Research and Analysis Wing [RAW]

The Research and Analysis Wing [RAW] is India's foreign intelligence agency. RAW has become an effective instrument of Indian national power, and has assumed a significant role in carrying out India's domestic and foreign policies. RAW has engaged in espionage against Pakistan and other neighboring countries. It has enjoyed the backing of successive Indian governments in these efforts. Working directly under the Prime Minister, the structure and operations of the Research & Analysis Wing are kept secret from Parliament.
Founded in 1968, RAW focused largely on Pakistan. Its formation was initially motivated by reports of Pakistan supplying weapons to Sikh militants, and providing shelter and training to guerrillas in Pakistan.
Numerous missions were assigned to RAW upon its creation. These included monitoring political and military developments in neighboring countries that affects Indian national security. Consequently, considerable attention is paid by RAW to Pakistan and China, countries that are traditional rivals of India.
RAW has evolved from its origins as a part of the Intelligence Bureau to develop into India's predominant intelligence organization. In 1968, RAW had 250 agents and a budget of Rs. 2 crore. This has expanded to a 2000 total of an estimated eight to ten thousand agents and a budget that experts place at Rs. 1500 crore, alternately estimated at $145 million.
Pakistan has accused the Research and Analysis Wing of sponsoring sabotage in Punjab, where RAW is alleged to have supported the Seraiki movement, providing financial support to promote its activities in Pakistan and organizing an International Seraiki Conference in Delhi in November-December 1993. RAW has an extensive network of agents and anti-government elements within Pakistan, including dissident elements from various sectarian and ethnic groups of Sindh and Punjab. Published reports in Pakistan allege that as many as 35,000 RAW agents entered Pakistan between 1983-93, with 12,000 working in Sindh, 10,000 in Punjab, 8,000 in North West Frontier Province and 5000 in Balochistan.
RAW has a long history of activity in Bangladesh, supporting both secular forces and the area's Hindu minority. The involvement of RAW in East Pakistan is said to date from the 1960s, when RAW supported Mujibur Rahman, leading up to his general election victory in 1970. RAW also provided training and arms to the Bangladeshi freedom fighters known as Mukti Bahini. RAW's aid was instrumental in Bangladesh's gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971.
During the course of its investigation the Jain Commission received testimony on the official Indian support to the various Sri Lankan Tamil armed groups in Tamil Nadu. From 1981, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau established a network of as many as 30 training bases for these groups in India. Centers were also established at the high-security military installation of Chakrata, near Dehra Dun, and in the Ramakrishna Puram area of New Delhi. This clandestine support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), some of whom were on the payroll of RAW, was later suspended. Starting in late 1986 the Research and Analysis Wing focused surveillance on the LTTE which was expanding ties with Tamil Nadu separatist groups. Rajiv Gandhi sought to establish good relations with the LTTE, even after the Indian Peace Keeping Force [IPKF] experience in Sri Lanka. But the Indian intelligence community failed to accurately assess the character of the LTTE and its orientation India and its political leaders. The LTTE assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was apparently motivated by fears of a possible re-induction of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka and a crackdown on the LTTE network in Tamil Nadu.
RAW was heavily criticized in 1999, following the Pakistani incursions at Kargil. Critics accused RAW of failing to provide intelligence that could have prevented the ensuing ten-week conflict that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of full-scale war. While the army has been critical of the lack of information they received, RAW has pointed the finger at the politicians, claiming they had provided all the necessary information. Most Indian officials believe that in order to prevent another such occurrence, communication needs to be increased between the intelligence agencies, which would require structural reform.
Most recently, RAW has gained attention for providing the US with intelligence on Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets for the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. Maps and photographs of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with other evidence implicating Osama bin Laden in terrorist attacks, were given to US intelligence officials.
The objectives of RAW include:

To monitor the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on India's national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy. To seek the control and limitation of the supply of military hardware to Pakistan, mostly from European countries, the USA and China.

The chief of the RAW is designated Secretary (Research) in the Cabinet Secretariat, which is part of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Most of the position's occupants have been experts on either Pakistan or China. The head of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence agency, enjoys greater autonomy of functioning than their counterparts in the UK and US and has the same privileged direct access to the Prime Minister as their UK counterparts. The control of the Cabinet Secretary over the RAW is limited to administrative and financial matters, with very little say in operational and policy matters. They also have the benefit of training in either US or the UK, and more recently in Israel. The Secretary (R) reports on an administrative basis to the Cabinet Secretary, who reports to the Prime Minister (PM). However, on a daily basis the Secretary (R) reports to the National Security Advisor. Reporting to the Secretary (R) are: Two Special Secretaries and one Special Director of the ARC, the Aviation Research Centre; Four Additional Secretaries, responsible for different geographical regions; A large number (above 40) Joint Secretaries, who are the functional heads of various desks. The structure of the RAW is a matter of speculation, but brief overviews of the same are present in the public domain. Attached to the HQ of RAW at Lodhi Road, New Delhi are different regional headquarters, which have direct links to overseas stations and are headed by a controlling officer who keeps records of different projects assigned to field officers who are posted abroad. Intelligence is usually collected from a variety of sources by field officers and deputy field officers; it is either pre-processed (vetted) by a senior field officer or by a desk officer. The desk officer then passes the information to the Joint Secretary and then on to the Additional Secretary and from there it is disseminated to the concerned end user. The Director RAW is a member of the JIC Steering Committee and is authorized to brief the Prime Minister should the need arise. Some officers of the RAW are members of a specialized service, the Research and Analysis Service (RAS), but several officers also serve on deputation from other services. The RAW has sub-organizations like the Aviation Research Center (ARC), the Radio Research Center (RRC) or the Electronics and Technical Service (ETS), which have considerable capacity for technical intelligence gathering. Another important branch under the operational control of the RAW is the Directorate General of Security (DGS). This agency has oversight over organizations like the Special Frontier Force (SFF), the Special Services Bureau (SSB) etc... Liaison with the military is maintained through the Military Intelligence Advisory Group and the Military Advisor to the Director RAW. Though the RAW is primarily intended for collecting intelligence beyond India's national borders, it has over time come to have a strong presence in all fields of intelligence gathering. The RAW was brought into internal security issues during the Sikkim situation, it played a role in the events of the emergency of 1977-79, it was asked to operate in Punjab to counter-balance the presence of the ISI (and so also in Kashmir), and the RAW has provided the security for the India's nuclear program. Right from its formation in 18 September, 1968, R N Kao, the founding father of RAW, picked up the best men from within government and from outside for RAW. A combination of military, academicians, bureaucrats and policemen was a fine start for RAW which modelled itself on the lines of CIA.

  

Responsibilities

Shrouded in secrecy, the IB is used to garner intelligence from within India and also execute counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks.
The Intelligence Bureau comprises employees from law enforcement agencies, mostly from the Indian Police Service and the military.
However, the Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) has always been an IPS officer.
In addition to domestic intelligence responsibilities, the IB is particularly tasked with intelligence collection in border areas, following the 1951 recommendations of the Himmatsinhji Committee (also known as the North and North-East Border Committee), a task entrusted to military intelligence organizations prior to independence in 1947.
All spheres of human activity within India and in the neighborhood are allocated to the charter of duties of the Intelligence Bureau. The IB was also tasked with other external intelligence responsibilities as of 1951 till 1968, when the Research and Analysis Wing was formed.
The current chief of the organization is Rajiv Mathur.

Activities

Understanding of the arcane workings of the IB is largely speculative. One known task of the IB is to clear licenses to amateur radio enthusiasts.
The IB also passes on intelligence between other Indian Intelligence agencies and the Police.
The IB also grants the necessary security clearances to Indian diplomats and judges before they take the oath.
On rare occasions, IB officers interact with the media during a criss situation.
The IB is also rumored to intercept and open around 6,000 letters daily.
It also has an email spying system similar to FBI's Carnivore System.^[5]
The Intelligence Bureau is also authorized to conduct wiretapping without a warrant.
The IB also has numerous authors who write letters to various newspapers and magazines to support the government's perspective. According to recent reports,

 

Workings

The `Class I' (gazette) officers carry out coordination and higher-level management the IB. These officers are (again in increasing order of seniority) Asst. Director, the Joint Deputy Director, Joint Director, the Deputy Director, Additional Director, Special Director or Special Secretary and finally the Director.
The SIB's are headed by officers of the rank of Joint Director or above but smaller SIB's are also sometimes headed by Deputy Directors. The SIB's have their units at district head quarters headed by Deputy Central Intelligence Officers or DCIO's.
The IB maintains a large number of field units and headquarters (which are under the control of Joint or Deputy Directors). It is through these offices and the intricate process of deputation that a very `organic' linkage between the state police agencies and the IB is maintained.
In addition to these, at the national level the IB has several units (in some cases Subsidiary Intelligence Bureaus) to keep track of issues like terrorism, counter-intelligence, VIP security, threat assessment and sensitive areas (i.e. Jammu and Kashmir and such).

 

Some of the problems within the IB are briefly listed below:

1) There are problems regarding recruiting: in the past postings and deputations with the IB were regarded as positive career choices among police officers, and this led to a favorable buildup of expertise in the both state and national law enforcement circles. In more recent times, this has changed, state police forces offer far swifter means of promotion and career advancement, also the perks of state level police postings in some cases compare more favorably than those of a central posting. The result is that people have to be forcibly deputed to the IB. This is further compounded by the fact that IB postings often involve extremely hazardous duties in hostile populations. Thus some postings go unfilled and in some cases the IB gets very thinly stretched on the ground. This leads to gaps in intelligence collection.

2) In sensitive areas (ex. J&K. NER) the pace of security operations is very high. This means that the turnaround time between collection, collation and dissemination has to be very small. IB officers serve largely in advisory capacity and have to coordinate with the regular enforcement arms. To reduce the dead time in intelligence handling, today in most sensitive areas, the law enforcement arms (in most cases) are endowed with their own intelligence units. These units do varying amounts of intelligence targeting and are in theory supposed to coordinate with the IB, sometimes however, this coordination is not achieved and quite possibly another intelligence agency dominates leading to the loss of the `overall picture'.

3) The IB is Government of India's principal internal news agency. It is responsible for monitoring all aspects of governance. As an extension of this role, it routinely monitors the state governments and often draws up independent assessments of the security situation in a state and advises the Governor. At the central level the IB closely monitors developments relating to parliamentary affairs and reports back to the Cabinet Secretariat. The Special Enquiry and Surveillance unit (SES) of the IB handles most of this work. This task is vital in maintaining the stability of elected governments. However it can easily be subverted to achieve less savory aims, especially at the state level. Apart from any actual degradation in capacity, this kind of work breeds the impression in that the IB is purely a mechanism for targeting the opposition.

4) The IB is also tasked with Counter-Intelligence operations. This area of IB work has been the object of severe criticism and almost every internal disturbance is projected as a failure in counter-intelligence (there is always talk of the absence of specificity in threat assessments). Problems related to this part are discussed more extensively in the section on counter-intelligence issues. The task forces have in all probability made several recommendations about these topics. The task force on Internal Security has stated the need to place emphasis on the position of the Secretary (MHA) and that all intelligence regarding internal security developments should be passed to him; this is appears to be an attempt to foster the functioning of the `Core Intelligence Processing Unit' in the MHA. The task force on Internal Security has also made clear the need to create dedicated `systems and procedures' of intelligence dissemination to aid in the conduct of counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations. It is also likely that the capabilities in the IB relating to counter-intelligence are being upgraded (this is discussed in greater detail in the section on Counter-Intelligence). The task force on internal security has also called for an end to political interference in the IB, it has suggested that a internal review and oversight body be set up in the IB to stamp out this sort of thing, but it is unclear to the author as to exactly how this mechanism will function.