Pakistani investigators say India’s external espionage agency Research and Analysis Wing, better known by its charmingly sinister acronym RAW, has plans to assassinate the country’s freshly reinstated Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. They also say that RAW is collaborating with Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud to hit targets in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The RAW’s motivation: create anarchy in Pakistan.
Let’s accept all of these assertions at their face value for the sake of argument. Let’s also disregard that they amount to saying that India wants more anarchy in Pakistan than there already is because of its own internal sociological fault lines. Let’s also ignore that India has everything to lose by creating in its immediate neighbor a failed nuclear armed fundamentalist Islamic state. I know all this is a great deal to overlook for the sake of argument. Nevertheless, let’s do it.
The notion that anarchy in Pakistan is an end in itself that the RAW wants is so fantastic that it is amusing. I hold no brief for the Indian or any espionage agencies. Their existence is a testimony to how profoundly distrustful human race is of its own. That is a larger philosophical debate which is as superfluous as it is beyond the scope of this post.
IANS reports quote The News as saying the following:
"Our agencies have intercepted a RAW plan to hit Rawalpindi and Islamabad by using terrorist elements within Pakistan," The News Friday quoted an official as saying.
An intelligence report shared with the newspaper by an interior ministry official "reveals" that Chaudhry's life "is in danger as RAW wants to target him to cause anarchy in Pakistan", it added.
According to the intelligence report, at least 20 Uzbek terrorists dispatched by Mehsud "have already reportedly reached Islamabad" and "would play a key role in this operation".
They are divided in groups and each group has been assigned a different attack plan, the report said.
"The terrorists may try to capture important buildings like the Pakistan Secretariat blocks, TV stations, police training centres and foreign chains of schools," the intelligence report said.
"This time, the attacks could be conducted at four or five places simultaneously in various areas of the twin-cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Vigilance is required to counter and curb attacks or terrorist acts planned by the extremists," the report added.
If true this is a remarkable piece of intelligence gathering. But to me its undoing lies in the specificity of its details. It seems almost as if the whole plot is orchestrated with the full knowledge of the Pakistani intelligence which may let it unfold if only to eventually accuse the RAW. It is impossible to say what really goes on behind such complex and intricate plotting and intelligence gathering. It is not as outrageous as it sounds that the RAW or, for that matter any intelligence agency, particularly Pakistan’s own Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), would be involved in such acts.
The reason I find this claim by Pakistani investigators questionable is because it is inherently self-defeating for India to push the country any further into chaos than it already is. If the plot flows from a purely misanthropic motivation, then it is a different story altogether. In that case we have much more to be worried about.