What denial mode? I mention the role and status of the ISI only to make the point that it takes time and money to build an effective intelligence organisation, and while one had it, the other did not. The funding of RAW in the early days is public information; nobody apparently took measures to conceal it. Both the paucity of personnel and the shortage of funds, or rather the measured application of funds to research and to gathering of human intelligence rather than to clandestine hostile operations, are on record. You must not paste your own emotions over the narration of others and seek to find a motive.
Join the dots. There was no one to do that kind of planning. That is what I have been trying to explain again and again. Nor was the Indian deep state committed to perpetual war against the other country, the way the Pakistan deep state has been (even according to your own statement above).
Yes, I am putting activities like
support to the Bangladesh insurgency outside the ambit of intelligence operations, because - again, I repeat - there was no funded and manned operation to undertake an enterprise of that size and complexity to a plan. BLF was not in the picture; I am referring to a specific incident, and you have introduced the BLF for your convenience.
You were not there; I was there, a college student not aware of the inner workings at all levels, but aware of the following:
- The massive and unforeseen influx (witness the shock and horror of the world at the influx of Rohingyas, although their numbers are less than 10% of those of the Bangladesh refugees, some 46 years ago.
- The creation of groups of resistance within Bangladesh, in the heart of the erstwhile East Pakistan, at a speed that could not have been achieved by an outside agency at all; imagine the ISI taking over a border state and forming a provisional government, an army high command and a method for working with Pakistan within a month, and visualise for yourself the difficulty of such an operation for a small group of seconded policemen working in New Delhi with antiquated equipment and facilities.
- The visibility of the police and the civil administration in the refugee camps, and the complete invisibility of even the Indian Army in those early days. The BSF existed, having been formed soon after 1965, but was overwhelmed, and just gave way. Their counterpart BDR came over to the rebellion within hours of Operation Searchlight, and reached out to the BSF for help.
- The complete absence of any but diplomats in the activities relating to the residual links with Pakistan. Your Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta was restricted to the ground floor of a safe house under the supervision of a career diplomat, and the local police was used only for watch and ward duties, and to ensure that he did no more than receive his daily communication from the High Commissioner in New Delhi.
- The anxiety of the local police administration when it seemed that no action was forthcoming from the GoI, in the face of this disaster.
- The complete absorption and silence from the military, and their refusal to discuss the matter at all, which should have given us the clue, but instead, at a time of great tension, seemed to indicate their complete abdication of any responsibility.
- The absence of any kind of unified reaction to the crisis in the early months, that would have been evident if there had been any kind of even rudimentary intelligence structure and process to deal with it.
These made it clear then and continues to make it clear now that India was caught by surprise at these developments, responded initially to cope with the influx (all border states were affected, from Tripura to Assam to Meghalaya to West Bengal, although the main weight fell on Tripura and on West Bengal, speaking from memory and surmise rather than examining records), sought to make arrangements for the various elements among the rebellion trying to come together without any plan or previous conspiracy to guide them, and then a flurry of diplomatic activity trying to convince the world to do something, fruitless in the face of an obstinate and cynical US response, led by that ghoul, the butcher of Cambodia, Henry Kissinger.
Please come to this discussion with clean hands and a clean mind.
First, the reference to Pakistan complicity in the Mizo uprising was intended to point to a far greater degree of preparedness on the Pakistani side, compared to the disarray on the Indian side.
Second, I never admitted nor implied any support as a retaliatory measure. Your country has been screaming to the high heavens on account of 2.5 million Afghan refugees (1.5 million registered refugees, another 1 million unregistered). We received 10 million. Your refugees came in two phases separated by years, not months; ours came in a matter of weeks. We did not plan to support anyone or anything; with 10 million threatening to swamp our country in four different states, with the lively possibility of a human wave sweeping over a Calcutta still reeling under the refugee impact of earlier waves, some of whom were transplanted, very reluctantly, to areas now in Chhatisgarh, some to the extreme south of the state in the Sundarbans, and some taking refuge in the cities, including families living under the overhang of railway platforms, literally inches from the trains going past, we tried to cope. We were not thinking about the downfall of Pakistan, we were looking at the downfall of India.
Please do not mistake the politeness with which I am wording my narrative as tacit agreement with your interpretations. Please take the literal sense and refrain from parsing it to suit your counter-narrative.
No, not until 2014, and that too without the regimentation that marks this activity in a state-dominated media industry in your country.
There is NO country-wide agenda, except, naturally, in the minds of those used to such an agenda, and used to writing to such an agenda. I am still familiar with figures and personalities in the media, familiar in the sense of being in touch. Try not to bring your consciousness of things as they are for you to understand things as they are for us.
There has been considerable activity in the social media, and I will readily concede that. It is well known that there are organised and tightly regimented party workers for the right wing who sit and monitor the social media, Twitter being a favourite, Facebook following close behind, and it is also well known, if nothing else, through exposures on PDF itself, by Indians and some Pakistanis, of their agenda full of dirty tricks and deliberate distortion of news, and copious supplies of misinformation.
There has also been a wave of crony capitalist purchases of electronic media and print media, and a reluctance in the print media to oppose the government and its decidedly slanted views. That does not amount to a centralised agenda, unless you imagine someone within the ruling party liaising with media channels friendly with them, or with personalities close to them - Arnab Goswami, with his family affiliations with that party, and his upper-caste Assamese hatred of the Muslim, being a prime example - but certainly not like the influence that ISI maintains over your country's media. You may have noticed from that example itself that even in a country with complete intolerance of the views of others on matters religious, or political, or relating to international relations, and even with a powerful intelligence agency used to having its way, if not by itself then through pressure from the Army, it is not possible to keep your own media under the tight control that you imply is maintained on Indian media.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot have Pakistan and the ISI unified and thinking as one mind and beating as one heart, and have a particular state of affairs there, and have India and RAW not even in the same room, but possessed of an agenda that its media follows slavishly.
We can agree on this to this extent and no more: the Indian Prime Minister has been talking about Balochistan and the Baloch, and the media are echoing him, especially the social media, and not in the sequence that you mention. A narrative has been presented; whether it is a false narrative or not is moot, and not even every Pakistani would agree with you. This is very much according to a decision that on the international stage, on international platforms, India should present the iniquity of Pakistani actions on its own citizens, making it clear that she was not coming to a discussion on human rights and criticising another country with clean hands.
That DOES NOT mean that there is an iceberg of covert activity hidden under such acts. It is this that I refuted, and it is this airy surmise that I continue to reject. There is nothing, absolutely nothing to support such a visualisation except your need to prove that there is villainy at work. If you wish to prove it, please use evidence; not the pleasing conclusions of your thought processes.
Are you telling me that the Northern Alliance was linked to Russia?
If I might disentangle this very tangled skein, do I understand that you are saying the following?
- India had gained strategic depth due to its support of the Northern Alliance against the Russians.
- India lost this strategic depth on the advent of the Taliban, after the Russians had been thrown out, and during a period of Pak-American collaboration on building up the Taliban.
- India sought to regain it by promoting the cause of the turned-around Americans and their development of ties with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Ah....so what? We never armed anyone in Afghanistan. Not even in the face of continued and almost desperate arming and supporting violent movements against a legitimate Afghan government. We did so then, under Karzai, and we continue to do so. I don't see what your grounds for resentment are. If you wanted to help Afghanistan and provide electric power, roads and schools and educational establishments and training, nobody stopped you. Why sit and burn with impotent envy at some who are doing the right thing?
What link? We openly supported the anti-Taliban Afghans then, and we openly support them today. We have done everything possible to support pro-democracy anti-communal forces. We did that not by sheltering them in our borderlands, as you did with your own blood-stained band of Afghan terrorists; we did that not by arming them to the teeth; we did that without pumping in money from the sources of finance that supported such terrorists. We did that by building roads, by building power stations and by training.
How do you convert this to a dark and foul story of undercover promotion of terror in Pakistan?
You say the rest is history, and yourself neglect history. India has always had excellent relations with Afghanistan, until the unfortunate coup d'etat of Sardar Daud. India had kept silent during the coup against him, and the subsequent coup bringing the Afghan nation under Soviet Russia, as well as the Soviet incursion, a silence that cost us a huge loss of goodwill among the western powers, especially those that adopted Kissinger's totally cynical manipulation of religion and religious feeling as an instrument of state policy. Once the Taliban were defeated, and there was space for democracy, we extended our support to the Afghans, during a period when a mild, peace-seeking, very transparent and clear Prime Minister and administration.
What exactly do you build out of this?
What is the meaning of your dark and menacing phrases: 'india's role in "political" support of Afghanistan', 'their current government which speaks the same language Indians speak', 'don't say that's also "un-planned strategy', 'It's just for the love of Afghans india's foot print is increasing in Afghanistan and it have no connection with Pakistan'.
This makes no sense whatsoever, except to deranged believers in a mysterious conspiracy that is taking place.
- 'india's (sic) role in "political" support of Afghanistan': Anything wrong with political support of democracy? Or with spending on development? Or with providing training to civilian artisans? If you want to allege that there is military training, or supply of arms, or a military presence even, over and beyond what is seemly for two countries to maintain in each other's territories, please say so.
- 'their current government which speaks the same language Indians speak': Is that where the heart-burn is? All you have to do is to abandon your policy of shelter, arming and funding terrorists opposed to the Afghan government, and go to them, without the ISI being involved, and offering to help them re-build their country. They have made many overtures; all have been rejected by ISI (=Army(=Government of Pakistan)). Why don't you try the natural way, instead of trying to manipulate things to your advantage?
- 'don't say that's also "un-planned strategy': What strategy is needed here? Unlike Pakistan, we are not trying to take over the country, or run its government and decide its policies from behind the throne. It is normal to extend help; it is not normal to seek to overthrow a government using your own submissive faction, while all the time expressing frustration that other, more normal methods are successful.
- 'it's just for the love of Afghans india's (sic) foot print is increasing in Afghanistan and it have no connection with Pakistan': And the problem with that is? Just because you as a nation hate Afghans - people writing in PDF will illustrate that point - and want nothing more and nothing less than for a pro-Pakistani government acting as tools of your deep state doesn't mean that others have to think the same way. Why envy us? And why, when the whole world frowns at your slightly lunatic activity, blame us for the anger that you and your deeds have aroused?
I have tried to show you above why trying to do coercive and manipulative things to a neighbouring state, either to your east or to your west, is unlikely to get you the goodwill of those neighbours. That is simple; the complicated schemes and models of the world's workings that are being presented are of no use.
... which turned out to be final.
