In RAW: A History of India’s Covert Operations, investigative journalist Yatish Yadav presents a comprehensive account of Indian spy networks and their intelligence gathering, and their role in securing and advancing Indian interests. Yadav's conversations with Indian spies provide insight into how covert operations work.
The following is an excerpt from the book's fourth chapter, Sri Lankan Affairs, which discusses the 'most disastrous' spy operation conducted by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and its aftermath.
This excerpt from RAW: A History of India’s Covert Operations, written by Yatish Yadav, has been reproduced here with kind permission from the publisher, Westland Publications.
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Sri Lanka remains one of the R&AW’s most disastrous espionage operations ever. The political decisions to first support the insurgents and subsequently turn the guns against them had little gains for India besides holding onto influence in the neighbouring country for a few decades. The spies believe India’s reaction in 1983 had been appropriate when the decision to support the insurgents was taken, as the country could not remain unmoved by atrocities against ethnic Tamils. But the battle was too long and arduous. Sustaining a covert operation for more than two decades doubled the danger. Plus, international community pressure was clear—terrorism in Sri Lanka must stop. The UPA thus gave its support to Mahinda Rajapaksa and so did its ally, the DMK, and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.
Any debate over the DMK’s support to Rajapaksa against the LTTE was clarified by a US embassy cable dated 27 October 2008 titled ‘Karunanidhi concern mostly political theatrics,’ based on a conversation between the US ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan president. The cable said:
Ambassador asked for the President’s views on how far he expected Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi to press the Indian government on Sri Lanka. The President responded that Karunanidhi’s recent tough line was mostly to keep his opponents in Tamil Nadu off balance. Rajapaksa even admitted he had received word from Karunanidhi that as long as Sri Lanka took care of the civilians, spoke of a political solution and did not criticize Karunanidhi, he would be satisfied. With fewer demands from Tamil Nadu, continued good humanitarian resupply, and care for low civilian casualties, President Rajapaksa thought he would likewise be able to keep the Indian government happy.
Around the same time, Mahinda Rajapaksa sent his younger brother Basil Rajapaksa to New Delhi as a special envoy. It was a political gesture and India conveyed its concerns over the humanitarian situation in the northern part of Sri Lanka, especially the civilians and internally displaced persons caught in the crossfire. In the background, Sri Lanka knew the power of the R&AW and under the cover of the civil war, they covertly worked to neutralise the spy agency’s influence and network.
Avinash said that between 2006 and 2009 when Sri Lanka waged an all-out war against the Tigers, a Tamil boat owner and a maid were the R&AW’s only effective arsenal in the island nation. There is no single documented account of Operation Satori carried out with the help of an Indian maid named Sundari. The fifty-five-year-old Tamil and Sinhalese speaking woman worked to rescue and evacuate R&AW sources when the Indian spy agency stopped personal meetings with local informers to ensure their safety.
Avinash said: ‘We were scrambling to find innovative means to communicate with our informers and assets caught in the crossfire when one officer suddenly looked at Sundari, who was serving us tea. The most frightening aspect of the operation was to maintain utmost secrecy about the movements of the assets, which were more or less banned. We had to save the assets from both sides and also assess the strengths and weaknesses of the intelligence services of Sri Lanka and the LTTE’s espionage network to carry out the operation.’
The government had restricted the movements of people in the battle zone and assets were stranded. Informers were being hunted by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. The LTTE espionage network was quite strong and there was a standing order that any leader leaving the battle zone must be shot dead. Although the R&AW knew the weaknesses of Sri Lankan intelligence, they realised that Rajapaksa’s spies were also keeping an eye on the northern and eastern provinces, scouting for prize catches. Within a week fictitious papers were arranged for Sundari through Kosala that would allow her to travel inside the battle zone freely to help the badly wounded in their makeshift hospitals. There was hopelessness and misery all around Jaffna and Sundari was trained to deal with this anxiety while on her rescue missions.
Sundari was pivotal to Operation Satori. Though she was not a conventional spy, she was a thorough professional. With the help of Asanka, an ambulance driver, and Ramanuj, an animal activist, she managed to rescue several leaders who were R&AW recruits and thus on Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s hitlist. On the one hand, the R&AW was providing satellite imagery to the Sri Lankan army to help neutralise the LTTE, and on the other hand, Sundari, Asanka and Ramanuj had the task of evacuating Indian informers and political assets from Jaffna. The area where Sundari operated was darkened via PhotoShop before images were shared with the Sri Lankan army and its intelligence unit, and Kosala had bribed certain senior personnel in the army so that people could safely be smuggled out of the war zone. Avinash, Kosala’s official handler, provided reports of the evacuation to Indian spies stationed in Singapore, Cambodia, Maldives and New Delhi. Although Avinash had dark thoughts about Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his scheming followers, he believed the Indian network with Kosala’s help would save the day.
‘Gotabaya had the unique distinction of torturing those he considered the enemy, including suspected informers. We had never witnessed such brutal killings in our careers,’ Arora told me.
As an ambulance driver, Asanka witnessed dangerous and dirty games orchestrated by political leaders. In 2006, when the war started, he had been involved in rescue operations in the southern provinces, where the Sri Lankan Air Force kept LTTE targets to keep the Sinhalese population happy. A Sinhalese himself, Asanka knew human rights violations were a reality and that Mahinda Rajapaksa’s assurances that his forces were trained to prioritise human rights were merely lip service. He was privately furious but continued to work in the army’s medical unit, waiting for a day of redemption.
Sundari and her team let the rescued assets and leaders know that Gotabaya Rajapaksa was targeting them and that their evacuation was being done in complete secrecy. According to Arora, Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed on several occasions that his intelligence operatives had accurate information about Prabhakaran’s whereabouts but in reality they were dependent on Indian sources to supply information about the Tigers’ positions.
The guns fell silent in May 2009 and Rajapaksa announced the victory in parliament on 19 May. Although he announced development programmes for the Tamil and Muslim minorities, he also said that the Tamils had been reduced to misery by the LTTE’s terrorism and the Tamil diaspora that supported the insurgents must stop such assistance for a separate Eelam. In Rajapaksa’s view, the victory of the Sri Lankan army in the civil war was in fact the victory of the Tamil people, as they had gained nothing from the years of bloody war. He argued that the LTTE had falsely promised Sri Lankan Tamils a separate autonomous state via terror activities against the government. This stalled development in LTTE dominated areas and the large Tamil population had had to suffer because of that. In his view Tamils were victims of the insurgency and the victory would ensure that they became part of mainstream society.
Rajapaksa knew the international community was readying itself to criticise the Sri Lankan army for war crimes and he launched a major offensive immediately after the Sri Lankan television channels beamed images of Prabhakaran’s dead body. Without naming any particular country, Rajapaksa said Sri Lanka had cared for and sustained all its people, including the Tamils, throughout the two decades of the LTTE’s violence and terrorism and he needed no advice on better treatment for the Tamils.
According to Arora, in April 2009, before Prabhakaran was killed, India had requested the Sri Lankan government to stop the attacks on LTTE strongholds. National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon had travelled to Colombo on 24 April, focused on ensuring the cessation of the war on the Tigers. Their visit coincided with the Sri Lankan army’s operation in Mullaitivu. The army’s intention was to capture Prabhakaran alive. Narayanan promised Rajapaksa that India had plans to provide assistance and rebuild Sri Lanka’s strife-torn regions after the end of the war. In return, Rajapaksa promised to silence the guns, but he did not do so till his army chief Sarath Fonseka confirmed that Prabhakaran and thirty of his trusted aides were dead. After the war ended in May, Gotabaya Rajapaksa claimed that the LTTE had developed a strong base in Eritrea, complete with boat-building operations, and that LTTE operatives had employed middlemen in India, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. He also admitted to some diplomats that the R&AW had supplied information on suspects infiltrating Sri Lanka and that Sri Lanka had carried out a few operations with the help of the Indian spy agency. This was enough to show the deep relationship between the two countries and the sharing of actionable inputs with each other.
Arora argued that while the UPA government invested the maximum in Mahinda Rajapaksa, it was only able to extract the minimum. The Indian mission in Colombo after the civil war had become completely ineffective and inefficient in maintaining a hold over the Sri Lankan government. A top official of the Indian embassy was in fact leaking information harvested by the R&AW and he could only be removed after persistent protests by K.C. Verma, the then spy chief. His predecessor, Ashok Chaturvedi, had not been very interested in Sri Lanka, but Verma wanted to keep the island nation in the R&AW’s control. The agency had warned of growing Chinese penetration but the Indian diplomats were busy elsewhere. Sometime in 2010, the diplomats’ indifference towards the Chinese presence in Sri Lanka triggered a storm in New Delhi. The Chinese were about to grab a mega contract to build massive highways in the country, but the Indian diplomats were certain Colombo would ultimately pass on the contract to the Indians. A document revealing the contract was faxed to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) by a R&AW agent when a delegation from the MEA was meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao was furious and pulled up the officials posted in Colombo. The UPA had returned to power a year earlier and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Rajapaksa that his victory in Sri Lanka’s January 2010 elections provided a historic opportunity for the country’s leaders to address all outstanding issues in a spirit of understanding and mutual accommodation and to work towards genuine national reconciliation. Rajapaksa expressed appreciation for India’s substantial and generous assistance including a grant of five hundred crore rupees for the humanitarian relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and assured Singh about the rapid and sustainable resettlement of the bulk of the IDPs. Though polite words flowed from both sides, the R&AW spies knew the relationship between the two countries was not as cosy as it appeared in the beautiful pictures immortalised at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. Rajapaksa was coldly cunning and was flirting with China and Pakistan to counter India. The R&AW was aware that Rajapaksa would land in Beijing within no time to start a renewed relationship with the Chinese.
Now the RA&W agents began to enquire in Beijing and Islamabad about Colombo’s plan. The liaison unit, working with friendly foreign intelligence agencies, reported that China had secretly provided arms and ammunition to the Sri Lankan army during the civil war and was now ready to invest more than $2 billion in Sri Lanka. The civil war had provided Beijing with an opportunity to considerably expand its footprint in Sri Lanka. China had not only provided fighter jets to the Sri Lankan army, it had also trained the pilots with the help of Islamabad.
Avinash said: ‘When we warned the India foreign service about the Chinese, a senior officer told me not to worry. Let the China build the roads, he said, and we will ply our buses on those roads. When we complained about him, he was immediately removed and shifted to some insignificant position at the Delhi headquarters.’
The officer codenamed ‘PAS’ was fond of scotch and the Indian spies had reported on various occasions that he was more interested in attending high-spirit parties than protecting and preserving India’s interests in Sri Lanka. ‘Once he was trapped by our spies and subsequently confronted with the evidence, we wanted him out of Sri Lanka. He was a compromised man,’ Avinash said, quoting a report that the R&AW had ciphered to New Delhi.
from Firstpost India Latest News https://ift.tt/3jBOAQ7
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