Generally Unfair

The perennial debate over the functioning of theintelligence agencies between the Army and the  agencies has once againbeen revived following the publication by Gen. V.P.Malik, who was the Chief ofthe Army Staff (COAS) at the time of the Kargil conflict in 1999, of his memoirstitled, Kargil: From Surprise To Victory.

He states that  Pakistan's successful intrusions reflected a majordeficiency in our system of collecting, reporting, collating and assessingintelligence. He  throws stones at the agencies from his safe sanctuary ofretirement, hoping that people would have by now forgotten his sins ofcommission and omission. The book is about how despite being, according to him,let down by the intelligence agencies, he and the army, operating under hisleadership, retrieved the honour of India and ejected the Pakistani intrudersfrom the mountain heights they had occupied.

As I read his claim and his account of his great leadership of the war asprojected by him, my mind went back to December 1971 when I was a young officerin the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligenceagency, then headed with great distinction by the late R.N. Kao. Kao was professional to his finger tips and  known for his operational brillianceand personal humility and a readiness to give credit where it is due and toaccept the inadequacies of the organisation, which he headed for nine years.

After the brilliant win of the Indian Army against its Pakistani counterpart in1971, General (he was not yet a Field Marshal) Sam Manekshaw wrote a very warmletter to Kao, expressing his appreciation of what he described as the brilliantwork done by the R&AW in the months preceding and during the war. Kao markedthe letter to Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister and the political architectof the victory, for perusal.

The letter came back from her with the  remark : "The General isgenerous in his praise because he won the war". Left delicately unsaid wasthe  truism that the army would have been the first to put the blame on theintelligence agencies had it lost the war. The Indian army is yet to produce aleader, who does not look for scapegoats when faced with failure.  And whateasier scapegoats than the intelligence agencies! One cannot blame General Malikfor not being an exception to this rule.

Even during the 1971 war, while the Indian Army covered itself with glory in theEastern sector, it did not do that well on the Western sector. Its seniorofficers responsible for the Western sector shifted the blame for their lack-lustreperformance  to the intelligence agencies.

Why was the Indian Army taken by surprise in the Kargilheights? What was the surprise about? How did it happen? The Army was in thehabit of withdrawing from the LOC in the Kargil area every winter and returningto its posts after the onset of spring. Thus, the LOC used to remain unprotectedthroughout the winter. Pakistan took advantage of this after General PervezMusharraf became the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) in October,1998. During thewinter of 1998-99, he sent his troops across the LOC and occupied the heightsleft unguarded by the Indian Army.

To put it in simple words, General Malik's contention is that the Indianintelligence should have come to know of the intentions and plans of thePakistan army. According to him, it was not aware of the full extent of theincrease in Pakistani Army deployments and movements across the LOC, which wouldhave preceded the Pakistani Army's foray into our territory during the winter.

The fact of the matter is that as early as June,1998, even before Musharraf hadtaken over as the COAS, Shri Shyamal Dutta, the then Director of theIntelligence Bureau, had sent a detailed wake-up call to the Prime Minister, theArmy headquarters and others, warning of the  training of large numbers ofPakistani irregulars across the Kargil sector. He also reported that increasedPakistani military activity had been noticed along the LOC in the Kargil sector.In July,1998, the IB further reported  new mine-laying  and otherominous activities by the Pakistan Army. The R&AW  reported  theinduction of new Pakistani units into the area. It also warned that thePakistani troops were being given special training.

What would an alert Army chief have done in the light of these reports? He wouldhave asked for an assessment from his own officers as to what these activitiescould mean. He would have requested the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) foran assessment on the likely implications of these activities. He would havereferred the JIC's assessment to the Defence Minister and the Cabinet Committeeon Security and recommended that in view of these activities it would not beadvisable for the army to withdraw from the LOC during the winter and leave theheights unguarded. He would have requested the government for the urgentsanction of the funds required for equipping the army units concerned to enablethem to stay put where they were even during the winter.

Did General Malik do any of those things? No. As a professional Army officerheading the Army, it was his responsibility to have warned the government of thevarious likely scenarios in the light of the intelligence reports and advised onaction to be taken. He failed to do this. And, when after the onset of spring,his troops, while returning to their posts, found the Pakistanis ensconcedthere, he blamed the intelligence agencies for not warning him that thePakistanis intended to do this.

Months later, during a one-to-one meeting with Kao to discuss the report of theKargil Review Committee (KRC) headed by Shri K.Subramanyam over which Kao hadexpressed his misgivings, Shri A.B.Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister, asked himfor his considered opinion as to why the Kargil conflict happened. Kao told methat he replied to Shri Vajpayee as follows: "Sir, General Malik went intoa happy sleep during the winter. He is now blaming the intelligence agencies fornot preventing him from sleeping."

It was alleged that an ArmyBrigadier posted in the Kargil area, who had  also  warned GeneralMalik of likely Pakistani intentions and moves, was sought to be intimidatedinto silence by General Malik through a departmental enquiry when he tried to goto the media with his story. It was also alleged that a distinguished journalistwas sought to be black-listed and denied access to the army headquarters when inone of his articles he pointed out that there were no Pakistani intrusions inthe areas where the Border Security Force (BSF) was deployed because it did notwithdraw its men from the LOC during the winter, despite being ill-equipped tomeet the rigours of the cold.

During his tenure as the COAS, General.Malik sought to marginalise the role ofthe  JIC and make the COAS not only the Czar of the armed forces, but alsoof the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), the Special Frontier Force (SFF) and alltechnical intelligence (TECHINT) capabilities. The Special Task Force for theRevamping of the Intelligence Apparatus, which the Vajpayee Government had setup after the Kargil conflict, had asked the National Security CouncilSecretariat (NSCS) to prepare a statement of inputs received by the JIC and itssuccessor the NSCS from the intelligence agencies during the months before theconflict.

Its statement showed that the largest number of inputs came from the R&AW,followed by the IB. There were hardly any inputs from the Directorate-General ofMilitary Intelligence (DGMI). The Task Force asked a senior officer of the Armywhy the Army had stopped sharing with the JIC and other agencies the militaryintelligence collected by it. It was taken by surprise when he replied thatsince the army was the end-user of all military intelligence, it did not have toshare with others the military intelligence collected by it.

During the testimonies before the Task Force, the army sought to damn theperformance of the civilian agencies. The Air Force and the Navy were moreobjective and  balanced and highlighted the good as well as the bad points.The efforts of General Malik to get control of the ARC, the SFF and the TECHINTcapabilities of the R&AW failed  partly due to strong opposition fromthe Air Force and the Navy to his demands and partly due to his failure toconvince the Task Force of the need for such action.

The Task Force had the benefit of a detailed presentation by some seniorofficers of the Army on the performance of the civilian intelligence agenciesbefore and during the Kargil conflict. In an attempt to buttress General Malik'sdemand for the transfer of the ARC to the control of the Army, one of theofficers strongly criticised its performance. The Task Force confronted him witha copy of a letter which General Malik had written to Shri Arvind Dave, the thenchief of the  R&AW, after the war was over praising the performance ofthe ARC. He and the other officers were confused. After brief consultationsamong themselves, the officer replied:" That is one of the routine lettersof appreciation which the chief writes to everybody after a war is over. It doesnot mean anything." That was the attitude of General Malik and his officersto the intelligence agencies.

In other countries of the world, whenever an enquiry is ordered into militaryallegations of an intelligence failure, the enquiry committee has arepresentative of the intelligence agencies to ensure that the committee, in itsdeliberations, is fair to the intelligence agencies. The KRC had norepresentative of the intelligence community. The Committee showed an incorrecteagerness to protect General Malik from any blemish despite indications, whichdid not reflect well on the way General Malik had handled the situation in thedays before his visit  to Poland when worrisome reports regarding theextent and the nature of the Pakistani intrusions started flowing in from hisown units.

General Malik created a messy situation  for himself, but he came out of itwith a brilliant victory. Why blame him for creating the messy situation in thefirst instance, when he and his men had won a brilliant victory in the end at atremendous sacrifice? That seems to have been the attitude of the KRC. They putthe blame on the intelligence agencies for whatever had gone wrong andwhitewashed the sins of commission and omission of  General Malik.

Our civilian intelligence agencies are not perfect. They have many inadequacies.They were found wanting on many occasions. I have myself drawn attention tothese in many of my articles. Despite this, I still retain, 12 years after myretirement, many friends and well-wishers in the intelligence community becauseI try to be scrupulously fair in my criticism. I was known for my fairness whileI was in service. I am known for my fairness even today.

Unfortunately, General Malik was not known for his fairness while he was inservice. He was perceived by many in the community of senior government servantsand national security managers as a compulsive fault-finder andscapegoat-seeker. Even six  years after his retirement, he has not changed.That is evident from his book.

One person in the government of India, who is completely  in the picture onthe totality of the performance of the intelligence agencies is the PrimeMinister of the day. One person, who is totally in the picture regarding theirperformance in the collection of military intelligence is the Defence Minister.

Shri Vajpayee, the Prime Minister at the time of the Kargil conflict, and ShriGeorge Fernandes, the Defence Minister, both denied allegations of intelligencefailure immediately after the war was over.

Whom to believe: Shri Vajpayee and Shri Fernandez or General Malik?