Review: RAW in Sri Lanka

Reviewed Work(s): Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: The Role of India's Intelligence
Agencies by Rohan Gunaratna
Review by: Rita Manchanda
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 19 (May 8, 1993), pp. 921-923
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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 REVIEWS

RAW in Sri Lanka cording to senior RAW sources it was

known to only six people in the prime
minister's office and about 10 others, in-
Rita Manchanda cluding in the RAW, and disinformation
specialists threw out that the training was
Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: Th.e Role of India's Intelligence Agen-
being done clandestinely by the militants
cies by Rohan Gunaratna; South Asian Network on Conflict Research, themselves with the support of the co-
Colombo, 1993. ethnic political elites of Tlmil Nadu.
Gunaratna claims that under Indira
WHAT happens when in a democracy channel and even the minutes of a secret Gandhi a supra covert organisation com-
foreign policy becomes a captive to covert meeting ketween the then RAW chief A prising operatives from RAW and lB was
intelligence operators? The Iran-Contra N Verma and the Sri Lankan president created called the 'Third Agency' for
affair is the obvious example, an object which the ministry of external affairs was subversive operations in Punjab and the
lesson on the risk of intelligence agenciesnot supposed to know about, though it training and arming of Tamil militants.
hijacking the diplomatic process. Closer may have been leaked to the Indian high The burden of proof rests solely on Rajeev
to home there is Pakistan's Inter Service commissioner J N Dixit through a friend- Bajaj's article in Surya magazine.
Intelligence (ISI), a virtual autonomous ly RAW agent in Colombo. The objective of the Sri Lankan opera-
power centre which is accused of directing The Colombo documents lend impres- tion was to destabilise India's southern
a 'proxy war' in India. Daily, newspaper sive credibility to Gunaratna's painstak- neighbour and not to divide the island
headlines denounce the subversive and ing piecing together of what the founder into two. Gunaratna quotes M K Rasgotra
terrorist activities of the ISI in India. of RAW, R N Kao, is quoted as having who was foreign secretary from 1983-84,
Ministers of the government publicly ac- described as India's 'disaster' of a policy as saying, "it was to give a message to
cuse the ISI of being responsible for ter- of training and arming the LTTE (p 26; Jayewardene" (p 53) as there had been an
rorist activity ranging from the training all page references in parentheses are to influx of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the
and arming of militants to the Bombay the book under review). But it is an wake of the July 1983 ethnic riots and the
bomb blasts. uneven patchwork of press reports, inter- 'spill-over effect' in Tamil had to be
And for those who take comfort in the views and the classified documents. More- contained. Rasgotra did not believe that
argument that such subversion of the over, while there is an impressive list of Indim Gandhi authorised RAW to subvert
foreign policy process is possible only in people interviewed, including former Sri Lanka by training and arming the
a presidential system of government as in foreign secretary M Rasgotra, the Indian militants. "Sheerest nonsense I have ever
the US or Pakistan, a transitional high commissioner to Sri Lanka, N N Jha, heard! I cannot imagine she would ever
democracy where the military is partand of president Jayewardene, closer scrutiny do it' he said (p 54).
the. ruling troika, ask our neighbours will reveal that more often than not these The first concrete piece of evidence that
across the Palk Straits. In the 80s, were marginal players. Key protagonists India was subverting Sri Lanka came from
Colombo accused India's Research and like RAW chief Girish Saxena and his suc- a small group of Tamil youths arrested by
Analysis Wing (RAW) of training and cessor A N Verma were not interviewed the security forces. In his reconstruction
arming Sri Lankan Tamil militants. nor was J N Dixit. of the trail, he details how a specially
It is the covert operations of the Indian At an exclusive meeting in Colombo on hand-picked group of young refugees
intelligence agencies which is the subject April 28, 1988, Verma is quoted as telling from Trincomalee whose homes had been
of Rohan Gunaratna's book. His imagi- president Jayewardene, "Dixit is present- gutted in the 1983 riots were taken from
native reconstruction of the role of RAW, ly not held in favour by the Indian prime Tamil Nadu to New Delhi. There they were
IB, CBI and the 'Q' branch of the state minister and does not play any significant trained in the use of 9mm pistols, AK-47
of Tamil Nadu holds up a disturbing mir- role in the process of negotiations" rifles, Indian SMGs, in the manufacture,
ror image of the virtual takeover by covert (p 345). The reasons cited by Verma of parcel bombs, laying of booby traps,
intelligence operators of the handling of behind Dixit's waning influence with the use of radio communication and surveil-
India's Sri Lanka policy over the heads of prime minister were "firstly, the public lance techniques. They were then taken to
the ministry of external affairs (MEA). disclosures of payments made to the Bombay harbour and taught how to ident-
Gunaratna's book stands out as the first LTTE on the eve-of the accord, secondly, tify various vessels before being sent back
systematic attempt to track the role of the his arrogance and overbearing attitude to Jaffna.
intelligence agencies in India's Sri Lankan and thirdly by his conduct and actions Subsequently, the office of the national
operation. He maintains that it was RAW which has made him extremely unpopular security advisor hired a European video
which ran the-country's Sri Lanka policy. with Sinhalese and Thmils" (p 346). journalist who under the cover of being
From the training and the arming of the Fact or fiction? There is no footnote to an Australian journalist made video recor-
Tamil militants to conducting a 'proxy indicate the source of this information. dings of the training camps for the Sri
war' through the covert Tamil National Was it the minutes of that top secret Lankan government. Initial training was
Army to undermine the LTTE-Premadasa meeting? Inevitably, in the shadowy world made available in Chakrata pear Dehradun,
negotiated truce, it was RAW which juggl- of covert operations, the sources will re- R K Puram and near the Delhi inter-
ed the dual policy of counterbalancing the main confidential. What makes for scep- national airport. According to the
arming of the LTTE with working for a ticism is when Gunaratna's sources lead director general of intelligence and securi-
political resolution. MEA was kept in- him to believe that there could be secret ty in Sri Lanka, by 1987 an estimated
formed on a need-to-know basis. training camps for Tamil militants in such 2,000 LTTE, 8,000 PLOYrE, 1,500 EPRLF,
Of course, the view is from Colombo densely populated areas in the capital as 1,250 EROS and 1,500 TELO cadres had
.and may even be a sponsored one for Greater Kailash Part 11, R K Puram and been trained in north and south India. A
Gunaratna had access to top secret Sadtagen (sic) Development Area and few months before the 1987 accord, 200
documents in Sri Lankan government Green Park. crack militants nominated from all the
files. This includes the top secret com- RAW's takeover of the ad hoc training groups were given training in the use of
munications between prime minister Rajiv camps for Tamil militants earlier spon- surface-to-air missiles.
Gandhi and president Junius Jayewardene sored by co-ethnic elites in the state, of Jayewardene's son, Ravi Jayewardene,
through the hitherto unknown RAW Tamil Nadu began in October 1983. Ac- claims that when he met Rajiv Gandhi in

Economic and Political Weekly May 8, 1993 921

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1985, Gandhi was ignorant of the covert tered as they had no niutual respect for or establishing a Voice of America station
role of RAW. Gandhi told him it was hard each other at least on the ground" (p 265). without Indian concurrence.
to believe that even half that number of And to corroborate his assertion he Gunaratna frames the covert operations
youth had taken up arms. A few months quotes from GOC IPKF Jaffna, Lt Gen of RAW in four phases. The first, the pre-
earlier Jayewardene in a classified letter Sardeshpande's book, Assignment Jaffna: October 1984 phase, is aimed at destabilis-
to Rajiv Gandhi conciliatingly proposed, "Most of its [RAW's] operatives were ing the Jayewardene regime. In the second
"let's forget the issue of training camps... amateurish, methods ludicrous and pro- phase, from October 19841986, RAW
I ask you to help me prevent them from cessing of intelligence selectively conve- plays off one militant group against
coming here with arms and also prevent nient. Its findings and assessment did not another in an effort to control them.
Sri Lankans from seeking refugee in your help us much in our 30-months venture LTTE emerges the strongest. The third
country. If we can agree on a common and evoked even less confidence in its phase, 1986-1990, is marked by RAW's un-
scheme... it will enable me to withdraw output and quality.. ." (p 266). successful efforts to control the LTTE.
armed forces". How wrong RAW was in its assessment And the fourth phase is the assassination
But while a series of special envoys of the LTTE was a lesson that the IPKF of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE. With the
from India wre trying to work out a was to learn at great cost to life and re-establishment of intelligence sharing
political solution to the ethnic crisis arms morale of the Indian forces. Contrary to between the Sri Lankan a,nd Indian in-
and explosives provided by RAW con- the assumption that Prabhakaran's men telligence agencies against the Tamil
tinued to be smuggled from the Tamil were urban guerrillas and would not be militants, we come a full circle.
Nadu coast to landing-points in Jaffna. able to fight a rural guerrilla war, even Gunaratna's publication coup is his
The objective was to push Colombo to India's trained troops in counter-insur- disclosure of the top secret intermediary
pursue a political rather than a military gency were intimidated by the LTTE. role played by RAW between the heads of
option. An escalation into a full-fledged The IPKF commanders were not the government of the two countries on three
civil war would in its 'spill-over effect' on orily ones kept in the dark. Even Dixit did different occasions. And he has been able
Tamil Nadu raise the spectre of a Dravida not know about the RAW-LTTE talks as to back this by reproducing the confiden-
Desam or a greater Eelam. he was considered persona non grata with tial letters exchanged. RAW's direct
That the 'message conved to Colombo the LTTE. Both Jayewardene and Dixit link with- Colombo became strong in
could take the most brutal form was chill- complained to New Delhi to put a stop November 1986 when LTTE supremo
ingly brought home on May 3, 1986 when to RAW talking to the LTTE, as it was feltPrabhakaran was resisting a political set-
a Tristar plane of Air Lanka was blown that the LTTE had to be tamed militarily tlement. He wanted war. The second was
up minutes before departure from Colombo and not politically as the RAW was at- just before the 1987 forced air-drop. And
killing 16 people and injuring 41. "There tempting. Gunaratna claims-that to scut- the third in 1988 during the IPKF opera-
is suspicion in the Sri Lankan intelligence tle the talks between the LTTE and RAW, tion when RAW tried to negotiate a deal
community and even in India's defence Dixit exposed the payments made to the between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan
establishment that RAW was behind the LTTE by RAW to a journalist. government.
airline bomb" writes Gunaratna (p 130). That the RAW, MEA, the IPKF and the Arguably, diplomacy is best done dis-
To this date the culprits have not been Tamil Nadu government were often pull- creetly, with delicate negotiations in-
identified. ing in different directions is officially sulated from the pulls and pressures of a
RAW opposed the 1987 accord. It had acknowledged by high commissioner N N democracy. And a source close to the
been brokered by the PMO and the MEA. Jha who when explaining the failure to RAW bosses alluded to the coup that
The intelligence agencies were marginal to mediate between the Tamil groups and the RAW helped to pull off when through the
the diplomatic process. But it was the Sri Lankan government said, "I feel too intermediary role of RAW and its Pakistan
RAW, the IB and the 'Q' branch which many people got involved in this, each counterpart (II?). General Zia-ul Haq
knew the militants. RAW cautioned that time a different person coming... Too and Rajiv Gandhi successfully worked out
nothing short of Eelam would be accep- many cooks spoil the broth" (p 400). a solution to nearly all the problems fac-
table to the LITE, which had emerged as For Gunaratna it was the covert role of ing India aind Pakistan. In his last inter-
the dominant militant group. view before his assassination, Rajiv
RAW which shaped India's Sri Lanka
As for the provision about the merger operation. From 1983 to the departure Gandhi had told Barbara Crosette of the
of the north and eastern provinces to of the IPKF in 1990, RAW's Sri Lankan New York Times that had General Zia
be decided by a referendum, Gunaratna lived India and Pakistan would have
spalist Chandrashekhran alias Chandran
quotes Jayewardene as saying that worked out a resolution of 'all problems".
succeeded in establishing India's position
Rajiv Gandhi gave false assurances to Both the foreign offices of India and
as a regional power. Jayewardene's flirta-
Prabhakaran that the referendum would
tion with the US, Israel and Pakistan were Pakistan denied it. They had been kept in
never be l%eld on the basis of a misleading effectively nipped in the bud. It had made the dark.
brief from Dixit that the Sri Lankan presi- Indira Gandhi all the more hostile to the What had been the secret clauses, the
dent had given such an assurance to the quid pro quo? In a democracy people have
Sri Lankan government and when the
Indian high commissioner (p 191). the right to know. And the RAW chief
crunch came, the US adopted a hands-off
When the LTTE reneged on the lndo- policy. reports only to the prime minister. India's
Sri Lankan accord and the Indian Peace RAW deliberately put out exaggerated Sri Lanka adventure is enougn of a cau-
Keeping Force (IPKF) was ranged against reports of western penetration of Colombotionary tale about what can go wrong
the LTTE, RAW agents continued to talk to legitimise playing the militants card. Aswhen intelligence agencies are allowed to
with the LTTE. Their assessment was that the former Sri Lan kan National Security hijack the diplomatic process. The master-
the military option would bog down India Minister Lalith Athulahmudali told mind behind the assassination of Rajiv
for decades in Sri Lanka, Therefore, on Gunaratna, "RAW wanted 4stick to beat Gandhi, Sivasaran, had been trained in
March 5 as part of the ongoing RAW- Sri Lanka. India wantd tO0 control her the use of arms and ammunition, ex-
LTTE talks LTTE leader Lt Col Johnny surroundings... They *ha an obsession plosives, intelligence and communications
had been flown in an Indian air force that Trincomalee was being given as a base in Tamil Nadu by RAW in 1984. The
plane from Madras to Vavuniya. On his to the US-absolute rubbish" (p 342). The LTTE learnt the use of RDX used in the
return- while carrying a letter from exchange of letters appended to the 1987 bombing of Rajiv Gandhi from RAW
Prabhakaran to Rajiv Gandhi, he was kill- accord officially recognised that in its experts.
ed by an IPKF patrol. The IPKF was not backyard New Delhi would not tolerate During the V P Singh government
aware of the RAW plan. Cunaratna adds, any government threatening India's securi- parliament did establish a committee to
"even if they knew, it would not have mat- ty by leasing out the Thincomalee harbour bring the functioning of the intelligence

922 Economic and Political Weekly May 8, 1993

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agencies under its purview. Under scrutiny also the recruits to the Citizens Volunteer their account of India's Sri Lanka story,
was whether RAW and IB had been mis- Force which had been trained by the former sleuths may also come forward
used to spy upon political opponents. IPKF. Neither the chief minister of the with their version. If the lesson of what
Contrary to what Gunaratna implies, the north-east, Perumal, nor the Indian army happens when a country's diplomacy is hi-
clean sweep of all the prime minister's brass knew of the operation. jacked by the intelligenceagencies is to be
men did not include the RAW chief. Verma properly absorbed, it is necessary to take
Gunaratna's book is the view from
was kept on by V P Singh.
Colombo. But with Indian policy-makers a dispassionate look at why things went
Covert operations are by definition
and the brass now coming forward with so wrong.
undercover, issues of legality and illegali-
ty are blurred. As the former RAW chief
Kao told prime minister Morarji Desai,
"there are no legal means of collecting in-
South-South Trade Preferences and Prospects
telligence abroad". (See Ashok Raina, In- V V Bhanoji Rao
side RAW, p 69.) There are no friends or
allies, only alliances of convenience. Ac- South-South Trade Preferences: The GSTP and Trade in Manufact
cording to the former Mossad agent,
edited by Hans Linnemann; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1992; pp 236,
Viktor Ostrovsky, Israeli counter-insur-
gency agency Shin Beth was training at FACTS, logic and comparative advantage In a rationed economy or in a situation
one and the same time lhmil militants, Sri may dictate North-South free trade and in which price controls are widely used
Lankan government elite troops comman- factor mobility; but the world's political and the exchange rate is overvalued, libera-
dos and Indian commandos, but in dif- economies are not ready for that. In the lisation of the trade regime may have
ferent camps. meantime it is expedient for the South to negative consequences for production and
Gunaratna quotes from K Mohandas's exploit whatever intra-South trade expan- welfare, as has been the experience with
MGR: The Man and the Myth in which sion is feasible. In such a context, explora- several liberalisation attempts (p 25).
the former Deputy Inspector-General of tions into South-South trade preferences The above warning should not be inter-
Police (intelligence) Madras, claims policy- are welcome. The volume under review is preted as a negation of the benefits of
makers in Delhi advised him to protect the one such explorative venture. trade liberalisation; instead, it is an affir-
Tamil militants. "If we continued along In April 1988, an agreement on Global mation that along with trade liberalisation
the known lines of investigation in the System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) was (or well before a high degree of trade
[Meenambakkam] airport blast case, the signed at Belgrade by 46 members of the liberalisation) one needs to ensure that
Sri Lankan government would officially Group of 77. Ratification by 15 signa- price controls are removed and the ex-
take advantage of it and proclaim to the tories will bring the agreement into force.change rate is market determined. In-
world the existence of militant training The idea of GSTP among developing evitably also, attention has to be paid to
camps in India' Mohandas was told countries was proposed in 1976 at the impact of liberalisation on employ-
(p 109). UNCTAD-IV (Nairobi). Within UNCTAD, ment, poverty and welfare in general.
The name of the game is skullduggery however, while the Group of 77 pushed the Does trade liberalisation (reducing
and disinformation is a part of the bag idea, OECD and eastern European coun- tariff and non-tariff barriers) definitely
of tricks. Prabhakaran is given out to be tries opposed it. Linnemann in his in- lead to gains from trade via reduction in
ill, dying and dead to cast a spanner in troduction notes: "After 1983, most of thedomestic costs and prices? Where, for in-
the LTTE-Premadasa talks. More sinister preparatory work for the GSTP would stance, duties are kept very high, the dif-
was the conscious suppression of in- seem to have taken place outside the ference between current domestic price
telligence about acts of sabotage and ter- UNCTAD framework as such, with India and world market price adjusted to duty
ror. It is not only Mossad which chose to taking the lead" (pp 14-15). may be so great that a relatively low reduc-
underplay intelligence about the plan of The volume reports the findings of a tion in duty may not have any impact on
a Shite group to attack the US Marine research project undertaken at the Econo- the domestic price. In addition, tariff
base in Lebanon in which 243 Marines mic and Social Institute of the Free reduction may have reduced impact when
were killed. University, Amsterdam, under the auspices there are non-tariff barriers alongside
of the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alter- tariffs.
In the raising of its proxy force, the What are the obstacles on the way to
natives in Development which in turn was
Tamil National Army, RAW did not let creating a preferential trading system
sponsored jointly by the Indian Council
niceties such as the mass kidnapping of (PTS)? The chief obstacle arises when the
of Social Science Research and the Dutch
Tamil youths come in the way of achieving PTS members as a group suffer a reduc-
Institute of Social Science -Research in
its objective. In retaliation for Jaye- tion in welfare. For realising welfare gains
Developing Countries. Hans Linnemann,
wardene's successor, Premadasa's -unila- through PIN, the required conditions are:
Pitou van Dijck, Els Hoogteijling,
teral declaration that the IPKF should be import demand should be price elastic
Herman Verbruggen and Cees van Beers
withdrawn by July 1989, RAW had work- (thus, as PTS partners reduce tariffs and
wrote the various chapters.
ed out a blueprint for pushing the pro- costs, trade expansion takes place), price
Since most low income countries have
Indian north-eastern council to unilateral- differences among countries should be
relatively high levels of import tariffs, the
ly declare Eelam.
key question is the extent to which a large and, of course, price differences
TNA was used by KAW to disrupt the preferential lowering of tariff and non- between PTS members and the rest of the
fragile truce between the Premadasa tariff barriers leads to growth in South- world should be small (otherwise, imports
government and the LTTE. In an effort South trade in manufactures. This is from the rest of the world will surge).
to create tension in areas where the IPKF the principal concern of the book under Relatively small markets in partner
had recently been withdrawn, Gunaratna review. countries and inefficiency of (c )nestic
industries compared to those in partner
claims on November 17, 1989, 700 TNA
PREFERENTIAL TRADING: RATIONALE countries hinder domestic industrial ex-
cadres attacked six police staticis in the
AND FEASIBILITY pansion in a PTF. An implicatior is that
eastern province. "The manr,handpicked large countries are attractive as members
to initiate the operation was David, a Chapter 2 deals with the rationale and of a PTS and thus enjoy a bargaining
senior RAW officer" (p 366). A couple of feasibility of preferential trading among position in its formation. But there is a
days later 600 cadres attacked a rest house, developing countries. After describing thedanger that even inefficient industries in
housing an army camp'and the Kalumnai benefits of trade liberalisation a la the large countries may outcompzte indus-
police station in Batticaloa district. Their Krueger, Bhagwati, Srinivasan etc, the tries in small countries simply because of
victims were not only the policemen but following warning is given: the existence of some economies of scale

Economic and Political Weekly May 8, 1993 923

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