Indian Investigative Reporter Exposes RAW's Covert Ops Against Neighbors

In a new book titled "RAW: A History of India’s Covert Operations", Indian investigative journalist Yatish Yadav has essentially confirmed some of what India's neighbors have suspected for a long time. Yadav has added to the revelations contained in a earlier book titled "Mission R&AW" written by ex Indian spy RK Yadav.

Indian RAW in Afghanistan:

Yatish Yadav has revealed that Indian intelligence recruited three top Afghan leaders, including Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, in 1990s. Two other leaders, not named by Yadav, are still active in Afghan politics. The Americans knew about RAW's activities in Afghanistan.  Although it is not clearly stated in the book, it appears that Indian intelligence continues to have its assets at the highest levels of the government in Kabul. One of India's Afghan assets that is still active but not been named is most likely Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's current "Chief Executive". Abdullah has close ties with New Delhi. Members of his immediate family live in India.

Here's an excerpt of the book about Afghanistan:

"R&AW also created immense goodwill in many countries; it helped a top Afghan politician and former warlord to escape the Taliban and even got his relative a job in Turkey. R&AW spooks relentlessly bribed, cajoled and blackmailed India’s enemies".

RAW Vs Pakistan:

Yatish Yadav confirms what is already well known: India had carved Bangladesh out of East Pakistan.  Indian intelligence continued its covert actions in Bangladesh after its creation. Here's an excerpt of the book, as published in the Indian media:

"Set in the turbulent ’70s to the ’90s, R&AW spooks toppled dictators like General Ershad in Bangladesh and Fiji’s Colonel Rabuka by organising public protests and trading loyalties of people in their inner circles respectively.

Although the book makes no reference to it, Indian agent Kulbhushan Jhadav's arrest in Balochistan has confirmed that  RAW agents, based in Afghanistan and Iran, are actively carrying out violent covert ops in Pakistan.

There are 4,000 Indians working in Chabahar, Iran, according to Indian journalist Karan Thapar. Some of them, like Kulbhushan Jadhav, work undercover for Indian intelligence agency RAW.  It is hard to believe that the Iranian intelligence is not aware of the presence of undercover Indian agents among the 4,000 Indians working in Chabahar. After all, Jadhav had two passports, one in his own name and another in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel. The Indian Express and Asian Age, both Indian publications, suggest that Jadhav had links with Uzair Baloch who has been convicted by for working for the Iranian intelligence in Pakistan.  Kulbhushan Jadhav has confessed to orchestrating deadly terror attacks in Balochistan and Karachi. He has said that India's RAW funneled money through Indian consulates in Jalalabad, Kandhar (Afghanistan) and  Zahidan (Iran) to BLA and TTP for terror attacks in Balochistan and Karachi. Targets of terror attacks included people, mosques, roads, port and Balochistan's Hazara Shia community.

RAW in Sri Lanka:

The book claims that RAW fueled the conflict in Sri Lanka by playing both sides. Here's an excerpt:

"In Sri Lanka, R&AW played a double game, helping the Sri Lankan Army to destroy the LTTE while protecting Indian assets against the Tigers and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s hit men. According to a R&AW spymaster in Colombo, MEA bungled and allowed the Chinese to get a foothold in the island. Avinash Sinha arrived at Colombo Fort Café on the morning of 3 December 2005, looking forward to what he had been told was the best Sri Lankan breakfast in the city. Avinash, a R&AW operative, perhaps a few autumns younger than Kosala Ratnayake, had returned to Colombo that October after three years. He had recruited Kosala, a top functionary in the Sri Lankan government, over several wet evenings in January 2002. That was when the Sri Lankan regime had been seriously engaging with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for peace talks".

Summary:

Indian investigative reporter Yatish Yadav's "RAW: A History of India’s Covert Operations" confirms what many of India's neighbors and long known and experienced: Indian intelligence agency RAW sabotages and subverts governments through its proxies and its assets in neighboring countries. India promotes and exacerbates local grievances to overthrow governments and break up nations. Yatish Yadav says "R&AW spooks relentlessly bribed, cajoled and blackmailed India’s enemies".

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  • Riaz Haq

    Why India must restructure RAW, recruit agents from different backgrounds
    Like the US, India should have a wall of honour for agents who sacrifice their lives to ensure there is no war with Pakistan, writes Jay Desai.

    https://theprint.in/yourturn/subscriberwrites-why-india-must-restru...

    So now it is high time that the RAW starts recruiting people from different educational backgrounds. This will increase efficiency in a great manner which is badly needed. Another problem is that RAW has no website of its own. For example, the CIA has its own website. The CIA website includes the literature relevant to a scholar. On the CIA’s website, one book is notable, called ‘The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives’. It is a book by the journalist Ted Gup.

    The book basically talks about these CIA operatives who died in action while defending the interests of the USA. In CIA headquarters at Virginia, there exists a wall of honour, a marble wall with black stars engraved, where each represents a fallen CIA agent and in a bullet proof glass case is kept ‘the book of honor’.

    The book does consist of a list for each year. It is the year on which a CIA officer fell, where more than 50% cases of anonymous stars are present to conceal identity. There was an Indian national, Ravindra Kaushik, RAW agent in Pakistan, who penetrated the Pakistani Army and became a Major, during years of service to the nation; he saved the lives of 20,000 Indian soldiers. In 1983, he was caught and subsequently incarcerated. He died at a Pakistani jail in November 2001.

    Why should not there be something in India similar to a wall of honour for such people who became martyrs? After all, these individuals make the supreme sacrifice acting as India’s first line of defence to ensure no war takes place between India and Pakistan. True, Kaushik was only a source and not an employee of the RAW. But that should not be the criteria by indicating that we will never acknowledge fallen sources like him (including many sources similar to Kaushik). Arthashastra does recommend that a spy should be rewarded for his or her service to the nation.

    RAW has increased India’s influence across the world. The birth of Bangladesh from East Pakistan, growing influence inside Afghanistan, adding Sikkim in 1975 to the Indian State, security of the Indian programme on nuclear weapons, success of African liberation movement have all been the big success stories of RAW. On 22 October 2020, the RAW chief made a visit to Nepal. He arrived on a special aircraft of the Indian Air Force and met then-PM K.P. Sharma Oli as well as the avowed opposition Communist leader, former PM Baburam Bhattarai.

    In India’s strategic imagination, Nepal is very important. Nepal, with the high Himalayas between India and China, is critical for India to get right as part of the neighborhood. India-Nepal relations are through open borders and from a security perspective it should never be forgotten that the Pakistanis used Kathmandu to hijack the Indian commercial flight IC814. So this plane ultimately landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan; Government’s hard time.

    So a stable, peaceful Nepal is vital which is not vulnerable to external forces that are inimical to Indian interest, for example China. If Nepal is unstable, its institutions are weak, then it has every possibility of becoming a fertile ground for external forces.

  • Riaz Haq

    Fidato
    @tequieremos

    In 1980, India and Israel collaborated a joint attack against Pakistan's nuclear plant in Kahuta. The nuclear program was still in the embryonic state. Plus there were no F-16 aircrafts with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to counter such a strike. A squadron of Israeli aircraft...


    https://twitter.com/tequieremos/status/1447977997177442310?s=20


    https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/48288/did-india-plan-t...


    The timing of Khan’s outpourings could not have been worse. Reagan was due in Beijing. The aid package to Pakistan was up for renewal on Capitol Hill. In New Delhi, too, there was anger at Khan and at the US. The talk was that Washington had betrayed India’s secret plans to strike at Pakistan’s nuclear project. K. Subrahmanyam, chairman of India’s joint intelligence committee, picked over the Khan interviews. “We knew we were being challenged by Islamabad,” Subrahmanyam recalled. “Our intelligence people also had evidence of the Pakistan air force increasing their levels of readiness, further proof, if any more were needed, that our covert intentions to hit Kahuta were not secret any more.”

    But what made India’s joint intelligence committee livid was that it had been sitting on the plan to strike KRL for a year. A committee of soldiers and intelligence people had first come together to discuss what became known as “the Osirak contingency” in 1981, after Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji had published his Pakistan war-gaming manual. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi had consented and placed Air Marshal Dilbagh Singh, chief of air staff, in charge of the operation. He had ordered Indian Air Force Jaguar squadrons to practice low-level flying, simulating runs with 2,000-lb bombs.

    In February 1983, with the strike plan at an advanced stage, Indian military officials had travelled secretly to Israel, which had a common interest in eliminating Khan, to buy electronic warfare equipment to neutralize Kahuta’s air defenses. On 25 February 1983, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi had accused Pakistan of “covertly attempting to make nuclear weapons,” and three days later, Raja Ramanna, director of India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center, had revealed that India, too, was developing a uranium enrichment facility. Suspecting something was brewing, the ISI sent a message to their Indian intelligence counterparts in RAW that autumn, and as a result Munir Ahmed Khan of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission met Dr. Ramanna at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna. He warned Ramanna that if India were to strike at Kahuta, Pakistan would hit India’s nuclear facilities at Trombay. It lay downwind from the teeming Indian city of Mumbai and an attack would result in the release of “massive amounts of radiation to a large populated area, causing a disaster.”


    — Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark: "Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the global nuclear weapons conspiracy", Walker Books, 2010.

  • Riaz Haq

    Fidato
    @tequieremos

    In 1980, India and Israel collaborated a joint attack against Pakistan's nuclear plant in Kahuta. The nuclear program was still in the embryonic state. Plus there were no F-16 aircrafts with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to counter such a strike. A squadron of Israeli aircraft...


    https://twitter.com/tequieremos/status/1447977997177442310?s=20


    https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/48288/did-india-plan-t...

    ----------

    New Delhi paused. Israel stepped in, suggesting that it carry out the raid, using India’s airbase at Jamnagar to launch Israeli air force jets and a second base in northern India to refuel. A senior Israeli analyst close to the operation recalled that the plan was to enter Pakistan beneath the radar, with jets tracking the line of the Himalayas through Kashmir. As Reagan’s staff finalized arrangements for the president’s visit to China in March 1984, prime minister Indira Gandhi signed off the Israeli-led operation, bringing India, Pakistan and Israel to within a hair’s breadth of a nuclear conflagration. It was at this point that the CIA tipped off President Zia, hoping the chain reaction would defuse the situation. And after Khan’s outbursts in the Pakistani newspapers, India and Israel had backed off. But these were high-stakes games, played between a known nuclear nation—India—and another—Pakistan—that Reagan continued to insist had no capability, the US deception bringing the region even further towards an apocalyptic conflagration.

    Soon afterwards, Khan was at it again. This time sticking to a tight script, he contacted the Daily Jang and The Muslim. “Pakistan can set up several nuclear centers of the Kahuta pattern,” he bragged, knowing that every one of his words was being read over the border. “In the event of the destruction of the Kahuta plant, more than one such plant can be set up in Pakistan.” To make things absolutely clear, Pakistan’s ambassador in New Delhi approached the Indian foreign office, promising that they would make it rain fire if India went ahead.

    Indira Gandhi had her resolve to do something about Kahuta rekindled in March 1984, when, just weeks after the Chinese president Li Xiannian visited Pakistan and stated that China endorsed a nuclear weapons-free South Asia, the Indian foreign ministry learned that China appeared to have detonated a nuclear-capable device on behalf of Pakistan at its test site at Lop Nor, an event witnessed by Pakistan’s foreign minister.30 In Washington, the true nature of the China–Pakistan nuclear pact also began to surface. Len Weiss, Senator Glenn’s staffer, recalled the congressional backlash as newspaper stories from the UK reached Washington claiming that US and Western intelligence had concluded that China had passed its bomb designs to Pakistan. “This news for us came from nowhere and its consequences were obvious. It was no longer just inexperienced Pakistan striving for a bomb and the US turning a blind eye. It was Pakistan backed by a sophisticated and proven nuclear power with the US burying the bad news from elected officials.”
    — Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark: "Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the global nuclear weapons conspiracy", Walker Books, 2010.