India’s RAW deal
Or, learning painful lessons about covert operations by an aspirant great power
The Canadian Prime Minister revealed, on his recent trip to the UN, that we wanted two outcomes from the assassination of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an activist for the cause of an independent Sikh homeland, “Khalistan,” on June 18, 2023.
Justin Trudeau told the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof that we wanted to have a “number of people thrown in jail.” The other desired outcome is a “series of lessons learned and changes made to the way Indian intelligence services operate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/opinion/sikh-canada-india-assassination.html
The first outcome will depend on an RCMP investigation and on the possibilities of catching and charging the perpetrators and successfully pursuing recourse through the Canadian judicial system.
The second outcome depends on India getting the message, feeling real and sustained pressure from a determined coalition of allied states, and finding ways to act that do not threaten the current stature or future electoral prospects of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Above all, the Indian government will need to rethink its calculations about the conduct of covert operations abroad, especially covert operations that reach well beyond India’s so-called “near abroad.” In doing so it will have to weigh reputational damage and confront the reality that the doctrine of “plausible deniability” that attends covert operations can sometimes provide little real shelter.
While the first outcome, whatever its chances, will ultimately play out in public, and likely over an extended period, the second outcome will have no public face and no timeline, thanks largely to the secrecy and lack of accountability that surrounds Indian intelligence, as well as the political costs, at least on the world stage, that face the Indian PM whether he chooses action or inaction. What the Indian government has chosen, so far, at least in public, is bluster and retaliation for Canadian accusations.
Trudeau’s demand for change to Indian intelligence is pointed directly at an Indian Intelligence agency known as RAW (“Research and Analysis Wing”). To understand this is a matter of joining two dots.
On September 18, the Prime Minister rose in the House of Commons to make his startling claim that Canadian security agencies possessed “credible allegations” of a “potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.” He told Parliament that Canada had expressed its concerns to top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government and that he had raised the matter personally with the Indian Prime Minister during the G20 meetings. In his statement he said that he was looking to the Indian government to uphold the rule of law and to “reaffirm” its position on extrajudicial operations.
https://www.cpac.ca/episode?id=8c32f198-da20-44a4-9b60-90859909520c
I am going to give Justin Trudeau strong credit in the face of a difficult situation. The PM’s approach seems carefully calculated—to put public pressure on the Indian government, to create a space where allies can affirm their support for the Canadian position, to assure Canadians that the government takes foreign interference seriously and will defend Canadians’ rights, but to avoid forcing the Modi government to the wall by giving it a chance to show its rule of law/democratic credentials.
Some of this approach may have had to be adapted to prevailing circumstances. The government seems to be confronted with unending leaks of sensitive intelligence. The fact that the Globe and Mail had elements of the story and was going to publish the allegations of Indian state collusion in the killing of Nijjar no doubt determined the timing of the PM’s announcement and may have forced his hand. Trudeau would have had little option but to turn from what may have been a preferred method to pressure India--secret diplomacy, including trips by the National Security and Intelligence Adviser and the CSIS Director to discuss the matter with counterpart officials, and quiet conclaves with Five Eye intelligence partners seeking their support--and instead engage in a carefully-worded public denunciation, offered alongside a suggestion that Canada and India cooperate to establish the truth. The latter was surely advanced as a fig leaf.
Dot number two came separately on the same day. The Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly, held a press conference, backed by the Public Safety Minister, Dominic LeBlanc, to announce that Canada had “expelled a top Indian diplomat,” adding that the Canadian allegations about Indian state involvement in the killing of Nijjar, “if proven true…would be a great violation of our sovereignty and of the most basic rule of how countries deal with each other.”
In the Q and A that followed Minister’s Joly’s brief statement she confirmed that the Indian diplomat declared persona non grata was none other than the head of India’s RAW office in Canada. His name was Pavan Kumar Rai. He departed Canada four days later--on September 21.
Indian media sources soon filled out his profile. The Times of India identified Rai as originally an officer of the Indian Police Service (IPS) who served in the Punjab, in the city of Amritsar, site of some of the deadliest tensions between Sikhs and the Hindu-majority Indian government. He joined the IPS in 1997 and was subsequently seconded to RAW in 2010 and then deployed to the Indian High Commission in Ottawa as a diplomat in 2018. His prior service in the IPS in Punjab may not have been known to Canadian authorities when he was accredited in Ottawa. His official title was minister for “economic issues, coordination and community affairs,” the last designation would have provided some cover for any efforts to engage in interference operations against Canadian Sikhs.
Pavan Kumar Rai’s career path from police officer to Indian intelligence agent is not uncommon. RAW frequently seconds its agents from the IPS. In Rai’s case, his elevation in RAW and his overseas posting as a diplomat may have benefitted from the patronage of a recently retired chief of RAW, Samant Kumar Goel, also a former IPS officer. Goel’s tenure as head of RAW was, according to Indian media sources, marked by emphasis on combatting Sikh extremism in India and abroad.
RAW, it seems clear, in terms of its leadership, personnel and direction is the Indian government’s leading covert arm to deal with Sikh militancy and the Sikh separatist movement abroad.
This is not where RAW started, historically. It was originally founded in 1968 as a spy service targeted at China. It soon came to have a mission targeting India’s other key rival in the region, Pakistan, a mission that spilled over into Afghanistan. The first step on RAW’s path to influence and power was the success credited to it in supporting India’s triumphal war against Pakistan in 1971, which led to the creation of the independent state of Bangladesh.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/raw-indias-external-intelligence-agency
Little transparency and no accountability are hallmarks of RAW’s operations. Its size and budget are unknown but estimates suggest that it grew from an initial cadre of 250 officers in 1968 to an agency with 8-10,000 personnel by 2000.
By the late 1980s, given the bloodshed occasioned by the Indian military’s assault on the Sikh Golden temple in Amritsar in 1984, the revenge murder by her Sikh bodyguards of PM Indira Ghandi, and a resulting ethnic violence targeting Sikhs in the Punjab which resulted in some 8,000 deaths, RAW had turned its attention to Khalistani groups. That such operations eventually reached into Canada should come as no surprise, given the large size of the Sikh diaspora in this country and the presence of some vocal supporters of the Khalistan movement. Canada is not alone in this regard. It is clear that Germany has also witnessed extensive RAW operations, which it has made efforts to counter through diplomatic expulsions and judicial sanctions.
In the aftermath of the Nijjar killing it is reported that the FBI reached out to Sikhs in the United States who were advocates for an independent Khalistan to warn them of danger. (I am grateful to Larry Hannant for bringing this report to my attention)
While Indian intelligence operations in Canada have previously garnered little public attention, one case reached the Federal Court in an immigration proceeding in 2019, which indicated that an Indian national and editor of an Indian newspaper had been tasked by RAW (and by another Indian intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau) to act as an agent of influence with Canadian politicians and government officials. The individual in question, whose identity is protected in court records, claimed that he refused the direction.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6823170/canadian-politicians-targeted-indian-intelligence/
Still, it is a far cry from trying to run an influence operation through a proxy to engaging in a ‘wet job,’ as assassination operations are known in the intelligence world. Assuming Canadian intelligence, backed by some information from our allies, is accurate, the question becomes why RAW would engage in such a tactic, whose main exponent these days is the Putin regime, which favours WMD poisonings of Russian defectors and dissidents.
The answer to this question also provides clues to the extent that the Modi regime might be prepared to put RAW on a leash and offer some reassurance to the Canadian government that the spy service will cease such covert operations on Canadian soil.
So why would RAW engage in such covert operations in the first place? One factor is that RAW reports directly to the Prime Minister of India, unlike India’s other intelligence services. While such access gives its potential power and influence it also creates expectations of serving a Prime Ministerial agenda. Modi’s fervour against Sikh separatism and his popular Hindu nationalist agenda is well known. A desire to please the boss, put crudely, may be a propulsive force in RAW covert operations abroad.
As India’s global ambitions and power projection grew, including its desire to forge an independent foreign policy path, RAW’s global map changed with it. Distinctions that might have existed in the past between covert operations deemed legitimate in India’s near abroad (Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, even Punjab state) and those in the West become blurred.
It is impossible not to overlook the complete absence of accountability and transparency that surrounds RAW. It answers to no one other than the PM, certainly not to the Indian parliament, or the courts. It suffers little public investigation or critical academic attention. One academic course syllabus dealing with RAW posted online contains this summary statement :”To maintain peace and security all over the country, RAW is playing a great job.”
RAW even enjoys a bit of a popular culture spy mythos as a heroic agency defending India’s security. Lack of accountability breeds insularity and risk taking. Accountability grounds decision-making and helps enforce a culture of compliance and legitimacy. Ask any Western intelligence agency.
During Congressional investigations into the CIA in the 1970s, the Agency found itself accused, in the famous words of Senator Frank Church, of being a “rogue elephant” given its conduct of global covert operations to enforce regime change and its domestic interventions. India’s RAW now finds itself in a similar spot, or might if there were Indian politicians willing to criticize its behaviour.
Even without facing a political backlash in India, India’s RAW deal demands change. Trudeau was right about that and he will, I predict, have the backing of other Western states who will not countenance violent Indian covert operations on their territory, targeting their citizens.
Thank you for this helpful piece of institutional background.
It seems to me, though, that the Canadian government’s statement of last week was carefully phrased and quite sensibly nuanced: that there were “credible” “allegations” of a “potential” “link” between “agents” of the government of India, and the killing of a Canadian citizen".
Now, perhaps I am hampered by giving these words their ordinary meaning; but, as I read it, this is a far cry from the bold assertion that “India arranged the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil” - which is how the press has (predictably) portrayed it.
It merely says that there is reason to believe there was Indian involvement - without saying much about who, or how, or why.
Accordingly, until we have a sense of what the purported “agent” allegedly DID, in connection with this murder, and with whom, then perhaps it is prudent not to speculate too much. Did they counsel, procure, encourage, or support it, and if so, how?
Furthermore, those over a certain age [or who check it out on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182 ] will know that pro-Khalistan terrorists based in Canada participated in the killing hundreds of innocent people, by planting bombs on aircraft, and only one person was successfully prosecuted in Canada for it (and he is now out of jail. They are by far our most lethal recent terrorists. Way worse than ISIS.
I also remember the millions spent on a long but ultimately unsuccessful investigation and a failed criminal trial; while, enquiries by a retired Supreme Court Justice and by a distinguished Canadian were critical of the police and also of the security services?
Have those institutions markedly improved their performance? Does the RCMP, in particular, work better today than it did back then?
So, perhaps a degree of skepticism is warranted, at least for now. Especially when, ironically, it appears that dissident members of CSIS, are also doubtful about whether there is the political will to get to the bottom of things. Which is to say: whether trolling for ethnic votes, will take precedence over both security and justice?
So, should we be surprised if, perhaps, India feels the same way?
Finally, it probably should not be forgotten that friendly countries like the US and Israel (after the Munich massacre) and the UK (IRA members in Gibraltar?) have, themselves, been involved in the extrajudicial killings of purported terrorists; so perhaps the muted response from some of our allies is an attempt to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy.
I disagree with your analysis, India is a commercial/economic giant and is favoured now as a tool against China by our Allies. Canada does not have clout, nor power or money, this is why our Allies will make polite statements but nothing else against India. Pragmatic geopolitics will be the main factor in this issue. Canada stands alone.