The World Was Going Our Way (61 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
All these requests must be carried out, of course, with the utmost care and secrecy as otherwise the action could be turned against us. I would like you to inform us when the SPIDER actions have been carried out. We would also like you to observe the reactions of the Pakistani authorities to this action and to inform us accordingly. We consider it possible that the Pakistani government may make a protest to the West German embassy that anti-government material is being distributed by Tarantel press agency or that it might take some kind of action against the USA. The Pakistanis might even expel the Americans mentioned in our material. The local authorities might resort to organizing some kind of action against American institutions, such as demonstrations, disturbances, fires, explosions etc. For your personal information we are sending the texts of the SPIDER material in Russian and English in Packet no. 4. After reading them, we request you to destroy them.
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What effect, if any, operation SPIDER had on the Ayub Khan regime remains unknown. The Centre’s hope that Pakistani authorities might bomb American buildings in revenge for US involvement in the circulation of ‘anti-government material’ was, however, based on little more than wishful thinking.
While operations REBUS and SPIDER were in full swing, the Karachi residency was in turmoil as a result of the appointment at the beginning of the year of a new and incompetent resident, codenamed ANTON, a veteran of the South Asian section. ANTON was one of those intelligence officers with severe drinking problems who were deployed by the FCD from time to time in Third World countries. According to Shebarshin, who had the misfortune to serve under him, he appeared not to have read a book for years, ‘was incapable of focusing on an idea, appraising information, or formulating an assignment in a literate manner’. He was also frequently drunk and persistently foul-mouthed. Residency officers tried to avoid him. ANTON’s one redeeming feature, in Shebarshin’s view, was that he rarely interfered in their work. Eventually, after he collapsed at an embassy reception, the Soviet ambassador, M. V. Degtiar, insisted on his recall to Moscow. To the dismay of Shebarshin and his colleagues, however, ANTON continued working in the FCD. Within the often heavy-drinking culture of the Centre, alcoholism rarely led to dismissal.
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Late in 1967 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took the initiative in founding the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) under the populist slogan, ‘Islam is our faith, democracy is our polity, socialism is our economic policy; all power to the people.’ ‘To put it in one sentence’, declared one of the PPP’s founding documents, ‘the aim of the Party is the transformation of Pakistan into a socialist society.’
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During the winter of 1968-69, the PPP under Bhutto’s charismatic leadership co-ordinated a wave of popular protest which in March 1969 finally persuaded Ayub Khan to surrender power. He did so, however, not, as the 1962 constitution required, to the Speaker of the Assembly but to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Yahya Khan, who promptly abrogated the constitution and declared martial law.
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During the winter of 1968-69, the PPP under Bhutto’s charismatic leadership co-ordinated a wave of popular protest which in March 1969 finally persuaded Ayub Khan to surrender power. He did so, however, not, as the 1962 constitution required, to the Speaker of the Assembly but to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Yahya Khan, who promptly abrogated the constitution and declared martial law.
19
The Centre immediately embarked on a series of active measures designed to make Yahya Khan suspicious of both China and the United States. Operation RAVI was based on two Service A forgeries: a ‘Directive’ dated 3 June 1969 supposedly sent from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to the Chinese chargé d’affaires in India and a Chinese Foreign Ministry document outlining plans to turn Kashmir into a pro-Chinese independent state. On 28 June copies of both forgeries were sent to the Pakistani ambassadors in Delhi and Washington, doubtless in the hope that their contents would be reported to Yahya Khan.
20
Simultaneously, another active-measures operation, codenamed ZUBR, spread reports that Americans had lost faith in Yahya Khan’s ability to hold on to power and were afraid that he would be replaced by a left-wing government which would nationalize the banks and confiscate their deposits. The United States embassy was said to have reported to Washington that Yahya Khan’s regime was hopelessly corrupt and would squander any foreign aid given to it. The Karachi residency also claimed the credit for organizing a demonstration against the Vietnam War.
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Simultaneously, another active-measures operation, codenamed ZUBR, spread reports that Americans had lost faith in Yahya Khan’s ability to hold on to power and were afraid that he would be replaced by a left-wing government which would nationalize the banks and confiscate their deposits. The United States embassy was said to have reported to Washington that Yahya Khan’s regime was hopelessly corrupt and would squander any foreign aid given to it. The Karachi residency also claimed the credit for organizing a demonstration against the Vietnam War.
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After RAVI and ZUBR came operation PADMA, which was designed to persuade the Yahya Khan regime that the Chinese were inciting rebellion in East Pakistan. Service A fabricated a Chinese appeal to ‘Bengali revolutionaries’, urging them to take up arms against ‘the Punjabi landowners and the reactionary regime of Yahya Khan’. The original intention was to write the appeal in Bengali but, since no KGB officer was sufficiently fluent in the language and the operation was considered too sensitive to entrust to a Bengali agent, it was written in English. A copy was posted to the Indian ambassador in November 1969 in the knowledge that it would be opened by Pakistani intelligence before arrival and thus come to the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities. A further copy was sent to the US ambassador in the hope that he too would personally bring it to the attention of the Pakistanis. Simultaneously, KGB agents in Kabul warned Pakistani diplomats of Chinese subversion in East Pakistan. The Pakistani representative in the UN was reported to be taking similar reports seriously. A post-mortem on PADMA concluded that the operation had been a success. The supposed Chinese appeal to Bengali revolutionaries was said to have become common knowledge among foreign diplomats in Pakistan. The Centre concluded that even the Americans did not suspect that the appeal was a KGB fabrication.
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New entrants to the FCD South Asian Department were often told that, when shown a map of the divided Pakistani state after the partition of India in 1947, Stalin had commented, ‘Such a state cannot survive for long.’
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By the late 1960s the Kremlin seems to have come to the conclusion that the separation of Pakistan’s western and eastern wings would be in Soviet, as well as Indian, interests.
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The KGB therefore set out to cultivate the leader of the autonomist Awami League, Sheik Mujibur Rahman (‘Mujib’). Though Mujib was unaware of the cultivation, the KGB claimed that it succeeded in persuading him that the United States had been responsible for his arrest in January 1968, when he had been charged with leading the so-called ‘Agartala conspiracy’, hatched during meetings with Indian officials at the border town of Agartala to bring about the secession of East Pakistan with Indian help. Through an intermediary, Mujib was told in September 1969 that the names of all the conspirators had been personally passed to Ayub by the US ambassador. According to a KGB report, Mujib was completely taken in by the disinformation and concluded that there must have been a leak to the Americans from someone in his entourage.
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23
By the late 1960s the Kremlin seems to have come to the conclusion that the separation of Pakistan’s western and eastern wings would be in Soviet, as well as Indian, interests.
24
The KGB therefore set out to cultivate the leader of the autonomist Awami League, Sheik Mujibur Rahman (‘Mujib’). Though Mujib was unaware of the cultivation, the KGB claimed that it succeeded in persuading him that the United States had been responsible for his arrest in January 1968, when he had been charged with leading the so-called ‘Agartala conspiracy’, hatched during meetings with Indian officials at the border town of Agartala to bring about the secession of East Pakistan with Indian help. Through an intermediary, Mujib was told in September 1969 that the names of all the conspirators had been personally passed to Ayub by the US ambassador. According to a KGB report, Mujib was completely taken in by the disinformation and concluded that there must have been a leak to the Americans from someone in his entourage.
25
Late in 1969 Yahya Khan announced that, though martial law remained in force, party politics would be allowed to resume on 1 January 1970 in preparation for elections at the end of the year. The Centre’s main strategy during the election campaign was to ensure the victory of Bhutto’s PPP in the West and Mujib’s Awami League in the East.
26
In June 1970 V. I. Startsev, head of the FCD South Asian Department, jointly devised with N. A. Kosov, the head of Service A, an elaborate active-measures campaign designed to discredit all the main opponents of the PPP and Awami League. The President of the Qaiyum Muslim League, Abdul Qaiyum Khan, who had been Chief Minister from 1947 to 1953, was to be discredited by speeches he had allegedly made before 1947 opposing the creation of an independent Pakistan. The founder and leader of the religious party, Jamaat-i-Islami, Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maudidi, was to be exposed as a ‘reactionary and CIA agent’. The head of the Council Muslim League, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, was to be unmasked as a veteran British agent (presumably because of his past residence in London) and accomplice in political murders. The leader of the Convention Muslim League, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, was also to be implicated in past political murders as well as in plans to murder Bhutto. (Ironically, in 1973 he became President of Pakistan with Bhutto’s backing.) The President of the Pakistan Democratic Party, Nurul Amin, in order to discredit him in West Pakistan, was to be unmasked as a leading figure in the ‘Agartala conspiracy’.
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In June 1970 V. I. Startsev, head of the FCD South Asian Department, jointly devised with N. A. Kosov, the head of Service A, an elaborate active-measures campaign designed to discredit all the main opponents of the PPP and Awami League. The President of the Qaiyum Muslim League, Abdul Qaiyum Khan, who had been Chief Minister from 1947 to 1953, was to be discredited by speeches he had allegedly made before 1947 opposing the creation of an independent Pakistan. The founder and leader of the religious party, Jamaat-i-Islami, Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maudidi, was to be exposed as a ‘reactionary and CIA agent’. The head of the Council Muslim League, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, was to be unmasked as a veteran British agent (presumably because of his past residence in London) and accomplice in political murders. The leader of the Convention Muslim League, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, was also to be implicated in past political murders as well as in plans to murder Bhutto. (Ironically, in 1973 he became President of Pakistan with Bhutto’s backing.) The President of the Pakistan Democratic Party, Nurul Amin, in order to discredit him in West Pakistan, was to be unmasked as a leading figure in the ‘Agartala conspiracy’.
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Though the elections of December 1970 produced the result for which the KGB had covertly campaigned, there is no evidence that active measures had any significant impact on the outcome. It would, however, have been out of character if the Centre had failed to claim substantial credit when reporting on the election to the Politburo. The PPP won 81 of the 138 seats allocated to West Pakistan; the runner-up in the West, the Qaiyum Muslim League, won only nine seats. In the East, the Awami League won an even more sweeping victory with 160 of the 162 seats. Though Mujib had failed to contest a single seat in West Pakistan, he thus won an overall majority in the National Assembly and was entitled to become Prime Minister. Bhutto colluded with Ayub and the army in refusing to allow Mujib to take power. On 25 March 1971 Yahya Khan ordered Mujib’s arrest and began savage military repression in East Pakistan. The Centre reported to the Central Committee that the end of Pakistani unity was imminent.
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While Bhutto naively - or cynically - declared, ‘Pakistan has been saved’, Bengal was overwhelmed by a bloodbath which compared in its savagery with the intercommunal butchery which had followed Indian independence in 1947. India provided a safe haven for Bengali troops resisting the Pakistani army. In November the civil war between East and West Pakistan turned into an Indo-Pakistani war. On 16 December Dhaka fell to Indian troops and East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh.
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While Bhutto naively - or cynically - declared, ‘Pakistan has been saved’, Bengal was overwhelmed by a bloodbath which compared in its savagery with the intercommunal butchery which had followed Indian independence in 1947. India provided a safe haven for Bengali troops resisting the Pakistani army. In November the civil war between East and West Pakistan turned into an Indo-Pakistani war. On 16 December Dhaka fell to Indian troops and East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh.
The political transformation of the Indian subcontinent caused by the divorce between East and West Pakistan suited Moscow’s interests. The Indo-Soviet special relationship had been enhanced and Indira Gandhi’s personal prestige raised to an all-time high. Pakistan had been dramatically weakened by the independence of Bangladesh. Moscow’s preferred candidates (given the impossibility of Communist regimes) took power in both Islamabad and Dhaka. After defeat by India, Yahya Khan resigned and handed over the presidency to Bhutto. On 10 January 1972, Mujib returned from captivity in West Pakistan to a hero’s welcome in Dhaka.
Despite the fact that Bhutto nationalized over thirty large firms in ten basic industries in January 1972 and visited Moscow in March, the Kremlin had far more reservations about him (initially as President, then, after the 1973 elections, as Prime Minister) than about Mujib. The most constant element in Bhutto’s erratic foreign policy was friendship with China, which he visited almost as soon as he succeeded Yahya Khan. At his request, China vetoed Bangladesh’s admission to the United Nations until it had repatriated all Pakistani personnel captured after the war (some of whom it was considering putting on trial for war crimes). China also helped to set up Pakistan’s first heavy-engineering plants as well as supplying arms.
Somewhat incongruously in view of his largely Western lifestyle, Bhutto took to imitating Mao Zedong’s clothes and cap. In 1976 he even had a book of his own sayings published in the various languages spoken in Pakistan, much in the manner of Mao’s
Little Red Book
.
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Mildly absurd though Bhutto’s neo-Maoist affectations were, Moscow was not amused. As one of Bhutto’s advisers, Rafi Raza, later acknowledged: ‘The lack of importance attached by the Soviet Union to ZAB[hutto] was evidenced by the fact that no significant Soviet dignitary visited Pakistan during his five and a half years in government, despite his own two visits [to Moscow] . . .’
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Little Red Book
.
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Mildly absurd though Bhutto’s neo-Maoist affectations were, Moscow was not amused. As one of Bhutto’s advisers, Rafi Raza, later acknowledged: ‘The lack of importance attached by the Soviet Union to ZAB[hutto] was evidenced by the fact that no significant Soviet dignitary visited Pakistan during his five and a half years in government, despite his own two visits [to Moscow] . . .’
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So far as Moscow was concerned, Mujib’s relations with China, in contrast to Bhutto’s, were reassuringly poor. Bangladesh and China did not establish diplomatic relations until after Mujib’s death. As in India and Pakistan, the KGB was able to exploit the corruption of newly independent Bangladesh. For politicians, bureaucrats and the military there were numerous opportunities to cream off a percentage of the foreign aid which flooded into the country.
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Mujib once asked despairingly: ‘Who takes bribes? Who indulges in smuggling? Who becomes a foreign agent? Who transfers money abroad? Who resorts to hoarding? It’s being done by us - the five per cent of the people who are educated. We are the bribe takers, the corrupt elements . . .’
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Mujib once asked despairingly: ‘Who takes bribes? Who indulges in smuggling? Who becomes a foreign agent? Who transfers money abroad? Who resorts to hoarding? It’s being done by us - the five per cent of the people who are educated. We are the bribe takers, the corrupt elements . . .’
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Though overwhelmingly the most popular person in Bangladesh, Mujib was in some ways curiously isolated. Irritated by the personality conflicts within the Awami League, he increasingly saw himself as the sole personification of Bangladesh - the
Bangabandbu
. He was, it has been rightly observed, ‘a fine
Bangabandbu
but a poor prime minister’.
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The Dhaka residency acknowledged in its annual report for 1972, after Bangladesh’s first year of independence, that it had failed to recruit any agent close to Mujib.
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Among its successes during that year, however, was the recruitment of three agents in the Directorate of National Security (codenamed KOMBINA T).
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The KGB also succeeded in gaining control of one daily newspaper (to which it paid the equivalent of 300,000 convertible rubles to purchase new printing presses) and one weekly.
36
On 2 February 1973 the Politburo instructed the KGB to use active measures to influence the outcome of Bangladesh’s forthcoming first parliamentary elections.
37
The KGB helped to fund the election campaigns of Mujib’s Awami League as well as its allies, the Communist Party and the left-wing National Awami Party. Probably with little justification, it claimed part of the credit for the predictable landslide victory of the Awami League.
38
Bangabandbu
. He was, it has been rightly observed, ‘a fine
Bangabandbu
but a poor prime minister’.
33
The Dhaka residency acknowledged in its annual report for 1972, after Bangladesh’s first year of independence, that it had failed to recruit any agent close to Mujib.
34
Among its successes during that year, however, was the recruitment of three agents in the Directorate of National Security (codenamed KOMBINA T).
35
The KGB also succeeded in gaining control of one daily newspaper (to which it paid the equivalent of 300,000 convertible rubles to purchase new printing presses) and one weekly.
36
On 2 February 1973 the Politburo instructed the KGB to use active measures to influence the outcome of Bangladesh’s forthcoming first parliamentary elections.
37
The KGB helped to fund the election campaigns of Mujib’s Awami League as well as its allies, the Communist Party and the left-wing National Awami Party. Probably with little justification, it claimed part of the credit for the predictable landslide victory of the Awami League.
38
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