AFTER KANISHKA, MUMBAI
26/11----AFTER 26/11 ?
By B.Raman
In 2006, the Canadian Government had
appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by
former Supreme Court justice John Major to
enquire into the crash of an aircraft of Air
India named Kanishka on June 23,1985. The
crash was caused by an explosive device
suspected to have been planted in a piece of
unaccompanied baggage by Sikh extremists
belonging to the Babbar Khalsa headed by the
late Talwinder Singh Parmar of Vancouver,
Canada.329 civilians---270 of them Canadian
nationals, 27 British nationals, 22 Indian
nationals and 10 other foreign nationals----
were killed. The majority of the Canadian
and British nationals killed were of Indian
origin. The 22 Indians killed included 20
members of the crew. The flight was
operating on the
Montr?al-London-Delhi-Bombay route. It was
blown up in midair by a bomb in Irish
airspace.
2.The report of the John Major Commission
was released on June 17, 2010. The
Commission has found that a "cascading
series of errors" by the Government of
Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS), which was set up only in
1984, allowed the terrorist attack to take
place.We have been carrying relevant
extracts from the report on the web site of
the South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG) at
www.southasiaanalysis.org.
3.The terms of reference of the Commission
were restricted to finding out whether
intelligence relating to the plans of the
Sikh extremists based in Canada to blow up a
flight of the Air India originating from a
Canadian airport existed, if so, whether the
disaster could have been prevented and why
it was not prevented. The Commission's
enquiry did not cover the role of Pakistan
in assisting the Babbar Khalsa in organising
acts of terrorism against Indian targets.
This was not in its terms of reference.
After the explosion, Parmar fled to
Pakistan, where he was given sanctuary by
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He
operated from Pakistan against India till
1992 ----- for seven years --- and crossed
over into India from Pakistan in 1992
following Western pressure on Pakistan to
have him arrested and handed over to India
for investigation and trial. He was killed
in an encounter by the Punjab Police in
1992. The role of Pakistan in giving shelter
to the main conspirator in the plot which
blew up the Kanishka and continuing to help
him and sponsor his acts of terrorism was
also not gone into by the Major Commission.
It was not in its terms of reference either.
4. When the Kanishka aircraft was blown up,
Gen.Zia-ul-Haq was in power in Pakistan and
was playing an active role in assisting the
Central Intelligence Agency of the US in its
operations against the Soviet troops in
Afghanistan. In gratitude for this
assistance, many transgressions of Pakistan
were overlooked by the Western Governments.
One of these transgressions was its
assistance to the Babbar Khalsa which blew
up the Kanishka and not extending mutual
legal assistance to India in the
investigation of the case. The second
transgression was its clandestine
acquisition of a military nuclear capability
with the collusion of China.
5. Mrs.Benazir Bhutto came to power with
the reluctant approval of the Pakistani Army
and the ISI, then headed by Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul,
following the elections held after the death
of Zia in a plane crash in August,1988.
After assuming office, she started
exercising pressure on the ISI to stop
playing what she used to call the Sikh card
against India. There was pressure on the ISI
from the Western Governments too.
6. The ISI asked the Government of Mr.Nawaz
Sharif, which was then in power in Punjab as
the Chief Minister, to take over the
responsibility for assisting the Khalistani
terrorists, including Parmar, and for
funding and training them. The Nawaz
Government readily agreed to this and asked
the Special Branch of the Punjab Police to
take over from the ISI the responsibility
for assisting the Khalistani terrorists. It
appointed Brig.Imtiaz, who headed the
political division of the ISI under Zia, as
adviser to the SB to supervise this project.
He had been removed from the ISI by Benazir,
who intensely disliked him.
7. What happened in Pakistan after the
Kanishka disaster is now being repeated
after the terrorist strikes of 26/11 in
Mumbai carried out by the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LET) with the prior knowledge and possibly
tacit if not open approval of the ISI. One
hundred and sixty-six persons, including 25
foreigners of different nationalities,
were killed. Till the Kanishka disaster of
June 1985, the repeated warnings of the
Indian intelligence and security agencies
about the emergence of the Babbar Khalsa as
an international terrorist organisation were
not treated seriously by their Western
counterparts.
8. The Major Commission report clearly
brings out that there was a considerable
flow of intelligence and warnings from the
Government of India about the plans of the
Babbar Khalsa branch in Canada to blow up
an Air India plane originating from Canada.
There were also similar warnings and
requests for physical security enhancements
from Air India to Candian security offcials
responsible for aviation security. The Major
Commission report indicates that these
warnings and intelligence, which had
emanated from the Government of India and
Air India, were not seriously acted upon by
the Canadian authorities. The reports from
the Government of India were attributed by
them to the Indian tendency to "cry wolf".
Air India's warnings were attributed to its
alleged desire to obtain security
enhancements without paying for it. The
result: 329 innocent civilians perished. The
disaster could have been easily prevented
and their lives saved, if the warnings from
the Govt. of India and Air India had been
acted upon.
9. This could not be done because of the
tendency of the Canadian authorities to view
any intelligence warning emanating from
India with a prejudiced mind through the
prism of Inda's disputes with Pakistan. This
prejudiced mindset is not unique to the
Canadian authorities. It is shared by the
authorities of other Western Governments
too. Have they learnt any lessons from the
Kanishka disaster?
10. No. The same prejudiced mind was seen
between 9/11 and the London explosions of
July,2005, in their tendency to dismiss
Indian warnings of the emergence of the LET
as an international terrorist organisation
on par with Al Qaeda. They started paying
serious attention to the LET only after the
London explosions of 2005 and then after
the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.Just
as they were looking at the Indian warnings
regarding the Babbar Khalsa through the
India-Pakistan prism, they continue to view
even today the Indian warnings regarding the
LET through the India-Pakistan prism.
11. In the actions taken by them after the
Kanishka disaster, they made a distinction
between the role of the Babbar Khalsa in
indulging in terrorism and the role of the
ISI in assisting it. Post-1985, they acted
against the Babbar Khalsa as a terrorist
organisation and co-operated with India in
monitoring its activities, but they
refrained from acting against the ISI. After
the Kanishka explosion, it took about 10
years for the Babbar Khalsa to be brought
under control. During this period, many more
innocent civilians perished at its hands .
12.History has been repeating itself since
26/11. The Western Governments are now
taking seriously the threat posed by the LET
to them, but, at the same time, they are
refraining from acting against the ISI
without whose support the LET cannot survive
for long. Unless there is simultaneous
action against the LET and the ISI, the
threat from the LET will continue for a long
time.
13.After 26/11, the ISI is behaving exactly
as it behaved after the Kanishka disaster.
Because of the Western pressure and the
close monitoring of the activities of the
LET, it has asked the Special Branch of the
Punjab Police to take over the
responsibility for keeping the LET and its
political wing the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD)
alive and active and for funding their
activities. The Punjab Government of Chief
Minister Shabaz Sharif, the brother of Mr.
Nawaz, is going along with this.
14. The "Dawn" of Karachi reported on June
16,2010, that according to the
supplementary budget for 2009-10 recently
submitted to the Punjab Provincial Assembly
for post-facto approval, the Government of
Mr.Shabaz Sharif gave a grant of Rs79
million to the Markaz-i-Taiba, the
headquarters of the JED and the LET at
Muridke in Punjab. In addition,another sum
of Rs3 million was given as grants to the
schools run by the JUD in different
districts of Punjab.Punjab Law Minister Rana
Sanaullah Khan, who has been accused by his
critics of having contacts with the Sunni
extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is
playing a leading role in the Punjabi
Taliban, has admitted to having given the
money to the JUD.
15. One does not see any sign that the West
is moving to act against the continued
nursing of the LET by the ISI, either
directly, if possible, or through the Punjab
Police. Unless this is stopped, disasters of
the Kanishka and Mumbai kind will be
repeated.The prejudiced view of Indian
intelligence warnings and assesssments
brought out in the Major Commission report
continues even today 25 years after the
Kanishka disaster---not only in Canada, but
also in other Western countries. So long as
they are not able to rid themselves of this
prejudiced mindset, threats of mass casualty
terrorism planned and carried out from
Pakistani territory or with the assistance
of its ISI will continue to confront not
only India, but also the West.
( The writer is Additional
Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.
of India, New Delhi, and, presently,
Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre
For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)