South Asia Awaits Another Secret War

[BanglaBhoot]

Sunday, 20 July 2008, 6:31 pm

Column: J. Sri Raman

The Kabul blast of July 7, which targeted India's embassy and took a heavy toll of human lives, may trigger yet another secret South Asian war.

As noted in these columns (Blasts That Shake South Asia, July 12, 2008), the attack elicited a far-from-routine official Indian reaction. India's National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan did not stop with blaming Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the blast. He went on to issue an ill-veiled warning: "We should pay them back in their own coin."

The outrageously irresponsible observation has gone almost unnoticed, but a significant indication of what it may signal has been forthcoming. The espionage agency of Pakistan has never enjoyed a saintly image. But it is not as if India's own secret warriors haven't used the coin of terrorism that all too often reveals two sides. And the coin may become their currency again, to go by non-official national security advisers who know the business of blasts.

Before coming to all that, a word about the ISI. It was set up in 1948, just a year after Pakistan's birth. The ISI remained just one of the country's many intelligence agencies until its time arrived with the US war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The ISI rose to the peak of its power in Pakistan during the military rule of Zia ul-Haq (1977-88), which covered the larger part of the lacerating war (1978-89) with long-term consequences for the region.

The war of the eighties witnessed a dramatic enhancement of ISI covert-action capabilities by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Young men from the ISI went west to the US for training in covert techniques and the CIA loaned cloak-and-dagger experts for assistance to its friends in the killing fields of Pakistan's tribal frontier. The ISI became a conduit for the CIA's financial aid for the Pashtun warlords on the anti-Soviet side and found this a profitable position.

Initially, the ISI was given mainly internal tasks - to snoop on the small, Sindh-based Communist Party and monitor political parties, especially the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. After the war, the ISI returned to domestic politics, trying to prevent Benazir Bhutto's re-election as prime minister.

Former BBC correspondent Owen Bennett Jones, in his book, "Pakistan: Eye of the Storm," writes: "A former director-general of the ISI, Lt.-Gen. (Retired) Azad Durrani, has recorded in a Supreme Court affidavit that he was instructed by Zia's successor as chief of army staff, Gen. Aslam Beg, to provide logistic support to disbursement of funds to Benazir Bhutto's opponents.... According to Durrani, the ISI opened cover bank accounts in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Quetta and deposited money into them. The sums were not small. One account in Karachi was credited with over $2 million and smaller amounts were then transferred to other accounts ... "

Jones goes on to say that a sum of $58,000 went to a politician later associated with Pakistan's nuclear bomb, and a fortune of $83,000 went to a fundamentalist party, and so on. We will keep that story for another day, but the point here is that the ISI was always flush with funds for its activities, even when these were extended to operations of much greater importance to the military and the militarists.

Especially important, for evident reasons, were the operations in and against India. The ISI is known to have been involved in the eighties in the separatist movement in the Indian State of Punjab (which was not without local causes and catalysts as well). In fact, in the late sixties, the agency reportedly assisted a London-based Sikh Home Rule Movement, which was to be transformed into the secessionist Khalistan campaign.

The ISI has been even more deeply involved in the insurgency in the India-administered State of Jammu and Kashmir (again with its local causes and catalysts as well). Jones recalls: "On 31 July 1988, Srinagar (capital of Jammu and Kashmir) rocked to a series of explosions. They were claimed by the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) ... The JKLF, it was true, had laid the bombs but the materials had been provided by the Pakistani state, more precisely the ISI."

He adds: "In 1987, the ISI and the JKLF had, with General Zia's approval, struck a deal. The JKLF agreed to recruit would-be militants in India-held Kashmir, bring them across the Line of Control and deliver them to ISI trainers. The ISI, in turn, agreed to provide the JKLF fighters with weapons and military instruction. The young men were then sent back across the line so that they could mount attacks."

The ISI has been blamed for several bomb blasts in other parts of India as well, though New Delhi has not always shared evidence with the nation. The most notable instance, perhaps, was the series of 13 blasts in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on March 12, 1993, that took a toll of over 300 lives. The other major examples include the Mumbai serial train blasts of July 11, 2006, and the Jaipur explosions of May 13, 2008.

The Indian counterpart of the ISI, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), may figure less in the Western media, but is equally infamous in this part of the world. Unlike the Pakistani apparatus, the RAW is only an external intelligence agency, but the similarities between the two on other counts is striking.

Set up in 1968, mainly as the result of a years-long security review following India's military fiasco of 1962 against China, the RAW had the US and the CIA presiding over its birth. Organizationally modeled on the CIA, the RAW has worked closely with the superpower's snoopers, especially on subjects of common interest such as China and Pakistan-related nuclear issues.

Officially, the RAW functions on an annual budget of around $150 million, but all one knows really is that funds have posed it no problem. Constitutionally a "wing" of the Cabinet Secretariat, it suffers from no agency-like accountability to India's parliament, and its activities lie outside the ambit of the country's recently acquired Right to Information Act.

In public pronouncements, the RAW claims to be particularly proud of its role in the creation of Bangladesh after an India-Pakistan war. Its former officials and fervent admirers, however, shower more fulsome praise on its past exploits in Pakistan. Many of them believe that its return to the days of anti-Pakistan blasts, again in the eighties, as not just something to be devoutly desired. To them, it is the demand of the hour.

Narayanan, obviously, had the RAW in mind, when he talked of paying back the ISI in its own coin. What even a hawk like Narayanan could not spell out has found explicit expression subsequently.

An op-ed article in a respected national daily with a particular reputation for sobriety (Fighting Pakistan's "informal war," July 15, The Hindu), speaking for the RAW and "advocates of retaliation," elaborates on Narayanan's enigmatic statement. It says: "If a Pakistan-based terrorist group carries out strikes against civilians in Mumbai, the argument (of the Narayanans of India) goes, India must be able to assassinate its leaders and their financiers."

The crusaders for a covert offensive or counteroffensive, quoted in the article, derive confidence from a specific past operation aimed at striking dread in the enemy camp. "In the mid-1980s," it is recalled, "the RAW unleashed two covert groups, CIT-X and CIT-J (Covert Intelligence Teams given alphabetical identities), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. A low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore, followed." The blast series of the eighties included the Bohri Bazaar tragedy in Karachi, still etched in the memory of a large number of survivors. Both these groups are said to have used the services of cross-border traffickers to ferry weapons and funds.

The series came in for special praise in 2002 from former RAW official B. Raman, who said: "The role of our covert action capability in putting an end to the ISI's interference in Punjab by making such interference prohibitively costly is little known and understood." The "advocates of retaliation" are quoting him repeatedly now.

This is not the first time the demand for revival of the days of "retaliation" through civilian-targeting detonations has been raised. Nostalgia for the RAW's heroic age was voiced even during the period of Pervez Musharraf as a military ruler. Some blasts, it was suggested then, would give a fitting answer to his frequent charge of India's involvement in Balochistan combined with a continuation of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. The threat of blasts, meanwhile, sounds tame, compared to crueler punishment envisaged in the same article for Pakistan. It says: "Pakistan has long feared a nightmarish future where a hostile India dams its water resources in Jammu and Kashmir and throws its weight behind irredentist forces. Each terror bombing against Indians, paradoxically, is bringing that nightmare one step closer to realization."

The waters can be a matter of life and death for Pakistan. Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, India has rights over the waters of the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers, while Pakistan has rights over the waters of the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum. All the rivers flow from India to Pakistan.

In May 2005, the World Bank appointed a neutral arbitrator in the dispute after Pakistan made a demand for an adjudicator. The next month, Pakistan told India to suspend work on a dam on the Chenab. On December 6, 2006, Pakistan put on record its fears that the dam could be used to choke off water supplies at times of crisis. The issue is supposed to be under discussion as part of the India-Pakistan peace process.

The "advocates of retaliation" are also arguing for efforts to set up a common front with Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the Riyasat-e-Amniyat-Milli (RAM). The CIA, as they see it, cannot but side with such a front.

If they have their way, South Asia may soon witness a stepped-up secret war, which will spell more blasts and deaths in bazaars and metros. They should not be allowed to have their way.

Scoop: South Asia Awaits Another Secret War

 

[BanglaBhoot]

By MARK MAZZETTI

Published: July 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — As they complete their training at “The Farm,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s base in the Virginia tidewater, young agency recruits are taught a lesson they are expected never to forget during assignments overseas: there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.

Foreign spy services, even those of America’s closest allies, will try to manipulate you. So you had better learn how to manipulate them back.

But most C.I.A. veterans agree that no relationship between the spy agency and a foreign intelligence service is quite as byzantine, or as maddening, as that between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I.

It is like a bad marriage in which both spouses have long stopped trusting each other, but would never think of breaking up because they have become so mutually dependent.

Without the I.S.I.’s help, American spies in Pakistan would be incapable of carrying out their primary mission in the country: hunting Islamic militants, including top members of Al Qaeda. Without the millions of covert American dollars sent annually to Pakistan, the I.S.I. would have trouble competing with the spy service of its archrival, India.

But the relationship is complicated by a web of competing interests. First off, the top American goal in the region is to shore up Afghanistan’s government and security services to better fight the I.S.I.’s traditional proxies, the Taliban, there.

Inside Pakistan, America’s primary interest is to dismantle a Taliban and Qaeda safe haven in the mountainous tribal lands. Throughout the 1990s, Pakistan, and especially the I.S.I., used the Taliban and militants from those areas to exert power in Afghanistan and block India from gaining influence there. The I.S.I. has also supported other militant groups that launched operations against Indian troops in Kashmir, something that complicates Washington’s efforts to stabilize the region.

Of course, there are few examples in history of spy services really trusting one another. After all, people who earn their salaries by lying and assuming false identities probably don’t make the most reliable business partners. Moreover, spies know that the best way to steal secrets is to penetrate the ranks of another spy service.

But circumstances have for years forced successful, if ephemeral, partnerships among spies. The Office of Strategic Services, the C.I.A.’s predecessor, worked with the K.G.B.’s predecessors to hunt Nazis during World War II, even as the United States and the Soviet Union were quickly becoming adversaries.

These days, the relationship between Moscow and Washington is turning frosty again, over a number of issues. But, quietly, American and Russian spies continue to collaborate to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, and to secure nuclear arsenals.

The relationship between the C.I.A. and the I.S.I. was far less complicated when the United and Pakistan were intently focused on one common goal: kicking the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. For years in the 1980s, the C.I.A. used the I.S.I. as the conduit to funnel arms and money to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

But even in those good old days, the two spy services were far from trusting of each other — in particular over Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons. In his book “Ghost Wars,” the journalist Steve Coll recounts how the I.S.I. chief in the early 1980s, Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman, banned all social contact between his I.S.I. officers and C.I.A. operatives in Pakistan. He was also convinced that the C.I.A. had set up an elaborate bugging network, so he had his officers speak in code on the telephone.

When the general and his aides were invited by the C.I.A. to visit agency training sites in the United States, the Pakistanis were forced to wear blindfolds on the flights into the facilities.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, C.I.A. officers have arrived in Islamabad knowing they will probably depend on the I.S.I. at least as much as they have depended on any liaison spy service in the past. Unlike spying in the capitals of Europe, where agency operatives can blend in to develop a network of informants, only a tiny fraction of C.I.A. officers can walk the streets of Peshawar unnoticed.

And an even smaller fraction could move freely through the tribal areas to scoop up useful information about militant networks there.

Even the powerful I.S.I., which is dominated by Punjabis, Pakistan’s largest ethnic group, has difficulties collecting information in the tribal lands, the home of fiercely independent Pashtun tribes. For this reason, the I.S.I. has long been forced to rely on Pashtun tribal leaders — and in some cases Pashtun militants — as key informants.

Given the natural disadvantages, C.I.A. officers try to get any edge they can through technology, the one advantage they have over the local spies.

For example, the Pakistani government has long restricted where the C.I.A. can fly Predator surveillance drones inside Pakistan, limiting flight paths to approved “boxes” on a grid map.

The C.I.A.’s answer to that restriction? It deliberately flies Predators beyond the approved areas, just to test Pakistani radars. According to one former agency officer, the Pakistanis usually notice.

As American and allied casualty rates in Afghanistan have grown in the last two years, the I.S.I. has become a subject of fierce debate within the C.I.A. Many in the spy agency — particularly those stationed in Afghanistan — accuse their agency colleagues at the Islamabad station of actually being too cozy with their I.S.I. counterparts.

There have been bitter fights between the C.I.A. station chiefs in Kabul and Islamabad, particularly about the significance of the militant threat in the tribal areas. At times, the view from Kabul has been not only that the I.S.I. is actively aiding the militants, but that C.I.A. officers in Pakistan refuse to confront the I.S.I. over the issue.

Veterans of the C.I.A. station in Islamabad point to the capture of a number of senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan in recent years as proof that the Pakistani intelligence service has often shown a serious commitment to roll up terror networks. It was the I.S.I., they say, that did much of the legwork leading to the capture of operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

And, they point out, the I.S.I. has just as much reason to distrust the Americans as the C.I.A. has to distrust the I.S.I. The C.I.A. largely pulled up stakes in the region after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, rather than staying to resist the chaos and bloody civil war that led ultimately to the Taliban ascendance in the 1990s.

After the withdrawal, the American tools to understand the complexity of relationships in Central and South Asia became rusty. The I.S.I. operates in a neighborhood of constantly shifting alliances, where double dealing is an accepted rule of the game, and the phenomenon is one that many in Washington still have problems accepting.

Until late last year, when he was elevated to the command of the entire army, the Pakistani spymaster who had been running the I.S.I. was Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. American officials describe this smart and urbane general as at once engaging and inscrutable, an avid golfer with occasionally odd affectations. During meetings, he will often spend several minutes carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. Then, after taking one puff, he stubs it out.

The grumbling at the C.I.A. about dealing with Pakistan’s I.S.I. comes with a certain grudging reverence for the spy service’s Machiavellian qualities. Some former spies even talk about the Pakistani agency with a mix of awe and professional jealousy.

One senior C.I.A. official, recently retired, said that of all the foreign spymasters the C.I.A. had dealt with, General Kayani was the most formidable and may have earned the most respect at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. The soft-spoken general, he said, is a master manipulator.

“We admire those traits,” he said.

The New York Times > Log In

 

[BanglaBhoot]

M. Aftab

I must admit ours is a story of a bully and dummies. If that is not so, then how will you define the government’s tutelage of George Bush and other American hawks towards Pakistani doves? How will you describe it when the latest US ‘gift’ to Pakistanis — the amassing of Nato troops, are knocking on our Western doors? This is despite Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani hoping against hope and saying that “Pakistan is a sovereign state and no one has the right to attack it”. Does the US care Mr Prime Minister?

The stream of threats from Washington’s military, the State Department, Pentagon and Bush himself are no longer mere rhetoric. American military aircraft and drones are actually operating in the Pakistani skies, committing aggression and fighting a war against Pakistan. This latest aggression is not against al Qaeda or the Taliban, the label of which they use to justify their open aggression against Pakistan and its betrayed people. The people are betrayed by George Bush. That everyone knows from the past US behaviour towards Pakistan.

Whenever we are in trouble and a victim of aggression from abroad, this is what the US does to us. The people are betrayed by the rulers in Islamabad because they have always tried to fool the nation about the real deals with Washington and what goodies our saying yes to US will bring us. What I say here is not merely reflecting the peoples’ apprehensions or fears. American bombs are actually falling on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistanis, maiming Pakistani children, burning and destroying our houses.

Lame duck Bush not only is blatantly indulging in bombing our territory and our people, but he has clearly and unashamedly marked out Pakistan as the future target of Iraq-like American aggression and occupation of Afghanistan. When the new US President is in office, he will have to look and act not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, but Pakistan; he advises the incoming US President. That full-scale aggression against Pakistan is already here. It will be made more grievous when the new President occupies the White House.

People! If you already do not know it, be warned. Your rulers already know it because they are in league with Washington to get rid of you and your country. Do not believe the shadowboxing that every Pakistani ‘leader’ or a shadow of a leader in civvies or khakis is indulging in now. Do not believe what every Pakistani leader is spitting out in speeches. Do not believe the paper tigers. Do not believe the dummies. They are taking you right to the American altar — to slaughter you.

The leaders are scared of an America that has repeatedly been defeated by valiant people of all continents and countries from Cuba to Vietnam. You know that. But the bully is not ashamed of all these defeats by pygmies. He must start new misadventures to continue to try proving its emaciated ‘muscle’ to browbeat newer, younger, and poor nations. They must do it to help their flunkies, illegally occupying power slots around the globe while they are disowned and condemned by their own people. Such is the Pakistani rulers’ case.

And what did Shah Mahmood Qureshi mean when, after meeting with Condoleezza Rice and Ban Ki-moon, he said in New York, “Pakistan is in the eye of the storm”, and, “We need to make farsighted, well-calculated, and prudent decisions to safeguard our interests.” After Pakistan’s incessant humiliation by US and its heaping all sorts of ***** on our country, can the decision be anything other than this one: get out of the American slavery! It is a matter of survival, Mr Qureshi.

Here, Washington is pitted against Pakistanis because they are the most anti-US and anti-Bush people in the world. And theirs’ is the country most-anti-US in the world. We should be proud of being so. The findings by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) poll in Pakistan confirm it. Threats galore, not even Washington’s puppets are left behind. Look at Hamid Karzai’s threats. It reminds me of an advertisement of a Black Label whisky. After drinking, rather licking, some Black Label whisky, the *** stands on a table and, with all arrogance a *** can command, it is calling and challenging, “Where is the cat?”

Karzai, the President, whom even Americans call the “Mayor of Kabul”, and some even reduce him to “the ruler of the Presidential Palace”, is purely made-in-USA, brought up, taught English, and astronomically raised from public relations officer to a one-time Afghan President Professor Sighbatullah Mojaddadi. I remember the days in the 1980s when Afghan mujahideen were fighting the Soviets. He used to come to my office and sit there for hours. I asked him many a time why does he not go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets? His standard answer was, “I do not wish to get killed.” “Then why do you not go to Peshawar?” I used to ask? “There is a lot of trouble with so many mujahideen groups feuding with each other,” was this ‘great mujahid’s’ answer.

“The people of Afghanistan, the world, know very well that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is the biggest exporter of terrorism and extremism to the world, particularly Afghanistan,” said a meeting of the Afghan Cabinet. And our rulers are supposed to lead a valiant people who defeated the British colonial rulers without any arms, just equipped with the leadership of the Quaid — a lawyer who fought with arguments for the independence of his people — not arms. The bravery of our people can be judged from the spirit and valour they had mustered just after they won freedom. For years, they used to say, “We will walk into India just with our swords, defeat India, and stand on the ramparts of the Red Fort.”

I tell such stories because today’s cowardly rulers were not even born yet, then. The problems with these rulers, who staged coups, conspiracies, and walked to the throne through the backdoor is that they have not read even the history of our country and our people.

Take a more recent case of the 1960s, in which a tiny nation of dwarf-sized people defeated the US giant. North Vietnam — ravaged, destroyed, and burnt to ashes by American bombers and big guns was a country hardly anyone wished to even visit. In a meeting, in which I was assigning different reporters to various countries for reporting, everyone chose Western countries. In the end, only a visit to North Viet Nam was left where no one wished to go. I picked it up. That was my first visit to North Vietnam.

I saw North Vietnam totally charred, destroyed, and demolished. Its roads disappeared under incessant carpet bombing by US warplanes. I saw impoverished little people. Many of them half the size of our cowardly rulers who have “not seen even a bullet in their lifetime, as Brig. (retd) Abdul Salam Akhtar, speaking at a news conference of Ex-Servicemen Association said recently. But these little North Vietnamese defeated the American giants and made America eat a humble pie. A glorious win that literally threw American solders into the Tonkin Bay.

Are our pampered rulers even going to fire a single shot on those intruding American drones, spy planes, bombers, and cowardly solders on our Western borders? Let’s have some shame for a change. Let’s fight for our very dear country — once at last. This is the only country we have. You may have a green card, but 164 million Pakistanis do not. I do not have one. They do not wish to have one; I, too. Now come to civvies. As American aggression against our territory mounts, with greater ferociousness everyday, some of our green card-holding leaders are bleating like goats or indulging in a drama, or trying to lull 164 million anti-US Pakistanis into sleep. Many analyst and observers even describe the recent happenings in Bara, Khyber, and other locations as yet another drama staged on the eve of Richard Boucher’s visit to Islamabad.

It is time to repulse the US aggression. It is time to debunk the US threats. But our run-away civilian leadership is in London, Dubai, or wherever. On the other hand, the rulers are still steady in their bunkers in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. They like these run-away civilian leaders to stay out of the country and to make their stay as prolonged as they can. Rather than countering US bombings and controlling the Taliban, al Qaeda, in case they really are in the Pakistani territory, Mr Gillani has gone on an alarming tangent. “Majority of foreign militants, including Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and others are present in the tribal areas and their activities are increasing day by day. Majority of these foreigners are hiding in the tribal areas and their presence raises the spectre of another 9/11,” he says.

But here are some questions. How many do these foreigners number, dozens, hundreds, or thousands? Haven’t they been flushed out by 80,000 to 100,000 troops deployed in the region for more than five years? If so few can make a nation of 164 million hostages, their economy nearly crippled, its foreign policy enslaved, and the lives of its people hanging by a thin thread — be it Lahore, Islamabad or Karachi. What does the premier plan to do? The Taliban and al Qaeda apart, does it show that any enemy country can hire a bunch of such people and challenge Pakistan, notwithstanding our valiant people and mighty troops? These are grave matters. Does the prime minister and his party with a huge popular mandate, feel answerable to its voters and the nation for all what is going on?

The Prime Minister pronounces once again, “Pakistan is a sovereign state and nobody will be allowed to interfere in its internal affairs.” If bombing Pakistani territory incessantly and ignoring its government’s claims of supposed sovereignty is not ‘interference’, then what is it?

Sovereignty is not a decoration piece to be kept in the closet of the Prime Minister House or the Presidential Palace or the President’s bunker. It is not meant to be kept in a locker. It has to be used, exercised, exhibited, and demonstrated. Do the prime minister and other rulers think the rhetoric of ‘sovereignty’ or its pretension will deliver? Washington does not think so. Bush does not concede. In view of this, Mr Prime Minister, what do you plan to do? No more repeats of Bangladesh! Think up – now.

Opinion

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

The outrageously irresponsible observation has gone almost unnoticed,

Well, not on this forum.

I made sure to point out this 'outrageously irresponsible statement' and its implications.

You have a senior government official advocating terrorism against another sovereign nation.

 

[vish]

What secret war?

The statement was propaganda... got unnoticed at large but the message reached people's sub-concious...

Score one: India.

 

[Vinod2070]

The message was obviously not a terror threat.

It was to say that terror against India will not be tolerated and will carry an unbearable cost. He did not specify the means.

But yes, India should develop a covert capability (if not there already) to pin pointedly take out the kingpins of the terror network.

Any terror chief like the LET Hafiz should be afraid to go to his office if he is sending terrorists to India. Afraid that today could be his last day.

Then it will become clear if the people who prepare others to sacrifice their lives and have a pick of their "bewas" are ready to do it themselves too.

 

[nitesh]

The message was obviously not a terror threat.

It was to say that terror against India will not be tolerated and will carry an unbearable cost. He did not specify the means.

But yes, India should develop a covert capability (if not there already) to pin pointedly take out the kingpins of the terror network.

Any terror chief like the LET Hafiz should be afraid to go to his office if he is sending terrorists to India. Afraid that today could be his last day.

Then it will become clear if the people who prepare others to sacrifice their lives and have a pick of their "bewas" are ready to do it themselves too.

Agree with you, there should be an agency which should destroy enemy of
nation.