RAW realism

In the India-Pak joint mechanism on terrorism can RAW and ISI find a common ground?

Sanjay Kapoor  Havana

The first indication that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was thinking out of the box to make his meeting with Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf really “purposeful” was available during his press conference when he was flying from Frankfurt to Brasilia. After he had skilfully negotiated most of the questions related to the India-Brazil-South Africa summit and NAM, and his proposed meeting with the general, this reporter asked him a question. How did the Indian government reconcile the manifest contradiction in its perception about Pakistan, which is being seen as both a “source” as well as a “victim” of terror?

Singh admitted to this ambivalence and attributed it to what was happening in Pakistan. He said that as far as the past was concerned, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism was a fact of life. Also true in his reckoning was the fact that Pakistan was a “victim” of terrorism where groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) could act autonomously. At that moment, most journalists missed out on the implications of this new formulation that considered Pakistan's terror enterprise as a thing of the past and recognised the existence of a complex reality where the two countries were being targeted by the same autonomous terror organisations. The reason for recapitulating the sequence and circumstances of the prime minister's remarks on Pakistan as a “victim of terror” is important from the standpoint that he did not say it out of his own volition, but merely dilated on this issue when a question was raised in the press conference.

Back home in India, the importance of the prime minister's assertion was not lost on the BJP leaders and their phalanx of former intelligence officers  — people who have been feeding the party's machinery of phobia and hostility towards Pakistan. They knew that if such thinking could find space in the Indian foreign and defence policy then it could constitute a major paradigm shift and hurt the BJP. Promptly, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad criticised the prime minister for deigning to suggest that the devil was not evil.

During the seven-hour-long journey from Brasilia to Havana, it was possible to sense an optimism within the prime minister's foreign policy handlers that the meeting with Musharraf could kick-start the secretary-level talks. No one was really prepared for what was being planned out by the two sides. What was lending predictability to these moves was the presence of National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, who has been hawkish towards Pakistan. Not too long ago he had made a presentation to Sonia Gandhi and others about how Pakistan could be involved in the Mumbai blasts. He did not seem to be in any confusion then or later during the long journey from Delhi to Brasilia and finally to Havana that Pakistan was making trouble in India.

It was in the backdrop of such an understanding that Singh and Musharraf met in Havana in one of the protocol rooms of Havana's foreign ministry. This one-to-one meeting lasted for more than an hour. The meeting was preceded by another meeting between Narayanan and Pakistan's Tariq Aziz and between the two foreign ministry bosses (Shiv Shankar Menon was a foreign secretary-designate in Havana) that sorted out the glitches. Originally, the two leaders were to address a joint press conference at Singh's hotel, Melia Habana, but it was shifted to the NAM information centre. For long, there was just the Indian flag placed on the dais, till a Pakistani diplomat came rushing with it ahead of Musharraf. The joint statement was read out by Singh. Musharraf later said that he was restrained to speak to the press. Singh announced the formation of a joint terrorism mechanism, besides announcing the resumption of the secretary-level talks. The joint statement also lent urgency to the sorting out of the Siachen and Sir Creek issues.

The announcement of a joint terror mechanism stumped everyone. It constituted a major shift in policy and perception. How will it work? Who will be the referee? Singh, Narayanan and Menon made light of this joint mechanism and stated that this was only meant to put in place a system where India could share the evidence that it collects of terror acts in India as Pakistan had been asking to show them the proof of Pakistan's involvement in the Mumbai blasts in July, 2006.

There was little clarity about who would represent India or Pakistan. Will the ISI and RAW sit together? No answers available. Narayanan denied that intelligence would be shared. “Only information about terror investigation,” he said categorically. There was also silence whether the militant strikes in Jammu and Kashmir — long attributed by Pakistan as the manifestation of the Kashmiri freedom struggle — would be covered under the joint mechanism.

Be that as it may, this mechanism has far-reaching implications as it recognises the presence of non-State actors in these terror attacks. Intelligence sources claim that the mechanism was premised on the information that it was Al-Qaeda that was responsible for the Mumbai strikes. If that is the case then the joint mechanism lends substance to the thinking of the US administration that Pakistan-based Islamic outfits were an extension of Al-Qaeda, which were trying to undermine their global fight against terror.