LAHORE: Soon after the recent February 14, 2019 Pulwama attack that claimed lives of 40 Indian soldiers, leading Indian politicians like the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee,Jammu and Kashmir Governor, Satya Pal Malik, a key Congress leader, former Minister of State of Defence, Jitendra Singh, and eminent legislator, Galla Jayadev, etc hadtermed the incident as an intelligence failure, though Premier Narendra Modi kept harping on the same tune that Pakistan had orchestrated the event.The UAE-based “Gulf News” had gone on to write: “When 78 buses transporting 2,500 soldiers move through an attack-prone terrain, some planning would precede it. That planning seemed to have been somewhat vague. The convoy moved in a close line, offering what must have been a target weak in the flank. There were no escort vehicles, or pilots. It is not clear if the front, rear and the middle of the convoy were in constant radio contact. When the bomber car joined the highway from a slip road, and drove alongside the convoy for a while before ramming into the target bus, fifth from the front, according to one report, there was no alert from a single soldier.”But neither the Indian media nor the country’s leading politicians had recalled that their country’s spy agency, RAW, has a long and unenviable history of committing costly blunders to its credit.Tracking a few huge mistakes committed by the Indian secret service RAW, one finds that despite having played a pivotal role in the creation of Bangladesh, the Indian secret agency never had a plan to annex it with India.It also could not prevent Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rahman from being killed, even though it claimed it had prior knowledge of the plot. It was RAW, which had supported the 1975 Emergency proclaimed by the then Indian Premier Indira Gandhi.History later proved that this Emergency was a fatal mistake and that RAW had been giving Indira Gandhi wrong estimates about her public support and popularity. During the “Operation Blue Star” against the Sikhs in June 1984, RAW failed again as it could not assess the strength of Sikh commander Bhindranwale’s forces at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.What was thought to be a five-hour operation later stretched to five days and tanks had to be brought in by the Indian Army to crush the rebellion. This resulted in heavy casualties for the Army, courtesy incorrect RAW estimates. Indira Gandhi had to pay a heavy price later and was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards.Despite having invested heavily to ensure that Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam continued as the Prime Minister of Mauritius in 1982, the Indian government had to face a lot of embarrassment as RAW had failed to deliver.Known to have trained and funded the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, RAW could not prevent former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi from becoming a victim of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a village near Chennai in May 1991.With the 2019 season of the Indian Premier League, whose brand value is US$6.3 billion, is due to commence on March 23, India has perhaps once again chosen a wrong time to enter into yet another clash with Pakistan, which said it would soon give a befitting reply to the February 26 Indian move of violating its airspace.For example, with reference to the 1962 Indo-China War, this is what a prestigious Indian media house “India Today” had written in its November 21, 2016 edition: “India never suspected that China would ever launch an attack, but it did. India was attacked on October 20, 1962 in what famously came to be known as Sino-India war of 1962. The belief of not ever being attacked by China did not let the Indian army prepare and the result was the standoff between 10,000-20,000 Indian troops and 80,000 Chinese troops.”And then, once its army got thrashed by China in 1962, Indian political leadership was seen running from pillar to post for foreign help.The “Rediff News”, a renowned Indian news, information, entertainment and shopping web portal, hadrevealed on December 04, 2012 that during the 1962 conflict with China, the-then Indian Premier, Jawaharlal Nehru, had written two desperate letters to the American President, John Kennedy, whereby requesting 12 squadrons of fighter jets and a modern radar system.The article titled “The untold story: How Kennedy came to India's aid in 1962” had stated: “These jets were seen as necessary to beef up Indian air strength so that air-to-air combat could be initiated safely from the Indian perspective (bombing troops was seen as unwise for fear of Chinese retaliatory action). Nehru also asked that these aircraft be manned by American pilots until Indian airmen were trained to replace them. These requests were rejected by the Kennedy Administration (which was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis during most of the Sino-Indian War). The United States, nonetheless, provided non-combat assistance to Indian forces and planned to send the carrier “USS Kitty Hawk” to the Bay of Bengal to support India in case of an air war.”Research shows that during the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which was fought over a disputed Himalayan border and was perhaps also a result of the series of violent border incidents after the 1959 uprising in Tibet and New Delhi's bid to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama against the wishes of Beijing, between1,383 and 3,250 Indian soldiers were killed, between 548 and 1,047 troops were wounded, 1,696 had gone missing and 3,968 were captured by the Chinese forces.In China’s case, only 722 soldiers had perished and 1,697 were wounded, according to the American Army and Indian Defence Ministry estimates.A Former Dera Ismael Khan-born Indian Army Chief, VP Malik, had also cited similar numbers in his 2010 book “Kargil: From surprise to victory.”Discussing some of India’s biggest national security failures in its December 19, 2008 edition, the “India Today” had mentioned many incidents including Rubaiya Sayeed’s abduction in 1989.Rubaiya was the daughter of the-then Indian Home Minister, Mufti Sayeed.The kidnappers had demanded the release of thirteen of their colleagues in exchange for Rubaiya’s release.The-then Chief Minister of Held Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, did not want to capitulate, but the Central government had accepted the demands of the kidnappers and freed what it dubbed the jailed militants including Sheikh Abdul Hameed, Ghulam Nabi Butt, the younger brother of the late Maqbool Butt, Noor Muhammad Kalwal, Muhammed Altaf and Mushtaq Zargar.Rubaiya was kidnapped within five days of her father being made the first Muslim Minister of Home Affairs by the VP Singh Government to instill confidence within the Kashmiri people.In December 1989, the “India Today” had written: “Politically, the episode established the alienation of a section of the Valley's youth.”The renowned Indian media house had then mentioned the 1991 killing of Rajiv Gandhi as a national security failure too.It wrote: “Rajiv Gandhi fell to a female suicide bomber, Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, of the Tamil Tigers. It was a high-profile political assassination born out of a complex plot but simple security failures. If only the basic procedures provided for in the Blue Book on VVIP protection were followed, the tragedy could have been averted. At the election rally venue, there was no perimeter security, no barricading, no metal detectors and no sniffer dogs.”On the 1999 Kargil War, the “India Today” had held: “For the country’s intelligence and military establishment, lulled into complacency by the cross-border warmth generated by prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Lahore bus journey in February 1999, the nasty surprise sprang up three months later from the heights of Kargil and lasted for six weeks. By the time the army got its act together, more than 100 soldiers had been killed, many of them mowed down because the enemy’s firepower was grossly underestimated.”The “India Today” had also cited the 1999 hijacking of an Indian plane as a major security lapse of its country’s national security establishment.It stated: “On December 24, 1999, five masked terrorists seized in mid-air the controls of an Indian Airlines flight (IC-814) from Kathmandu to Delhi with 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board. Six days later, the government capitulated to the Pakistani hijackers' demand for the release of three top terrorists lodged in the Indian jails. Every time you make major concessions, you are preparing the ground for several more in the future.”It is imperative to note that the hijackers had released 27 of 176 passengers in Dubai, but fatally stabbed one and wounded several others.Various other Indian newspapers had written that the hostage crisis had lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to release three Kashmiri freedom fighters-Messrs Mushtaq Zargar, Ahmed Omer Saeed and Masood Azhar.The 2001 attack on Indian Parliament was mentioned by the “India Today” as yet another national security blunder.It had asserted: “The attack on Parliament was reality television at its horrific best as December 13, 2001 saw an audacious terror attack on Parliament which the intelligence agencies had no clue about.”It viewed that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York had actually translated into an Indian idiom.The 2001 Indian Parliament attack had led to the deaths of 14 people including five terrorists, six Delhi police personnel, two Parliament Security Service personnel and a gardener.The media house then wrote about the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.It added: “Terrorists held several people as hostages at Taj Hotel in Mumbai. The 59-hour-long televised tableau of terror that unfolded in Mumbai on November 26 and numbed the nation was the new benchmark for terror as well as for the in-built sloth in India’s intelligence and security setups. The audacious attack, simultaneously carried out at 11 places in India's financial capital, by a group of 10 armed terrorists, came from the Arabian Sea.”The Mumbai attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, had led to deaths of at least 174 people, including nine attackers.More than 300 people were wounded in these attacks.And last but not least, the “India Today” had stated how the Indian Army’s Operation June 1984 at Amritsar Golden Temple had ultimately accounted for the murder of country's sitting Premier, Indira Gandhi, in October 1984.After a 24-hour firefight, the Indian Army had gained control of the Golden Temple complex. Casualty figures for the Army were 83 dead and 249 injured.According to the official estimates, some 1,592 Sikhs were apprehended and there were 493 combined militant and civilian casualties.In the violent events leading up to “Operation Blue Star,” some 410 people were killed in violent incidents and riots, while 1,180 people were injured.Indian media outlets had stated that the public outcry over Indira Gandhi’s death had led to the killings of more than 3,000 Sikhs.It is worth mentioning that the 2016 Uri and Pathankot terror incidents in India were also labelled as intelligence failures by Indian politicians and media.
from The News International - National https://ift.tt/2BQe4pp
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