Operation ‘Fox-Hunt’ Read Free Page B

received from the US were deployed against India in Jammu & Kashmir. Besides the Kashmir insurgency, the ISI has used militant groups as its proxies in attacking targets on the Indian ‘mainland’. Some of its significant coups have been the hijacking of IC 814 from Nepal in 1999, the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, the attack on Indian Parliament and the Mumbai attacks over the last two decades. Thus ISI became the sword arm of the Pakistani establishment in its aim to destabilise India and defeat it with ‘Death of Thousand Cuts’.
    It was natural that this spy agency would be a military organisation answerable to the Pakistani Army. The Director General, the chief of ISI (DG ISI), is always a serving Lieutenant General of the army and is considered to be the most powerful man after the Army Chief in the de facto hierarchy of the country. Since 1971 all DG ISIs have been Lieutenant Generals. The DG ISI has three deputy directors reporting to him. Each of the deputy directors heads one wing: the Internal wing dealing with counter-intelligence and political issues inside Pakistan; the External wing which handles external threats and operations; and the Analysis and Foreign Relations wing. Major General Akhtar Abbas headed the Joint Intelligence Bureau which is responsible for political intelligence and had a wing dedicated to India operations.
    As the meeting wound down, and the military and civil servants attending the secret briefing walked out, Abbas gestured to Brigadier Mehroon Hasan to stay back.
    “The DG came back from GHQ yesterday,” he drawled as he took a sip of water from the glass on the table, “It’s time to activate Operation
Shamshir
.”
    The Brigadier grunted.
About time
, he thought. “Have we got the political approval for the operation?” he asked aloud.
    “That was not discussed in my meeting with the DG. My guess is Rawalpindi is handling the liaison with the politicos. I want you to prepare a briefing for the COAS for Wednesday.”
    As the head of Joint Intelligence (North), Brigadier Hasan had access to all groups operating in Kashmir (whether they took orders from ISI or not) while Abbas headed the India-centric department in the Joint Intelligence Bureau. It was because of their overlapping areas of responsibility that both men worked together. Though Abbas was the senior officer, the operational command was with Hasan. It helped that both belonged to thesame parental unit−8th Battalion, Baloch regiment. In fact, Abbas had been Hasan’s Commanding Officer way back in the early 1980s.
    Like its British predecessor, the Pakistani Army infantry regiments were divided on regimental basis. Each of the regiments represented a martial race of the subcontinent. The fraternal feelings and espirit de corps imbibed in the ‘regimental’ atmosphere was responsible for the secret ‘old boys’ clubs’ existing across commonwealth nations.
    In the tense days after the Abbottabad incident, the army had realised that in case of another humiliation, they needed to have a plan to divert the attention of the media and the Pakistani people towards another threat, a threat the Pakistani Army could protect against India. The ISI and the army had set-up a joint team to plan the operation which would invite strong and belligerent response from India. Under the command of Brigadier Mehroon Hasan, a special team had worked on and come out with Operation Shamshir. The name of the operation was a random phrase chosen by the computer in the ISI HQ.
    Last week, after a US drone attack had mistakenly killed 27 troops, and a bomb attack by Pakistani Taliban had claimed 93 lives during a Shia funeral procession, the media was baying for blood and needed to be distracted. It was also the year when the new Army Chief of Pakistan was to be anointed. Understanding the gravity of the situation in which an army on the defensive could be further put on back foot by scheming politicians foisting upon it a