India’s U-2 scandal and more Nothing exposed the folly of Pakistan aligning itself with the west early in the Cold War and signing strategic treaties like the Baghdad Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation agreement as badly as the shooting down in 1960 of a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union. The plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, had taken off from a base in Peshawar on a CIA mission. The incident deeply embarrassed the west, severely compromised Pakistan’s security, and dented its image, besides souring its relations with the United States. The Pakistan army claimed it “felt deceived” because the US had kept it in the dark about the clandestine operation. The Peshawar base was soon closed down. Many in the Indian establishment smugly contrasted Pakistan with non-aligned India: with its independence from the west, India would never collaborate with the US in clandestine espionage missions. But a Washington-based NGO has now disclosed, on the basis of recently declassified official files, that India did just that. Soon after the China War of 1962, India allowed the CIA to launch secret U-2 spy missions against China from an airbase in Odisha (Orissa). At least four U-2 flights took off from Odisha between 1964 and 1967. These were approved by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, an apostle of non-alignment. The backdrop to the U-2 missions was November 1962, when India faced a rout in the China War, and Nehru made a desperate request for military assistance from the US. In response, Washington asked for, and received, permission to use Indian airspace for U-2 missions flown out of a US base in Thailand, which provided information on Chinese troop movements along the border. But the Americans wanted an airbase in India. This was created out of an abandoned World War II airstrip in Odisha. Besides spying on China, this would be used for surveillance of a Soviet anti-ballistic missile testing-site. This raises uncomfortable questions. How could Nehru, with his strong moral convictions and commitment to non-alignment – much celebrated at the 1958 Bandung conference – agree to U-2 overflights, and worse, to a strategic airbase for the US? Why did Nehru write to President Kennedy on November 19, begging for military help? Nehru wrote: “We have to have more comprehensive assistance if the Chinese are to be prevented from taking over the whole of eastern India. Any delay in this … will result in nothing short of a catastrophe ….” The assistance would include at least “12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters” and “modern radar cover”. Nehru wanted US help for “the survival of freedom and independence in this sub-continent and rest of Asia”. This reveals the Indian leadership’s trauma and humiliation at the military debacle then under way. The Indian Army was hopelessly unprepared for the Chinese attack, beginning October 20, regarded by many chroniclers (including Neville Maxwell, whose India’s China War is still the conflict’s richest account) as a “punitive expedition” against India’s refusal to negotiate its borders with Beijing. It soon became clear that India’s ill-clad, ill-shod and poorly-armed soldiers wouldn’t hold out for long. They put up some resistance in Ladakh and at Walong in the northeast. But India’s great hope, the 12,000-strong 4th Division, disintegrated. Defeat stared India in the face. By November 19, both defence minister VK Krishna Menon and army chief PN Thapar had been sacked. Panic at the thought of China overrunning the Northeast, combined with extraordinarily poor intelligence, provoked Nehru to write two letters to Kennedy within a few hours that day. In the second, Nehru wrote: “Bomdila [Northeast command headquarters] has fallen …. [U]nless something is done immediately to stem the tide the whole of Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland would also pass into Chinese hands… Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh are also threatened. We have also noticed increasing air activity by the Chinese air force …” In reality, the Chinese air force had been immobilised by a severe lack of Soviet spares – thanks to rising Sino-Soviet tensions. But the IB and Nehru didn’t know this. The letters, some commentators contend, prove that Nehru was no principled believer in non-alignment, opposition to the Cold War, or support for decolonisation and peace. Rather, he was “realist” who placed “the national interest” over “third-worldism”, and wanted a strategic alliance with the US, of the kind that Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh later pursued. This is a distortion of Nehru’s thinking. But the letters do show Nehru at his weakest – and panicky – worst. They represent a temporary aberration or deviation from non-alignment, which was long reflected in India’s condemnation of the British-Israeli invasion of the Suez Canal, the Korean War, and US hegemonism. Nehru refused to kowtow to the west. But he didn’t hesitate to condemn the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary either. An aberration is different from wholesale abandonment of non-alignment – and a formal, comprehensive or treaty-based embrace of the West. Yet, admittedly, the China War left Nehru broken and disoriented. He was badly let down by Intelligence Bureau (IB) director BN Mullik, a “practised sycophant” who underplayed Chinese preparations even in mid-October 1962. However, none of Nehru’s mistakes and misjudgements compares in magnitude or consequence with some other Indian policymakers’ blunders both before and after 1962. In 1956, the CIA launched “Operation ST Circus” to foment a Tibetan rebellion against China. It trained 300 Khampa tribesmen in armed warfare and sabotage in Colorado and airdropped arms for the Tibetan resistance, briefly crossing Indian territory. Briefed by the CIA, the IB became complicit in this crossing– without, by all accounts, approval from the political leadership. Worse, after the China War, it actively collaborated with the CIA to set up the Special Frontier Force, a paramilitary commando unit with 5,000 Tibetans, which could be parachuted on to the Tibetan plateau to fight the Chinese. The CIA suddenly abandoned the operation in 1969 after sacrificing thousands of Tibetans – a terrible human tragedy. Learning no lessons, Indian agencies continued with the SFF. An even more dangerous CIA-IB operation was jointly launched in 1965 to place espionage equipment powered by a plutonium power pack on top of the Nanda Devi peak to monitor Chinese nuclear activities. A monstrous avalanche prevented the mountaineers’ team from securing the equipment in the planned location. They abandoned it. The equipment, including the power pack, has remained untraceable despite repeated searches, raising fears of radioactive contamination of the Himalayan glaciers, and eventually, the Ganga. The scandal became public in 1978 with an American media story. The Indian government instituted an inquiry, which surmised that there was little danger of contamination. But the truth of what happened to the plutonium pack still remains shrouded under snow. None of this deterred the CIA and Indian agencies from trying to place yet more sensors on Nanda Kot, near Leh, and in Arunachal Pradesh. The collaboration continued into the 1970s. Such deviations from non-alignment have since magnified to the point of India entering into a ‘strategic partnership’ with the US. Yet, the anti-hegemonic thrust of an independent non-aligned policy remains relevant even today. As do the tasks of correcting global inequalities and reforming the world order by promoting multipolarity and giving underprivileged people a greater voice.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 03:13:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015