ISLAMABAD: The retired spy chiefs of arch rival nuclear armed Pakistan andIndia point out strengths and weaknesses of Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI) and Research and Analysis Wing of India (RAW) while admitting thateach agency is as good as the other is.
“Once an American journalist with poor posture came up to me at aconference, casually posing a question, how do you rate RAW?,” said Lt-Gen(retd) Asad Durrani while narrating his point regarding what he thinksabout his rival agency in the latest book published in India titled, “TheSpy Chronicles, RAW, ISI and Illusion of Peace,” available to thiscorrespondent.
In the chapter of the book titled ISI vs RAW, Asad Durrani further addsthat, “It was obviously not so casual a question and was probably intendedto catch me off guard and provoke me into analysis and say nothing. He waslikely to go to the RAW chief and say look, this is what the other fellowsaid, and get the response from him.”
Durrani said instead almost reflexively I said, “at least as good as weare.” The book is based on marathon sittings of former ISI and RAW chiefsnamely retired Lt Gen Asad Durrani and A.S Dulat moderated by Aditya Sinha,an Indian author and journalist.
Former ISI chief Durrani in this chapter further says that, “About 10 yearsago, a ratings website called Smashing Lists came out with, among otherlists, the world’s 10 best spy agencies. Out of the blue, ISI was numberone, followed by Mossad, CIA, and all the others”.
He thinks, “For me, the best way to judge ISI was that during the Sovietoccupation of Afghanistan, it got all the help from most of the big playersin the West but allowed no interference in its role, organising theresistance. But then the Cold War was over and we had to change ourobjectives in the region, and the ISI was key to that. Anotheraccomplishment is that none of our operators ever defected or was ‘caughton camera’.
When Aditya Sinha questioned both Durrani and Dulat regarding the greatestfailure of ISI and RAW?
Dulat said our biggest failure against Pakistan is that we’ve not been ableto turnaround an ISI officer or have an ISI officer working for us. Or notto my knowledge, at a level where it counts. If you go back to the ColdWar, what was the main task of a CIA officer? It was to somehow find adefector. If a CIA guy found a defector then for the rest of his career hedidn’t need to do anything, because he had done what was supremelyrequired. On our side, I don’t think we’ve even imagined it properly and Idon’t think we’ve succeeded.”