Revisiting Punjab’s Secret Search For Peace

[Raju]

Revisiting Punjab’s secret search for peace

Praveen Swami

New facts emerge on the Chandra Shekhar government’s covert peace negotiations with Khalistan terror groups.

New facts have begun to emerge on top-secret negotiations held by the Indian Government and Khalistan terror groups in 1991 — a dialogue that its architects say came within a hair’s breadth of success, but was ultimately sabotaged by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

According to two key participants in the dialogue — the former Khalistan Liberation Front deputy chief, Manjinder Singh Issi, and the former Intelligence Bureau Joint Director, Maloy Krishna Dhar — the deal would have involved the rehabilitation of terrorists and the formation of a government which included their leadership. Had the deal succeeded, thousands of lives could have been saved.

Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s secret search for peace began within weeks of his taking office in 1991. D.S. Pannu, a long-standing confidante of the Prime Minister who went on to serve as India’s Ambassador to Burkina Faso, was among the key proponents of the talks.

Union Minister of State for Home Subodh Kant Sahay was ordered to open contact with key leaders of Khalistan terror groups.

Mr. Dhar, who had made a name for himself operating against Naga and Mizo terror groups in the north-east as well as the United Liberation Front of Asom, was recruited as a Special Assistant to the Union Home Minister. He focussed his attentions on Sohan Singh, the head of a Pakistan-based coalition of terror groups called the Second Panthic Committee. The ageing Mr. Singh, Mr. Dhar knew from his informants, believed that terrorism had outlived its utility.

IB agents helped Mr. Singh cross the India-Pakistan border near Jammu, and make his way to Ludhiana for a series of meetings with terror commanders active in the State. Elements of Gurbachan Singh Manochahal’s Bhindranwale Tiger Force and Gurjant Singh Budhsinghwala’s KLF joined in the dialogue, as did another top Pakistan-based terror commander, Pritam Singh Sekhon. Pakistan-based leaders of the Dal Khalsa, using fake passports, also made their way across the Wagah border in Punjab.

Held in IB-run safe-houses in Ludhiana and Amritsar, Mr. Sahay’s meetings with the terror commanders went better than anyone had expected. “We were soon very close to a deal,” recalls Mr. Issi, “but as we tried to get other groups on board, we began to sense that something was going wrong.” Wadhawa Singh of the Babbar Khalsa International, Paramjit Singh Panjwar of the Khalistan Commando Force, and Daljit Singh Bittu of the Sikh Students Federation — all then based in Pakistan — dug in their heels and refused to go along with the deal.

Politics had not a little to do with their rejection of the dialogue process. Pakistan-based commanders such as Mr. Wadhawa Singh feared Mr. Budhsinghwala and Mr. Manochahal would seize power, and thus leave them out in the cold. The Damdami Taksal, a neoconservative religious order that gave birth to the BKI, also felt it would be marginalised by its clerical rivals in Punjab — and that the peace deal would eventually lead to pro-Khalistan radicals rejoining the ranks of the mainstream Shiromani Akali Dal.

But, Mr. Dhar argues, Pakistan’s opposition to peace was the key factor in undermining the dialogue. “Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her ISI advisers,” he says, “were determined not to let peace succeed. Pakistan’s covert war in Jammu and Kashmir had exploded in 1990, and its establishment understood that the Punjab conflict tied down our troops, and threatened our logistical lines into Jammu and Kashmir.”

India’s covert services attempted to strengthen the pro-dialogue groups by pumping in funds to help them buy the support of their rank-and-file. Efforts were also made to bring pressure to bear on leaders through kinship and clan networks in Punjab. However, with much of the Khalistan leadership on Pakistani soil, and with terror groups dependent on its patronage for weapons and ammunition, the ISI proved to have greater leverage. “The ISI defeated us, plain and simple,” Mr. Dhar says.

Bloody fallout

After the rejectionists made a near-successful attempt to assassinate Mr. Sahay, the negotiations finally fell apart.

“There was no trust left,” recalls Mr. Issi, “and since it became clear that the pro-dialogue groups could not deliver an end to violence, New Delhi lost interest.” A total of 5,265 people — 2,591 civilians, 2,177 terrorists and 497 security force personnel — were killed in what turned out to be the worst-ever year of Khalistan violence. Mr. Wadhawa Singh’s BKI, which had emerged as the most feared terror group in Punjab, was responsible for much of the carnage.

Fatalities fell to 3,883 the following year, as increasingly-aggressive Indian counter-terrorism strategies kicked in, declining further to 871 in 1993 and just 78 in 1994. The former Punjab Director-General of Police, K.P.S. Gill, who had been removed from office as a goodwill gesture to the terrorist groups which had joined the dialogue, spearheaded this successful offensive.

Some key figures in the dialogue lived to see the peace. Mr. Singh, whose son Swaran Singh Boparai is now Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University, was arrested in 1993. Both Mr. Issi and Mr. Bittu remain active in Sikh neoconservative politics, albeit in two bitterly-opposed factions which charge each other with betraying the Khalistan movement. Earlier this year, Mr. Bittu was charged with sedition after making inflammatory pro-Khalistan statements.

Others were less fortunate. In 1992, Mr. Budhsinghwala was killed in a shootout in Ludhiana’s Model Town, the same neighbourhood where some of the peace negotiations were held. A year later, Mr. Manochahal was also shot dead. Mr. Sekhon is thought to have died of natural causes in Lahore eight years ago, while Mr. Panjwar, Mr. Wadhawa Singh, his brother Mehal Singh, and the International Sikh Youth Federation’s Lakhbir Singh are still in Pakistan. Barring Mr. Mehal Singh, the others figure on the list of top 20 terrorists whose extradition India has unsuccessfully demanded from Pakistan.

As New Delhi ponders the prospects of opening negotiations with Kashmir terror groups such as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the lessons of the 1991 dialogue weigh heavy on the minds of Indian strategists.

“Negotiating with some factions of terrorists,” says the Institute of Conflict Management’s Director, Ajai Sahni, “encourages other groups to raise the stakes by escalating violence. Moreover, the fact is that Pakistan holds a veto over the process.” However, officials involved in the 1991 dialogue note that even in its failure, it helped sharpen divisions between Khalistan terror groups and precipitated murderous factional infighting which helped the Punjab Police’s final, decisive offensive.

“We need to bring the full facts about 1991 out in the open,” Mr. Dhar says, “and to discuss its lessons — or we are doomed to make the same mistakes again and again.”

http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/01/stories/2007100155861300.htm

[Mehtab Singh]

Welcome back

Long time!

[Raju]

RAW books are not the raw truth

By V. Balachandran

Two recent books on RAW generated sensation and controversy. One was The Kaoboys of R&AW by B. Raman who worked for 26 years in the organisation. The second was India’s External Intelligence by Maj. Gen. V.K. Singh who headed its technical division for three years. The recent CBI raids on Gen. Singh and his publisher have apparently helped increase the sale of the second book.

Raman had a formidable reputation in RAW. He was always chosen to head special projects by successive RAW chiefs because of his clear thinking, capacity to execute operational plans, total loyalty, admirable penmanship, humungous ability to work very long hours and mastery over two European languages. My colleagues had sympathised with me when I was chosen to succeed him in a West European country in the late Seventies.

After retirement he continued to write innumerable pieces on national security issues. The Kaoboys encompasses the period when the external intelligence organisation was formed, its initial difficulties as well as successes and its history till the mid-Nineties. Raman has tried to weave this narrative into the history of the country’s foreign and internal security policy. It is a frank “no holds barred” narrative on the triumphs and failures of the organisation.

Entwining secret information with contemporary history is not easy. It has to be either the author’s personal experience or his ability to quote secret, even if unnamed, sources. The best examples of the first category are Archie Roosevelt’s For Lust of Knowing (1988) and Robert Gates’ From the Shadows (1996). Archie was a veteran US G-2 intelligence officer posted in the Maghreb in 1942. Robert Gates had worked closely with five US Presidents. An excellent example of the second category is Ghost Wars (2004) by Steve Coll, where each secret information is attributed to named and unnamed sources with convincing background details. If this is not done the book’s credibility suffers. It remains “disinformation.”

Unfortunately, Raman has not quoted such sources on some daring remarks. On page 54 he says that the King of Nepal suggested to Mrs Indira Gandhi after her 1977 defeat to shift to Nepal, but she declined after consulting Kao. He claims on page 13 that the United States “envisaged the encouragement of a separatist movement among the Sikhs of India’s Punjab for an independent State to be called Khalistan.”

This is a serious charge. The mention of the alleged US involvement in Sikh militancy described on pages 85-86 also does not quote any source. Similarly, he states on page 154 that the US state department advised US agencies not to send anybody to interrogate Lal Singh (Manjit Singh) who was arrested by the Gujarat police in the Nineties lest it exposed the ISI’s role. As far as I know, US agencies do not take directions from the state department on such matters. I remember a New York Times report in January 1991 quoting Robert Kimmit, then US undersecretary of State, openly criticising the CIA for running its own Afghan policy.

Then there are factual inaccuracies and debatable claims. The cowboy statue on the RAW foyer made by Sadiq is modelled after the statuette “El Vaquero” presented to Mrs Indira Gandhi during her Venezuela visit. The first President Bush did not gift it to Kao. Till at least 1995 the original piece was in the Indira Gandhi Museum. This is not a Remington bronze usually found in American offices.

The first RAW monitoring chief, who is no more, had told me that the advance alert on the December 3, 1971 PAF attack was a piece of technical intelligence. It is not true that cabinet secretary Vinod Pandey had asked RAW about the “Jethmalani File.” There was no such file. The requisition from him was over the alleged surveillance on Arun Nehru. The file concerned was of a “utility source.”

I should know, since I had carried that file. The “Do’s and Don’ts” ordered by Mrs Indira Gandhi on foreign liaison were communicated not in her own handwriting, but duly typed and circulated by the then home secretary Govind Narayan. It was not only RAW which did commendable work in Africa under Rajiv Gandhi but also MEA through PM’s special envoy Krishnan. RAW chief A.K. Verma did not go to Beijing ahead of Rajiv Gandhi’s December 1988 visit, although he deserves full praise for discreetly making the preparations for the visit, including obtaining an assurance from the highest level that the visit would be successful. Verma visited Beijing later and was received by Chinese Premier Li Peng.

Although Raman has named the book Kaoboys, he has given a prominent role to only some chosen few, including himself, but has not included several juniors who had rendered yeoman service. There was a junior Punjabi officer who won a Padmashri for doing a daring but foolhardy intelligence operation. There was another who had befriended a Prime Minister. The book is also full of repetitions and could have been edited more. Also the binding could have been better, for the hefty price charged. Mine is already coming apart.

Maj. Gen. V.K. Singh’s book on RAW would not have been noticed but for the recent publicity for all the wrong reasons. One does not know how he has breached “national security.” Far more sensitive pieces of information were revealed in several books earlier, including by the late J.N. Dixit’s Assignment Colombo or Gen. Ved Malik’s Kargil.

The author who was “deputed” to RAW for three years has written about his observations on its work culture, which had already been made public by the media.

He also observed some suspicious dealings in procurement, which he brought to the notice of the concerned superiors in RAW and the PMO. The proper course for the government should have been to inquire into these allegations and give a point-by-point rebuttal. On the other hand, the CBI raid will result in the courts inquiring into these allegations. Was this necessary?

Nearly 20 years ago, an outstanding RAW chief (A.K. Verma), propelled his officers to come out of their mental cocoon by reading books on different subjects and reviewing them frankly. It would appear that the present government thinks otherwise.

V. Balachandran is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

Op-Ed in Deccan Chronicle, 25 Sept., 2007

[Raju]

Welcome back

Long time!

:WW:

[guptseva]

Waheguru jee Ka Khalsa

Waheguru Jee Ke Fateh

The

indian goverment are just trying to undermine the freedom fight. the only terrorist out there are the indian gov.....

They killed thousands and thousands of men, bibiya and kids.....they committed a GENOCIDE in Punjab and other parts of india....

LETS NEVER FORGET......Cous it can and will happen again.....cous we are all forgetting......

the want us as there slaves.....

We Want FREEDOM....Khalistan is the only way.....

Gurfateh

[mann_kaum_layee_qurbaan]

india is corrupt and hard to trust, pakistan unna de wi baap ah.

trusting india is like trusting hitler, trusting pakistan is like trusting stalin.

lose-lose situation.

[Mehtab Singh]

india is corrupt and hard to trust, pakistan unna de wi baap ah.

trusting india is like trusting hitler, trusting pakistan is like trusting stalin.

lose-lose situation.

Whats worse is we can't start with trusting even those who look like us

[GABROO KHALISTAN DAH]

trust me pm me for my adress and all checks can be sent there, cash preferred.

[mann_kaum_layee_qurbaan]

lol, yeah and trusting our own is like trusting Benito Mussolini

sorry forgot about the third group mehtab singh :lol:

[lsingh]

Even the Govt figures which are much lower than the actual figures show the scale of the killing of Sikhs. Other communities would be working day and night to get to justice for the victims.