The just-revealed pact of 2004 between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the result of some serious journalistic digging by the New York Times, has a direct meaning for India — that this country must at all time rely on its own resources to deal with Pakistan-generated terrorism aimed against it. The American newspaper disclosed on Sunday that the CIA was given permission by the ISI to use Predator drones to attack suspected anti-US terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan, where US and Nato troops have been committed since 2001, on two strict conditions — that the US drones steer clear of Pakistani nuclear facilities, and that these do not venture anywhere near the mountainous areas where jihadi fighters are trained to engage in terrorist actions against India.
This does raise the question that the US fight against terrorism is self-centred, and that Washington’s rhetoric against international terrorism is one-sided and need hardly be taken at face value (as many here tend to do). Evidently, the Americans agreed to Pakistan’s terms on drones in their self-interest. That is not surprising.
What occasions interest is this: while pursuing its own goals in relation to the Afghan theatre, the US subtly relied on India to do nothing that would alarm Pakistan’s military and make Islamabad divert its forces away from its Afghan border (where it is meant to assist the US effort) to the theatre to its east against India.
It’s worrisome that neither the NDA government nor two successive UPA governments cottoned on to the game. When queried about the implications of the CIA-ISI drones pact, a top official of the ministry of external affairs said on Monday that New Delhi would first verify the NYT report. This was entirely avoidable. After all, New Delhi doesn’t, for instance, first wait to authenticate Western reports regarding Chinese troops or workmen in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but goes right ahead and voices concern. Articulating a political first principle on an important security matter ought not to depend on technicalities.
In the face of grave terrorist provocation from the Pakistani side, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks, India stuck to the unwritten script and did everything not to disconcert Washington. It will be seen as supine if it does not speak up even now, not just against Pakistan but also the US.
Indeed, it says something about India’s intelligence-gathering and intelligence-analysing capabilities that security arrangements prejudicial to its interests don’t even register on its radar. Corrective action simply can’t be delayed any longer.