Nepal does not have a professional intelligence and security
set-up. The local police is largely responsible for not only crime control and law and
order, but also intelligence collection, counter-intelligence, immigration control,
physical security of VIPs and civil aviation and counter-terrorism.
Some officers of the police have had the benefit of being trained
in India, but a large majority of the staff have not gone through any professional
training of worthwhile quality. At the same time, there has been a reluctance on their
part to become unduly dependent on India in professional matters.
When Shri Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister, the Government of
India had succeeded in persuading the then Government at Kathmandu to seek the assistance
of India in the training of its police officers in immigration control and aviation
security so that some professionalism could be built up in these important fields.
The Narasimha Rao Government realised that it was in the interest
of India that Nepal had a highly professional internal security set-up and that this
professionalism was acquired with the assistance of India and not other countries.
From 1994, there were indications that under pressure from
elements in the Police opposed to undue dependence on India, the local political
leadership had agreed to their diversifying their sources of training assistance.
Following this, they had sought the co-operation of the British
Security Service (the MI-5) and established a liaison relationship with it. This saw the
beginning of the dilution of the closeness of the co-operation between the internal
security set-ups of Nepal and India.
One does not know whether they have since further diversified
their sources of assistance and whether Pakistan too has succeeded in making them accept
its offers of training assistance. Mr.Akram Zaki, former Secretary-General of the Pakistan
Foreign Office, who, after retirement, functioned as Foreign Policy Adviser to Mr.Nawaz
Sharif, was married (she is since reported to be dead) to a Hindu woman, who was the
daughter of a prominent Nepalese political leader. Through his political contacts in
Kathmandu, Mr.Zaki had been trying to persuade the Nepalese authorities to accept training
assistance from Pakistan too.
Despite such training assistance from diverse sources, there was
no significant improvement in the professionalism of the local security bureaucracy and,
consequently, internal security was one of the weakest aspects of their governance.
Taking advantage of this, over the years, not only criminal,
insurgent and terrorist elements, but also the intelligence agencies of different
countries have made Nepal an important base for their operations. As examples of such
elements using Nepalese territory, one could cite the arrest of Sucha Singh, the assassin
of Pratap Singh Kairon, the then Chief Minister of Punjab, in Kathmandu in the 1960s; the
fact that about one-third of the local tourist infrastructure such as hotels, guest
houses, restaurants and travel agencies is estimated to be owned by Dawood Ibrhaim, the
notorious drug smuggler now based in Karachi, through third parties; the detection in 1983
by the local police, on information furnished by India, of the presence in Kathmandu, of a
Sikh commando group led by Dr.Jagjit Singh Chauhan, which was trying to infiltrate to New
Delhi to disrupt the Asian Games and their expulsion to Bangkok; the activities of
Dr.Sohan Singh, of the Panthic Committee (subsequently arrested by the Punjab Police), and
Paramjit Singh Panjwar of the Khalistan Commando Force (since shifted to Lahore) from
Kathmandu; the escape of many of the accused in the Mumbai blasts case to Karachi, after
the blasts, via Kathmandu; the increase in the Kashmiri population of Nepal since Pakistan
started its covert war in Jammu & Kashmir in 1989, with many of them coming from the
Valley and some from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir; the frequent visits of the leaders of
India's North-Eastern insurgencies to Kathmandu for meeting foreign Christian missionaries
and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) assisting them etc.
The Western intelligence agencies and Christian missionary
organisations use such NGOs for funnelling funds in Indian rupees to Indian NGOs and other
contacts without attracting the attention of the Reserve Bank of India and the Ministry of
Home Affairs. Recent years have seen a mushrooming of such NGOs in Nepal, which does not
have the expertise and experience in monitoring their activities. It has been estimated
that Nepal has the largest number of NGOs for a country of its size anywhere in the world
and that most of them have been floated by or at the instance of foreign intelligence
agencies.
Nepal has been an important base for the China and India directed
activities of foreign intelligence agencies. It is an invaluable window on Tibet. Its
importance for the China-directed activities of the CIA and other Western intelligence
agencies has increased after the transfer of Hong Kong to China. It is a favoured meeting
ground of the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies with their super-sensitive
Indian agents so that such meetings escape detection by the Indian counter-intelligence.
It is the contact point of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) with Sikh extremist leaders based in Punjab who are not in a position to travel to
Pakistan for guidance and instructions. It is an active ISI rear base for facilitating the
clandestine travel of Kashmiri extremist elements, not in a position to travel overland,
to Pakistan for training without any travel documents. It is also the ISI's clandestine
arms dump where arms and ammunition brought by the Karachi-Kathmandu flights of the
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) are stored for being passed on to the Kashmiri
extremists during the winter months when trans-Line of Control smuggling becomes
difficult.
The ISI activities in Nepal are facilitated by the control
exercised by Dawood Ibrahim over the local travel industry which provides berths for a
large number of ISI officers to work in their staff and by the almost total lack of
control over Indian and Nepalese nationals travelling between the countries.
Over the years, the Government of India, overriding the concerns
and warnings of the Indian security bureaucracy, has been treating Nepal in the same
relaxed manner as the US treats Canada. There is no effective border control, no
immigration control, no passport control, no visa control, no security control and no
foreign exchange control. Indian currency is legal tender in Nepal and any Indian citizen
can travel to Nepal without travel documents and without foreign exchange legally drawn
from an authorised Indian bank, which will have record of his travel.
Any Indian citizen can clandestinely go to Nepal by road, from
there go to Pakistan by the PIA with ISI assistance and return to India by the same route
without any record of his travel anywhere. Similarly, any ISI operative or Muslim
terrorist can travel from Karachi to Kathmandu by the PIA, deposit his Pakistani passport
with the Pakistani Embassy or Dawood Ibrahim's set-up, acquire a forged Indian driving
licence as a Hindu with the help of Dawood Ibrahim's set-up, travel to India to commit a
terrorist act and then escape back to Pakistan.
Successive governments in New Delhi were aware of the concerns of
the security bureaucracy over the way the ISI and other foreign intelligence agencies were
exploiting the security vacuum in Nepal to indulge in anti-India activities, but were
reluctant to exercise adequate pressure on the Nepalese political leadership to put an end
to this state of affairs lest such pressure strengthen the anti-India political forces in
Nepal to the benefit of China.
Similarly, there was a reluctance to treat Nepal on par with
other foreign countries and impose the same travel control regime -- with passports, visas
and drawal of foreign currency in an authorised bank made obligatory-- as applicable to
other foreign countries.
The dilution of the emphasis on the primacy of our national
security interests in our relations with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan under the so-called
Gujral Doctrine further aggravated an already difficult security problem.
However, this should not exonerate the Indian security
bureaucracy and the Indian Airlines management of their responsibility for the total lack
of security controls which made the hijacking possible. Since the Indian security
bureaucracy was well aware of the security vacuum in Nepal and of the ISI activities there
as well as of the lack of professionalism of the Nepalese aviation security staff, it
should have ensured that a second line of effective security through our own security
officers was available for all IA flights.
Such an autonomous second line of security, not dependent on
local officers, in the form of a careful scrutiny of the air tickets and the travel
documents and physical checking of the passengers before boarding is a normal practice
with countries afflicted with the disease of terrorism such as Israel, Sri Lanka and even
Pakistan. As such, the Nepalese authorities could not have misinterpreted it as
unnecessary intrusion.
Moreover, the most spectacular terrorist acts of Islamic
terrorist groups are generally committed during the Ramadan fasting period, particularly
on Fridays. Security measures should have, therefore, been strengthened during the fasting
period.
By failing to provide a second line of security and to issue a
special alert for the Ramadan period and by leaving everything in the hands of Nepalese
officers, the Indian security bureaucracy and the IA management have facilitated the
hijacking of the IA flight 814 and they cannot take cover behind the weaknesses of the
Nepalese security and behind the indecisiveness of our political leadership in enforcing
our national security interests in our relations with Nepal.
While the Government would thus be totally justified in taking
severe action against the officers responsible, it should not shirk its responsibility for
enforcing the primacy of our national security interests in our relations with Nepal at
least in future.
B.RAMAN
(4-1-2000)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat,
Govt. of India, and presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com)
