Till 1993-94, the CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) literally forbade the RAW from launching covert operations in Pakistan.
We don't really get to hear or read much about them. They operate in the shadows to make sure we are safe from forces conspiring against us. It's never fun and games for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India, but they surely have some truly epic tales to tell. We managed to find some declassified covert operations carried out by RAW in the past, and they are nothing short of extraordinary.
1. Operation Smiling Buddha
Smiling Buddha was the name of India's nuclear program. RAW was given the task of keeping the entire operation under wraps. This was also the very first time that RAW was asked to get involved in a project inside India. Finally, on 18th of May, 1974, India successfully tested the 15-kiloton plutonium device at Pokhran and became a member of the elite group of nations who were nuclear ready. Not only was the operation carried out without any critical roadblocks, but even the intelligence agencies of countries like the USA, China and Pakistan were taken by surprise when the nuclear device was tested.
2. Khalistan Movement
The mid-80s was a dark period in India. Backed by the ISI, the Khalistani militancy was reaching its peak. Tough times. RAW set up two covert task forces to counter the militants in Punjab. Counter Intelligence Team - X or CIT-X, and Counter Intelligence Team - J or CIT-J. The objective of CIT-X was to target Pakistan while CIT-J was supposed to target the Khalistani groups. RAW not only managed to flush out all the Khalistani militants from the streets of Punjab but also destabilised a number of major cities in Pakistan, eventually forcing ISI to retreat and end all activities there.
3. Operation Kahuta
Pakistan's major nuclear weapons laboratory, the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) was also an emerging centre for long-range missile development. KRL is located in a small town called Kahuta in the Rawalpindi district of the Punjab Province, Pakistan.
RAW first got to know about Pakistan's nuclear programmes by analysing the hair samples from the barber shops near Kahuta. The hair showed that Pakistan had figured a way to enrich uranium for weapons. RAW started operation Kahuta with the intentions of infiltrating Pakistan's nuclear energy installations, but it went horribly wrong thanks to a rookie mistake by our then Prime Minister. Morarji Desai accidentally compromised RAW's plan when he told Zia-Ul-Haq, the then President of Pakistan, that India was aware of their nuclear program. Immediately acting on this goof-up, Pakistani intelligence managed to track and kill all of RAW's officers and sources in Kahuta. India has been in the dark about Pakistan's nuclear program ever since.
4. Operation Meghdoot
Operation Meghdoot is a perfect example of how keeping one's eyes and ears open can save a number of lives. RAW received a tip from a London-based garment company that had supplied Arctic weather gear to the Indian troops for the Northern Ladakh region. The company informed them that Pakistan too, had bought very similar gear.
RAW intercepted vital information that proved Pakistan was planning an incursion in the Siachen glacier. The information helped the Indian Army take control of Siachen glacier before Pakistan. India eventually dominated in all the major peaks in Siachen.
5. Operation Chanakya
uring the testing times of violence in Kashmir, RAW was given the task of infiltrating various ISI-backed Kashmiri separatist groups and restoring peace in the beautiful valley of Kashmir. RAW not only managed to successfully infiltrate the area, but also evidence of ISI's involvement in the training and funding of Kashmiri separatist groups in the valley. Peace was restored, and the operation also marked the creation of pro-Indian groups in Kashmir.
6. Operation Cactus
In November 1988, around 200 Tamil rebels, a part of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) invaded Maldives. The Indian Armed Forces, with assistance from RAW, at the request of the President of Maldives, launched a military campaign to clean out the mercenaries off the island nation. The Indian Air Force airlifted the 6th parachute battalion from Agra to Maldives. Swift and the precise operation carried out by the Indian Army, Navy and RAW helped restoring government's rule in Male within hours.
7. Operation Leech
Myanmar was always a tricky area for the Indian intelligence. Especially because of the dense forests being surrounded by the Arakans (ethnic people of Myanmar). India wanted to promote democracy and help put a friendly government in the region. For this, RAW established Burmese rebel groups and pro-democracy parties in the region, like the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). India allowed KIA to carry out trade in jade and precious stones. They even gave out weapons to them. But when relations with KIA turned sour and it became a source of training and ammunition for north-eastern rebel groups, RAW initiated Operation Leech. Their mission was to assassinate the Burmese rebel leaders as an example for other rebel groups that conspired against the welfare of Myanmar and India. In 1998, six top rebel leaders were shot dead and 34 Arakanese guerrillas were arrested the account of gunrunning in the country.
8. Anti-Apartheid movement
Although we don't have a lot of information on this, it is known that RAW was also involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa and Namibia. They were even responsible for training intelligence officers of a number of independent countries of the African continent. Many retired RAW officers worked in the training institutes of these intelligence agencies as well.
9. Snatch operations with the Intelligence Bureau
RAW has been involved in snatch operations for quite some time now. A snatch operation is when RAW officers catch the suspect in a foreign country and get them into the country for interrogation in undisclosed locations. This is generally done to bypass a lengthy extradition process. A good example of a snatch operation would be Akshay Kumar's film BABY.
In the last decade, RAW has carried out close to 400 successful snatch operations in Nepal, Bangladesh and other countries.
Some famous terrorists nabbed are Bhupinder Singh Bhuda of the Khalistan Commando Force, Lashkar militants Tariq Mehmood and Abdul Karim Tunda, Sheikh Abdul Khwaja, one of the handlers of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Yasin Bhatkal founder leader of the proscribed terrorist organisation Indian Mujahideen among others.
These were only a few operations that have been declassified. There are countless others which you don't get to hear about, probably never will either. What we do know is that we are in safe hands.
The National Security Agency (NSA) listened in on high-level meetings on climate change, global economics, and even “how to deal with [US President Barack] Obama,” according to the new documents released by WikiLeaks.
One of the revelations was that the NSA bugged a private meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which they discussed how to tackle climate change. The goal of the snooping, according to WikiLeaks’s press release, was to protect American oil interests.
“Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies,” said WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange.
Assange added that the UN will most likely react to these leaks.
“We previously published Hillary Clinton’s orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General’s DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN — let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN’s reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targeted without consequence, then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk.”
The top secret documents have also brought to light other meetings held by top world leaders that were bugged by the NSA, including one between Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu and Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi in 2010 during which Netanyahu pleaded with Berlusconi to help him deal with US President Barack Obama
The NSA apparently spied on another meeting involving key EU and Japanese trade ministers tasked with discussing final compromises that might be made as part of WTO (World Trade Organization) negotiations.
Moreover, the NSA also gained access to a secret conversation between former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, during which Sarkozy said that the Italian banking system would soon “pop like a cork.”
Even the UN’s Refugee Agency was not spared form the NSA’s spying eyes. US intelligence agents reportedly kept tabs on the phone lines of the organization’s regional directors, including that of Bernard Doyle, the regional representative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for Central Asia, according to the new report.
WikiLeaks also showed that the NSA targeted a Swiss telephone line belonging to the Director of the Rules Division of the WTO, Johann Human.
WikiLeaks is famous for disclosing secret documents demonstrating government abuses and overreaches, including information about US military conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, portions of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, and documents that the director of the CIA kept on his personal email account.
ramana wrote:Mike Hayden claimed in an interview that what sets apart US intel agencies was they don't indulge in corporate espionage unlike UK, France, and others. So even he doesn't know!
Also why would they need Ban Ki Moon's DNA?
They want to clone him?
very odd.
ramana wrote:Also why would they need Ban Ki Moon's DNA?
They want to clone him?
very odd.
RoyG wrote:Pillai just revealed that LeT team that came to India were "enticed" to do so by the IB and were monitored. Claims that undercover agents posing as LeT operatives were used to pass on disinformation to Pakistan which led them to devise the operation. This is probably how they found out about their local fidayeen operatives including Ishrat. Very successful operation.
It is not often that Pakistan claims to have arrested 'an Indian spy' -- and that too someone who has been a retired middle-level officer in the Indian Navy.
The queer case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, who sought premature retirement from the Indian Navy years ago, fits the bill. Jadhav was arrested earlier this month, allegedly from Pakistan's insurgency-hit province of Balochistan. The Pakistani agencies quickly flaunted his Indian passport that he was allegedly carrying on him.
The Pakistani establishment played up the event so much so that Pakistan's powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif raised the issue with visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and discussed with him the problems Pakistan faces on account of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW)'s alleged involvement in fomenting trouble in Balochistan.
Equally queer was the Indian response. India did not deny the existence of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a fundamental alibi any nation takes in the event of alleged espionage. Clearly, India could not have obfuscated Jadhav's identity as he had served as a commander in the Indian Navy before his premature retirement.
India's official response is that while Jadhav was indeed a retired naval officer, he has had nothing to do with the Indian government since his premature retirement.
The Pakistani case is much different: That Jadhav had joined R&AW after premature retirement from the navy and was deployed in Iran as a R&AW agent.
The alleged circumstantial evidence offered by Pakistan against Jadhav was a bit too much as India strongly refuted the Pakistani allegations. In any case, the Pakistani version is full of loopholes.
If Jadhav was indeed deployed as a R&AW agent in Iran, as Pakistan has alleged, what was he doing in Balochistan?
Why should he make himself a sitting duck target for capture in an enemy State even if one believes Pakistan's version for a minute that he was a spy and was on an espionage mission in the restive province?
Furthermore, it is a bit too much to digest the Pakistani theory that he was travelling with a valid Indian passport.
Various accounts have emerged as to how Jadhav, an officer with the equivalent rank of a lieutenant colonel in the army, had become a businessman and even owned a small ship as part of his business activities, though everything is quite opaque about Jadhav's current profile and what business he was doing since his premature retirement.
Pakistan does not prove anything by claiming that Jadhav was arrested in Balochistan. It is quite probable that he was compromised and lured to Balochistan where he was eventually arrested by the Pakistanis.
Another compelling and probable theory is that Jadhav may been compromised and arrested from another location and his arrest was shown from Balochistan.
Whatever may be the case, it is quite clear that he was set up big time. Or else, how does one explain that he was in possession of an Indian passport? Would a spy travel to an enemy country with a valid passport?
India has sought consular access to Jadhav, but has not been successful so far. A key diplomatic source based in Pakistan told me that getting consular access to an arrested person -- and that too someone arrested on charges of espionage -- is not easy. It may take months for Indian diplomats to meet Jadhav.
This is the primer on la affaire Kulbhushan Jadhav, but the real story may well be something different and the real objectives even more vastly different.
Pakistan has raised the Jadhav episode just before the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team set foot on Indian soil. The Pakistani JIT's arrival in India on Sunday, March 27, which includes Inter Services Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel Tanvir Ahmed, to probe the January 2-5 terror attack on the Pathankot airbase is unprecedented and a potential game changer in the India-Pakistan context.
It is quite likely that the Pakistanis are cleverly using the Jadhav card to derail the outcome of the JIT process.
That said, the least the Indian government can do and must do is to secure Jadhav's release unharmed.
This guy is looking like immediate brother of cricketer Abdul Razaq 
Let me predict the course of events in the next few weeks
1. Paki media and govt agencies will pick up this story
2. Indian TV will then pick it up and interview the family
3. Congress will say government has bungled
4. TV debate will invite Pakis and Indian experts to debate this and both sets of views will be given equal weightage
5. TV channels will run a program on the sorry state of Indian spies who are forgotten by the Indian government
6. Media will dig up stories of 5-6 Indians who the government has denied knowledge of and claim that Pakistan and the US have confirmed these people as Indian spies
Recruited as spies by various intel agencies, these poor men risk everything under cover in Pakistan—only to be abandoned when they are caught
The most damning piece of evidence that former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jhadav is not, as Pakistan claims, an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is that he had an Indian passport.
No national intelligence agency ever runs an agent in enemy territory with identity documents connecting him to the agency’s country. Passports and so on are always of another country.
New Delhi rolled up its covert operations inside Pakistan under the prime ministership of IK Gujral, who naively believed this would help his peace initiatives with Islamabad. Indian intelligence, in terms of its operations in Pakistan, has yet to fully recover from that self-inflicted wound.
Read | Pakistan asks Iran to investigate, provide details on ‘Indian spy’
The saving grace for India is that Pakistan has successfully made so many enemies in its neighbourhood that New Delhi finds no shortage of other groups willing to carry out dirty deeds against Pakistan.
The first on the list are anti-Taliban Afghan regimes. Afghan leaders like Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah have a visceral hatred of Pakistan’s military and what it is doing to their country. Provided funds, Afghan intelligence has been happy to arrange for black ops against Pakistan.
The Baloch and Shias of Pakistan, who had soured on their own country, would also have been willing cut-outs for Indian activity, though they would have probably been kept in the dark about which foreign agency was actually hiring them.
As an Israeli intelligence officer once explained, “We have many Arab sources because Arabs hate each other – and because the Arabs we recruit think they are working for a country other than Israel.”
Read | Did Pak catch world attention with ‘Indian spy’ story? Perhaps not
For all of Islamabad’s claims that India is directly involved in its problems in Balochistan, senior Pakistani military officers involved in operations in that province will admit in private that there is no “Indian hand” there.
As one explained some years ago to me, “There is a foreign hand and it’s an Afghan hand. Your government helps keep that hand well greased, but nothing more than that.”
The assassination in 2011 of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the former Afghan president’s half-brother, say sources, was connected to the Inter-Services Intelligence agency’s belief he was the point man for Kabul in supporting the Baloch insurgency against Pakistan.
India’s covert operations against Pakistan have waxed and waned depending on who was in power. Morarji Desai, Gujral and Manmohan Singh did not approve of such measures. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv were active supporters of such operations.
Read | India rejects Pakistan’s video confession: ‘Spy saga’ decoded
Under Rajiv Gandhi, then RAW chief AK Verma put such teeth in India’s covert operations in Pakistan that late intelligence commentator B Raman wrote that if Rajiv had been re-elected and Verma allowed to continue his policies for a few more years, “Pakistan would not be existing in its present form”.
Notably, Verma has since said of the Jhadav case: “A lone agent does not work like this in a foreign country creating subversion or mischief. He needs local support. He has got to have local friends…So far as this person is concerned, it appears that he was caught alone, single-handed. All this makes it a very highly and unlikely story of him being an agent.”
Another former RAW chief said it would be the “height of madness” to have a former Indian military officer operate inside Pakistan. “No intelligence agency in the world would function like that.”
A retired senior Indian intelligence officer described Jhadav roaming around in or near Pakistan with an Indian passport as against the basic rules of spycraft. “It always makes sense to use third parties,” he said.
Read | ‘Sharif working on strategy to raise issue of R&AW involvement in Pak’
Pakistan’s motives for staging such an event can only be guessed at. But Islamabad has long sought to portray its Baloch insurgency as being an Indian creation and that Pakistan is as much a victim of state-sponsored terror as India.
None of its elaborate dossiers about the “Indian hand” in even the Pakistani Taliban have found takers in the West or the United Nations.
However, Islamabad has found one taker for its disinformation: China. That is why Beijing has agreed to help up set up a division-strength protection force to defend its planned economic corridor in Pakistan.
In the short term, Jhadav seems to have been the fall guy in a simple attempt by Islamabad to divert attention from New Delhi’s much more convincing case of Pakistani involvement in the terror attack on Pathankot airbase that has been blamed on the Jaish-e-Mohammed.
.NIA officer Mohammed Tanzil Ahmed shot dead, agency says attack was ‘planned’
A National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer, who had handled several cases related to the Indian Mujahideen (IM) including the arrest and probe against its India chief Yasin Bhatkal, was shot dead past midnight Saturday by unidentified men at Sahaspur in Bijnor district of western UP. Police said his body bore 22 bullet injuries.
The officer, Mohammad Tanzeel Ahmed (49), was returning from a family wedding along with his wife and two children when the attack took place.
An Assistant Commandant with the BSF on deputation to the NIA, Ahmed had proceeded on leave on April 1 after completing his job as the liaison officer for the five-member Pakistan Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that was in Delhi to probe the Pathankot attack, NIA sources said.
Shortly before 1 am, two men on a motorcycle stopped Ahmed’s Wagon R car near the Sahaspur police post and opened fire. His wife too sustained serious injuries. She was shot four times. His teenaged son and daughter were on the rear seats
- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... n5C23.dpuf
rkhanna wrote:Mr. Tanzil has been reputed to have single handedly destroyed the IM in Punjab/UP. Quiet surprised this has got such little attention on BR.
He joined NIA in the year 2009 when the agency was formed
Ahmed had investigated a few cases associated with the Indian Mujahideen (IM)
He had also been involved with the capture and test against its Indian boss Yasin Bhatkal
He has recently finished his service as the contact officer for the Pakistan Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that was in Delhi to test the Pathankot assault
As per his colleagues, he was one of the key examiners of the 'center group' of the NIA
Ahmed was instrumental in the capture of claimed Indian Mujahideen agent Danish Riyaz
Ahmed has been with the NIA for six and a half years
Ahmed also had a successful tenure as a trainer at the BSF Academy Tekanpur and the Training Centre and School at Hazaribagh
He has also worked on cases related to the SIMI, the Indian Mujahideen, the Bardhaman blasts, the recent arrests related to the IS and the fake currency racket.
Killed NIA officer's Bihar connect
Ramashankar
Patna, April 3: National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer Tanzeel Ahmed, who was murdered near Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh in the small hours of Sunday, played an instrumental role in exposing the links of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) in Bihar and Jharkhand.
Tanzeel (45), an assistant commandant of the Border Security Force who was on deputation with the NIA, was killed and his wife seriously injured when two motorbike-borne assailants opened fire at the couple.
Tanzeel, who was with the NIA since 2009, was part of the team assigned to probe the serial bomb blasts in Bodhgaya and Patna's Gandhi Maidan on July 7 and October 27, 2013, respectively. At least six people were killed and 89 others injured in the Patna blasts.
A senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who was earlier posted with the NIA recalled that Tanzeel had played a key role in the arrest of Danish (20), said to be a right-hand man of IM co-founder Yasin Bhatkal, from Chakjohra village in Darbhanga on January 22, 2013. Tanzeel had camped for almost for a week in Darbhanga to trace Danish, whose name had also figured in the serial bomb blasts in Pune, Delhi and Bangalore. "A Delhi police team was on the lookout of Danish in connection with the 2010 Jama Masjid blast case," the IPS officer revealed.
He was also involved in the investigation into Bengal's Burdwan blasts of October 2014. An officer at Laheriasarai police station in Darbhanga district described Tanzeel as a brave and competent officer. "I still have fresh memories of the slain officer; he spent hours with us during his visit to Darbhanga to expose the IM's connection in several north Bihar districts including Darbhanga, Samastipur and Madhubani," said the officer, who is not authorised to speak to the media.
Sources in the NIA said Tanzeel had worked under Bihar-cadre IPS officer Vikas Vaibhav when the latter was posted with the NIA on deputation. Vaibhav, who served the NIA from 2011 to 2015,wrote on his Facebook page: "Deeply saddened by the sudden loss of Md. Tanzeel. An asset to the NIA. He will remain in our hearts. My deepest condolences."
Tanzeel had also been engaged in carrying out raids at the suspected hideouts of IM operatives in Ranchi's Sithio area. An NIA source said: "It was Tanzeel who had exposed financial transactions in the bank accounts of Yasin Bhatkal's wife, which led to his arrest."
A senior home ministry official said Tanzeel had been part of the NIA team that busted a nascent Islamic State network in January, leading to the arrest of 17 young men across the country.
"He was also probing the fake currency racket run by the Indian Mujahideen from Pakistan and Bangladesh," the official said.
The Uttar Pradesh police have sealed the borders of Bijnor district and launched a manhunt for the killers. Additional director-general Daljeet Singh Chaudhary said the police's special task force was handling the case but all the senior officers in western Uttar Pradesh, including members of the anti-terrorist squad, were on the spot.
rkhanna wrote:Mr. Tanzil has been reputed to have single handedly destroyed the IM in Punjab/UP. Quiet surprised this has got such little attention on BR.
Gyan wrote:If this is true then we have practically given away all our operations and assets of RAW in neighbor nations to USA.
In short the briefing was about the importance of the judiciary in fighting terrorism.
Further, Doval also pointed out how the four pillars of democracy must work in tandem to fight terror. The speedy disposal of cases pertaining to terrorism was also part of the briefing.
......
Doval during his briefing appraised the judges about the national security system and also the threats faced by India both internally and externally. He also stated that there is a need for stronger laws in order to fight terrorism.
However, the most important point was the speedy delivery of justice and the importance it had in the fight against terrorism.
In addition to this Doval emphasized on the need to ensure that the four pillars of democracy worked in tandem. All the four pillars have a role to play in the war against and unless there is cooperation, it would be very difficult to combat terror, he also said while adding that this is a non-partisan issue.
Could you share more on that please.
vikassh wrote:A denial from the government on disappearance. The real story will only come after some time:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Officials-deny-RAW-officers-disappearance/articleshow/51871287.cms
Pakistan's snooping agency ISI is spying on Indian security forces using malwares through mobile gaming and music applications such as Top Gun, mpjunkie, vdjunky, talking frog, the government said today.
Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary also said Pakistan's spy agency was making efforts to trap ex-servicemen in the garb of providing job opportunities and financial aid for spying.
"There are reports that Pakistani intelligence agencies are spying on Indian security forces by sending malwares in mobile apps such as Top Gun (game app), mpjunkie (music app), vdjunkey (video app), talking frog (entertainment app," the minister said.
He said during the period 2013-16, seven ex-servicemen were arrested/detected for espionage activities for the ISI.
"The Indian security forces have been sensitised about Pakistan's ISI using dubious applications on smartphones," he said.
"Besides, the government has circulated Computer Security Policy and Guidelines to all the ministries/departments on taking steps to prevent, detect and mitigate cyber attacks which includes sanitisation of staff and officers, installations of CCTV and biometric for electronic surveillance with well defined crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism for implementation," Mr Chaudhary said.
The Army’s counter terrorism grid has, no doubt, been successful in thwarting several attacks. However, this begs the question of how best to blunt or limit the impact of the externally inspired and targeted militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. Unfortunately, diversions such as the Pakistan-directed attacks in Gurdaspur and Pathankot are causing Delhi to take its “eye off the ball”, for the main battle is in Kashmir and not elsewhere.
The March 31 incident in the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar, leading to a serious clash between “locals” and “outsiders” over a non-event viz. India’s defeat by the West Indies in the ICC World Twenty20 Championship, should have been an eye-opener, for it revealed how deep the divide was and the degree of polarisation that it signified.
In the aftermath of the NIT incident, unsubstantiated allegations of a young girl having been molested by an armed forces personnel produced a visceral reaction. The violent protests soon went out of control and the resultant firing by security personnel led to a complete shut down across the Valley, including in Srinagar. The death of five local youth in police firing also produced a new set of martyrs, giving fresh ammunition to the protesters.
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