During his recent visit to India, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, alluding to Khalistan supporters, said that the United Kingdom would not welcome people who planned to use the UK’s legal systems to evade the law in India. Added that his country had set up “an anti-extremist task force” to help India.
Johnson apparently tried to appease India for not having forestalled Khalistan referendum. Johnson’s remarks reflect how hard it was for him to put up with India’s ennui about activities of the British Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) led by t Gurpatwant Singh Pannu . Khalistanis felt short of voting for an independent Khalistan in England on October 31 last year.
A few Sikhs “smeared” the Himachal Pradesh state assembly (winter).This event amounted to showing a red rag to India’s RAW/IB disinformation sleuths. India media first published reports that agonies have intercepted documents that reflected that Pakistan was planning to set up a new organisation Lashkar-e-Khalistan with recruits, inter alia, from Kashmir and Afghanistan to create unrest in India.* They even suggested that social media would be flooded by such separatist elements. Then came a warning from India’s Intelligence Bureau that “Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI has formed a new terrorist group, named Lashkar-e-Khalsa that is trying to carry out terrorist attacks in India. Quickly they attributed subsequent “terrorist attacks” and arrests to the ISI/ (Pakistan). “On May 6, four Khalistani terrorists were arrested by the Haryana Police at a toll post in Karnal. The police recovered improvised explosive devices (IEDs), arms and ammunition from the vehicle at a toll plaza in Karnal” and an explosion at the Punjab Police Intelligence Headquarters”.
Analysis and corollaries
The ISI is nowadays itself in the throes of a smear campaign at the hands of some myopic politicos. How could it afford bad relations with India? Even the Pakistan’s army chief and prime minister Shahbaz have vehemently desired to improve relations with India.
The allegations had tell-tale signs that they were false. The “document” about creation of Lashkar-e-Khalsa was never published or shared with Pakistan. It baffles one’s imagination that “terrorists” moved so freely with an explosives laden vehicle to be checked at long last at a toll post. Details of damage to the police headquarters were not published or investigated.
It is significant to recall that the Research and Analysis Wing chief Samant Kumar Goel (Balakote “strike” architect, and Kashmir and disinformation expert) and Intelligence Bureau head Arvind Kumar , reputed to be a counter-insurgency and disinformation specialist, were given a one-year extension in their services.
Goel, a 1984-batch IPS officer from Punjab cadre, would continue to be the Secretary of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for a one-year period beyond the presence tenure which ends on June 30. Similarly, Kumar, an IPS officer of Assam and Meghalaya cadre continued to head the Intelligence Bureau for a period of one year after June 30.*
Even prestigious Indian newspapers sometimes publish reports or articles that smack of being pieces of state-sponsored disinformation. Harvard’s criteria for detecting fake news could be applied to disinformation bloomers. Harvard suggests `everyone should vet a publisher’s credibility first and then check all the sources and citations’. James Carson offers tips in his article `Fake news: What exactly is it – and how can you spot it‘? (Telegraph January 31, 2019)
Disinformation camouflaged in Op-Eds is hard to detect as they do not usually quote their sources of information. A case in point is Shishir Gupta’s article `In Imran Khan’s 18-point Kashmir plan for Aug 5, outreach to Turkey, Malaysia and China’, published in Hindustan Times dated July 28, 2020.
Shishir writes, `With Pakistan Army expected to take the back seat, Imran Khan may go to occupied Kashmir [Azad Kashmir] to rake up anti-India sentiment in his assembly address to mark one year of India nullifying Article 370’ (How did he know the contents of the address when it was yet to be delivered).` Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan who counts the campaign against India over Jammu and Kashmir as his government’s key achievement has roped in the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, in its 18-point plan to commemorate the Aug 5 anniversary of India scrapping Article 370 that extended special status to the valley, people familiar with the development said. The ISI is Pakistan’s notorious spy agency accused of nurturing terror groups, mostly directed at India and Afghanistan’ (How did he know of the ISI’s connexion?).` Before he reaches Muzaffarabad, Khan’s government intends a field trip for foreign journalists to the occupied territory. Like in the past, the terror training camps funded by the ISI would be off-limits for the journalists’ (Looks like he is well aware of the location of the training camps being there himself?). So on.
Gupta’s credibility: Be it noted that Gupta is `Winner of the 2011 Ben-Gurion Award for journalism’. His affinity for Israel and abhorrence of Pakistan is conspicuous. He was also a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London. The ISS. London published the Pakistan-bashing paper `Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the Rise of Proliferation Networks (A Net Assessment) (An IISS Strategic Dossier) Paperback – January 1, 2007′.
IB/RAW’s strategy
: Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, RAW has concluded that the only way it could weaken Pakistan is to sour Pakistan-USA amity. To achieve this objective, IB/RAW is burning midnight oils to exploit USA’s sensitivity about CPEC and certain ticklish subjects like Hawala transactions for funneling funds to “terrorists’, nuclear proliferation, use of missiles to hit aircraft, nuclear weapons and delivery systems and development of chemical biological weapons. India even conducted mock exercises against the CBW attack .A Press Trust of India report stated `Meanwhile, the police has seized a rare pencil pistol and 25 “chemical” cartridges from a militant hideout in North Kashmir’s Kupwara district, leading to suspicion that militants might be switching over to chemical or biological weapons from conventional arms. The pistol and cartridges, marked “neroxin” were seized from the house of Bashir Khan at Krishipora-Nagrimalpora village, the Sub-District Police Officer, Handwara, Altaf Khan, said today. Khan said during the inspection of the ammunition, one of the police officers suffered giddiness and had to be referred to Army hospital for treatment, leading to the suspicion that the cartridges might be carrying chemical or biological agents’.
RAW’s disinformation campaign is well reflected by innocuous-looking news like”Kashmiri Mujahideen are in possession of stinger missiles”.
EU’s expose
Not long ago, EU-based non-governmental organisation EU DisinfoLab revealed an India-sponsored dis-informational network of 265 fake media outlets in 65 countries, including the US, Canada, Brussels, and Geneva. The network was being run by the Srivastava Group of India. It listed New Delhi Times as one of its assets, and also ran a think tank called International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies.
The Institute paid for the travel and accommodation of an unofficial far-right delegation of 23 European Union parliamentarians to Srinagar on October 30, 2013. The trip was arranged by Indian –intelligence surrogate Madi Sharma who posed as a self-styled “international business broker”. The delegation’s shikara (boat) ride in Kashmir Lake (dal) pictured Kashmir as heaven in serene peace. Some members however smelt a rat and abandoned the free joy ride.
Confessions by Indian diplomats
Some Indian diplomats have confessed in their memoirs that they have indulged in nefarious activities against Pakistan. Voracious readers my go through Amar Bhushan’s book Terror in Islamabad. Before being posted to Islamabad, Bhushan had served as an officer of India’s premier intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, Border Security Force Intelligence, and State Special Branch for quarter of a century. His book mentions another RAW officer, Amit Munshi (real name Veer Singh) posted as “Cultural Attache”.
India’s ambassador Bharath Raj Muthu Kumar played a role in the Afghan insurgency. With the consent of then foreign minister Jaswant Singh, he
`coordinated military and medical assistance that India was secretly giving to Massoud and his forces’… `helicopters, uniforms, ordnance, mortars, small armaments, refurbished Kalashnikovs seized in Kashmir, combat and winter clothes, packaged food, medicines, and funds through his brother in London, Wali Massoud’, delivered circuitously with the help of other countries who helped this outreach’. When New Delhi queried about the benefit of costly support to Northern Alliance chief Massoud, Kumar explained, “He is battling someone we should be battling. When Massoud fights the Taliban, he fights Pakistan.
India’s national-security czar Ajit Doval publicly claims that he acted as a spy under a pseudonym in Pakistan for 11 years, seven years in Lahore. Doval is a retired director of Indian Intelligence Bureau. He boastfully dons the title of “Indian James Bond”. He lived in Pakistan’s Lahore, disguised as a Muslim for seven years. During his years in the country, he befriended the locals visiting mosques and lived among the predominantly Muslim population. “Acknowledged as a master of psychological welfare” in India, Doval, as a part of his job also spied on Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence. Doval credits himself with brainwashing a group of freedom fighters led by Kukkay Parey who detected freedom fighters and killed them.
Sharing an incident from his time in Pakistan, he said that he was once identified as a Hindu by a local from his pierced ears. Doval then underwent plastic surgery to prevent his cover from blowing. Narrating his account, Doval shared, “I was coming back from a Masjid. A man sitting in the corner, who had an intriguing personality and a white beard, called me. He asked, are you a Hindu? I replied saying no. He asked me to come with him, and took me to a small room and shut the door. He told me, ‘See you are a Hindu. Your ears are pierced.’ The place I come from, as a child there is a tradition to pierce the ear. I told him it was pierced when I was born. He told me, get plastic surgery for this, it’s not safe to walk like that. Then I got it (plastic surgery) done.”
In the late 1980s. Doval snuck inside the Golden Temple posing as a Pakistani agent to the Khalistani militants and passed significant information during Operation Black Thunder in 1988. After his stint as an undercover agent, Doval worked in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. A close-associate of PM Modi, Doval is also responsible for master-minding the surgical strike in 2016.
Concluding remarks
To harm Pakistan India is engaged in a virulent anti-Pakistan disinformation campaign. India’s role in precipitating Fatf restrictions on Pakistan is obvious. It appears India has meticulously implemented Hitler’s propaganda theorems: `The bigger the lie, the better the results. The success of any propaganda campaign ultimately depends on the propagandist’s down-to-earth understanding of the “primitive sentiments of the popular masses”. Mein Kampf (pp. 179-180).
India’s Strategic Policy Group, idle since Manmohan Singh’s second term, has been revived (to create troubles in Sindh, Balochistan, and KPK).Indian diplomats routinely flouted diplomatic norms.
