India: Modi makes intrepid spy his new security chief

Officials say the move indicates that the new prime minister will take a more muscular approach towards Pakistan.

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Sanjeev Miglani

NEW DELHI // India’s new prime minister Narendra Modi has chosen a daring former spy with years of experience in dealing with Pakistan as his national security adviser.

Officials say the move signals a more muscular approach to New Delhi’s traditional enemy.

The choice of Ajit Doval, alongside former Indian army chief General VK Singh as a federal minister for the north-east region, underscores plans to revamp national security that Mr Modi says became weak under the outgoing government.

The two top-level appointments, reporting directly to Mr Modi, point to a desire to address what are arguably India’s two most pressing external security concerns: Pakistan and China.

Mr Doval, a highly decorated officer renowned for his role in dangerous counterinsurgency missions, has long advocated tough action against militant groups, although operations he has been involved in suggest a level of pragmatism.

In the 1980s, he smuggled himself into the Golden Temple in Amritsar from where Sikh militants were later flushed out. He also infiltrated a powerful guerrilla group fighting for independence from India in the north-eastern state of Mizoram. The group ultimately signed a peace accord.

Mr Doval was also on the ground in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu was hijacked by Pakistan-based militants on Christmas Eve, 1999. The crisis was resolved when top militants were freed in exchange for hostages.

“Doval is an out-of-the-box thinker,” said an Intelligence Bureau officer with several years of service in Kashmir and other hot spots. “Expect him to shake things up.”

The official said he expected the new security team to push for a rapid expansion of border infrastructure and a streamlining of intelligence services, which still function in isolation and often impede one other.

Gen Singh has declared his priority is to develop the north-east to narrow the gap with Chinese investment in roads and railways on its side of the frontier.

India is also creating a new mountain corps and beefing up border defences, although that initiative has stalled.

A secure India is a long-standing goal of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and he wants strong borders so the country can focus fully on giving economic growth a much-needed boost.

He won the election in May in a landslide victory largely on economic pledges that Indians hope will secure jobs and raise living standards.

But with most foreign troops withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of this year, India is concerned that Islamist militants fighting there will turn their sights towards the disputed region of Kashmir, which is also claimed by Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two of three wars since independence over the territory, and their armed forces are separated there by a rugged, mountainous Line of Control which militants have the capability to cross.

Mr Doval, 69, formerly head of the Intelligence Bureau domestic spy agency, will be National Security Adviser, only the second officer from the intelligence community to hold the post.

By contrast, predecessor Shiv Shankar Menon is a member of the elite Indian Foreign Service - an expert on China and nuclear security known for his formidable intellect.

Mr Doval did not say what his priorities would be after his job was announced on Friday, but as head of a right-wing think tank in New Delhi, he said the new government must lay down core security policies, one of which was “zero tolerance” for acts of violence.

He was referring to operations by militants who India says cross from Pakistan, like the gunmen who killed 166 people in Mumbai in 2008 in a brazen assault that brought tentative peace talks between the South Asian rivals to a juddering halt.

Gen Singh, may inject urgency into India’s plan to establish a corps of 80,000 troops along its border with China in the north-east.

A massive programme to build roads and upgrade airfields in the remote area was also cleared by the ousted Congress party, but has lagged.

Gen Singh, who won a parliamentary seat for the BJP in the election, is expected to accelerate the process through the defence bureaucracy, helped by a direct reporting line to the all-powerful prime minister.

* Reuters