The >BBC’s so-called exposé on India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), funding the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party in Sindh, has triggered a furore. But has anyone in the BBC cared to look at the story’s sourcing? As someone who, for 17 years with the BBC, reported extensively on both intelligence and insurgency, I have doubts over the story’s veracity, written by my former colleague Owen Bennett-Jones, over the RAW’s MQM connections. The first line in the story gives it away — and over an issue all BBC reporters were trained to hold dear. This is how the story begins: “Officials in Pakistan’s MQM party have told U.K. authorities they received Indian government funds, the BBC learnt from an authoritative Pakistani source.”
Confirming sources A British reporter of the BBC getting to hear what the MQM has told U.K. authorities from “an authoritative Pakistani source”? In my time in the BBC, such sourcing would never be accepted. The BBC newsroom would surely ask for a second reliable source. And common sense would dictate the newsroom to go in for confirmation from the U.K. authorities, preferably those directly involved in the MQM investigations. Several key questions arise. Do the Pakistani sources have access to U.K. authorities who are investigating the MQM? Has the U.K. shared such details with the MQM? If the U.K. has got clinching evidence about MQM money-laundering, has it moved against their U.K.-based leaders? But most important — why can’t the BBC, of all organisations, get authentic U.K. sourcing on such a sensitive story? In subsequent paragraphs, the whole story is made to hang on Pakistani sources.
In the last few months, top Pakistani ministers and military officials >have blamed the RAW for all the smoke and fire in Pakistan, accusing it of fuelling unrest in Balochistan, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh — even for the Taliban >attack on the Army school in Peshawar in which more than 100 schoolchildren were killed. The allegations born of paranoia after India got several consulates from a friendly Afghan government in towns bordering Pakistan has been carried to extreme limits, as is seen in this case where India is being blamed for a Pakistani Taliban attack on an army school in Pakistan. In the absence of concrete U.K. sourcing, the BBC story looks as much like any story in Pakistani media, which blame the RAW for all the unrest in Pakistan now.
“ In the absence of concrete U.K. sourcing, the BBC story looks as much like any story in Pakistani media, which blames the RAW for all the unrest in Pakistan now ”
The RAW’s MQM connections and with other ‘assets’ in Pakistan in the past are well-known. The RAW’s late veteran B. Raman had alluded to it in his book The Kao-boys of R&AW . He had gone so far as to say: “If Rajiv Gandhi had not lost the elections in 1989 and if A.K. Verma had continued as the chief of R&AW for two or three years more, Pakistan would not be existing in its present form today.” It is well-known by now that I.K. Gujral, when he was Prime Minister, closed down all RAW offensive operations in Pakistan, forcing the agency to close down the CIT cells (J and X) that were used for them. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that these cells or similar ones were revived for offensive operations any more. When such a decision is taken, the carefully nurtured ‘offensive assets’ are either pulled back if they are infiltrated from India, or they go astray in the absence of support if they are locals. So, is Pakistan raising a calculated furore over MQM’s India links at a time when their leaders are being investigated in the U.K. for possessing weapons (that came to light over the investigations of a murder) and for money-laundering? Is it trying to raise hell over what happened 20 years ago to score brownie points in the current context? That clearly seems to be the case.
The Sindh card While elaborating on state-sponsored insurgencies in South Asia between 1947 and the 1990s earlier, I had argued that nation states in post-colonial South Asia have reciprocally backed insurgencies and militancy against each other. The documentation covered how Pakistan, India and even Bangladesh used cross-border insurgents as part of national policy. This indeed is the unique feature of hostile neighbourhood relations in South Asia after the departure of the colonial power. The late Benazir Bhutto had told Indian editor M.J. Akbar that President Zia-ul-Haq is making a mistake by fuelling Khalistani militancy in Punjab. “If he plays the Punjab card, India will surely play the Sindh card,” she had said. India did play the Sindh card for quite a while in much the same way she had anticipated, but that is history.
After Gujral started his ‘parantha diplomacy’, the Indian state went into a defensive limbo. Repeated requests by a RAW station chief to mount an assassination attempt on ULFA military wing chief Paresh Baruah in Bangkok using Thai police assets were refused. From the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to the Shanti Bahini in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, to the MQM and other Mohajhir hit-groups in Sindh, the RAW pulled back on all these offensive trans-border operations.
From 2000 onwards, India started persuasive regional diplomacy to hit militants across the border. The name of the game changed. It worked in Bhutan and Bangladesh because friendly governments there decided to go after Indian rebels based in their territory with some seriousness. It did not work in Myanmar and surely not in Pakistan. But there is little evidence to show India is as yet trying something different — or something it had tried in the days of Rajiv Gandhi and A.K. Verma.
(Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC correspondent.)
