The latest broadside by The Washington Post (WP) team against India on its purported official level involvement in the attempted murder of US/Canadian Khalistani terrorist on US soil thwarted by the US agencies typifies the long-standing deep animus of WP against India. The article is full of innuendoes, speculation, tentative assessments and distortions. The WP shows no qualms in pushing a narrative to serve a political purpose in connivance with US agencies. The low and unethical standards of WP’s journalism are manifest.
The WP’s so-called investigative team is frank that their information source is serving and former security officials in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, as well as India. All are anonymous, except former R&AW chief A.S. Dulat, so that one cannot judge the level of responsibility of these officials in the intelligence apparatus, whether they relayed first-hand or second-hand information, or what their hidden motives were in speaking to the press.
There is no reason for the Indian reader to believe in the integrity of persons who are obviously part of a deliberate hit job. A spate of articles has appeared in the Anglo-Saxon press about India’s involvement in planning assassinations of “dissidents” abroad and putting the country in the company of Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. An insidious reference is made in this context to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and the killing of Khashoggi. This is part of the narrative about democracy backsliding in India, the rise of authoritarianism and muscular Hindu nationalism under Modi.
The WP report talks of differences within the Justice Department and the agencies about becoming tougher with India over the Pannun affair. Is the leak the handiwork of elements who hold some grudge against India and want to unauthorizedly speak to the press? What stops them from purveying misleading, half-baked information as part of a larger political game financed by anti-Indian individuals and lobbies? If in the indictment process, the name of CC-1 was not released officially, who within the US agencies has gone beyond due process and made the name public?
The WP is being unscrupulous and unethical in using innuendos to substitute for facts, knowing that when insinuations are made, the seeds of suspicion of culpability are planted in the public mind. A larger purpose is served, even as the paper can say it made no definitive accusations.
The WP article talks of the CIA and FBI mapping the potential links of the attempted murder to Modi’s inner circle. That it was approved by the then R&AW chief is consistent, it says, with the accounts provided to the WP by former senior Indian security officials with knowledge of the operation. They claimed that the R&AW chief was under “extreme pressure” to counter the alleged threat of Sikh extremists overseas.
The article also says that according to former officials, the decision to entrust Vikram Yadav with the operation sparked recriminations with R&AW. They also told WP that the operation would not have taken place without the approval and protection of the seniors. A.S. Dulat claimed that this was not part of R&AW’s repertoire during his tenure, which suggests that this could have changed. In the same breath, the article mentions that the US agencies have tentatively assessed that NSA Ajit Doval was probably aware of the operation but no “smoking gun proof has emerged”. This is a way to damn a person and also claim that he might not be guilty!
It is inconceivable that those within R&AW with knowledge of the operation will speak to the WP correspondent in Delhi. If they did, it would mean that persons within R&AW are hobnobbing with foreign journalists to give substance to the allegations against their own organisation and country. This seems either an invention by the WP journalist or, if not, he is doing intelligence work on behalf of the CIA and the FBI, which should open him to charges of visa violations and breach of Indian security.
The WP article also says that attempts were made to contact Vikram Yadav (CC-1) but he could not be located. It is effrontery on WP’s part to contact an intelligence operative and interfere in India’s own investigation. Expulsion would normally be in order in such a case. Whether the government will do so is another matter. A probe should also be made into who these R&AW operatives are with knowledge of the Pannun operation who have spoken to the WP and condign action should be taken against them, if required.
The WP alleged several times in the article at different places that high-level persons were involved in the Pannun operation, while also simultaneously claiming that proof of this is lacking. At one place, the article talks also of current and former officials saying that the operation involved higher ranking officials with ties to Modi’s inner circle, including ex-R&AW chief Samant Goel and NSA Ajit Doval, though admitting again that there was “no direct evidence of their complicity”. It mentions a third time in the body of the article that the CIA believes Doval “probably knew or approved”. It repeats these insinuations for the fourth time by mentioning that the US and Western officials told WP that such an operation could not have taken place “without a clear understanding that doing it would be met with Prime Minister’s approval”. Why repeat the same point in different ways? Slipshod writing? Editorial incoherence? Or this is a sly and devious way to hammer the same point repeatedly to cast a slur on Modi and his entourage.
US and Indian security officials are quoted by WP as saying that R&AW was told that Pannun’s murder was a “priority now”. How would the US know this? Did they intercept written or oral orders? How would Indian security officials- presumably retired ones- know this except by hearsay? Is all this gossip shared over a drink with WP’s correspondent in Delhi whose appointment, in any case, was based on a mandate to tarnish Modi’s India?
WP’s deep bias against India is reflected in the way it refers to persons hostile to India. Pannun is described as “one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the US”. Is his sin only “criticism”? The article talks of “11 Sikh or Kashmiri separatists living in exile” but labelled as terrorists by the Modi government who have been killed in Pakistan. The implication is that they were unfairly labelled as terrorists and were not sheltered by the ISI in Pakistan. They were simply in self-exile there, with no complicity in terror activity directed at India.
The US can have a long list of those it sees as terrorists but there is something suspect in India declaring anyone a terrorist. The article sows suspicion that Avtar Singh Khanda might have been killed in the UK because of R&AW’s record of aggressive activity there, although British authorities have said that he died of leukaemia. The paper also quotes Pannun as saying that he is targeted in order to stop the ongoing “referendum movement for the secession of Punjab from Indian occupation”. The WP finds this statement politically within norms as it is considered fit to be carried without comment.
India is accused of surveillance of Sikhs and other groups overseas perceived as disloyal to the Modi government. The Khalistan movement long precedes the arrival of the BJP to power. The demand of a separate Sikh state, referendums held in support of that, the attacks on our missions, the death threats to Modi as well as our ambassadors, and the attack on our missions, is mere disloyalty to the Modi government for the WP. Which are the “other groups” targeted is not mentioned. This is chicanery on the part of the paper, which sees nothing wrong in Canadian intelligence officials monitoring Indian embassy communications.
Freedom House, which has an alleged intelligence connection, is quoted as accusing India of “transnational repression against Indian citizens- dissidents, activists, journalists” abroad. This is a blanket statement made without any proof. Which Indian journalist, activist or dissident abroad is “repressed” by the Indian government? This is not elucidated. Is this journalism or slander?
History is distorted in favour of Sikh separatism by baldly stating that in 1984, Sikh separatists took over the Golden Temple when the government rejected demands for more autonomy, and that the crackdown that followed prompted the exodus of Sikhs to Canada, the US and Britain. There is no mention of terrorism in Punjab and the targeting of the Hindus. That migration from Punjab has continued despite the Akali government being in power for years in Punjab, and now the AAP government. has escaped WP’s attention. Citing human rights organisations questioning the designation of Nijjar and Pannun as terrorists on the specious ground that due process was not followed, shows WP’s unwillingness to admit the reality about the Khalistani criminals. Even the float in Brampton in Canada celebrating the assassination of Mrs Gandhi only “seemed” to the WP to have glorified violence. Seemed? The spate of photographs accompanying the article is intended to give a lot of publicity to the Khalistan cause, with Nijjar and many others projected as martyrs.
The paper says that the US side sees no indication that India’s investigation would implicate senior officials in the Modi government, which suggests that the US wants a preordained result.
The WP journalists back the US argument that its extra-territorial counterterrorism operations were in “ungoverned territories” unlike those of India. Was Iraq ungoverned territory when Iran’s Soleimani was killed at the Baghdad International Airport in 2020, or was Libya ungoverned when it was bombed in 1986 or in 2011 when Gadaffi’s compound was bombed? In 1993 when Bagdad was bombed by Clinton because of the alleged plot to assassinate George Bush Sr in Kuwait, was Iraq under Saddam Hussein ungoverned territory?
The WP deliberately distorts the meaning and thrust of Doval’s reference to offensive defence, which was in the context of countering terrorism from Pakistan, not elimination of anti-Indian terrorism in the Anglosphere. Likewise, it is unpardonable to twist Modi’s statement that the “new India will come to your home to kill you” in order to present him as supporting assassinations everywhere, knowing well that he was referring to the surgical strikes and the Balakot operation against Pakistan in retaliation for its terrorist strikes against India.
The paper says that White House officials warned the Indian government that The Washington Post was close to publishing an investigation but failed to tell the paper. This is a silly way to pretend that the US authorities had no hand, direct or indirect, in promoting this highly warped and propagandist story.
Kanwal Sibal is a former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Comments
0 comment