Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Return of the Superspy

Return of the Superspy
The New Indian Express
By Yatish Yadav, 8th June 2014
No spymaster before him is so fabled for running meticulously conceived anti-terror operations deep inside enemy territory. He has personally trained agents in the dangerous art of exhaustive reconnaissance of insurgent hideouts in troubled Kashmir, at great risk to life and liberty. He has spent decades tirelessly tracking down suspected militants in the treacherous terrain of the North-East, infiltrating terrorist outfits in Punjab, conducting dangerous counter-insurgency missions, and, most importantly, acting as the father figure for India’s intelligence operatives working thousands of miles away from home running covert operations that no other Indian agency—perhaps with the exception of the Technical Services Division dismantled by General Bikram Singh— had dared to attempt in the past.
Ajit Kumar Doval, 69, former Director of Intelligence Bureau and now the new National Security Adviser in Narendra Modi’s government, is a revered figure in the secret world of Indian espionage. The ‘Master’ as a field agent had successfully broken the back of the North-East insurgency in 1986 in an undercover operation that gave him lasting fame—the defection of 6 out of 7 commanders of Laldenga’s outfit to the Indian cause, forcing the secessionist leader to sign the peace accord. In his heydays as an operative, Doval’s addiction to danger, instead of safely spending life behind a babu’s desk in the North Block, drafting and signing INT reports, marked him for greatness. As a young man, he was a thrill seeker—in the Eighties, the 1968 Kerala batch IPS officer, a master at disguise and embedded deep undercover in Pakistan for almost six years, pulled off daring coups that left ISI clueless. With years of experience in dealing with insurgency and terrorism in Kashmir, the new NSA is expected to shake up New Delhi’s moribund security establishments paralysed by UPA’s inaction and inter-organisational politics. Veteran intelligence analysts feel the Doval Effect will also impact the PMO’s aggressive foreign policy towards Pakistan and China.
Hours after the formal announcement of his appointment last week, terrorist chatter on the Kashmir border revealed that terror commanders in Pak Occupied Kashmir (PoK) are on knife edge. India’s Most Wanted Dawood Ibrahim, who is the ISI’s prized guest in Karachi, immediately shifted his base closer to the lawless Pak-Afghan border. Doval’s experience in covert actions deep into enemy territory left the don fearing an unexpected Osama-like op. The legend of Doval, who for the next five years will command Indian security and Intelligence to ruthlessly protect Indian interests, stands to be reborn again.
DC Pathak, former Director of the Intelligence Bureau, who had worked with Doval, says the government’s choice of NSA is perfectly tailored to the task. “The challenges and problems we face are well known to all. Now we have the right man for the job. I have always advocated someone with field operations background should be the NSA,” feels Pathak. Some of the best spies in the CIA, Mossad and the now defunct KGB with field experience as either soldiers or spooks make it to senior positions in government and intelligence across the world.
Sometime in 1988. Residents of Amritsar around the Golden Temple where Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale once held sway, and Khalistani militants spotted a rickshawpuller plying his trade. He was new in the area and he looked ordinary enough. The suspicious militants put him on their watch list. It took 10 days for them to make contact; or for him to approach them, as the confusing game of spycraft unfurled within the sacred precincts. The rickshaw puller convinced the militants that he was an ISI operative, who had been sent by his Pakistani masters to help the Khalistan cause. Two days before Operation Black Thunder, the rickshaw-puller entered the Golden Temple and returned with crucial information, including the actual strength and positions of the terrorists inside the shrine. He was none other than Ajit Doval undercover. When the final assault came, the young police officer was inside Harminder Sahib, streaming much needed information to security forces to carry out search-and-flush operations.
“His piercing gaze and mysterious smile is etched in my memory forever,” says an intelligence officer who met Doval after Operation Black Thunder. “The risk was high but our security forces got the blueprint for the attack from Doval. Maps, details like strength, weapons and the location where militants was hiding were given by him. The IB passed over the information to NSG, saving countless lives and preventing further damage to the temple,” he recollects.
Doval’s bravery and ingenuity earned him the Kirti Chakra, the first cop to win the gallantry award, previously given to Army officers only. Similarly, his operations in the ’80s in Mizoram had an unprecedented success rate in eliminating and effecting the surrender of important insurgent leaders. Doval’s strategy was to use information from agents on the ground to keep a tight leash on rebels while covert operations were carried out against hardcore anti-nationals. An intelligence officer, who served under Doval, describes his informal style towards trusted agents engaged in field operations. They were encouraged to “live” their roles and could come to work dressed anyway they liked, with no questions asked.
“We were not required to dress like babus,” the officer recalls. “Operatives would come in kurta pajamas and lungis, wearing sandals. Anyone preparing for an op deep inside enemy territory was allowed to grow a beard ‘to get into the role.’ Others could hire maulvis to learn Urdu and Arabic. As part of their cover, some agents spent days learning shoe-making and later worked as mochis in targeted areas including foreign countries. Doval saab himself is expert in Urdu,” the officer adds proudly.
The surrender of the dreaded Kashmiri militant Kuka Parray was a feather in Doval’s cap in the Nineties. Such was his acumen that, armed with terrorist psycho profiles, he was able to brainwash and persuade Parray and gang to become counter-insurgents. “He met Parray sometime in the 1990s and motivated him to help the government,” confides a serving intelligence operative who had seen action in Kashmir as a young man, refusing to divulge further details. Parray and his outfit Ikhwan-e-Muslimoon, neutralised top militant commanders in the Valley with the help of the Indian Army. Turning Parray was a political victory as well; the operation enabled the Centre to subsequently hold the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996. Parray, who became an MLA, was killed in a terrorist ambush later. The official says then “New Delhi” was not certain Doval would succeed, being aware of the complex political situation. But, the coup earned him the respect of even his staunchest critics within the agency, who were advocating a peacenik policy with Pakistan-sponsored terror outfits. A master of psychological warfare, Doval’s role in several near-mythical exploits in Kashmir expanded from being just a ruthless spymaster to a master-strategist, who brought various separatists including Yasin Malik, Shabbir Shah Maulvi Farooq, and even the hawkish pro-Pak SAS Geelani to the negotiating table.
Intelligence agents admit that though India’s George Smiley hung up his boots in 2005, he was still unofficially in the field, directing covert missions. A Wikileaks cable dated August 2005 had suggested that Doval had planned the failed IB operation to take out Dawood, who escaped after some bad ’uns in the Mumbai police had tipped him off. “The reports of Dawood shifting his base in Pakistan appears credible as Doval has been pursuing him for over a decade,” said an Intelligence officer.
Doval’s New Strategy
■ Strengthening, reviving and ensuring coordination among the security and intelligence apparatus that were systematically dismantled by the previous regime.

■ Maximise the authority of security agencies undermined by the bureaucratic set-up to deal with cross- border terrorism.
■ To formulate a firm policy in dealing with Pakistan and other neighbouring countries known for harbouring anti-India elements.
■ Strengthening and ensuring penetration of human intelligence (HUMINT) at district and local level.
■ Launching National Intelligence Grid for the integration for intelligence.
■ Evolving a uniform anti-Naxal policy to deal with the menace.
■ Ensuring a system where innocents are fully protected and cases of those languishing in jail are expedited.

Ajit Doval: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Ajit Doval: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Written by Nitin Gokhale | NDTV, May 30, 2014
The appointment of Ajit Doval as India's fifth National Security Adviser or NSA was never in doubt once Narandra Modi swept to power and took office as Prime Minister earlier this week.
For the past nine years, Mr Doval headed the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a think tank known to be close to the BJP but more importantly one that is doing significant work on critical issues in the realm of comprehensive national security.
Mr Doval, 69, a legend in the secretive world of intelligence and covert operations, retired as Director Intelligence Bureau in January 2005.
But he had attained fame much before he rose to the top. As a mid-level Intelligence Bureau officer in the north-east, he infiltrated the underground Mizo National Front, then waging an insurgency against the Indian state, weaned away half a dozen of its top commanders and all but broke the back of the MNF, forcing its leader Laldenga to sue for peace. The Mizo Accord of July 1986 -- after 20 years of insurgency -- was propelled largely by Mr Doval's initiative.
But his exploits did not end there.
In the late 1980s, when militancy was at its peak in Punjab, Mr Doval walked into the besieged Golden Temple in Amritsar posing as a Pakistani agent months before the 1988 Operation Black Thunder and obtained vital intelligence on the militants holed up inside.
Mr Doval, a 1968 batch IPS Officer of the Kerala cadre, also did his tour of duty in Pakistan, considered a high-risk, high-reward assignment in an intelligence officer's career.
He received India's second highest gallantry award, the Kirti Chakra, for his daring exploit in the Golden Temple Operation. In Kashmir, he lured away prominent militants like Kukkay Parey and turned him and his colleagues into counter-insurgents, a policy criticized in some quarters but also praised by others as an effective tool that helped combat militancy in Kashmir at its peak.
One of his last high profile acts in a career spanning 37 years was as part of the negotiating team that worked behind the scene during the December 1999 hijack of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandahar.
Mr Doval was headed to an important post-retirement assignment if the BJP-led NDA was voted back to power -- as was largely expected in 2004 -- but the BJP was narrowly beaten to second place by the Congress, leading to the formation of a UPA government and effectively ending the chances of any role for Mr Doval in the national security set up.
For the majority of the past decade, Shiv Shankar Menon, a career foreign service officer, guided India's foreign, diplomatic and security policies. But as NSA, Mr Doval is expected to be different from his predecessor.
Exactly 10 years after he saw his big opportunity slipping away, he now has a chance to shape India's national security policy. 
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ajit Doval, both staunch believers in a strong state and stronger counter-terrorism measures, are likely to concentrate more on the internal security situation, improving India's covert operations capability in the neighbourhood even while they put in place an equally robust foreign and defence doctrine. Mr Doval, more George Smiley than James Bond, is truly India's spy who came in from the cold.

Former Intelligence Bureau Chief Ajit Doval Appointed as National Security Advisor

Former Intelligence Bureau Chief Ajit Doval Appointed as National Security Advisor
Written by Devesh Kumar | NDTV, May 30, 2014
  
New Delhi:  It's official now. Former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director Ajit Kumar Doval has been appointed as National Security Advisor, or the NSA, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A hands-on officer, Mr Doval, 69, assumes his new role at the back of a formidable reputation. The 1968-batch IPS official, who belonged to the Kerala cadre, was the first policeman to be decorated with the Kirti Chakra, the second-highest peacetime gallantry award behind Ashok Chakra.
Mr Doval retired as the IB Director in 2005, but before his superannuation, he held several important assignments. He spent 6 years in the Indian High Commission in Pakistan. He was pressed into service after 5 Pakistan-based terrorists hijacked the Indian Airlines Flight No. IC-814 which had taken off from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999, and was on its way to Delhi. He was among the officers who negotiated the release of the passengers.
He was part of several counter-terrorism operations in Mizoram, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. He took part in Operation Black Thunder, undertaken in 1988 to flush out Sikh militants holed up inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
After his retirement, Mr Doval had started the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank known to take up nationalist causes.
Soon after being sworn in as India's 15th Prime Minister, Mr Modi had appointed former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman Nripendra Misra as his Principal Secretary.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Don't see any political party speak much on national security issues: Ajit Doval

Don't see any political party speak much on national security issues: Ajit Doval
Nistula Hebbar, ET Bureau Jan 9, 2014
(Ajit Doval's comments are…)
Former director of the Intelligence Bureau and the youngest police officer to ever receive the Kirti Chakra, Ajit Doval heads the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF). In an interview with Nistula Hebbar, he spoke about security issues, politics and how Narendra Modi is yet to articulate his strategic vision. Doval's comments are significant in the light of his having been regarded as a close confidante of BJP leader LK Advani and his authorship of a paper on black money that was adopted by the party.
As a security expert, what is your view of recent reports on Lashkar-e-Taiba's alleged attempts to recruit Muslims in Muzaffarnagar's riot camps?
I find it difficult to believe simply because there has been no official authentication of these news reports which have appeared. Areport appears and everyone talks about it without going into the fact that LeT as an organisation is a particular kind of creature. Nobody goes into their recruitment strategies, how they've recruited in the past etc. We need more information on this before it can be believed.
As part of your work for the VIF you have also issued a paper on black money along with (RSS ideologue) S Gurumurthy, which was commissioned by the BJP. Would you say you have right-wing sympathies, ideologically speaking?
The paper was written first and the BJP took it up later as part of their campaign to bring back black money from abroad. As for right wing, just what do you mean by that? As far as I am concerned, the entire country is right wing as we don't have collectivised ownership of resources and have the concept of private property. That is my understanding of right and left-wing ideologies predicated on ownership of resources. I stand for a strong nation with a strong economy so that we have enough resources to spend 2.5% of GDP on strengthening defence capabilities, enough to compete with China and others. You need to spend, and you have to take a strong nationalist view on these issues.
BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi also seems to advocate a strong nationalist view on these issues. Are you in sympathy with them?
I don't really know. He (Narendra Modi) hasn't articulated his views on many issues. There could be (a point of agreement) but I haven't really heard much. Why him, I don't see any political party speak much on security issues, maritime security which is so important, things that need to addressed at a fundamental level.

Were you upset that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also didn't refer to these issues in his press conference?
I do find it strange that the Prime Minister didn't speak about any of these issues in his press conference. That could be because of the nature of the occasion. As I said earlier, no political party seems to be engaging in any meaningful dialogue on these issues.
It's being said that you might find an important place in any future NDA government, even as National Security Advisor? Are you a member of the BJP?

That is absurd and hypothetical. I am not a member of any political party, have never been. I don't think I'd like to accept any position in any government.