What really constitutes state terrorism
The only country in the world, other than Israel, to have acquired land through conflict or intimidation after the end of World War II is India. Israel has the excuse at least that in some of their conflicts with the Arabs they pre-empted imminent aggression and thus were not the aggressor per se. In the South Asian sub-continent, India has openly coveted (and/or made designs to take possession thereof) before actually annexing their neighbour or their prime real estate. In every incident of aggression, care was taken to garb the nakedly expansionist moves under some camouflage or the other.
The first to fall into India’s grip was Kashmir, the legal subterfuge used was the Maharaja’s Letter of Accession. This was followed by military intervention to annex Hyderabad, Junagadh and Manawadar in 1948. In 1960 it was the turn of the Portuguese possessions of Goa, Daman and Diu in a farcical war. The smaller princely states of India were just taken over lock, stock and barrel at the appropriate time. As the world started to look askance at naked aggression, India turned increasingly to subterfuge. In 1968, they formed the Research and Analytical Wing (RAW) whose main purpose at that time was to organise covert operations in Bangladesh, in this they were actively supported by the Border Security Forces (BSF) whose Deputy Director General (DDG), in this case Brig Pande, was based at Calcutta with an alternate HQs in 91 BSF at Agartala for operational purposes.
With the creation of RAW, India turned from naked aggression to sophistication in the pursuit of its ambitions. RAW became involved in covert operations in all the peripheral countries around India. While RAW’s role in the creation of Bangladesh did not get much attention, its operatives were in constant contact with hard-core India sympathizers within the Awami League (AL) such as Tajuddin, Nazrul Islam, etc. Through these surrogates, RAW maintained pressure on Shaikh Mujibur Rehman whenever he started weakening in his anti-Pakistan stance.
After 1971, RAW retained its interest in Bangladesh, raising a parallel military organisation loyal to AL (and India) known as the Rakhi Bahini headed by Brig Nuruzzaman. As a Captain of the Pakistan Army, Nuruzzaman had undergone trial for treason in the famous Agartala Conspiracy Case. Though they were better armed and organised than the Bangladesh Armed Forces, the Rakhi Bahini was easily disarmed and demobilised by the Bangladesh Army post-Mujib. RAW agents have since become a permanent factor for destabilisation in Bangladesh, having subverted the loyalties of a large segment of the Hindu population.
After Sheikh Mujib was assassinated, they recreated the 1971 vintage Kader Bahini led by the infamous Kader Siddiqui who operated from Indian territory from 1975 to 1985 and constantly troubled the Zia Regime (and later the Ershad regime) with many instances of terrorism. Today India sustains the Chakma revolt against Bangladesh in the Chittagong Hill Tracts by supporting the Shanti Bahini which makes cross border raids from training and logistics camps in the Indian Tripura State at Amarpur, Sabroom and opposite Baghban-Tilla.
Westerners were captivated by the marriage of the American Ms Hope Cooke with the ruler of the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim in the early sixties. Set in a fairy tale Shangri-La atmosphere Sikkim became known as one of free world’s remaining ancient monarchies.
But trouble incited by RAW was brewing from 1973 onwards. RAW planted agents in Gangtok, Mangain, Namchi and Gyalshing for cultivating sympathisers who would fan disturbances against the reigning monarch and would then “request” for Indian help against the “despot”. Just in case the anti-monarchist ploy did not work, RAW was ready with operational data required for military intervention. On 20 April 1975, the once friendly and peaceful kingdom of Sikkim became a possession of India.
Bhutan’s Jigme Wangchuk of the adjacent Himalayan kingdom took this lesson to heart and while he clearly pouts at regional official functions he does not strain too much at the leash and studiously toes the Indian line, realising that his situation is probably more untenable than his once-upon-a-time Sikkim Counterpart. Nominally, he remains, along with the Maldives, as showpiece independent nations and the only ones on India’s periphery “without” problems with India. Just in case that he should ever dream otherwise, the Kingdom is prone to inspired pro-India riots from time to time. This domino will fall eventually or may not depending upon whether the Indians want to keep the showpiece hanging.
The paradise that once was Sri Lanka is a case of the full force of application of the so-called Indira Doctrine, that this whole region is an area of unrestricted Indian influence.
The former Chief of RAW, Kao, was mandated by Indira Gandhi to repeat the Bangladesh story and bring the Sri Lankans into line. RAW was given a free hand to destabilise the island republic, a country so at peace with itself and its neighbours that it had a maximum of only two or three active military units (less than 5,000 men under arms).
The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ramachandra, gave his consent to RAW setting up Tamil rebel camps at Ganda at Gorakhpur. Tamils were trained to bring about an armed rebellion to carve a Tamil State out of the predominantly Sinhalese island. Of the many groups that RAW trained, the most deadly were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) led by Prabhakaran, which murderously targeted the other fellow ethnic Tamil Groups in addition to bringing unrestrained terror to the Sinhalese majority in the island. The full face of terrorism was unleashed in the cities with car bombs, assassinations etc killing and maiming thousands before the Sri Lankan Armed Forces could reorganise themselves and assert the rule of the law.
With their LTTE allies ultimately besieged in the North and North East, the Indians gave the Sri Lankans an ultimatum to stop their offensive and virtually at the point of a gun signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987. Indian forces started landing in Sri Lanka as the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) to “enforce” the peace even before the Accord was signed. This was Pax-Indiana at its most blatant.
As often happens in a Client-Patron relationship, the Tamil tigers refused to fall into line with their Indian masters and the IPKF started to sustain heavy casualties from their former allies. The Indian Army blamed RAW for not providing accurate information about the former RAW proteges. The IPKF inadequacy in dealing with the LTTE became a debacle that forced the Indians to withdraw from Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan paradise had now become a living hell, the fighting between the now 3-4 division strength Sri Lanka Armed Forces (over 100,000 men under arms) and the Tamil Tigers goes bloodily on without quarter given or taken. As a revenge for having caused innumerable casualties and horrific damage, the Tamil Tigers targeted the man who had mandated the IPKF to establish Pax-Indiana in Sri Lanka, Rajiv Gandhi. In classic Tamil Tiger operation, RAW trained operative assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, the blood cycle had come a complete circle.
This was second time around that it had happened in the same family, the first being the gunning down of Rajiv’s mother by Sikh bodyguards in the wake of the storming of the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the killing of Bhindranwala and his close associates. Bhindranwala shot into fame from obscurity as a protege of late Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s younger son, who mandated RAW to support his feud. As a sequel to Rajiv’s assassination India closed down all camps and suspended the free movement of Tamils (now mostly supporters of LTTE) with India, one may well ask, if this is not an instance of an open display of export of state terrorism, what is? Unfortunately for India, the Tamils have plenty of sympathisers in Tamil Nadu and the problems persist, having come home to roost.
The Indian Ocean farce where 200 Tamil mercenaries from the Eelam People Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF — another creation of RAW) were employed to stage a coup against Maldives President Mamon Abdul Gayoom is a case in point. President Gayoom was prompted to ask for Indian help for rescuing his government. Anybody with scant knowledge of aircraft, ship and logistics would have worked out that the Indian forces were despatched to the rescue much before the coup was even attempted. A grateful Gayoom has given Indian forces a major foothold deep in the Indian Ocean, a solid land-based aircraft carrier for dominating the oceanic area figuring in the designs of India hegemony.
Pakistan figures promptly as a major RAW target, with special emphasis on the separatist Sindhu Desh movement. A wing of the Indian Special Services Bureau (SSB) has established terrorist camps across the border from Sindh in Rajasthan in eight major locations, Ganganagar, Jaipur, Udhampur, Kishangarh, Bikaner, Barmer, Jiselmer and Gandhinagar. Services of Hindus who had migrated to India during 1971 and whose relatives are still living in Sindh are coordinated through a RAW cell located at Jaipur called the Sindhu Desh Department. With the exit of the active elements of the Al-Zulfikar Organisation (AZO) from Afghanistan and Libya, AZO has been taken over lock, stock and barrel by RAW. The same style of paid gunmen and bomb explosions as was witnessed in Sri Lanka has been duplicated in Sindh. The cooperation between the KGB, Khad and RAW to destabilize Pakistan, particularly Sindh during the decade-old Afghan war, is well documented and known to western intelligence agencies. RAW emerges as the only presently functioning instrument of wide scale application of State terrorism. This is no rogue operation planned by some idealistic nuts running wild, this is a deliberate implementation of the policy of the Indian Government to annex and occupy neighbouring countries or to browbeat them into accepting Indian hegemony. The RAW takes the initiative to sow anarchy and disorder in murderous class of its own.
Pakistan’s main claim to fame with respect to being judged guilty of state terrorism is Kashmir, there is wide scale speculation that the US may declare Pakistan a terrorist State because of supposedly ISI-organised camps organise guerrillas to cross into Indian occupied Kashmir. The ISI learnt most of its expertise from close collaboration with the CIA during the Afghan war when Afghan Mujahideen were trained in guerilla warfare in camps in the border region to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet yoke.
Given the fact of Kashmir’s disputed status and Pakistani emotions, the ISI could well be using that knowledge for operations in Kashmir but the insurrection within Kashmir is mostly indigenous, the people’s will being spontaneous does not need orchestration. The ISI and other Pakistani covert agencies are also accused of providing help to Sikh militants demanding a separate homeland. Most of the Sikh militants are ex-Indian Army personnel who mutinied after the Golden Temple was desecrated. Support to them by Pakistan may be more moral than material in the circumstances.
Kashmir is another matter, it is a freedom struggle and the ISI need not organise camps since Kashmiris on both sides of the border are committed to freedom from Indian tutelage and thus would be crossing the border without official sanction. Even if the sanction is denied, the borders will remain porous, in the circumstances imposing a clamp down would be next to impossible.
In the face of overwhelming evidence of Indian sponsored State terrorism directed against all its neighbours for years, the USA is not likely to discriminate against Pakistan on the basis of the evidence at hand and the nature of the international dispute, though restraint may well have been advised by the US through diplomatic channels.
One may well ask, what is any Pakistani government to do, turn the other cheek and act deaf, dumb and blind while Kashmiris are increasingly subject to atrocities? In Kashmir today, if death, rape and torture has become endemic, it is mostly at the initiative of Indian forces. To be fair, while one may accept that we may have cast a stone or two, in the face of the Indian barrage of terrorism against all its neighbours, one will expect that justice will not be denied. If the world community has any even-handed non-discriminatory yardstick for labelling any nation a terrorist State, India outstrips everyone else by a mile!
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