by Sachi Sri Kantha; published April 1, 2004
The RAW Factor in Col.Karuna’s Revolt
Soon it will be a month since Col.Karuna publicly parted ways with the LTTE. Did India’s stinking skunks play a role in Col.Karuna’s decision to break ranks with the LTTE? Though evidence (positive or negative) will mount with time to prove or disprove anyone’s doubts, let me review how a few prominent journalist-observers in the print media have presented their own expert guesses [a better phrase is ‘pay-check spins’].
First, I reproduce a brief news report [“RAW agents in LTTE-held areas?”] by Srinath Prasanna Jayasuriya, which appeared in the Ceylon Daily Mirror of January 13th of this year. It was on March 3rd Col.Karuna jumped ship.
“It is learnt that LTTE intelligence has received information that members of Indian Intelligence (RAW) have entered areas in the North-East under LTTE control.
Security sources in the North say that the LTTE have launched an operation to catch RAW members. Recently, the LTTE is said to have arrested a Tamilnadu businessman and a Tiger ‘major’ alleged to be RAW members in Mannar and Vavuniya and they are being interrogated at present. An LTTE member holding the rank of a ‘major’ has been uncovered as a RAW member, sources said.
No sooner a decision had been taken to sign a defence agreement with India, the LTTE had commenced an operation to find out whether there are RAW members in areas under its control. The Tamilnadu businessmen in Mannar alleged to be a RAW member is the owner of several trawlers in Nagapattana and is a billionaire. He had come to Sri Lanka on business. LTTE intelligence has reported to its seniors that RAW has sent its members disguised as tourists and businessman.”
If Col.Karuna’s act was a bolt from the blue for the LTTE, how did Jayasuriya contribute this report nearly 50 days ahead of the early March ‘shocker’?
(1) The Hindu-Frontline group
The Frontline magazine, dated March 27th has come out with an elaborate eight-piece cover story, co-authored by its regular hacks, V.S.Sambandan and D.B.S.Jeyaraj. Of the eight pieces [with a cumulative bloat of approximately 15,425 words!], five were contributed by Sambandan and the remaining three carried the byline of Jeyaraj. Jeyaraj’s pieces – mostly rehashed material with appropriate additions and deletions to his weekly material appearing in Colombo’s Sunday Leader weekly – amounted to nearly 7,240 words. Sambandan’s contribution ran to a cumulative length of nearly 8,180 words. The eight segments were as follows: (1) The LTTE crisis, by Sambandan, (2) Admired and hated, by Sambandan, (3) An electoral siege, by Sambandan, (4) The Eastern warlord, by Jeyaraj, (5) Interview with Col.Karuna, by Sambandan, (6) The Conflicts Within, by Jeyaraj, (7) Interview with S.P.Tamilchelvan, by Sambandan, (8) Tiger vs. Tiger, by Jeyaraj.
But, as one would expect, not even once in these eight pieces, the ‘R’ acronym – i.e., the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) – appeared among the 15,425 words! In the journalism book of pretentious Chennai’s House of Hindu and its hacks, commenting about the nefarious deeds of stinking skunks is rather un-Gandhian and off-limits. Thus, to evaluate the role of RAW in Col.Karuna’s treachery, we should read between the lines of a few more appropriate sources.
(2) Deccan Herald
Sudha Ramachandran’s commentary in the Deccan Herald [March 16th] was merely a little more than 800 words long. It was relatively uninhibited in expressing the commonly-held view among the islanders. To quote,
“There is speculation that external forces – RAW or the Americans – might be behind Karuna’s rebellion. It is possible that these rumours are to discredit him. At the same time, it is unlikely that Karuna would have challenged Prabakaran to this extent without some assurances from powerful patrons. [Note: Italics added for emphasis.] Few Tiger dissidents have survived Prabakaran’s wrath. Whether Karuna will prove to be the exception remains to be seen. The odds are against him.”
(3) The Pioneer
Ashok K.Mehta was a retired Major General, Indian army, who served in Sri Lanka during the IPKF war, from July 1988 to March 1990. His nearly 1,280 words long column to the Pioneer [March 24th] paid an open left handed compliment to the stinking skunks, while deftly opining that it was the Sri Lankan government ‘which has engineered the coup.’ Excerpt:
“It has been speculated that India’s Research and Analysis Wing(RAW), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and SLA intelligence have either in part, jointly or collectively instigated the revolt by Karuna. As far as is known, RAW had severed its links with LTTE soon after the ignominious withdrawal of IPKF in 1990. Full marks if it has rejuvenated its contacts and split the LTTE which is crediting RAW with capacity it has seldom displayed. It is most probably the SLG which has engineered the coup for electoral advantage besides other spinoffs.”
Ashok Mehta’s assertion that “RAW had severed its links with LTTE soon after the ignominious withdrawal of IPKF in 1990” is a partial truth. What has been omitted is the fact that RAW vigorously maintains and initiates links with anti-LTTE individuals – be they Tamils, or Muslims or Sinhalese – in the island. Why? Physically and diplomatically stalking Pirabhakaran and splitting/weakening LTTE by hook or crook has remained the Number One objective of RAW since 1987.
In the internet, Major General Ashok Mehta has incarnated himself as a military affairs columnist to Indian newsmedia, rewriting the military history about a war which the Indian army lost fairly and squarely to LTTE in Eelam, but blaming his fellow bunglers [Indian politicians, diplomats, and the RAW] but not his virility. He began his March 24th column, reminiscing on one of his past field acts in the Eastern Eelam, as follows:
“What will it take to get Karuna, asked the Indian Peace Keeping Force’s overall commander of his Batticaloa and Amparai military commander in early 1988. ‘I can give you two more brigades, you deliver Karuna,’ the General added. The youthful 20-year-old Karuna was then, as now, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) regional military commander, invariably one step ahead of the IPKF and could never be captured. ‘Give me rupees five crore and I will get Karuna’ [Note: italics added for emphasis] demanded the Batticaloa and Amparai IPKF chief. The conversation on Karuna’s seizure was killed by lack of funds.
Prabhakaran, the supreme leader of the LTTE, has no doubt been asking precisely the same question of his intelligence chief Pottu Amman ever since the legendary Eastern military commander seceded from the LTTE and declared the birth of a new outfit, LTTE Batticaloa and Amparai. Prabhakaran has no dearth of funds, intelligence and military resources but is not sure he can do another Mahattiya….”
I was a little intrigued by the five crore rupee value [One crore = 10 million; i.e, 50 million rupees] quoted by the then IPKF General. To capture his adversary in the battle field, this General was not talking in military lingo, but quoting a shekel range! Is it a belated, but opportune, cryptic revelation that during 1987-89, the Indian army was about to dangle this shekel to make Karuna into a turncoat? And they couldn’t get the sum [really?] through the pipeline then? Couldn’t it be that a shekel offer of the same value [or even double/triple that amount, considering Col.Karuna’s stock rose during the past 15 years!] would have been made by the skunks to Col.Karuna during the past two years to whet his appetite for treachery?
RAW and its Long Reach: a Personal Opinion
It is not irrelevant to check the functional architecture of RAW and whether it has deep coffers. One American website [http://www.globalsecurity.org] with a home address 300 N.Washington St. B-110, Alexandria, VA 22314, provides the following pertinent information.
“The Cabinet Secretariat Research and Analysis Wing [RAW], India’s most powerful intelligence agency, is India’s external intelligence agency. RAW has become an effective instrument of India’s national power, and has assumed a significant role in formulating India’s domestic and foreign policies. RAW has engaged in disinformation campaigns, espionage and sabotage against Pakistan and other neighboring countries. RAW has enjoyed the backing of successive Indian governments in these efforts. Working directly under the Prime Minister, the structure, rank, pay and perks of the Research & Analysis Wing are kept secret from Parliament.”
It further adds that “…The RAW and the Ministry of External Affairs are provided Rs 25 crore annually as “discretionary grants” for foreign influence operations…”
Thus, it is not beyond the capabilities of an intelligence arm of India [“provided with 25 crore annually as ‘discretionary grant’ for foreign influence operations”; i.e., 250 million Indian rupees per annum] to disperse shekel in the order of five crore rupees – or even double that sum – to poison the mind of a once-valued LTTE warrior as a reward for treachery.
There are amidst Tamils, a self-serving set of news vending harkaras, who pretend not to ‘see, hear or speak’ evil of stinking skunks, other than merely using a well worn euphemism, ‘extraneous forces,’ in passing. But the dirty deals and imperious deeds of RAW’s hands (especially since 1980s) are now becoming regular fixtures in books on espionage. For what it’s worth, I reproduce a paragraph from Jeffry Richelson’s book, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1995):
“India also conducts extensive scientific and technical intelligence operations, particularly in the United States. Among its targets are computer technology, with India hoping to dominate the Third World market. The FBI expressed its displeasure to the deputy director of RAW in 1993, when it detained him moments before he was to board a plane to leave the United States, where he had spent five months traveling (under FBI surveillance) and visiting his agents.” [p.427]
Jeffrey Richelson is credited in the jacket cover of the book as a ‘Senior Fellow of the National Security Archive’; thus, he knew his beans. If RAW’s deputy director had the temerity to ‘visit his agents’ in America and got ‘detained’ [euphemism for ‘getting caught’] in the process, one need not guess wildly about what RAW’s hands are dealing within Eelam and Sri Lanka. This brings me again to the January 13th news item in the Ceylon Daily Mirror about RAW agents in LTTE-held areas. Despite the ad nauseam bad mouthing of the LTTE’s intelligence division by partisan hacks like Jeyaraj, Pottu Amman and his team deserves credit for their services in protecting the hard earned victories for Eelam Tamils.
A little more than a month ago, in an email correspondence with a leading Indian journalist, currently stationed in Colombo, who writes on LTTE issues, I made the following ‘straight-on-your-face’ comment:
“…The journalists’ euphemism of ‘diplomat’ in any embassy may be a peon or a lowly clerk and at most ‘an intelligence personnel masquerading as the Second Secretary’. Don’t you think that we are oblivious to this fact, of how the embassies of India and Pakistan function in Colombo? and how the Intelligence personnel belonging to RAW and ISI have desks as ‘diplomats’ in the Indian and Pakistan embassies in Colombo? These ‘diplomats’ also manufacture ‘truths’…”
Needless to mention, I have not heard from him (in defence or negation of my comment) since then, though he was courteous in responding to my previous query with two emails. Why I mention this anecdote is to stress that Indian journalists stationed in Colombo simultaneously function as voluntary conduits for messages from the RAW and their non-journalist deeds need vigilant monitoring.