RAW: India's External Intelligence Agency

[Ali.009]

What You should know about RAW by Satish Chandra

I have written (for example in my article titled `India’s Technological and Economic Emancipation’ on sulekha.com) about the continued control of Indian intelligence agencies by British and later American intelligence agencies after 1947. India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was split off from the Intelligence Bureau which had continued after 1947 to be loyal to the British. Later the Americans supplanted the British and RAW functions as a branch of the CIA against India. As part of this relationship, CIA-RAW exercises extensive control over the Indian media and, among its various activities, engages in sabotage of indigenous research and development to keep India dependent on other countries for defence and other equipment (the nuclear deal is just another CIA-RAW operation of that kind, though of a scope and with consequences far graver than any such operation till now).

An example of this is a Bharat-Rakshak discussion thread about a black box installed by the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in the indigenously developed Arjun tank that documented the sabotage of its engines during trials by the Army; such sabotage has been the basis of the Army’s rejection, on RAW’s prompting, of the Arjun tank in favour of imports (as I said in the above article, India`s Army is the collaborator Army that helped the British rule India and, even after Independence, all its regiments and units have retained their former identities and regularly celebrate the anniversaries of their founding by the British).

A CIA-RAW operative, who serves as a moderator on Bharat-Rakshak and controls the forum, recently locked away this discussion thread so that numerous posts that had appeared documenting the sabotage of the Arjun tank were covered up. The major metropolitan newspapers, on most of which CIA-RAW exercises extensive control, have made no mention of the black box — which was like the flight data recorder in aircraft — installed by DRDO in Arjun tanks and the shocking findings about the sabotage even though a report on this was provided to them by the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). There is across the board sabotage by various means by CIA-RAW to keep India down technologically, economically and militarily. RAW’s grip over India is comparable to the old KGB’s grip over the Soviet Union, with the difference that whereas the KGB worked for the good of the Soviet Union, except toward the end, RAW has always worked for its imperialist paymasters. The role of politicians in governing India is insignificant compared to that of CIA-RAW but RAW has no place in the public’s consciousness or in discussions of public affairs in India.

An important point about the sabotage of Arjun is that people on the Arjun discussion thread on Bharat-Rakshak were aghast at the Army’s behavior and calling for Army brass being tried for treason, etc. but it will be a mistake to stop with the Army; it is RAW which is behind such sabotage not just of Arjun but of India’s interests, technological, economic and other, in a lot of areas. RAW has operatives in the Army at various levels but it is necessary to go to the root of the problem. RAW has to be destroyed and I have said that a brand new external intelligence agency should be formed with the help of military intelligence (RAW is supposed to be India’s external intelligence agency but at least 90% of its activities are within India, against India).
The destruction of RAW does not mean simply disbanding the agency and letting its employees continue their service to the CIA through other organisations, old or new, or in other roles. It is a mammoth agency with just the number of joint secretaries in the hundreds. It is India’s real `government’ and the politicians and civil servants largely obey its dictates. It puts the words in the mouths of cabinet ministers, etc., and determines most policies that are, erroneously, attributed to them. Any one, even a prime minister, whom CIA-RAW considers inconvenient is eliminated, if necessary by death, as I have said regarding the deaths of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and, later, Rajiv Gandhi in my article titled `How India`s economy can grow 30% per year`.

Over the past many years, I have shown how almost all terrorist incidents in India since 1983 have been carried out by outfits controlled by the CIA either directly or through intelligence agencies in the region, including India’s RAW. The Jain Commision of Inquiry, which went into Rajiv Gandhi’s death, acknowledged that the LTTE, which carried out his assassination, was created and controlled by RAW. It was an open secret that MQM, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, when it was known as a terrorist organization, was a creation of RAW. But the same is true of many terrorist outfits that operate in India. Another example of RAW’s multifarious activities, that I have described in press releases, articles and letters to the press since 1987, is its spreading heroin addiction and AIDS first in India’s Northeast then elsewhere to provide the United States with a population to use as guinea pigs for AIDS vaccine development, after the CIA was assigned the task of roping in a population for this purpose.

I have described how both Rajiv Gandhi (after being blackmailed with threats of exposure of the Bofors and HDW kickbacks by Swedish and German media at the CIA`s instigation) and Vajpayee cooperated in this. But terrorism, etc., are the least of its activities; I mentioned those only because the existence of terrorism is publicly known. Its sabotage of India’s research and development activities, of which the sabotage of the Arjun tank is just one example, is among the deadliest of its activities. The nuclear deal and its various aspects — replacing indigenous production of uranium and reactors with imports, the capping, rollback and elimination of India’s nuclear weapons program, media control and buying up politicians, scientists, etc. for this purpose — is just the largest and deadliest of such activities, leaving out the 24-hour satellite surveillance and all the crimes, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per year for the past 31 years, against India’s greatest scientist, described in my article titled `How India`s economy can grow 30% per year` on sulekha.com. The point is that all the tens of thousands of RAW employees are guilty of the gravest treason and deserve the death penalty. So do all those — politicians, civil servants and others — who are willing collaborators of CIA-RAW.

It is not just the Intelligence Bureau that continued to be loyal to the British after 1947. So did Nehru:”Starting about 10 hours before he tendered his resignation, Vajpayee, through the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, tried hard to induce the undersigned to issue a statement urging him to not resign (as I have said over the years, he, like Indira and Rajiv, has been a life-long paid agent of British and American intelligence agencies, with the Soviets providing some antidote which gave India a semblance of independence; Indira was made prime minister by the KGB’s assassination of Shastri; and as Nehru admitted to U.S. ambassador Galbraith, he was a life-long agent of the British). No more than about 80,000 British, women and children included, ruled India for centuries. Nothing that can be said about the stupidity and slavishness of Indians will be an exaggeration.” ( see my article `What can save India?’ on sulekha.com). In India traitors have been the rule rather than the exception. Anyone concerned with India’s defence has to take account of that.

Nuclear Supremacy for India over U.S.

Nuclear Supremacy for India over U.S.: Nuclear Supremacy For India Over US

 

[daredevil]

Pure BS. Don't carry it around.

 

[doobie86]

a bit far fetched maybe?

I cannot believe people can come up with such BS, like how they regularly claim the US is secretly run by Jews and the 'illuminati'. Come on people. Human beings just aren't that smart, a secret government/super amazing intelligence agency that fools the masses and controls everyone and everything.

Providing the US with guinea pigs for an AIDS vaccine...90% of RAW's activities are directed against India...Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were CIA agents...Bharat Rakshak is run by a RAW-CIA agent...

yeah and my grandmom can bench press 500 pounds with her super CIA formula, I swear really, 550 on a good day.

(we're talking about atleast a 9 foot fall here , come on you that's funny)

 

[fatman17]

GlobalSecurity.org

RAW: India's External Intelligence Agency

Author: Jayshree Bajoria

November 7, 2008

Introduction
The History of RAW
The Structure and Function of RAW
RAW's Role in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka
Covert Action in Afghanistan, Pakistan
Relations with the CIA
Weaknesses in RAW

Introduction
India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has long faced allegations of meddling in its neighbors' affairs. Founded in 1968, primarily to counter China's influence, over time it has shifted its focus to India's other traditional rival, Pakistan. RAW and Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have been engaged in covert operations against one other for over three decades. The ongoing dispute in Kashmir continues to fuel these clashes, but experts say Afghanistan may be emerging as the new battleground. Islamabad sees India's growing diplomatic initiatives in Afghanistan as a cover for RAW agents working to destabilize Pakistan. It accuses RAW of training and arming separatists in Pakistan's Balochistan Province along the Afghan border. RAW denies these charges, and in turn, accuses the ISI of the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

The History of RAW
Until 1968, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is responsible for India's internal intelligence, also handled external intelligence. But after India's miserable performance in a 1962 border war with China, the need for a separate external intelligence agency was clear. During that conflict, "our intelligence failed to detect Chinese build up for the attack," writes Maj. Gen. VK Singh, a retired army officer who did a stint in RAW, in his 2007 book, India's External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing.

As a result, India established a dedicated external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Founded mainly to focus on China and Pakistan, over the last forty years the organization has expanded its mandate and is credited with greatly increasing India's influence abroad. Experts say RAW's powers and its role in India's foreign policy have varied under different prime ministers. Successes that RAW claims it contributed to include:

the creation of Bangladesh in 1971;
India's growing influence in Afghanistan;
Sikkim's accession to India in the northeast in 1975;
the security of India's nuclear program;
the success of African liberation movements during the Cold War.
The first head of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kao, who headed the IB's external intelligence division, led the agency until he retired in 1977. Many experts, including officers who worked with him, credit him with RAW's initial successes: India's triumph in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and India's covert assistance to the African National Congress's anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. "To a large extent, it was Kao who raised RAW to the level of India's premier intelligence agency, with agents in virtually every major embassy and high commission," writes Singh. But the organization has been criticized for its lack of coordination with domestic intelligence and security agencies, weak analytical capabilities, and complete lack of transparency.

The Structure and Function of RAW
Not much is known regarding the structure of RAW, say experts. The organization started with 250 people and about $400,000. It has since expanded to several thousand personnel, but there is no clear estimate of its staffing or budget, as both remain secret. However, an estimate by the U.S.-based Federation of American Scientists suggests that in 2000, RAW had about eight to ten thousand agents and a budget that experts place at $145 million. Unlike the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Britain's MI6, RAW reports directly to the prime minister instead of the Ministry of Defense. The chief of RAW is designated secretary (research) in the Cabinet Secretariat, which is part of the prime minister's office. Some officers of RAW are members of a specialized service, the Research and Analysis Service, but several officers also serve on deputation from other services such as the Indian Police Service.

RAW had two priorities after its formation, writes B. Raman, a former RAW official, in the 2007 book ,The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. The organization worked to strengthen its capability for intelligence gathering on Pakistan and China and for covert action in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Some experts say that RAW's efforts in East Pakistan, which was created from the partition of the Indian state of Bengal and completely separated from the rest of Pakistan, was aimed at fomenting independence sentiment. Over time, RAW's objectives have broadened to include:

Monitoring the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on India's national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy.
Seeking the control and limitation of the supply of military hardware to Pakistan, mostly from European countries, the United States, and China.
Experts disagree on the amount of influence RAW asserts on India's foreign policy. Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University, says the agency has no influence on foreign policy. However, Dipankar Banerjee, a retired army official and current director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a New Delhi-based think tank, says the head of RAW has direct access to the head of state, to whom he provides input and analysis.

From the early days, RAW had a secret liaison relationship with the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency. The main purpose was to benefit from Israel's knowledge of West Asia and North Africa, and to learn from its counterterrorism techniques, say experts.

RAW's Role in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka
RAW played a significant role in the formation of Bangladesh along with the Indian army and other Indian security and intelligence agencies. Besides providing intelligence to policymakers and the army, RAW trained and armed Mukti Bahini, a group of East Pakistanis fighting for the separate state of Bangladesh. Analysts say that RAW also facilitated the northeastern state of Sikkim's accession to India in 1975, and provided military assistance to groups hostile to the pro-China regime in Myanmar, such as the Kachin Independence Army.

But it was the support for the Tamil separatist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, that brought RAW much criticism from human rights organizations. RAW helped to train and arm the LTTE in the 1970s, but after the group's terrorist activities grew in the 1980s-including its alliances with separatist groups in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu-RAW withdrew this support. In 1987, New Delhi made a pact with the Sri Lankan government to send peacekeeping troops to the island and Indian forces ended up fighting the group RAW had armed. In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister of India at the time of the peacekeeping force deployment, was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber.

Covert Action in Afghanistan, Pakistan
Since its inception in 1968, RAW has had a close liaison relationship with KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency, due to the intelligence it has provided RAW on Pakistan. This relationship was further strengthened in the early 1980s when the foundation was laid for a trilateral cooperation involving the RAW, KHAD, and the Soviet KGB. Raman says RAW valued KHAD's cooperation for monitoring the activities of Sikh militants in Pakistan's tribal areas. Sikhs in the Indian state of Punjab were demanding an independent state of Khalistan. According to Raman, Pakistan's ISI set up clandestine camps for training and arming Khalistani recruits in Pakistan's Punjab Province and North West Frontier Province. During this time, the ISI received large sums from Saudi Arabia and the CIA for arming the Afghan mujahadeen against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. "The ISI diverted part of these funds and arms and ammunition to the Khalistani terrorists," alleges Raman.

In retaliation, in the mid-1980s, RAW set up two covert groups of its own, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan (Newsline), writes Pakistani military expert Ayesha Siddiqa. Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a "low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore" was carried out. This forced the head of ISI to meet his counterpart in RAW and agree on the rules of engagement as far as Punjab was concerned, writes Siddiqa. The negotiation was brokered by then-Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. "It was agreed that Pakistan would not carry out activities in the Punjab as long as RAW refrained from creating mayhem and violence inside Pakistan," Siddiqa writes.

In the past, Pakistan also accused RAW of supporting Sindhi nationalists demanding a separate state, as well as Seraikis calling for a partition of Pakistan's Punjab to create a separate Seraiki state. India denies these charges. However, experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan's Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan. But some experts say India no longer does this. As this Backgrounder explains, Pakistan is suspicious of India's influence in Afghanistan, which it views as a threat to its own interests in the region. Experts say although it is very likely that India has active intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, it is difficult to say whether it is also involved in covert operations.

Relations with the CIA
The CIA assisted in the creation of RAW, says South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution. However, India's intelligence relations with the CIA started even before the existence of RAW, note experts. After India's war with China in 1962, CIA instructors trained Establishment 22, a "covert organisation raised from among Tibetan refugees in India, to execute deep-penetration terror operations in China," writes Swami.

But the CIA's operations with the ISI to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s made RAW very wary. However, it did not stop RAW from seeking the CIA's assistance in counterterrorism training. Raman writes: "One had one more bizarre example of how international intelligence cooperation works." The CIA trained the officers of the ISI in the use of terrorism against an adversary, and at the same time, he writes, it trained RAW and IB officers "in some of the techniques of countering that terrorism." India's intelligence agencies also feel the lack of an equal relationship with the CIA, say experts. Swami says RAW's grievance is that there is little information they get on Pakistan from the United States; however, Washington expects New Delhi to provide it with intelligence on Afghanistan.

In 1997, Prime Minister I.K. Gujral shut down both the CITs aimed at Pakistan on moral grounds. Before Gujral, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had ended RAW's eastern operations in the early 1990s, as part of his efforts to build bridges with China and Myanmar, say analysts.

Successive RAW leaders attempted to gain fresh authorization for deterrent covert operations, but without success, says Swami. Siddiqa writes: "The Indian government probably realized that encouraging covert warfare would not only destabilize bilateral relations but was also dangerous for the peace and stability of the entire region."

Weaknesses in RAW
The intrusion of Pakistan-backed armed forces into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (GlobalSecurity) in 1999 prompted questions about RAW's efficacy. Some analysts saw the conflict as an intelligence failure. However, RAW officials argued they had provided the intelligence but political leadership had failed to act upon it. The Indian government constituted a committee to look into the reasons for the failure and recommend remedial measures. The report of the Kargil review committee was then examined by a group of ministers, established in 2000. The group recommended a formal written charter and pointed out lack of coordination and communication within various intelligence agencies.

Following the review, a new organization was set up-the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO)-modeled on the U.S. National Security Agency-which would be the repository of the nation's technical intelligence-spy satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and spy planes. The government also decided to create a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), whose head would be the adviser to the Chief of Staffs Committee and the defense minister. The DIA was empowered to conduct transborder operations.

However, the shakeup of the intelligence apparatus has not removed the problems that persisted, especially relating to the overlap of agency activities, say experts. Earlier, RAW was the only organization permitted to conduct espionage operations abroad. Now both the IB and DIA have also been given the authority to conduct such operations, writes Singh.

There have also been occasional media reports of penetration inside RAW by other agencies, in particular the CIA. Swami writes that RAW is exceptional amongst major spy agencies in maintaining no permanent distinction (Hindu) between covert operatives who execute secret tasks, and personnel who must liaise with services such as the CIA or public bodies, such as analysts and area specialists. "As a result, personnel with sensitive operational information are exposed to potentially compromising contacts," he writes.

CFR.org.