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'Under Doval, foreign powers traditionally suspicious of India were wooed.'
'Enemies were embraced.'
In their latest book Spy Stories (Juggernaut), Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark reveal the cloak-and-dagger, hall of mirrors world that is spying in India and Pakistan, involving India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing -- RA&W -- and Pakistan's directorate of Inter Services Intelligence, the ISI.
In an e-mail conversation, Adrian Levy tells Rediff.com, "Doval's generation would never leave the D Company alone, for example, hounding every aspect of Dawood's network. They continued to denigrate the ISI and the Pakistan military, engineering the aftermath of most incidents so that their domestic impact was weighed as a strategic necessity rather than outright victory."
The third segment of a revealing four-part interview:
What are the profound changes brought about in R&AW during Ajit Kumar Doval's tenure as NSA?
Post 2014, the national security infrastructure became more flexible and sensitive.
It was remade into silos that would deal with simultaneous threats by compartmentalising them, but also reach out to India's allies -- countries and individuals.
The Perception Game and narrative control became far more sophisticated selling the story of India to foreign partners.
Meanwhile, geopolitics and luck also played their part as China's continued rise, and Pakistan's continued entropy, accelerated the US flick flacking from Islamabad to Delhi.
In 2001, R&AW looked on disgusted to see the CIA woo the ISI as 9/11 demanded.
The CIA needed a staging post, but also the inroads that Pakistan could offer, in order to contain the Taliban and counter al-Qaeda.
In 2001, with Pakistan having been sanctioned for its nuclear programme, R&AW understood that smashing this pact would become a national priority.
By 2009, this had all but been achieved with India emerging via a strategic military partnership of 2004, and the civil nuclear deal, as a junior partner (of the United States).
By 2011, this partnership was upgraded with access to intelligence and hardware, a relationship that deepened under the BJP, which was proactive in meeting US needs and desires.
Under Doval, foreign powers traditionally suspicious of India were wooed.
Enemies were embraced. New terms were proffered. Difficult balances were struck with let's say Iran and the US.
Old battles were also continued. Doval's generation would never leave the D Company alone, for example, hounding every aspect of Dawood's network.
They continued to denigrate the ISI and the Pakistan military, engineering the aftermath of most incidents so that their domestic impact was weighed as a strategic necessity rather than outright victory.
When to fight, and how to fight, and who would read about it were all indices in Doval's calculations.
Pulwama is one such example. A bloody tragedy that was traded into being an act of war (by Pakistan) with India using the kind of language and actions which would boost the BJP in the impending elections.
Narasimha Rao had done similar in the 1990s, but with less success.
Post 2014, it would be fair to say that the national security infrastructure was underpinned by a desire not just to win but to tell the stories of its victories which upon closer examination were almost all sleight.
Surgical insight -- to where and with what? Balakot was what exactly in 2019 and who did what to who?
In this framework seeming to win is akin to winning.
And giving an electorate what they want ensures the stability of a nation State.
Brexit -- and its polarising legacy -- show us that seeming to give people what they want is actually not governance and instead atomises society into its most malignant particles.
It certainly does not make for peace and prosperity. Post 2014, Pakistan was made the perpetual enemy -- or interchangeably Muslims were by security agencies that fetched the evidence.
And this was at the cost of rising prosperity and deepening peace across India. The BJP had never been more powerful, but less in control over the economy, and health and the truth.
Does telling India's story require Pakistan to be framed as the perpetual villain?
Is real democracy a goal, or simply now the dressing beneath which authoritarianism festers, of a kind loved by Orban and Netanyahu and Trump, all of them liars even when in the dock.
How do you see RA&W's professional exchanges with America's CIA, Russia's FSB and Israel's Mossad?
Interestingly, the CIA gave ISI its paramilitary capability and then saw these paramilitaries recruit proxies and set fires in India's fault lines in Punjab and Kashmir etc.
The worst of the CIA's proclivities after 9/11 legitimised the worst of the ISI's behaviour -- extra judicial killings, abductions, rendering of prisoners and torture.
India was influenced by British intelligence and counter insurgency, key officers trained in programmes forged in Kenya and Northern Ireland.
It was then schooled also by Israel that shared hardware and software too, enabling the growth of India's intelligence grid that eavesdropped and tracked across Kashmir and elsewhere.
India took the lead in technical intelligence as a result, and possibly in analysis too.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com