Battle over intelligence

Published : Jan 06, 2001 00:00 IST

A drastic revamping of India's defence intelligence is on the cards, but the exercise could spell problems in the ranks of the three services.

COME February, officers of India's defence intelligence services will not, unlike most other government officials, have tax breaks on their mind. The Union government is due to table in Parliament in the Budget session the findings of the four task force s set up to restructure the security and intelligence apparatus. The findings, finalised in November, have been under intense scrutiny by a Group of Ministers (GoM), including Home Minister L.K. Advani, who is its Chairman, Defence Minister George Fernan des, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. The GoM's report could lead to a drastic transfiguration of the intelligence establishment, the most comprehensive one in decades.

The Task Forces were set up in response to the findings of the Kargil Review Committee led by defence analyst K. Subrahmanyam, which had been submitted in January 2000. The Review Committee had claimed that intelligence failures were central to bringing about the Kargil war and suggested a series of reforms. The four Task Forces were then set up to deal with issues concerning the intelligence apparatus, internal security, border management and management of defence. They were, led respectively by Girish Saxena, Jammu and Kashmir Governor and a long-term intelligence officer, N.N. Vohra and Dr. Madhav Godbole, former bureaucrats, and Arun Singh, former Union Minister of State for Defence and now an adviser to the Defence Minister.

Through their four-month-long proceedings, the task forces focussed on the 25 recommendations made by the KRC. The committee had declared that there were deficiencies in the collection, reporting, collation and assessment of intelligence. "There is no in stitutionalised system for coordination or objective-oriented interaction between the (intelligence) agencies and consumers at different levels," it declared. "A generalist administration culture would appear to permeate the intelligence field," it said. The Task Forces sought to address these problems and forwarded their findings to the GoM. National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar and National Security Council Secretary Satish Chander participated in the GoM's subseque nt meetings.

Just what the GoM has in mind is not clear, but the debate that will break out in February is certain to be acrimonious. For one, the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have made no secret of their dislike of the KRC Repo rt. Officials of the I.B. and RAW claim, with some justification, that more than sufficient intelligence on Pakistan's plans to initiate hostilities in the summer of 1999 was available. A myopic political leadership believed the nuclearisation of South A sia that officials suggested, and therefore chose to ignore these warnings. Through the meetings of the Task Forces, there were more than a few signs of feuding between the civilian-run intelligence establishment and the Army, much of which could become public in the course of debates during and after the Budget session.

WITHOUT dispute, the Saxena-led Task Force on revamping the intelligence network is certain to be the most controversial. Sources say its 244-page report has recommended the establishment of an integrated National Intelligence Board (NIB), headed by the National Security Adviser. The NIB will have as its members the I.B. Director, the head of the RAW, and the Director of Revenue Intelligence. The defence forces would be represented by the head of a new Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is to be s taffed by the Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence chiefs. While the Army's intelligence establishment, the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DGMI), is currently run by a three-star General, the smaller operations of the Air Force and Navy are under the command of a two-star officer in the rank of a Major-General.

Complaints by the Army, which is dependent heavily for cross-border intelligence on RAW and the I.B., lie at the heart of the new proposals, which would place the military at the top of the intelligence set-up. The Army claims that civilian intelligence outfits do not understand their needs and are not professionally equipped to gather military information. This claim is, predictably enough, rebutted by both RAW and I.B., which argue that the Army is just trying to find scapegoats for its pre-Kargil fai lures in 1999. As things stand, RAW is the principal provider of intelligence to the military, drawing up regular six-month threat projections with a 30-day warning of imminent hostilities. The defence services now want a monthly forecast, but their inte lligence wings now lack the resources, equipment and expertise to generate one.

None of these complaints is particularly new. Two years ago, a Navy analysis recommended instituting a separate DIA, which appears to be the precursor of the nascent body. The Navy's Strategic Review suggested that intelligence inputs at the strategic, o perational and tactical levels left "much to be desired". It declared that despite the existence of the Joint Intelligence Committee, established in the 1970s as a nodal agency to analyse strategic intelligence from various sources, there was "inadequate " interaction between it and the service headquarters. More recently, Army officials said that RAW was unable to assess the relevance of Pakistan acquiring large quantities of high-altitude equipment including boots, tents and snow scooters from European suppliers just months before the Kargil war.

Part of the problem also lies in historical tensions between the Army and RAW. Although RAW has a significant proportion of Army personnel on secondment, they often complain of being left out of the information loop by the organisation's highly-secretive cadre officials. In the early 1990s RAW had torpedoed the DGMI's proposal that it be given charge of tactical intelligence gathering 50 km beyond India's borders. RAW had been training and arming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the 1980s, even as the Army was trying to disarm the Tigers. For years, RAW also reportedly supplied arms to Karen rebels in Myanmar, arms which ultimately found their way to Indian separatist groups fighting the Army in the northeastern region. The web of deceit and intrigue blew open in 1998 after military operations led to the seizure of RAW-authorised weapons meant for rebels in Myanmar.

EMPIRES are at stake in the battle between the DGMI and RAW. The Army, for example, wants desperately to take control of the RAW's Aviation Research Centre (ARC), the principal agency for air-borne communications and electronic surveillance. Sources say the Army put forward formal claims before the Saxena Task Force, arguing that RAW had failed to use its not-inconsiderable resources to detect Pakistan's pre-Kargil build-up. RAW operatives denied these allegations stoutly, claiming that the ARC provided the Army better images and analysis than the DGMI, but that it chose to interpret Pakistani troop movement along the frontier and its stockpiling of arms and equipment as routine.

The ARC, which operates a mid-size fleet of specially equipped spy aircraft, provides the RAW aerial reconnaissance, communications and electronics intelligence as well as imagery analysis. These are then disseminated to other departments, including the military. The ARC is headed by an Air Vice-Marshal deputed on a near-permanent basis, and a large proportion of its staff are on secondment from the defence forces. The Army runs its own Defence Image Processing and Imagery Centre, which has the ability to obtain and process satellite images. But it also depends on RAW's technical resources, as also the signals intelligence capabilities of the I.B. for a complete technical picture of events across India's borders. The Air Force and the Navy, which use v aried aircraft including MiG 25s, HS-748s or AVROs and Dorniers to carry out surveillance, do not seem to have endorsed the Army's desire to take over the ARC.

The dispute over the ARC merely mirrors a broader set of conflict of resources. Should the DIA come into being, for example, there is certain to be pressure on the NIB to sanction foreign postings for the new military intelligence organisation. The DIA, sources told Frontline, would wish for dedicated military intelligence officials to be posted abroad, just as military attaches, along with I.B. and RAW personnel, now are. This could in the future lead to pressure over budgets, not to mention was teful duplication of resources. There are also likely to be firefights over allocations of unaudited intelligence funds. Should the DIA gain control over cross-border intelligence, that in turn would lead it to demand more assets for tasks currently perf ormed by the I.B. and RAW. "The answer that is being put out," notes one I.B. official wryly, "is just to create yet another organisation and yet another layer of bureaucracy."

RAW officials are bitter about the Army's posture. "The army just wants scapegoats to cover up its own failures," a senior RAW official said. Clearly, the DGMI would do well to address some of its own internal problems. It is well known within the intell igence community that the DGMI is staffed largely by officers with little or limited prospects of promotion. That, in turn, has meant the organisation has generally gathered intelligence of little value, and the shortage of resources as an alibi for gros s inefficiency. During the Kargil crisis, the DGMI spent weeks acting as the public relations arm of the Army, and subsequently, tried to silence publications critical of the conduct of the war. The then DGMI head, Lieutenant-General R.K. Sawhney, report edly lobbied the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to launch legal proceedings against those less than effusive in their praise of the conduct of the Kargil operations, including Frontline.

THE turf battle on intelligence could be mirrored by a similar war among the three services if the Arun Singh-led Task Force's proposals for the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) in a restructured MoD are implemented. Should the restructuring proposals be accepted by the GoM, the size of the existing service headquarters is likely to be reduced and it may be merged with the MoD. The single service chiefs would retain their operational commands and responsibilities, but joint operations would be handled by the CDS, a four-star General as in the case of the service chiefs. Chief of the Army Staff General Ved Prakash Malik had proposed the creation of the post of a CDS in the post-Pokhran-II situation. This, however, fuelled fears in the Air F orce and the Navy about the Army's hegemonic ambitions in the military establishment.

Arun Singh's report, which sources say runs to over 300 pages, was presented to Advani on September 30. It suggests that the CDS should have overall charge of the proposed strategic nuclear command, defence intelligence, air defence and service promotion s. Empowered with a fixed two-year tenure, the CDS would have under him a Vice Chief of Defence Staff and a secretariat comprising members from each service to coordinate responsibilities. The recommendations also reportedly include granting the services more financial authority, as well as freeing them further from the civilian-dominated MoD by allowing them to promote Brigadiers and their equivalents in the Air Force and the Navy without clearance from the powerful Committee on Cabinet Appointments, w hich process is often a time-consuming one.

Proposals for a restructured MoD under review by the GoM suggest that the CDS would act as an interface for enhanced coordination between the military, civilian and political establishments. At present, India has only one tri-services joint command, loca ted on the Andaman and Nicobar islands. But the Andaman Fortress, headed by a Vice-Admiral, is Navy-dominated. The Army has just one battalion based in Port Blair, while the Air Force operates a single Mi-8 helicopter squadron. The establishment of new t heatre commands has been rejected, given the service rivalries evident in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Following resistance from the Navy and the Air Force, the Task Force has also recommended that the post of CDS be held on a rotational basis by the three services. Given their doctrinal differences, that is unlikely to ensure an abiding peace among the services.

It is near-impossible to attempt a cogent critique of the Task Force reports until they are made public. It is evident, however, that the GoM has before it a series of bureaucratic answers to the problems that became evident during the Kargil war. "There is already a good field apparatus," suggests one Army officer, "the real problem is the complete unwillingness of officials at the top to listen to their own field operatives." None of the persistent problems between the services, or between the service s and the MoD, are likely to be resolved simply by setting up the NIB or the CDS. If and when the GoM gets down to implementing the recommendations of the Task Forces, the real problems faced by India's intelligence and defence establishments could be no closer to resolution than they have been at any time in the last three decades.

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