Power Cycle in South Asia: Behaviour Pattern of Intelligence

“The contrast between the ISI and R&AW is glaring. While ISI is high profile, pro-active and highly field oriented, R&AW is low profile, reactive and largely desk bound. While ISI is both an active instrument and component of power play, the R&AW has absolutely no role in power projection. The ISI has controlled Governments or can stand independent of them. The R&AW on the other hand operates only within the limits prescribed for it by the political executive.”
_________________________________

by A. K.Verma

(March 24, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is a moot point whether formulations or propositions relating to the Power Cycle Theory can be made applicable to the nation States of South Asia. For one thing, the majority of the nation states in the region are less than 60 years or two generations old which means that there has been insufficient time to draw conclusions between critical point intervals and a state’s tendency to become involved in militarised interstate disputes. Besides, no nation state in the region has acquired a leadership status. The process of evolution of institutions in the area is also mired in uncertainties for some. The Power Cycle Theory can perhaps be examined in the inherent domestic context in a state like Pakistan. In that case intelligence behaviour which has had indeed a defining role in that country, merits scrutiny.

The key intelligence organisation in this state has been the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. It was set up in 1948 within the Defence Establishment to collect intelligence in the POK and Northern areas of J&K State when the results produced by the Pak IB, normally responsible for internal intelligence, were found to be deficient. Its jurisdiction expanded rapidly as the rulers of Pakistan needed a secret reliable agency for their nefarious designs. It had already been given a charter for collecting external intelligence. President Ayub Khan (1958-69) extended its domain to East Pakistan when the loyalties of the Bengali Officers of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau in East Pakistan became suspect in the eyes of the Govt leaders at the Centre who mostly hailed from West Pakistan. The revolt in Baluchistan (1972) in Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time saw its responsibilities extend to Baluchistan, as now the Baluch Officers of the IB became suspect. In 1975 Bhutto created an Internal Political Division within the ISI to keep track of his political opponents. This step gave ISI a foothold to enter the arena of domestic politics in Pakistan.

In due course the ISI turned into an important and often a crucial player in the internal political scenarios of Pakistan. President Zia, after his coup (1978) against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, gave the ISI wide operational authority to monitor the entire range of activities, political or otherwise, directed against him. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Shias in Pakistan, now considered to have come under the influence of Iran, also began to be watched by the ISI. Sunni organisations like the Sipah-e-Saheban became ISI’s instruments for combating Shia enthusiasm for Iran. Thus, the ISI blossomed further into a manipulator of political or religio-political entities.

Political intelligence gathering and field operations gradually built into the functional structure of the ISI. The fullest use was made of this phenomenon by the army leadership who controlled the ISI, as a countervailing force against the major political and religious groups, believed to be operating against the Central Establishment which almost invariably was Army dominated. When president Zia died in 1988 in a plane crash after 11 years in office, which had generated a strong public opinion against army rule, the army leadership thought it wise to let a civilian administration come to the centre stage. As it feared that Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would emerge at the top, the ISI was commissioned to weave a right wing coalition of parties to oppose the PPP. This meant a new role for the ISI, that of a political broker, and it engineered a new dispensation, named the Islamic Jamhooriat Ittehad (IJI). Though Benazir Bhutto could not be stopped from becoming the PM in 1989, eventually IJI, under Nawaz Sharif, was propelled into the ruling space in 1990. Thus, apart from becoming a political broker, ISI had also successfully become a Government wrecker. In no other country in South Asia, all influenced by the British administrative culture, do intelligence agencies get involved so ruthlessly with the political processes, because fundamentally intelligence and politicking are expected to operate in mutually exclusive zones.

Another big moment came for the ISI when an Islamic agenda was set up with western support in the 80s to neutralise the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and drive it out. Starting as a facilitator for the campaign, in no time it took over as the guardian and the mentor of the Islamic groups in action there. After the Soviets were expelled, it became the friend philosopher and guide of the Talibans who emerged later in power in Afghanistan.

The ISI’s deep involvement with Islamic parties and Mujahideen groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan affected ISI’s own ideological beliefs. The ISI is no less Islamisized now as any of the fanatic groups it promoted. There can be no doubt that its commitment to the Islamic cause, has frustrated USA’s efforts to arrest Osama Bin Laden, believed until recently to be hiding in Pakistan controlled areas. This is no secret from the US itself.

The ISI, has thus, played the role of a State within a State. “Where the only value is survival or security, the rise of a powerful intelligence service is inevitable. An intelligence set up, led to believe that it alone can safeguard the interest of the country, is a dangerous development. Such an agency turns into an instrument of coercion, intrigue and oppression,” and feels free to carve out its own functional or professional space, oblivious of any limiting parameters since no statute exists laying down such parameters. Unsurprisingly, ISI has become the most used tool to safeguard and enforce ideology and operate real or proxy wars in Afghanistan and J&K. The ISI now represents the essential ethos of the ruling establishment from whichever background it is drawn.

In contrast, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) in India, the agency charged with collecting foreign intelligence, has no authority for internal security work and suffers from inadequacies which characterise the legacy of a colonial culture, inherited from the British times, and from a debilitating attitude of indifference and neglect from its political masters and key bureaucratic functionaries. Although the R&AW is directly placed under the Prime Minister of the country, the degree and extent of the Prime Ministerial attention varies in proportion to his perception of the value, which can be derived by him from it.

In India, intelligence is often looked upon with suspicion, its machinery a malevolent instrument in the hands of the unscrupulous. People tend to keep away from it and its practitioners. The impression prevails that intelligence professionals dabble in black magic and black arts and are therefore best confined to the backrooms of the establishment. The modern and progressive countries of today provide for intelligence support for the policy process by encouraging intelligence participation in policy debates, effective communication between producers and policy makers over gaps in knowledge as well as constraints on intelligence capability to fill these gaps, and focusing intelligence analysis on policy issues or options under review. Such issues of collection, dissemination, co-ordination and analysis had come up for deep scrutiny during the first ever audit of intelligence in the country after the Kargil conflict of 1999. Many valuable decisions were then taken aimed at improving the quality of intelligence work in the country but it still is not apparent whether they and their follow up are adequate to meet the challenging pressures on India’s national security environment as the country moves into the 21st century.

The biggest challenge arises from the one point Pakistan agenda of bringing about the disintegration of India. Pan Islamic terrorism and the use of weapons of mass destruction by such terrorism constitute new possible instruments for achieving such objectives. Are our components of national security management in a position to give a fitting answer to such designs? No changes in the agency behaviour are observable to create confidence that Pakistan will be repaid in its own coin.

The contrast between the ISI and R&AW is glaring. While ISI is high profile, pro-active and highly field oriented, R&AW is low profile, reactive and largely desk bound. While ISI is both an active instrument and component of power play, the R&AW has absolutely no role in power projection. The ISI has controlled Governments or can stand independent of them. The R&AW on the other hand operates only within the limits prescribed for it by the political executive. ISI has an overwhelming influence on determination of foreign policy in key areas such as India, Afghanistan and employment of terrorism and is also the executing instrument for such policies. In India, R&AW is conceded no corresponding role and principal policies in this field are made perhaps without a full participation by R&AW.

There have been four wars between India and Pakistan (1947, 62, 71, 99), each imposed by Pakistan. Wars in future cannot be ruled out because of the conviction of the Pakistani military establishment that there has never been a peace process between the two countries, which makes a war unnecessary. There have been no significant critical point intervals in Pakistan when such an approach can be considered to have been given up. The graph of how India is to be dealt with has remained constant in Pakistan but the graph of ISI involvement has been a rising one, both in the domestic as well as external fields. In India, the graph of a militarist policy or the behaviour of intelligence has remained flat. The answer to the question how Indo Pak problems need to be dealt with perhaps needs to be found elsewhere and not in the power cycle theory.

- Sri Lanka Guardian