ISI, RAW Should Team Up In Fight Against Terrorism: Former Pak Foreign Affairs Minister
Incidentally, both RAW and ISI were trained by the CIA in their formative years.
New Delhi: Perhaps taking a leaf out of the Bollywood blockbusters `Ek Tha Tiger’ and `Pathan’, Pakistani politician and former foreign affairs minister Bilawal Bhutto recently declared in the United Nations that Pak spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Indian covert agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) can possibly team up to fight terrorism. Channelling his inner scriptwriter, Bhutto also claimed that diplomacy and dialogue are the only “viable path to peace” and reiterated Pak’s willingness to engage in a broad dialogue with India – including cooperation on counter-terrorism. Nobody, however, knows whether this is Bhutto's "wishful thinking" or whether he has the clearance from Pak Army and ISI to make this statement.
Incidentally, both RAW and ISI were trained by the CIA in their formative years. The two agencies do maintain a working relationship as in the past it was RAW that saved the life of former Pakistani president Gen Pervez Musharraf in 2003 from a possible assassination bid by Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists following a timely tip off. And this was not the first time. In 1999, hours after Musharraf was sacked as Pak Army chief by then Pak PM Nawaz Sharif, his plane despite running low on fuel was denied permission to land in Karachi endangering his life and that of 198 others and the only option he had was to land in India. R&AW, reportedly, made the information about his possible assassination ploy public, forcing the Pak government to make him land safely in Karachi. There were many more such moments, some ISI acknowledged, some it did not.
In his book “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years” former R&AW chief A.S. Dulat talked about the need of the two agencies to communicate with each other. He added the meeting of two agency chiefs paves way for talks between political leaders. Dulat wrote that both Musharraf and ISI have acknowledged that timely intelligence provided by RAW about a likely Jaish-e-Mohammed attack may have saved the Pak President’s life in 2004..
“I am completely confident that if ISI and RAW were ready to sit down and work together to fight these (terror) forces, we would see a significant decrease in terrorism in both India and Pakistan,” the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader said in a press conference in United Nations headquarters in New York. He further said diplomacy and dialogue were the only viable path to peace and added that Pakistan was willing to engage with India on wider dialogue and cooperate on counter terrorism.
“Pakistan would like to cooperate with India to combat terrorism. We can't leave the fate of 1.5 billion, 1.7 billion people in the hands of non-state actors and terrorists. For them to decide, at a whim, that (when will these) two nuclear armed forces will go to war,” Bhutto said. He also proposed a joint mechanism to address complaints, investigate terrorist incidents jointly and work together to ensure accountability. However, in the same breath he went on to abuse the Indian government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Pakistan is constantly making overtures for a dialogue to diffuse diplomatic and military tension that persists despite the ceasefire on borders. But a confused Bhutto failed to put across the message in a cohesive manner as abusing the PM of India and then expecting him to allow RAW to collaborate with ISI is a far fetched dream.
