RAW, Mossad developing strong strategic relations

[Kaushal]

Good.<P>Kaushal

[VRaghav]

appu,<P>Kaushal had mentioned something regarding real estate. Israel is a tiny nation and is surrounded by risks 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Mossad wants free access to India to set up its state-of-the-art intelligence bases, which are closer to good-demenoured nations like TSP.<P>Also they probably want an air-base, just in case they have to scramble a few jets out may be from Pune or Nalia or Jodhpur(?) and decimate the Kahuta or any other place where a nuke is being assembled and would be eventually sold to the Arabs.<p>[This message has been edited by VRaghav (edited 14-09-1999).]

[L Beeson]

Why is the "(DRDO) which in the prime force behind India's defence projects, is involved "up to its shoulders', as one of the sources described it, with the purchasing military equipment from Israel." <P>I thought DRDO was supposed to make not buy.<P>Ammunition for T-72s? I thought India made this.<BR><P>------------------<BR>Laurie

[Peeyoosh]

Laurie<P>Am sure there is specialised ammo for the T-72 that we do not make. We do make Sabots, HEAT (I think) and the standard HE and Solid Shot.<P>Peeyoosh

[Peeyoosh]

Schwarzie<P>Sing'pore would get a pretty strong no-no from the USA on any serous joint stuff - say Mig 29s or Mirage 2000s or Su 30 MKIs vs F-16s etc.<P>Other than that pretty little we can get from them.<P>Peeyoosh

[vverma]

the way the ISI is biting us all over, I think the politicos will soon find their hebrew heritage <P>Yeah, no kidding! I'm sure Vajpayee can trace atleast one of this grandfather's inlaws' relatives to be a Jew a la Hillary Clinton.

[Shirish]

Sharing resources and training is one thing, but giving any external agency an operational base in the country is stupid. Countries only have interests and these can change at any time. <P>I think the current policy of not allowing any foreign intelligence or law enforcement offices , is a good one.<P>Remember the time, circa 1985 , when the Israelis were training Indian, Tamil, and Lankan commandos at the very same camp near the Negev!

[Bharat]

<I>Israel has two strategic goals: free access for Mossad agents to India and permission for the Israeli air force to use an Indian air force base. [/i]<BR>Not even UK at the height of friendship with US allowed US to keep its agents to move freely in London.What they had was a continous exchange of info.<BR>No country would allow another country to run agents on its land.If there exists an Israeli deep cover agent in a terroorist organisation based in India or Pakistan and Indian logistic help is reqd. then that help is given only if the output is shared.For any country to allow another country to run agents is a recipe for disaster.<BR>Mossad is one of the most clinical and efficient org. in the World.But its policies are just 2 fold.<BR>1.Mainly to protect Israeli national interest.<BR>2.To look after Jews and help them against prosecution.<BR>All other relations developed are based on these 2 principles.Israel, if pressurised by US, would also use its base to spy on Indian institutions<BR>Even without US pressure they might keep such ops going on just in case India turns hostile or plainly to look at Indian-Gulf relations. Mossad are good but bottomline is they are an Israeli organisation and with view Indo-Gulf exchanges with suspicion.<BR><BR>What we must have with Israel is a intel share on terrorist.This can be made by regular high level contact and joint studies by both countries think tanks on terrorism ,its effects and counter-strategy.The operative word is strategy and not tactics.Tactics means simple COIN ops while strategy is countering financial sponsorship by having talks with relevant personalities and trying to bring good will in the hearts of the people to accept the Govt. by granting them reqd.,justified demands.<BR><BR><P>As far as an air base is concerned India would participate in joint training ops but <B><B><B>it [/b][/b][/b]<BR>will,should not allow Israel to conduct ops.Max. allowed should be Israeli ELINT aircrafts giving reqd. inputs for Indian Air Force to conduct strikes.Israeli help will be useful in conducting COIN ground ops.<BR>In this matter India has experience while Israel can apply their high tech. to study and give valuable inputs on reqd. changes.<BR><BR>As far as defence articles are concerned India could become Israel largest EW export nation.Israel will always try to keep its ante up against Russian and French systems.<BR>Arrow is a joint project with US, so Israel will not be able to sell that.<BR>NSG is a special commando team and is used in delicate ops. and not to suppress the Afgani,mercenary,militants,TSPians freedom struggle in Indian J&K.<BR>The entire article with some facts is for Gulf nations to get panicky and support TSP economy.<BR><I><B>Latest Indian intel says that NS has ordered an increase in grass growth in TSP.[/i][/b]<BR><BR><BR>Back to the topic, my post should not be taken as Indo-Israel intel ties should not improve.What I am saying is each country has its strategic interest , but allowing foreign agents a free run on Indian turf is IMHO a bad descision.<BR>OK , if there is something that threatens both nations immediately then they must be allowed to stay,run the op. and share the product.<B><B>If by any chance elementss which threaten the existence of Israel in immediate deed , then on a PM request India can allow Israel to run the op. alone and share the product if India is too directly threatened.<BR>In the above scenario, the Israeli PM must make the request to Indian PM.<BR>A scenario coould be a wealthy or well established person who is planning to hit Israel by acquiring WMD and his presently within India or near the border.<BR>But this person has not attacked India in deed or rheotoric.India could allow Israel to use Indian bases to find and eliminate him.

[Ashwin B]

Arun:<BR>This is something for Pak to get worried about and not paranoia.<BR>IDR April-June '98 carries a fairly lengthy article by Kumaraswamy (I think that's the name, I'll confirm soon) discussing Indo-Israeli defense ties. He mentions RAW training with Mossad in the article. <P>I'll post the entire article soon. I'd like to know if I am violating any copyrights if I post the article here?

[Roop]

I believe it is quite possible that Israel and India have indeed come to some working arrangement for IsAF aircraft to operate on various spying/eavesdropping missions from IAF bases. There is nothing ridiculous or far-fetched about this. The most likely purpose of these spying missions would be to detect Pak missile activity, as an early warning to both India and Israel. It is highly likely that both countries have deep-cover agents within Pakistan who would need to keep in touch via encrypted "squirt" radio transmissions, etc.<P>If this report is true, I say, "Good! Keep up the good work, guys".<P>If not, I say, "What the hell are you guys waiting for? It's to both countries' benefit, now hurry up and work something out!"<P>Regards,<BR>Mohan<BR>

[VivekT]

It is quite common for allied countries to allow use of their airbases to each other. The best example is Canada and the NATO countries. Canada has demarked a huge area of it's territory as being purely for the training of NATO combat aircraft. Believe it or not, in terms of area, this training ground is as big as France & Germany put together.<P>Israel's main threats are the Arab nations. At present they can mount an attack or a defence only from one direction. Airbases in India would give them the capability to attack from the enemy's rear, forcing the enemy to deploy aircraft to protect his rear rather than use those aircraft in the frontline.

[Kaushal]

I believe the FAS site has something on RAW.<P>Kaushal

[Prakash]

<BR>Security cooperation between India and Israel is strategically good for both countries.<P>But let us always keep in mind that the teaming is India and Israel (and not Israel and India).<P>More importantly, while Israel strategic<BR>interests at present coincide with ours, and<BR>we should take advantage of this, let us <BR>not go too far for strategic interests<BR>- theirs and ours - surely will change over time.<P>Finally and most importantly, allowing Israeli agents to freely operate in our country and to allow their planes to be based in our land is compromising our national sovereignity. (Let us not forget that the last country to rule India<BR>too was quite small in size and population.<BR>Let us also not forget that that country too initially came quite benignly - to explore<BR>and to trade.) We must never make any<BR>compromise with our national soverrignity.

[neil]

think about it guys IAF getting real time air -to-air combat practice against the isreali F-16,and F-15 and also the Kfir which infact is the copy of the mirage-5, the IAF will definetly learn a lot of lessons. they are also really ood at air to ground ops which has been proven a lot of times, this is one oppertunity we should not let go. isreali air force is probably one of the best in the world, they have basically kicked everyone's b*tt in air-to-air combat. <BR> about the Mossad opreating in India, thats really debateable but the RAW does need some real time training on gathering good intel so a little help from the mossad would be nice. <P>------------------<BR>jai HIND<BR>jai JAWAN.

[neil]

bhupn<BR> there is also a large jewish population in INDIA too, lot of them are in bombay. If you look back in history, before the forming of Isreal there were a lot of jewish people who lived in India and felt safe there.

[Chandra]

IMHO, RAW should work extremely close with MOSSAD. They have a lot to learn from the Israelis.<P>While India and Israel are natural allies (because of our common enemies), as a sovereign country we cannot let them use our bases. What then, will be the difference between India and stooge countries like Australia, New Zealand, England etc.?<P>On hindsight, we can let them have an airbase in India, if they let us have one in the strategically important Mediteranean sea.

[Philip]

As long as the back scratching is mutual,it's fine.Label it whichever way you want to.However on the issue of allowing a foreign country to use Indian military bases,it must be remembered that even in the heydays of Indo-Soviet friendship Mrs.G never allowed the Soviets bases anywhere.In fact the Soviets were eyeing Vizag as a base for their fleet but the answer was Nyet!<P>It would be foolhardy to allow Israel or any other country to use our bases for this reason alone.Any enemy of the country being allowed to operate out of India might have powerful enemies who would then consider attacking Indian territory on the justification that their enemy has military facilities here.WE also used that argument with Sri Lanka when the US was planning big things during the govt of Jayawardene and Premadasa.We made a big song and dance-quite justified in the days of the Cold War about Trincomalee,the Oil Tank Farm,VOA station etc.In fact one US military publication goofed up depicting Sri Lanka as a US base!Our reason for arming and training the LTTE and the other anti-govt Tamil groups in Sri Lanka was to counter foreign external intrusion in an area of national concern.<P>Therefore in my opinion we cannot allow another nation however friendly to use our soil for hostile purposes.Neither do we belong to any military power bloc like NATO.While their may be intelligence and other military exchanges etc.,we would be justifiably open to criticism and a counter reaction if we did so.Imagine it if pakistan allowed the US or Chinese to operate out of Karachi,Gwadar etc.!The hue and cry over anything like that from our side would be deafening.

[VKumar]

The reason why we are importing from every small country is because the private sector is not being encouraged to enter the defense sector.<P>I am sure that given reasonable encouragement, in 10 years, our private sector will produce Quality stuff.

[vram]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Imagine it if pakistan allowed the US or Chinese to operate out of Karachi,Gwadar etc.!The hue and cry over anything like that from our side would be deafening.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>During the Afghan war, US did use TSP as a base for training and launching mujhi attacks on the soviets. I understand that the CIA still has operatives working from TSP. during gulf war, TSP airbases were used by the US.<P>NSA has listening posts in China. What's the problem in Israel setting up intel cell on Indian soil? That cannot be reason enough for arab countries to attack India.

[Sujit]

Good marriage at last !<P>But I don't particularly like the idea of allowing free access of Indian soil to the Israelis, unless of course, it is an emergency.