British Journalist duo Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark claim that Pakistan and India’s intelligence agencies conducted back-channel talks in the aftermath of the 2019 Pulwama Attack that killed India’s Central Reserve Police Force’s 40 personnel.
In their book titled Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of The R.A.W (R&AW) and I.S.I, Levy and Scott-Clark say that a senior official from India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s office and the Research and Analysis Wing exchanged messages with officials of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence through two foreign journalists in the 2018-19 period.
The book claims that ISI officials distanced themselves from the attack, saying it was planned in Afghanistan. They also denied the Indian charges that the suicide bomber, Adil Dar, a Kashmiri, was “launched from Pakistan”. Despite ISI’s claims, their Indian counterparts continued to maintain that the Jaish-e-Mohammed facelifted the suicide bomber Adil Dar and that the armed was allegedly supported by Pakistan.
The journalists say that Islamabad pointed toward the fact that backing such an attack would “push Pakistan over the edge — from grey-list to blacklist in at the Financial Action Task Force (F.A.T.F.) in Paris.” Islamabad cited the FATF “blacklisting, as one forceful reason for Pakistan having no direct involvement”. The book claims that New Delhi refused to believe them.
Levy and Scott-Clark say they had conversations with Lt. Gen. Nusrat Naeem, the ISI’s former C-Wing chief; former RAW chief Rajinder Khanna, who is now a deputy NSA, and military defence official Lt. Gen. Vinod Khandare.
Referring to an exchange, the writers say that one chain of the messages said, “an I.S.I. officer in its A-Wing, the analysis section, that stressed that Jaish remained an I.S.I. target and was on its ‘kill list’. We read one of these out to Khandare: ‘For the last sixteen years, after Jaish tried to repeatedly kill Musharraf and many other officers, the ISI has been hunting down its fighters and striking them. They are in our crosshairs – do not forget,” it claims.
Indian official Khandare, however, disagrees with the claims in the book. He said, “You know, terror has no reason or season. Plans are seeded and then gestate. They go off like rockets on short fuses. Do not judge an atrocity by its timing. Judge Pakistan on its record. Pulwama bomber Adil Dar was a Kashmiri. True. But he was in the thrall of an outfit that has its bases inside Pakistan.”
Talking about the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack in which seven security personnel were killed, the authors claim that “corrupt local police officers were suspected of scouting the airbase”.
“Jaish had paid for the 350 kilos of explosives but they had been procured in India and the haul was waiting for the raiding party on the Indian side,” the book claims. “Indian allies, including corrupt local police officers, were suspected of scouting the airbase.”
Authors say, one “dirty” cop had found an area where there were “multiple vulnerabilities: the floodlights were down, and the C.C.T.V. cameras had no coverage. There was no surveillance equipment of any kind and a large tree grew beside the perimeter wall that one written report identified as a security hazard.”
The book claims that an Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer also told them that the police officer or one of his collaborators had “climbed up and attached a rope”.
“The raiders had used it to heave over 50 kilos of ammunition, and 30 kilos of grenades, mortars, and AK-47s,” the IB officer is quoted as having said.
The book also says that several key pieces of protection were “missing”, “despite constant warnings”.
“More than 91 kilometres of the Punjab border was not fenced. At least four reports had suggested that rivers (and dry creaks) were vulnerable spots, but no nets were pegged across them,” the authors quoted a BSF officer as having told them. “There were no extra patrols, despite six written requests. Surveillance technology and movement trackers had not been deployed. The B.S.F. was thin on the ground because it concentrated its activities in Kashmir, and its requests for more men had been ignored, repeatedly.”
