intelligence honey pot, the robbed country should not adopt an ostrich syndrome. Transparency increases efficiency and aids to the system correction process. India should quietly look into the allegations and find out the pathway through which the alleged virus had infected a system manager.
