Former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency, Amarjit Singh Dulat, has said that there is a trust deficit between New Delhi and Kashmiris.
In an exclusive interview with Rediff.com, te former R&AW chief, A.S Dulat said, “Following the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, There is a trust deficit between Delhi and Srinagar. It is there even today.”
A.S Dulat also noted that the present government claims funding from across the border has been stopped. “It has never stopped. It may go up and it may go down, but it will never stop.”
Kashmir politics has always been volatile. In 1991, when I returned to the Valley (after P V Narasimha Rao became prime minister), one of our major successes was that we managed to find Shabir Shah. “He had been underground for almost a year. He did not want to be arrested. The general view was that he was in Pakistan. Pakistan had also been looking desperately for him as they wanted to get him actively involved in militancy. He was not directly involved in militancy, but he was an inspiration to these boys (Jamaatis). But we believed he was in India and we did manage to find him,” Dulat said.
He also claimed that Delhi does not trust Kashmiris and the Kashmiris in turn do not trust Delhi.
Speaking on the Kargil War in 1999, he said that he was in the IB when the DG sent a report on this to the home minister and the defence minister. All the important people were informed by the DG himself. “There is something called actionable intelligence, but that often gets entangled with domestic and foreign policy especially when it comes out of Pakistan.”
As somebody has said ‘Don’t ring a bell unless you can ensure the bell is heard.’