RAW: India’s External Intelligence Agency And Its Impact On Neighbours

India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has long faced allegations of meddling in its neighbours’ affairs. Founded in 1968, primarily to counter China’s influence, over time it has shifted its focus to India’s other traditional rival, Pakistan. RAW and Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have been engaged in covert operations against one other for over three decades. The ongoing dispute in Kashmir continues to fuel these clashes, but experts say Afghanistan may be emerging as the new battleground. Islamabad sees India’s growing diplomatic initiatives in Afghanistan as a cover for RAW agents working to destabilize Pakistan. It accuses RAW of training and arming separatists in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province along the Afghan border. RAW denies these charges, and in turn, accuses the ISI of the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

The genesis of RAW
Until 1968, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is responsible for India’s internal intelligence, also handled external intelligence. But after India’s miserable performance in a 1962 border war with China, the need for a separate external intelligence agency was clear. During that conflict, “our intelligence failed to detect Chinese build up for the attack,” writes Maj. Gen. VK Singh, a retired army officer who did a stint in RAW, in his 2007 book, India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing.

As a result, India established a dedicated external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Founded mainly to focus on China and Pakistan, over the last forty years the organization has expanded its mandate and is credited with greatly increasing India’s influence abroad. Experts say RAW’s powers and its role in India’s foreign policy have varied under different prime ministers. Successes that RAW claim it contributed to include:

The creation of Bangladesh in 1971;
India’s growing influence in Afghanistan;
Sikkim’s accession to India in the northeast in 1975;
The security of India’s nuclear program; and
The success of African liberation movements during the Cold War.
The first head of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kao, who headed the IB’s external intelligence division, led the agency until he retired in 1977. Many experts, including officers who worked with him, credit him with RAW’s initial successes: India’s triumph in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and India’s covert assistance to the African National Congress’s anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. “To a large extent, it was Kao who raised RAW to the level of India’s premier intelligence agency, with agents in virtually every major embassy and high commission,” writes Singh. But the organization has been criticized for its lack of coordination with domestic intelligence and security agencies, weak analytical capabilities, and complete lack of transparency.

The functions of RAW
Not much is known regarding the structure of RAW, say experts. The organization started with 250 people and about $400,000. It has since expanded to several thousand personnel, but there is no clear estimate of its staffing or budget, as both remain secret. However, an estimate by the U.S.-based Federation of American Scientists suggests that in 2000, RAW had about eight to ten thousand agents and a budget that experts place at $145 million. Unlike the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Britain’s MI6, RAW reports directly to the prime minister instead of the Ministry of Defence. The chief of RAW is designated secretary (research) in the Cabinet Secretariat, which is part of the prime minister’s office. Some officers of RAW are members of a specialized service, the Research and Analysis Service, but several officers also serve on deputation from other services such as the Indian Police Service.

RAW had two priorities after its formation, writes B. Raman, a former RAW official, in the 2007 book, The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. The organization worked to strengthen its capability for intelligence gathering on Pakistan and China and for covert action in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Some experts say that RAW’s efforts in East Pakistan, which was created from the partition of the Indian state of Bengal and completely separated from the rest of Pakistan, was aimed at fomenting independence sentiment. Over time, RAW’s objectives have broadened to include:

Monitoring the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on India’s national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy.

Seeking the control and limitation of the supply of military hardware to Pakistan, mostly from European countries, the United States, and China.

Experts disagree on the amount of influence RAW asserts on India’s foreign policy. Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University, says the agency has no influence on foreign policy. However, Dipankar Banerjee, a retired army official and current director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a New Delhi-based think tank, says the head of RAW has direct access to the head of state, to whom he provides input and analysis.

From the early days, RAW had a secret liaison relationship with the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency. The main purpose was to benefit from Israel’s knowledge of West Asia and North Africa, and to learn from its counterterrorism techniques, say experts.

RAW’s role in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka
But it was the support for the Tamil separatist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, that brought RAW much criticism from human rights organizations. RAW helped to train and arm the LTTE in the 1970s, but after the group’s terrorist activities grew in the 1980s-including its alliances with separatist groups in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu-RAW withdrew this support. In 1987, New Delhi made a pact with the Sri Lankan government to send peacekeeping troops to the island and Indian forces ended up fighting the group RAW had armed. In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister of India at the time of the peacekeeping force deployment, was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber.

Covert action
Since its inception in 1968, RAW has had a close liaison relationship with KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency, due to the intelligence it has provided RAW on Pakistan. This relationship was further strengthened in the early 1980s when the foundation was laid for a trilateral cooperation involving the RAW, KHAD, and the Soviet KGB. Raman says RAW valued KHAD’s cooperation for monitoring the activities of Sikh militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Sikhs in the Indian state of Punjab were demanding an independent state of Khalistan. According to Raman, Pakistan’s ISI set up clandestine camps for training and arming Khalistani recruits in Pakistan’s Punjab Province and North West Frontier Province. During this time, the ISI received large sums from Saudi Arabia and the CIA for arming the Afghan mujahadeen against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. “The ISI diverted part of these funds and arms and ammunition to the Khalistani terrorists,” alleges Raman.


In retaliation, in the mid-1980s, RAW set up two covert groups of its own, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan (Newsline), writes Pakistani military expert Ayesha Siddiqa. Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a “low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore” was carried out. This forced the head of ISI to meet his counterpart in RAW and agree on the rules of engagement as far as Punjab was concerned, writes Siddiqa. The negotiation was brokered by then-Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. “It was agreed that Pakistan would not carry out activities in the Punjab as long as RAW refrained from creating mayhem and violence inside Pakistan,” Siddiqa writes.

In the past, Pakistan also accused RAW of supporting Sindhi nationalists demanding a separate state, as well as Seraikis calling for a partition of Pakistan’s Punjab to create a separate Seraiki state. India denies these charges. However, experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan’s Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan. But some experts say India no longer does this. As this Backgrounder explains, Pakistan is suspicious of India’s influence in Afghanistan, which it views as a threat to its own interests in the region. Experts say although it is very likely that India has active intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, it is difficult to say whether it is also involved in covert operations.

Relations with CIA
The CIA assisted in the creation of RAW, says South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution. However, India’s intelligence relations with the CIA started even before the existence of RAW, note experts. After India’s war with China in 1962, CIA instructors trained Establishment 22, a “covert organisation raised from among Tibetan refugees in India, to execute deep-penetration terror operations in China,” writes Swami.

But the CIA’s operations with the ISI to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s made RAW very wary. However, it did not stop RAW from seeking the CIA’s assistance in counterterrorism training. Raman writes: “One had one more bizarre example of how international intelligence cooperation works.” The CIA trained the officers of the ISI in the use of terrorism against an adversary, and at the same time, he writes, it trained RAW and IB officers “in some of the techniques of countering that terrorism.” India’s intelligence agencies also feel the lack of an equal relationship with the CIA, say experts. Swami says RAW’s grievance is that there is little information they get on Pakistan from the United States; however, Washington expects New Delhi to provide it with intelligence on Afghanistan.

In 1997, Prime Minister I.K. Gujral shut down both the CITs aimed at Pakistan on moral grounds. Before Gujral, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had ended RAW’s eastern operations in the early 1990s, as part of his efforts to build bridges with China and Myanmar, say analysts.


Successive RAW leaders attempted to gain fresh authorization for deterrent covert operations, but without success, says Swami. Siddiqa writes: “The Indian government probably realized that encouraging covert warfare would not only destabilize bilateral relations but was also dangerous for the peace and stability of the entire region.”

Weaknesses in RAW
The intrusion of Pakistan-backed armed forces into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (Global Security) in 1999 prompted questions about RAW’s efficacy. Some analysts saw the conflict as an intelligence failure. However, RAW officials argued they had provided the intelligence but political leadership had failed to act upon it. The Indian government constituted a committee to look into the reasons for the failure and recommend remedial measures. The report of the Kargil review committee was then examined by a group of ministers, established in 2000. The group recommended a formal written charter and pointed out lack of coordination and communication within various intelligence agencies.

Following the review, a new organization was set up-the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) – modelled on the U.S. National Security Agency – which would be the repository of the nation’s technical intelligence – spy satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and spy planes. The government also decided to create a Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), whose head would be the adviser to the Chief of Staffs Committee and the defence minister. The DIA was empowered to conduct trans-border operations.


However, the shake-up of the intelligence apparatus has not removed the problems that persisted, especially relating to the overlap of agency activities, say experts. Earlier, RAW was the only organization permitted to conduct espionage operations abroad. Now both the IB and DIA have also been given the authority to conduct such operations, writes Singh.

There have also been occasional media reports of penetration inside RAW by other agencies, in particular the CIA. Swami writes that RAW is exceptional amongst major spy agencies in maintaining no permanent distinction (Hindu) between covert operatives who execute secret tasks, and personnel who must liaise with services such as the CIA or public bodies, such as analysts and area specialists. “As a result, personnel with sensitive operational information are exposed to potentially compromising contacts,” he writes.

BY : Jayshree Bajoria.

  

South Asia’s: Water Unquenchable Thirst

A growing rivalry between India, Pakistan and China over the region’s great rivers may be threatening South Asia’s peace.

 

SONAULLAH PHAPHO has spent half a century picking a living from Wular lake high in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Today he is lucky if he scoops a fish or two out of the soupy mess. Push a boat into the knee-deep lake and the mud raises a stink of sewage. A century ago Wular and its surrounding marshes covered more than 217 square kilometres (84 square miles), making it one of Asia’s larger freshwater lakes. Now, thanks to silt and encroachment, the extraction of water by nearby towns and tree planting on the shore, it measures only 87 sq km and is shrinking.

Compared with much of South Asia, Kashmir, a disputed territory in northern India, has many rivers and relatively few people. But even here fresh water is running short. To see how contentious this can be, drive half a day south to where the Baglihar dam (shown above) is rising up. An enormous wall bisects the valley, dressing it in white spray, and three huge jets of water blast from its sluices.

Half complete, the dam is already a local wonder that tourists gape at. It generates 450MW for the starved energy grid of Jammu and Kashmir. Once the scheme fully tames the water, by steering it through a tunnel blasted into the mountain, the grid will gain another 450MW.

The river swirls away, white-crested and silt-laden, racing to the nearby border with Pakistan. But there Baglihar is a source of bitterness. Pakistanis cite it as typical of an intensifying Indian threat to their existence, a conspiracy to divert, withhold or misuse precious water that is rightfully theirs. Officials in Islamabad and diplomats abroad are primed to grumble about it. Pakistan’s most powerful man, the head of the armed forces, General Ashfaq Kayani, cites water to justify his “India-centric” military stance.

Others take it further. “Water is the latest battle cry for jihadis,” says B.G. Verghese, an Indian writer. “They shout that water must flow, or blood must flow.” Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terror group, likes to threaten to blow up India’s dams. Last year a Pakistani extremist, Abdur Rehman Makki, told a rally that if India were to “block Pakistan’s waters, we will let loose a river of blood.”

Assorted hardliners cheer them on. A blood-curdling editorial in Nawa-i-Waqt, a Pakistani newspaper, warned in April that “Pakistan should convey to India that a war is possible on the issue of water and this time war will be a nuclear one.”

Upstream such outbursts are usually dismissed as proof that troubled Pakistan is, as ever, spoiling for a fight. Water is merely the latest excuse. India is not misbehaving, says Mr Verghese placidly. It fails to take all it is entitled to from cross-border rivers in Kashmir. Run-of-the-river dams like Baglihar consume nothing, since water must flow to run turbines. Such a dam, he says, merely briefly delays a river.

Indians point out, too, that Pakistan enjoys a rare guarantee: the Indus Water Treaty, struck in 1960 by far-sighted engineers and diplomats who saw that after the partition of land, water had to be shared out too. The treaty, which has survived three wars, details exactly how each side must use cross-border rivers. Mostly this applies to the tributaries that flow from Kashmir to form the massive Indus river, Pakistan’s lifeblood.

If Indians abide by the treaty, then in theory at least they cannot be misbehaving. They see Baglihar as proof of co-operation, not a threat. When Pakistan objected to the dam’s design, India accepted international arbitration, the first case in the treaty’s history. Outside experts studied the dam and ordered small changes. But in effect they said it posed no threat to Pakistan. And last year the dispute was officially ended by the two governments.

Downstream, however, few sound satisfied. “The Baglihar decision…allowed a reservoir on a river coming into Pakistan, and now a precedent is set,” laments John Briscoe, a water expert formerly of the World Bank who advises Pakistan. The Pakistanis fear Indian control over the headwaters of the Indus. And Indian bureaucrats fuel these fears with obsessive secrecy about all water data.

Bashir Ahmad, a geologist in Srinagar, Kashmir who studied the Baglihar dam, gives grim warning about the Indians’ future intentions: “They will switch the Indus off to make Pakistan solely dependent on India. It’s going to be a water bomb.” A less excitable report in February by America’s Senate offered a similar assessment: “The cumulative effect of [many dam] projects could give India the ability to store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the growing season.” Dams are a source of “significant bilateral tension”, the report concludes.

More dams are to come, as India’s need to power its economy means it is quietly spending billions on hydropower in Kashmir. The Senate report totted up 33 hydro projects in the border area. The state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, says dams will add an extra 3,000MW to the grid in the next eight years alone. Some analysts in Srinagar talk of over 60 dam projects, large and small, now on the books.

Any of these could spark a new confrontation. The latest row is over the Kishanganga river (called the Neelum in Pakistan) as each country races to build a hydropower dam either side of Kashmir’s line of control. India’s dam will divert some of the river down a 22km (14-mile) mountain tunnel to turbines. To Pakistani fury, that will lessen the water flow to the downstream dam, so its capacity will fall short of a planned 960MW.

Pakistan also claims (though the evidence is shaky) that 600,000 people will suffer by getting less water for irrigation. Again it insisted on international arbitration at The Hague. In September, to Pakistani delight, India was ordered to suspend some of its building for further assessments to be made. But India still looks likelier to come away happy in the end, as the treaty foresaw and permitted the Indian design, and India is likely to finish its dam ahead of Pakistan in any case, by 2016 rather than 2018.

When China’s upstream

Countries downstream have genuine reasons to fret. Pakistan is exposed. Like Egypt it exists around a single great river, though the Indus is nearly twice the Nile’s size when it reaches the sea. It waters over 80% of Pakistan’s 22m hectares (54m acres) of irrigated land, using canals built by the British. In turn that farming provides 21% of the country’s GDP, as well as livelihoods for a big proportion of its 180m people. Many of them are already thirsty.

On average each Indian gets just 1,730 cubic metres of fresh water a year, less than a quarter of the global average of 8,209 cubic metres. Yet that looks bountiful compared with each Pakistani’s share: a mere 1,000 cubic metres. Worse yet, South Asia’s fresh water mostly falls in a few monsoon months. The dreadful floods this year and last showed that untamed and unpredictable rivers can be both resource and threat.

More rows between India and Pakistan are certain. India may keep on dismissing them as Pakistani bluster, an easy thing to do if you are upstream. But India is downstream in another highly tricky area: its border with China.

Tension already exists over the status of India’s Arunachal Pradesh state, which China refuses to recognise. A quarrel over rivers in the region could serve as a focus for wider disputes about territory. A measure of the recent slump in relations came when, to the fury of India’s authorities, China blocked an attempt by the Asian Development Bank to prepare for a dam project in Arunachal Pradesh. And one of India’s largest rivers, the Brahmaputra (Tsangpo in China), flows south from the Tibetan plateau and into Assam not far from the disputed land.

MAP:

Angry Indian politicians, activists, bloggers and journalists claim that water-starved China (with 8% of the world’s fresh water but 20% of its population) has plans to divert the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra to farmers in its central and eastern regions. Feelings are running so high that India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, felt obliged to issue a statement on August 4th saying that China’s leaders had assured him there were no such plans afoot. And though a few run-of-the-river hydroelectric schemes are being built upstream on the Tsangpo, none of these could change the river’s course. Cool heads point out that speculation about China channelling the torrent from near the border, at a spot known as the Great Bend, looks fantastical, at least at present.

Chinese engineers would need to use nuclear explosions to have a chance of making tunnels through a series of ridged mountains to get water east from the Great Bend. Although plans have existed since the fourth century to take water from China’s west to the east, and the scheme was pushed by Mao Zedong, the engineering, at least for now, appears to be technically impossible. Yet broader Indian strategic fears—the fact that the Chinese control the Tibetan plateau, which is the source of water for parts of densely populated northern India—will evaporate no more easily than Pakistani fears of India.

An ever-thirstier region

The scarcity of water in South Asia will become harder to manage as demand rises. South Asia’s population of 1.5 billion is growing by 1.7% a year, says the World Bank, which means an extra 25m or so mouths to water and feed: imagine dropping North Korea’s entire population on the region each year. Greater wealth in South Asia brings with it a soaring demand for food, especially for water-intensive meat and other protein. Industry and energy-producers also use water, though unlike farms they return it, eventually, to the rivers.

Worse, overall supply will not only fail to keep up with rising demand but is likely to fall (unless a cheap way is found to turn sea water fresh). The Himalayan glaciers are melting. A Dutch study last year of the western Himalayas reckoned that shrunken glaciers will cut the flow of the Indus by some 8% by mid-century. Flows may also get less regular, especially if glacial dams form, withholding water, and then collapse, causing floods.

Others give even scarier predictions. Sundeep Waslekar, who heads a Mumbai think-tank, the Strategic Foresight Group, which has picked water as a long-term threat to Asian stability, sees a “mega-arc of hydro insecurity” emerging from western China along the Himalayas to the Middle East and farther west. The strain of bigger populations, diminishing water tables and a changing climate could all conspire to produce a storm of troubles. South Asia is especially vulnerable: Mr Waslekar sees a cut of 20% in total available fresh water over the next two decades.

The greatest threat of all would be from any change to the monsoon, which delivers most of the region’s fresh water each summer. Here, again, worries arise. Indian meteorologists who have studied rainfall data from 1901 to 2004 have noted signs in recent decades of more dry spells within the peak monsoon months. If these lead to weaker, or less predictable, monsoons in future (though this year’s was about normal) the consequences for farmers could be dire.

When the water ran out

 

In any case, the cost of running short of water is already becoming clearer. The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported last year that up to 77m Bangladeshis had been poisoned by arsenic—the largest mass-poisoning in history. It was the result of villagers pumping up groundwater from ever deeper aquifers. The same poison is now entering crops and more of the food chain.

Filthy water and bad sanitation spread diseases, such as diarrhoea and cholera, which kill hundreds of thousands of Indian children every year, says Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency. Several South Asian rivers, suffering from weaker flows, have become a sludge of human and animal waste, dangerous to drink and wash in and unsafe even for watering crops.

All over the region water tables are dropping as bore holes drive deeper. In the dry season even some of the larger rivers slow to a trickle. Knut Oberhagemann, a water expert in Dhaka, Bangladesh, says that the flow of the mighty Ganges where it enters Bangladesh is at times a pitiful few hundred cubic metres a second, so low that “you can walk across the river”. When the same river, at this point called the Padma, reaches the coast, it is often so feeble that the sea intrudes, poisoning the land with salt.

The same problem curses the delta of the Indus in Pakistan. There a semi-desert was turned into some of the most fertile land on earth by British-built irrigation canals. But as the sea encroaches on low, flat land, rivers at times are flowing backwards, laments a local environmental activist. Take away the fresh water—around 60% of which is now lost to seepage and evaporation because of the bad management of those canals—and the desert will eventually come back.

Save or snatch

Governments in South Asia can respond to growing scarcity in one of two ways. The first is to improve the way they use the water they have, both by managing it better and by co-operating with one another. The second is to try to grab as much water as they can from their neighbours.

Better management of irrigation canals and better farming techniques would help hugely to cut waste. In Pakistan bitter rows between provinces have long scotched coherent planning. Wealthy Punjab, a big farming province, is routinely accused by downstream Sindh (and by others too) of taking an unfair share of the water.

And Pakistan badly needs more dams to control floods, store monsoon water and make electricity (China is said to have offered to help Pakistan build a series of big dams, and has already sent engineers to help speed along the new one on the Neelum/Kishanganga). Only about 10% of the potential hydropower of the Indus has been tapped so far, and only 30 days’ average river flow can be stored (by contrast, the Colorado in America has dams to store 1,000 days’-worth).

Many governments are at least thinking in terms of dams and co-operation. Mr Waslekar reckons that 60-80 big dams (mostly for energy) will be built in South Asia in the next two or three decades, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. In many cases—as for example in mountainous Bhutan, where the economy gets a huge boost from selling hydropower to India—this can foster economic and diplomatic co-operation. India has visions of one day persuading unstable but immensely water-rich Nepal to follow suit. The country is the source of more than 40% of the Ganges’s water, and Indian analysts talk dreamily of 40GW of hydropower potential waiting to be used.

Other cross-border water deals are pending. Cosy ties with Bangladesh’s government mean that India can more easily build dams on some of the several dozen rivers that cross their shared frontier. In September Mr Singh visited Dhaka to sign a deal with Bangladesh to allow the latest hydro dam to go up on the Teesta river. Though the deal was postponed at the last minute by a row with a regional Indian leader, it now looks set to go ahead. However there are bitter memories in Bangladesh of an earlier deal, on the Ganges, which allowed India to put up a barrage to block the river’s flow in the dry season.

Tentative signs of wider co-operation exist. China issues twice-daily reports on the Tsangpo river flow in the flood season, separately to India and to Bangladesh. This could be seen as encouraging, if the two giants of the region wished to consider getting together over water. Indeed if full-scale friendliness were ever sought, an immense opportunity awaits.

Mr Verghese points out that the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra falls 2,450 metres (8,000 feet) over a few kilometres in China just before it reaches the Indian border. Send it through a 100km tunnel from the Tibetan plateau down to Assam and an enormous 54,000MW could be generated. One day its power could light not only much of north-east India and Bangladesh, but nearby Myanmar and beyond. Such a mega-structure would become a keystone for regional co-operation.

It will almost certainly never be built. Analysts have suggested that, given the generally dire relations between South Asian countries, water will provoke clashes rather than co-operation. A 2009 report for the CIA concluded that “the likelihood of conflict between India and Pakistan over shared river resources is expected to increase”, though it added that elsewhere in the region “the risk of armed interstate conflict is minor”. And a Bangladeshi security expert, Major-General Muniruzzaman, predicts that India’s “coercive diplomacy”, its refusal to negotiate multilaterally on such issues as river-sharing, means that “if ever there were a localised conflict in South Asia, it will be over water.”

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Tipai deal is breach of trust-Hasina's efforts to befriend India has been rebuffed

Kuldip said, "friendshipwith India was a straw to which the people of Bangladesh have clung. Today theywonder if they have any future with India." 

India's veteran journalist anddiplomat Kuldip Nayar has said his country's move to build the Tipaimukh Damhas come as a big embarrassment to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's governmentand felt the need for quick measures to bridge the confidence gap. In anarticle published in a local Englishdaily, Nayar who has just returned home after a week long visit to Dhaka said Sheikh Hasina's popularity issinking in Bangladesh and India as her friend should not do anything to add newproblems to her government.(The New Nation )

He writes when the news broke outof the Indian signing of the contract to build the Tipaimukh dam keeping Bangladesh was in the dark. And it happenedonly one month after Indian Prime Minister Dr Monmahan Singh's visit to Dhaka.

The contract with the ManipurState Government and the developer company was signed on October 23, he said adding it occurred despite the IndianPrime Minister's assurance to his hostin Dhaka that India will not do anything (on Tipaimukh) which will hurtBangladesh's interest.

He writes, the Indian move is a"violation of the understanding given by Delhi that it will not doanything that would affect Dhaka."

He said the news was first brokenby BBC from an unconfirmed source about one month after the signing of the contract. And when it flashed out inBangladesh media the Indian side reacted only to contain the reaction fromBangladesh side.

He writes," the explanationgiven by New Delhi after 72 hours (of breaking the news) is that the dam is meant to check floods andwill not divert waters. This has not assuaged the feeling of Bangladesh."The very signing of the agreement without informing Dhaka was a breach ofconfidence, Kuldip said.

The Dam may or may not destroythe environment is a separate point of complaint, he said adding the questionis the breach of trust and it has harmed beleaguered Hasina in Dhaka who haslost in prestige from the Indian action.

He said her efforts to befriendIndia have been rebuffed and added, "There is no doubt that the Teesta andTipaimukh will cut her votes when Bangladesh goes to polls two years later. Thefallout will benefit Begum Zia who is sitting pretty and issuing statementsafter statements as she did in the past," he writes.

Kuldip said, "friendshipwith India was a straw to which the people of Bangladesh have clung. Today theywonder if they have any future with India." He said Sheikh Hasina hastaken unilateral steps like transit which gives quick access to India to itsnortheastern states.

But the way New Delhi isreciprocating her gestures is even worrying the pro-India elements inBangladesh. He said the loan given to Bangladesh is all tied to imports andtechnical know how from India. The border between the two countries has notbeen demarcated and there is no move to transfer the enclaves.

Teesta waters issue has not beenresolved and when the impacts of all such blows were somewhat losing impacts,Tipaimukh has come as a new blow to the relations between the two countries,Kuldip has argued.

He said some quarters believethat the Teesta water would eventually come just as the flow from the Farakkabarrage did, but the moves suffered recently from the critical approach of WestBengal Chief Minister Mamata Benarjee.

He said there are as many as 52rivers from India flowing into Bangladesh. " I think that on the majorones New Delhi should give a clear understanding to Dhaka that they will not bein any way touched without consulting it," Observers in Dhaka is nowwatching development from both sides as to how they are moving to resolve theissue. Meanwhile angers are taking new shape in Bangladesh as people havestarted taking the streets to protest the unilateral Indian actions giving adamn to international laws and norms on common borders.

Critics say since it is an issueequally bringing risks to local people in India and Bangladesh, bothgovernments will join hand to work out a solution acceptable to people on bothsides.  

BY :  Faruque Ahmed.

Hasina Has To Wake Up To The Reality

There is no doubt that Teesta water and Tipaimukh dam issues will cut into her votes when Bangladesh goes to polls.

Popularity is a rare quality which begins to elude the rulers when they need it the most. Bangladesh Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina is in a similar situation. Her stock has shrunk at a time when she requires it badly. People had returned her with a sweeping majority. Yet they increasingly feel, three years after her being in power, that her non-governance, if not mis-governance, has only made their life miserable.

After staying in Bangladesh for five days I find that she has not only lost her sheen but also the trust she enjoyed once. People expected her to deliver but there is nothing they can recognise as her achievement. For example, she promised electricity and substantially supplied it at great cost by borrowing from overstretched banks. But people wanted to see large power stations to come up since their demand is ever rising. What India promised is yet nowhere in the horizon.

Alleviating poverty with limited resources is always a challenge, but she does not appear to be even trying to meet it. She looks content with whatever she has done and runs down the critics. “Cut electricity of those who complain about its shortage sitting in their air-conditioned rooms,” she said when newspapers and television networks pointed out about the shortage. 

No doubt, Hasina has contained terrorism and there is a sense of relief that the nation is not at the mercy of fundamentalists like Bangla Bhai. Secularism is her commitment and she pursues it relentlessly. She has retrieved the ground her opponent, Khaleda Zia, president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had lost, knowingly and purposely. The credit also goes to Hasina that anti-India sentiment which the BNP fostered has more or less disappeared. And she has taken unilateral steps like transit which gives quick access to India to its northeastern states.

But has New Delhi reciprocated to the extent she has gone worries even the pro-India elements? The loan offered is all tied with Indian imports and technical know-how. The border between the countries has not been demarcated and there is no move to transfer the enclaves which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to do during his visit to Dhaka a few weeks ago. (Assam is already up in arms on the enclaves).

The biggest disappointment with India is the denial of sharing of Teesta river water. They feel they lost it because of political wrangling between New Delhi and Kolkata. (West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who was on board on the formula of sharing the water changed her mind at the eleventh hour and appointed a River Commission to look into the matter). Some quarters believe that the Teesta water would eventually come just as the flow from the Farakka barrage did through the enlightened approach of the then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. Again it depends on Mamata because the Manmohan Singh government is too dependent on her Lok Sabha members for survival to put pressure on the Teesta issue.

The blow was somewhat losing its impact when the reported signing by India of a contract for building the Tipaimukh dam on the Barak river in Manipur, a northeastern state, came to light. It was a BBC story which lacked confirmation first but was later supported by other sources. The contract was signed by Delhi and the Manipur government on October 23, one month after Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka. What has hurt Bangladesh is the violation of understanding given by Delhi not to do anything that would affect Dhaka.

The explanation given by New Delhi after 72 hours is that the dam meant to check flooding will not divert water. This has not assuaged the feelings of Bangladeshis. That the dam may destroy the environment is a separate point of complaint. As many as 52 rivers from India flow into Bangladesh. I think that on the major ones New Delhi should give a clear understanding to Dhaka that they will not be in any way touched without consulting it.

The beleaguered Hasina has further lost prestige. Her efforts to befriend India have got rebuffed. There is no doubt that the Teesta water and Tipaimukh will cut into her votes when Bangladesh goes to polls two years later. The fallout will benefit Khaleda Zia who is sitting pretty and not issuing statement after statement as she did in the past. But are the Bangladeshis a shuttlecock to be tossed from one side to another—from Hasina to Khaleda?

They feel exasperated and helpless. They openly talk about the military takeover. Military too is far from happy by the capricious postings and transfers by the Hasina government. But the chances of any coup are very few. The military support to the caretaker government more than three years ago was of no avail. The armed forces could neither clean up the administration nor build up an alternative to the two leaders.

Friendship with India was a straw to which the people in Bangladesh have clung. Today they wonder if they have any future with India. China which is trying its best to woo the country is not to their liking because Beijing is neither democratic nor pluralistic, the two principles to which they have stuck since the founding of Bangladesh by Banga Bandhu Shaikh Mujib-ur Rahman. They would want to build their country according to their own genius.

Bangladesh, like India, is also reeking with corruption. And there too the nation has been appalled to find the top, the creamy layer, hobnobbing with the rulers for more concessions and more concealment of their misdeeds. Even the World Bank has threatened to withdraw its assistance for constructing the Padma Bridge fearing corruption. Things may yet sort out now that the Prime Minister’s office has taken the matter in its own hand.

Hasina bothers little because the haze of popularity has not yet awakened her to the reality. She believes that a few newspapers are tarnishing her good name. She does not realise that the papers’ circulation is in proportion to their credibility. They could not be leading papers if they had reported or interpreted the situation wrongly. But then, like the communists, she forgives the renegades but not critics

BY :  Kuldip Nayar.

Correlation Between Teesta Agreement And Bilateral Relations

THE recent visit of the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to Bangladesh could have been historic for Bangladesh and India, had the two countries signed a water-sharing agreement on the river Teesta. Manmohan Singh did tell a news briefing that his maiden visit to Bangladesh had been ‘very satisfying’; it might have been from the Indian perspective but, perhaps, not so much from the Bangladesh point of view.

The sharing of Teesta water has been on the negotiations table for four decades. There was a possibility for an agreement on the Teesta to be signed when the Bangladesh prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, paid an official visit to India. However, it was not to be. At the end of her visit, the Dhaka-Delhi communiqué indicated that more survey and data were required to finalise the draft agreement and that the agreement could be signed during Manmohan Singh’s visit.

The agreement looked a certainty during the visit of the Indian national security adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, to Dhaka in August; it seemed that the agreement was merely waiting to be inked by the two heads of government. Moreover, the Bangladesh water resources minister, Ramesh Chandra Sen, earlier said that the two countries had already signed a draft agreement and that all the terms and conditions had been finalised.

However, as it turned out, the state government of Pashchim Banga had reservations about certain clauses of the proposed agreement, and the agreement fell through. The question then is what the water resources minister of the two countries had been doing for the past two years. Apparently, the two had met at different forums and been working on the treaty. It is unlikely that the central government of India did not consult with the Pashchim Banga chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, at any stage of the negotiations.

It is safe to presume then that Mamata changed her mind at the eleventh hour, thereby casting a shadow on the Indian prime minister’s Bangladesh visit. Suffice it to say, an agreement on the Teesta was generally perceived to be a crucial component of the visit. The question to ask then is why Mamata waited until the last to articulate her reservation. She is also quoted to have said that there is no water in the Teesta to be shared with Bangladesh.

It is pertinent to point out here that equitable sharing of the Teesta water would not have arisen had India allowed to let the river flow its natural course. Needless to say, while erecting a dam on an international river goes against relevant international laws and conventions, India has not allowed such laws and conventions to deter it from damming international rivers and diverting their water to different parts of the country.

Mamata also questioned some issues in the treaty. Although it is not clear what her specific objections are, her government is said to have found the agreement ‘detrimental to the interests’ of Pashchim Banga. There is also speculation that the decision was prompted by her difference with the central government over financial allocation for the state government.

The Teesta is said to be the lifeline of the Indian state of Sikkim, flowing for almost the entire length of the state and carving out verdant Himalayan temperate and tropical river valleys. The emerald-coloured river then forms the border between Sikkim and West Bengal before joining the Brahmaputra as a tributary in Bangladesh.

The idea of using the Teesta for irrigation for the betterment of the people dates back to the British period. During the 1950s, the then East Pakistani authorities intimated the Indian authorities regarding the Teesta project in her territory. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, talks on Teesta water sharing continued in the Indo-Bangladesh Joint River Commission. Bangladesh objected to India’s plan to divert the water of the Teesta to the Mahananda basin. Since the independence of Bangladesh, a number of Joint River Commission meetings took place without any results. Over the decades, the river flow on the Bangladesh side decreased because of the diversion of water from the Indian parts of the river during dry season.

Bangladesh wants to split the water evenly at the Indian barrage to have an ensured supply of half of the water during dry season. The proposal from Bangladesh was to keep 20 per cent of the water for environmental flow. India prefers keeping only 10 per cent for the river. Moreover, India wants other factors to be taken into account before distributing the water of these rivers. In case of the Teesta, 85 per cent of agricultural land served by the river was in India and the remaining 15 per cent in Bangladesh (source: internet).

According to international laws, the Joint River Commission will distribute the water based on equity and this equity does not mean equal sharing. For us our experts must do a thorough research and find out what would be this equal share for us (i.e. the equity ratio). If we go back to history, the British India did share the same water without any dispute. The current India’s argument is that the British did not show any interest in developing any particular area with irrigation since they were part of the same country and state. To develop the river basin areas barrages and dams are required. In the given situation, our experts should look at the irrigable area in catchments and the target areas of the project and neglect the actual area under irrigation (on the Indian side).

A better relationship between Bangladesh and India depends on how the latter considers our needs. After the failing negotiation over the Padma, Teesta water sharing is very important for Bangladesh. To make this negotiation successful, Bangladesh has two major bargaining chips — transit and terrorism. Bangladesh did their best to hand over Indian separatists and allow India to use ports in Bangladesh. The much-debated transit deal is also on its way. But the question is what Bangladesh will get in return.

In diplomacy everyone looks for fair equation or at least some part of fairness in the equation. Somehow what we have seen again and again is that India is least interested to build a healthy relationship with its eastern neighbour. India needs to remember without peaceful neighbours one cannot sleep well; one cannot feel safe at home. India for its own stability must need to consider Bangladesh’s demand sincerely. For peaceful existence we need to work together to realise the people’s hopes and aspirations in this region. If India wants to continue its economic growth, it must consider its eastern neighbour and be ready to meet Bangladesh needs. Without regional cooperation, India would not be able to continue its economic drive to success.

The steps that Mamata has taken just before Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh appear ultra-nationalistic. In the 21st century anyone thinking only of his/her people’s interest cannot be a true leader. We all know India’s central government does not have the power to control the state government but surely it can influence the state government. Mamata Banerjee needs to feel the pulse of Bangladeshis. We may have separate boundary, separate flags but we speak the same language, share the same culture. Only language and culture can bring people closer. Mamata Banerjee needs to understand the demand of Bengalis of the other side of the boundary and should react quickly to meet the demand of Bangladeshi people.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister Dipu Moni, after a meeting Mamata on November 16, rightly noted that the extent of the bilateral relationship between Bangladesh and India depends on the signing of the Teesta treaty. If both the countries want to establish a deep relationship the signing of the Teesta treaty is absolutely essential. Provided that both the countries sign this treaty, other issues and cooperation between the countries will increase enormously. This cooperation will have a great impact in the Southeast Asian region. On the contrary, if the pact is not signed, the bilateral relationship between Bangladesh and India would be affected. Signing the pact not only ensures the water supply for Bangladesh but both the countries would able to establish trust among them. And this trust is required for regional security and peace.

BY : Nadim Jahangir.