Eyeing Pakistan and China, Modi bolsters security team

Tuesday, 3 June 2014 00:46 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

REUTERS: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen a daring former spy with years of experience in dealing with Pakistan as his National Security Adviser, a move officials say signals a more muscular approach to New Delhi’s traditional enemy. The choice of Ajit Doval, alongside former army chief General V.K. Singh as a federal minister for the northeast region, underscores plans to revamp national security that Modi says became weak under the outgoing government. The two top-level appointments, reporting directly to Modi, point to a desire to address what are arguably India’s two most pressing external security concerns – Pakistan and China, both of which, like India, have nuclear arms. Doval, a highly decorated officer renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency 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 the city of Amritsar from where Sikh militants were later flushed out, and he infiltrated a powerful guerrilla group fighting for independence from India in the north eastern state of Mizoram. The group ultimately signed a peace accord. 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 long years of service in Kashmir and other Indian hotspots. “Expect him to shake things up.”

The official, who did not want to be named, 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. Singh has declared his priority is to develop the northeast in order 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 Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the new prime minister himself 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 India’s 1.2 billion people hope will secure jobs and raise living standards.