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Unlike what the title suggest there is nothing sort of "secrets of RAW" which was revealed in this book except "secret" culture of the RAW. While reading this book, many a time I felt that author has lost his focus. Ofcourse he rightly pointed out lack of leadership, esprit de corps and accountability in the organization, but somehow I also feel that the author himself lacks knowledge of the organization, for example.. when making a point that RAW is overstaffed with a lot of joint secretaries. What(I feel) he didn't say that each of them is head of a desk dealing with a geographical region or a critical issues like weapons technology proliferation and counter terrorism.I feel that Intelligence collected through various sources as a raw data by men at lower hierarchy have to be processed by senior officers and not all information collected can be processed by machines.Also that intelligence have to be passed in proper and digestable form to a lot of end users in timely manner. Even CIA has less that 10% of people in operations and rest are analysts.
The author also seem to have a rather jaundiced view on RAW on its failures. Anyone who understands the organisation and understand the fact that for every gaffe/ failure there are many successes which doesn't make it to media. At one place he speaks about failures of RAW and he says, "the Kargil intrusion is a case in point". where as the fact of the matter is that as early as June,1998, even before Musharraf had taken over as the COAS, Shri Shyamal Dutta, the then Director of the Intelligence Bureau, had sent a detailed wake-up call to the Prime Minister, the Army headquarters and others, warning of the training of large numbers of Pakistani irregulars across the Kargil sector. He also reported that increased Pakistani military activity had been noticed along the LOC in the Kargil sector. In July,1998, the IB further reported new mine-laying and other ominous activities by the Pakistan Army. The RAW reported the induction of new Pakistani units into the area. It also warned that the Pakistani troops were being given special training. Singh, in a way, seemed to nurse the traditional grudge of the Armed Forces towards the RAW.
hope the author clarifies it.....
Rating:  [2 of 5 Stars!] |
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