The Great Game in Afghanistan: Rajiv Gandhi, General Zia and the Unending War 9789352644391, 9789352644407

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To the memory of my grandparents

Contents

Foreword by Ronen Sen Introduction: An Undiplomatic Question 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

‘Who killed Zia?’ John Gunther Dean Rajiv’s Western Affinities Annapurna in Moscow The Playground Opens Up August 1988 Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Book About the Author Copyright

Foreword

know him in school or college. My first meetings with Rajiv Gandhi were in the former Soviet Union – in 1982 when he had accompanied Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on an official visit, and in 1983 when the red carpet was rolled out for him by the Soviet leadership during his visit to that country as general secretary of the Congress party. I was assigned to visit Moscow prior to his first visit as prime minister to the former Soviet Union in 1985. I served as his foreign and defence policy adviser from 1986 till he relinquished office in 1989, but remained in close touch with him thereafter till his shocking assassination in 1991. As part of my official responsibilities, I accompanied him on all his visits abroad, except one to Nepal in 1987 when I was indisposed. And I participated in all his meetings with foreign leaders, including the one-onone meetings. There were few exceptions when some meetings were genuinely one-on-one, but in all these cases he gave me an immediate feedback on the main points discussed. I did undertake a number of assignments as his special or personal envoy for meetings with heads of state or government of some neighbouring and other countries. These were all under the radar and, except on one occasion, no one got to know of these visits. Not even my family knew that I had left the country since I had on a couple of occasions travelled even without my passport. These assignments were critical but were not always a Lone-Ranger type of operation. The need-to-know approach was balanced with close NO, I DID NOT

consultations and collaboration with our external affairs and defence ministries, our intelligence services and other departments. In the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), we worked as a loosely knit, non-hierarchical and yet cohesive and harmonious team. My predecessor Chinmaya Gharekhan, Montek Ahluwalia, late Gopi Arora, late R. Vasudevan, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Suman Dubey – all played their roles. It is a cliche but it’s worth repeating that foreign policy can’t be framed or implemented in a silo. It can’t obviously be separated from strategic, defence and national security policies and also from socio-political stability. But it also has to be integrated with evolving regional and global trade and economic trends, scientific and technological advances and so on. There is rightly an increasing focus on economic diplomacy in recent years. But this was apparent to Rajiv Gandhi from the mid-1980s. He happened to be the first Indian prime minister to meet an Indian private sector business delegation abroad – it was at the Kremlin over three decades ago. This caused some consternation among the old guard of his party, just as much as his focus on computers and IT, biotechnology, nanotechnology, telecom, application of remote sensing and space technologies in distance education, telemedicine, disaster management was mistakenly perceived by many, including within his own party, as losing touch with grass-roots needs and aspirations. He was proud of our heritage but he was not a prisoner of the past in terms of ideology or outlook. In many ways he was ahead of his time. He had a vision and was in a hurry to implement it. He did not wait for a national consensus to emerge, but tried to shape that consensus and, if required in terms of national interests, went ahead despite the lack of consensus even within his own party. There were some unfortunate domestic distractions which delayed the implementation of some goals, as for example the road map of establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. We all worked hard, but none worked harder than he did and the accomplishments were many. Though there were underlying economic strains, the Rajiv Gandhi years witnessed the fastest growth in independent India’s exports.

In the cold war period, his bilateral tracks with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were two of the most important continuum of Indian foreign and strategic affairs that he inherited and carried into the future. However, his single biggest foreign policy achievement was undoubtedly his path-breaking visit to China in 1988. To say that we had anticipated all developments would not be true. But Rajiv Gandhi knew that rapid changes were taking place. He had sensed the emergence of centrifugal trends in the Soviet Union, following Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost, and had even written a personal letter to Gorbachev about decentralizsation in our federal polity. He kept in touch with both Gorbachev and Reagan on issues ranging from strategic arms control to the post-Soviet withdrawal scenarios in Afghanistan. While spending considerable time and political capital in his Action Plan for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World, he had simultaneously given the green signal for developing nuclear warheads for different delivery systems, in the light of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in our immediate neighbourhood. He strengthened our defence collaboration with the Soviet Union, including the nuclear submarine project initiated by Indira Gandhi, and signed the Kudankulam nuclear power station agreement with Gorbachev, both units of which have recently been commissioned. At the same time, Rajiv Gandhi initiated defence cooperation with the USA. The visits to India in quick succession by US defence secretaries Casper Weinberger and Frank Carlucci in the 1980s were the first such visits to India. Our fledgling Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project was supplied with General Electric (GE) jet engines and India became the first non-military ally of the US to be supplied with an American supercomputer. He had also strengthened India’s maritime role as an independent net provider of security in the Indian Ocean with his actions in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles while strengthening ties with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan and other countries. His leadership role in the anti-apartheid movement was widely acknowledged as was his initiative in setting up the G-15 group in the NonAligned Movement (NAM), though his preference was for a somewhat

smaller but more representative group including China and Brazil, which was not doable at that time. Certainly, Rajiv Gandhi had the ability to establish personal equations with foreign leaders. He got on very well with Reagan, Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders of major countries, but he equally valued his personal relationships with the kings of Bhutan and Jordan, for example, and leaders of other neighbouring and developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He took an interest in choosing personalized gifts and keeping track of birthdays and special anniversaries. With Reagan? Yes, despite the age difference, there was a clear personal chemistry. This was evident in the body language during their one-on-one meeting. Part of the reason was the open and spontaneous gestures of both leaders. For instance, when late one night in January 1986, Rajiv learnt of the tragic explosion of the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger, he spontaneously spoke on the phone to Reagan, rather than waiting till morning and sending a condolence message through usual diplomatic channels. Personal equations do not always play a decisive role in the formulation of policies which are based on the extent of congruence of national interests as perceived at any particular time. But they do often help in shaping perceptions on which policies are based. In this context, foreign ambassadors like John Gunther Dean played an important role in understanding the needs of a changing Indian society, economy and strategic environment, and sensitizing his government about the mutual benefit of closer Indo-US relations. Ambassador Dean deserves credit for aiding India–US ties achieve fuller potential because he sympathized with India’s aspirations and desired amicable settlement of differences. He was one of the very few foreign ambassadors to have been given direct access to Rajiv Gandhi. I also had the privilege of interacting closely with him while working as an aide to the prime minister. John was the US ambassador in India and I knew over the course of our several meetings that he always had the best interests of the United States in mind while dealing with his counterparts. We were separated by almost two decades but got along well. John Gunther Dean was a professional and a true American patriot. I am glad that he has faithfully chronicled the

exchanges between the two countries during an important transitional phase in Indo-US relations. I know that, whatever the outcome may have been, we had reached out to all stakeholders in good faith at that time to have durable peace and development in our region. I hope that this chapter in our history will be probed further by other researchers as well. New York City 2016

Ronen Sen

Introduction: An Undiplomatic Question

1988, President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan died in an air crash. Was the crash an accident? John Gunther Dean, then the US ambassador to India, did not think so. He raised the question: ‘Who killed Zia?’1 The question was something that the US government did not want aired at that time. Dean, an outstanding diplomat, was silenced. He was declared mentally deranged and recalled to the United States2. But the story of John Gunther Dean did not end with his dramatic departure from Delhi. Dean could have acted like a sad victim after 1988. Instead, in 2016 at the age of ninety, he celebrated his life as if he had been a winner all along. Dean remains deeply hurt over the controversies of 1988. But he has no regrets because the prophecies that he made in 1988 came true and shaped the world, proving that Dean’s apprehensions about South Asia and the world were right. For over a quarter-century, John Gunther Dean has been synonymous with conspiracy theories. A long trail of articles and essays emerged after he questioned the circumstances surrounding the violent death of President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan in an air crash. Dean’s question – ‘Who killed Zia?’ – was the reason for many a doomsday theory. It was impossible to answer, not just for himself, but even for those who probed it. ON 17 AUGUST

A large part of those closest to Zia died in the air crash with him. As a result, the story of Zia remains incomplete. But Dean’s question raised the possibility of taking the story forward but at an inconvenient time.3 In an extremely rare move, the US State Department withdrew Dean’s ‘mental health clearance’ and subjected him to a series of bizarre psychiatric tests between September and October 1988. As a result, Dean has come to be remembered only for asking that question. Indeed, the withdrawal of health clearance and the slur of psychiatric instability on John Gunther Dean appear like a conspiracy as it muffled the larger diplomatic meltdown around the time Zia’s aircraft crashed. The phony diagnosis of a personality change, being declared ‘mentally deranged’, however, did not stop John Gunther Dean from becoming a successful international consultant for multinational projects in the 1990s, and a great friend to many, including this writer. What was shocking was that the punishment came from the government, which he had served for forty-two years. The tense relations between Dean and his employers in 1988 are sufficient to conclude that the allegation of mental ailment was perhaps the only way to stop Dean from raising some embarrassing questions. Despite those bitter memories, Dean has maintained his curious mind and his personal chutzpah. Dean was not interested in a forensic investigation. He wanted to place before the world the larger drama,4 and the diplomatic failure, behind the meltdown of August 1988. Dean indeed had known what diplomatic and political conditions led to the violent death of Zia and triggered the age of terror. But the world, more importantly the US leadership, were not willing to listen. Dean blamed Israel for the crash. But the final act of pulling the trigger, whether by a divine act or through human machinations, was not the most important issue. What was important for him was the number of events of 1988 that could have been avoided if a better plan was followed regarding Afghanistan’s future and Pakistan’s nuclear ambition – especially since a better plan indeed existed but was not tried out sincerely. In the pages that follow, I have tried to explain the flow of events largely based on the John Gunther Dean collection of papers, which is now with the

Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta. Dean collected the papers to vindicate his position over a period of more than four decades of his diplomatic career. He did not have a long-term plan to assist in writing a book with his collection. In fact, collecting the papers was a mere private pursuit for the ambassador who became controversial during the concluding period of his career. Dean had distinguished himself as ambassador before the India window opened up. He was the US ambassador to Cambodia (1974–75), Denmark (1975–78), Lebanon (1978–81) and Thailand (1981–84).5Out of the four ambassadorial assignments, two were exceptionally tough, given the unfolding civil wars in Cambodia and Lebanon. The third assignment was in Thailand, the centre of a serious narcotic trade with cross-border ramifications. Apart from having the unique distinction of having served as ambassador in four locations one after the other, Dean had served abroad with a break of one year (1969–70) since 1965. During 1969–70 Dean served as a fellow of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs and participated in the anti-Vietnam war protests. But his two big appointments were in civil war conditions. Dean had become a legend after his exploits in Cambodia and Lebanon, and he obviously loved the adulation he received when Newsweek put him on the cover on 21 April 1975, which was then carried all over the world. The Newsweek cover showed Dean, the last American ambassador to Cambodia before its final takeover by the Khmer Rouge. The US embassy staff were evacuated by helicopters from the embassy compound in Phnom Penh and Dean distinguished himself by being the last to be evacuated risking his life. Before leaving, he packed the American flag of the embassy in a plastic sheet and took it along. The image of the American ambassador holding the folded flag despite obvious hardships became iconic – it went viral, in today’s parlance.6 By December 1984, when India was moving towards having a new prime minister after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Dean’s long foreign stint made him a great candidate for a home posting, but Dean was aware of his stature and expected more from his life and career. He was aware that retirement was near, but he probably was ready for one last big assignment

to boast of. Dean never acknowledged it, but it’s known that he perhaps made a few telephone calls to friends on the Capitol Hill to be Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Rajiv’s India. The appointment of John Gunther Dean as the US ambassador to India was, therefore, rather unusual as it was made directly by the White House without the express support of the State Department, which wanted to send someone else.7 Eventually, Dean was sent in as a coordinator of India–US ties as Rajiv Gandhi’s government went all out for a technology revolution in India. Though Dean remains appreciative of his former bosses in the State Department, at the end, as the story will show, he had no reason to be supportive of either the State Department or the White House. The differences over the appointment were, however, a minor hiccup compared to the developments in South Asia that he was witness to. After the chill of the 1970s, restarting India–US ties was difficult, but Dean’s presence in Delhi helped bilateral ties. He provided crucial diplomatic support as the two nations began a new round of technological partnerships, which finally brought India and the Silicon Valley closer. In fact, Dean’s role in promoting Indo-US technological cooperation was strong enough to turn him into Rajiv Gandhi’s personal friend. Dean also made friends with the new entrepreneurs as well as traditional Indian business houses. He travelled to San Francisco to lecture the first generation of Indian IT entrepreneurs to support the changing India of the 1980s. His friendship covered the Modis of Modi-Olivetti fame as well as the Hindujas. Cultivating industrialists in India, who were eager to tap into the coming technology and capital boom in India, and politicians in the US and India, Dean started a trend that would later be known as ‘economic diplomacy’. Economic diplomacy also gave him some early troubles. A controversy erupted in 1985, when former White House deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver – known as a powerful member of the Reagan White House due to his proximity to the president himself – visited New Delhi.8 He had by then quit the White House and launched the successful lobbying firm Michael K. Deaver & Associates. Though Deaver left the White House, he retained his influence with the Reagan staff. The unofficial access to the administration that he enjoyed made Deaver controversial.

After Deaver arrived in New Delhi, the New York Times wrote a story alleging that Dean had broken rules by hosting Deaver in the ambassadorial residence. Dean did not deny the allegation even as he helped Deaver with local contacts. Deaver played a constructive role by meeting industrialists in Delhi who were allowed to benefit from the widespread technological exchanges between India and the United States that began from the early months of Rajiv Gandhi’s term. Dean obviously supported the engagements. Delhi was going to be the biggest and the ultimate posting of his career, and Dean was willing to risk criticism to make it a success. The skirmishes over his appointment and the Deaver episode were soon forgotten, and Dean got down to prepare for Rajiv Gandhi’s official visit to the US. Dean’s stint in New Delhi saw India, the US and Pakistan attempting to rearrange South Asian affairs. But the brief window of cooperation was shut following bilateral problems between India and Pakistan and their respective dynamics with the United States. By August 1988, Dean would become a convenient scapegoat for this diplomatic failure. After his Delhi assignment, Dean chose a career with a mix of leisure and business. But he continued to remain of interest to diplomats and journalists who often dropped by at his Paris apartment.

John Gunther Dean turned ninety on 24 February 2016. His dramatic life as a diplomat, author, soldier, adventurer and high-power business consultant was celebrated by his family and friends in Geneva, Paris and elsewhere. The telephone rang throughout the day with best wishes from friends all over the world. But the phone call that stayed with Dean was the one from Ronen Sen, the former Indian ambassador to the US and the former joint secretary in charge of intelligence and nuclear issues under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It was a rare phone call, as Sen and Dean had connected after a gap of almost two decades. It brought back so many memories for both Dean and Sen. After the two spoke, Sen put down the phone; he was struck by the fact

that Dean had no bitterness over the way his diplomatic career ended in a storm of controversy in 1988–89.9 The Deans have lived in a lavish but lonesome house in Jules Sandeau near the Eiffel Tower. There were no dearth of friends, except in the initial few months after the crisis erupted. But Dean and his wife Martine have no regrets about asking the uncomfortable question and about blaming Israel for the assassination of President Zia. Apart from Dean, President Zia’s ambassador to the United States, Jamsheed Marker, too believes that President Zia was assassinated.10 Interestingly, everyone connected to Zia through friendship or hostility has had to pay a price. Zia’s main partner in the Afghan jihad, Akhtar Abdur Rahman, the former chief of Pakistani intelligence agency, the InterServices Intelligence (ISI), perished with him in the same air crash. Mohammed Najibullah, the president of Afghanistan was executed in 1996. The price that Dean paid was equally steep. He had to pay the price despite the fact that at the time of the controversy around ‘Who killed Zia?’ Dean was one of the most distinguished diplomats of the United States. The following pages attempt to examine the conspiracy theories and bring out the truth around the violent incidents of 1988, based upon the John Gunther Dean collection and interviews with several diplomats associated with the events of the Rajiv Gandhi years in Delhi. The papers of this unique collection reflect the global politics, American diplomatic practice and the unique cold war era diplomacy that is now part of diplomatic history. Dean served in various locations in Asia and Africa which gave him a vantage point to observe the historic developments of these countries during the second half of the twentieth century. Every Asian posting coincided with tumultuous developments and he was duty-bound to send political reports to the American foreign policy team. As a diplomat, writing long political notes for the State Department and the White House came easily to him. But unlike many of his colleagues, Dean preserved copies of whatever diplomatic notes he sent out. The John Gunther Dean Papers – stored in eighteen containers in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library – contain a formidable collection of diplomatic correspondence, from 1974 to 1989,

that Ambassador Dean built up in the privacy of his office and home. These letters and official cables tell the tale without the twists and turns that political autobiographies and biographies often imparted to the issues. Copying diplomatic documents is a prerogative of a serving diplomat as long as the papers are not used for non-official purposes. In Dean’s case, the paper collection began in the late 1960s, more specifically when Dean served in the US embassy in Paris and chronicled the nascent peace process for the resolution of the Vietnam War.11 Each part of his massive collection tells the tale of a particular part of the history of Lebanon, Cambodia, France, India, Laos and even Africa. This book relies, however, solely on papers having a bearing on the India– Pakistan–Afghanistan relations. Each of the country-specific segments of these papers was placed on the ‘Declassification Schedule’ (DS) annually. While the papers on Cambodia were the first to be on the DS, his papers on India, being the last and most sensitive, were the last to be placed on the DS. As a result of the delay in declassifying the India papers, they were not available to Dean when he was writing his autobiography. Some of the cables immediately following the air crash of President Zia remain under the supervision of the ‘powers that be’ (language used by the library staff in a humorous way) and are unlikely to be ever declassified. In his autobiography Danger Zones, Dean did mention India–US attempts at working together on Afghanistan and the ultimate disagreement between the two over Afghanistan’s future and Pakistan’s nuclear status, but he did not deal with the story exclusively as his focus was on essaying his own life. The section of the biography dealing with his India stint was also hampered as the documents from his personal collection had not been, as per rule, declassified by then. The rule book of the National Archives of the United States stipulates a mandatory period of twenty-five years before official documents can be declassified. So, a major chunk of history in Af–Pak affairs was missing in Dean’s autobiography, something that became clear to me as I went through the papers in the Dean collection at the Jimmy Carter Library in 2014. The lack of complete documentary understanding of what happened between India,

the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the cusp years of the cold war egged me on to further study and this has resulted in the present book. This is based on the impression that I gathered from the India-specific parts of the collection, after the library released them to me following support from Dean and his family. Though India’s disagreement with the US on Afghanistan has been commented upon, it takes the papers of the Dean collection to highlight the vast impact that the disagreement, and the dumping of the Geneva Accords by President Zia-ul-Haq, generated. The aftershocks of the India–US disagreement over arming Pakistan with American weapons and President Zia’s betrayal of the Geneva Accords of April 1988 continue to rock South Asia well into the twenty-first century. Diplomats who worked during these difficult years told me that the story of Afghanistan of the 1980s cannot be complete without going into how the United States, India and Pakistan worked on a peace plan and how the plan finally failed to take off due to differences among the stakeholders. Since 9/11, Af–Pak has grown as a discipline, producing the impression that Afghanistan’s affairs can be better understood by the hyphenated discipline. A wide array of literature has been built on the narrow Af–Pak focus, as if the destiny of Afghanistan was drawn by keeping Pakistan in focus and vice versa. This book is the counter-narrative of the narrow Af– Pak project to show that the focus of the crisis was much broader. The papers consulted for this book begin with Box 5 of the John Gunther Dean collection. Box 5 covers 1985–88 executive-level cooperation and provides insights into the relations between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President Ronald Reagan. The box, divided into Part 1 and 2 by Dean himself, is remarkable because it contains exchanges of letters on Afghanistan, Pakistan, narcotics, and the regional order of South Asia. The papers had been held in a digital format in the CIA computers stored in the library, an archivist told me when I first contacted the library. But after several attempts, the papers finally began arriving on my laptop. Needless to say, Dean’s own eagerness to declassify the papers had been the secret support that I received while trying to access the papers. Accessing the papers was made easier by the professionalism of the archivists at the Jimmy Carter Library, but on one occasion at least, the archivist at the

library told me that given the importance of the papers, ‘the powers that be’ had noticed my interest in the collection. However, Dean felt that having served the required twenty-five-year classified period, the entire Indiaspecific part of the collection had to be released, and so they were for me. Boxes 5, 6 and 7 are chronologically arranged from 1985 to 1988, with handwritten citations by John Gunther Dean. The papers begin with an early letter for Rajiv Gandhi from Vice-President George H.W. Bush following the June 1985 visit to Washington DC by Rajiv Gandhi and include every bilateral issue till the immediate aftermath of the air crash that killed President Zia-ul-Haq. The issues discussed cover how to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, India–Pakistan nuclear rivalry, India’s military exercises, diplomatic exchanges between India and the US, and hightechnology exchange. The most interesting aspect of these letters and diplomatic cables is the tone of the communication. The early cables show warmth and a commonality of purpose, but towards the end of the collection, bitter disagreements, personal disappointments, terms like ‘stab in the back’,12 suspicion and unhappiness stand out to show the diplomatic meltdown that surrounded the violent incidents of 1988. While exchanges between Indian and American diplomats and ministers got shriller, an internal fight broke out within the American diplomatic community as well, of which Dean was a collateral victim.

Ronen Sen, who handled most of the letters when they were exchanged between Gandhi and Reagan, told me that in his opinion, these are the most important letters exchanged ever between an Indian prime minister and an American president. Given the wide variety of issues – Afghanistan, Pakistan’s growing nuclear status and military sales to Pakistani military, disarmament, Sri Lanka, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), technological cooperation, agriculture – these letters appear to be of timeless importance. The executive communications contained in Box 5 are important, but perhaps more important are the diplomatic cables that show Sen, Dean,

Arnold Raphel, Stephen Solarz, Peter Galbraith, A.P. Venkateswaran and K. Natwar Singh participating in the flow of events, in New Delhi, Islamabad, Rome and Washington DC. While the executive communication set the boundaries of the arena, diplomatic exchanges by these crucial figures added to the full frame. It is interesting to note that while Ambassador Dean preserved priceless communications between Indian, American and in some cases even comments from Pakistani officials on Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, he also took care to preserve communications that could refocus light on the difficult moments in India–US ties, especially on Pakistan–Afghanistan and Pakistan’s policy on nuclear weapons. Though executive communications were conducted in a courteous tone, Dean’s own notes and political cables preserved the intelligence ‘incidents’ that broke out repeatedly between the American and Indian sides during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure. The 1980s were the period when intelligence acquired a new strategic dimension due to intelligence about nuclear issues becoming highly prized in South Asia. Two incidents took place in 1988 in quick succession. The first was the detection of an American intelligence asset in the US consulate in Madras, which led to the evacuation of an official posted in the US mission in Madras. The second involved the ‘Dr Subbarao incident’, an alleged attempt by a retired Indian naval scientist to flee with classified nuclear documents. In both the cases, Rajiv Gandhi personally confronted Dean illustrating the sad state of affairs that prevailed in India–US relations in 1988. The case of Subbarao especially became a widely recounted one, due to the fact that it erupted at a time of considerable tension in India–US relationship in May and June 1988. Years later, Subbarao told a news magazine about the unverifiable grounds of his detention by the law enforcement authorities. The arrest made little immediate sense as Subbarao, at the time of his arrest, was not carrying nuclear secrets, but his PhD thesis. The arrest and the twenty-month detention of Subbarao remains unexplained till date given the flimsy grounds on which it was conducted. However, it appears that Subbarao, who was one of the individuals with some knowledge of India’s nuclear submarine project, was also tracked by

the American intelligence agents working from the US embassy in New Delhi. In both the cases, Dean ensured the speedy departure of the concerned American personnel from India while personally absorbing the blowback from Rajiv Gandhi. Upon reading the entire India-related classified papers, it appears that at least the Subbarao incident was partly precipitated by the downturn in the overall India–US strategic relationship from the great heights during January–June 1985 to the alarming depths during June– August 1988. Similar intelligence-related incidents were brushed under the carpet in the early months of Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as India–US ties were on the ascendance, but relatively smaller incidents like the two mentioned, prompted the prime minister of India to personally intervene in 1988. By 1988, as a result of India’s pro-US tilt, technology cooperation began to thrive, but the heart of it all, the strategic understanding between India and the US over Pakistan and Afghanistan, had crumbled. Once Rajiv Gandhi felt that India was not getting any benefits on Pakistan and Afghanistan from the United States, there was little else to retain the India– US relations at the euphoric 1985 levels. At the end of the cold war, as the US appeared triumphant against Soviet might, India’s top decision makers appeared deeply upset about the American lack of cooperation over Pakistan’s nuclear and Afghanistan-related ambitions. In one of the last letters to be exchanged between Reagan and Rajiv, the former invited Rajiv to discuss the India–US relationship on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly session of the United Nations. The letter was sent to India on 30 August 1988, a fortnight after the air crash that killed President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan. ‘I plan to be in New York on September 27, and would welcome an opportunity to meet with you or your representatives that morning,’ Reagan wrote. Rajiv Gandhi responded on 3 September 1988: Dear Ronald, On August 15, in your address at the Republican Party’s national convention, something you said struck me as

particularly apt to relations between India and the United States. You spoke of the need ‘to keep the fire so that when we look back at the time of choosing we can say that we did all that could be done. Never less.’13 After counting the achievements in India–US cooperation, Rajiv Gandhi conveyed his inability to a meeting on the morning of 27 September and chose instead to visit Bhutan that day. After starting a spectacular cooperation between India and the United States, the core of that cooperation had frozen and India’s political leadership had little political incentive to revive the warmth of India–US ties. These pages aim to portray how over four years of India–US diplomacy, Af–Pak affairs led to the ultimate falling out between India and the United States. Rajiv Gandhi had extended a personal invitation to Ronald Reagan to visit India during his first visit to the US in 1985. But Reagan did not visit India during his presidency.

1 ‘Who Killed Zia?’ 1988, US ambassador John Gunther Dean was alone in his office in Delhi when the phone rang. Dean’s office was usually full of fun and people, stories and gossip. Guests were welcomed freely. Yet that midmonsoon afternoon, all activity ceased as Dean listened carefully. His staff knew that the call was important, as it was not channelized through the operator. The phone call was from Joint Secretary Ronen Sen who handled all sensitive communications and intelligence in the office of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Ronen and Dean worked closely, often coordinating on issues of interest on a daily basis. On that day in August 1988, Dean did not expect anything untoward to happen between India and the US, and a call or meeting with Ronen was not on the cards. But across the border, nearly 680 kilometres from Delhi, inside Pakistan, dramatic developments were taking place that were to change South Asia and Dean’s life forever. Ronen Sen was calm as he told the American ambassador to New Delhi that he had just been informed that Pak One, the presidential aircraft of Pakistan, had crashed. He had no further information and the brief phone call ended with Ronen promising to call back shortly. ON 17 AUGUST

Dean trusted his source but felt the news was incredible, because he knew well that an air crash killing the Pakistani president in suspicious circumstances could immediately trigger another India–Pakistan war.1 Ties between India and Pakistan had been tense for months and now the unthinkable had happened. But did the aircraft crash with Zia on board? Or was it flying without VVIP passengers? Doubt and fear crowded Dean’s mind. A war of vengeance could quickly turn nuclear, Dean worried. Within minutes Sen was back with confirmation: Zia’s aircraft had crashed. And Zia was not alone in that aircraft. He was accompanied by almost the entire top brass of the intelligence and armed forces of Pakistan. Dean says that during those calls, Sen also told him that Indian satellites had filmed the final moments of the air crash.2 A torrent of questions rushed through Dean’s mind as he listened to Sen. It was clear to him that the air crash represented a doomsday scenario. He put the phone down and walked out of the office to inform his staff to remain on the alert. Dean immediately began writing points for reports on the day’s developments for the White House and the Secretary of State. Despite nearly two decades between them, Dean had reasons to trust Sen. Indian officials usually addressed him as Ambassador Dean, but Sen was a friend and the informality was part of the working relationship between the American ambassador and Rajiv Gandhi’s most trusted aide. It was this rapport between the two men that kept India and the US aware of the meltdown across the border. It also turned out to be a day of personal loss for both as one of the intercepts revealed that the American ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, had also gone down with Zia. Sen had the resources to eavesdrop on Pakistan’s sensitive communications in ‘real time’. He was the coordinator of India’s secret agencies, who had to go through his office whenever the prime minister wanted a briefing. In the first four years of Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Military Intelligence underwent extensive changes3 and Pakistani leaders did not know that listeners across the border could get ‘live’4 inputs on the developments inside Pakistan.

Ronen Sen, in August 1988, was arguably the most powerful information manager in South Asia, and a single misstep or inaccurate diagnosis from him could trigger disaster. He was checking the details through all possible channels. The intercepts were revealing a fast-paced chain of events in Pakistan. ‘All my diplomatic life I worked with the CIA and found that they were often better informed than the diplomats of the State Department because the CIA always worked harder and did great fieldwork,’ Dean told me later when I asked him about his friendship with Ronen Sen.5 Dean felt that a diplomat who could balance diplomacy with intelligence gathering and spy craft was always the best in the business. As a diplomat who began in the field of military intelligence during World War II, Dean had that mix of spy craft and diplomacy. In Sen’s nuanced and sanitized briefings, he often saw that mix of strategic communication as well as diplomatic utility. As electronic surveillance intercepted communications at the Pakistan military establishment’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, Sen received updates every minute. He called Dean every few minutes to give the latest update on the Zia air crash. In those initial moments, Dean and probably his long-time personal secretary Leona Niemann were the only Americans to know that President Zia’s aircraft had fallen from the sky. With each phone call, a clearer picture of President Zia’s last day emerged. Earlier that morning, Zia had travelled to Khairpur Tamewali field firing range near Bahawalpur in the Lockheed C-130B Hercules christened Pak One. The firing range was to host field tests of the US-made M1 Abrams tank the Pakistan Army was evaluating for induction into service. US ambassador Arnold Raphel accompanied Zia. The American team also included Brigadier General Herbert Wassom, the chief of the US military mission in Pakistan. Apart from the Americans, an entire top rung of the Pakistani power elite were with Zia, including General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, the brain behind Zia’s jihad in Afghanistan. At 4:30 p.m. on 17 August 1988, Pak One, the VVIP aircraft with thirtyone passengers6 led by President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, took off from Bahawalpur airport.

For two minutes and thirty seconds, the aircraft flew normally, gaining height rapidly, while maintaining contact with the control tower of Bahawalpur. Then suddenly, Pak One was lost to the control tower. This disappearance was most unusual because the American-made fourengine aircraft carrying VVIPs was flown by highly experienced pilots and the air traffic normally kept a constant priority watch on the airborne craft. Eyewitnesses reported7 that, at this time, Pak One went into an uncontrolled spin and flew in loops for another two minutes and then flying at full velocity, hit the ground nose first. The aircraft–ground impact was such that the two engines dug deep into a riverbank. The impact and the explosion reduced the occupants into small fragments of bone and flesh. The cataclysmic nature of the crash and near-total destruction of the bodies were cited by Zia’s chief political opponent Benazir Bhutto as an example of the ‘wrath of God’.8 For Sen, however, divine retribution was not explanation enough. He needed hard information from the intercepts that he had communicated to Dean even while Zia’s aircraft was burning furiously, aided by 20,000 pounds of fuel. For days, Pakistan and the rest of the world would discuss the question of how Zia died. One explanation supported by Zia’s political enemies at home was that Zia was killed by God. The ‘wrath of God’ theory worked well especially for those who suffered under Zia’s dictatorial government, unprecedented in Pakistan, and which so far remains unsurpassed. But the ‘wrath of God’ theory was fast overtaken by conspiracy theories. Initial reports and various eyewitness accounts added to the confusion. The aircraft had taken off smoothly and had climbed to a height of 4,000 feet. Most eyewitnesses said that the aircraft appeared to be in a spin and hit the ground leaving behind an enormous cloud of smoke. But some also said that the aircraft circled in the air while an explosion took place mid-air.9 No one believed that an aircraft carrying Pakistan’s president, the US ambassador to Pakistan and top military officers of Pakistan could crash due to mechanical failure. It was a sabotage, hinted the newspapers. But no

one could say how such a perfect crime could be executed and who had the wherewithal to execute it. Dean had no doubt that it was a classic modern-day assassination.10 He sensed immediately that the circumstances and the regional disorder of South Asia suggested that someone had decapitated the Pakistani state probably to teach Pakistan a lesson, perhaps to pave the way for a new regional order. Pakistan–India ties had been stormy for several months, and an air crash involving the president of Pakistan could not help. The situation in Pakistan, which had become a nuclear-armed nation under Zia, suddenly turned dangerous as the crash created a power vacuum. But doubts persisted about the fate of the aircraft and its occupants, since the debris was yet to undergo forensic tests. Information was still sketchy and India did not know if the ‘real-time’ intercepts were revealing the real story. Did Zia fly to another country? Did he stage a fake assassination? Was the crash part of a coup against Zia’s one-man rule? Pakistan struggled to keep the secret. But Sen knew the unfolding scenario already and was informing the prime minister of India every few minutes. Inside South Block, the scene turned volatile. The afternoon of 17 August 1988 drew two responses from two lead narrators of those fast-paced moments. Dean remembers that it was Sen who helped the Americans get the first reports of the crash. But Sen never gets into the details. For him, every day spent with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from January 1986 to the winter of 1989 was full of excitement. ‘Emergencies erupted in the Prime Minister’s Office every other day and one had to be ready for them,’ Sen told me.11 Dean is kinder and says that without the deep listening capabilities of the Indian intelligence agencies, a crisis could not have been averted in the high-pressure afternoon of 17 August1988, as a misunderstanding could erupt at any moment leading to catastrophic consequence for the whole of South Asia. India had to weigh the fluid situation quickly, in real time.

All electronic ears of India on the India–Pakistan borders and in Delhi were turned toward the Islamabad–Rawalpindi airwaves. But doubts persisted in the intelligence wing of the PMO and in Sen’s head. Zia was not indestructible but at that moment the thought of him staging a great escape from Pakistan was also a dramatic possibility; after all the world was fast changing and dictators were falling. In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos had chosen to flee with his wife Imelda and their ill-gotten wealth. Earlier Duvalier had fled Haiti. Big powers were asserting themselves and dictators, despite their political genius, were fast taking a hard look at their career. Zia was one such dictator.12 But would he fall from the sky just like that? Or flee? That afternoon, a few select and privileged landlines in Delhi exchanged these views rapidly. Rajiv Gandhi’s worry was that Pakistan might be facing a violent coup against President Zia and in that case the worst was possible given that Islamabad had attained nuclear status under Zia. ‘Ronen, ask Ambassador Dean what he finds out from Washington DC and Islamabad,’ Rajiv instructed Sen.13 Tension was palpable in the PMO because a war could begin in case an adventurous general was to exploit the demise of the Pakistani president who had tried hard but failed to get rid of the label of dictatorship. But nothing definitive could be stated to the press by the PMO at that moment lest the situation in Pakistan worsen. So while the Indian military intelligence was discreetly listening to the chatter across the border with their newly acquired space-age gadgets, the authorities waited for Pakistan to break the news first. By evening, Pakistani state media was told that President Zia-ul-Haq had perished in the crash of Pak One. By evening, the news was out that Zia had crashed along with his entire retinue of top commanders barring his deputy chief of staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg, who had chosen a smaller aircraft to fly back from Bahawalpur where the top commanders and the president had gathered to check field trials of the M1 Abrams tanks. But confirmation was awaited. General Beg was informed of the crash in-flight and he turned his aircraft to fly back to Bahawalpur. Mid-flight, he inspected the crash site and its smouldering remains. After a brief on-board discussion with Major General

Jehangir Karamat, director general of military operations, General Beg decided to proceed to Islamabad to deal with the leadership vacuum.14 For three hours, from the moment of the air crash till late in the evening, Pakistan was without a head of government. India was listening into every communication inside Pakistan as Rajiv Gandhi and his team felt a meltdown was imminent in Pakistan. Minutes passed by in Rajiv Gandhi’s office as everyone speculated that the election that was planned for November 1988 in Pakistan was going to get cancelled and military rule would be extended as a result of the death of Zia. Finally, the news was broadcast on the official Pakistani news channels. New Delhi heaved an uneasy sigh. The three hours were marked by intense behind-the-scenes discussion between the military and the civilian leaders of Pakistan. For those three hours, Pakistan did not have either a president or a chief of its army as Zia had held both posts. The Constitution of Pakistan ensured that in the event of the death or absence of the president, the chairman of the Senate would become the acting president. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the then chairman of the Senate, was the clear choice. The other option was that General Beg would succeed to the post of the president and extend the military rule. Thankfully, after a broader consultation with Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal Hakimullah Khan and the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff Rear Admiral Saeed Muhammad Khan,15 the military elite of Pakistan felt that the Constitution of Pakistan should be allowed to work and the chairman of the Senate should get his chance. Around 7 p.m., Ghulam Ishaq Khan was asked to visit the GHQ of Rawalpindi where he was briefed of the opinion of the services’ chiefs. Khan then called for an emergency meeting of the cabinet, which the chiefs of the defence services were also invited to join. The Pakistani cabinet was formally informed of the demise of President Zia-ul-Haq. Khan read out the names of the co-passengers of Pak One and one of them was Arnold Raphel, the US ambassador to Pakistan. Dean had already learnt this and had communicated to Sen that Arnie, as he called him, had died in the crash with Zia.

Next, across South Asia, black-and-white TV screens lit up with the bespectacled face of Ghulam Ishaq Khan. He assured Pakistan that the country would be on track and will undergo a process of peaceful transition of power though President Zia was no more. He emphasized that the 16 November 1988 election would be held as announced by Zia. He also introduced the new cast of characters in the Pakistan Army: Mirza Aslam Beg was now the new army chief. It was to the credit of the Pakistan Army and the civilian leaders that they did not allow the tension to break out on the surface. A tiny impropriety or breach of protocol could have turned into an ugly spat and in turn snowballed into a major meltdown. For instance, asking Ghulam Ishaq Khan to visit the GHQ to meet the services’ chiefs was against established protocol, but Khan nevertheless did so without caring for niceties. Later, commentators like General Khalid Mahmud Arif noted that the Pakistan Army’s new chief General Beg and other members of the military elite should have shown due courtesies to the elderly Khan and prevented the chance of an ego clash at this hour of crisis.16

Inside Roosevelt House, Dean received hourly updates from Sen about the developments in Pakistan. Dean made frantic moves to collect as many news reports as possible on the crash. As an ex-intelligence officer, he knew that news is often the best tool for private investigation. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited the high commission of Pakistan a day after the crash and expressed his sympathies for the Zia family. But the rumours and conspiracy theories swirled in Delhi and Islamabad and added to the tension. John Gunther Dean survived 17 August 1988 fearing a nuclear war between the two countries, as Pakistan was precariously poised between an iconic military dictator’s sudden dramatic evaporation and the political rebirth of Pakistan that he had promised. But the ambassador was broken in spirit by the happenings in Pakistan. That afternoon Dean realized that the last assignment of his long illustrious career had turned him into a failure.

The three-and-a-half-year-long stint in Delhi, despite his access to the office of the prime minister of India, had been wasted. In August 1988, Dean did not care for his successful career. Something broke inside him. But for the official letter ending his assignment in Delhi, the ambassadorship had more or less ended. Dean was looking forward to a rewarding retired life, perhaps with some influence and clout on the lecture circuit in Washington DC. But he felt that retirement was not going to be peaceful due to the set of circumstances in South Asia. He wanted to deal with the consequences himself. His children by then were settled in Europe and the US. He was a notable high-flying diplomat and he wanted a better explanation of the violent incidents taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan that had pulled India along. Dean felt angry; he felt he had been used by unseen hands who worked from the cosy bureaucratic comforts of their offices in the State Department and the White House. He wanted a serious round of consultations and sought appointments with Vice-President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State George Shultz. Martine, his wife, advised caution and wanted him to delay his travel. But Dean had already served in Delhi for more than the usual three years. He did not care for anything else. From Delhi, he boarded a passenger jet on 10 September, but sensed that something was wrong as a CIA agent accompanied him on board and kept watching his moves. Once on the ground at Dulles airport, Dean was received by Mort Abramowitz, the chief of intelligence and research unit at the State Department. Dean was told that all the appointments that he had requested for had been cancelled. ‘Why don’t you come over to my house and we’ll just have dinner?’ Abramowitz suggested.17 The reason for this alarmingly cold welcome was already known to Dean and Abramowitz because, for weeks, diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Delhi had been disagreeing with the State Department’s narrative of events in South Asia: Dean did not believe the official version of the air crash that killed Zia. In between meeting friends in Delhi, he collected a large amount of news reports about the crash from both India

and Pakistan and reached the conclusion that Zia’s air crash was an act of sabotage and not just a simple air crash. By then the American official explanation had veered towards the version that Zia died in an accident. The reasons were secondary. The diplomatic machinery focused on the tragedy of the demise of the US ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel. Secretary of State George Shultz visited Islamabad to retrieve his remains personally to highlight the importance of the loss to the American diplomatic community. But Dean was restless after the incident. The ambassador’s notes sent from Delhi to Washington DC had triggered a crisis. Zia’s air crash was one of a series of mysterious developments that had begun earlier that year, and Dean saw a pattern in this meltdown. He wanted a man-to-man talk with the movers and shakers of American diplomacy in Washington DC because he felt personally slighted by the condition of South Asia as his assignment in Delhi was to prevent this sort of meltdown for which all sides had worked together for three years. Dean had expected that the assignment in Delhi would make him a bigger star than he already was but instead he was witnessing the demise of a lifelong dream of winning the adulation of the American people. Dean wanted to discuss why he was not allowed to succeed. Dean wanted to make public a secret plan for peace and ask why that plan of cooperation and commerce was not allowed to succeed. Dean felt as if he and his career had been used to serve some unknown forces in the US who benefited at his cost and at the cost of the life of Arnold Raphel. But before he could confront his bosses with his outburst, Dean was contained. George Vest,18 director general of the foreign service, restrained Dean and told him that the psychiatrists at the State Department had determined even without meeting him that he had undergone a personality transformation due to the pressure of his job in Delhi. The United States of America had not yet sacked its ambassador to India and instead was building up a case for dismissal with in-house research and findings. Dean was told by Vest that the State Department had declared him unstable. In usual circumstances, a person in such a case would be sent to a mental

institution, but in this case, Dean was asked to go on leave and rest in his wife’s chalet in Verbier near Geneva. Some in the State Department at that time felt that the definition of clinical mental derangement differs from Washington DC to the Alps. I was to find out personally how absurdly unfair it was to heap ‘personality change’ on a perfectly healthy American ambassador to the Republic of India who was plain angry and wanted to meet his friends for a frank chat. Dean was asked to go on leave for six weeks and cool off in the Alps. The issue of John Gunther Dean’s phony mental illness and the question of ‘Who killed Zia?’ are forever blinking red lights of South Asian diplomacy. I wanted to probe it further. John Gunther Dean suspected the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to have assassinated the Pakistani president using sophisticated techniques. But in reality, the discussion that he planned based on that question was not for the Israelis. The question ‘Who killed Zia’ was aimed at the heart of the American presidency. Because Dean planned to confront the American leaders with personal meetings and press conferences and inform the American people that the real problem was not just the fall of Pak One from the skies above Bahawalpur. The real issue was the hurt ego of a highprofile American ambassador who felt that his superiors used him to create a smokescreen of a peaceful coalition for Afghanistan, which was not a genuine attempt. He felt that the Americans created an appearance of peaceful diplomacy for a stable Afghanistan and in the process sacrificed his career and those he honestly had cultivated in the process. By giving up the complex but historic regional – and global – consultation the Reagan–Bush administration gave up on the biggest diplomatic coup for stability in South Asia. Dean obviously had invested in this initiative and was rightly upset at being deprived of his role. He felt during his fateful trip to the State Department that the American president and vice-president should be held accountable for the failure of peace negotiation that they themselves had launched.

The question of who really was behind Zia’s air crash was relevant but not all-important. Everyone, including his arch rival Benazir Bhutto, suspected that Zia died of sabotage but instead of the forensics, the focus shifted to succession, as there was a justified fear that the dictator’s mysterious death could ignite a storm of fire engulfing Pakistan and India and other stakeholders. ‘President Reagan had no idea of what was happening in South Asia at that time. Rajiv Gandhi wanted to control the situation. So did many others. But the question was always about who started the fire,’ Dean explained to me in his Paris home, where I spent a week interviewing him on the papers related to the historical negotiations. The American leaders knew the answer and so did Dean, but the difference between the two was that the former was silent while Dean wanted to speak. So Dean had to be muzzled. Dean felt the US was responsible for Zia’s death. The US that had been working for three years to avoid such a situation in South Asia, by aborting the mission midway, had created a circumstance where violence was inevitable. Dean’s argument was explosive. As Washington DC crafted the convenient narrative of how the Reagan–Bush administration won the cold war, Dean flew in with the counter-narrative that the cold war had ended with a hot war which in less than a decade would be attacking the shores of the United States. Dean was too prophetic to be a diplomat. In Delhi, meanwhile, a big controversy erupted that every official in the Prime Minister’s Office was aware of but did not want to discuss. The US ambassador to Islamabad had been killed in the Zia air crash and the US ambassador to New Delhi left in a great hurry on 10 September, only to stay absent without any further communication.19 This created great curiosity in the Indian diplomatic circle and media as they speculated over his fate. Martine had been left all alone in Delhi all this time as confusing signals had been coming from Washington DC and Dean desisted from discussing all the official details with her. She joined him in Geneva after he was allowed to leave Washington DC. In Delhi, there was obvious anxiety at the top level. But Sen says that the Indian government chose to remain silent, as a display of curiosity or

interest from India would have worsened the officially sanctioned mistreatment of Dean. At Verbier, near Martinique, the Swiss police kept tabs on Dean, and an assistant secretary of state and a top aide of the administration paid Dean a visit to make sure that he kept quiet about his condition,20 especially since the issue was unfolding during the election season when George H.W. Bush was certain to be the successor to President Ronald Reagan. After spending six weeks in the family chalet in Verbier,21 Dean returned to Delhi in late October 1988 to pack up and leave. Apart from the warm support of his family, Dean found support from the president of India, R. Venkataraman, a rare honour, and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi himself. Venkataraman gave a farewell party to Dean where Dean was presented with a large oil painting. By sending Dean off warmly, Rajiv Gandhi’s government showed that it did not care for the State Department’s mental health certificate to Dean. By the end of 1988, the Deans landed in Goa and celebrated New Year’s Eve on the coast of the Arabian Sea before leaving for Washington DC to wind up whatever remained of his career. Back in Washington DC, an absurd show unfolded as Dean spent some time in a semi-retired state due to the officially designated ‘deranged’ condition. He was assigned a huge office in the State Department near the suite of the Secretary of State. But he was not given any specific duty. He was kept busy with psychiatrists and doctors from the medical team of the State Department. Suddenly, the State Department gave Dean his medical clearance back and his security clearance was restored. But Dean’s ambassadorial life was over. It was not enough to ask him to quit. He had to be silenced so that he would keep his mouth shut about the elaborate diplomacy that unfolded from Washington DC and New Delhi over the crisis in Afghanistan. Therefore the mental ailment charge was imposed as a ploy to keep Dean beyond the reach of journalists and policy analysts so that he could not raise uncomfortable questions in an electionbound USA. He quit immediately after the medical clearance was restored in the spring of 1989 and was awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award along with a letter from Secretary of State

George Shultz commending him for ‘the unprecedented success in improving relations between the United States and India, a significant achievement of the Reagan administration’. Dean was at best a witness to the diplomacy that could have ensured stability in Afghanistan at the end of the cold war. Yet he had to be silenced as he refused to obey the sudden change in the official line of the United States foreign affairs team regarding South Asia. Obviously, someone in Washington wanted him out of the way along with his questions. It was difficult if not impossible to figure out who that person could be. But it is obvious that by raising doubts and by asking to confront leading lights of the Reagan–Bush team on South Asian violence, Dean had given away his hand before the move. As a result, he was pre-empted. Or else on that election eve, Dean could have revealed an embarrassing lot of lapses and failures of the Reagan– Bush team, which was being projected as the duo that won the cold war.22 Dean felt rightly that his political and diplomatic bosses had used him for gaining an upper hand in the cold war and he was going to pay back in the same coin, if circumstances had been kinder to him. The core of Dean’s argument was that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did not keep the American part of the bargain that they had made with Rajiv Gandhi on the security of Afghanistan and nuclear status of Pakistan, which were both allowed to go out of control during the late 1980s. Dean wanted to reveal that the events of 1988 could have been averted if the American leaders were serious about pursuing the path that they had charted with Rajiv Gandhi. While researching this India–US discussion between the top leaders on both sides, I contacted former external affairs minister Natwar Singh. Interestingly, Natwar’s memoir, though rich in anecdotes, did not mention the landmark talks between the two sides.23 On being asked, Natwar Singh steered me to Ambassador Ronen Sen, who was the joint secretary in charge of Rajiv Gandhi’s critical foreign affairs desk in the PMO between 1986 and1989, an exceptional career record which gives him the unique distinction of having knowledge of the structure of diplomacy under the entire duration of Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministerial tenure.

Sen, who became India’s ambassador to Germany and the United States in the twenty-first century, opened up after prolonged persuasion. He agreed, after many phone calls and face-to-face talks, that the India–US relationship took a critical turn during the second half of Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership after the initial euphoria. Jamsheed Marker, former Pakistan ambassador to the US, was magnanimous to provide me with background information on the Pakistan side. He was the ambassador to Washington DC during the period under study who turned events around to the advantage of Pakistan under guidance from his bosses, Sahibzada Yaqub Khan and President Zia-ul-Haq. The three interlocutors who were consulted for this book worked for the three key characters in the globally significant drama unfolding over Afghanistan: President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President Zia-ul-Haq. The cast of characters in this play included Secretary of State George Shultz, Under Secretary of State for political affairs Michael Armacost, Richard Armitage, Arnold Raphel on the American side, and Ronen Sen, Chinmaya Gharekhan, and most importantly, Romesh Bhandari and A.P. Venkateswaran on the Indian side. On the Pakistani side sterling roles were played by Shahid M. Amin, Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo and of course General Zia-ul-Haq. Though Amin did not respond personally to my queries, his account of that period in his autobiography helped me with the narrative.

One question that repeatedly arises is what might have prompted an ambassador of the United States to collect executive-level communications, apart from the regular communications of his office. Because, without this collection, the diplomacy between Rajiv and the Reagan–Bush White House would have been lost, sustaining the mistaken impression often favoured among Af–Pak theorists that India probably sat inertly while the Great Game unfolded in Afghanistan during the 1980s. This is a story of India’s diplomatic defeat and American duplicity. Due to inherent inconvenience, neither side has shown any interest in

remembering the account. But Dean believes that the broader explanation of the meltdown of 1988 can be understood only by going back to that doomed peace effort. Dean who survived the allegations of ‘mental derangement’ had in his autobiography mentioned in brief the peace effort that India and the US were working on, but his description was not detailed as the documents on India were not declassified in 2008 when the autobiography was published. It was, however, due to his restlessness for the truth that this book took shape. Soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Dean suggested that Sonia Gandhi should collect the letters that Rajiv Gandhi had exchanged with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush during the 1980s which would provide a new version of events that unfolded in South Asia and beyond, stretching into the twenty-first century. It was probably not possible to publish such letters as such executive-level letters were not made available to Sonia Gandhi. Though only two parties, the American leadership and the Indian government, were supposed to have such letters, Dean kept copies for himself. Rajiv himself never spoke of the letters except once when visiting Ixtapa in Mexico. On 6 August 1986, at the peak of the disarmament debate, Rajiv met with leaders of Sweden, Greece, Mexico, Argentina and Tanzania to discuss the Five Continent Peace and Disarmament Initiative, which had been launched in 1984 during the summit attended by Indira Gandhi to dispel the notion that the call for a ban on nuclear testing was aimed at the United States alone. During that meeting in Ixtapa, an interviewer wished to know Rajiv’s opinion about the ‘deaf ear’ of Ronald Reagan to their disarmament plans, and Rajiv revealed that the US president and he had been corresponding with each other.24 Reagan and Gandhi discussed a long list of issues in those letters. But most important of all were the few requests that President Reagan made to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to resolve the Afghan crisis in favour of a broad-based coalition and the obvious bargain involved preventing Pakistan from going nuclear. The letters, says Sen, who later served as India’s ambassador to the United States under the UPA government, were unprecedented and remain

unique in India’s diplomatic history so far. ‘Indian and American leaders did not correspond on such vital issues so intensely before that period, nor (was) such intense dialogue attempted after that.’ Dean’s rage is rooted in the fact that the US did not keep its promise to India, thereby it did not respect his own work and that of Rajiv Gandhi. The truth, however, is that once the dialogue broke up over Afghanistan, none of the states involved in the Afghan solution kept their promises to each other, triggering an epic conflict, which still rages on. The letters are a window to a complex world of international politics and games that have never been studied in full from the point of view of India. These letters and cables are the only documents so far that unveil Rajiv Gandhi’s turbulent ties with the United States, the most important pillar of his foreign policy. He can be heard in these documents reaching great heights of bonhomie with the United States and also the depths of despair and frustration regarding the American leadership. The existence of a coalition plan for Afghanistan under the regional and global set of actors was known to a few people in India, Pakistan, the United States, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union – but each one of them had their own version of the talks. The long multi-cornered diplomatic drama preceding the Geneva Accords of April 1988 finds mention in Quiet Diplomacy, the autobiography of Pakistani diplomat Jamsheed Marker. He has mentioned it only briefly for reasons best known to him.25 But for Dean’s collection, we would not have a clear picture of this plan for peace and stability, which turned out to be an expansive smokescreen of duplicity on the part of the Reagan–Bush administration.

Jihad and the Nuclear Option At the heart of the summer–monsoon meltdown of 1988 were the competing race to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan, and India’s concerns about Pakistan acquiring a mix of strategic weapons and strategic depth in Afghanistan, which would permanently alter South Asia’s power equation. While nothing much could be done to deter Pakistan from acquiring nuclear

weapon capability in the mid-1980s (due to parallel diplomacy between the US and Pakistan), the issue of Afghanistan, however, gave some hope to the stakeholders as attempts were made towards an amicable solution. But neither India nor Pakistan could build a consensus on mutual interests in Afghanistan. Why did Pakistan find Afghanistan so crucial for its security in the 1980s? The conventional understanding is that Pakistan became involved in the Afghanistan crisis after Soviet troops rolled into Afghan territory on Christmas Day in 1979. Indeed, Pakistan’s bipolar strategy of having both nuclear capability as well as strategic depth in Afghanistan began during the Bhutto era of the 1970s as Pakistan wanted to recover from the humiliating defeat of 1971. Under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan realized the importance of a nuclear deterrent which would prevent India from carrying out a repeat of the 1971 war against what remained of Pakistan. By the late 1970s, Pakistan under Prime Minister Bhutto was well on its way to recover from the injuries inflicted by India in the 1971 war. Bhutto was successful in getting the rich Arab countries that attended the Lahore World Islamic Conference of 1974 to open a lifeline between Pakistan and the petro-rich Arab world.26 Armed with petrodollars and Islamic solidarity from countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya, Bhutto began on the path towards nuclear Pakistan. Bhutto himself was not instrumental in turning Afghanistan into an immediate issue for Pakistan but his nuclear project would play a key role in determining the global and regional affairs in 1988, which would allow Pakistan to use a unique barter of nuclear power status in exchange for a decisive say in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan imbroglio was yet to erupt when the nuclear status of Pakistan became an international issue. In the summer of 1976, alarmed by reports of Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, Henry Kissinger, then US Secretary of State in the Gerald Ford administration, arrived in Pakistan for a conversation with Bhutto. Kissinger was determined to dissuade Bhutto from building what was increasingly perceived worldwide as the ‘Islamic

Bomb’. The meeting was later recounted by Benazir Bhutto in her autobiography: The meeting had not gone well and my father had been flushed with anger when he returned home. Henry Kissinger, he told me, had spoken to him crudely and arrogantly. The US Secretary of State had made it clear that the Reprocessing Plant Agreement (with France) was not acceptable to the United States. The agreement either had to be cancelled or delayed for several years. Reconsider the agreement with France or risk being made into ‘a horrible example’.27 First, therefore, came the process of making ‘a horrible example’ out of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as he was not willing to give up the quest for nuclear power for Pakistan. Months after Kissinger’s threat, Bhutto lost power to the military coup of 5 July 1977 that made General Zia-ul-Haq the chief martial law administrator of Pakistan. Over the next year and a half, Afghanistan would become the chief agenda of Pakistan’s military dictator but between July 1977 and 1980, the Bhutto family’s actions probably firmed up fear in the Pakistani establishment that Afghanistan which had difficult ties with Pakistan from the moment of its birth in 1947 could also be used as a political sanctuary by the political and probably militant opposition of Pakistan. A beginning in that direction was made by Bhutto himself. Details on this issue have been sketchy as the taboo topic was rarely discussed. Senior Bhutto, in a fit of rage, reportedly instructed his sons to avenge the humiliation and injustice that Zia had heaped on him. The sons followed the father’s command and launched a political movement that would then morph into a militant campaign – from Afghan soil. Benazir Bhutto herself avoided talking of how her brothers Murtaza and Shah Nawaz became international terrorists after the overthrow of the government of their father in the 5 July 1977 coup. Within months of the arrest of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his two sons had begun a campaign in the Western capitals under the Save Bhutto Committee. Yet the deposed prime

minister of Pakistan who aspired to rival India with his own nuclear deterrence, was hanged on 4 April 1979. The hanging might have directly created more Kabul–Islamabad problems. Murtaza, till then a temperamental leader of the Save Bhutto Committee, swore revenge immediately.28 In May 1979 he flew to Damascus and by the end of summer the Bhutto brothers had set up the dreaded Al Zulfikar Organization (AZO). From the safe sanctuary provided by the anti-Zia government of Kabul, AZO would launch a radical and violent campaign against President Zia’s government.29 No political or diplomatic option was taboo for this group as it sought to depose Zia’s military dictatorship. Backed by Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Murtaza and Shah Nawaz led from the front even as Benazir Bhutto and her mother Nusrat were imprisoned in Pakistan. From 17 September 1979, for three years, AZO would operate from Kabul apparently backed by the international supporters of the Bhutto family. To what extent was AZO supported by India remains a debatable issue. But at least one controversial Pakistani author, Raja Anwar, has written an account of how Murtaza flew to India repeatedly seeking support from Indira Gandhi’s government, once she returned to power in January 1980.30 Senior journalist Satish Jacob recounted to me his first meeting with Murtaza Bhutto in the spring of 1980 when Murtaza welcomed him to his hotel room and offered expensive scotch whiskey. During the meeting, Murtaza told Jacob that he was a regular listener to BBC’s reports from Delhi as he wanted to know about the political situation in the country. Thus began a friendship that lasted till 1996 when Murtaza was shot dead in Karachi. ‘He even came home for dinner’, Jacob told me while avoiding the details of what brought Murtaza to Delhi frequently during the early 1980s. ‘My interest was purely journalistic. We were not involved in his politics’, Jacob said.31 On 2 March 1981, AZO carried out its most audacious operation by hijacking a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) jet from Lahore to Damascus. The incident was sensational as Murtaza proved that he could hit Zia from Kabul and prompted Zia to begin his biggest crackdown on AZO supporters in Pakistan, which lasted almost till 1985 when Shah Nawaz

Bhutto, the youngest of the Bhutto siblings, and the military head of the group, was found dead in France in mysterious circumstances. Faced with the growing signs of political and military support to the democratic forces of Pakistan, Zia perhaps realized in the first three years of his rule that Kabul could be used by forces that wanted to control Pakistan, restricting his freedom. Having a pliant government in Kabul was an old desire of Pakistan’s government but after AZO’s arrival, the desire could have been strengthened as Pakistan obviously had to ensure a friendly government in Kabul to avoid political embarrassment at home.

Inside Afghanistan, rapid political changes in the late 1970s had created a volatile condition. On 27 April 1978, the government of Mohammed Daud Khan was toppled and replaced by the government of Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin of People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The arrival of the leftist government led to an increased bonhomie between Kabul and Moscow. The new government launched a series of programmes that triggered a clash between the Islamists and the progressives. The communists undertook revolutionary land reforms triggering a crisis in the traditional Afghan landholding system at the rural level. The communists also imposed a ban on usury citing Islamic and communist reasons. This last step hurt farmers who in pre-Soviet times had borrowed from moneylenders to buy seeds for their urgent needs. The Islamic clerics, the mullahs, sided with the traditionalists and declared that the fight was between the Communist Manifesto and the Holy Quran. With internal contradictions intensifying, Amin deposed Taraki on 14 September 1979 and created a mildly nationalist government under PDPA. With the country slipping in and out of control, Moscow planned to intervene militarily. On 27 December, Hafizullah Amin was killed. Next day, Soviets declared formal military intervention in Afghanistan. The new leader was Babrak Karmal from the ‘Banner’ faction of the same party. The resistance began as soon as the Soviets rolled in with their military hardware. But the war became a puzzling maze due to the tribal warfare that

raged as a subtext to the main narrative of anti-Soviet violence. That meant that to stabilize the vast land mass of Afghanistan, both the tribal as well regional cards had to be played. Marching into Kabul was easy for the Soviets, but soon a feeling grew that the crisis of Afghanistan had no military solution due to the complex nature of the society. Pakistan and Afghanistan were caught in a spiral of violence that produced a noisy but tragic daily soap. Pakistan-based jihadis routinely attacked the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. In response, the PDPA flew its fighter jets bombing Pakistan’s border areas. Summoning each other’s diplomats for long lectures on morality and good international behaviour provided entertainment for the world but was indicative of the lurking danger in the region. As the situation in Afghanistan boiled over under Soviet occupation, mysterious NGOs sprang up in the West asking for help in ending Soviet occupation. They often campaigned for donations and political support to save Afghanistan from Moscow’s aggression. Soon after the formation of the Soviet-backed government of Hafizullah Amin, Al Zulfikar Organization debuted in Kabul. This infuriated Zia who launched his own campaign and sent the jihadis to gather information on the organization.

Rebellion Spreads from Nooristan In March 1979, Nooristanis angry over the growing influence of the Soviets and communism in their affairs rebelled. The fire of rebellion spread fast and by the end of the year, the Soviet Union was forced to undertake a military invasion to ensure survival of the Kabul government. Pakistani involvement with the mujahideen began almost at the same time as the Nooristani rebellion. General Zia opened camps in Pakistan for the Afghan refugees and allowed the Jamaat-i-Islamia, funded by petrodollars from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to preach among the mujahideen. Pakistan’s Pathan leaders began warning Zia that he had begun playing with fire by encouraging the mountainous tribes of the Pathans inside Afghanistan to take to guns with a vengeance.

The Soviets tried to establish a diplomatic channel with Pakistan through the government of Morarji Desai in Delhi, which took a dovish view of Pakistan.32 During his 11 June 1979 visit to Moscow, the Soviet leaders pleaded with Desai to engage Zia. But Desai advised caution and patience. Pakistan initially denied that it was extending support to the mujahideen but the rebel alliance, which was initially named Afghan Liberation Front (ALF), was often helped in reaching out to the media in Peshawar and Islamabad by the Pakistani government. Three organizations emerged in this period to lead the Afghan resistance against godless communism: Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, Hizb-e-Islami and Jamaat-i-Islamia. China got involved and provided initial training to the groups but soon, and more famously, the American secret war was launched during the last days of the Carter government. President Carter’s hawkish national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that he would ‘sow shit in the backyard of Russia’.33 Very soon, the CIA would be involved in one of the greatest secret wars in human history as the presidency of Ronald Reagan would formalize what was started by the Carter–Brzezinski duo. So by 1980, Afghanistan became a flashpoint in the cold war. The Afghan adventure of the Soviet Union came at a critical time in the history of all the leading stakeholders. The Soviet Union found the venture unaffordable due to the political cost that it entailed especially among Moscow’s Asian partners who viewed the Soviet empire sympathetically.34 Indira Gandhi was quick to convey her distaste after her return to power in the first fortnight of January 1980. The United States was faced with the new uncertain burden, and Iran, which had alienated the US after the recent Islamic Revolution, was left feeling the heat of Afghanistan next door. Pakistan, just months under the military rule of General Zia, was yet to capitalize on the opportunity that Afghanistan represented.

A Broad-based Solution to a Crisis It was during this period that India came up with the expressions ‘nonintervention’ and ‘non-interference’. On 31 December 1979, Indira Gandhi

said: ‘We are against all foreign intervention [meaning the Soviets]. But people have been interfering [hinting at Zia’s budding jihad] in this area in one way or the other. The whole area is getting so destabilized that it is quite a danger for us.’35 Within a few weeks of returning to power in the spring of 1980, Indira Gandhi would sense the danger she had spoken about as the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha in 1979: insurgency in Punjab began to spike soon after Indira returned to power due to the free flow of arms and narcotics from the Pakistani side. About Afghanistan, India adopted a bipartisan approach even during 1979. India’s permanent representative to the UN, Brajesh Mishra, who later served as India’s national security adviser during the IC 814 crisis when an aircraft was hijacked to Kandahar from Kathmandu by Pakistanbased terrorists, spoke of non-interference in Afghanistan.36 India participated in the UN discussion on Afghanistan from the beginning and Mishra echoed the line taken by Indira Gandhi in parliament. But unlike many other major powers, India avoided condemning Moscow unequivocally. That meant India expressed its opinion while leaving some space for dialogue with the superpowers. India had multiple concerns. On the one hand, the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviets created a war next door and the involvement of Pakistan in that war ensured a massive flow of weapons into Pakistan from the American CIA. India had stayed away from the crisis initially but quickly realized that such extreme detachment was of no use when the American government sanctioned US $400 million in economic and military aid to Pakistan. The aid was dismissed famously as ‘peanuts’ by Zia but later on would serve as an important landmark as military ties between the US and Pakistan shaped up. Insulted by the ‘peanuts’, Zia would declare that Pakistan would hold talks for help with the Soviets but sadly no major military pact was possible between Pakistan and the USSR as long as the mujahideen based in Pakistan were killing Soviet-backed Afghan PDPA soldiers. The situation in Afghanistan turned increasingly dangerous by the time Indira Gandhi became Indian prime minister defeating the Janata Party government. Soon after Indira’s return to power in 1980, Moscow informed

India that it was willing to leave Afghanistan at the earliest. It was the first time that Moscow gave a hint that its involvement in Afghanistan was not going to last forever.37 Four years down the line, when Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan began their secret dialogue, it would be on the question of a definite timeline of Soviet withdrawal that Reagan would secure Rajiv’s help. The demand for a definite timeline for withdrawal came from Indira Gandhi’s personal experience of handling geopolitical pressure on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971. India managed to save itself from international condemnation by quickly withdrawing from Bangladesh after securing the liberation of the country from Islamabad’s rule. Indira Gandhi, a seasoned player of the network of non-aligned countries, began lobbying for a major international conference on Afghanistan. For this she had ready support from the East European block where the ailing Josep Broz Tito still wielded great influence. In response to Tito’s requests, sent to Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter and Indira Gandhi, Brezhnev declared on 22 February1980 that he was willing to withdraw. The year-long diplomacy between Carter, Indira Gandhi and Brezhnev, however, was punctuated by the demise of Tito and the preoccupation of the Americans in the presidential election, which brought in Ronald Reagan, the new anti-communist icon. A major obstacle to American attempts at peacemaking was the Reagan administration’s well-known aversion for multilateral platforms like the United Nations where the developing countries enjoyed ‘automatic majority’, which usually resulted in a pro-Soviet tilt in the UN General Assembly. Yet, soon after the arrival of the Reagan administration a number of developments in the United Nations created an understanding among the Western and the Eastern blocks leading to the appointment on 22 February 1982 of Ecuadorian diplomat Diego Cordovez as the personal representative of the UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cueller ‘to the region’. Cordovez had perhaps the world’s most difficult task at hand. The only factor that probably helped him was his lack of geographical proximity from South Asia’s conflicted history. Apart from his sense of humour and gift of prolonged conversation, Cordovez had almost nothing else to bank

upon in achieving the dialogue between the warring sides in Afghanistan, as the stakeholders in the dialogue were, in fact, fighting a real battle on the ground. Cordovez was asked by the UN to broker a peace deal between the government of PDPA in Kabul and the mujahideen.38 Indeed, talks between the Pakistan-based mujahideen and the PDPA were important but not the key element in the drama. The real talk had to take place between Moscow and Washington, and Cordovez as a crisis solver did not have a dialogue between the superpowers on his agenda. The talks between the PDPA government and the mujahideen that Cordovez started had an intriguing element of ‘proximity’. It meant that the UN could hold dialogues with both fighting sides in two separate halls without bringing the two sides together in a face-to-face situation. The PDPA government, the mujahideen and the Government of Pakistan, however, would know that they were indulging in talks in close proximity to each other. Elaborate care would be taken to ensure that the delegates would not meet each other even during lunch and restroom breaks. The proximity talks launched in 1982 failed to produce any spectacular results till Rajiv Gandhi became the Indian prime minister. By then, India itself had been hit hard by the cult of freely available weapons that had emanated from Af–Pak and hit at the heart of the Indian state. Afghanistan was no longer a crisis that unfolded over 400 km away from Indian Punjab. Punjab was deeply affected by the flow of arms, and India was being shaken by waves of militant violence as guns from Pakistan made their way into Punjab. Delhi had to go back to the script Indira worked on in 1980.39 The problems of the proximity talks were unique. The PDPA government in Kabul refused to recognize the status of the mujahideen as stakeholders in Afghan affairs, while the Government of Pakistan and the mujahideen refused to accept that the PDPA represented all Afghans. The first challenge was to bring these two opposing sides together on a negotiating table. It was obvious that the two opposing sides, who were mortal enemies, could be brought to a table only if their chief sponsors, the Soviets and the Americans, connected at some secret level with each other.40 While the UN brought the chess pieces to the table, the movers of the two sides remained

stuck in Moscow and Washington DC though both sides pined to be connected with each other. Unable to move ahead in the ‘proximity talks’ in Geneva, both sides of the cold war needed an impartial yet interested party to mediate discreetly to build an atmosphere of dialogue on Afghanistan. It was against this backdrop that Dean would be sent to New Delhi as the ambassador of Ronald Reagan to keep Rajiv Gandhi connected to the Afghan drama that was of interest to America. It was predetermined diplomacy that would first draw Rajiv Gandhi into the Afghan imbroglio and then affect his ties with the United States.

The meltdown of 1988 stemmed from the fact that all did not go according to plan when various stakeholders tried to turn the Cordovez formula into a broad-based solution of creating a national government in Afghanistan. Cordovez believed that interfering in the internal issues of the stakeholders was not part of his agenda, yet he had the task of forging peace between them. It was difficult to create a dialogue-friendly atmosphere without indulging in deep diplomacy with the chief stakeholders. While Cordovez tried to implement his peace talks, Rajiv Gandhi and his officials connected all sides creating the contours of a political consensus. Finally, however, Zia rebelled and charted his own course with American support, even as a broad-based solution was being evolved. Everyone seemed to betray everyone else. An air crash and explosions were probably not unthinkable in such circumstances. Incidentally, the air crash of 17 August 1988 was not the first time that Zia had faced an aviation disaster. Approximately six years ago, AZO had attempted to shoot down Zia’s aircraft, a Falcon, with a Russian heatseeking missile.41 The attempt failed as the guerrillas tasked with the assignment were not skilled enough and the pilot of the Falcon undertook a risky manoeuvre and saved his passengers. But 1988 turned out to be a special year when war spread to the rest of South Asia. By the time Zia crashed out of the scene, the starting shots of the war had long been fired, and they continue to reverberate across South Asia and the world.

2 John Gunther Dean 2006, US PRESIDENT George W. Bush came to New Delhi and gave a speech at the Purana Qila (Old Fort) that would herald a new phase of India–US ties. The new deal for India under George W. Bush was the India– US Civil Nuclear Agreement. Reporters on the foreign affairs beat sat in on official briefings, and attended embassy parties and business lunches thrown by the energy lobby and business associations, as new jargon like ‘123 Agreement’ and ‘Hyde Act’ were bandied about. The legal and legislative jargon was necessary to explain that the latest in India–US ties was based on precedents and agreements going all the way back to the 1950s. The suspected incidents of nuclear espionage and cat-and-mouse games between the US and India over India’s nuclear weaponization were forgotten and the mutual benefits of nuclear energy were highlighted. American journalists, especially the bureau chiefs of the New York Times and Time magazine often led from the front. A number of serving and former American diplomats and specialists on India were sent to New Delhi to lobby for the deal. Frank Wisner, Robert Blackwill, Richard Holbrooke and Richard Haas were just a few of the diplomatic stars allowed to drop in. Senator John Kerry too flew in at a IN

critical moment in bilateral negotiations. No one mentioned that a big fight had broken out when the US had declined to recognize the ‘civilian’ nature of India’s nuclear programme under Rajiv Gandhi. Throughout the negotiation over the nuclear deal, the resident US ambassador and other diplomats acquired almost a permanent front-page presence in the newspapers. It was obvious that the ambassadors and other diplomats play a vital role in US foreign policy especially when new initiatives are undertaken by the US government. US ambassador David C. Mulford remained in the news pushing his government’s agenda through the entire duration of the negotiation from 2005 to 2009, while his counterpart Ronen Sen in Washington DC moved on behalf of India. Yet no one mentioned the name of John Gunther Dean during that season, as if he did not exist. The high-tech cooperation did not come without tough negotiations as commentators reminded each other about the technological apartheid that the US had imposed on India after India tested a nuclear device in 1974 that was followed by further restrictions after India declared its nuclear weapon status with a series of tests conducted on 11 and 13 May 1998.1 Both sides reminded each other that though technological exchange has been a consistent feature of India–US ties, high-tech deals are a sign of an exceptionally good phase in relations.2 It was an opportunity to recall when the US and India had collaborated on high-tech exchanges in the past.3 Such exchanges were a part of strategic affairs, as both sides reminded each other. Discussions often included references to long-standing cooperation between India and the US across a broad spectrum. But few references were made on how transfer of high technology from the US was connected to overall US policy towards South Asia. One key figure in this drama, Ronen Sen, India’s ambassador to George W. Bush’s White House, had dealt with the first season of India–US high-tech exchanges when he served as the joint secretary in charge of strategic affairs, in the office of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Sen’s most important diplomatic partner was often none other than John Gunther Dean. Mellower and maturer in 2005, Sen and his colleagues worked on hightech exchange between India and the US in the twenty-first century.

Yet, as the papers from the John Gunther Dean collection show, from the launch of the INSAT satellites in the mid-1980s4 to the sale of Cray Supercomputer in 1987 and India’s connection with Silicon Valley were made possible because Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan found in John Gunther Dean an able diplomat to implement the plan of sharing US high technology with India.5 India and the United States cooperated in the 1980s in such exchanges, but both made strategic adjustments due to the political changes at the end of the cold war. United States, the victorious superpower, obviously had little need to adjust. It was mostly left to India to adjust to the new realities. India embraced liberalization after the cold war, but cross-border terrorism from Pakistan also embraced India. During the 1990s, India was one of the worst victims of cross-border terrorism, but the United States, despite benefiting from the structural readjustments of the Indian economy, did not join India’s fight against terrorism.6 All that changed when terror hit New York City on 9/11. The nuclear deal was the post-9/11 platform to forge a new generation of strategic partnership. The inconvenient past was, therefore, brushed under the carpets of Delhi’s big hotels where lobbying took place. In 2005–06, neither side showed much interest in reliving the excitement of the mid-1980s. How could the story of high-tech exchanges between India and the US be complete without the version of John Gunther Dean? I could sense a silence fall every time I asked the question over the closing of the strategic heart responsible for the developments in the 1980s. If David C. Mulford and Ronen Sen handled the diplomatic exchanges from the two embassies in 2006, similar exchanges were handled by the American ambassador in Delhi in the 1980s. But at the mention of Dean’s name conversations would end. Yet, it was true that great strides in India–US technological collaboration took place in those pre-Internet days because the tough US ambassador in New Delhi had determined to make a strong bid to improve India–US ties and befriended the prime minister and his family to gain access to the highest echelons of policymaking in India. Despite his contribution to

maintaining smooth channels of communication between India and the US at a critical phase, Dean was forgotten in 2005 and 2006 in Delhi. Why? Because, despite his role in the first big India–US initiative on high technology, Dean, like many others on both sides, stumbled on critical issues like Afghanistan and Pakistan’s silent nuclearization. As a result, the US ambassador who handled high technology in Delhi in the late 1980s became better known in 2005 for the controversy over the 1988 air crash that killed Zia.

To discuss the details of India–US disagreements, I contacted Barbara Crossette, the former chief of bureau of the New York Times who was posted in India during 1990–91. She shared Dean’s email address with me. Thus began a long series of communications with Dean, which grew over the years and finally took the shape of this book. In the course of our communication, Dean mentioned that his autobiography had been published. But he could not use the papers on the India episode as the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, which held the papers, had not yet declassified them. From our discussion, the series of disagreements between India and the US over South Asian regional order became clear to me. Dean’s contention was that political understanding at the highest level is the prerequisite for any bilateral strategic understanding between two great powers, and Rajiv Gandhi shared a warm personal relationship with President Ronald Reagan and VicePresident George H.W. Bush. Yet the warmth did not deliver as much as was expected of it. Even as the idea of this book was taking shape, in January 2014, Dean called to inform me that the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library would probably consider a request for allowing an Indian journalist to access the papers related to Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan diplomacy. Thus began the final part of this book’s research, as now the papers narrated the flow of events, showing how India–US ties reached an unprecedented height in the mid-1980s and then froze by the end of Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership, to be revived only a decade later by the visit of President Bill Clinton.

Over phone calls, emails and with the help of Dean’s papers, the story of the secret concord and discord between India and the United States in the 1980s became clear. While India–US partnership was to focus on high technology and IT, paving the way for the Indian government’s plan for the new economy, the very opposite happened.7 As India’s strategic aims did not match with those of the United States, the landmark gains of bilateral economic and technological ties were soon overwhelmed by the India–US disagreement on Pakistan, Afghanistan and nuclear issues, which summed up the reasons for the lack of political warmth between the two sides, despite India following the Western economic model after 1991. After the controversy over the assassination of President Zia, Dean had been lost to the world. So my interaction with Dean first was focused on recovering John Gunther Dean beyond ‘Who killed Zia?’

In the autumn of 2014, John Gunther Dean welcomed me to his Paris home. As the car carrying me from the airport came to a halt outside 29 Jules Sandeau, I found Dean waiting by the steel door to his apartment. By then, we had been in conversation for almost five years, frequently over longdistance telephone calls and emails. Dean has been out of formal diplomacy since 1989, but he is regularly visited by diplomats from various countries who want to learn from his experience. Due to security concerns, gaining access to the Deans is difficult. But before I left Delhi, he made sure that I would stay with him at his apartment. ‘Martine wants you to stay with us,’ he told me. When I reached Paris on 17 September 2014, Dean’s trusted Algerian driver of twenty years was waiting outside the Charles de Gaulle Airport. As his Filipino aide dragged my suitcase up, Dean made clear that he liked to be in charge and my comfort and well-being would be looked after by him. ‘You will be in good company, my friend. My other Indian friend, General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, used to stay in the room whenever he visited us,’ he remarked showing me my bed.8 Sculptures from South and South-East Asia were liberally placed inside the room. The room as much

as his flat, 29 Jules Sandeau, told the tale of his life’s journey – one long love affair with South and South-East Asia. While Dean travelled for work, Martine travelled for art, cuisine and cookbooks. A top shelf sports a cookbook of ‘CIA wives’ and another reveals a treasure trove of South-East Asian cuisine. On one end of their Ushaped flat is Martine’s personal study with an Internet station and books, and on the other end is Dean’s study with deep-fitted cupboards where the papers of the John Gunther Dean collection rested for several years before they were transferred out in the early years of the twenty-first century. Dean spoke about Rajiv Gandhi with warmth as if he were still a part of his life. New Delhi was a challenging posting for Dean. Next door, in Pakistan, jihadis and the CIA were preparing to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan. India dealt with insurgency and narcotics spillover from Afghanistan, even as Pakistan built its clandestine nuclear weapons programme to counter India’s regional dominance. Dean had served in many locations in the world, but he was simply overwhelmed by the dimensions of the problems of South Asia. He kept his head down and maintained his cool while working. He enjoyed the confidence of his president in Washington DC, and the Indian prime minister granted him total freedom of access. Things looked great for Dean and his discreet but direct diplomacy. Throughout his posting, Dean collected news reports and analysis relevant to his work and created a massive collection of news reports on India, though towards the end of his tenure in Delhi, Dean himself became the news. In August 1988, Dean did not care for his successful career. Martine advised caution and wanted him to delay his travel. But Dean had already served in Delhi for more than the usual three years. His career had ended for all practical purposes but he was not going to go down without a last fight. But why would Dean fly to the State Department for an argument with the Secretary of State and possibly the vice-president of the United States? As I asked this question that evening in Paris, Martine explained that US ambassadors till the 1990s had been powerful diplomats, but since the end of the cold war and the arrival of communication technologies, the power of

real-time decision making had been more or less taken away from them, as faster communications ensured stronger control over US embassies by the State Department. So the aircraft that Dean boarded on 10 September 1988 for Washington DC was supposed to take him not for a conversation with his employers, but a conversation with equals.

John Gunther Dean was destined to lead a successful life, which however did not mean an easy journey. He was born on 24 February 1926 in Breslau, in the Ruhr Valley of Silesia. Breslau was an intellectual centre during the early decades of the twentieth century when the Nazis were on the rise in Germany. Located near Poland and Czechoslovakia, Breslau attracted traders, academics, writers and industrialists. Dean’s mother, Lucy Ashkenaczy, was from a prosperous Austro-Hungarian banking family. His father Josef Dienstfertig was a Jewish lawyer and did not face the usual anti-Semitism of Europe due to his fame and expertise. The Dienstfertigs had lived in Silesia for five centuries. When he visited Jerusalem for the opening of the Hebrew University as a member of a team of Jewish citizens of Europe, Dienstfertig surprised the Zionists by declaring himself a nationalist Jew from Germany. In November 1938, the Gestapo came to the Dienstfertigs. ‘Herr Doktor, Herr Doktor! Siekommen! Schnell!’ yelled the guard of the apartment building when he saw the Nazi police.9 Josef Dienstfertig ran out through the back stairs and contacted the US embassy in Berlin. Within two weeks, the Dienstfertigs were on their way to becoming Americans and took refuge in New York City. To fit into the New York crowd of Queens, the Dienstfertigs changed their surname to Dean. But shortening the surname was not enough. Gunther was the future American diplomat’s first name and it sounded too German for the wartime United States. The school principal in New York gave him a new name, John. So John Gunther Dean was reborn in the United States in 1938 named after journalist John Gunther.10 The young John Gunther Dean studied hard as his parents tried to recover from the trauma of displacement and discrimination in Europe. The United

States was at war with imperial Japan and Nazi Germany after Pearl Harbour was attacked on 7 December 1941. Next year John was at Harvard University. His parents were happy with the academic success of their sixteen-year-old son. At Harvard Dean was introduced to a blend of academic rigour, diplomacy and high-profile intelligence operations. In 1942–43, more and more adult males were being called up for military duty. The provost of the university, Paul Buck, told incoming students that they were not going to be just students and must consider it a duty to serve in the war effort. Harvard changed its functions to keep the university running twelve months a year, with a twelve-week summer semester added to the standard fall and spring terms. Dean left Harvard in 1944 and joined the army. This ended his status as a German or ‘enemy alien’. He became a naturalized American citizen and he took the oath of citizenship in military uniform. A big moment for an eighteen-year-old! After some quick training at Fort Belvoir, Dean was sent to a top-secret intelligence site named merely as Post Office Box 1142. It was here that the captured submariners, scientists, soldiers and bureaucrats from Nazi Germany would be brought for debriefing. Dean’s primary job was to engage the arrested scientists and help the American authorities to debrief them. The debriefings would train him about the world that was to follow after 1947. At this early stage in his career at Post Office Box 1142, Dean would learn to blend technology with state secrets, which became a lifelong lesson for him. The early training also equipped him to question government-given facts. The experiment of information and intelligence management at the POB 1142 would contribute to the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. Intelligence gathering underwent radical technological changes during World War II. It was also at POB 1142 that German scientists revealed Germany’s aborted plans to acquire nuclear weapons.11 Throughout Dean’s career, the quest for technology, nuclear weapons and developmental issues would evolve to become the mainstay of global diplomacy. Dean returned to Harvard once the war was over and after graduation, joined the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) in Paris. He also

got an offer to join the newly formed CIA and stood a good chance at succeeding in the world of espionage due to his early exposure at POB 1142. But his father advised him not to join the agency. From 1950 to ’53, Dean worked in Paris and Belgium assisting in the implementation of the Marshall Plan for the recovery of war-torn Europe. Meanwhile, he got married to Martine Duphenieux, a Frenchwoman from one of the aristocratic families of southern France. The Deans had a lot in common. For one, they were both restless and loved to travel. Opportunity came soon when beginning in 1953, John Gunther Dean became active in Vietnam where France was promoting the Marshall Plan. Just as Dean’s first job as an intelligence officer was influenced by his proficiency in German, his mother tongue, his assignment in Vietnam was influenced by his proficiency in French, which he had learnt in school and now practised at home with Martine. This was also the year when Dean met Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and struck a close friendship. Dean’s assignment in South-East Asia would change when the French forces were defeated by the Vietminh in the battle of Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954. The Dien Bien Phu defeat brought Dean face-to-face with the first Geneva Accord of his life, which saw the French forces quit the French colonies in South-East Asia. American involvement in Vietnam grew, however, when the US refused to sign the Geneva Accord and instead, fearing the worst as per the domino theory, adopted South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover of South-East Asia. After the stint in Saigon, Dean left for Vientiane, Laos, where he worked from 1956 to 1958. Dean’s long stint in South-East Asia under very difficult circumstances made a lasting impression on him and he would return to the region after spending a decade in Europe and Washington DC. In 1970, Dean was once again sent to central Vietnam, as deputy to the American commander of Military Region 1 for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS). Covering South-East Asia, Africa, France and Belgium, Dean had served for nearly two decades abroad almost continuously. By the time he was posted to Vietnam in 1970, Dean was already a force to reckon with and one of the upcoming

diplomatic stars who had contacts with Richard Nixon as well as his political opponents. Having witnessed and interacted with the power elite of South-East Asia, Dean was one of the foremost experts on South-East Asia in the State Department and it became evident by the early 1970s that he was going be the prime mover of American interest in the region for many years to come. Over the next two decades, Dean would be posted from France to Cambodia, to Laos, to Lebanon and Thailand before his final posting as the US ambassador to New Delhi in 1984. In Cambodia, Dean wielded enormous influence as he was expected to cut a deal with the Khmer Rouge. But as Washington DC got caught in the political shock of the Watergate scandal and a new administration led by Gerald Ford took over, the stage was set for the arrival of the Khmer Rouge. It was at this time that a wrestler-turned-diplomat, Richard Armitage, emerged in the American diplomatic horizon as a brave crisis solver coordinating barges carrying ammunition, food and other equipment down the Mekong river from Saigon to Phnom Penh. (Armitage would make a ‘fleeting appearance’ in the India–Pak papers of John Gunther Dean collection.) Though the Cambodian operation ended in a fiasco, Dean and Armitage gained kudos for their handling of the crisis. On 12 April 1975, the American embassy in Phnom Penh was evacuated without any loss of life. From the White House, Gerald Ford took note of the cover of the magazines carrying the photograph of Dean with the American flag folded in a triangle. Four months later, on 14 August 1975, Ford sent a message of commendation to Dean for his cool handling of the meltdown in Phnom Penh. ‘You were given one of the most difficult assignments in the history of the Foreign Service and carried it out with distinction,’12 Ford wrote to Dean.

The Lebanese Interlude

John Gunther Dean is one of the veteran Jewish diplomats of the United States. But, Dean has never been a promoter of Jewish interests abroad. His focus always remained American interests. However, there could not be any quarrel between Dean and other Jewish/Zionist interests due to his origins in World War II Europe. Dean was as Jewish as a devout Jew could be. But there was a major difference as he followed strict American foreign policy goals. Dean may have been guilty of self-obsession but he never promoted Israeli interests consciously, mainly because he served in Asia and Africa for most of his three decades of service in diplomacy. After Dean’s service in Cambodia, his next assignment was as the ambassador of the United States to Denmark. The European break was obviously a reward for Dean, but also a crucial cold war posting. The Israel factor, however, drew Dean in by the 1970s. A cataclysmic civil war began in Lebanon in 1975 as Christian guerrillas clashed against the Muslim forces, divided on ethnic and sectarian lines. This civil war in Lebanon was unlike the one in Cambodia. Issues of religious freedom, especially for Christians in Vietnam, came up but at the heart of the civil wars of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos was the ideological divide of the cold war era. But the war in Lebanon was sui generis and involved superpowers as well as regional powers, and contained various ideological and religious overtones. By 1980, the Lebanese civil war had become a major regional problem with all parties fuelling violence. On 27 August 1980, fighters armed with AK-47s and anti-tank rounds attacked the official vehicle carrying the Deans. Within a few minutes, the vehicles were showered with rounds of high-velocity bullets and Light Anti-Tank Weapons (LAWs). Luckily, there was no physical harm but the experience left Dean seething. What added to the official anxiety was that it was the second time in less than five years that the American ambassador in Lebanon was targeted. In 1976 Ambassador Francis E. Meloy, Economic Counsellor Robert O. Waring and a chauffeur were kidnapped and killed. No one quite knew who killed the American ambassador in 1976. And in 1980, the American ambassador was targeted again.

Dean launched his own investigation into the attack and based on support from the Lebanese authorities, Palestinian sources and his own friends in the US government, came to the conclusion that the attack was somehow linked to Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, who were involved in the attempt to assassinate him.13 The episode triggered off a negative relationship between Dean and the Jewish state. Ironical as it seems, Dean and Israel remained at loggerheads, unlike other Jewish diplomats and policymakers in the US who often displayed affinity for the Jewish state.14 This discord would frequently surface as Dean would travel from Lebanon to Thailand and then India. He also raised the inconvenient question over how far should American diplomats and lawmakers go in support of Israel without undermining the agenda of the United States. This antipathy between Dean and Israel continued till the end of his career when Dean accused the Mossad of being responsible for the crash of Pak One carrying President Zia-ul-Haq. In those days when Blackberrys and Gmail groups were not used to control ambassadors posted in foreign shores from the nodal centre of foreign affairs, ambassadors, especially of the major powers, often assumed huge and sometimes a disproportionate amount of influence. As a diplomat serving in danger zones, taking decisions in real time had become a natural practice for Dean. But ever since he began dealing with difficult diplomatic issues that could turn into political issues, Dean felt the need to preserve evidence to support him in future, just in case.

The Differentiator and Oriental Princes Dean’s main qualification was his ability to push the limits of his profession. Over the years, he also developed several survival tactics. One of the key strategies that Dean employed in his diplomacy was that during each of his postings, he cultivated the normal diplomatic channels alongside cultivating political figures of host countries. Following these two tracks helped Dean in negotiating the complex diplomatic terrain of South and South-East Asia. Dean repeatedly used his high contacts in Laos,

Cambodia, Lebanon, Thailand and France to resolve complicated diplomatic matters. Dean would bring the same quality to India in 1985. Dean engaged a long list of such personalities in diplomacy. From Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos to Dany Chamoun in Lebanon and Rajiv Gandhi in India, Dean had discovered a special kind of Asian leader, deeply conflicted, an outwardly westernized member of the country’s elite. These leaders were part of a new category of ‘oriental princes’. Dean courted these individuals as they provided quick access to legitimacy in societies that were unknown to him. Using the ‘oriental princes’ was a pragmatic way of staying on top of local developments. In 1972, he landed in Laos as the deputy to Ambassador ‘Mac’ Godley and then proceeded to befriend the leader of Laos, Prince Souvanna Phouma. Prince Phouma was a member of the liberal, Western-educated elite of Laos but he had failed to prevent a long-running feud between the royal government and the military elite, and the Pathet Lao opposition. Souvanna Phouma became a friend of the Deans. His children went to school in Paris, and Dean used to play bridge with Prince Phouma. This friendship opened a window to the top decision makers in Laos, which was crucial since the entire South-East Asian region was facing some sort of civil conflict at that time. A few months after Dean’s arrival in Laos, Godley was called home by Nixon to be his assistant secretary of state on Near Eastern Affairs, which left Dean in charge of the US embassy in Vientiane. As the charge d’affairs, Dean carried out some really adventurous interventions and negotiations, which played a role in preventing a coup in Laos. Along with the Laotian leader, Dean created a coalition government formula for Laos, which he felt should have been allowed to succeed, but did not. Dean swiftly emerged as the candidate to be the US ambassador to Cambodia where the spillover from the Vietnam war had created a dangerous situation. Sure enough, in March 1974 he was sent out to Cambodia as the American ambassador. Dean was familiar with Cambodia’s king Norodom Sihanouk from his posting in the country in the 1950s. But in 1974, Sihanouk was in exile in China and Dean worked with the royalty on the ground in Cambodia, Prince

Sirik Matak, uncle of the exiled king. Dean became passionately involved with solving the civil war but finally the American government felt it was best to leave Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge. Dean left Cambodia with his memories of activist diplomacy and the realization that Sirik Matak, who worked very closely with him, was killed by the Khmer Rouge in a public execution in the middle of Phnom Penh. Sirik Matak’s death was perhaps the first brutal assassination of a leading political friend that Dean witnessed in his diplomatic tenure. Dean’s ability to befriend political leaders and his drive to get extra information helped him and it also raised his personal profile back home. This tendency of getting things done by connecting with the political leadership had its pitfalls as the assessment of the ambassador on the ground often differed from the assessment of his bosses back in Washington DC. In India too Dean was not happy to deal with the Ministry of External Affairs. Soon after first meeting Rajiv Gandhi in Washington DC in the summer of 1985, Dean felt the need to open communication channels with the highest decision makers in India. So from the summer of 1985, he began working on creating what Ronen describes as ‘the differentiator’, a set of circumstances that would help him create channels with the highest decision maker and his household. Dean turned to George Washington to create the ‘differentiator’ moment in India–US diplomacy. Though anti-colonial sentiment was strong in Delhi’s political corridors, Dean made a symbolic move to bring portrait of Washington by Gilbert Stuart to New Delhi in January 1986. The massive portrait was hung on a wall in Dean’s bedroom. The painting had a legendary past as it was first gifted by American ice merchants to a trader in Calcutta in the early twentieth century. It was not a placid painting like some others by the same artist. In this one, Washington had been painted with his left hand resting on his sword hilt. His right hand was pointing towards a challenge. The portrait radiated anxiety and hinted at troubles ahead. Gilbert’s Washington suited the turbulent mood of conflict-torn South Asia.

Dean invited Sonia Gandhi, the Indian prime minister’s wife, to a private viewing of the American classic. Sonia Gandhi walked into Roosevelt House in New Delhi, and a bond with the Deans was formed. Sonia and her family lived in a necessary but oppressive security bubble. It was a masterly diplomatic move to take Sonia out of that bubble for a social gathering. Away from the tension of security, Sonia and the Deans spent a friendly evening. The other guests waited when the Deans chatted with Sonia. The American ambassador had appealed to her aesthetic senses to emerge triumphant. What made the conversation between the Deans and Sonia work was the mutual understanding of the challenges they faced daily. The hosts were moved by and instantly connected to Sonia’s problems. Such moments of bonding going beyond formal diplomatic protocol were rare but had a unique merit as this kept a top-level channel open for communication. Like Souvanna Phouma, Yasser Arafat and Sirik Matak, Dean planned to befriend the Indian prime minister personally.

In January 2014, three decades after Dean was appointed the US ambassador to New Delhi, he revealed to me that the US National Archives had finally agreed to his requests and declassified the bulk of his Indiarelated papers. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library released the papers, including some of the detailed negotiations between Rajiv Gandhi and several American interlocutors such as President Ronald Reagan, to me. The dramatic nature of the cables sent from the US embassy in Delhi, and other US embassies, including the one at Islamabad under Arnold Raphel, and the State Department in Washington DC, reveals an elaborate plot, which, if allowed to succeed, would have transformed South Asia and provided the world a more enduring legacy of Ronald Reagan as a peacemaker. The papers also reveal the role of Rajiv Gandhi in this peacemaking effort, which finally fell apart. My interview with Dean in the winter of 2014 showed that apart from Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, only a few people including the top advisers on both sides had some idea about the secret talks that Rajiv held

with Ronald Reagan and President Zia for stabilizing Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. Dean had been collecting papers since 1967 when he was posted in Paris at the peak of the Vietnam War, because he had learnt two lessons early on: first, never trust one’s colleagues fully because presidential politics would try to spoil the gains of diplomacy. Second, it was always necessary to have evidence of one’s own role in complex issues. ‘If people are willing to subvert constructive work, and they are, you need to make sure they cannot lie about it as well,’ he wrote in his autobiography.15 At that point in his career, Dean decided to keep copies of all memos and cables that he produced. Dean collected all papers of executive importance, as he wanted to make sure that people with a stake in the status quo could not subvert his efforts in the future. By discreetly photocopying executive communication and storing them in his private files, Dean ensured that his version would not be lost to history. The India papers, therefore, resulted out of this habit and though others have not spoken about them or the plan that becomes apparent in them, it is Dean’s papers that help us rediscover the forgotten peace attempt that was allowed to fail due to political exigencies of the time. Rajiv Gandhi, who never disclosed his diplomatic efforts to help solve the Afghanistan crisis, was assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 21 May 1991. Inside 29 Jules Sandeau, the evening plans of Martine and John Gunther Dean were disrupted by the news of Gandhi’s assassination. He was killed in Sriperumbudur, but from two of the large gleaming photo frames in the main drawing room at 29 Jules Sandeau, Rajiv Gandhi smiled at the Deans. Violence was no stranger to Dean but the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi also removed an important witness to history. Rajiv’s gifts, among them a carpet that he had given Dean in 1987, the photographs and a closet full of Rajiv’s personal letters and diplomatic communications with the American leaders ensure that his is almost a live presence in Dean’s house. As the TV began showing Rajiv Gandhi’s international meetings, Dean dialled friends across the world to find out more on the news.

But at some level Dean already knew that Rajiv’s assassination was part of the new normal in South Asia. A new era had begun in 1988, in the way Rajiv Gandhi himself had warned Ronald Reagan about. In this new age, covert war and terror, not negotiation, would play the leading role.

3 Rajiv’s Western Affinities FADED AND YELLOWED,

A four-page document had been filed away in a cavernous cupboard in Dean’s Paris study. The document was a profile of the young Indian prime minister, and evidence of the US government’s deep interest in the character of Rajiv Gandhi and the political challenges before him. The document shows that the State Department was aware of the conflict between Rajiv and India’s bureaucracy and pro-Soviet public opinion. India’s biggest block of pro-Soviet supporters were inside the military bureaucracy, the paper observed. Repeatedly, the paper found internal factors that could prevent the warming up of bilateral ties between India and the US. But the prime minister was singled out for being committed to India–US ties. The anonymous author of the official note declares that in Rajiv Gandhi, India had found a leader with a ‘personal affinity for Western culture and conviction in economic reform’. The paper notes that Rajiv Gandhi moved away from anti-US rhetoric in the early months of his government on issues where India differed with the US. This generous assessment apart, the note also listed the risks ahead for Rajiv Gandhi as the prime minister of the complex Republic of India.

There were hindrances in his plan to draw India closer to the US. His ministers were not free of corruption. Some were even involved in illegal smuggling activities that the Americans were aware of. India remained chaotic despite years of attempts by the government to establish order. Communal disturbances, poverty and a failure in governance could endanger both Rajiv Gandhi and his government. Under the given circumstances, a pro-West leader of India was the best bet for the United States. Despite the new beginnings, there was tension. More official visits had to be organized so that the two countries could stay connected with each other and share responsibilities. But the paper pointed out that things could change if the US moved closer to China or made extraordinary concessions to Pakistan. A downturn in India–US ties was possible if Pakistan went nuclear, which would mean that the United States supported Pakistan’s clandestine attempts. A weakened prime minister under a possible political scandal would be unable to deal with the pressure of failed foreign policy with the US. Strong interpersonal ties between Indian and American officials were recommended as a solution to keep anti-US sentiments at bay. But, the official note mentioned that the possible assassination of Rajiv Gandhi – maybe by a disgruntled Sikh militant – might jeopardize both India–US ties as well as India’s long-term survival. ‘A weak successor is less likely to improve India–US ties,’ the paper concluded. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was the best thing that had happened to India–US ties in more than three decades since 1947.1 But for Rajiv Gandhi’s plans to succeed, India had to change.

After Indira, Who? Indira Gandhi returned to power as prime minister of India on 14 January 1980 but the old sparkle was missing. Yet she tried to show that she was ready for the bold new world order and projected herself as the grand leader of India on a global comeback trail. From the beginning, her fourth term was different from her previous stints as the leader of India. South Asia was

in a shambles in 1980. Afghanistan was formally occupied by the Soviet Union nineteen days before her swearing in; Bangladesh was without Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; a Tamil insurgency was brewing in Sri Lanka and would pull her in soon. Alarming things had happened in Pakistan during her absence from power. Soon after her election defeat in the spring of 1977, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan was overthrown on 5 July, in a military coup by General Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto was eventually sent to the gallows on 4 April 1979. Her old allies and enemies had vanished. South Asia was now an uncertain new place even for the formidable Mrs Gandhi. Indira Gandhi had been in power continuously since 1966 barring thirtyfour months during the late 1970s. During those months of absence from South Block, the South Asian map that she had helped redraw after the Indo-Pak war of 1971 was threatened with one more round of redrawing. Afghanistan had emerged as the chief trouble spot. Russian tanks waited on the other side of the Khyber Pass, overlooking the plains of the Indus. Intrigue and arms ruled the Af–Pak region as several countries were drawn into the Great Game being played next to the Indian border. The real issue facing Indira Gandhi was that her friends, the Soviets, were responsible for creating the conflict in Afghanistan, which was now her problem. She had trusted the Soviets in the past. But the old warmth was sullied by recent traces of suspicion. New friendships were needed. Old ties had to be revived or discarded. Every opportunity had to be used for this project – even if the opportunity came during a funeral. In the first week of May 1980, Indira Gandhi flew to Belgrade to attend the spectacular funeral of her father’s friend Josip Broz Tito on May 8. The funeral was a stunning affair and was filmed for posterity. On the sidelines of this gathering of world leaders, who pretended to mourn while conducting serious diplomacy, Indira met the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. She expressed her surprise at not being kept informed on the Soviet move to capture Kabul. Brezhnev, ageing and unwell, offered his regrets. The warmth between the old friends had been interrupted by Indira’s exile from power during 1977 to 1979.

Two-and-a-half years later, in November 1982, Indira flew to Moscow to attend Brezhnev’s funeral. She introduced her heir apparent Rajiv to the Soviets. Rajiv and the Soviets had a crackling chemistry. The world order was changing fast. A new generation was coming, and they bonded well with each other. Once again, India–Soviet ties were looking better. The ‘reverberations and clash of rival powers’2 that Indira Gandhi heard intensified in 1984. Kabul had been besieged by the mujahideen backed by the CIA and supplied by General Zia of Pakistan. Rockets and bombs began hitting the beautiful, rugged Afghan capital. Soon, it was time for Indira’s own funeral. All over the world, statesmen prepared to fly to India to attend one of the grandest South Asian funerals in recent decades. Like the other grand funerals of the time, this one too was an opportunity for a round of diplomacy. Hearing the news of Indira’s assassination, President Babrak Karmal in Kabul summoned Ambassador Jyotindra Nath Dixit of India to his office immediately to learn more about the conditions in Delhi. The president of Afghanistan too had learnt of the unfolding developments in Delhi like Dixit barely an hour ago, on Radio Moscow, which due to the Afghan war had become the official carrier of bad news to Kabul.3 Within an hour of the declaration of the demise of Indira Gandhi, Karmal drew India into the Afghan war rhetoric. After checking facts about India and the leadership with Dixit, Karmal finalized the draft of his message. The message, which read like an English translation of a Persian letter, expressed overwhelming love and respect for the assassinated Indian leader.4 Karmal saw a chance to impress the new leadership and made the most of the opportunity. After getting the official account from Dixit, Karmal handed over messages meant for Rajiv Gandhi, who was to succeed his mother to the post of prime minister later that same day, for President Zail Singh, and for the people of India. The letters described the assassination as a ‘dirty and wild action’ and pinned the blame of the violent action on the ‘bitterest enemies of free India’.5 In less than an hour of the announcement of the death of Indira Gandhi, the Afghan president’s office had dug out Indira’s last public

speech in faraway Bhubaneswar where she had spoken of her fears of a violent death just a day ago, and quoted portions of it in his own letter to the Indians. Investigation into the assassination was to begin in India but Karmal declared that there was a deep conspiracy behind it, cutting across national boundaries. In a few days, the Afghan media was to echo their president’s conspiracy theories. The dramatized condolences from Kabul were necessitated by the troubles facing the government in Kabul. The lonely communist government of Afghanistan required regional friends. The letters wanted to secure a lifeline between Kabul and Delhi. Karmal was in trouble. His government, backed by the Soviet Union, was facing the heat of the US-backed mujahideen from Pakistan. He needed friends. India could be the biggest friend. He conveyed to Indira’s successor Rajiv Gandhi that he could be India’s partner if only Rajiv gave his consent to his plans. Politics had begun even before Indira Gandhi’s body was brought home from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Indira Gandhi had been killed, and the world was eager to turn her departure into an occasion to shape its future. Delhi raced against time to host a funeral to equal a mini-UN summit on the banks of the Yamuna. Such was the flow of dignitaries to the international airport in Delhi prior to the funeral, that the chief of the protocol division of the external affairs ministry of India, Mohammed Hamid Ansari, earned a departmental record for having welcomed the largest number of dignitaries at the airport.6 Indeed, the world was flying into India to share its grief. Apart from the grief, they also saw the next episode of India’s story unfold. What began next was a spectacular funeral televised in detail, whose ratings temporarily even edged out Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign to the White House. Across India people ran for the nearest TV set and mobs raided homes – not to loot, but to watch the funeral procession. They found more than a funeral on their TV screens. Doordarshan telecast Indira’s funeral but people saw Rajiv Gandhi in the camera’s focus. The long shot was favoured as Rajiv and his family featured in the tragedy.

One of the many dignitaries that Hamid Ansari welcomed on that sombre occasion was General Zia-ul-Haq. Zia used the opportunity, just like Karmal, to try to impress India. The leadership of the United States was absent at the funeral since it was election time in the US and President Ronald Reagan was seeking a second term. But this absence did not hurt India–US ties. Former US ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, a tall Boston academic, represented his country. Despite the absence of higher official representation, India–US ties had been steadily on an upswing in the last two years of Indira’s rule. As part of this growing bonhomie, Vice President George H.W. Bush, a former director of the CIA, had been visiting India more often than in the chilly decade of the 1970s. In contrast to the lukewarm personal ties between Indira Gandhi and her Soviet friends from1980 to 1984, her ties with the American leaders had been slowly getting warm. Bush had also met Indira, Rajiv and Sonia during Indira’s last prime ministerial trip to Washington DC in 1982. As India’s discomfort with Russian guns across the Khyber Pass grew, so did its warmth for the American leadership. But selling India–US friendship to the Indian people, who for decades had been fed a potent mix of anti-colonial rhetoric and the history of Indo-Soviet cooperation, was not an easy proposition. Further, it was risky to speak of India–US ties positively after Indira Gandhi’s traumatic assassination, when the ‘foreign hand’ theory hinted at a Western conspiracy to eliminate her.7 Yet, that is exactly what Rajiv Gandhi would have to do ultimately. President Zia returned after attending Indira’s funeral and held a press conference on landing at Islamabad airport, underlining his willingness to make India–Pakistan ties peaceful. Zia then invited the newly sworn-in prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, to join hands with Pakistan to end the occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces. Commentators speculated on whether Rajiv would reciprocate Zia’s overtures and if the two rivals could make common cause with each other to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.8 This was easier said than done because around that time Zia had begun arming the mujahideen against the

Soviets in Afghanistan, which might have provided the reasons for the breathless reference to the ‘bitterest enemies’ of India in the letters sent to India by the Afghan president’s office. Both the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan sized each other up continuously while fighting the diplomatic battle that raged even as the real war on the border of the two countries captivated the world’s attention. Afghanistan believed that the Pakistani leadership wanted to keep them away from India’s orbit. The Afghans criticized Zia’s visit to Delhi as ‘theatrical’.9 In the meantime, the war between the communist government of Afghanistan and the military government of Pakistan intensified. In the third week of November 1984, three transport aircraft were hit at a fairly high altitude over the more volatile parts of the Afghanistan–Pakistan frontiers. Investigations into the hits showed that the anti-Soviet mujahideen had acquired SAM-7 and SAM-9 missiles.10 Though the United States– Saudi Arabia–Pakistan alliance was yet to introduce the game-changing Stinger missiles into Afghanistan, reports suggested that the insurgents had gained an upper hand in the fight with the Soviets. The Afghan government was worried as the aircraft were not combat jets but were employed in routine transportation and cargo duties. The hits showed that the mujahideen were not willing to play by the rules and were able to access force multipliers from outside powers. Back in India, the atmosphere of paranoia persisted and the new prime minister was finding it difficult to deal with the rising anti-West sentiments in his party and the bureaucracy. Events contributed their bit to feed the paranoia.11 Rajiv Gandhi wanted to bring technological change in India. But how could he do that without partnering with the United States, which was hated by his party and supporters?

Conspiracy and ‘Foreign Hand’ Theorists After 31 October 1984, Delhi was rife with wild rumours. Security agencies combed Delhi’s social network with suspicion, and conspiracy theories and political speculations about what lay ahead abounded. Everyone suspected

everyone else, and even the prime minister and his family were not spared the campaign of malice.12 As the Indian capital slowly pulled itself out of the anarchy that followed the biggest political assassination in decades, and the mob killings of Sikhs in revenge, the corridors of power remained engrossed in talks about who could have plotted the audacious assassination of the prime minister of India. But through the difficulties of those days, a new beginning was made by Indira’s successor, who made it clear in his early addresses that change was his agenda. Few knew what change under Rajiv Gandhi would look like, but given his pro-West leanings, it was clear from the beginning that the US would be part of the change that India was seeking. However, given the political paranoia prevailing in the country, the pro-West agenda had to be sold slowly. In Bombay, less than a month after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, there was a development with international ramifications. It still remains unexplained, which shows that the paranoia in the country was not entirely without basis. R.D. Pradhan, soon to be the Union home secretary, was serving the last few days as the home secretary of Maharashtra when one morning the phone rang in his office. Julio Ribeiro, the tough but popular police commissioner, was calling to inform him that the deputy high commissioner of the United Kingdom posted in Bombay, Percy Norris, had been shot dead. Norris was in the backseat of his car when two motorcycleborne assassins came close and fired at him.13 Pradhan found that the murder was committed with clinical precision. One bullet was fired from a high-velocity weapon and made a neat wound on one temple and exited through the other. Percy Norris was evidently killed by professional assassins or by those trained to carry out cold clinical murders. Pradhan was further surprised that the British high commission in Delhi itself did not wish to discuss this matter in detail with the law enforcement authorities. Pradhan and his police colleagues suspected that Norris was a high-level intelligence operative from the United Kingdom. But in his only public comment on the assassination of Norris, in his book, Pradhan points at Lebanese fighters who were suspected to have targeted the deputy high commissioner. Questions about the murder of a high-level

British intelligence official in India, less than a month after the assassination of the Indian prime minister, should have been asked.14 But no attempt was made for a deeper inquiry. No reasons were given for not allowing curious investigators of the Bombay police to dig deep. The British authorities knew better. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pradhan learnt, was to stop over at Bombay on her way to Hong Kong and spend an hour at the international airport. On 6 December 1984, Thatcher landed in Bombay and was received by Pradhan, who communicated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s best wishes to her. Pradhan then conveyed India’s regret over the murder of Percy Norris. But Thatcher surprised Pradhan by not discussing the murder in detail. Pradhan could sense some quiet scandal lurking behind the murder of Norris, which demanded the presence of Thatcher in Bombay even though she had been in India just a month earlier to attend Indira Gandhi’s funeral. Pradhan remains tight-lipped on this issue but it is obvious that international interest in India was growing in the early 1980s and the Western powers were not going to be quiet bystanders if the situation demanded action. Norris did not get to live in India long. He arrived in Bombay on 8 October and within a month and a half, he was shot dead on a busy street in India’s financial capital. A shadowy outfit named the Revolutionary Organization for Socialist Moslems took responsibility for the murder and claimed that Norris was a Scotland Yard asset who used diplomatic cover to work for his government and for the CIA. Many uncomfortable questions arose out of the murder. How could a shadowy spy get posted to India merely twenty-five days before a political assassination and who could murder him in daylight within a month of the biggest political assassination of India? Intriguingly, security professionals in Delhi continued to echo the CIA theory that Indira Gandhi herself loved to promote to suit her political convenience. Now the shadow of ‘foreign hands’ became the talk of the town. One positive result of this paranoia was that Rajiv Gandhi went to the polls looking like an invincible prince who could slay both his political opponents at home and the evil forces elsewhere in the world. Students

from Delhi University gathered in front of the US Information Service in Connaught Place, shouting anti-imperialist slogans against the CIA, MI6 and the rest of the imaginary and real enemies of India and Rajiv’s political ideology. Few among those protesters cared to discuss the contradiction that Rajiv Gandhi as the prime minister of India would in fact be known for his ‘Western affinities’.15

Several parallel strands of the story take off from October 1984. The story of Rajiv Gandhi, the story of South Asia, and the superpowers’ game plan for South Asia were all set to take a new course from this watershed in Indian history. With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to highlight the context in which the change of power took place in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The enormous election victory of Rajiv Gandhi was a brief diversion from the more engrossing stories of India and its neighbourhood, which consumed much of his energy and time in subsequent years. On 29 December, Rajiv Gandhi was the undisputed leader of the country after the elections, which had given 413 out of the 544 seats in the Lower House to the Congress party. Before the declaration of the election result, Rajiv took his family for a trip to Ranthambore. The photographs of the incoming prime minister and his family in the tiger reserve were quickly picked up by the national and international media, building a new image of India. Others also took note of this massive victory and the democratic ripples it created in South Asia. Babrak Karmal summoned J.N. Dixit again on 1 January1985. This time, the Afghan president praised the Indian prime minister’s victory, and requested him to take an interest in leading South Asia. By then a daily spectacle had begun in Kabul involving public condemnation of the role of President Zia and the mujahideen resistance against the communist government of Babrak Karmal. The increasing advantage that the mujahideen enjoyed made Kabul shriller. While congratulating Dixit on the new government, Karmal praised his own government and the growing popularity of the PDPA among the

masses and mentioned the vast membership it had acquired in recent months. But Dixit discreetly found that the PDPA’s popularity was dwindling and desertion had begun to take a heavy toll on the Afghan security forces. Afghanistan’s PDPA government had military support from the Soviets but it did not have credible international supporters. Rajiv Gandhi was Karmal’s hope.16 On 5 January, a televised address by Rajiv Gandhi marked the inauguration of his government. The world took note. It was evident that TV images and technology were going to be part of the government’s modernization plan. The newly elected prime minister began speaking about a ‘quantum leap into the twenty-first century’ to his friends. Such a leap was not going to be without technology and international cooperation involving technology. But India could not succeed in achieving the desired change without shedding its fear of the West. His TV address made it clear that Rajiv would give diplomacy a lot of space. Meanwhile, anti-US sentiments remained high in India, though due to government control over Doordarshan, anti-US paranoia did not get out of hand. While the government-owned TV channel ignored the report on the Coomar Narain spy scandal which erupted at this time, the privately owned print media highlighted the spy scandal of the first month of Rajiv’s tenure, giving the impression of a ‘free-for-all’ in the capital’s corridors of power and almost justifying the paranoia in Delhi. However, Rajiv remained insulated from the scandal. On 10 January, Bruno Kreisky, former chancellor of Austria, came to meet Rajiv Gandhi and a day later Kreisky was honoured with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by President Giani Zail Singh. Kreisky was part of the past that Rajiv wanted India to shed but was also deeply connected to. Kreisky helped India deal with the pressure that the Non-Aligned Movement faced in Europe. Honouring Kreisky with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award was also a sign of India bidding goodbye to its past diplomacy as a new pro-West orientation took roots. Several questions can be asked about Rajiv’s world view here. Did he really have a long-term diplomatic vision? Did he inherit an official agenda from his mother who might have planned the same to package her as a less

confrontational stateswoman in the latter part of her career? These conjectures, however, did not mean much because it became clear that Rajiv took an interest in issues that were of critical importance to the superpowers, such as nuclear arms reduction and disarmament – issues that involved diplomatic foresight but also strategic risk and hard bargaining. Rajiv Gandhi let the world know of his new stature as the prime minister of India by packing his first month with diplomatic action. Two days after attending the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, he participated on 28 January in the Six Nation Summit on Nuclear Disarmament at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. The six heads of state who participated in the summit were Raul Alfonsin (Argentina), Andreas Papandreou (Greece), Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (Mexico) Olof Palme (Sweden) and Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) apart from Gandhi himself. Together, the leaders demanded a halt to the nuclear arms race among the superpowers and the two global power blocs of the East and the West. US president Ronald Reagan also extended his support to Rajiv soon. On 5 January 1985, four days after he was sworn in, Rajiv met with Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, sent by President Reagan to assess the new prime minister of India. A prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Percy was well known in Delhi during the 1970s. Veteran journalists remember him for his colourful and frank conversations at the US Information Center during which he would drop subtle hints at the consequences of not cooperating with the United States. But in the first week of January 1985, Percy found a friendlier prime minister in Delhi who needed no such hints. A lot would be said and written about the ‘Ronald Reagan–Rajiv Gandhi chemistry’ in the coming months. But in reality to change the atmosphere of paranoia, Rajiv had begun using professional lobbyists like Percy, for warming up to the US. For Percy, the meeting with the young PM was a great opportunity as he was recovering from an electoral defeat in a year when Republicans were winning. Percy was looking for a political rebirth and Rajiv Gandhi handed him one by choosing him as his man in the Capitol. The main task before Charles Percy was to help improve the India–US ties.

The young prime minister was eager to chart a new course with the United States but circumstances in India were not yet conducive as the Indian press was full of left-leaning investigative journalists who were busy exposing the NATO and the United States in Delhi’s power-brokering circle. Rajiv Gandhi had chosen the right kind of American politician as his first official guest. A great deal of Percy’s fame came from his legislative battle against Nixon in the spring of 1973. When President Nixon appointed a new Attorney General to investigate the Watergate scandal, Percy, a fellow Republican in the Senate, demanded an independent prosecutor to investigate the president of the United States and moved a resolution. Nixon never forgave him and vowed to sabotage future attempts by the Senator to contest in the presidential election. But Percy nevertheless won the match when his resolution for the independent prosecutor was unanimously passed in the Senate. Such anti-Nixon credentials were certainly pleasing to Congress leaders in Delhi. They had not forgotten the fact that President Nixon had made Indira Gandhi wait at the White House for forty minutes in 1971 in a display of US displeasure at the Indian prime minister’s policy towards the crisis in East Pakistan. But what pleased Charles Percy more, reportedly, was when Rajiv appointed him as his secret lobbyist in Washington DC. On his first speech telecast nationwide, Rajiv Gandhi announced his bold plans for reform in the economic and environmental sectors, and for cooperation in regional field and high technology. Rajiv’s plans were backed by Arun Nehru and Arun Singh who had joined his team after working for several years in prominent multinational corporations. The blueprints of the reforms were yet to be made public, but Rajiv had announced that state activities were to be reduced and private enterprise was to be promoted. All this could only be music to the American private sector. For this warm relationship to yield results, a full team was needed. Percy was an early key member. The other members of the US team had to be based in Delhi. Fifteen days after the Percy–Gandhi meeting in Delhi, Percy’s friend Ronald Reagan who had campaigned for him for the Senate seat in Illinois, was sworn in for his second term as the US president.

Though India–US ties were going in the right direction, despite a lingering mutual suspicion, American ties with Afghanistan remained a problem. In his 1984 Christmas message, President Reagan launched a verbal attack on Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, even as Babrak Karmal, without any means to win a battle against the United States, kept up with his anti-US discourse. The fact was that Reagan, who had contributed to the arming of the mujahideen, was determined to push Karmal’s government into a corner till a political solution was found to the Afghan crisis. For Reagan, a political solution meant a total, unconditional withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan at the earliest. The verbal fight between the US and Afghan officials, however, meant almost a daily humiliation of the Pakistani charge d’affaires in Kabul, who was summoned regularly to be hand-delivered protest notes on Pakistani and mujahideen military activities in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Babrak Karmal’s tirade against Zia-ul-Haq’s government added to the drama. Rajiv Gandhi decided to engage the rattled Afghan leadership and on 8 January 1985 sent Bali Ram Bhagat, a trusted lieutenant who at that time was a member of parliament and chairman of the Foreign Relations Department of the All India Congress Committee (I), to Kabul. The result was positive. Bhagat’s was the first official visit from Delhi to Kabul after the new government took over and the Karmal government got a lift on the Indian government’s official agenda. Karmal praised Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative to hold the Six Nation Summit of 28 January and in some measure perhaps made a conciliatory comment about peace between the two superpowers. By month-end, Rajiv Gandhi had proved that he wanted to be a statesman and a player in South Asia and beyond. But so far India had little role in the Afghan scene, which was limited to more experienced protagonists like Ziaul-Haq, CIA, and the Saudis. A key part of the unfolding India–US ties was to be the collaboration between India and the US on regional issues, notably, Afghanistan. By mid-1985, a common strategy on Afghanistan was already figuring in bilateral talks between India and the US.

But the plan to stabilize Afghanistan by taking India on board was not new. By January 1985, five years had passed since the idea of finding a joint solution to the crisis in Afghanistan was first floated in 1980. The idea to engage India in this superpower game came first from Moscow, and was discussed with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The Bondarevsky Proposal17 In his autobiography, Matters of Discretion, former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral described the Soviet idea to engage India to resolve Afghanistan as ‘An Amazing Proposal’. The proposal was floated by academician and scholar Prof. Grigory Bondarevsky during a meeting with Gujral, the Indian ambassador to Moscow at the time of their meeting on 24 March 1980. The proposal was simple but required widespread international consensus and therefore had to have the involvement of the leaders at the highest level in the participating countries. Bondarevsky suggested that Gujral should seek the opinion of Indira Gandhi on the idea that all three countries – the Soviet Union, Afghanistan and Pakistan – should collectively guarantee the inviolability of the Durand Line. Guaranteeing the inviolability of the Durand Line would take away the constant anxiety of Pakistan and provide comfort to Afghanistan. Apart from that, the USSR might just benefit naturally as it would help it remain focused on Afghan territory. The proposal to guarantee the sanctity of the Durand Line would have meant that Pakistan would be a loser if it rejected the idea as it would be accused of missing out on an opportunity to befriend the Soviet Union. It was obvious to Gujral that the proposal to engage India was conceived to suit the Soviet Union’s regional interests. So he asked Bondarevsky why Indira Gandhi should get involved in this plan. Gujral was told that the idea was at a very private level and did not have the blessing of top Soviet leaders like Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. However, by 3 April 1980, Gujral was told that the idea was to be discussed with Viktor Maltsev, the deputy foreign minister of the USSR. Gujral was told that the Soviets also wanted to involve Ayatollah Khomeini

who was finding it difficult to handle the international problems of Iran after coming to power a year ago. The Soviets suggested that since both Iran and India had problems with Pakistan, Indira Gandhi should send a highly respected Muslim emissary from India to build a common ground among various regional capitals for the agreement on the Durand Line. After speaking to Bondarevsky for three months, Gujral felt that the plan was a vehicle for bringing in Leonid Brezhnev’s concept of ‘Asian Security’ through the back door. And so India went cold towards the proposal but Moscow made a beginning that would be taken up by others in subsequent years.18 On New Year’s Eve of 1985, the same proposal was made, but from a different location. The Percy–Gandhi meeting was a week away, when on 31 December the White House took note of Rajiv’s momentous electoral victory and dialled the number of the US ambassador to Thailand.

In the residence of the US ambassador to Thailand, the Deans were fast asleep when the phone rang. The caller wanted to inform that President Reagan was about to appoint Dean as his envoy to India. At the end of that early morning phone call, Dean was asked to proceed to Washington DC for urgent briefings on India. John Gunther Dean was ecstatic but went back to sleep nevertheless.19 India was to be the biggest posting of his career, a gigantic country and a civilization unlike any. Dean felt stimulated with the challenging nature of the Indian assignment. US presidents had begun taking special interest in India after India dismembered Pakistan in 1971 and reduced American influence in South Asia. The secret of India’s regional strength came from the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty that was signed in 1971, which was the official seal of India supporting Soviet interests in the cold war. But by the 1980s, with growing issues in India–Soviet ties, the United States sensed a new opportunity to court India. Dean fitted the bill of a senior diplomat who could be trusted with the task of bringing India into the American camp. The task was difficult in view of public antipathy towards

the ‘foreign hand’. But the details of the assignment in Delhi had begun to appear before Dean already. From Thailand to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a flourishing network of narcotics smuggling had emerged as a part of a parallel order in South and South-East Asia. The power of this parallel order was well known as narcotics smugglers had often been supported by various government figures in this region. Dean told me that even the American government’s agencies had at times taken a questionable position on the issue of narcotics. Dean had worked long in the US Foreign Service and witnessed the evolution of the service from an awkward giant trying to inherit the legacy of global government from colonial powers in South-East Asia and Africa to the tough superpower contesting to prevail in the 1970s. The earlier simplicities of the profession were fast vanishing. Complex internal battles and turf wars were breaking out. In his autobiography Dean also hints obliquely at corruption among sections of diplomats and US law enforcement agencies.20 Chasing narcotics peddlers and producers in Thailand showed him an emerging new facet of his profession. He narrated a dramatic shift in the character of US diplomacy that he sensed in Thailand. Over the years, US diplomats who were trained to deal with Nazi Germany and Soviet communism had evolved and they had to contend with a growing problem within: internal rivalry. To quote from his autobiography: A US embassy in any country may be an umbrella for dozens of different agencies and interests, from the army, navy, air force, or Marines to cabinet departments like Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, you name it. Most staff members do not always know what others are doing. Most officials in an embassy also work for someone outside the embassy, back in Washington. A knowledgeable ambassador can balance and integrate these interests so that the United States speaks with one voice in that country. But at the end of the day, different US agencies and departments are often at

odds with each other. Sometimes the best you can do is to acknowledge a fundamental conflict and simply make sure that all sides get some of what they want.... So it was the problem of drugs.21 In my meetings with Dean, and in his autobiography, Dean hints at the problem that the drug smuggling and the market for narcotics posed to the officials who dealt with the problem professionally. US and Thai narcospecialists criss-crossed the country in search of drug production centres and often discovered that the connections of the producers reached into corridors of power. Dean obviously had to deal with rivalries between different government departments that were trying to garner credit for counter-narcotic operations. Dean also hinted at the dangerous turn that drug addiction among Americans visiting Thailand took. Thai authorities began arresting American citizens found indulging in the opium culture of the Thai countryside and as a result Dean used to receive lots of requests from highlevel American officials and politicians asking his help to get the Americans released from Thai prisons. Dean’s main job soon turned out to be to save the ‘mules’. The ‘mules’ were typical carriers of heroin from the Thai countryside via Bangkok to Western airports where drug detection was still primitive.22 As the Thai government began arresting American mules, Dean had to intervene in order to save them from lengthy prison terms. It was during this period that the drug crescent, from Thailand to Afghanistan, took shape. By his handling of the narcotics and smuggling problems in the South-East Asian region, Dean had already entered the security ambit of India, which faced a number of insurgency movements in the north-east funded through a network of drug trafficking in South-East Asia. Narcotics were, therefore, a key element in India–US ties, and might have partially played a role in transferring specialist Dean from Thailand to India. But in a vast and growing relationship, the narcotics issue was only one of the concerns. At this time, India was emerging as part of a vast geographical arc from South-East to South and South-West Asia where

arms, drugs, terrorism, foreign occupation – as in the case of the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union – and violent political change were part of the norm. Hard-knuckled diplomats were the need of the hour. But what exactly did the United States want from India? This question is best answered by Dean himself. His papers reveal that in 1985 the US urgently wanted all that India had been offering the Soviets beginning with the 1971 Friendship Treaty.23 Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had personal ties with the United States, the State Department note revealed.24 So the estrangement between the two partners did not quite fit in with their personal affinities. The US had to bridge the gap between strategic divergence between the US and India and the personal affinities that tied Nehru-Gandhi leaders to the United States. The US did not have to discover India, it had to regain India. And this mattered to the US as India had an endless demand for arms and ammunition, which the United States was willing to supply. Besides, American schemes in West Asia and the Af–Pak region could not be implemented without getting India on board. The third reason was the cold war, and India mattered greatly in this as with non-alignment as a principle of Indian foreign policy, New Delhi was capable of mobilizing the world in favour of the Soviets. India, in short, was a vast market and a great power with the ability to sway the world and therefore could not be ignored. Rajiv Gandhi’s hour of reckoning regarding the United States came with the leak of killer gas from the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal. The timing of the Bhopal tragedy could not have been worse. The United States had just witnessed a presidential election and the Reagan–Bush administration was going to be sworn in soon. India was going through the election campaign. All political calculations could go wrong because of the disaster. The accident was monstrous and could have neutralized the sympathy wave in favour of Rajiv Gandhi. But the fallout of the gas disaster was soon controlled. A day after Rajiv Gandhi campaigned in Bhopal, Union Carbide chief, Warren Anderson, was allowed to go home on 7 December 1984. No one took responsibility for facilitating the great escape of Anderson, yet

everyone understood that Anderson could not have left without support from the ‘highest level’.

But the real shocker in India’s ties with the Western world came later. On 17 January to be precise. Though the scandal had been a ticking time bomb throughout the election season, it exploded only after Rajiv was comfortably placed in the prime minister’s chair. On the night of 17 January, a First Information Report (FIR) was filed in the Tilak Marg police station in New Delhi against several persons in what came to be known as the Coomar Narain case. This case is an important illustration of the old-style diplomacy that Western powers conducted in Delhi, which Rajiv Gandhi’s direct style of diplomacy sought to end.25 Coomar Narain was a colourful pseudonym for a man from Kerala named C.V. Narayanan who worked in the Hailey Road office of a Mumbai-based firm, Maneklal SLM Industries Limited. He was accused of using his office to facilitate meetings between professional intelligence officials of various countries and government servants based in the PMO and the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Once in his office, government officials handed out secrets in exchange for foreign currency that was much in demand. Expensive whiskey and sexual favours were also not ruled out. The case focuses on the four areas of interest, Dean points out in his papers, which were of vital importance to Western countries, particularly the United States. The first is the issue of Indian demand for weapons; second, India’s plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan; third, India’s ties with the USSR; and fourth – and most important of all – India’s vast technological and nuclear programmes. It came to light that T.N. Kher, K.K. Malhotra, P. Gopalan (all of whom worked in the office of P.C. Alexander, the principal secretary to the prime minister) were arrested on charges of selling classified information from the Prime Minister’s Office to various Western agencies. Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin, Arun Nehru, who was in charge of internal security and the Intelligence Bureau in late 1984 and most of 1985 allowed a crackdown on the case. The case had its genesis during the tenure of

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, but she was quite oblivious to it. A fortnight after her assassination, the Intelligence Bureau discovered a vast network of information sellers who found ready buyers among the Western intelligence agencies operating in Delhi.26 The documents seized from the arrested men ran into hundreds of pages and the investigating authorities were stunned by the extent of the papers that were demanded by Western sources and the kind supplied by the moles in the PMO. That the affair unfolded right in Alexander’s office, turned it into a hot case. Journalist Vinod Sharma wrote in a popular magazine that the espionage was so effective that: (India) had lost valuable information which no country could afford to part with. The seized documents contained not only several letters addressed to the Prime Minister by various ministries but also a plethora of information relating to defence production, a department which deals with all equipment produced for the armed forces within the country. Besides it is also responsible for the modernisation plans of the three services, production of spares required for the upkeep of armaments and their purchase from outside. In a nutshell, the information which leaked out from this department would have had willing buyers not only among arms traders but also those countries to which India is of strategic importance.27 One of the papers related to a top-secret note concerning a ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Pakistan’s nuclear installation at Kahuta. It was quickly denied that such a note could have any credibility since such an important document could not have been put down in black-and-white. But no one can deny if such a note was indeed prepared by the staff for some unknown use.28 What kind of countries could be interested in India’s secrets? The answer lies in Dean’s notes, which list the documents and issues that the United States was interested in. Indeed, some of the front-ranking countries in the West share a similar range of interests regarding India as it represents a

large market for their products – weapons, food, medicines and agricultural products. What kind of security could be ensured for the prime minister of a country whose secrets are known to both its friends and enemies? Perhaps little. Security had been compromised and a restructuring of the intelligence apparatus was urgently required. Within a short period after the Coomar Narain case, intelligence effectiveness was increased many times. As a result, four years later, at the height of the crisis on Af–Pak, India’s intelligence agencies were perhaps at their best operational form. India’s abilities to protect itself would increase along with the number of its challenges.

Housewarming Party January 1985 turned out to be a unique month. While in Delhi the sympathy wave carried Rajiv to power, the US prepared to swear in the Reagan–Bush administration for their second term. In less than two months, the USSR would also undergo a political change as Konstantin Chernenko, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, passed away and was succeeded by Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev. Astrologers predicted in newspapers and magazines that the future ahead for the Indian prime minister would be difficult. But no astrologer connected the dots between Delhi, Moscow and the Washington to predict the course of the storm in Afghanistan–Pakistan during the Rajiv Gandhi years in Delhi. The immediateness of the Punjab, Assam and Sri Lankan crises was enough to divert attention from the Afghan crisis. With his people preoccupied with the crises at home, Rajiv Gandhi could quietly try firefighting on Afghanistan. From Rajiv Gandhi’s early 1984 speeches, it appears that finding solutions to the crises in Punjab and Assam was his top priorities. It was also clear that he was deeply aware of India’s international ties and the urgent need to assuage the big powers to safeguard India’s independence and autonomy. Few Indian prime ministers have witnessed an espionage

scandal of the proportion of the Coomar Narain case. But one can imagine the sense of alarm that might have gripped 1, Safdarjung Road on learning that most of the secrets of the offices of Indira Gandhi and subsequently for a few weeks of Rajiv Gandhi were being sold to arms traders, and to the intelligence agencies of the world, by the employees who had access to 1, Akbar Road and 1, Safdarjung Road (office and residence, respectively, of Indira Gandhi) as well as the South Block office of the prime minister of India. Despite the alarm, Rajiv Gandhi, who wanted to stay connected to the outside world, stayed the course in international diplomacy and even before coming to power his office planned to unleash the diplomatic moves that were needed for India and for his government. But first he had to break his ties with his past, with 1, Safdarjung Road. Following Rajiv Gandhi’s formal swearing-in ceremony on 1 January, security preparations for the residence became a major headache for the agencies involved. To complicate the case of continued occupation of 1, Safdarjung Road by the prime minister and his traumatized family, two incidents of accidental firing took place in the compound of the highsecurity bungalow after 31 October.29 In the first case, one of the security personnel was seriously injured and in the second, a guard room was left with a bullet mark. These incidents and talks of unwanted nervous aggressive tendencies among security guards prompted the proposal to convert the residence into a memorial for Indira Gandhi. It was planned that the prime minister’s residence was to be changed before the new PM begins his round of hectic foreign trips from the spring of 1985. That meant a new residence for the PM and his family was to be built. Accordingly, a blast-proof wall was built around two bungalows on 5 and 7, Race Course Road (since renamed Lok Kalyan Marg). These two bungalows would be webbed to a new reception building. One of the bungalows was to be used as an office and the other would as the residence of the PM. Under the supervision of K.M. Saksena, senior architect of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), the buildings on Race Course Road were turned into the new power address of India. It was from here that

Rajiv Gandhi would decide the fate of Punjab, Assam and Sri Lanka, and chalk out his moves for Pakistan and Afghanistan. So in the first month of 1985, South Asia’s new strategic address emerged as 7, Race Course Road. There was a plan to construct a big and impregnable residence for the prime minister. But pending those bigger plans, the PM was to use 7, Race Course Road as his official residence. Old cables and the service lines of the two bungalows of Race Course Road were re-routed and the traffic on the road closed as Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi packed their books, furniture, and memories of 1, Safdarjung Road and moved to their new residence across the road along with their two kids. The difference in this case was that 7, Race Course road was not just an official residence of the prime minister, it also became a school for Sonia and Rajiv’s children as they had teachers coming home to teach – a measure that was adopted as a security precaution.30 Though 7, Race Course Road became impregnable later on, the insecure life of the occupants inside this address provided a reason for Dean to deepen his ties with the PM.31

The engage-Rajiv plan of the Reagan–Bush administration was yet to fully unfold and Dean had just begun receiving his briefings in the State Department in the last week of January 1985. Dean was asked to stay clear of the issues that could not be resolved. He was asked to stay away from the old issues like the spying activities against Indian government departments of strategic importance and the Bhopal gas tragedy, which had become a judicial time bomb for the US. He was asked to focus on new initiatives and warm up to the prime minister to start work on new projects. Because, despite the disturbances in Delhi and Bhopal, for the India watchers of the State Department, New Delhi’s new leadership dynamics were not a threat. They were an opportunity. A young, progressive prime minister had taken over and he was forming a team for the difficult task of governing India and its neighbourhood. Despite the enormous difficulties that the country passed through and the spy scandals that erupted, there was something fresh about Rajiv Gandhi’s India of 1985. This was due to the fact that Rajiv Gandhi was not an Indian

leader in an exclusive sense. In all aspects of his personal life, as was judged by the note from the US government, Rajiv was more of a Westerner from an Indian home. In this he had stretched his mother’s Western affinities to the other extreme. Journalist T.V.R. Shenoy commenting on his preferences for things Italian, noted that even the video game that Rajiv played while waiting for the election results was of Italian origin and his personal scooter was a Lambretta which he used to take his young wife out during his early days of service in Indian Airlines.32 Indira Gandhi was fluent in French due to her schooling in Switzerland and had a number of east-coast friends in the United States, but she also imbibed an Indianness from her deeply religious mother, Kamala Nehru and from her stint at Santiniketan. Rajiv Gandhi did not have such predictable traditional moorings. Indira was not always there during his childhood due to her public life, and his father Feroze was a modern man with a passion for technology and ‘fixing’ machines. Rajiv Gandhi was exposed to Indian culture, but he did not have the mindset of an orthodox Hindu Indian. Among all his contemporaries in South Asia – King Birendra of Nepal, Hussain Muhammad Ershad of Bangladesh, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan, General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, President J.R. Jayawardene of Sri Lanka – Rajiv Gandhi stood apart due to his Western affinities, which would prove to be his Achilles heel. Pakistan had to wait for the arrival of Benazir Bhutto for an equivalent of Rajiv’s mix of East–West values, but till then most other South Asian leaders were handicapped to counter Rajiv’s charm offensive, which was amplified by the visuals on the state-run television. The US government had studied Rajiv Gandhi like other members of the Nehru-Gandhi family for several years and knew that ‘Rajiv liked the Yanks more than his mother’.33 The basic understanding was that despite whatever might have happened, Rajiv Gandhi could be trusted. ‘He was imported back to India, after his stint abroad,’ said Dean to emphasize his analysis of Rajiv.34 Suppressing feelings came to Rajiv naturally and his face remained crease-free even while dealing with complex or unpleasant issues. The ability to maintain a cool exterior while

under stress helps while on the hottest seat in India. This quality could be an asset in diplomacy but this could also exasperate people around the leader. The US leaders had become familiar with Rajiv Gandhi from his visit to the US with his mother and subsequently during their continuous engagements.

The Foreign Hand in India But US–India ties were not as perfect as the Indian and American leaders wanted them to be. From the beginning, these ties had been marked by warmth between leaders, which however did not result in an improvement in the overall relationship. To complicate matters, the Indira Gandhi era, despite her early popularity in the West, witnessed the lowest point in India–US relations. Such a conflicted path of a relationship goes back a long way in history and Dean was asked to focus on the overall relationship between the two countries without getting distracted by occasional irritants like supply of arms to Pakistan and espionage scandals. After India’s independence, ties with the US flourished and were often useful in dealing with India’s sudden security requirements, for instance, during the war with China in 1962. But then problems began to emerge with the departure of Rajiv Gandhi’s grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru from the scene in 1964. The Indo-Pak war of 1965 was perceived unsympathetically by the US administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Indira Gandhi, in March 1966, sought to normalize the relations with her first official international visit to New York and Washington DC to court Johnson. Indira took Rajiv and Sanjay with her for this trip. Indira’s trip was successful but India and the US were pulled away from each other by global compulsions. Soon after the US visit, in the summer of 1966, Indira issued a scathing statement targeting the US administration for its attacks against Vietnam. During her visit to the White House, Indira had agreed to set up the US Educational Foundation in India. But Indira made a U-turn by joining hands with the USSR in condemning the ‘imperial aggression’ against Vietnam.35 This U-turn was probably inspired by political considerations inside her party. As Indira launched a left-leaning economic programme including

bank nationalization, her opponents like Morarji Desai and Y.B. Chavan supported a pro-West economic agenda, making the US appear at least ideologically partial to her political opponents. Indira Gandhi launched her final attack on her opponents by winning the election of April 1971 riding on the wave of populist slogans like Garibi Hatao (Remove poverty). She attacked her opponents: ‘They [her opponents] say remove Indira, but I say remove poverty.’36 Relations with the US nosedived during the crisis in East Pakistan. Millions of refugees poured into India to escape from the atrocities perpetrated by the Pakistan Army on the people of East Pakistan. Indira Gandhi toured world capitals seeking their help in solving the refugee problem. President Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger were very unhelpful and defended Pakistani dictator Gen. Yahya Khan and his policies in East Bengal. Indira Gandhi travelled to Moscow on her way back from Washington DC and other Western capitals which led to to the signing of the historic Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty, a shorthand for a military pact that guaranteed Mosow’s help in case a war broke out between India and Pakistan.37 India won the war of 1971, which began with the Pakistani bombing of Indian airbases in the western part of India on 3 December and ended with General A.A.K. Niazi’s signature on the Instrument of Surrender in Dhaka before the Indian Army commanders on 16 December. India–US ties took a hard knock when the US threatened to send aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to target Indian army positions. Indira used diplomacy with the big powers for consolidating her place in Indian politics. However, once she became the paramount Indian leader, outreach to the superpowers was not of great use. Indira began sensing that following her method, other leaders were also reaching out to global powers to challenge her grip on the Indian state. She gave birth to the ‘foreign hand’ theory in an outburst aimed at her opponents like Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) when the latter launched the anti-Indira movements in Bihar and Gujarat in 1973 and 1974. JP was emboldened by the international socialist network, which was mostly headquartered in the West. The support

and goodwill for JP in the West turned Indira further anti-West. Soviet spies were forgotten and the CIA was seen lurking behind every political crisis. So it was to corner and crush her opponents, whom she felt were backed by ‘evil forces’, that Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency on 25 June 1975. Rajiv Gandhi was far away from this turmoil in the summer of 1975 as his brother Sanjay became the de facto ruler of India using his mother’s office. As time passed, news spread that the PM, who had not received any support from her Western liberal friends like Dorothy Norman – the New York based author, photographer and social activist – for her dictatorial excesses, was once again planning to shift to the American side. In effect, Indira Gandhi had become too powerful to have political friends and allies after the series of political victories in the early 1970s left her looking like the empress of India. Her party was in awe of her and her rivals were clueless about a counter-Indira strategy. By the time they could come up with a counter-Indira strategy, it was too late to do so without triggering a crisis. When Indira Gandhi launched her attack on the counterIndira forces, the country spiralled out of control and Indira launched the Emergency to stabilize the state. So friendless and isolated was she that only the Communist Party of India (CPI) did associate itself with her, ostensibly with directives from Moscow. But problems began between the CPI and the Congress soon after reports began reaching CPI that the working class settlements of the major cities of India were the chief targets of Sanjay Gandhi’s policies like forced sterilization for population control and demolition drives for better urban planning. As the CPI began complaining to Indira Gandhi, Sanjay, in a first overture to the US, gave an interview to Uma Vasudev of the infrequently published journal Surge.38 The vision for the twenty-first century that Rajiv would swear by on 5 January 1985, was first enunciated by his younger brother Sanjay, who just a decade ago had turned into a political phenomenon in PMH – an abbreviation for ‘prime minister’s house’ at 1, Safdarjung Road coined by P.N. Dhar, perhaps the best chronicler of the Emergency.39 In that interview Sanjay gave a glimpse of his approach to politics and economy, which was of the variety admired in the West under the fast-emerging neo-liberal

leaders. The public sector, Sanjay said, should be allowed to die ‘a natural death’. Thirty years later, under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and his finance minister Manmohan Singh, public sector fell out of favour. But Sanjay Gandhi dreamt of a far more radical right-wing path and he conveyed this by condemning the communist backers of his mother’s rule in that interview. ‘I don’t think you’d find a richer or more corrupt people anywhere,’ was what Sanjay had to say for the CPI’s pro-Congress leaders. The explosive interview ricocheted in the media of the United States and the corridors of the Kremlin. Indian leaders were thoroughly exposed in the Kremlin, and the West perhaps saw that after a full term of hostility, the most charismatic leader of South Asia was showing signs that she was willing to do business with the US again. Despite the initial outburst against Sanjay, Indira Gandhi perhaps had begun reorienting her politics to the advantage of her future in power. But the price of her authoritarianism was to be paid and the Congress lost the election on 16 March 1977. Throughout the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi dominated the headlines as Rajiv and his Italian wife watched from outside the active political orbit. Rajiv’s pro-superpower orientation is not chronicled from the mid-1970s. But it can be gauged by the fact that following the election, he blamed Sanjay for the defeat that his mother had to face. Rumour on Delhi’s streets spoke of the elder son leaving India along with his family. But Rajiv stayed back with his job in Indian Airlines, pursuing a private life, which ended with the death of his brother in an air crash on 23 June 1980, and turned him into the heir apparent of Indira Gandhi. Along with everything else, Rajiv Gandhi inherited her foreign policy. But Rajiv’s ‘Western affinity’40 ensured that his foreign policy would deal with diplomatic inheritance differently.

In January 1985, Rajiv Gandhi did not have the time to plan his moves and travel the world capitals to launch his international diplomacy. Indira Gandhi was luckier that despite the problems of 1970 in East Pakistan, she had the time to plan her moves vis-á-vis Washington DC and Moscow, making her a formidable diplomatic player. In the case of Rajiv the stage

was set by others. We would have never learnt of Rajiv Gandhi’s interactions with the big players on Afghanistan had the Dean papers not been declassified. Rajiv had moved from 1, Safdarjung Road to 7, Race Course Road at a time when South Asia was in turmoil with the Americans and the Soviets fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan. Rajiv had a ‘dream’ as he famously said later in June in the United States, but the question is, did Rajiv have the need like his mother to court the superpowers? Indira courted the superpowers to strengthen her position vis-á-vis her opponents at home, or as in 1971, Pakistan. But where did the United States or Moscow fit in Rajiv Gandhi’s scheme of things? Perhaps it is this question that Rajiv Gandhi wanted to answer in the first month of 1985. The answer may have come from Punjab, Kashmir, Assam and a host of insurgency movements that were going on in India’s northeast. Rajiv knew that India could not be secure from external threats as long as the war raged in Afghanistan. Rajiv did not need an American president to hold his hand as he had a huge majority in the Lok Sabha. His opponents inside parliament and outside were silenced by the 413 seats that he secured in the December 1984 election. So it was against the backdrop of the security architecture in South Asia that Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomacy took off in March 1985. Rajiv Gandhi had a rudimentary team of foreign policy specialists that he gravitated to during his days as the successor to his brother Sanjay Gandhi. Vijay Dhar and diplomat Ronen Sen were part of the Rajiv team when he was on formal probation.

Rajiv Gandhi Begins Diplomacy Sections of the global diplomatic elite were familiar with Rajiv already, partially due to his exposure to diplomacy as the general secretary of the Congress party and partly due to his additional qualification as a leading member of the Nehru-Gandhi family. One of his initial partners in diplomacy and politics, Vijay Dhar, was witness to Rajiv’s early years when he travelled the world as the son and the heir apparent of Indira Gandhi.

Dhar could not tell me where Rajiv, often blamed for being untrained in politics, sourced his talent for diplomacy. Dhar said that Rajiv perhaps learnt from the long discussions that his grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru conducted in Teen Murti Bhavan in Delhi with political partners and opponents. Though he started with uncertain diplomatic talent, Rajiv quickly put together the official cast of characters including the likes of Ronen Sen, Chinmaya Gharekhan, K. Natwar Singh, Arun Singh, Gopi Arora, Romesh Bhandari and many others. Globally, Najibullah and King Zahir Shah, Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were either already in his phonebook or were familiar with him. But given the fateful path that India and South Asia has been on since the Afghanistan jihad became the talk of the world, the cast of characters in the international platforms as well as the PMO of Rajiv Gandhi need to be given due importance. Many of the players in the diplomatic arena were directly connected to Af–Pak, yet would play indirect roles which would help or deter Gandhi in his international work. For example, though the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme did not play a role in Afghanistan diplomacy, he pushed India’s disarmament plan through the Group of Six which helped Rajiv connect with the superpowers. It was also the Bofors deal championed by Palme which in the second half of Rajiv’s prime ministership would erode his popularity. Sensing new opportunities, young diplomats began playing a quiet behind-the-scenes role in Rajiv’s diplomatic initiatives. The world spoke a different diplomatic language then and non-alignment still mattered. A precarious balance had to be kept while maintaining internal peace. Diplomacy was challenging. On 24 January, four days after the swearing in ceremony for the second tenure of the Reagan–Bush administration, the Discovery space shuttle took off from Cape Canaveral increasing the possibility of worldwide insecurity. The flight and its cargo were secret as it was a fully military payload. The new wave of the militarization of outer space was a wake-up call for developing countries and ambitious world figures.

Palme, a staunch anti-imperialist figure from the social democratic league of Europe, flew down to Delhi to attend the meeting of the Group of Six. The six leaders called for urgent disarmament measures and called upon the US and the USSR to stop nuclear tests for a year. The weaponization of space was a new threat to world peace and India joined other like-minded countries to oppose it. By bringing these six leaders to Delhi in the first month of his prime ministership, Rajiv displayed an activism that was in keeping with Delhi’s more recent habit of holding international summits. The rhetoric of the Six Nation Summit of 28 January was aimed at the two superpowers and they took note of Rajiv’s arrival. In February 1985, just as Rajiv Gandhi was filling his office with new furniture and bureaucrats, he summoned Ronen Sen, then serving as joint secretary (administration) in the Ministry of External Affairs in South Block to return to Moscow for a month. The task at hand was specific. Sen had to plan a big Moscow visit by the Indian prime minister. The trip to the USSR had to be carefully choreographed. Sen had to be the ground coordinator but as is usual in diplomacy, events overwhelmed plans and expectations. There was an Indian ambassador in Moscow, but Rajiv wanted someone he had worked with. Soon thereafter, Sen reached Moscow to the mild embarrassment of himself and the embassy where he had served as a first secretary till about a year ago. His task was to see if the Soviets would be willing to receive Rajiv for a formal official visit. Sen found that luck favoured him.41 Every prime minister of India chose his or her first foreign trip carefully. In the case of Rajiv Gandhi, the failing health of the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, solved the dilemma over the first destination. Soviet media announced on 10 March that Chernenko had passed away after serving a brief tenure from February 1984. Moscow used the occasion to showcase the tremendous martial might of the Soviets and invited the leaders of the world to attend the state funeral at Kremlin. In less than fortyeight hours, the entire array of top-level leaders landed in Moscow in grey and black woollens.

The funeral, like the one in New Delhi of November 1984, highlighted succession. Following the funeral, the leaders walked past the newly installed general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It is fair to say that like a play, which introduces its characters at the beginning of the show, Chernenko’s funeral served as the introduction of all those leaders who were to deal with the issue of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s nuclearization in the years to come. Margaret Thatcher, Eric Honecker of East Germany, Yasser Arafat, Zia-ul-Haq, George H.W. Bush and a host of others were present at the Kremlin when Rajiv came to shake hands with Gorbachev. As Rajiv came to greet and thank Gorbachev for the hospitality, the Soviet leader stopped the Indian prime minister and instead of a quick handshake that he used to fast-track the queue, Rajiv was extended the courtesy of a warm friendly chat. It was obvious even to a TV viewer in Moscow that the Indian PM was special and was singled out by the Soviet leadership for preferential treatment in a sombre state funeral. Later, Rajiv Gandhi met his counterparts from various countries, including Zia, and Thatcher. The Soviets were bidding adieu to one era and welcoming the era of Gorbachev and they could show the world how they celebrated the new era. This trip was undertaken in a remodelled Boeing 747 with a specially built prime ministerial space for Sonia and Rajiv. This prime minister – his co-passengers K. Natwar Singh, Romesh Bhandari and G. Parthasarathy felt – would conduct himself with a certain style. The Rajiv Gandhi style was to bid goodbye to the Indira and Shastri era of frugal foreign travel. Fine drinks and excellent food found their way to those accompanying the PM on the flight. What thoughts must have raged in Rajiv’s mind at that moment on 13 March 1985 in the Kremlin is a matter of conjecture. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi interacted with the cold war powers from a postcolonial point of view. Rajiv began his interaction with the superpowers from the point of view of regional security. Nehru attempted strategies like non-alignment to remain safe from superpower politics. But Indira was

more calculating in her dealings with superpowers, particularly in times of political need at home. Rajiv had no rivals at home or in the South Asian region in the first half of 1985. He needed the superpowers for furthering the development and security of the country. But in return, he would be expected to pay in kind, in security benefits for the superpowers. Rajiv was under watch from the very beginning. With Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister of India became a strategic person to watch out for. The White House and the Kremlin were keenly watching Rajiv and the papers in the Dean collection speak volumes about the new PM of India and his importance. Soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s return from Chernenko’s funeral in Moscow, a curious incident in Delhi’s diplomatic neighbourhood brought the cloakand-dagger diplomacy of South Asia within a mile of his official residence. Igor Gueja, a third secretary in the information section of the Soviet embassy, disappeared while on a morning stroll in the Lodhi Gardens on 17 March. Then on 21 March, Victor Khitzichenko, an engineer attached to the economic division of the embassy, was murdered while being driven around by his Malayali driver. The murder was blamed on the Afghan resistance fighters or the mujahideen who were believed to have infiltrated Delhi along with the Afghan war wounded who were landing in Delhi seeking treatment and refuge from the government of PDPA and the secret police of Mohammed Najibullah.42 The missing Soviet diplomat was believed to have defected to a Western country. Was it a kidnapping by an enemy country? Was the murder connected to the defection/kidnapping? Like the Norris murder, this case too went cold, as no one wanted to dig deep, fearing the unknown. Print media speculated about various angles for a while as the Soviet embassy sought more police protection. The murderers of Khitzichenko came riding a Yezdi and appeared to be of West Asian origin. Safety of the Soviet diplomats in India had been an issue of concern since the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR as India had a large Afghan population. As reports came from Afghanistan of Soviet atrocities against the Afghans, chances of attacks against Soviet diplomats grew. The regional

conflict raging in Afghanistan had created a spillover conflict in Punjab and helped Pakistan bolster its cause on Kashmir. But now, even the diplomats and non-combatants of various countries were getting caught in the crossfire and India became a stage of these incidents. Rajiv Gandhi’s government was helpless in the face of this violent spillover. The spillover of the kind Delhi was witnessing and its source do find mention in Dean’s notes. New Delhi, Dean noticed, had efficient intelligence resources on the ground in Pakistan that tracked the flow of US weapons meant for Afghanistan. India often tracked consignments of weapons and briefed Dean about the exact utility of the weapons for Pakistan.43 Though a new level of coordination was taking root, differences remained on the flow of weapons into Pakistan and Pakistan’s role in the Afghan jihad. The US was already the biggest player in the Afghan jihad, and needed to discuss the regional management issues with Rajiv Gandhi.

As Dean underwent the few weeks of preparation before landing in Delhi, he assessed that the young PM had a long list of challenges to deal with and his role had to include reducing problems for the PM and not increasing them. As the State Department began its sessions of briefings and the Congressmen and Senators dropped by to meet Dean, he realized that given the Pakistan factor, the Afghan jihad, and the key differences between India and the US, his chief task was going to be that of mediating and conciliating at the highest level. The region was to be of key importance to the US and that is perhaps why they posted Dean, fresh from his tough posting in Bangkok, in New Delhi. But in Rajiv Gandhi, the US diplomats had more than a match when it came to Af–Pak and the greater South Asia. Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that Rajiv, though initially not the chosen one, had imbibed some of the key indirect training in foreign affairs that Indira imparted to her children. Rajiv’s training in foreign affairs was not insignificant. Though his active phase began following the demise of Sanjay Gandhi in 1980, both had the

privilege of growing up in Teen Murti Bhavan in the 1950s where they were introduced to the world of diplomacy since childhood. Afghanistan had a special place in the world view of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi due to the family ties and friendship with several key Afghan figures. Rajiv was present when Indira Gandhi met ‘Frontier Gandhi’ Abdul Ghaffar Khan in London, when Nehru attended the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in September 1962. This exposure and education in Af–Pak affairs that came to Indira almost naturally continued when Rajiv, now with a young Sonia, accompanied his mother to Kabul for her meetings with King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan in 1969. The connections continued subsequently in various forms, some of which would come to haunt Rajiv later in his prime ministership. Apart from the televised speech of Rajiv Gandhi, 5 January 1985 saw one more speech by a South Asian leader: Benazir Bhutto spoke out in London. Benazir chose 5 January, the birthday of her late father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the murdered prime minister of Pakistan, for a mushaira in London, where she had landed after being freed from Zia’s custody. Supporters of the Bhuttos and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) raised anti-Zia slogans and sang revolutionary songs. Supporters of PPP could not wait to return to Pakistan and regain the government snatched away from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the coup of 1977. Rajiv Gandhi’s massive electoral victory, which translated into India’s ability to withstand turmoil that could cripple a developing modern state, had been noted far and wide. Pakistan under military rule was facing the heat of the power of democratic transition next door. Zia, the chief proponent of jihad in Afghanistan, had to be tested in the battle of ballots, decided the Americans. Three days after Benazir’s mushaira in London, Zia announced elections in Pakistan. But strangely, the election was to be on a non-party basis, which meant Benazir’s PPP could not contest as a political platform; every contestant from PPP had to contest on their own without representing their party. The result of this Zia-brand of election was aimed at reconfirming the military rule and not to allow democracy to take roots in Pakistan. The election of 25 February came as a setback to Zia but within a few days the Constitution of Pakistan was amended to give Zia sweeping

powers. So in Zia’s Pakistan, an election was an occasion for strengthening military dictatorship. Within a few days of the election result, Zia landed in Moscow to show off his new democratic credentials before leaders from all over the world at Chernenko’s funeral. He had been wearing the long black tunic paired with the white trousers often since ousting Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977. At Chernenko’s funeral the black tunic took on another meaning. It showed that when pushed to the wall, Zia could come up with surprising moves to tune his career to the preference of his partners in the world capitals who were uncomfortable with the capital punishment he handed out soon after getting ‘elected’ in a party-less election but wanted him to give up his military uniform for good. But contrary to Gorbachev’s animated and longish talk with Rajiv in funereal Kremlin, the handshake the new Soviet leader extended was cold though Zia attempted to appear warm. Zia was not going to rest with a grim handshake and asked his ambassador in Moscow, Shahid M. Amin, to seek a special appointment with Gorbachev. Every world leader, including Rajiv Gandhi, sought a special meeting with Gorbachev. Amin wrote to Gorbachev, referring to the serious situation that had emerged across the Khyber Pass due to the face-off between the Soviet occupation forces and the jihadis. Gorbachev initially declined to meet Zia in a specially arranged meeting and the Protocol Division in Moscow asked the visitors to meet Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov. Zia declined to deal with Tikhonov, one of the senior-most Kremlin figures nevertheless.44 Finally, a meeting did take place between Zia and Gorbachev. Zia prepared for it by talking to Amin. But such were Zia’s ties with the Soviets that ambassador Amin kept the radio transistor in loud mode just to prevent eavesdropping by the electronic listening devices.45 President Zia had made a transition from total military uniform to a tunic and saw transition everywhere. He was eager for some change in Soviet policy on Afghanistan. But it was suggested that he should not expect miracles from Gorbachev as the Afghan invasion of December 1979 drew Gorbachev’s support as well, who along with his colleagues in the power elite of the Kremlin, had pushed for sending Soviet soldiers all the way till the Khyber Pass.46 The only hope for a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan

lay in the possible collapse of the Soviet economy if the Afghan jihad could damage the Soviet war machine significantly. Finally, when the day for meeting Gorbachev came, Zia was kept waiting for an hour as the Pakistani delegation was given a tour of the spacious rooms of the Kremlin which were noted for their Czarist artefacts. Gorbachev and Zia met almost an hour and a half behind schedule. Zia conveyed that he sincerely wanted to have a good relationship with the Soviet Union and hoped that the Afghanistan crisis would end soon. Zia wanted Gorbachev to be a historic peacemaker in Afghanistan and repeatedly pleaded for Gorbachev’s visit to Pakistan. Gorbachev returned the courtesies, by stating that the USSR also wished to have good ties with Pakistan but that was not going to be possible as long as Pakistan backed the mujahideen. To rub it in, Gorbachev told Zia that Moscow would ensure that Pakistan faces the consequences of backing the mujahideen. But Zia was an actor. If he could visit Delhi to attend the summits during Indira Gandhi’s last tenure, after the assassination attempts by Al Zulfikar Organization, he dealt with Gorbachev’s grim and impolite conversation with warm handshakes, pleading for the cessation of hostilities between the USSR and Pakistan, and made repeated requests for a personal visit by Gorbachev to Islamabad. Despite Zia’s theatrics, the meeting was a disaster and next day TASS put out a bitter account of the meeting for the world. Zia remained undisturbed. Before leaving Moscow, Zia spat out a response for Gorbachev, which the Soviet leader did not get to know. Zia handed over a cyclostyling machine for a local Islamic radical in Moscow, probably from Uzbekistan. Cyclostyling for propaganda was banned in the USSR but Zia did not care and broke diplomatic protocol by bringing in the machine in a secure diplomatic crate. A few days after Zia’s return from Chernenko’s funeral, the Uzbek came to the Pakistani embassy, gave a code to the ambassador and collected the machine, which was to be used to spread Islamist ideas in Uzbek and Afghan populations in Moscow and St Petersburg.47 Pakistan–Soviet ties were in a difficult shape as Zia battled opponents asking for democracy at

home and as across the border Rajiv Gandhi impressed his ministers with accounts of the warm welcome he had received in Moscow.

The fight between the Soviet-backed leaders and the mujahideen had peaked in 1984. But in late April 1985 the conflict showed that the CIA’s secret war via Pakistan could engulf Pakistan itself when twelve Soviet soldiers were kidnapped by the mujahideen and taken to Mattani near Peshawar. The soldiers were being treated as POWs by the mujahideen, obviously backed by the Pakistani soldiers. The arrest of the twelve Soviet soldiers, which came to be known as the ‘Mattani incident’ would have been forgotten had the arrested soldiers obeyed Pakistani orders. A fight broke out when the soldiers attempted to flee. In the chaos that followed, Pakistani regulars shed all pretence of being the mere backers of the Afghan resistance fighters and fired upon the kidnapped Soviets. In the fight that followed all twelve Soviets perished on Pakistani territory. A few of the Soviets took out the ammunition dump of the location while fighting for their lives.48 The Soviet media turned the event into a major patriotic issue highlighting the valiant fight they put up instead of being meek victims of the mujahideen–Pakistani kidnappers. The USSR refused to take the matter up with Pakistan but pressure mounted on Zia to stop backing the mujahideen. In Moscow, deputy foreign minister Mikhail S. Kapitsa summoned the Pakistani ambassador and delivered a rude shocker. Pakistan, he said, was ‘acting like an enemy’. Obviously, Pakistan under Zia was in no position to act like a friend of the Soviets as the US had been funding the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As ambassador Amin spoke in his defence, Kapitsa exploded: ‘You are lying all the time,’ he growled at the bespectacled Pakistani diplomat who made it a point to dress like Zia in a black tunic for his official meetings. The result of the Mattani incident was that the Soviets launched a major military offensive near the Pakistan border decimating mujahideen bases backed by Pakistan.49

Zia, a favourite of the West for his support to the CIA-backed war, had extended all-out support to the mujahideen with weapons and logistics. But his bargain with the CIA did not include attacking Soviet soldiers using the Pakistan Army. We don’t know whether the Mattani incident was Zia’s revenge for the humiliation in Moscow. But three decades later, it looks as if Zia had his chances to settle scores with the Soviets as well as other forces in the region, at a time and place of his choice. However, no one wanted the Mattani incident to be repeated on Pakistani soil, for its consequences would lead to a Soviet offensive across the Khyber Pass and into Pakistan. The Soviet media was vicious in its criticism of Pakistan’s policy of using American money and Islam in its ploy to prevent the Soviets from settling in Afghanistan forever. Moscow hated Pakistan under Zia and Zia returned the favour. India had its own share of problems from Zia’s support to the Afghan jihad as it was being used by Zia to fuel an insurgency in Indian Punjab. The US wanted to win in Afghanistan without destroying Pakistan in its proxy war. None of the parties were, however, discussing how to diffuse the crisis in Afghanistan, though all sides maintained political ties with each other. Possibly, the Soviet Union began to realize the urgent need to diffuse the crisis, more so with the arrival of the new leadership in the CPSU. The USSR may have used the Chernenko funeral, the last of the great Soviet funeral diplomacies, to take tentative steps in that direction.

Rajiv returned from Moscow after the funeral of Chernenko and now planned formal trips to Moscow and Washington DC. Ronen Sen was in Moscow and Dean was in the final stages of preparations before the Indian prime minister landed in Washington DC. But in Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq was doing his bit to skew the backdrop for India–US diplomacy and launched a brutal crackdown on his enemies. The difference between Zia and Rajiv was that Rajiv had the advantage of democratic legitimacy with a huge majority in parliament, but Zia had reached his powerful position by thwarting democracy. They both had nearabsolute power, achieved in different ways.

Rajiv’s political opponents were silenced by defeat in the election. But Zia’s enemies swore to fight him both in Kabul as well as inside Pakistan. As India portrayed itself as a victim of terror, the US State Department also talked of international terrorism in the Indian context, often hinting at the Al Zulfikar Organization. The problem with this allegation was that AZO, led by the sons of the deposed and murdered prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was struggling to end military dictatorship and restoring democracy. The US, a champion of democracy, was caught in an uncomfortable situation on how to deal with AZO which was drawing support from Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Mohammed Najibullah of Afghanistan – all arch troublemakers for the US in West Asia and North Africa. Having triumphed in the bizarre ‘democratic’ election of 28 February 1985, Zia went on a spree of meting out military justice, which was partially aimed at exposing the Indian connection with anti-Zia forces. The violent campaign also highlighted that Afghanistan had been used and probably was still being used by the Indian and Afghanistan governments to launch anti-state activities inside Pakistan. The first thing that Zia did after his election victory was to hang the activists and fighters of AZO. On 1 March, Ayaz Sammu, a former leader of Jeeye Sindh Students Federation, was given the death sentence. On 5 March, Nasser Baloch was hanged.50 Ayaz Sammu was the leader of the 12 September 1982 attack on Zahurul Hasan Bhopali, a leading member of Majlis-e-Shoora, Zia’s hand-picked advisory council. Bhopali was killed in a brutal operation during which Sammu also killed Ilyas Siddiqui, one of his fellow assassins, possibly out of rivalry. But it was Nasser Baloch who was a more important catch for Zia. It has been alleged by Pakistani columnist Nadeem F. Paracha and Raja Anwar, a former AZO member and now a politician in Pakistan, that both Sammu and Baloch were trained in Kabul. But it was Baloch who hit international headlines by the daring hijacking of a Pakistan International Airways (PIA) flight from Karachi to Kabul and then to Damascus on 2 March 1981.51 Capital punishment for the AZO fighters, who were trained in Kabul, is mentioned in Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography as repression and a sign of Zia’s tyrannical rule, which

remained unchanged despite the apparent change of the model of government of Pakistan. Political gains from these hangings remained unclear initially, but the fact is that by hanging these high-value captives, Zia presented the Pakistani side of the problem with Kabul which, due to Soviet backing and support, had emerged as a destination for the AZO rebels. Perhaps, that is why Zia was against having an ‘honest’ dialogue with Kabul or the Soviets. Though never proved, the alleged Indian angle to AZO showed that the rhetoric of terrorism cuts both ways. There was, however, a tiny window of opportunity for Pakistan before New Delhi began talks with Moscow and Washington DC. Pakistan began a serious exchange of views with Moscow. Moscow’s position was hinged on the trust factor. Pakistan on its end kept refusing direct dialogue with Kabul, as Zia perceived a direct negotiation with the Government of Afghanistan as a form of recognition of the troublemakers. Nevertheless, both sides began connecting following the fearful days of the Mattani incident.

The Soviet invasion started a chain of events that rolled on for six years. The big question was what made Afghanistan such a big headache for India and for Soviet leaders in 1984–85. Rising concerns over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan tapped into a psyche of thousands of years of resistance. Over the years, the average Afghan gained his formidable fighting skills, by blending his enterprising nature with the knowledge of the terrain. The Afghan could play the game of deception as well as fight on his own terrain on his own terms. The Soviet forces celebrated the 1980 New Year’s Day in Kabul and overthrew the government of Hafizullah Amin. But they were soon overwhelmed by the reaction from various tribes and their fighters who responded to the excesses committed by the avowedly Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). The battle of attrition, intrigue and revolutionary terrorism went on across both sides of the Af– Pak border as resistance grew inside Afghanistan and AZO activists

launched repeated, audacious attacks on targets in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. By late 1984, talks were on to bolster the mujahideen opposition with the supply of lethal missiles like Swiss Oerlikon 20-mm canons, British Blowpipe portable missiles and improved heat-seeking missiles like SAM7. The missiles were aimed at bringing down the famed Mi-24 Hind gunships that had been at the forefront of Soviet operations due to their ability to take on the mujahideen in the rural mountainous areas. With the Mattani incident and with Soviet operations near Pakistani borders, the arrival of fresh weapons like heat-seeking missiles in the hands of the mujahideen turned the war into a kind of guerrilla warfare that neither the Soviets nor the US had seen before. The terrain was different, the weapons introduced were uncertain in their effectiveness, the political leadership were caught over Zia’s intransigence over talking to those who not only fought the Pakistan Army but indeed supported opponents of the regime in Islamabad. A breakthrough was needed, either in the battlefields of Afghanistan or on the diplomatic high tables of Moscow, Islamabad, Washington DC or Kabul. Increasingly, after the arrival of Rajiv Gandhi in October 1984, it began to appear that the high table of diplomacy could also be convened in New Delhi’s South Block. Interestingly, AZO’s activist phase was brief. It began by morphing from the Save Bhutto Committee spearheaded by the two Bhutto boys Murtaza and Shah Nawaz in London. Following the London debut, the two brothers went underground, thanks to their various supporting cells in Europe, Arab capitals and the revolutionary circle. The two Bhutto brothers were charismatic and articulate, and what made them unique was that both could handle press conferences and meetings with the heads of governments as well as AK-47s with equal ease. Zulfikar, the sword of the holy Prophet of Islam, was known to be two-pronged. The two brothers gave the impression of a two-pronged weapon. Shah Nawaz, the younger and most charismatic of all the Bhutto siblings became the military and intelligence head of Al Zulfikar Organization; Murtaza, the Harvard-educated intellectual, dramatic and equally striking,

was the head of the political wing. By October of 1984, however, AZO had ended its phase of violent opposition to the Zia regime. At the peak of their most active terrorist phase, AZO operated out of Bungalow No. 2 on Wazir Akbar Khan Road, Kabul. This was an audacious attempt by Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed ruler Hafizullah Amin to allow Murtaza to set up his base in Kabul.52 Amin was, however, not the sole authority. The formidable intelligence service of Afghanistan encouraged Murtaza. The brothers were allowed to set up base in Kabul by Amin but in December 1979, as the Soviets poured in with tanks and helicopters, Babrak Karmal replaced Hafizullah Amin. It was during the reign of Karmal that AZO was most active. As the Soviets experimented with several leaders of Afghanistan to stabilize the region under their occupation, AZO continued to operate from Kabul. However, the two brothers made matters difficult by marrying two local beauties. By that time, Murtaza had begun to draw military and political support from sympathetic revolutionaries of whom there was no paucity in the crowd of non-aligned leaders like Gaddafi, Hafez al-Assad and Arafat – all friends of the Bhuttos and enemies of Zia because of his hand in the Black September massacre of Palestinians in Jordan in 1970. What was the role that Indira Gandhi and Rajiv played in Al Zulfikar Organization? No one speaks about this uncomfortable topic. But veteran journalist Satish Jacob53 who met Murtaza Bhutto during one of his early trips to Delhi and struck up a friendship, says that Murtaza was a regular visitor to Delhi under the Nehru-Gandhi rule in the 1980s. Fatima Bhutto, Murtaza’s daughter, wrote in detail54 about her father’s stay in Kabul under the patronage of the government of Babrak Karmal but even she avoided giving details of Indian support; she has only mentioned that Murtaza met Indira and Rajiv. However, Murtaza’s comrades say that India was not just concerned about the repression against the Bhuttos under Zia’s rule but in fact hosted Murtaza and his colleagues in India till well into the late 1980s.55 In 1982, however, AZO had benefited from its friends in various world capitals, and hit the headlines a number of times. The Afghan government was also under pressure as AZO intensified its anti-Zia activities with

hijacking and murders. They were forced to leave Kabul and landed in Libya. From Libya, the two brothers went to Damascus and there, by the end of 1984, they almost dissolved their movement as Zia cracked down on their supporters and sympathizers. By the time Rajiv Gandhi took over in Delhi, the phase of political terrorism in Pakistan had all but dried up but Al Zulfikar Organization showed Zia that there were consequences for every action that he undertook, which perhaps returned to haunt him much later. Zia had begun taking advantage of the support he extended to the Americans on Afghanistan. According to the Indians,56 Zia had backed separatists in Punjab and Kashmir in India. Inside Pakistan he was targeting the AZO’s captured members and was moving towards hanging them, ignoring global pleas for mercy. It was in this set of circumstances that Benazir Bhutto repackaged herself in exile in London to build a non-violent political opposition to Zia. The phase of revolutionary violence against Zia was over by the time Benazir began flying to world capitals to drum up support. Zia’s opponents were powerful. But Zia had Afghanistan under his control so he had to be handled carefully. Rajiv Gandhi and Dean were just a month away from their first handshake when Rajiv Gandhi visited Moscow for the fourth time, but on his first state visit as the Indian prime minister. The first two visits to the Soviet Union were in his capacity as the general secretary of the Congress, who had a great deal of interest in foreign affairs. Rajiv’s Soviet visit was expected to be the start of a major modernization drive for India, even though it came after a particularly difficult period in India–Soviet ties. Ever since Sanjay Gandhi’s interview in 1976 to a news magazine in which he had criticized the Soviets, an impression had gained ground that despite all her public pronouncements, Indira Gandhi was, in fact, a pro-West leader. Impressions hardened when Indira visited the USSR in 1976, along with her then chosen successor, Sanjay. In Moscow, Sanjay was blunt and often clumsy with his hosts. Unlike Sanjay, Rajiv began on a low note, visiting Moscow during the funeral of Brezhnev where his mother introduced him to the leading lights

of Moscow. Next, he visited Moscow on his own, as the general secretary of the Congress in July 1983 when he was welcomed by Andrei Gromyko, the then foreign minister of the USSR. His third visit for the Chernenko funeral was the first as the PM and that was followed by the full-scale state visit, which set a tradition as Rajiv paid an annual visit to the USSR from 1985 onward. Qamar Agha, one of the Allahabad-bred academics of Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi who worked with Rajiv as one of his several back-room boys in the early 1980s, says that Rajiv was treated like a head of government during his visits abroad even before he became the PM. Looking back, the real breakthrough in Soviet–US diplomacy came from Rajiv Gandhi’s first official visit to the USSR. On 22 May 1985, during the visit to Moscow, Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev held three hours of freewheeling discussions without their aides. Following the discussion Rajiv addressed a press conference where the issue of Afghanistan came up. In answer to a question, Rajiv Gandhi said: ‘Our position on Afghanistan is very clear. We are not for any country interfering or intervening in the internal affairs of another country’.57 This answer was aimed at all sides. While the Soviets wanted to condemn Pakistani actions in Afghanistan, Rajiv Gandhi remained non-committal. The length of the discussion convinced all present about the chemistry that both Gorbachev and Rajiv had with each other, but it was obvious that India disagreed with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as much as it was weary of Pakistani support to the mujahideen fighting Soviet occupation. At the end of his trip, on 26 May, a joint Indo-Soviet statement was issued. But Rajiv’s press statement earlier on 22 May had already made it clear that the Soviet orthodoxy on Afghanistan did not find unqualified support from India and that India favoured a political solution to the occupation. Peace in Afghanistan would certainly help India. Between 1985 and 1989, Rajiv Gandhi made annual trips to Moscow, skipping 1988, when he welcomed Gorbachev in Delhi for the Soviet leader’s second visit. But it was evident that despite Rajiv’s rhetoric of disarmament and developmental goals of the Third World, there was something really not right between India and the USSR. Both Delhi and Moscow had been trusted partners and Soviet weapons helped India win a

war in 1971. Rajiv’s first state visit to Moscow in 1985 therefore marked the revival of India–Soviet ties. India wanted to get Soviet support at a time when it was needed most. But unlike in 1971, India needed much more than ammunition and weapons platforms. India needed the USSR to be a partner in a leap into the twenty-first century. Moscow was supremely capable of supporting India, even as Rajiv piloted India into the future. All over the world, however, doubts about the Soviet system had been growing for some time. The war in Afghanistan was a leading cause of concern for the general health of the Soviet economy. Since the early 1970s, the Soviet economy had been stagnating and had begun to decline. As a result of the weakening economy and the general drain on its resources, Moscow was trying out all sorts of approaches towards an early solution of the Afghanistan situation. On 23 March, Kremlin allowed Pakistani ambassador Shahid M. Amin to address the TV audience of the USSR.58 The purpose of this televised speech was soon overshadowed by the Mattani incident and the number of Soviet offensives near the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. However, since the arrival of Gorbachev in March, the impression had gained ground that the Soviet Union would adopt a different approach in economic and strategic affairs, as the country had reached a difficult pass. The Soviets were playing carrot and stick with Pakistan and conveyed to Amin that they had enough resources to stay put in Afghanistan for several years. But they also wanted Pakistan to build a demilitarized zone along the border with Afghanistan to facilitate Soviet evacuation. Despite the cold handshake that he extended to Zia, Gorbachev was in fact doing the opposite within a month of taking over from Chernenko. Moscow began telling Pakistan that Zia had a chance to make a difference by stopping the flow of weapons into Afghanistan. Georgi Arbatov, a leading Jewish Soviet academic and close adviser of the Kremlin told Amin that Gorbachev began a review of the Afghanistan policy soon after coming to power. Amin also saw through the bravado of Moscow when bureaucrats threatened that they could stay in Afghanistan for several more years. Pakistani students were scattered all over the USSR and Amin used them to

gather information about the way the Soviet population was responding to the military campaign in Afghanistan, which was unlike any military campaign in Soviet history. Pakistani students in the medical and engineering colleges of the USSR gave the impression of a growing public discontent against the continued deployment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Obviously, the Soviets could fight for years in Afghanistan but they also wanted access to the market and money, without which they were going to fall apart. Ronen Sen, who was by then a part of Rajiv’s team in South Block, found there was a certain unknown dynamic that had entered Indian diplomacy. Things don’t happen just like that, he began telling himself. But no one could quite yet explain what drove the enormous diplomatic machinery that began moving soon after Rajiv was sworn in. Rajiv Gandhi had often talked of his vision for India. That vision contained satellites, high technology, wider public broadcast systems, increased telephone network and computerization, and was sold to the electorate. Whatever Rajiv promised the electorate hinged on his outreach to the developed countries of the West and the USSR, India’s old strategic partner. But technology was also a strategic commodity and it is not always possible to get what one wants. There were some glitches in the development of India–Soviet ties. To begin with, the 1971 Indo-Societ Friendship Treaty, which had the solid backing of Indira Gandhi, began to lose political support in India by the late 1970s. It was reported then that the declaration of elections by Indira Gandhi at the end of the Emergency era came as a surprise to the Soviets. They were also apprehensive of losing the Indian arms market, which was a huge pie that no respectable arms producer was willing to let go of. The Coomar Narain case threw up leads showing that the Soviets were one of the beneficiaries of the elaborate cat-and-mouse game that went on in Delhi’s spy circles. The aim of the espionage was most importantly to keep tabs on defence procurement and the armaments sector of India to prevent India from sliding into the Western defence sector. Journalist Vinod Sharma reported59 that the spy ring had become a supermarket of information on the details of the Indian military purchase, preparation and even India’s stand

on international issues like Nicaragua. The spy network had many buyers and some of them allegedly came from the Soviet embassy. The spy scandal claimed the principal secretary P.C. Alexander, who had to resign taking moral responsibility for the lapse. Rajiv Gandhi’s first official visit to the Soviet Union was therefore part of an exercise to keep a time-tested partner in good humour. But it must have been obvious to the Indian side, just as it was to the Pakistani diplomatic and student community based in the Soviet Union, that Moscow was facing an unprecedented economic and structural crisis in its history and that it will have to put its own house in order. The problems of the Soviet economy were no longer hidden. The visuals from Moscow show Rajiv Gandhi being accorded a warm welcome by his communist hosts on 21 May 1985. Both sides discussed Afghanistan and the contents of the talks remained mostly unknown till Rajiv reached the United States for a five-day visit on 12 June. In talks with his American hosts, Rajiv placed India’s opposition to American arms flowing into Afghanistan but also soothed the listeners by highlighting that he understood well that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan made it difficult for the US to stop supplying weapons to Pakistan. American journalist Linda de Hoyos reported that Rajiv’s opposition to the Soviet occupation had created a major gulf between India and the USSR over the Soviet handling of Afghanistan. Evidently, the Americans had taken note of the three-hour-long discussion between Rajiv and Gorbachev, which failed to produce any agreement on Afghanistan. Rajiv’s engagement with the US leaders was far more wide-ranging than the one he had in Moscow. In comparison, Rajiv Gandhi’s discussion with Secretary of State George Shultz held on 23 June, was eighty minutes long. His talks with the US leaders continued on the last day when he had discussions with President Reagan once again. Reagan and Rajiv kept their interactions on Afghanistan away from the media, while focusing on the menace of terrorism in the world. But in Washington DC, one image that spoke more than anything else was that of the presence of Charles Percy sitting proudly in the front row of the Congress and showing off his newfound client for Charles Percy and Associates – the prime minister of India.

Rajiv Gandhi wanted the United States and India to come closer and was willing to go that extra mile for reviving this relationship. It was here that Rajiv presented the concept of what he called a ‘nonaligned Afghanistan’ – a political arrangement for Afghanistan that also solved the internal problems of power-sharing within Afghanistan, which was to be based on guarantees of non-intervention by external powers. Rajiv Gandhi had made his move on Afghanistan far away from the Indian borders. He did not just speak of a solution to the Afghanistan problem but took it to those who were looking for a formula with external guarantees. Reagan responded by saying that Rajiv and he ‘hit it off’ despite their age difference of thirty-three years. The solution of the Afghanistan crisis had been refloated by Rajiv (after Indira, Gujral and Bondarevsky) and now it was up to his American and Soviet friends to accept the suggestion. Both were caught in such a stalemate that they probably would try anything that might be of help.

Rajiv returned to Delhi in the third week of June. On the other end of the world, John Gunther Dean and his wife Martine packed their bags, visited friends and colleagues, and caught a flight to India. On 1 August, a fortnight before India’s Independence Day celebrations, Dean personally handed over a letter from Vice-President George H.W. Bush which introduced Dean to Rajiv as an ‘active’ ambassador. John Gunther Dean was now officially the US ambassador to India. Dean was an active ambassador. He hated formal ambassadorial affairs and loved to travel and meet people from all walks of life. This had led to him being put under surveillance in his previous postings. But India was not to be a problem posting, he thought, as he met Rajiv Gandhi in Washington DC during the just-concluded visit. Dean’s job was clear-cut: he was supposed to help the US achieve certain goals through his appointment. First among these was to facilitate a pro-US solution of the Afghanistan crisis through his interactions with the Indian government. Second, he was asked to do ‘whatever he could’60 to wean India away from the Soviet arms lobby and help the American arms

manufacturers to get a break in India. Third, he had to keep an eye on India’s nuclear programme. And fourth, he was supposed to be the salesman of US tech firms especially since India was determined to race to the twenty-first century under Rajiv Gandhi. None of these aims, Dean found, were compatible with each other. Most importantly, Dean had no idea how to find space for the American agenda in the daily explosion of events and developments that the Indian prime minister had to deal with. He got an inkling of it on 20 August when the TV newsreader announced that Sikh preacher Harchand Singh Longowal had been shot dead at the end of his sermon in a gurdwara in Sherpur village of Sangrur district. With this assassination, Rajiv Gandhi’s Punjab Accord was in a shambles.

Rajiv had been promising a solution to the ongoing insurgency in Punjab since the 5 January speech61 that he delivered over state broadcaster Doordarshan. While he conducted diplomacy and spoke of peace abroad, Rajiv was aware that Punjab had gone out of control with the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the anti-Sikh pogrom of November 1984; the crucial border state facing Pakistan had to be calmed. But how could India’s most important frontier state be calmed when arms from the Afghan jihad of Zia spilled in and mixed with theological fissures? The Punjab problem, like the crisis with Pakistan, goes back to the partition of India in 1947. On 11 March, Rajiv Gandhi sent Home Secretary R.D. Pradhan to Chandigarh. Pradhan suggested as a first step that Punjab governor K.T. Satarawala should be changed. With the new governor Arjun Singh, Pradhan and super-cop K.P.S. Gill of the Indian Police Service began reaching out to various sections of the Sikh political class. On 13 April, Rajiv announced an investigation into the anti-Sikh pogrom that took place following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. On that day, after a meeting in Jallianwala Bagh, Arjun Singh asked Longowal to visit Delhi on 23 July. The much-publicized Punjab Accord signed on 24 July in the Parliament House of Delhi was a hurried agreement. Promises were made and agreements reached without knowing how to go ahead in dealing with the

territorial dispute of Punjab and the issue of sharing river water, and dealing with the deep-rooted alienation of Sikh youth. Rajiv Gandhi must have felt relieved though doubts persisted in the mind of his Punjab team including R.D. Pradhan. But Punjab erupted despite the agreement, which appeared like a tiny bandage over a ruptured artery. Violence spread to Delhi, and Lalit Maken, leading light of the Congress and an energetic leader of the party, was shot dead in his South Delhi home by Sikh militants. The news of Longowal’s assassination twenty-days later in Sangrur highlighted the complexity of the Punjab crisis. Punjab was a problem for India, but its crisis is rooted in South Asian dynamics. Rajiv Gandhi had to have a regional approach to tackle Punjab and its Sikh militancy, which had claimed thousands of lives including that of his mother. Urgency over Punjab was no longer an Indian need. On 23 June Air India Boeing 747 Kanishka crashed off the coast of Ireland after exploding mid-air. Investigations revealed that Canada-based Sikhs had played a role in this tragedy. The world woke up to this problem of India, which would eventually become a world problem as other forms of jihadi terror spilt over from Afghanistan soon. With Dean in place, the Americans conducted an assessment – cited in the beginning of the chapter – of Rajiv Gandhi and his politics. They discussed all issues frankly and came to the conclusion that the United States could not leave Rajiv Gandhi or India to these exploding challenges. The US decided to be a partner of Rajiv as the assessment remarked that a weak government in Delhi at that point or an assassination of Rajiv himself by Sikh militants would push India into a terminal spin. Indians of course knew of the Pakistani hand in the insurgencies in Punjab, and Rajiv wanted to reduce the tension between India and Pakistan. For that he met Zia in Moscow on the sidelines of the Chernenko funeral on 11 March. Ambassador Amin, who was present at the meeting, says that Rajiv and Zia broke the ice in their meeting and agreed that neither country would be the first to launch a nuclear attack.62 Indians knew from the pattern of arms supply and the active promotion of Sikh cultural interests by Zia that the Pakistanis had taken a hard stance on the issue of a separate homeland for the Sikhs in Indian Punjab.

Rajiv had a number of internal problems and several of them had external links. Rajiv needed help. It was here that a give-and-take began to take shape silently. In exchange of creating a regional network of leaders, India slowly extended a platform for superpower interest in its strategic front yard. Within six months, the position of Rajiv and Zia seemed to have undergone a drastic change. On 1 January 1985, Rajiv appeared invincible and Zia was vulnerable with the baggage of dictatorship weighing down his standing. But by July 1985, Dean observed that Rajiv had a failing Punjab Accord staring at him and, in comparison, Zia had become a president through a poll, albeit not free and fair, and silenced a large chunk of his critics in the AZO. But despite his domestic problems, Rajiv’s international moves were more optimistic. By cracking down on AZO, Zia made sure that the military arm of the organization could no longer pose a threat to him. While hanging the AZO militants within a week of winning the fraudulent election, Zia also sent out a message that he was going after the militants who had claimed innocent lives in their run-ins with his government in Pakistan. Zia was also aware that the Soviets were looking for an honourable exit from Afghanistan. Zia seemed to be enviably placed in August 1985; terrorism in Punjab had all but buried the Punjab Accord; the Soviets appeared clueless in Afghanistan; and the Americans were happily supplying Pakistan with an endless number of weapons to be used in Afghanistan (or in other private campaigns that Zia might like to use the surplus weapons). Zia also created a situation wherein the Bhuttos were denied a military option. Benazir Bhutto who had been living in London for a year, packed her bags for Nice to spend a few quiet days as the entire Bhutto clan flocked into the southern resort city in France. Here on 19 July, the commander of the AZO, Shah Nawaz Bhutto’s body was found in his apartment. The death remains a mystery as varying accounts exist. The death of Shah Nawaz ensured that AZO would never be resurrected. Benazir blamed her sister-in-law Rehana for not responding to Shah Nawaz’s calls for help. The Pakistan ambassador to France, Jamsheed Marker, who served under both Zia and Benazir, says that the two brothers

Murtaza and Shah Nawaz fought over money at a restaurant and then fought again in their apartment leading to the tragedy. A third account by Fatima, Murtaza’s daughter, hints that the murder was possibly a favour extended to Benazir to help her enter the political arena of Pakistan without having to shoulder the burden of a terrorist brother with ties to enemy countries of Pakistan. Shah Nawaz was buried in Larkana and with this burial, began the political journey of Benazir. As she landed in Pakistan for the funeral of her brother, she found herself in a sea of humanity testifying to the enormous popularity that she and her family continued to enjoy. Benazir left, but she was to stage a comeback soon. Shah Nawaz had no future in Pakistan but by dying in mysterious circumstances, he drew out millions of Pakistanis in an emotional show of support for the Bhuttos, which initiated a process that shook Zia’s rule and finally led to the return of Benazir seven months later. Zia was winning the proxy guerrilla war in Afghanistan but losing the battle for political legitimacy at home unless he could engage those who had helped the Bhuttos before. Rajiv too was caught up in the Punjab imbroglio and needed regional support. The dictator of Bangladesh, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, the dictator of Maldives, Abdul Maumoon Gayoom, and the Nepal monarch King Birendra had their own problems of eroding political legitimacy. By then, the Indian and US leadership had forged a comfortable working relationship. The gradual opening up of the channel of dialogue through the office of the Indian PM remains an unrecorded part of the negotiations over Afghanistan. The definite motivations for the very personal intervention from the prime minister of India remain a mystery. Most of Rajiv’s international speeches at this time, in Moscow, Washington DC and elsewhere, were suffused with the vision of his grandfather and his mother. But, understandably, Rajiv wanted to emerge from the shadow of Indira Gandhi who had a tall international presence. This mother–son dynamic can be best measured by looking at Rajiv’s visit to the Bahamas on 16 October. After his meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London, Rajiv reached Nassau in the Bahamas to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Traditionally, CHOGM is addressed only by the British monarch. But Rajiv’s team came up with an alternative way to deal with the traditional role of the British Crown in CHOGM. He organized ‘a unique event’, addressing forty other heads of government and their foreign ministers a little before the formal summit was to begin. Despite Rajiv’s ideological distance from his mother, there was no doubt that the growing profile of India demanded his continued involvement with world affairs that reflected his mother’s international politics. But the times had changed and the perils ahead were different in nature. Rajiv Gandhi met President Reagan for the second time when he went to New York to attend the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the United Nations on 22 October 1985. Both the leaders discussed the Afghanistan– Pakistan issue and Rajiv extended his support in finding an appropriate solution to the Afghan crisis. Rajiv also had brainstorming sessions with the likes of Michael Armacost, US Under Secretary of State for political affairs, which gave him an opportunity to understand better the US position. My two primary sources for this story, John Gunther Dean and Ronen Sen, were only beginning to get used to the rapid flow of events, dialogues and negotiations of 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi began his interaction with the United States on Afghanistan–Pakistan. It was at this time that Rajiv Gandhi decided to take matters in his hands to improve India–US relations. According to John Gunther Dean Papers, he started an unprecedented trend in Indian diplomatic history of briefing the US ambassador personally. It was an extraordinary move that granted Dean direct access to the prime minister. During his tenure, Dean continued to meet Rajiv for these unique briefings that he faithfully chronicled. Rajiv held the first briefing on technology transfer on 13 November 1985 and set up a team of officials and experts to interact with Dean. It was understood that these briefings would connect him directly with the White House and the State Department and it was obviously done to remove any possible misunderstanding between the two sides. Main topics for such briefings were to include technology exchange, back-channel talks on Afghanistan, Pakistan’s nuclear programme and India’s ties with Moscow.

Dear Mr Prime Minister Closer home, diplomatic history was being made in South Asia. Rajiv Gandhi went to Dhaka in December 1985 to attend the first ever summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) leaders. The participating leaders – the presidents of Bangladesh, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the kings of Bhutan and Nepal and the prime minister of India – signed the SAARC Charter on 8 December 1985, thereby establishing the regional association. Before the summit began on 7 December, Rajiv and Zia firmed up plans for a meeting in Delhi on December 17. It was then that John Gunther Dean drove from Roosevelt House to the South Block to meet Chinmaya Gharekhan, the additional secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, to hand-deliver a letter from President Reagan to the Indian prime minister. The letter was delivered a day before Rajiv Gandhi was to welcome President Zia. The letter was a unique diplomatic project that Reagan put on paper. After building a case for the need for stable and prosperous South Asia, Reagan came to the ‘tragic conflict in Afghanistan’. By talking of Afghanistan, Reagan was taking the prime minister of India into confidence regarding the solution that was to be found only if the Soviets withdrew their troops from Afghanistan. This was, by several measures, a warming up by the US administration and a good deal depended on how Rajiv would react to Reagan’s outreach on the Afghanistan issue.63 So far, the Americans had been relying on Pakistan in the UN-backed negotiations over Afganistan. But by consulting Rajiv on Afghanistan, Reagan expanded the ambit of consultation. From the Indian point of view, President Raegan’s letter to Rajiv Gandhi marked the beginning of a negotiation between the US and India over Afghanistan which had appeared on the Indian radar erratically for several years. The Rajiv–Reagan talks of June 1985 had been an exchange of different views on Afghanistan. But the letter marked the first time that the United States wanted to keep India involved and informed of its position over Afghanistan. Rajiv Gandhi had himself made the differences over the

Afghanistan issue known in Washington DC which left no scope for ambiguities. But Reagan had since Rajiv’s visit sent a number of emissaries like Michael Armacost to Delhi to impress upon Rajiv of the Reagan–Bush administration’s desire to engage the prime minister of India for regional management in South Asia. By committing his thoughts on paper, Reagan simply put his official seal to a plan aimed at restarting a regional dialogue process on Afghanistan. Rajiv Gandhi, by reaching out to the US, had proved that he was indeed the kind of partner that the Americans were looking for. But for playing his role for regional management, the Americans had to reduce their clandestine activities in India. Sadly, as Dean was to find out, he was not always consulted by the State Department and his embassy was not often in his control. The US embassy in Chanakyapuri was a divided house, Dean was to discover by the time he hand-delivered the first letter from Ronald Reagan to Rajiv Gandhi, which began a series of exchanges between the Indians and the Americans on the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 1985, Dean had hoped to establish a personal rapport with the Indian prime minister in the way he had established with the leaders of various countries during his past postings. Such a moment finally was to arrive in January 1986. But before that, Dean had a full-fledged crisis which undermined his stature both inside and outside the embassy. The Indian media began reporting in the first fortnight of January 1986 about a bizarre and complex spy network. At the centre of this story was a man named Rama Swaroop. It came to light that Rama Swaroop was part of an active anti-communist network in Delhi and was aligned with the Israelis, the Americans and the West Germans. Swaroop was convinced of the evil of communism and found it worthwhile to espouse at least rhetorical support to the Af–Pak mujahideen. The revelations in the media came as a shock to Dean, but the Indian government had been investigating the matter since Dean arrived in Delhi. Though, on the surface of it, India–US relations were looking healthier as their leaders had begun to exchange helpful notes by the end of 1985, it was also evident that the Americans were not all on the same page when it came to dealing with India. There obviously were some at least in the agencies or

among the diplomats who preferred to use dark tools of statecraft while dealing with Rajiv Gandhi’s government. Swaroop was in news earlier in 1979 when he had facilitated the visit of the Israeli military legend and leader, Moshe Dayan, to Delhi. Now, however, it appeared as if the Americans were using an Israeli asset in Delhi to ferret out information about the Rajiv Gandhi government and its diplomatic stance on several issues of global importance. As the spy scandal began to unravel, Dean conveyed to the deputy national security advisor, Donald Fortier, his displeasure at being ‘cut out’ of issues on which he should have been informed. Dean, however, was surprised that despite the heat of the espionage scandal in the media, Rajiv Gandhi chose to engage him directly. On 30 January, Rajiv sat down with Dean to seek the truth about the espionage scandal.64 The meeting was unusual as the PM could have just asked Ronen Sen to seek a briefing from the US ambassador. At the end of the meeting, it was clear that Rajiv Gandhi had been upset with US snooping activities, but found out that Dean was personally not responsible for this particular perfidy, but that it was the continuation of the extreme paranoia that marked India–US ties of the 1970s. At the end of the meeting, Rajiv Gandhi asked Dean to convey to Reagan and Bush that India wanted to know the American response to Gorbachev’s proposal regarding arms reduction and a nuclear test ban. It was the clearest sign so far that Rajiv Gandhi had been asked by the Soviets to find out if the Americans were willing to indulge in quid pro quo over the talks about withdrawal from Afghanistan and talks on strategic arms reduction and nuclear test ban. The Soviets wanted an honourable exit from Afghanistan but they also wanted honourable exits from other issues that were a massive drain on their resources – like the endless arms and space race. A negotiation had begun over how to convince the Soviets to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. The Kremlin, under the new leadership of Gorbachev, had begun moving fast on changing the Soviet stand on Afghanistan. On 27 December 1985, Gorbachev met foreign ambassadors in Moscow and predicted that substantial progress would take place in 1986. Afterwards, he shook hands

with the Pakistani ambassador warmly to convey that a different policy was being planned in the Kremlin to resolve the crisis over Afghanistan. Rajiv Gandhi was extending the hospitality of India for the complex cold war politics involving the United States and the USSR that affected Afghanistan, which was the playground of Pakistan, Afghan warlords, Saudi cash and unknown intelligence agencies. The basic positions in the Afghanistan crisis were not irresolvable but till Gorbachev’s speech indicating major changes in Soviet policy towards Afghanistan, the threat of war over Afghanistan had not yet cleared. Certain things, however, were becoming clearer: Rajiv Gandhi had become a politically acceptable leader in South Asia, which was more used to authoritarian leaders. Zia had an advantage over Benazir but chose to squander it away by calling for a sham election; the Afghan government was deadly opposed to Pakistan and could harbour terror groups if it wished; but it was in no position to use a violent option to keep up the pressure on Pakistan in its US-backed jihad; with the demise of AZO a democratic opposition was the only way ahead to pressure Pakistan to fall in line. But it was also evident that both India and the USSR wanted Afghanistan to be neutral in the future and have a broad-based government covering multiple sectors of society. This position was articulated by Rajiv in Washington DC in June 1985 and was spoken of favourably in private. But the strongest hint reached Pakistan when the Polish ambassador to the USSR sat down with Ambassador Amin in May 1986 in Moscow to convey that the Kremlin no longer insisted on having a socialist government to continue in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Amin was told that a non-aligned Afghanistan – not committed to either of the superpowers – would be acceptable to the Soviets. This was a climbdown by the Soviets that fitted Rajiv’s description of an Afghan government. Polish diplomats were important players in the cold war era and they were often used as ‘sounding boards’ for Soviet diplomacy.65 It appeared increasingly that Afghanistan was headed for a non-aligned government where all sections of Afghans including the communists and the mujahideen – deadly enemies of each other –would have to participate.

This was an extremely difficult project to accomplish. But it was the best option. For some time in the spring of 1986, New Delhi, Moscow, Islamabad and Washington had to consider a united approach to bring in a non-aligned government in Kabul covering the Islamists, communists, the tribal leaders and modern civil servants in a bid to stabilize the government in Afghanistan. But what were the chances of success for such a love affair among starcrossed lovers with a history of mutual hatred? Perhaps all sides were aware of the impossibility, yet they agreed to try as after four decades of non-stop proxy wars that constituted the cold war and the six years of war in Afghanistan, all the principals and the ‘fellow-travellers’ (Sen’s expression), now wanted to travel in a different direction. Of course, India wanted to find a solution to the Afghan crisis in order to prevent the spillover of jihad into Kashmir, or the arms flow into Punjab and rest of India. But, according to Sen, Rajiv Gandhi got involved in the Afghan problem also as part of a larger diplomatic exercise. He says that the foreign policy team under Rajiv Gandhi took a principled position on several issues like Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation, reduction of strategic arms and disarmament of space, and South–South cooperation, which demanded continuous dialogue with the principals of the cold war – the United States and the USSR. However, as he proceeded deeper into dialogue on one front, Rajiv discovered that issues on other fronts had a tendency to cut into India’s negotiations with the stakeholders in Afghan affairs. Afghanistan was one of the several areas where the transition from the cold war to the post–cold war era could be felt first-hand. Reagan needed support in handling this transition. Gorbachev too needed a trusted friend. Rajiv, along with his foreign affairs team and the Reagan–Bush team, provided exactly that kind of interlocutors. The Iran–Iraq war and post-1979 Islamic Revolution prevented the Iranians and the US to collaborate on effective diplomacy. The Saudis were unable to break free from the jihad. The Pakistanis were caught with incidents like Mattani right on their soil and the Americans were supplying arms to Pakistan to kill Soviet soldiers by proxy. The US and the Soviets

required a friend who could be trusted to help further the negotiations, and India fitted the bill.

But there were other problems with the potential to hamper India’s ability to take part in global diplomacy. One of the first political crises that would affect Rajiv subsequently came not from Afghanistan but from Madhya Pradesh, the Shah Bano case. It began in July 1985 with a small news item: a Constitution bench under Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud had dismissed a Muslim advocate’s plea to avoid paying maintenance to his divorced wife, named Shah Bano. The Supreme Court ordered the advocate, Mohammed Ahmad Khan, to pay his elderly wife a monthly maintenance. There were protests from conservative Muslim voices who held this to be against Sharia and violative of their right to religious freedom. There were appeals to the prime minister to amend the law under which Shah Bano was awarded alimony by the apex court. Rajiv Gandhi was advised by many established Congress politicians not to alienate Muslims from Congress. In 1986, the Parliament passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, that nullified the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case. This was seen by many as an act of appeasement of Muslims. Arif Mohammed Khan, a junior minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s council of ministers, resigned in protest. The charge of appeasement of the conservative Muslims was to become a hot potato later in Gandhi’s prime ministership. In about a year after coming to power, Rajiv Gandhi had become a global statesman thanks to his proximity to a large number of stakeholders, from Stockholm to Moscow to Washington. He was consulted by Ronald Reagan on regional matters and he became the leading figure of the Group of Six, which along with other participants became a pressure group to advise and guide the superpowers on threat reduction and strategic weapons reduction. The good times were just beginning as Rajiv Gandhi had removed the old doubts and suspicions about the ‘foreign hand’ and extended a hand of friendship to the United States. Of course, he would be accused of being naive regarding the US and also in the Shah Bano case, but in 1986, with his brute majority in parliament, Rajiv’s position was unchallenged.

4 Annapurna in Moscow ‘HUP-TWO-THREE-FOUR! Hup-two-three-four!’ It was seven in the morning and my hosts were with their fitness trainer. The half-an-hour daily exercise is what keeps the Deans in good shape. Their vigorous exercise session gave me some time to explore the Dean family study, filled with great literature and official documents. Dean had told me about his personal collection of papers and photographs and I was curious to peruse them. A large cupboard with papers marked ‘India’ drew my attention and I started removing the books placed in front of its doors that blocked the massive cupboard. The heavy cupboard doors made enough of a noise to draw a warning roar from John who fiercely guards his study. But by then I had disturbed the order of the study and his personal collection of papers and photographs that narrated the story of warm ties between Dean and Indian leaders, especially the late Rajiv Gandhi. By the time Dean came to check the extent of my curiosity, I had the papers all piled up around me, and I was holding a visiting card bearing the name ‘A.P. Venkateswaran’. The faded business card declared that A.P. Venkateswaran was in touch with Dean after he joined the Hinduja Foundation, run by the influential Hinduja group.1 Dean looked at the papers and said, ‘OK. Have your way.

But please do not disturb the arrangement of the papers.’ Then his glance fell on the business card. ‘He was my friend.’ Thus began the story of two powerful foreign secretaries who served Rajiv Gandhi in critical missions. Venkateswaran and Romesh Bhandari, both immensely resourceful and tough, with international networks of friends that cut across the cold war barriers, oversaw the early negotiations with the United States on behalf of Rajiv Gandhi. In those days under Bhandari and Venkat, lots of things were possible and they turned what seemed to be impossible into possibilities. Romesh Bhandari, a Punjabi with a ruddy complexion and a love for good things and bright colours, was a high-profile secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs when Rajiv Gandhi succeeded his mother. He had joined the Indian Foreign Service under Jawaharlal Nehru and rose to his position due to a mix of competence and a clever projection of his ties with the leaders. Bhandari acquired a bit of a reputation for being close to NehruGandhi family. There was no surprise that given his blend of competence and political ties, Bhandari became the foreign secretary of India in the spring of 1985. His crisis-solving abilities had acquired legendary status during Indira Gandhi’s final phase in power. After serving efficiently throughout the cold war era in various important locations, including Washington DC, Bhandari’s most important assignment came on 24 August 1984 when an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked by Sikh militants. The hijackers first took off to Lahore. But President Zia’s government, which was under fire from the international community for its support to Sikh separatism, denied the hijackers a longer stay on Pakistani soil. Pakistani intelligence officials handed over a pistol to the hijackers on seeing that the hijackers had used a toy gun to take over the aircraft. Next, they were asked to proceed to Dubai. Indira Gandhi ordered Romesh Bhandari and a crack team of the Indian security establishment to fly to Dubai. In the meanwhile, the Dubai government had asked the militants to surrender, promising that they would be handed over to the American authorities. But Bhandari used his superb contacts with the royal family of Dubai and made them break their pledge

to the hijackers. In the meanwhile, India had chartered a special aircraft and flown it to Dubai. The hijackers were told that they would be flown to the US and a special aircraft from the US was waiting for them on the tarmac. Once the militants came on board, they were overpowered by the security operatives who had accompanied Romesh Bhandari.2 That success in Dubai, with the cooperation of the government of the emirate, turned Bhandari into a superstar diplomat-cum-crisis-manager. Bhandari never discussed these sensitive operations that he undertook. But these operations perhaps underlined the excellent equation he shared with the Nehru-Gandhis during his diplomatic tenure and subsequently when he got several important assignments. Bhandari once told me that he would write a tell-all memoir covering security and diplomatic issues. But he passed away before he could pen his thoughts. Bhandari said that the Punjab crisis saw him play a vital role. He would also play a significant role in connecting the Soviets with the Americans as Rajiv Gandhi’s foreign secretary. But the biggest success of his career was to present India in a new light before the United States, through the festival of India.

Rajiv Gandhi unleashed a flurry of foreign-affairs-related activities upon taking charge as the prime minister of India. After his trip to Moscow to attend Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral, which was the familiarization part of his diplomatic agenda, it was time to execute India’s international diplomacy. It was also Romesh Bhandari’s project. To give India’s international profile a facelift, the government under Rajiv Gandhi organized a series of functions, projecting the cultural heritage and diversity of the country. Rare art and antique sculptures were airlifted from India to be displayed in the cities of important Western nations even as questions were raised about transporting them abroad. Rajiv Gandhi offered what may be called a twenty-four-course banquet of India to the world. But not all of it was palatable to the West. Some of the dishes were pungent and spicy, but that came later. The good dishes

came first. Here Rajiv borrowed from the Pupul Jayakar–Indira Gandhi set of ideas: the Festival of India. The festival was conceived during Indira Gandhi’s last visit to the US in 1982. Ironically, despite the West’s troubles with Indira Gandhi, the script for a good relationship with the US was partly written by Indira Gandhi, and she had put her trusted friend Pupul Jayakar3 on the job of improving India’s image in the US. It took off from the simple notion that India did not celebrate all that it had given the world since the 1960s. For her planned trip to the US later in 1984, she had proposed to showcase Chola and Vijayanagara sculptures, along with the best of Indian music, dance, handicrafts and cuisine. The collective effect of so many cultural products at once left the American governing elite impressed as newspapers and revered columnists woke up to the fact that ‘(there is) art everywhere in India’.4 Malavika Sarukkai in Bharatanatyam, Raja and Radha Reddy in Kuchipudi, and the East–West jugalbandi of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Zubin Mehta reminded the US elite that the magic and charm of India remained unexplored. But some people like Bhabhani Sengupta of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi described India’s ‘flirting’ with the US as harmful in the long run since India was not going to change its basic orientation of nonalignment any time soon.5 But the euphoria around the Festival of India was not without solid reasons. Rajiv Gandhi arrived in style and impressed everyone in Washington DC with his warmth and personality. It was an unprecedented moment in the India–US relationship. The White House threw an elaborate welcome party for Rajiv Gandhi. The Indians, reciprocating the special gesture from the American government, arranged a birthday party for Vice-President George H.W. Bush at the Kennedy Center. Bush was deeply impressed and talked of a personal relationship with the Gandhis which stretched back to the warm evening that he spent in Delhi on an official visit during the last year of Indira Gandhi’s rule. The United States had seen a lot from India: the yogis, the globetrotting sadhus and sexual/spiritual leaders like Rajneesh, the classical musicians. But it had not experienced all of this in one big creative burst lighting up

the night sky of Washington DC and New York City. The Festival of India was launched by Rajiv in the summer of 1985, and it toured ninety American cities over the next eighteen months. Soon after being introduced to the Indian PM in June 1985, one of Ambassador Dean’s immediate duties was to guide the US first lady Nancy Reagan to the mind-boggling Festival of India.6 Escorted by Dean, Sonia, Rajiv and the curator Rajiv Sethi, Nancy Reagan absorbed the Mangania music from Rajasthan and appreciated the meenakari work flown in.

In the mid-1980s, South Asia was enveloped in violence and India was also a victim. The cold war was still on and the Americans wasted no opportunity to impress the leader of India, who was also the chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement and therefore important for American global schemes. Rajiv Gandhi visited all the important addresses in Washington DC to highlight the special bond between the two sides, and as a sign of the changed times, he was hosted by the State Department. All issues including the violence in Afghanistan were discussed in the meetings in the White House and the State Department. We now know for certain that the Rajiv–Reagan diplomacy over Afghanistan had its beginnings in Washington DC where the Indian prime minister and his team were welcomed warmly. During these meetings, Rajiv Gandhi was asked to be part of the negotiations on Afghanistan. Dean maintains that President Reagan personally made this request and was backed by his team as it was looking for allies to reach out to the Soviet Union.7 It is not known if there was any quid pro quo. But both sides agreed that the evacuation of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan and peaceful succession in Kabul, with the support of regional powers, was the way ahead. It was obvious that the American initiative on Afghanistan would not render Kabul anti-India at least, and Indians had nothing to fear from an American initiative. Thus began a cooperation based on an understanding. India was in a difficult spot as far as superpower rivalry was concerned. India maintained a balance in its ties with the USSR and the US. Though Rajiv Gandhi welcomed the American request, he was careful not to let any

misunderstanding grow between Delhi and Moscow, and instructed the Indian ambassador to Moscow to brief the Soviet leadership even as his discussion with Washington DC was under way. During his talks in Washington DC, Rajiv agreed to send Foreign Secretary Bhandari to Moscow, ostensibly to brief senior Soviet leaders about the possibility of a political settlement in Afghanistan. But Bhandari’s visit was also intended to help the Soviets understand the American line on Afghanistan and the nuclear rivalry between the US and the USSR.8 Rajiv Gandhi was cautioned earlier by one of his key early aides, Vijay Dhar, about America’s intentions and the euphoria about India–US relations.9 But Rajiv dismissed Dhar’s arguments as influenced by his ‘communist bent of mind’. Rajiv directed his foreign secretary to maintain communications, much to the satisfaction of the Americans. Rajiv Gandhi’s meetings in Washington DC and Moscow gave a new dimension to the backchannel talks between the Pakistan-backed Afghan mujahideen and the government in Kabul, who were essentially proxies for the US and the USSR respectively. Rajiv Gandhi’s instruction to Bhandari to visit Moscow was a serious sign of India’s interest in solving the Afghan problem. The talks between Bhandari and the Soviets were confidential. But going by Dean’s cable to the Secretary of State, Bhandari had begun to engage the Soviets on Afghanistan. During a 22 November 1986 discussion between Venkateswaran (Bhandari’s successor) and Dean, the former recounted that Bhandari had also cautioned Rajiv about the ultimate motivation behind the American move to use India as a backchannel for Afghanistan.10 Given that the CIA-backed mujahideen were killing Soviet soldiers, ties between Moscow and Washington DC were deeply strained. And President Reagan’s deep ideological moorings, as evidenced in his speeches, did not help matters either. By conveying the American desire for a solution to the Afghan crisis to the Soviet leaders, India had initiated a process at a time when the violence in Afghanistan had soared continuously for more than a year. The Dean papers make it amply clear that while the UN-backed peace talks on Afghanistan had four dominant players – Afghanistan, Pakistan, the

US and the USSR – in reality, India too was an active participant in the backchannel talks.11 In the months to come, Rajiv Gandhi would go all out to improve ties between the US and the USSR, an unprecedented diplomatic manoeuvre by any Indian prime minister till that time. Therefore, 1985 and 1986 were the most enriching years for Indian diplomacy under Rajiv Gandhi and his two foreign secretaries, Romesh Bhandari and A.P. Venkateswaran. For some time after Bhandari paid a visit to Moscow, there was a feeling in Delhi about whether the proposal to engage India as a go-between was indeed a ‘game within a game’. Sceptics abounded. It was under these circumstances that Venkateswaran took over from Bhandari in the spring of 1986. By then, India and the US had begun to work on South Asia management. One of the men who had become a trusted player in this changing India– US ties in Rajiv’s office was Chinmaya Gharekhan, additional secretary in the Ministry of Eexternal Affairs and a crafty survivor in South Block’s corridors of power. Dean had known Gharekhan since the two met in Laos in the early 1970s. Dean served as the chargé d’affaires in the US embassy in Vientiane when Gharekhan headed the International Inspection Commission for the conflict in Laos. Together with Gharekhan, Dean had overseen some of the first signs of recovery of India–US ties in the summer of 1985. One outcome of such interactions and Rajiv’s June 1985 visit to the US was reflected in India’s growing willingness to let US naval ships to visit Indian ports. This had been a particularly difficult issue since the United States sent warships to the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 India– Pakistan war; but such was the early euphoria that even intractable issues received attention. In less than four months, bilateral ties warmed up and the US granted sixty-six export licences that had been pending for a long time and agreed on transfer of technology regarding several items to India. In addition to that, the US also conveyed to India that it would grant the GE404 engine for the Light Combat Aircraft programme of India.12 Given the fast pace of bilateral ties, Rajiv designated Gharekhan, scientific adviser V.S. Arunachalam, Minister of State for Defence Arun Singh and nuclear

scientist Raja Ramanna as the dialogue partners for Dean. The list was later extended with the inclusion of Joint Secretary Ronen Sen. This arrangement was made in order to ensure a direct line of communication between Rajiv and Dean.13 Gharekhan had travelled with Rajiv to Chernenko’s funeral and was part of India’s superpower diplomacy during the early days of Rajiv Gandhi’s rule. Like Gharekhan, K. Natwar Singh too travelled to Moscow for the funeral and so did many others. Given such experts in foreign affairs, Rajiv Gandhi did not want a powerful external affairs minister. Ministers came and went as Rajiv obviously enjoyed dealing with the great powers himself. But he made full use of Indian diplomats.

Sixteen months after Rajiv Gandhi celebrated his stunning election victory by taking his family to the tiger reserve in Ranthambore, and after months of quiet negotiations between India and the Swedish arms producer Bofors, an agreement was signed by the two sides on 24 March 1986. Following the deal, an Indian delegation landed in a sleepy little Swedish town of 35,000, named Karlskoga.14 Confident of India’s growing stature and led by the charismatic future chief of the Indian Army, General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, the delegation conducted itself in style. While the US took note of India’s growing conventional military might, the Swedes threw a lavish reception for the Indians who were buying the Howitzer gun manufactured in Karlskoga. The warmth and hospitality, the food and the wine were of such a high quality that the Indian ambassador B.M. Oza found the entire atmosphere quite uncharacteristic of the sedate Swedes. But then the feeling of bonhomie and confidence of the Indians in the delegation were also a bit uncharacteristic of the Indians. At night, after a gala dinner, the Swedes brought out cigars and bourbon and General Sundarji and his wife Vani regaled the Swedish hosts with jokes, who remarked, ‘We have never met such lively Indians before!’ ‘In that case, you perhaps did not meet the right kind of Indians,’ retorted Vani.15

The deal was struck and Bofors became a big success story for a while. Rajiv Gandhi obviously was inching closer to the US without reducing the military might of India in South Asia. India had survived an ugly phase in its history in 1984 and emerged robust and democratic. Its young leadership was unusual in a region usually comfortable with authoritarian rulers. Thanks to Rajiv’s massive electoral victory and his political honeymoon, Delhi was the capital of the biggest diplomatic power in South Asia, and asserted itself regionally, and made the right noises over the Afghanistan crisis. In diplomatic parlance, India was once again the ‘big boy’.16 In contrast, Pakistan was having a tough time in the spring of 1985.

For General Zia, 1985 brought two problems. One, across the border India was increasing its conventional military superiority. Two, in Zia’s first year in civilian garb – following the March 1985 election – he had unleashed a domestic nightmare. The Pakistani masses witnessed one more round of crackdowns on political dissidents, which was the first thing Zia did on getting elected.17 The Bhutto fever had caught Pakistan once again and Zia saw the old troubles resurface. General Zia who had now become President Zia was not getting any popular despite acquiring the trappings of democracy. Rajiv was a stark contrast to Zia, yet the two seemed connected at some level. Zia’s reputation of having led the Black September crackdown of 1971 in Jordan was further embellished by the ‘judicial murder’ of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the crackdown against political dissidents throughout Zia’s rule in Pakistan. Rajiv on the other hand was a tragic prince who emerged victorious after a stormy period in India’s history. His carefully cultivated reputation of being ‘Mr Clean’ prevented probing questions about his role in the antiSikh pogrom of 1984 or about his strategy to quell the militancy in Punjab. His family life coupled with his ‘Mr Clean’ image seemed straight out of a modern soap opera.

South Block’s key decision makers and bureaucrats understood how under Rajiv, India and Pakistan might use this new-found influence in world capitals. But it was Zia who had already made the first move and set the ball rolling. Because, despite his presence and the towering electoral victory, Rajiv did not really have to play the big game from the frontiers of the North-West Frontier Province and the Khyber Pass – that historical privilege fell on Zia. Rajiv was probably still looking for his shot at greatness that the controversial ruler of Pakistan had already begun to attempt. The two leaders began connecting soon after Rajiv took charge and Zia started feeling the heat of the democratic fever among the Pakistani masses. In their first formal meeting in Moscow in March 1985, Zia and Rajiv sat down to discuss confidence-building measures over the nuclear issue.18 Zia caught the non-alignment handle and said that India should play the role of the NAM chairman to influence the Soviets to leave Afghanistan: ‘Play the role that India should in a situation like this, in order to lay peace in this region,’ Zia told Rajiv, emphasizing that the Soviet Union should seek a peaceful solution through political means in Afghanistan and withdraw to its erstwhile borders. However, it was not Zia’s task to bring Rajiv to the negotiation table over Afghanistan. This could be done by the superpowers alone and they did their bit by drawing India into the discussions over Afghanistan. By the end of 1985, Rajiv’s diplomatic platter looked full and 1986 was to be the year of high-level diplomacy as Rajiv was to host Mikhail Gorbachev in Delhi where landmark discussions would take place. But Rajiv Gandhi had to order his office to suit the task ahead. Sarla Grewal, his principal secretary brought in Ronen Sen into the PMO. On 1 January 1986, Sen began to work with Rajiv Gandhi formally. Quiet, efficient, always putting in eighteen-hour days at work, Sen, like Gharekhan, was already a part of Rajiv’s foreign policy initiatives but, unlike Gharekhan, he would stay the entire course of the Rajiv era in the South Block. He would have the singular privilege of travelling with the PM during every foreign trip barring just one when he had fallen sick due to an allergy attack. Sen worked with all the prime ministers from Rajiv

Gandhi to Manmohan Singh. But he did not witness again the kind of access and confidence that Rajiv enjoyed with Washington DC and Moscow, especially in the early part of his tenure. By January 1986, Rajiv’s foreign affairs team had a lot of promises to keep. ‘Even twenty-eight hours a day would not help. It was not possible to look at all the papers that came to my desk in Rajiv’s PMO. But we tried our best to cater to the prime minister’s enthusiasm on global affairs,’ Sen told me. Rajiv had made the Indian position clear that Afghanistan had to have a broad-based government after the Soviet withdrawal. The Pakistanis agreed to it. The Americans agreed to it.19 The Soviets needed a guarantee that an enemy regime would not replace the government in Kabul after their withdrawal and they also agreed that a broad-based government alone would help address their concerns. In January 1986, ideas began flowing freely between Delhi, Washington DC and Moscow, via Islamabad and Kabul, on what should be the political future of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. By then Pakistan–India ties were a little less complicated. But India’s diplomacy had to take into consideration developments on the Pakistan–USSR front. Zia went back home after entering into a verbal agreement on a ‘no-firststrike’ (on each other’s nuclear installations) pact with India on 17 December 1985.20 Soon after returning to Islamabad, he lifted the martial law that had been in force since he deposed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on 5 January 1977. But the good days were not to last beyond the New Year’s Eve. In the first week of November 1985, Benazir Bhutto was released from detention in Karachi where she was imprisoned temporarily after the burial of her brother Shah Nawaz in the Sindh countryside. The public trauma of Shah Nawaz’s untimely mysterious death – many said murder – added to Zia’s worries.21 The swelling public support she received during her visit in the autumn of 1985 would influence Benazir to return to Pakistan permanently next April. Benazir’s temporary return in tragic circumstances had shaken Zia’s government. She had returned with her brother’s remains on 21 August1985. The groundswell of support for the Bhuttos and the

rumour that assassins sent by Zia had killed Shah Nawaz in Nice reduced Zia’s post-election high considerably.

The antagonism between the USSR and the Pakistani government was characterized by the extreme asymmetry of military might between the two countries. The Pakistanis could not match the overwhelming might of the Soviets, who had come down the mountains that separate Central Asia from South Asia. No one knew the real intention behind the Soviet takeover of Kabul. Would the Soviets roll further down into the great Indus plains of Pakistan following the footsteps of Alexander the Great? Would they cross the Hindu Kush and enter Pakistan and stop at the shore of the Arabian Sea? Nevertheless, Pakistan had to act and, if necessary, defend itself as best as it could. As Zia put it, he would ‘fight for Pakistan’.22 The Pakistanis had their legitimate fears. They had not forgotten the help that the USSR had extended to India in the 1971 war. That apart, there were not too many reference points that the Pakistanis could locate in their map of enmity with the Soviets. Zia nevertheless persevered and used all the tools of statecraft to deal with the Soviet menace across the Khyber Pass. Since the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979, the Pakistan foreign office debated the strategy that Pakistan should adopt to free Afghanistan from Soviet control. It was true that militarily the Soviets were far superior to Pakistan given their formidable conventional and nuclear firepower. But it was also true that the Afghan governments of Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal had given refuge to the Al Zulfikar Organization and other anti-Zia elements on Afghan soil. Therefore, Pakistan had a casus belli against Afghanistan if not against the Soviet government. Moscow, as Pakistan’s ambassador Shahid M. Amin was to report later, understood this. Not acting on the Soviet occupation would translate into a setback for Pakistan but any plan to oust the Soviets from Kabul also carried the possibility of terrible consequences. But Pakistan had to look after itself, felt Zia, for in 1971 the US, its superpower friend, refused to back Pakistan after the genocide of April–May 1971 in East Pakistan had turned Western

public opinion against the government of Pakistan. This time too, the West might hesitate to step in if the electorate in the US refused to give its consent for such an intervention. In December 1985, Rajiv had begun to find serious takers for his vision for regional peace. But Zia and his advisers had an advantage over Rajiv Gandhi and his team in Delhi. Zia’s top negotiators on regional affairs like Yaqub Khan and his ambassador to Paris, Jamsheed Marker, were highly experienced in world affairs. Rajiv Gandhi’s team was young and adventurous. But Zia’s team had faced many a diplomatic setback since the 1960s. But everyone waited to see if the Kremlin under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev would blink first after six years of war and occupation in Kabul.

Pakistan and India Favour Same Plan Georgi Arkadyevich Arbatov, the Soviet expert on the United States was one of the key advisers to Gorbachev. Arbatov, a Jewish scholar and Anglophile, was the director of the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies in Moscow. In the summer of 1985, Zia’s ambassador to Moscow, Amin, reached out to Arbatov.23 Amin says that the series of meetings between Arbatov and himself became a kind of a secret channel to keep Pakistan and the USSR informed of their respective positions. Arbatov explained that the main problem between Moscow and Islamabad was the latter’s tolerance of anti-Kabul activities from its soil. Amin listened as he obviously understood the enormous influence that Arbatov could wield subsequently as the eyes and ears of the Soviet leader. Arbatov sympathized with Pakistan’s position that the Pakistan– Afghanistan border was difficult to police due to its terrain. But he minced no words to tell Amin that the presence of the anti-Soviet mujahideen camps and flow of arms from Pakistani soil to the mujahideen were serious issues for the Soviets. Just as evidenced in the Mattani incident, Arbatov warned that a visibly hostile policy by Pakistan might act as a trigger for a bigger flare-up

between the Pakistani and Soviet forces. The Pakistani diplomat was told that the soft position that Gorbachev had taken after coming to power constituted a ‘chance’ for Pakistan that might not return in the future. By the summer of 1985, Gorbachev had brought in major changes in the Kremlin and the architects of Soviet–Afghan policy were shunted out. Andrei Gromyko who had been foreign minister for four decades was replaced with Eduard Shevardnadze, a Politburo member from Georgia. The removal of Gromyko from the post was one of the most important developments that signified a break with the past. Gromyko was groomed by Joseph Stalin in the 1950s to be the Soviet foreign minister and had survived the power games in Kremlin and retained his office till Gorbachev axed him. Gromyko was known for his inflexibility.24 Shevardnadze, who had no notable foreign policy experience, was brought in to assist Gorbachev while the impression grew that Afghanistan affairs were being looked after directly by Gorbachev. This perception was strengthened by his public statement on 27 December 1985, which, among other things, predicted vast changes in Soviet foreign policy during the year ahead. The world took note of Gorbachev’s declaration. But Soviet ties with Pakistan remained volatile despite the calming presence of Gorbachev. Pakistan accused Afghanistan’s government of fomenting trouble on its restive borders across the Durand Line; in response, Moscow accused Islamabad of carrying out genocide in the border areas of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa (formerly the North-West Frontier Province). Pakistan complained that Moscow was smuggling out Pashtun and Baloch students to its universities and colleges with the intention of indoctrinating them with anti-Pakistan ideas. The cycle of accusations went on and on. But Kremlin was beginning to realize the economic costs of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. On 25 February 1986, Gorbachev told the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) that ‘counter-revolution and imperialism have turned Afghanistan into a bleeding wound’.25 The stakeholders in the Afghanistan crisis took note of the fact that Gorbachev had realized that the invasion had turned into a burden for his government.

The fifth round of Geneva talks held in August 1985 had ended in a deadlock due to the inflexible position adopted by Afghanistan’s government led by Babrak Karmal and his second-in-command Mohammed Najibullah, who insisted that there must be direct talks between Kabul and Islamabad. But Pakistan insisted that there could only be proximity talks. The Soviets supported the Afghan position. The Soviet position was also supported by the patriotic and hawkish Soviet media at home. But with Gorbachev’s proclamation about the ‘bleeding wound’ of Afghanistan, things could change dramatically, and they did. By the end of February 1986, Zia’s regional ties appeared to be better placed, thanks to the backchannel talks that had been going on between Moscow and Islamabad. It meant that both sides could discuss government formation in Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal with relative openness. In hindsight, it appears that given a bit more support at home, Zia would have moved towards setting up a broad-based government in Kabul. But a dictatorship clothed in the garb of democracy, successful in pushing a superpower out of Afghanistan through a carrot-and-stick policy of negotiation and resistance, would have turned Zia into a Napoleon-like figure in Pakistan. Zia’s democratic dictatorship had indulged in some legal and constitutional gymnastics, which, if left unchallenged, would have permanently dissolved Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution drafted by the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Three months before lifting of the martial law, Zia had declared that all official actions taken under the martial law regime would remain immune to judicial review after the lifting of the martial law. This was ensured through the eighth amendment of the Constitution of Pakistan. Zia was successfully securing his grip over power at home. But the deteriorating situation at home especially on the security, narcotics and ethnic fronts demonstrated that Zia’s iron grip over Pakistan was weakening to some extent. In the summer of 1985, Karachi witnessed the first major riot between the Muhajir (Muslim immigrants from India) community and the Pashtuns after a young girl was run over by a bus driver.

The riot engulfed Karachi, and dozens were killed on both sides of the ethnic divide. Karachi was seething with ethnic rage when Benazir brought the mortal remains of her brother Shah Nawaz to the city on 21 August, on her way to Larkana where she buried him in the family graveyard of Garhi Khuda Bux. Karachi was torn and traumatized, but nevertheless it extended an enthusiastic and peaceful welcome to her. This demonstrated beyond doubt that the people of Pakistan was not with Zia, despite his diplomatic successes on the Afghan front. Within days of Benazir’s return with her brother’s body, millions poured into the Sindh countryside in support and solidarity, grieving. The burial transformed into an uprising. To prevent the unthinkable, Zia jailed Benazir and released her only on 3 November 1985. But as Benazir returned to London, she would have hoped that the dictatorship of Zia would be weakened in the near future. But she realized that if Zia succeeded in pushing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, thanks to global developments, his position would become unassailable. To stay put in her Barbican flat in London, when Zia acquired greater international importance and utility, would have meant a longer political exile for Benazir Bhutto. The other option was to fly back to Pakistan and open an internal front in a political war against Zia.

Zia’s anti-Soviet jihad was a ‘fight for Pakistan’. Bhutto borrowed the same spirit and turned against Zia in her own ‘fight for Pakistan’. Emboldened by the warm support she received at home during the autumn of 1985, Bhutto made up her mind to return to Pakistan even as the BBC broadcast announced the end of martial law in Pakistan on 30 December. Her supporters wanted her back and she remembered the enormous popularity she enjoyed in Pakistan during her brief stay there between July and November 1985. Her office informed her supporters in London that their leader would be returning home.26 Rumours spread that she would return on 23 March, the National Day of Pakistan. But she did not arrive in Pakistan

on 23 March 1986. Instead of quietly proceeding to Pakistan, she stopped at Moscow to consult the Soviet leadership.27 No one knows what transpired between Benazir Bhutto and her Soviet hosts, but it was obvious that she wanted to get a full view of the Soviet position on where the negotiation on Afghanistan stood at that point. The visit also indicated a growing Soviet desire to engage all sections of Pakistan’s political class. The press was kept in the dark about her meetings in Moscow. She landed in Lahore on 10 April 1986. She herself was not a party to the Afghanistan negotiations, but her presence, especially the enormous welcome rally which drew more than three million Pakistanis to Lahore, had a psychological effect on Zia who must have felt pushed to make quick moves to address the pro-Benazir groundswell. It was obvious that a new cast of prime political players were emerging in the world and Zia was averse to allow his political opponents at home victory in this battle. There were obvious differences between Zia and Benazir. Zia spoke the language of Islam and Benazir spoke the language of liberating Pakistan from the clutches of a dictator who had usurped power. Benazir’s repeated show of strength in Lahore and Karachi and her growing diplomatic acceptability in Moscow and Washington DC, increased President Zia’s sense of insecurity. It was in this set of circumstances that the secret Pakistan–Soviet talks began.

The basic premise behind the talks was that for Soviet evacuation to begin, a facilitating condition had to be created. For that, the arms flow from Pakistan into Afghanistan had to stop and the Soviets had to climb down from their tanks and helicopters. Sadly, neither facilitation nor reduction in arms were happening on the ground in Afghanistan. As far as Pakistan and Afghanistan were concerned, they were stuck on the old problem of recognition. While Pakistan refused to sit across the table with the Afghan government of PDPA, the Afghans refused to go for any talks with the Pakistani government.

India on its part insisted on having a non-aligned coalition government in Afghanistan that would work towards national reconciliation. Rajiv Gandhi had first spoken of India’s desire to have a non-aligned Afghanistan during his May 1985 trip to Moscow and followed it up during his trip to Washington DC in June. The idea of an all-party government consisting of all groups of Afghans was a formula which was born out of the Loya Jirga model where every tribe and political party or sect has access to state power in Afghanistan. But it was difficult to get the warring parties to agree to that formula. To begin with, India and Pakistan did not look for the same solution to the crisis in Afghanistan. But by the spring of 1986, Rajiv Gandhi’s prescription for Afghanistan coincided with the Pakistani one. Curious and perhaps a little utopian, Pakistan, India and the UN-backed negotiators were on the same side as far as Afghanistan was concerned. The Indian and UNbacked formula of a government of national unity in Kabul, which would be non-aligned and free of outside interference, found support from all sides, especially from President Zia’s diplomatic machinery.

Marker–Zimmermann initiative This change of heart did not come overnight. Like Rajiv Gandhi and Romesh Bhandari, others had also been trying to solve the Afghan crisis. In the summer of 1985, Pakistan’s ambassador to Paris, Jamsheed Marker, began using Walter Zimmermann, a mysterious Paris-based businessman, to reach out to the Soviets on his own.28 Zimmermann had KGB sources in Moscow and had friends in CPSU’s highest circles. Zimmermann met Soviet deputy prime minister G. Marchuk and learnt that Mikhail Gorbachev was unhappy with the Geneva peace talks being led by the erratic but enthusiastic Ecuadorean diplomat Diego Cordovez and wanted a direct negotiation with the Pakistani leadership. Zimmermann told Marker that the Soviets would withdraw from Afghanistan if Pakistan promised to leave Afghanistan alone and stopped the border infiltration. But after several sorties by Zimmermann to Moscow and Islamabad, where he

met President Zia as well as Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, the plan for a direct dialogue between the two sides failed to take off. One of the reasons for the failure of the Marker–Zimmermann initiative on Afghanistan can be tracked to Gorbachev’s apprehension that Victor Grishin, his rival in the Politburo, might exploit the news of secret, backchannel talks to campaign against peace talks on the pretext that Soviet soldiers were dying in Afghanistan at the hands of the Pakistan-backed mujahideen. But this failure might have helped both Pakistan and the Soviets to adopt the Indian formula as it gave them both some time to plan their moves. The Marker–Zimmermann Track II diplomacy of 1985 failed. But another round was attempted through the office of the Pakistani ambassador Shahid M. Amin who flew to Stockholm for the funeral of assassinated Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in the spring of 1986. Georgi Arbatov who also happened to be present in Stockholm for the funeral agreed to meet visiting Pakistani prime minister Junejo and foreign minister Yaqub Khan. So on the evening of 15 March 1986, Arbatov, Mikhail Gorbachev’s top adviser, and Yaqub Khan met in Stockholm in a stunning diplomatic breakthrough that could have been the most constructive move for the future of Af–Pak relations. Yaqub Khan (echoing Rajiv Gandhi’s comments in Washington DC and Moscow) said that the most important issue in the context of the ongoing violence in Afghanistan was to have a government in Kabul that would satisfy the minimum concerns of the parties involved in the fight. Yaqub Khan and Arbatov agreed that the government in Kabul should be friendly to its northern neighbour and should not become a base for anti-Moscow activities following Soviet withdrawal. It was decided that both sides of Afghanistan’s fighting forces – the mujahideen and the communist rulers led by Babrak Karmal – should be brought together in a broad-based government in Kabul. Arbatov and the Pakistani foreign minister discussed the suitability of the exiled Afghan monarch Zahir Shah as the leader of the government. Declassified Soviet documents have shown that Mikhail Gorbachev had begun exerting pressure on Karmal to expand his government and include national reconciliation on its agenda. Therefore,

national reconciliation or inter-tribe peace in Afghanistan was not an artificial idea and had already been discussed with Kabul’s governing elite for some time before Arbatov and Yaqub Khan discussed it. The Indian position on Afghanistan was also now the Pakistani position – an unprecedented but welcome development. Rajiv Gandhi was also in Stockholm for the funeral of Olof Palme, his friend. Interestingly, like previous funerals this one too provided diplomatic openings. Rajiv had maintained warm ties with Palme, a vestige of the socialist phase of India’s foreign policy. Palme, however, was a complex person. Though a pacifist in public, he had a private, darker side when he would jet across the world selling Swedish arms to places where these items would fuel conflicts. Soon after coming to power, Rajiv Gandhi emerged as a key figure of the Group of Six with Palme as the tallest international leader of the group. In October 1985, the Group of Six sent a joint appeal to the US Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze suggesting that the Group of Six, which consisted of six nonnuclear weapons states (with two members like India and Sweden capable of producing nuclear energy) should be allowed to install monitoring devices on their territories to check compliance of the superpowers to the pledge of a total ban on underground nuclear testing.29 The talk of a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons continued while India and Sweden exchanged notes on how to acquire Bofors howitzer guns. Then on 28 February 1986, Olof Palme was shot dead in Stockholm, and his wife Lisbeth was injured. The murder of Olof Palme remains a mystery. Palme’s death created a vacancy for the position of the leader of the Group of Six. Rajiv Gandhi appeared naturally poised to occupy that slot. An important issue in international politics is the stature of the leader. The stature of a political player may not matter internally but it does at the high table of international diplomacy. Though political clouds were gathering on the horizon, Rajiv Gandhi had acquired some importance in international affairs. At the funeral of Olof Palme, Rajiv shone as he delivered a stirring speech about the assassinated prime minister even as Pakistani and Soviet diplomats were doing some serious talking in the same city. The speech marked a comfortable phase for Rajiv’s politics but the

dialogue between the Soviets and the Pakistanis was truly a landmark as it came after nearly five years of total hostilities.

Removed from the immediacy of the Afghanistan crisis, from October 1985 to the spring of 1986, India was trying to deal with the other two pillars of its strategic affairs, namely the nuclear issue and the issue of technology transfer. One of the main reasons for reintroducing India into Washington DC in the summer of 1985 was to make a breakthrough in the technological barrier built around India following the 1974 nuclear explosion. Rajiv Gandhi used Dean as a major diplomatic conduit in his efforts at getting the Americans lift the technological ban. The problems that India faced due to the technology denial regime, enforced after the Pokhran blasts in 1974, were felt most strongly in India’s strategic sectors. The technology denial regime impinged on India’s ability to carry out high-tech research and kept New Delhi from accessing the latest technologies like the supercomputer. Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomacy was aimed at ending the technology denial regime that stifled India’s ability to grow. A technological breakthrough was at the heart of Rajiv’s domestic and foreign policy, and he emphasized to the Americans that it was difficult to justify why India should be a strategic partner of the US if the latter was pushing India back to the dark ages by denying it access to high-tech and supercomputing abilities. Technology and nuclear issues had become enmeshed with South Asian security, starting with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The scene was set exactly a decade ago in 1976 when following the first Indian nuclear test of 1974, the United States brought in the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, to deny technology and US economic and military assistance to countries that were working to develop nuclear weapons. While India had to suffer the technology denial regime for the 1974 nuclear test, Pakistan got a reprieve without any effort on their part when the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan. As jihad against Soviet occupation began in Afghanistan, the US was left with no option but to help the government of General Zia-ul-Haq. It was

President Carter who used the Symington Amendment in April 1979 to cut off aid to Pakistan as it had continued with its nuclear programme. Following the Soviet invasion, eight months later, Carter offered $400 million aid to Pakistan but General Zia declined the offer terming it ‘peanuts’. Finally, in mid-1981, the Reagan administration gave Pakistan a six-year waiver of restrictions under the Symington Amendment, enabling the US to supply arms for the jihad in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Pakistan scored over India and by mid-1980s it was clear that the Symington Amendment maintained its denial regime as far as India was concerned while allowing Pakistan to arm itself against India and against the communist government in Kabul. India’s push for accessing technology was, therefore, also a push to stop Pakistan from becoming the sole beneficiary of the waiver of restrictions. The new set of diplomats with Rajiv and Reagan were thus chosen to help India break the technology barrier. Selling popular American technology and high technology to friendly countries was something Dean was good at. It was something that he enjoyed doing, and he had been trained in the field of technology transfer since his days in war-ravaged Europe of the late 1940s and the early 1950s when the US extended help under the Marshall Plan to further the economic and technological recovery of Europe. Dean wanted something similar in scale to help shift the gears of the Indian economy. Rajiv–Dean cooperation began on expected lines, as Rajiv’s team was eager to exploit the new ambassador in town for his contacts. On 16 December 1985, a day prior to meeting President Zia in Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi flew down to Madras (now Chennai) and inaugurated the first fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam, named after his mother Indira Gandhi. What added to the symbolism of this effort was that India, despite the technological apartheid imposed on it since 1974,30 had become the fifth power in the world to harness the fast breeder technology and build a fast breeder reactor. To make his point to the rivals across the border, a Pakistani delegation was present beside the Indian prime minister when he dedicated the reactor to the nation.

Meanwhile, multilateral diplomacy had given Rajiv a foothold in the strategic affairs of the region and the world. Throughout the first half of 1986, he had to confront many challenges on domestic and international fronts but his interest in strategic world affairs of the cold war era and his contacts with the strategic community were strengthened during this time. At the meeting of the Group of Six, Rajiv and Olof Palme had demanded that their countries be allowed to verify the nuclear arms reduction and the declarations of nuclear testing by the two superpowers. The clause of verification by the Group of Six was to form a context for the Geneva talks of 16–19 November 1985 between President Ronald Reagan and the CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Between the autumn of 1985 and spring of 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev launched his nation on to a new course. His dual programme of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations of the Soviet Union that were also felt across the valleys and mountains of Afghanistan as well as on the negotiating tables discussing ways to reduce strategic arms. In January 1986 the Soviet Union proposed unprecedented confidencebuilding measures between the US and the USSR calling for a drastic reduction in strategic nuclear weapons. This was obviously a result of the meeting in Geneva between Reagan and Gorbachev. India welcomed Gorbachev’s proposals enthusiastically. The ‘Gorbachev Proposal’ was unprecedented and maximalist. It called for an elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000, a halfway reduction of strategic weapons, banning of Star Wars–like initiatives outright, and stopping underground nuclear testing. Rajiv Gandhi’s earlier proposal, extended from the platform of the Group of Six, was relevant in this regard and Reagan intensified his consultation with him especially since Rajiv was expected to hold a major summit sometime soon with Gorbachev. A few days after Gorbachev declared his proposal and introduced a new dynamism over the hot issue of the conflict in Afghanistan, Dean and Rajiv

Gandhi’s foreign affairs adviser–cum–additional secretary, Gharekhan, sat down to discuss how best India could take advantage of the cooling of tensions between Moscow and Washington DC.31 Dean planned to visit Washington DC to personally convey to the US authorities Rajiv’s support for the Gorbachev Proposal. On 28 January the Challenger space shuttle disaster shook the world. Dean, who was to leave for Washington DC as Rajiv’s messenger to the Capitol Hill, came to have a pre-departure talk with the Indian PM on 30 January. Dean found Rajiv willing to help the Americans in their negotiation with the Soviets on disarmament and hoped that the Americans would brief him on the technicalities of the talks and the proposals being exchanged between Washington DC and Moscow. Rajiv said that disagreements with and criticism of the Gorbachev Proposal could be better expressed by the Indians as they would have more credibility before the Soviet interlocutors. Subsequently, Rajiv and Dean agreed that one of the key members of Reagan’s disarmament team, Max Kampelman, could travel to India for providing the details of the talks.32 President Reagan did not disappoint Rajiv and promptly sanctioned Kampelman’s visit to Delhi to provide a detailed briefing on the nuclear disarmament plans. In his letter to Rajiv, Reagan politely knocked off some of the unrealistic demands that Rajiv had been making on behalf of the Group of Six. Rajiv wanted access to the Soviet and American nuclear test sites for the sake of verifying claims about nuclear testing and arms reduction. Reagan dismissed this demand highlighting that the issue of nuclear verification outside the established multilateral organizations like the IAEA was not that simple. He reminded Rajiv that it was his Soviet friends who broke the nuclear moratorium during the Kennedy era, conducting around forty nuclear tests. Reagan also informed Rajiv that though the proposal for the underground test ban and the cutting down on nuclear safety had reduced tension, he was in no hurry to surrender the right to test nuclear weapons: While we are actively investigating technologies that may one day make us less dependent on offensive nuclear weapons for

our security, nuclear weapons will remain for the foreseeable future the key element of our deterrent. In such a situation, where both the US and our allies must rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression, nuclear testing will continue to be required.33 Reagan’s letter of 7 March 1986 reflected the executive communication which was critical to world politics but it was also a frank admission by the United States that despite its public positions on disarmament and nonproliferation, the president of the United States preferred to keep his nukes.34 While nuclear weapons posed a threat of extinction to mankind, the real eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation went on near the Af–Pak border, which had been bothering Rajiv Gandhi deeply. Though the two sides spoke on nuclear risk reduction, the Soviet Union ratcheted up its military activity in Afghanistan amid fears that General Zia was providing the most sophisticated weapons to the mujahideen based in Pakistan. The questions that stalled the entire dialogue process over Afghanistan were: What would follow a Soviet evacuation, and how much time would the evacuation require? In a special gesture, Reagan wrote to Rajiv detailing the progress that Gorbachev and he had made in strategic weapons’ reduction talks. Proposals, policies, discussion papers flowed in and out of South Block and connected Islamabad, Kabul, Moscow and Washington DC. The Soviets were ready for a compromise on disarmament issues for a respectable withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange, without undermining the security needs of the USSR. On 4 May 1986, Yaqub Khan made a stopover at Moscow airport on his way to Geneva for the seventh round of talks on Afghanistan. The Geneva talks, led by UN-appointed negotiator Diego Cordovez, were not going anywhere, but the behind-the-scenes talks were more fruitful. At the airport, Khan met Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Komplektov. Yaqub Khan agreed that given the acrimony between the Karmal government in Afghanistan and the mujahideen, and between Afghanistan and Pakistan, preparatory Track II talks were necessary to

bring about political reconciliation in Kabul and form a broad-based government in Afghanistan representing moderates rather than the extremists.35 There was a growing sentiment that such a government should be led by King Zahir Shah. The talks in Moscow, Stockholm and Geneva were not unfolding in isolation and were part of a number of political developments across the world. Upon her arrival in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto had made a sea change in Pakistani politics and her growing diplomatic acceptance and public support played on the minds of the Pakistani leaders. In view of the vast changes unfolding, US Congressman Stephen Solarz, a leading champion of non-proliferation and human rights in the US policy circles, arrived in New Delhi in the last week of May 1986. Solarz was by no means a pro-Zia legislator. He had supported Benazir Bhutto throughout her fight to return to Pakistan by ending her exile in London. Benazir met Solarz in Washington DC a few weeks before reaching Pakistan and sought his support. Solarz remained Benazir’s supporter and the purpose of his visit to Delhi was to get Rajiv Gandhi’s opinion on Benazir.36 Surprisingly, Rajiv Gandhi was not excited about the prospect of Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan. He felt that Benazir would disturb Zia’s plans. Rajiv and Zia had already met seven times within a year and had developed a working relationship despite the never-ending tension on both sides. Solarz, who was an advocate of political change, lobbied hard in favour of Benazir but was told politely by Rajiv that Benazir was an unknown player in the South Asian scene. Rajiv said that he did not believe change was possible in Pakistan as Zia was too powerful and Benazir, despite her mammoth political rallies, was just a solitary figure. It was obvious at this point that Rajiv thought more favourably of the Pakistani dictator, who was open to using Delhi’s formula for peace in the neighbourhood, than an inheritor of the Bhutto dynasty. Backed by the Track II understanding reached between the Pakistanis and the Soviets in Stockholm and at Moscow airport, the Geneva talks of May 1986 produced some progress. The Soviets came on board with the US to serve as the guarantors of an accord between the Afghans and the Pakistanis. Disagreement remained over the time frame for Soviet

withdrawal. The Afghans wanted to drag the time frame for withdrawal but the Pakistanis wanted it done swiftly: the Afghans reflected the Soviet line and the Pakistanis reflected the American line. This was far more agreeable than the deadlock that existed prior to 1986. While Rajiv Gandhi welcomed American representatives and spoke to Reagan on the phone whenever the need arose, for most of 1986, Rajiv Gandhi paid a good deal of attention to courting Soviet leaders and promoting the non-alignment agenda. It was also part of the preparation for a state visit by the leader of the Soviet Union. It also helped the United States greatly. Dean and Sen agree that Rajiv Gandhi courted both superpowers intensely, and both encouraged India to do so.

Early morning on 8 August, Rajiv Gandhi’s special Boeing 707 named Annapurna left New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport for a series of international meetings. The first stop was London where India, the UK and five other Commonwealth nations were to discuss sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. Next, he flew to Mexico to meet the leaders of the Group of Six in the first meeting after Palme’s assassination. From Mexico Annapurna flew to Czechoslovakia on 11 August. Annapurna was in good health as she took off from Prague the same day. But Sen says that Rajiv Gandhi claimed that one of the engines of the aircraft was on fire and insisted that it be taken to Moscow. The fire was detected ninety minutes after Annapurna took off. It could have been flown to other destinations like Frankfurt or even London, but the PM insisted on landing in Moscow airport. The PM’s will did prevail. There was no panic on board though it was widely reported that the landing was due to a fire in one of the four engines of the aircraft. The story was not believed back home and it was felt that Rajiv landed the aircraft for some urgent consultations with Moscow on his way back to Delhi. To add to the air of authenticity, a message was sent to Bombay to keep a relief plane ready but Rajiv Gandhi decided to return home in a Soviet plane, an Ilyushin VIP aircraft that took off after six hours. Interestingly,

Annapurna had also been ‘repaired’ by then by the engineers who travelled with the PM. But nevertheless Rajiv chose to travel in the Ilyushin. Sen says that he did not see the fire in the engine. ‘It was Rajiv who said, “Look, that damn thing is on fire and let us land in Moscow,” and we landed in Moscow.’37 The six hours that Rajiv spent at Moscow airport were spent wisely as the deputy foreign minister of the USSR, Mikhail Kapitsa, was already at the airport before Rajiv’s aircraft could land with a ‘fuming’ engine.38 During the months before the Annapurna stopover in Moscow, Kapitsa was aggressively pushing Pakistani interlocutors like Shahid M. Amin for concessions on Afghanistan. Ninety minutes after Kapitsa welcomed Rajiv and his team into the airport building, Soviet deputy prime minister H. Alieve arrived and stayed with the visitors till the Ilyushin flew out with Rajiv and his team. Incidentally, this short meeting in Moscow happened exactly when the USSR and India were marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. Whatever was discussed remains secret but Sen remembers the Annapurna incident very clearly as proof that Rajiv had trusted both the American and the Soviet interlocutors as honest partners. Rajiv never spoke about it himself but Pakistan’s ambassador who met Kapitsa on 18 August had a taste of South-Asian-style hostility when he discussed the government that could succeed in Afghanistan. Kapitsa spoke undiplomatically and threateningly, using the Persian/Urdu/Hindi term for ‘enemy’: ‘Moscow would never allow a dushman to form government in Kabul.’ By dushman, Kapitsa meant the mujahideen who were shooting down Soviet helicopters and killing Soviet soldiers. Sen says that it was during this visit across three different countries that the Indian leadership was finally convinced that change was inevitable and that the cold war status quo was going to end soon. A solution, therefore, had to be found to the Afghan crisis and India had to work harder to find a favourable one. Thanks to diplomacy, it appeared that the situation in Afghanistan was firmly poised in a direction that would prevent the mujahideen from forming a government in Kabul after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The only option available was to go for a phase of national and tribal

reconciliation through a government of national unity guaranteed by international players. Rajiv Gandhi returned from Mexico City, Prague and Moscow determined to push India’s agenda. Ironically, US diplomatic cables had already started predicting dark clouds gathering on the horizon of India–US ties. They hinted at legislative procedures that might disturb the hard work that both sides had completed by then. India’s concerns were stronger as they dealt with existential issues.

The Militancy Irritant In between Rajiv’s hectic domestic and international travels and meetings came the second anniversary of Operation Blue Star. The build-up to the anniversary was tense. In March, a federal district court in Brooklyn acquitted Gurpartap Singh Birk of plotting to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi during his US trip of June 1985. The Indian government, which was trying to find its feet in Punjab, made note of this acquittal with some concern. Rajiv had announced that gaining control of Punjab would be foremost in his scheme of things and repeatedly emphasized that the flow of arms from Pakistan was primarily responsible for keeping militancy in Punjab alive. Punjab stayed in the news pages mainly due to the tragic anniversaries that marched by. August marked the anniversary of the murder of Sant Harchand Singh Longowal and the failed peace process in the state. A strong police state had been created to bring Punjab to the mainstream but the state remained volatile. On 10 August, Rajiv was in Mexico City. Earlier that day, retired General Arun Kumar Vaidya had driven his wife to a market in Pune where they now lived. Vaidya was the chief of the Indian Army at the time of Operation Blue Star and was a high-risk target. As Vaidya finished his shopping and sat down in the car, two assailants, Sukhvinder Singh ‘Sukha’ and Harjinder Singh ‘Jinda’, fired a volley of shots into the car killing Vaidya instantly. His wife Bhanumati was left bleeding in the car. The assassination of General Vaidya proved that the problems of Punjab were far from over.

Rajiv Gandhi was disturbed by the large-scale violence emanating from Punjab. He targeted Pakistan for supporting militancy inside India and hinted that sometimes Pakistan was reluctant to fight militants, especially if Indian lives were involved. His comments referred to the hijacking of the Pan Am aircraft from Bombay to Frankfurt via Karachi, with mostly Indian citizens as passengers. The bungled bid to rescue the passengers went terribly wrong and the hijackers killed airhostess Neerja Bhanot on board for non-cooperation. Rajiv claimed that the Pakistanis had trained commandos for such rescue missions but they were not deployed for this operation, allowing loss of Indian lives.39 The long shadow of militancy that emanated from the Af–Pak crisis and fell on India reached its longest shape on 2 October 1986 when a Sikh extremist targeted Rajiv himself. The then Union home secretary R.D. Pradhan says that had the assailant used an automatic weapon, he would have claimed the lives of a large number of VIPs.40 Rajiv and Sonia had just sat down at Rajghat to pay their homage at the Gandhi memorial when shots rang out. Though disoriented by the shots, the security agencies quickly located the person responsible, hiding in the bushes. It was obvious that India had become vulnerable due to the easy availability of weapons and sponsorship of its insurgents from across the border. The biggest diplomatic visit to India during the Rajiv Gandhi years was still fifty-six days away when he survived the first assassination attempt on Indian soil. During the rest of the month India was taken over by the Gorbachev spirit infusing a new confidence in India’s security preparedness. Soviet delegates had begun trickling into India and finally on 25 October K.F. Katushev, chairman of the Soviet State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations, called on the PM in Delhi. Katushev’s was the last big supervisory visit before his boss Mikhail Gorbachev himself was to land in Delhi. The Americans responded warmly at this time to Rajiv Gandhi. Following the attempt on his life, Vice-President George H.W. Bush wrote to Rajiv suggesting that the Special Protection Group (SPG) of India should be trained by the special forces of the United States so that they become more competent.41 It was clear that though Rajiv was on first-name basis

with President Reagan, his ties with Vice-President Bush were equally warm and unaffected by his rhetoric against Islamabad. At this point, a series of changes were brought in at the PMO. Since his arrival the previous October, Rajiv had given a pre-eminent position to his cousin Arun Nehru, the minister of state for internal security.42 But Rajiv purged Arun Nehru in a major reshuffle of the council of ministers.43 N.D. Tiwari became the Union external affairs minister and Eduardo Faleiro became minister of state for external affairs. But Rajiv Gandhi remained the super minister of external affairs, assisted by Ronen Sen, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Arun Singh.

Dean and Venkateswaran: Activist Diplomats By October 1986, Dean had become a close friend of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He was the most aggressive American diplomat to have been posted to Delhi till then, and he took advantage of the friendly ties. But the Rajiv–Dean style of diplomacy created some disquiet at the State Department. On 30 October 1986, Yuli Vorontsov, first deputy foreign minister of the USSR, landed in Delhi to inspect the preparations for Gorbachev’s visit. Rajiv Gandhi decided to summon Dean to introduce him to the Soviet guest, and turned the meeting into one of triangular diplomacy. Dean’s connection with the Reagan White House was well known, but the wisdom of introducing the US ambassador to the visiting Soviet minister was questionable. The meeting caused great discomfort in the State Department, especially in the office of Under Secretary of State, Michael Armacost. The exchanges between the Delhi-based ambassador and Yuli Vorontsov are not mentioned in the official exchanges between Dean and the State Department. But Dean told me that his meeting with Vorontsov and his explanation of the official American position caused problems with the diplomats dealing with the Track II diplomacy over Afghanistan back in Washington DC. Dean was not authorized to meet Vorontsov but met him perhaps not to disappoint the Indian prime minister. Dean conveyed to Vorontsov that the Americans

found the formula for government formation in Afghanistan an acceptable one.44 But the informal meeting turned into a major issue among the US diplomats who found it unacceptable that Dean was meeting Soviet dignitaries in Delhi. The hiccups caused by the Dean–Vorontsov meeting in Delhi did not, however, affect the relations between the White House and 7, Race Course Road. It was conveyed to the White House that the meeting took place at the instance of Rajiv Gandhi himself. Though it remained a secret diplomatic irritant, the acrimony was contained for the time being as the month of November arrived with its enormous diplomatic potential. Though a year old, the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) had created ripples especially since all the SAARC members including India were for the first time coming together in a single grid overcoming their differences. Discussions at the second SAARC summit held in Bangalore was dominated by the violence in Sri Lanka. On 23 November, two days before Gorbachev’s visit to Delhi, Dean handed over to Foreign Secretary A.P. Venkateswaran a letter from President Reagan to Rajiv Gandhi on Afghanistan.45 New Delhi was working overtime to welcome Mikhail Gorbachev and Venkateswaran was in his office despite it being a weekend when Dean walked in with the letter. The letter was explicit in seeking India’s involvement in an Afghan solution. Reagan wrote that the Indian contacts with the Soviets were ‘most welcome’ and Reagan requested Rajiv Gandhi to push the Soviets to agree for a ‘comprehensive settlement’ of the Afghanistan crisis. Reagan cited the Geneva talks of May where both Moscow and Washington DC had come on board as guarantors and said that he also agreed on creating a ‘non-aligned and independent’ Afghanistan. Reagan was worried over the Soviet timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he found to be unrealistic. He sought Rajiv’s help in convincing Gorbachev that the Americans believed a political solution to the guerrilla war in Afghanistan was possible. Reagan’s letter made an unequivocal case for India to help him in his outreach to the Soviet Union.

But what is of historical importance is the conversation that took place between Venkateswaran and Dean. Venkateswaran told Dean that the Indian government had been happy to extend the services of Romesh Bhandari to connect the Americans with the Soviets on Afghanistan though at times it appeared that the US government was trying to ‘test’ India’s reaction to the American views on Afghanistan.46 Americans in return felt that Rajiv Gandhi was not keeping his promise of supporting the US on negotiations with the Soviets. Therefore, Reagan had made a more explicit request in his letter. Venkateswaran asked what Rajiv Gandhi would gain by bringing up the American point of view on Afghanistan with Gorbachev. Dean explained that Rajiv had everything to gain and nothing to lose because Reagan’s letter made it clear that the American actions in Pakistan were linked to the situation in Afghanistan. The letter made it clear that Reagan’s government would reduce its arms supply to Pakistan as a quid pro quo for Indian help in ensuring that the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the shortest possible time frame. Venkateswaran told Dean that from his discussions in Moscow a couple of weeks ago, when he had gone there to prepare the ground for Gorbachev’s Delhi trip, it appeared that Gorbachev would discuss a ‘political solution’ of the Afghanistan occupation with Rajiv Gandhi.47 Dean told Venkateswaran that the presidential letter from Washington DC was ‘not a letter to “test the Indians” or “educate” them’ but rather a sincere effort to get Gandhi to raise this issue with Gorbachev, to explore with the Soviet leader whether any basis existed for a political solution to the Afghan occupation. Dean writes: ‘I came away with the impression that the foreign secretary felt that the president’s letter was extremely useful to Gandhi in probing Gorbachev’s true interest in a political solution. He thought that we would be informed on the outcome of these discussions sometime after Gorbachev’s departure.’48 Venkateswaran also said that following Bhandari’s trip to Moscow, an impression had gathered in Delhi that the United States was not interested in reducing its military and strategic reliance on Pakistan.49 Bhandari’s cautionary words indicated that top Indian policymakers were not

convinced of US sincerity and suspected that ultimately, United States would not protect India’s interest. Dean suggested that if Gorbachev agreed to explore the means of bringing about ‘a prompt and complete withdrawal of Soviet forces’ from Afghanistan, India would have to deploy someone to follow up on the discussion between Rajiv Gandhi and Gorbachev in Delhi. It was thus that an India–US negotiation on the future government of Afghanistan following a Soviet withdrawal took place, beginning with Romesh Bhandari’s flight to Moscow and the letter from Ronald Reagan to Rajiv Gandhi on the eve of Gorbachev’s visit to Delhi. This matter was to be discussed further when Venkateswaran was to visit Washington DC in the second fortnight of December to interact with Under Secretary Michael Armacost. In Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev held a three-hour-long talk without aides from the Soviet side. The only aide who accompanied Rajiv Gandhi was Ronen Sen. The talk reaffirmed the importance of Soviet–India ties. In an interview with the journalist Saeed Naqvi, a noted early beneficiary of Rajiv Gandhi’s love for the electronic media, Gorbachev echoed the letter Ronald Reagan had sent to Rajiv. ‘The day is not far off when the question around the political settlement of the situation around Afghanistan is settled. This will simultaneously mean the solution of the question of the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan,’ Gorbachev said expressing the hope for a resolution of the Afghanistan crisis at the earliest possible date.50 The landmark talks in Delhi were unpublicized. The closed-door meeting acquired two endorsements from Gorbachev. First was the Soviet endorsement of a ‘political solution’ to the Afghan infighting. The solution naturally had elements of Soviet withdrawal as well as internal reconciliation in Afghanistan. Secondly, it gave the fig leaf of respectability to the Soviet plan of an early withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The political solution began taking shape even before Gorbachev landed in Delhi and Reagan’s letter reached Rajiv Gandhi. On 20 November, Mohammed Najibullah became the president of Afghanistan after Babrak

Karmal was stripped of his powers. Karmal had been receiving Gorbachev’s urgent requests to initiate a process of national reconciliation with all sections in Afghanistan. But he had failed to listen to Gorbachev and maintained a tough course. Now short of time and with an economic disaster looming on the horizon, Gorbachev blessed a change of leadership in Kabul.51 Najibullah was a friend of Rajiv Gandhi. The stars were aligned for the end of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and for a period when the country would be ruled from Kabul through ‘a political solution’. There were swift moves towards the endgame. Less than a month after Gorbachev’s declaration of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Abdul Sattar, foreign secretary of Pakistan, visited Moscow. Yuli Vorontsov, who met Sattar, was a relieved man. ‘We are getting out of Afghanistan,’ Vorontsov declared to Sattar who was told that the next round of proximity talks in Geneva might be the last and would firm up the plans for evacuation of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.52 Vorontsov conveyed to Sattar that the leadership understood well that it had committed a terrible mistake by supporting Karmal’s predecessor Hafizullah Amin. Vorontsov thereafter proposed that talks should begin between the mujahideen and the government led by Najibullah. Vorontsov informed Sattar that Gorbachev’s comments in Delhi were well thought out and part of a new policy of Moscow. Najibullah called for national reconciliation on 1 January 1987. He announced a unilateral ceasefire and invited the mujahideen to open a dialogue with an aim of joining the coalition government. It was clear to all parties that though Najibullah initiated the national reconciliation process, it did not mean that he could also become the leader of a national coalition government of Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. Soon after, the Kremlin sent Anatoly Kovalyev, deputy foreign minister, to Pakistan. Kovalyev was informed that the mujahideen were unlikely to listen to a call from Najibullah for a dialogue as long as Najibullah remained on top. The Pakistani side suggested that it would be better to usher in the national reconciliation process under a neutral and respected public figure.53 The idea of a non-aligned government of national unity had travelled a great distance from the June 1985 Washington DC visit of Rajiv Gandhi

when the option was first discussed by the Indian team and their American hosts.54 Now all sides to the Afghan crisis were talking on similar lines about the option to avoid a bloodbath and anarchy following Soviet withdrawal. On 7 January 1987, Rajiv wrote to Reagan highlighting that his position on Afghanistan remained unchanged since it was last conveyed to Reagan in Washington DC. Afghanistan, Rajiv wrote, should be allowed to ‘chart an independent non-aligned course. Free from intervention and interference.’ Perhaps this was the only occasion in the history of South Asian conflicts when the Pakistanis and the Soviets were talking of creating a government of national unity in Afghanistan while India and the US played cheerleaders. In response, Reagan wrote: ‘An acceptable political settlement in Afghanistan would contribute immensely to international peace and stability and to the broader US–Soviet dialogue.’55 Rajiv Gandhi was on a high in January 1987. His pan-Asian role and his anti-apartheid stance in Africa were turning out to be successful. His officials too felt excited about the success of convincing the Americans, Soviets and most importantly arch-rival Pakistan, to work together on Afghanistan. On 11 January 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was flying high – literally. He was on his way to his farm in South Delhi’s Mehrauli neighbourhood when he noticed that the cadets of the National Cadet Corps were dotting the sky near his official residence.56 Rajiv swerved back from the road to Mehrauli and entered Safdarjung Airport, and on to the runway where the NCC cadets were strapping themselves up in parasailing gear. Wing Commander S.C. Dandiya, the officer commanding the No. 1 Delhi Air Squadron of the NCC, could not say no to the cheerful PM who wanted to fly in the air. Rajiv’s security staff were in a daze and could not even utter the mandatory cautions to prevail upon him as Rajiv took the parasail gear and strapped himself up to soar in the air. In a matter of minutes, Rajiv was airborne grinning all the time. He took circles up in the air as his security detail and the cadets watched with bated breath. After spending several minutes in the air above Safdarjung Airport, Rajiv descended without a hitch and surprised everyone, as landing is the most difficult part of parasailing and needs some practice.

Rajiv Gandhi had every reason to feel elated about the success of his collaborative diplomacy on Pakistan’s western front. But bilateral ties with Pakistan were in a delicate state as far as the eastern front of Pakistan were considered.

The Pakistanis and the Soviets began an intense round of discussion on how to reach a consensus on a candidate to replace Najibullah and bring greater acceptability to the reconciliation process. Against this backdrop of a precarious reconciliation process in Afghanistan and a spike in the brutal violence on the Af–Pak border, Yaqub Khan visited Moscow twice in February 1987 as the talks forged ahead. On 7 February 1987, Khan suggested that the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah should lead the national unity government and under him both the ruling party PDPA and the mujahideen could form various wings of the government. Representation would be granted to all other social sections too. Shevardnadze remained sceptical of Zahir Shah’s role and he also opposed participation of the armed mujahideen in the national unity government. But Yaqub Khan insisted, hinting that the elusive unity of Afghanistan’s various groups and tribes was indeed possible under Zahir Shah. Yaqub Khan and Yuli Vorontsov began working jointly to craft a new government in Kabul representing all warring sections of Afghanistan, allowing them some time to recuperate from their decade-long war. All sides were aware of the difficulty in forming a government featuring the mujahideen and the government of PDPA who were in effect enemies to each other. Pakistan’s government shared the view that Najibullah was not the right man for the job to unite all sections of Afghanistan and that a benevolent figure like Zahir Shah was the need of the moment. There were differences of opinion within Kremlin. Vorontsov wished to get out of Afghanistan and was willing to explore all options of withdrawal. But Shevardnadze stressed the fact that Najibullah was the right man as Zahir Shah, exiled in Rome, was far removed from the scene of action and would find it difficult to keep all sections under control. Shevardnadze believed that the ‘political solution’, that is, the new national government,

would have to be based on the ‘existing realities’. Najibullah, argued Shevardnadze, would share power with the mujahideen if he were allowed to lead the government 57 On 23 February, Yaqub Khan came to Moscow to discuss the Track II process on the new government in Kabul with Vorontsov for the second time that month. The warmth in Soviet–Pakistan ties was unprecedented. Barely a year ago, in March 1985, Zia had received the cold shoulder from Mikhail Gorbachev at Chernenko’s funeral. But after a few false starts, both sides began talking from the summer of 1986, and by spring of 1987 both sides were party to a vigorous discussion on the national reconciliation government in Kabul. During his second February visit, Yaqub Khan was emphatic. Khan, who was on his way to Geneva for the UN-backed talks, said that the coming round of talks should be the last and the two issues to be resolved in this round of talks were the time frame for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the nature of the future government of Afghanistan. Khan reiterated the point that the government of Afghanistan would have to be neutral regarding neighbourhood issues and non-aligned from superpower rivalry. Najibullah was unfit to lead the national unity government in Kabul, he argued. Zahir Shah was the only one in Pakistan’s view with the necessary qualifications to lead a neutral and non-aligned government.58 But the period from 1986 to 1987, which saw unprecedented discussions on the future of Afghanistan among all the traditional rivals, was also the best season for arms sellers. On the ground in Afghanistan, the Pakistanbacked mujahideen guerrillas began receiving Stinger missiles from the CIA. This dramatically shifted the balance of power inside Afghanistan. The Stinger missiles began targeting the Mi-24 Hind helicopters that were the chief weapons against the Afghan fighters. Successful attacks on the Hind helicopters created an additional problem for the Soviets and increased the pressure on the Soviet leadership who were worried about steep adverse public opinion among the Soviet population.

Though political ties between India and the US were in good shape, a brief but interesting storm began brewing when India complained bitterly that the American tendency to supply weapons of all kinds to the Pakistan government hinted that Washington DC was looking for something more long-term in Afghanistan. Old suspicions on the USA’s real intent peaked in Indian political circles as Rajiv Gandhi faced tough questions in parliament. At the heart of the mini-storm was the American plan to supply Pakistan with Airborne Early Warning Systems (AEWS). The Americans argued that India should allow the US to supply the AEWS to Pakistan, as under a special scheme they would be flown only by American pilots. Dean was at the receiving end of the outburst from various sections of the Indian elite as he had to explain the reasons. Rajiv Gandhi wrote to the US against supplying the AEWS to Pakistan despite a sudden troubleshooting visit by Congressman Solarz. At this moment, bitter infighting broke out in American diplomatic circles over the privileged access to leaders that Dean was able to cultivate.59 It appears like a lingering problem that had defined Dean’s ties with the other officials at the State Department in Washington DC. Dean complained that he was being taken for granted by junior officials. Though not disruptive in scale, these quarrels indicated strained relation between Dean and his bosses back in the United States. One reason for this difference was that Dean was finding it difficult to defend proposed weapons package to Pakistan. Washington DC wanted Dean to defend the US position stoutly, but Dean felt that the US should not undermine India’s security. Divergence between the ambassador and his superiors created a difficult situation. But the biggest issue of this season was over Operation Brasstacks, which reached a critical phase in January–February 1987. At its height, journalist Kuldip Nayar got an interview with Abdul Qadir Khan, who conveyed in no uncertain terms that a war between India and Pakistan would definitely turn into a nuclear exchange. Zia subsequently undertook his trip to Jaipur to indulge in cricket diplomacy in February when his interlocutors were concluding delicate talks with the Soviets.60

Natwar Singh in his autobiography has hinted that the intensification of Operation Brasstacks in the spring of 1987 was the handiwork of General Krishnaswamy Sundarji alone. Dean’s communications with the State Department, however, show that Rajiv Gandhi was kept in the loop about every step of Brasstacks. For now, it seemed that President Zia had enough firefighting to do in Moscow and Geneva and could have been spared the tension and a near-war on the eastern frontier. Inside India too things were heating up. The Bofors issue had snowballed into a political crisis and the insurgency in Punjab was refusing to die down with continuous support from Zia’s government. Brasstacks was a lesson crafted for Zia but might have also hurt the chances of cooperation with him. But the gamble in Afghanistan was far greater than a season-long crisis on the India–Pak border. And after the drama of cricket diplomacy, Zia refocused on the deliverables from the talks.

In the meanwhile, legitimate questions began to be raised about what Najibullah had really achieved in the few months since replacing Karmal. Had he achieved the national reconciliation that he was expected to usher in on the ground?61 The answer lies in the fact that despite his secret police Khadamat-e-Aetla’at-e-Dawlali (KHAD), Najibullah was not the most powerful man in Afghanistan, which was being governed by the actions emanating from Moscow, Islamabad, Washington DC and Saudi Arabia. Najibullah’s reconciliation process needed a lot more time, and support from the superpowers, which were not committed to Afghanistan as yet. As Soviet helicopters were being shot down with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles, the reconciliation talks died even before it could take off. Yet, at this point in the narrative, all sides seemed satisfied with the outcome: the Soviets were close to a respectable conclusion of their occupation of Afghanistan; Pakistan could end its involvement in a high-risk war without getting into a devastating finale; and the US was getting a Soviet-free Afghanistan. But the Indo–US relationship witnessed a spiralling crisis from the summer of 1987. The chief reason behind the sudden turbulence in the

India–US relationship can be traced to the eccentric Texan Senator Charlie Wilson’s push for arming the mujahideen with more deadly weapons. Equally important was the role played by Ambassador Jamsheed Marker of Pakistan, a Parsi diplomat of Pakistan who counted Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw of India among his close friends. Marker, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the USSR during the 1971 war, finally had a chance to settle a secret score with India as he became the most important ambassador in Washington DC due to the Afghan war. Marker became a regular at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA headquarters in Langley. Thanks to Wilson, Marker spent most of his time at Capitol Hill discussing such issues as the number of mules needed to cross the Hindu Kush and the lethal Stinger missiles for the mujahideen. Marker partnered with Wilson as the paperwork at the CIA headquarters turned into notes of approval at the Congress and the White House, and led to the transport of weapons from the headquarters of the Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida. Marker was also trying to get the approval for an aid package of $4.2 billion to be disbursed over a six-year period under a renewed waiver of restrictions under the Symington Amendment. In the summer of 1987, Marker’s networking in Washington DC caused a major media debate in New Delhi. For Pakistan, clearing of the aid package was crucial as it compensated some of the losses that it suffered during its covert war against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. But ensuring the smooth passage of the aid package was not easy for Marker as A.Q. Khan queered the pitch. In an interview with Kuldip Nayar in January, Khan had almost confessed to Pakistan’s nuclear status, causing tension over Pakistan’s nuclear plans among the nuclear non-proliferation ayatollahs of Washington DC.62 What added to the challenges was the fact that Dean had also connected Rajiv Gandhi with powerful Democrat Congressmen like Stephen Solarz. Both Congressmen Solarz and Glenn Pell had no love lost for Zia and in fact supported his opponent Benazir Bhutto.63 But Marker with his excellent networking skills successfully pitched Charlie Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Chris Dodd, David Drier, John Warner and others

against the India–Benazir lobby of Solarz and Pell. Marker was rewarded for his efforts with Pakistan’s second highest civilian award by President Pervez Musharraf in 2011. Gopi Arora, a key aide of Rajiv Gandhi on foreign affairs, briefed Dean and requested him to convey India’s serious reservations over the massive transfusion of funds to Pakistan.64 In the summer of 1987, Indian officials came out in the open with the ‘foreign hand’ argument and public rallies in Delhi and elsewhere came under the scanner of the US embassy for use of anti-US rhetoric. Rajiv himself took his problems to the people when he addressed a rally of women workers from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi at his residence and criticized the flawed strategy of arming Pakistan while liberating Afghanistan. In less than six months, Rajiv Gandhi’s soaring mood had crashed, teaching him an invaluable lesson in diplomacy. The Indian government’s real sore point was the fact that India, which had an upper hand in the Afghan crisis because of its insistence on having a broad-based government in Kabul, had begun to lose its advantage to Pakistan, which, after having agreed to the Indian plan, began to campaign for a huge chunk of US taxpayer’s money in the form of a special aid package to help Islamabad fight the jihad in Afghanistan. Even as Indians worried over the possibility of Pakistan getting weapons and a special financial package from the US, trouble was brewing for Pakistan. The clandestine roots of the Pakistan nuclear programme were known to Ambassador Marker. In July, Arshad Pervez, a Canadian citizen, was arrested for illegally exporting maraging steels to Pakistan. The specific type of steel was a banned item because of its use in the nuclear industry. Marker says65 that he was kept in the dark about this Canadian of Pakistani origin and joined issue with President Zia over the phone. Zia tried to airbrush it saying the Pakistan government had nothing to do with Arshad Pervez. In fact, both Marker and Zia knew that all their hard work could go down the drain if the American anti-nuclear lobbyists like Congressman Stephen Solarz chose to turn this case into a major breach of trust by Pakistan, as US assistance for Pak-backed Afghan jihad was contingent on Pakistan not pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

Marker began damage control as soon as the scam broke out. That way, he kept the negotiations on Afghanistan isolated from the nuclear fallout of the Arshad Pervez case. India, however, found a handle in this case to argue against Pakistan getting preferential treatment in the US Congress. But such was the mood in Washington DC that nothing could shake Zia’s ties with the White House, which obviously was tracking the developments in Islamabad, Moscow and Kabul. Now having defeated the Soviets, Zia wanted to play them. He instructed Marker to work the corridors of the Congress and the State Department so that Pakistan could deflect the effects of the Arshad Parvez case. In August, the Pakistani team changed its strategy for the key $4.2 billion aid package (mainly for the jihad) which had acquired centrality in US– Pakistan relations. The change of strategy was necessary as a series of negative developments that had exposed Pakistan’s perfidy in the nuclear development areas. The Arshad Pervez case, coupled with Kuldip Nayar’s interview with A.Q. Khan, gave the impression that Pakistan had crossed the nuclear threshold and was now headed for a rapid expansion of its nuclear programme for which the maraging steel was necessary. Despite the evident weakness of Pakistan’s position in the Congress on account of its nuclear programme, Marker and the lobbyists of Pakistan came up with the argument that the US should adopt a ‘regional approach’ to the issue of nuclear proliferation in South Asia, emphasizing that the US can strike a fair posture only if it dealt with the issue in the South Asian context, that is, by examining the pressure that the Indian nuclear programme has put on Pakistan to build a similar programme.66 That apart, they also argued that the huge aid package of nearly $8 billion from the World Bank and the IMF to India could also serve as leverage against New Delhi’s nuclear ambition. Marker, meanwhile, began working on the powerful Senators Daniel Ken Inouye and Bob Kasten who were handling the issue of aid package for Pakistan. As the chairman of the subcommittee on foreign operations of the Committee on Appropriations, US Senate, Inouye was one of the most important figures in American legislative process. Marker claims that he and his team found a way to ‘influence the drafting’ of the proposals

contained in the Appropriations Committee of the Senate that were announced in the first week of December.67 Marker and his team argued that the situation in Afghanistan was at a critical stage, and reducing US support for Pakistan would harden the Soviet position, which would jeopardizse the Western plans on Afghanistan. Marker played Pakistan’s Afghan card to win the nuclear game for Pakistan. Marker’s diplomacy was to change South Asia forever.

As Indian concerns were being ignored in the US Congress, Rajiv Gandhi planned to visit Washington DC to set the US back on the course that it was on till the spring of 1987. Frantic preparations began on both sides to take Rajiv Gandhi to the US in October 1987. In copious notes that criss-crossed the wire between New Delhi and Washington DC, both sides discussed how best to utilize a visit to Washington DC. Given the sentimental value that Rajiv had for the month of October, it was planned that the visit should take place in the first week of October. Rajiv Gandhi, the Americans believed, had heard a lot of the arguments from the media and the US diplomats about the massive arms and cash aid that Ronald Reagan was going to commit to Pakistan. But now he was determined to find the truth from the leaders of the United States of America. Rajiv Gandhi was particularly perturbed by the US promise to supply AEWS to Pakistan. In meetings with US representatives, Rajiv argued that the AEWS to be supplied to Pakistan were solely aimed at India and would act as a force multiplier for Pakistan as they would enable Pakistan to scan almost a thousand kilometres inside Indian territory.68 The 1987 visit to Washington DC was shorn of the fanfare of the summer of 1985. It was a pure executive-level visit lasting twenty-eight hours between 19 and 20 October. It was tied to Rajiv’s visit to the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Vancouver. The discussions revealed that either the Reagan–Bush administration encouraged the transfer of funds and arms to Pakistan or they were powerless to prevent the congressional nod in that regard. The Indian PM was ‘relaxed and confident’, observed the note from the State Department. But behind the

placid exterior he was dealing with complex issues. Both sides discussed Afghanistan in detail and reaffirmed their commitment to have a broadbased government in Kabul following the withdrawal of the Soviet forces. Americans once again asked Rajiv to convince the Soviets to leave Afghanistan in the shortest possible time frame. The flurry of meetings to have a broad-based government in Afghanistan was going ahead. But the reconciliation process under Najibullah had failed. The Americans, as usual, managed to bulldoze their way into the talk and refused to discuss ‘security assistance’, a euphemism for transfer of funds and weapons to Pakistan. The Indians were told that a ‘complete cut- off of assistance by congress would not occur’ despite the Indian support on Afghanistan. Sen told this author that the talks were not a failure and that Reagan did make up to Rajiv by shooting down the sale of AEWS to Pakistan. But for the moment, on 20 October 1987, the Indian team had nothing to cheer about as it took leave from Washington DC. Dean has more dramatic accounts of the meeting. The mood of the day was certainly gloomy due to the congressional moves favouring Pakistan. Ronald Reagan’s worsening health added to the gloominess in White House. Reagan spoke most of the time during their meeting as he was worried that the Indian side might detect his increasing hearing impairment. Reagan laughed and joked often without a clue about what was happening and midway during the meeting he left to take a nap in his bedroom. Sen says that Reagan was also disturbed because Nancy Reagan had undergone a surgery just a few days earlier.69 But Rajiv’s efforts to prevent a Pakistani takeover of Kabul began to face setbacks as his chief ally Ronald Reagan began receding to the background – both politically and physically. The visit to Washington DC ended as Rajiv and India reached a turnaround in his and India’s diplomatic journey. Back in Delhi, Rajiv became perhaps the first Indian prime minister to speak of violent struggles. In a startling change of discourse and language on South Africa’s racist government, Rajiv, four days after his return from Washington DC, said that South Africa needed a violent liberation struggle as all international attempts to seek a peaceful end to its inhuman policies were being thwarted by South Africa’s international allies.70 On the basis of

diplomatic cables and statements from Rajiv Gandhi, it can be deduced that November 1987 was the month when he made two crucial decisions, which probably took him to a path vastly different from the one he travelled till October 1987.

Rumours began to swirl in Delhi’s corridors of power that Najibullah was to land in Delhi any moment for an urgent consultation with Rajiv Gandhi. Najibullah had been asking for an appointment with the Indian prime minister for several months and Rajiv had been procrastinating.71 ‘Go solo on Afghanistan’, appeared to have become a policy option for Rajiv in the winter of 1987. The fruits of such a venture were uncertain. If successful, Rajiv could have ensured greater influence in Afghanistan but it could also be interpreted as gross interference in an area that was the domain of the superpowers. The risks behind this venture were immense but events show that perhaps Rajiv made up his mind quite quickly after the failed visit to Washington DC. But the injury of the failed visit to Washington DC was multiplied by an additional insult that came in the first week of December 1987. In the meanwhile, Soviet premier Nikolai Ryzhkov came to Delhi on 20 November. Rajiv and Ryzhkov met for three hours and discussed all the options in Afghanistan in detail. While Leninism was under attack in Moscow, Delhi turned Leninist when Rajiv launched the Soviet Cultural Festival in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. As American diplomats went into a tizzy to make sense of Rajiv’s actions, they were alarmed to learn that Rajiv was now positively disposed to entertain Najibullah in Delhi. But the ultimate setback to the Rajiv–Reagan initiative on Afghanistan came on 3 December in what can be interpreted as the biggest failure of Rajiv’s diplomacy. On that day, the operations subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Appropriations met to adopt the S. 1924 Foreign Assistance Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1988, also known as the Inouye–Kasten Act, incorporating the Pakistani line on nuclear issues.72 The full Appropriations Committee met the next day and reported S. 1924 to the Senate. The comprehensive piece of legislation dealt

with the entire spectrum of foreign assistance by the United States and shows how the United States dealt with globally relevant issues through domestic process of legislation. Most importantly, under the legislation, the US recognized that Pakistan’s nuclear programme should not be viewed in isolation of South Asia’s nuclear atmosphere, something for which Marker had lobbied. Indeed, Indian and Pakistani nuclear programmes were perceived to be of the same kind. India protested strongly as Pakistan’s nuclear programme was based on recorded instances of violation of non-proliferation guidelines. The Final Continuing Resolution came as a ‘wonderful parting gift’ for Pakistan’s support to the Afghan operation: Pakistan received a two-and-a-half-year waiver of restrictions under the Symington Amendment; $260 million in foreign military sales, with $30 million of this as ‘forgiven loans’; $220 million in economic support funds; $50 million in development assistance. Further, there was no mention of Pakistan’s nuclear programme which had been made public by A.Q. Khan. The Act began by banning technological support for both Pakistan and India. But in a curious way, it stated that ‘in strictly limited circumstances’, the president of the United States could waive such restrictions and proceeded to declare that Pakistan was a country of ‘strategic importance’ to the United States and therefore deserved a special treatment.73 In case of more than a hundred countries, the United States dealt with non-proliferation strictly as a bilateral issue. But in case of Pakistan, nonproliferation was viewed as a regional problem involving both Pakistan and India. The result of the Act was stunning, as a technology denial regime was imposed on India while Pakistan, despite the negative observations on its nuclear programme, got an extension of the waiver under the Symington Amendment clearing the way for more funding for the jihad in Afghanistan. In case of India, the legislative move destabilised the train of technology transfer that began in 1985. Such was the diplomatic coup by Marker’s team that the US chose to overlook the peril of nuclear weapons in the hands of Pakistan in exchange for President Zia’s support to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

In New Delhi, The Hindu reported the development under the headline, ‘Delhi surprised over senate panel move’ on front page. A single piece of legislation had nearly sealed shut the window in India–US ties that was opened after years of difficulties. Summing up the vast impact of the legislation, the newspaper said in a 4 December 1987 report, ‘It would also prohibit India from the proposed purchase of supercomputer, light combat aircraft (LCA) components, electronics, systems for Army and Navy, and scientific knowhow.74 It would affect India’s chances of obtaining assistance from multilateral institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the International Development Agency.’ Rajiv Gandhi and his team found it difficult to fathom the depth of the setback. The Hindu reported, the ‘unjustifiable Senatorial decision’ had drawn ‘the strongest possible message to the White House from the highest levels in India’. New Delhi felt ‘belittled’ by the linkage made between Pakistani and Indian nuclear programmes and justifying aid to Pakistan by citing Indian nuclear capability. That apart, it felt that the Senate Committee’s recommendation appeared to give Pakistan an indirect nod to continue with its nuclear weapons programme. Criticizing the US move, Rajiv Gandhi said, ‘They have not suggested any specific measures. We explained our position which is basically that it is not just a simple question of looking at India and Pakistan. You must evaluate the whole region. You must evaluate the method and manner in which Pakistan has developed its (nuclear) programme. You cannot isolate the two. First about the manner in which the Pakistani programme has come about – compare it with our programme. Our programme is totally peaceful, it is completely in the civilian sector.’75 Not surprising, Rajiv Gandhi’s arguments about the civilian nature of India’s nuclear programme did not influence the US political channels. Newspapers in Delhi reported ‘aid cut for Pak’ on the same day. However, these reports were far from the truth. Despite nominal cuts in the proposed economic support funds, Pakistan had secured the ultimate strategic goal of (tacit) US support for its nuclear programme and an enthusiastic boost of the Afghan jihad. Though the Inouye–Kasten resolution linked technical support with signature on a regional nuclear

elimination process by both Pakistan and India, it also facilitated the way ahead for the proposed $4.2 billion military and economic assistance to Pakistan.76 Pakistan had scored on several fronts in one diplomatic victory. In one move, the warmth in India–US ties created by Indira and Rajiv from 1980 onward had turned cold.

Fearing a backlash from India, Dean, under instructions from the White House, surveyed the mood in Delhi. The resulting message sent to National Security Advisor Colin Powell makes for interesting study: The proposed language takes no note whatsoever of the differences in the Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs. While Pakistan has surreptitiously and resolutely sought to develop a nuclear weapons capability, India since its 1974 nuclear explosion has quite openly and above board pursued a program for nuclear power plants…The language [of the Inouye–Kasten resolution] provides only thinnest camouflage for resuming military aid to Pakistan giving the president the power to waive restrictions toward Pakistan simply by certifying that a ‘second country in South Asia’ is producing weapons grade nuclear materials in ‘un-safeguarded facilities’.77 Dean pleaded with Powell to personally intervene to stop the Inouye– Kasten resolution. But it was too late. The headlines screamed ‘major victory’ for Pakistan. Dean in a long message predicted the cataclysmic fallout of the ‘thinnest camouflage for resuming military aid to Pakistan’ on India–US ties. ‘We should not underestimate the magnitude of the likely outcry here,’ Dean wrote to Powell. He cautioned that the hardest hit by this betrayal would be Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s personal equations with the American leaders. Exactly one month and ten days after Rajiv Gandhi’s second trip to Washington DC, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and

Colin Powell were mere spectators when the Congress rolled out a chain of gifts for Pakistan’s support to the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. Rajiv Gandhi responded with a change of language and symbolism. On 11 December, a week after the shocker from Washington DC, Rajiv said: ‘We don’t want aid, help or technology if there is the slightest pressure to make us deviate from our basic policies.’78 Later in the day, Rajiv, who had been accused of neglecting the victims of the gas tragedy at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, arrived in the slum area of the city where thousands had perished on the night of 3 December 1984. Rajiv’s symbolism made sense in the context of the mood that had enveloped India–US relations on 4 December 1987. In Washington DC, Rajiv’s ambassador P.K. Kaul had a no-holds-barred meeting to convey Indian sentiments before the legislation was passed. Armacost urged for calm from India. But Kaul said that all the work that India and the United States had been doing ‘will go back to zero’.79 Given the personal ties of the leaders involved, Kaul worried about the ‘overall relationship and feared that this would set the clock back’. Armacost agreed that the action of the Congress was going to hurt Rajiv’s political prospects at home and said that Dean’s cable had already conveyed the fallout that could be expected from Inouye–Kasten legislation supporting aid and arms for Pakistan.

The Hyphenation The fallout of the Inouye–Kasten resolution hit bilateral India–US ties immediately. The United States began to sense that India would put ‘on hold’ some of the programmes for India–US cooperation that featured in the October 1987 US visit of Rajiv Gandhi. Dean anticipated that the first to be sacrificed would be the Indian support on Afghanistan.80 Basking in the unprecedented success in the US capital, Jamsheed Marker found that the Indian response was ‘predictably strong and violent’ which prompted the US administration to take some remedial measures.81 While the Indians showcased the American measures taken in the second

week of December as actions taken to address New Delhi’s concerns, Marker viewed these steps as merely cosmetic. Though Dean’s paper meticulously highlights the legislative steps that the US took in the second week of December, the fact is that these steps could not throw away the central premise of the Inouye–Kasten resolution, which viewed the nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan as a ‘regional’ issue that linked and equated both Indian and Pakistani nuclear programmes with each other.82 Dean sent ‘media reaction’ reports on the new legislative measures that, Marker noted, tried to ‘dilute’ some of the provisions of the resolution. Dean stated that four Senators (John Glenn, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Clairborne Pell and Rudolph Eli ‘Rudy’ Boschwitz) and Representative Stephen Solarz attempted some damage control. As a result of the ‘dilution’ of Inouye–Kasten resolution, the ‘nuclear linkage’ between two South Asian rivals was withdrawn but the regional approach was preserved and the waiver of restrictions in favour of Pakistan was left undisturbed. The final resolution, Marker says, was even more suitable for Pakistan as it lifted all restrictions on Pakistan’s nuclear programme while removing some restrictions on India. However, even this round did not come without humiliation for India. Republican Congressman Dan Burton expressed the ‘Sense of Congress’ that Rajiv Gandhi’s government should reopen the Golden Temple for religious worship and respect human rights in Punjab.83 Thanks to watchful eyes of Representative Solarz, the statement somehow made space for expressions like ‘unity and integrity of India’ and spared Rajiv any more shocks. Though the US administration continued to issue statements in praise of India–US relationship, it is obvious from official communications that the bilateral warmth that was nurtured after a gap of a decade and a half, had cooled and Rajiv Gandhi had no illusions about the personal setback for him as far as ties with the US was concerned.84 At the end of the long fight, recalling the words of Duke of Wellington’s famous observation after Waterloo, Marker said, ‘It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’.85

A few days before Christmas, Dean reached Sen’s office in South Block with panic written all over his face. He said that the American government was worried about Rajiv Gandhi hosting Najibullah in Delhi. He wanted to find if Najibullah was indeed coming to Delhi on a state visit. Sen assured Dean that India had decided to treat the visit purely as a courtesy extended to a visitor in transit.86 Dean went back unhappy because Najibullah’s visit to India signified a marked departure in Rajiv’s Afghanistan policy. So far, Rajiv had allowed the direct diplomacy on Afghanistan to be handled by the US and the USSR. But now Rajiv would play directly with Kabul without mediation from Moscow or Washington DC. Besides, his hosting of Najibullah showed that he had agreed to toe the Soviet line, as this formal hospitality was a long-pending demand from Moscow, who considered Najibullah their best bet in Afghanistan. On his way to Cambodia and Vietnam, Najibullah called on Rajiv Gandhi on Christmas Eve. The official meeting lasted three hours followed by a lunch organized for Najibullah by Rajiv. Later Rajiv sat down to write two letters. The first, a formal letter, was meant for President Reagan87 and the second handwritten letter was for Vice-President George H.W. Bush. The letters are significant because they show the hands-on approach of Rajiv to the Afghan issue. He declared that the formation of the government in Kabul on the accepted lines was now ensured. Rajiv was going to include both Najibullah and King Zahir Shah or at least one of them to have a ‘broad-based government’ in Kabul in the near future. Afghanistan, the letter hinted, was no longer solely the playground of the US and the USSR. India would play in Afghanistan too. The letter conveyed that India was no longer bound to listen to directives from Washington DC to ensure a friendly government in Kabul. Dean found this letter to carry an ‘ominous’ sign that Rajiv Gandhi had been truly enraged by the betrayal of the Congress and the State Department. Pointing to the third page of the letter, Dean cautioned the State Department that by placing his appreciation for the president’s personal support to India and by pointing out the security assistance programme for Pakistan in the same section, Rajiv had indirectly conveyed that his plans for Afghanistan from this point on would be independent of

American intentions. In the letter meant for Bush, Rajiv struck a prophetic note: ‘1988 will be an important year in world history, and that of the United States.’88 Sen drove over to the Deans’ on Christmas morning and hand-delivered the letters for the US president and vice-president and then drove out of Roosevelt House. The prime minister had taken off with his family for a trip to the Lakshadweep Islands. Rajiv was upset but he was still good with personal public relations. In Agatti island of Lakshadweep, he spotted a stranded whale stuck in the shallow waters of a lagoon. Rajiv jumped into the water with his SPG guards and began pushing the large mammal back into the sea. Seeing them in action, hundreds of locals who had come to see the prime minister also joined in saving the whale.89 The stranded whale was saved and a larger whale showed up in the distance to escort it back into the sea. Locals believed that sighting of the whales marked an auspicious beginning. American newspapers carried the report of India’s whale-saving prime minister on the front page – a little consolation after a great setback. Rajiv Gandhi began 1988, ‘an important year in world history’ with whale sightings.

5 The Playground Opens Up 1988, KHAN Abdul Ghaffar Khan fell ill for the last time. Khan, also known as the Frontier Gandhi, had long been a misfit in Pakistan. At ninety-eight, he was an inconvenient political presence at home due to his well-known opposition to the idea of Pakistan. The Frontier Gandhi became relevant after his death on 20 January 1988. Ghaffar Khan was a close friend of the Nehru-Gandhis and made it a point to visit them whenever the family required a grandfatherly presence.1 He had been ailing for decades and often underwent treatment in the West, supported by both Pakistan and India. Rajiv and Indira Gandhi were both close to Ghaffar Khan, who fought the British with his Khudai Khidmatgar, a non-violent band of Pashtuns in the wild north-west during the 1930s. Rajiv Gandhi was planning his visit to Sweden to participate in the latest round of disarmament talks with the Group of Six when news came from Peshawar about Ghaffar Khan’s death. ‘The Frontier Gandhi has died and I have to visit him,’ was all that Rajiv said as he dismissed the meeting to discuss his planned visit to Sweden.2 Within a couple of hours, an aircraft of the Indian Air Force was procured to take Rajiv and his team to Peshawar. IN JANUARY

The decision to travel to Peshawar was taken early in the morning and Ronen Sen as usual accompanied Rajiv along with the rest of the prime ministerial delegation. As the aircraft reached Peshawar, the irony was not lost on those on board that a good part of their work of the last few years focused on the jihad that emanated from the mujahideen headquarters in Peshawar. As the aircraft began its descent into Peshawar’s international airport, which had been receiving CIA’s flights carrying arms, the grey countryside below appeared to have hardly anyone around. But Peshawar was a sea of humanity, Sen recollects. Tribal Pathans had come from all corners of the Frontier to see the man they called their Baacha (Badshah) for the last time. Escorted by the Frontier Gandhi’s family, Rajiv and his team reached the spot where the coffin of the departed leader was kept. The presence of the Indians added to the magic of the moment. Standing beside the coffin, Rajiv offered the funeral prayers and held informal talks with government representatives at the venue. The TV image of Rajiv praying beside the family members of the departed soul was highly symbolic in the charged circumstances and was carried by Pakistan TV and Doordarshan. ‘We bow our heads to him,’ Rajiv said.3 In all, Rajiv spent 100 minutes in Peshawar paying tribute to the Frontier Gandhi whom Rajiv had known from his childhood. Before leaving Peshawar, Rajiv sent a message acknowledging the support that President Zia had extended to him and his family at this moment when they lost a deep connect with the generation of pre-Partition Indians. Rajiv Gandhi became the first prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to visit Pakistan. In 1960 Jawaharlal had visited Pakistan to seal the Indus Waters Treaty. Rajiv Gandhi, however, did not consult Zia in advance before deciding to fly to Peshawar, which created a crisis-like atmosphere in Islamabad.4 Rajiv Gandhi was not the only one flying into Pakistan in a historic first; also flying in at the same time was the UN special negotiator for Afghanistan, Diego Cordovez, to discuss with the Pakistani leadership on how to implement a peaceful withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Zia informed Cordovez that Rajiv Gandhi had planned the visit without consulting him.

In his last years, the Frontier Gandhi saw epic-scale violence emanate from his city. This violence was now going to end. As Peshawar ended its tenuous ties with its non-violent history, in Islamabad, attempts were on to decide the future course of Afghanistan. The prospects of a broad-based government that all sides had earlier agreed to seemed rather bleak. In fact, despite an in-principle agreement, the coalition had failed to gather the required trust from all sides. The mujahideen leaders had by now proposed that there should be a transitional government consisting of twenty-eight cabinet ministers – fourteen mujahideen commanders, seven émigrés, and seven PDPA members. A grand council would be summoned representing all sides and a government would be formed, which would sign the Geneva Accords so that it would acquire the necessary sanctity to make it long-lasting. Bickerings continued over whether the government should be formed before or after the Soviet withdrawal. Obviously, doubts persisted over such an arrangement, as the government in Kabul was not positive about giving the leadership role to the mujahideen. A day before Rajiv Gandhi flew into Peshawar, Pakistan’s ambassador to Moscow, Shahid M. Amin was asked to meet Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, a tall Sindhi leader who had carved out his own space within the Zia dictatorship. Amin informed Junejo that the Soviets were eager to leave Afghanistan at the earliest as the occupation had become counterproductive. But the Soviets wished for a face-saving formula before loading their troops in trucks. They would very much prefer Najibullah in the broad-based government, as without sufficient PDPA representation, they feared a bloodbath against the PDPA. Junejo supported the inclusion of the PDPA in the government to be formed in Kabul. Some in the top echelons of Pakistan had resolved to follow the formula of the broad-based government as agreed in principle. Late in the evening, Amin and Junejo were joined by acting foreign minister Zain Noorani, director general of ISI General Hamid Gul, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN Shah Nawaz and General Zia himself. As the participants began talking about what the future government in Kabul would look like, Gul began showing signs of a rethink in the Pakistani

establishment about the broad-based government. The PDPA and Najibullah should be excluded from the national unity government, Gul insisted.5 His line was completely at variance from the line supported by Prime Minister Junejo. Pakistan’s chief decision makers on Afghanistan had begun to disagree among themselves at a crucial time. As Gul demanded the complete sidelining of the PDPA and Najibullah due to his past fights with the mujahideen leaders, Amin and Shah Nawaz argued for including all sections in the national unity government as not doing so might increase chances of a bloodbath in Kabul, which would humiliate the Soviets. Finally, it was time for Zia to settle the debate. Najibullah made a career out of suppressing the mujahideen before starting his reconciliation process under Soviet patronage. But he also underlined his opposition to Pakistan by dining with the Indian prime minister the previous Chrismas Eve. Gul’s point of view won the evening. Zia voted against Najibullah’s inclusion in the broad-based Afghan government. The higher Najibullah figured in the Indian plan for a solution to the Afghan mess, the lower was his stock on the Pakistani side – a typical IndoPak quarrel had begun to erode the precarious consensus that Najibullah, despite his deadly reputation, had secured from all international stakeholders while replacing Babrak Karmal in November 1986. At the 19 January meeting, Zia vaguely spoke about the need for the mujahideen of Peshawar to become more flexible in accommodating other viewpoints but generally vetoed the idea that Najibullah could become part of a meaningful power-sharing agreement in Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal. By following his independent line on Afghanistan, Rajiv Gandhi had knowingly spoiled Najibullah’s chances with Islamabad. The difference between the Indian prime minister and the Pakistani president increased by the time Rajiv flew back to Delhi because President Zia had already decided to push for Najibullah’s exclusion from the government in Kabul. All pretensions of meaningful talks about finding a solution to the Afghan problem were finally being given the go-by.

In the meanwhile, the diplomatic fire started by the Najibullah–Rajiv meeting of 24 December 1987 had begun to melt India–US ties. One of the first to feel the heat was the American ambassador to India. Media reports from Washington DC began to talk about the possible change of ambassadorship to Delhi. A news report on 1 January suggested that John Gunther Dean was to be replaced by Mort Abramowitz, assistant secretary in charge of intelligence and research.6 India–US relations had reached a dead end but Rajiv’s relationship with the US ambassador remained open and warm. The prime minister felt comfortable with Dean and preferred to have Dean in town for some more months instead of a stranger. ‘Rajiv asked us to go slow in responding to the American request for a new ambassador,’ Natwar Singh said while explaining how the good ties between Dean and Rajiv were viewed as a counterbalance even as ties between the US and India nosedived.7 Dean’s last year as the American ambassador would have ended differently had he left Delhi in January. But it was clear that a point of rupture had been reached in the US–India ties with Najibullah’s visit to Delhi. The version of the Rajiv–Najibullah meeting that Sen narrated to Dean was a diplomatic piece of truth. Sen, as instructed by his PM, tried to give a benign twist to Najibullah’s visit. But the Americans could read and analyse media reports which undercut Sen’s take on Najibullah.8 Najibullah had been eager to land in the Indian capital for several months but was granted permission to meet and dine with Rajiv Gandhi only after the Indians were given the latest congressional stepmotherly treatment in Washington DC. In the coming months, the three-hour-long meeting between the Afghan leader and Rajiv would morph into a well-nourished artery of support that would connect the Afghan president to New Delhi in a manner that was unprecedented till that time and remains an unsurpassed phenomenon in India–Afghanistan ties till now. Rajiv in his Christmas letters to Bush and Reagan had informed the American leaders about his meeting with Najibullah but Sen had learnt that the Americans did not appreciate the meeting at all. As a counter-measure

for the cold American attitude, the Indians did not confirm the visit till about a few hours prior to Najibullah’s actual arrival. ‘The Americans were hurt over the fact that we did not inform them about Najibullah’s expected arrival to Delhi,’ Sen said. What Sen obviously does not want to confirm is that the Americans were further incensed on learning that Najibullah had been adopted by the Indian leadership, dropping all pretence of soft diplomacy. Rajiv had begun paying the Americans back in their own diplomatic coin as he was kept in the dark by the leadership in Washington DC over the congressional surprises of December 1987. Rajiv, however, hinted to Dean that he would take up difficult issues with Najibullah and criticize his year-long reconciliation process which had not led anywhere.9 But the message that the meeting sent out was that the Indians would give the beleaguered Afghan leader greater importance and that all backchannel diplomacy from the Indian side through letters and secret flights to help the US would end. The Indians were going to make their own moves. Rajiv had also instructed K. Natwar Singh to openly communicate the Indian position to all sides engaged in Afghanistan. Rajiv was creating his set of responses to the rewards that Pakistan received in Washington DC in December. 10 The meeting with Najibullah also served his political purpose at home. The year 1987 brought success in the Sri Lankan war when Rajiv signed the India–Sri Lanka Accord on 29 July, but the accord also proved that South Asia remained a dangerous region to navigate as Rajiv survived an attack by a Sri Lankan soldier during the guard of honour following the signing. Rajiv’s success was not translating into benefits and his political problems accumulated at home. Earlier, on 22 May, a major massacre of innocent Muslim men at Hashimpura in Uttar Pradesh left his government’s record of handling internal harmony scarred. As the Sri Lankan initiative showed, Rajiv took greater risks internationally as his domestic problems increased.11 Muscle flexing with regard to Afghanistan made sense in such circumstances. Matching the prime ministerial mood, Natwar Singh’s voice rose. Soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s policy for the US began falling apart on Capitol Hill, Natwar Singh and Joint Secretary P.K. Singh met Dean on 5

December. Natwar Singh told Dean that the Indians were prepared to deal with the news of the security assistance to Pakistan because Rajiv and his team knew of the US efforts that were under way to reward Pakistan for aiding the CIA in Afghanistan. But what shocked the Indian leadership was that despite all the financial investments and political warmth at the highest levels, there was no attempt by the American side to contact the Indian PM or any of his officials about the December 1987 congressional move. It would have been easier to reconcile to the pro-Pakistan moves had the American leaders taken the Indian leadership into confidence. Obviously, the Americans expected India to swallow this bitter pill without creating a scene. But India did exactly the opposite – they poached on the American and Pakistani plan and began luring away chief figures like Najibullah to create a parallel Afghan peace plan. Natwar told Dean that this evident carelessness on the part of the American officials represented ‘perfidy’ and ‘a stab in the back of the Prime Minister’.12 Rajiv Gandhi had the support of parliament in hardening his stance towards the United States and naturally had paid the Americans in their own coin by springing a surprise on them in the form of the meeting with Najibullah. Rajiv Gandhi and his team were embarrassed to face the parliament and feared attacks by stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and others. Under pressure from the opposition, supported by a vocal press, Rajiv made two statements in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on the ‘stab in the back’ action by the United States. The Natwar–Dean meeting of 5 December was to warn the Americans that the PM would hint at a betrayal by the Americans as Indians were upset. ‘How was it that there was absolutely no warning to the Indian government from the US administration that these steps were about to be taken in the Senate Committee? Why had the US administration made no attempt to contact the Indian government at the highest levels to reassure it that it would seek to defeat the proposed amendment?’ said Dean summing up his conversation with Natwar Singh.13 But apart from the absence of forewarning, what had caught Rajiv unawares was the effort of the Senate subcommittee to use India as a vehicle to obtain appropriations for the US aid programme to Pakistan. For,

the language of the resolution showed that instead of the threats from its western borders, Pakistan needed security assistance due to the nuclear threats emanating from its eastern borders. Rajiv said that if three years of efforts of working with the US were to fail, any future PM of India would think seriously before striking up a friendship with the United States.14 Rajiv’s ties with the US had taken a beating and a damage control mechanism had kicked in. But it was too late because the opposition, despite its slim presence in the Lower House of parliament, had successfully cornered Rajiv on his US policy and painted him as a naive diplomat who had invested India’s dignity and had been personally humiliated in return.15 But away from the developments between Delhi and Washington DC, the final round of the Geneva talks was to take place now. The Geneva talks had evolved a great deal and now both the Afghan government and the Pakistanis were speaking to each other, though insurmountable problems remained. While Pakistan’s military leader had already reached the decision on avoiding Najibullah in a future government in Kabul, the Soviets were opposed to giving up on Najibullah and PDPA totally. The Soviets, focused as they were on withdrawal, were unable to bring India and Pakistan together and the Indo-Pak difference over Najibullah cast a shadow on the overall withdrawal process. The next few weeks were crucial for the Soviets as Mikhail Gorbachev was expected to make the final announcement about the withdrawal, providing the peace talks in Geneva much-needed support. The Soviet Union indirectly supported India’s Afghanistan plans.

Zia had already made up his mind on Najibullah by 20 January 1988. But the Pakistani decision to drop Najibullah had to be formally communicated to the Soviets. One opportunity to discuss the changed position was when Vorontsov came to Islamabad in February. But before that both sides had to discuss the broad-based government once again. Najibullah’s fate depended on how Moscow and Islamabad would handle his prospects in the broadbased government. But after his visit to Delhi, Najibullah had a little less

reason to worry about surviving the withdrawal, because the first to be evaluated was not Najibullah himself, but the idea of a broad-based government under King Zahir Shah. It is during this phase of December 1987 to February 1988 that the differences between India and the United States over the future of Afghanistan crystallized. The differences were massive and left no space for Rajiv Gandhi’s government. There is not much evidence available to show how India and the United States reacted to the Pakistani hard-line position of using the Islamists. But Dean preserved a special note from the State Department prepared in January 1988 on the eve of Under Secretary Michael Armacost’s visit to Islamabad. The two-and-a-half-page background note on the Islamists among the anti-Soviet mujahideen is a remarkable document which brings alive the strategic folly of the United States that was partially responsible for the rise of the Taliban.16 In that note, the State Department officials came up with the idea that resistance leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Yunus Khalis of Hezb-eIslami were not fundamentalists. ‘Islamist or Islamist activist is a better description than fundamentalist for the Islamist groups,’ it stated. In an obvious reference to pro-US Pakistan, the note states, ‘The resistance parties have no articulated political program. We would expect so-called fundamentalism to mean the declaration of an Islamic Republic, probably one more akin to Pakistan than to Iran [which was ruled by antiUS Ayatollah Khomeini].’ The anonymous author of the note had no idea that the hallmark of the government by the ‘Islamists’ would include extending support to global jihad and therefore the note states in a stunning display of innocence, ‘Its greatest hallmark is likely to be local autonomy and a return to the traditional way of life.’

Amidst reports of Rajiv Gandhi’s increasing estrangement from the United States, Peter Galbraith of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee visited New Delhi. Peter and Rajiv had long-standing family connections that went

back to the early 1960s when John Kenneth Galbraith, Peter’s economist father, was posted in Delhi as President Kennedy’s ambassador. Galbraith junior’s meeting was focused on Afghanistan. The Galbraith– Gandhi meeting materialized mainly because America wanted to understand how far Rajiv Gandhi had gone with Najibullah since his meeting on 24 December. Rajiv Gandhi did not tell Galbraith that sometimes a three-hourlong meeting was enough to change the course of a relationship. What Rajiv conveyed to Galbraith was in complete variance to the policy that the Government of India was to adopt on Najibullah in the coming months. In the coming months, those three Christmas Eve hours would acquire the shape of a strategic gamble. It was obvious that India–Najibullah ties were dependent upon other factors like how warm Pakistan’s ties with Najibullah were, Pakistan’s ties with India and the attitude of the Soviets towards Najibullah. Out of these three variables, two supported India’s ties with Najibullah. But before welcoming Najibullah to India officially, Rajiv Gandhi sent Natwar Singh to conduct a crucial meeting in Rome, which would either turn him into a part of the international peace plan or destroy the peace plan while building a parallel plan where Najibullah would call the shots for a fresh attempt at peace. On 3 February 1988 Rajiv told Galbraith what the latter wanted to hear. He conveyed the dilemma facing the formation of a coalition government in Kabul. The mujahideen were unwilling to give up their claims over the future Afghan army, intelligence and policy of the state. Najibullah was equally insistent that these three departments not be left to the mujahideen alone. Najibullah, therefore, was not the candidate who could lead a coalition government, Rajiv observed. Rajiv’s lack of praise for Najibullah helped Galbraith open up. At one point during the discussion, Rajiv Gandhi gently conveyed his negative impression that some American officials were somewhat worried about the Indian involvement in Afghanistan and that they wished India to restrict its efforts only to some sections of the Afghan leadership.17 When Galbraith sought some clarity on what Rajiv meant, he was told that the Indian attempts in Afghanistan were focused on how to prevent a

fundamentalist takeover of Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal. India feared, Rajiv said, that Afghanistan’s Islamization would take its toll on Pakistan as it would then have two Islamic states on its western borders – Iran and Afghanistan – and Pakistan would be under tremendous pressure from the men and their ideologies from across its borders to follow suit, which would then impact India. While Rajiv hoped that India could keep trying for a nonfundamentalist government in Kabul, he was quick to point out that Pakistan was hurtling towards dark days. Galbraith then asked Rajiv, rather rhetorically, about what Rajiv considered to be the Indian government’s job in Afghanistan. Galbraith’s question is revealing as it shows the distance that the Americans had travelled between the summer of 1985 and the spring of 1988. Rajiv pointed out that India’s role remained the same as in June 1985 when Reagan and Bush had asked him to persuade the Soviets to accept a realistic solution on a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Echoing the Venkateswaran–Dean conversation of November 1986, Rajiv told Galbraith that he even sent Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari to Moscow in 1985 to ‘persuade the Soviets to accept a realistic solution’, responding to the request from President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz.18 He then pointed out that the American officials had conveyed to him to stay involved in Afghanistan even during his 20 October 1987 meetings in Washington DC. Rajiv Gandhi told his American guest that the outreach to Najibullah was in a way part of the intensification of Indian efforts which stemmed from his meetings in Washington DC. The meeting between Foreign Secretary K.P.S. Menon and Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost during the visit, was the ‘first step’. The Rajiv–Galbraith meeting is important to showcase the vast difference that had developed between the Indian and US approach to Afghanistan. Later on, in response to the cable carrying details of the meeting, Armacost pointed out the difference between the two sides and said that while Indians were asked to remain involved, there was no question that any of that involvement was supposed to be ‘operational’ in nature. Armacost did not explain what he meant by India avoiding ‘operational’ actions on negotiations for a government formation in Kabul.19

Rajiv kept the bombshell for the end of his meeting with Peter Galbraith. Galbraith had ostensibly arrived at his doorstep to measure the mood in Delhi after news of India seceding from joint efforts on Afghanistan went out. The Americans were aware of India reaching out to Najibullah but Rajiv confirmed that Najibullah was not the only option before India. To Galbraith’s surprise, Rajiv said that India had reached out to all sections, including the mujahideen inside Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was now assessing the entire formula for the broad-based government in Kabul. To get a final understanding on the leadership, he had deputed his minister of state for external affairs K. Natwar Singh to meet exiled Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah in Rome later in the week. Rajiv Gandhi had already proven that he was capable of surprises by meeting Najibullah – which was also a kiss of death for the plans to include Najibullah in the broad-based government backed by Pakistan. By disclosing the impending meeting with Zahir Shah in Rome, Rajiv conveyed that he was on his way to have his own coalition government in Kabul backed by his own nominees like Najibullah, the ‘good’ mujahideen and the exiled monarch. But it also meant that Zahir Shah too could get a ‘kiss of death’ if Pakistan began to perceive him as a pro-India figure like Najibullah. Rajiv Gandhi took a greater gamble on Zahir Shah by sending Natwar to a meeting in Rome. The developments in the first ten days of February were crucial as they included the Rajiv–Galbraith meeting, which was followed by a similar meeting between Zia and Vorontsov in Islamabad. But before Vorontsov flew to Islamabad, he visited New Delhi to get Rajiv Gandhi’s views. By then Natwar Singh was expected to be back from Rome with news about the prospects of Zahir Shah heading the coalition government. It was this prospect of India actively steering the peace process between Kabul and Islamabad at the risk of US opposition to Indian activism that blew into a major diplomatic fight between both sides. The Americans also feared, rightly, that Indian outreach to Zahir Shah would certainly deliver a kiss of death to the ageing monarch and disqualify him from heading a government of national unity in Afghanistan. A major row broke out

between Delhi and Washington DC as the cables bearing details of Peter Galbraith’s meeting with Rajiv Gandhi reached the State Department.20

In the summer of 2011, Natwar Singh summoned me home and began recollecting his life. The conversation turned biographical as we toyed with the idea of writing a new volume regarding his public service. I spent three sweaty hot Sundays listening to his anecdotes from a rich diplomatic life. However, Natwar hesitated on certain points. Seeing our slow-moving dialogue, Mrs Hem Natwar Singh intervened, jokingly informing me that Natwar has never spoken of the most important diplomatic missions that he carried out because he had taken a vow of silence about them. Natwar Singh’s autobiography, which was published in 2014, too had no mention of his meeting with Afghan king Zahir Shah. When I asked Singh about this omission, he guided me back to Sen as the man who knew more about the Afghan games of Rajiv Gandhi. It was apparent to me that Natwar played a significant role towards the climax of Rajiv’s Afghan gamble. He was used as a megaphone to broadcast Rajiv’s views to the United States via the parliament of India, and so his statements reflected the views of the prime minister. Rajiv Gandhi’s instruction to Natwar to meet Zahir Shah in Rome had a much broader diplomatic impact than was probably evident at that moment to any of the Indian stakeholders, including Natwar. Rajiv Gandhi wanted the US-laid chessboard to be replaced by the India-owned chess pieces. In Rajiv Gandhi’s game, Zahir Shah had to shed his previous warmth for the US and embrace India. As told to Peter Galbraith by Rajiv Gandhi, Natwar Singh flew to Rome for a meeting with Zahir Shah, which was organized by General Abdul Wali, the exiled king’s son-in-law who also acted as the interpreter for the French-speaking Afghan king. The king told Natwar Singh that he was glad to find that Indians had arrived at his doorstep. He recollected that he had met Rajiv Gandhi in 1968 when he visited Kabul with his wife Sonia as part of his mother’s entourage. He made some observations that were right and some that were off the mark but the bottom line was that the Shah was once

more ready to serve as the leader of a government if all sides agreed. But he was disappointed by the fact that not all were enthusiastic about his prospective return, especially the mujahideen in Peshawar, Iran and some groups of fighters in Afghanistan who had built their own power bases and did not wish to part with their influence. Natwar Singh was moved on meeting the exiled king but felt that Zahir Shah was a pawn in the hands of his relatives, especially his younger male relatives, who saw in their country’s instability another chance to return to their previous position of influence. ‘We wanted Zahir Shah to come back to Kabul. We would guarantee safety and security for him and his supporters and he would then preside over a Loya Jirga of all the tribes of Afghanistan. But he was just not ready,’ Natwar said, recollecting the reason that prompted him to travel to Rome. Zahir Shah was not a man who could handle a volatile country torn by conflicts. Afghanistan needed a man capable of taking tough decisions and the Indians had already met him. That man was Najibullah. The meeting between Natwar Singh and Zahir Shah came as a bolt from the blue for the Americans and the Pakistanis as the impact of this meeting ricocheted from Rome to Washington DC and Islamabad, and finally landed in Delhi.21 But the biggest setback due to this meeting was felt in Peshawar where the resistance fighters were planning a meeting with Zahir Shah in their bid to forge a greater understanding with the exiled monarch.22 It was during this visit that the Zahir Shah formula became clear. In the dictionary of the State Department, the Afghan resistance groups against the Soviets were divided between the ‘traditionalists’ and the ‘Islamists’. The traditionalists included the leader of the National Islamic Front, Sayed Ahmad Gailani, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi and Nabi Mohammedi, leader of Harkat-i-Inquilabi-Islami. The Islamists on the other hand included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Yunis Khalis of Hezb-e-Islami, and Burhanuddin Rabbani of Jamiat-e-Islami. The traditionalists, Mojaddedi, Gailani and Mohammedi, were known for their Sufi Islamic affiliation and support for the deposed monarchy of

Afghanistan. The Islamists/fundamentalists on the other hand supported an austere and hard-line Islam, and opposed bringing back the monarchy. It was well known that Zahir Shah would return only if all sides of the mujahideen supported his return. He particularly demanded the support of Rabbani and Hekmatyar as a precondition for his return. Khalis was also in touch with Zahir Shah’s son-in-law Abdul Wali to reach a compromise. But by then it was clear that the Pakistani government of President Zia would not support the inclusion of Najibullah’s PDPA in the coalition government. In absence of any assurance from Natwar Singh, the Rome meeting was doomed. Soon after Peter Galbraith’s visit, the Americans summoned the Indian ambassador P.K. Kaul to the State Department where Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Edward Peter Djerejian delivered a demarche, objecting to Natwar’s meeting plans in Rome. Blessed as he was with the PM’s support, Natwar’s planned meeting went ahead in Rome. It took just one meeting organized by General Wali to disqualify Zahir Shah from the race to Kabul. Natwar came back with the conviction that Zahir Shah was not a man who could deliver. The meeting also destroyed Zahir Shah’s chances of being picked up by the Pakistanis and the Americans as General Zia was being advised about the unsuitability of Zahir Shah after his meeting with Natwar Singh. For a last-ditch attempt at an international effort to have a broad-based government in Kabul, Vorontsov arrived in Delhi on 8 February for a round of consultations with Rajiv Gandhi. Vorontsov’s visit to Delhi was in preparation for a wider discussion that was taking place involving the regional stakeholders. As the news of the Natwar–Zahir meeting reached Islamabad and Peshawar, the UN-appointed peacemaker Diego Cordovez returned to Pakistan for preparing for the talks in Geneva, which, as Vorontsov had earlier stated, had to be the last round of talks with concrete plans for Afghanistan’s next government as well as the withdrawal of Soviet troops. During the meeting with Cordovez, acting foreign minister Zain Noorani remarked that Zahir Shah had, by meeting Natwar Singh in his residence in Rome, ‘cooked his own goose’.23 Noorani thereafter informed Diego

Cordovez that the Pakistanis were working towards ensuring that the mujahideen get to present him with their demands. Hamid Gul of the ISI had already arranged a meeting between the mujahideen leaders and Cordovez on 4 February and the mujahideen– Cordovez meeting signalled that the Najibullah government would not get the upper hand as was expected. The question, therefore, was if the Najibullah government was with the Indians, the UN negotiator was dragged by Pakistan to the mujahideen, and the ‘supreme guardian’ Zahir Shah was dismissed out of the plan by Pakistan, what remained of the broad-based government? The mujahideen were the ‘broad-based government’ now, at least from the point of view of the Pakistani intelligence.24 Picking up the pieces of the ruins of his diplomacy over the last four months, Rajiv Gandhi had made his move and attained two goals, contrary to each other. Zahir Shah was being considered as the ‘supreme guardian’ of the Afghan coalition government till the US Congress passed an anti-India resolution and effectively threw out India from the group of decision makers on post-Soviet Afghanistan. But by sending Natwar Singh to meet the exiled king in Rome, Rajiv ensured that no future ruler of Kabul could neglect Indian security interests. Rajiv ensured that if the mujahideen–Zia alliance refused to accept the India–Zahir Shah–Najibullah–mujahideen alliance as partners, he was all too happy to allow Natwar’s ‘kiss of death’ to work for Zahir Shah like it did for Najibullah. Many in Peshawar, Washington DC and Islamabad viewed the meeting between Natwar Singh and Zahir Shah as a kiss of death from Delhi, which eliminated the king from the race to regain the lost crown. Rajiv Gandhi had the ultimate revenge by disqualifying the man that the Americans and Pakistanis were propping up to preside over a mujahideenheavy government, sidelining Najibullah. Rajiv had his revenge for the humiliation of December 1987 and for all practical purposes destroyed the talks that Reagan, Bush, Zia and Gorbachev had been planning since 1985 with his help.

Ronen Sen disagrees with my description of Rajiv’s actions as vengeance after the humiliation in the US Congress. He feels that whatever Rajiv did during this period was part of the overall Indian strategy. However, the acrimony generated by the Indian moves of December 1987 and February 1988 is all too obvious in the cables and letters that the Indians and Americans exchanged during this time. Often the cables ricocheted through multiple US diplomatic missions collecting the impressions of those who were watching from a distance. Natwar Singh was in time to meet Vorontsov in Delhi but his real job at this moment was how to manage the discord that was triggered by his meeting with Zahir Shah. The demarche to Indian ambassador Kaul from the State Department prompted a tit-for-tat treatment for Dean in Delhi. And Dean absorbed the verbal blows from his Indian friends like a professional diplomat. In February 1988, Natwar Singh was not exactly a silent mover like Ronen Sen who was known for his clout inside the PMO. Nevertheless, as the voice of the Indian foreign policy establishment in parliament, Natwar was empowered to articulate India’s interests. He was famous for thorough research before he delivered speeches in parliament, which resonated with the firm line of many of his younger colleagues in the party. Natwar’s meeting with Dean on 11 February 1988 in South Block was explosive. After the meeting, Dean realized that the Indians were deeply upset by American actions and were now determined to take matters in their own hands.25 Following the meeting, Dean wired Armacost about the outburst that he had to face because of the American demarche to Kaul in Washington DC targeting Rajiv Gandhi’s Afghanistan activism: ‘Natwar said he found it most astonishing that we would tell the Indians whom they should and should not see in their effort.’ Natwar provided Dean with a view of the sentiments inside the PMO and said that Rajiv Gandhi felt that the United States had switched to a ‘negative signal’ as far as India was concerned. Natwar said that the Americans had no reason to respond so strongly to the meeting in Rome, as Rajiv Gandhi had been repeatedly requested by President Reagan to intervene in Afghanistan. Obviously, the rupture of December 1987 had now become a gulf between India and the

US as far as the policy on Afghanistan was concerned. Americans could not get rid of Pakistanis and they preferred the Pakistani leaders to India’s. Armacost wasted no time in responding to Dean about what the Americans had asked Rajiv Gandhi to achieve, but did not provide an introspection: I myself conducted the meeting with K.P.S. Menon during Rajiv’s [October 1987] visit. I encouraged the Government of India to have their ambassador in Kabul continue the constructive conversation that he had been having with Jon Glassman. In addition, I encouraged the GoI to use their knowledge of the internal dynamics in Afghanistan to foster a greater sense of realism in Moscow about their policy dilemma and options in Afghanistan. I certainly never encouraged the GoI to engage itself in an operational way in seeking to shape the internal political arrangements in Afghanistan.26 Armacost’s mail left out what prompted the Indians to get operational in violation of the conversation between Menon and himself. Rajiv Gandhi had an explanation. The Americans have changed the switches, he told Dean, and Dean faithfully reported it to Armacost. Dean’s message summed up the Indian response to the American ‘switching on and switching off’ policy. Rajiv responded by switching gears. Armacost’s cable reflected the serious worry in the State Department’s higher echelons about the fallout of Natwar’s meeting with Zahir Shah and he justified the demarche to Kaul by citing the public reports of Natwar Singh’s meeting with Zahir Shah, which set alarm bells ringing in Peshawar. Armacost wondered why the Indians met Zahir Shah with such a lot of accompanying media publicity: Others, to be sure have met with Zahir Shah – though far more discreetly. The Indians are big boys. And if they wish to see Zahir Shah, no one can stop them … in this case, Indian

interest in Zahir Shah has weakened – and may have destroyed the former king’s credibility in the eyes of the key players in Islamabad and Peshawar. Thus further diminishing any realistic possibility of his serving as a key figure in transitional arrangements. Even his strongest supporters in the [mujahideen] resistance have told us this.27 Armacost was right that Zahir Shah had destroyed his chances and echoed the opinion that was earlier expressed by Zain Noorani in Islamabad during his meeting with Cordovez. But unlike Noorani who could not talk of consequences, Armacost was a powerful official in the headquarters of US foreign policy. To set the tenor of his comments, Armacost explained that meeting Zahir Shah and thus destroying his chances carried its own consequences for the Indians. In the coming weeks of the spring of 1988, the quarrel over Afghanistan was to become a vast contagion affecting the entire range of issues facing India and its prospects in the future. Evidently, the American position on Indian involvement had changed dramatically between November 1986 and February 1988. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan found it necessary to request Rajiv Gandhi to activate his contacts within the Soviet circle to help in the evacuation of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Yet, in February 1988, Armacost felt the Indians had acted beyond what was agreed upon. Goalposts had shifted significantly. Three years earlier, the situation was different.

The Bee and Its Sting Indian art and Indian policy on Afghanistan had a curious intersection early during the tenure of Rajiv Gandhi. It was in this intersection that a curious character acquired a foothold in the South Asian scheme on Afghanistan. During the next four years, this person would play a quiet role in building up the Zahir Shah option.

The massive Festival of India that cushioned Rajiv’s arrival into the United States was a costly project that had been under way from the time Indira Gandhi conjured it up along with her friend Pupul Jayakar in 1982. The festival project required almost twelve million US dollars. Indians would pay for bringing the large number of artworks and artistes and would shoulder the insurance expenses. The American side would look after the hospitality of the guests and the exhibitions. The American government reached out to philanthropists and rich private trusts to fund the Festival of India. One of the several trusts and foundations that funded the Festival of India was named after oil magnate Armand Hammer.28 It was the Armand Hammer Foundation that funded a part of the Festival of India in the United States. Hammer got the break that he was looking for. Diplomacy in that period was full of such unconventional openings and Hammer was not alone in benefiting from diplomacy. The international initiative to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan threw open a sea of opportunities for a generation of powerful diplomats, politicians and businessmen who went on to shape the post-cold-war scenario. It also showed the growing connection between the energy sector and the diplomats involved in cold war politics. For example, Edward Djerejian who rebuked P.K. Kaul in Washington DC subsequently joined Hammer’s energy company, but in mid-1980s, it was Hammer who called the shots. Armand Hammer, the founder of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, was controversial yet widely respected for being multi-talented. Despite his place in the drama of the spring of 1988, Djerejian was not a major player as compared to Hammer because it was Hammer who set up the chessboard that Rajiv disturbed with his independent policy on Af–Pak. In February 1987, Hammer boarded his private jet from Los Angeles and flew out on a cross-continent flight that would change the course of history and gift him the place in history that he had been seeking all his life.29 Hammer was not a rogue actor. His flight had the blessings of the ISI, CIA and George H.W. Bush. By that time a major concern of the affected parties was the kind of government that would replace the Najibullah government in Kabul. It was Hammer’s job to measure the level of tension

in various world capitals and create a suitable solution for the Afghan crisis that would be acceptable to all sides. Hammer became a consensus builder as his international business interests allowed him to cultivate friendships with George H.W. Bush, President Zia-ul-Haq and the Soviet leadership.30 Hammer was contacted by Cordovez, who had been briefed by the concerned parties about their preference for Hammer as the Track II diplomat from the Western side. Following his meeting with Cordovez in Los Angeles, Hammer’s flight first stopped to meet former Afghan prime minister Muhammed Youssef Khan at Hamburg. Youssef was a leading member of the émigré section of Afghan affairs and had been demanding their due share in the next government of Kabul. After this preliminary meeting with Youssef, Hammer flew to Pakistan for a dinner with President Zia with whom he had a personal friendship. Hammer then flew to Kabul, and finally landed in Moscow for a week-long visit. On top of this jet-setter’s agenda was determining the suitability of the exiled King Zahir Shah to take over the charge of Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. Zahir Shah, however, could not be an executive leader of Afghanistan and had to lead a number of bickering and violent partners. He was to be the adhesive in a giant coalition plan. A crucial role was crafted for him by people like Youssef in the West. The talks remained secret. The Hammer–Zia discussion on creating an alternative to Najibullah was so secretive that President Zia did not discuss this option even with Prime Minister Junejo who remained in the dark on this crucial breakthrough. This secretive approach remained in place till the last moment when Rajiv sent Natwar to meet Zahir Shah in Rome. Zia was livid at Zahir Shah’s meeting with the Indians and Junejo naturally was informed about the failure of Zia to get the king on board. This created a rift between Zia and Junejo that gave the impression that the president did not think the prime minister was trustworthy. The Zia–Junejo fight over Armand Hammer was the last nail that sealed the prime ministership of Junejo as Zia acted tough against Junejo’s rebellion.

Following his consultations in Moscow, Hammer flew to Rome and conducted the most crucial interview with King Zahir Shah. The purpose of the interview was to find out the king’s inclination to lead those who had deposed him on 17 July 1973. The king had to be magnanimous and reconcile with many factions himself. He had to feel confident of leading a disparate coalition. Finally, he also had to desist from exercising executive power. It was a difficult job. Shah and Hammer began discussing the pros and cons of this ‘political solution’. Thus began a year-long diplomacy by Hammer involving all sides. The resources at the disposal of this eighty-nine-year-old energy tycoon can be estimated from the fact that he was able to use a sting camera to record the meeting with the king. It was the first time that the American decision makers at the State Department had a glimpse of the man whom they were planning to place as an alternative to Najibullah, thanks to a sting operation. Hammer sent the film to Vice-President Bush and requested him to show it to President Reagan as the latter might gain a better understanding of the Afghan crisis from the recorded interview.31 Hammer’s secret shuttle diplomacy revealed the problems that lay ahead for the political solution for Afghanistan. Hammer’s career spanned the life of the cold war and his business prospered on both sides of the Iron Curtain despite the cold war. His interests in both the power blocs endeared him to many and he found many powerful doors were open for him. From his meeting with Zahir Shah, Hammer emerged with an enormous problem but the problem had a solution. During his meetings, Hammer was told by the Soviets in Moscow that the Soviet rulers would prefer Najibullah to lead the ‘coalition’ government.32 This, Hammer told the Soviets, was totally unacceptable to the Americans and the Pakistanis as Najibullah’s past as the head of KHAD, the dreaded intelligence organization of Afghanistan, was a difficult stain to remove in such a short time frame. Hammer returned from his meetings with the Pakistanis and the Soviets convinced that Zahir Shah was the ideal choice to lead a coalition

government to bring all the warring sides together following an international agreement.33 The biggest job that the monarch would have to oversee would be the return of the refugees who had fled to Pakistan and the neutrality of the government in Kabul in the future. Indeed, the king was to appear like a titular figure as the real power would be distributed among the other constituents of the government. The king himself would lead the state council which would have Youssef and other former politicians as members. The state council would have leaders of the mujahideen based in Pakistan and Iran. The non-exiled mujahideen were to form another section and the last section would ensure meaningful participation by the PDPA of Najibullah. Most of the arguments in this formula would focus on the last layer of participants. The government would have a prime minister who would be elected by the exiled Afghans in Pakistan and Iran. In case circumstances prevented a vote on the PM, he could be appointed by the state council. The PM would in turn appoint a cabinet. The underlying premise for this three-tier, broad-based coalition, which was inspired by the Indian formula that Rajiv Gandhi began telling his American and Soviet counterparts in 1985, was that the government led by Zahir Shah would be a transition government to last only a limited period of time. The task before the transition government was to draft a constitution for Afghanistan that could ensure a neutral and non-aligned future for Afghanistan. Hammer knew that the plan would work only if President Zia agreed to it. Zia had agreed to the solution during Armand Hammer’s shuttle diplomacy and this was communicated to Moscow when Sahabzada Yaqub Khan met his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze on 7 February 1987. Khan said in that meeting that Pakistan would support a broad-based government under the leadership of Zahir Shah. Though Armand Hammer was to land in Moscow a few days later, it was evident even to him that a lot could go wrong in setting up a government which had so many internal and external stakeholders. Hammer’s was one

of the several options for Zia and he used other options when things got better at home and at the US Congress. The reasons that might have prompted Hammer’s involvement in the government-building activities of Afghanistan are in the realm of speculation. But Hammer had courted diplomats and his energy company continued to court diplomats long after his demise on 10 December 1990. Hammer’s interest in Afghanistan can best be explained as the interest of an American energy magnate to ensure a friendlier government in Kabul which by implication would reduce tension and volatility in the global energy market. The other advantage of this project was aimed at pressuring Iran that had been lost in 1979. Yet, it is obvious that Hammer acted with the intention of currying some favours for the rich and the powerful in the USSR, US, Pakistan and the exiled Afghan community. Years later, Djerejian retired from the State Department, but the spirit of Hammer continued to work. Djerejian became Occidental Petroleum Corporation’s independent chairman of the board of directors in 2013. Djerejian’s career in Hammer’s company also coincided with the period that saw the implosion of Afghanistan. Hammer’s career took a nosedive immediately after his historic secret mission to Afghanistan and Marker remembers him for the fraudulent acts that he committed.34 But during the mid- and late 1980s when Jamsheed Marker was posted as the ambassador of Pakistan to the US, he often dined with Hammer and the two became friends. In fact, Marker still remembers warmly the lunches at Hammer’s office. What added to the friendship between the Parsi ambassador of Islamic Pakistan and the Jewish energy magnate were their love of wine – of which Hammer had a vast collection in his private cellar – and Western classical music. At these lunches over energy, geopolitics and South Asian affairs, Hammer and Marker would often be accompanied by Ray R. Irani, an American of Lebanese-Shiite origin.35 Irani served in the Occidental Petroleum Corporation for three decades before retiring in 2013 and remains an influential figure in the field of energy trade. Energy would draw Natwar Singh later on into Middle Eastern affairs, which hints at the

deeper geopolitical connections that this set of characters acquired during their diplomatic forays. Hammer’s lifelong association with the East and the West had given him his unique qualities. His friends admired his vast collection of art works that he often showed to his guests. A few days prior to his demise, Hammer would inaugurate the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles next to the headquarters of his energy company, which was given the task of housing all the art works that he acquired throughout his life. Little wonder that partnering the Festival of India, Hammer showed his understanding of the diplomatic use of art. It is here that he and Dean have similarities as Dean too used art during his diplomacy with Rajiv Gandhi and his family. Indeed, Armand Hammer exemplifies the deep interest that the energy sector in the West had in the developments in the vast stretch of land east of Iran. Hammer was alone in getting involved in the geopolitics over Afghanistan but he certainly was not an exception as energy tycoons are often involved in important geopolitical issues. However, there is no explanation given by the various parties regarding the talks that Armand Hammer held with Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Zia-ul-Haq and his foreign minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan. One reason that might have prompted Hammer to participate in the talks on Afghanistan’s future might have been his life itself. Hammer began his business career in the USSR under Lenin and Stalin and then shifted to the United States. He used his links in Moscow to drive his global presence across many industrial sectors. But despite his high profile and often controversial life, Hammer remained an inconvenient oligarch due to his connections in both sides of the cold war era’s political divide. It is well known that Hammer had a deep desire for public recognition.36 At Chernenko’s funeral in March 1985, Hammer made his presence felt at the international gathering of statesmen.37 The Western media had already taken note of Hammer’s popularity in Moscow due to his multiple business interests in the Soviet Union, which turned him into a figure who connected the past rigidity with the future openness of the Soviet Union. Hammer’s aircraft took off from Los Angeles for world capitals in quest of a solution in Afghanistan but in reality he had been engaging the

Americans and the Soviets for longer than Rajiv Gandhi’s career in politics. Given his stature inside the Soviet establishment, it was almost natural that Hammer would be widely consulted for a solution to the dangerous brinkmanship under way in Afghanistan. Without Armand Hammer’s high-profile but secret intervention, Rajiv Gandhi’s U-turn on Afghanistan would have appeared less like a betrayal. But Hammer represented the American side of diplomacy and it appeared as if Rajiv didn’t think much of the American formula or its implementation by Hammer before embracing Najibullah. But what kind of restlessness might have prompted an eighty-nine-yearold oil tycoon to board his jet in search of a solution in Afghanistan remains a mystery. There have often been reports about Hammer’s great vanity; he thought that a Nobel Peace Prize was apt for him. Media reports often suggested that he even courted influential persons in search of a Nobel and that his name did figure in the rumoured Nobel list in the 1980s. Hammer, however, was denied the photo opportunity at the signing of the Geneva Accords. He wanted to attend the signing ceremony but the Pakistanis did not oblige because by then what remained was Hammer’s vanity and not the peace process for the broad-based government. Hammer was influential but his influence was nothing compared to the power wielded by the political heads. When things started going wrong, Hammer became irrelevant. Ambassador Marker even dismisses him entirely saying simply and cryptically, ‘Events overwhelmed Hammer.’38 India had joined the great diplomatic game regarding the future of Afghanistan at the request of the Reagan administration. But when it realized the huge price that India might have to pay, it withdrew from the Western high table and chose to pursue a solution to the Afghan problem on its own. But the options that India chose on Afghanistan had their own costs. But Rajiv Gandhi took that risk.39

February 1987 was vastly different from February 1988. During the spring of 1987, Hammer, Rajiv and Zia were on the same side of diplomacy on Afghanistan, but one year later, the US and India had adopted hostile

positions. In February 1987, India had no reservations in looking away from Najibullah, despite his initiating a national reconciliation process – the precondition which allowed Najibullah to become president in November 1986. A year later, after ruling out Zahir Shah, India rediscovered Najibullah. Apart from the American betrayal of the previous winter, changes in Soviet stands also pushed India closer to Najibullah. On 8 February, Mikhail Gorbachev startled the world by announcing the coming Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Given the relations among the different stakeholders in Afghanistan, Gorbachev’s declaration might have sounded like a warning of things to come. Intense brainstorming in South Asia accompanied the statement from Moscow. Cordovez first met Najibullah in Kabul at 3 p.m. on 7 February to salvage the peace talks for the formation of a broad-based government. Backed by India, Najibullah had regained his confidence and conveyed to Cordovez his decision to hang on to power in Kabul even as he was prepared to offer the prime minister’s post in his government to the mujahideen, so as to have a broad-based government. Najibullah wanted Cordovez to continue with the negotiations on the formation of government. Meanwhile, India summoned the US ambassador to be present for a discussion on 9 February, partly because Rajiv Gandhi desired to flaunt the importance that the Kremlin accorded to South Block. In his discussion with Sen, the American ambassador learnt that the Soviets made a special show of their closeness to India by sending Vorontsov to Delhi on 8 February, the very day Gorbachev had declared his withdrawal plans for Afghanistan. In the meeting with Rajiv, Vorontsov gave a preview of Gorbachev’s announcement on Afghanistan. It was a kind gesture from Gorbachev towards his Indian friend who had been of help in the past. Vorontsov came with a large delegation that stayed back to conduct business.40 Pakistan was informed of Vorontsov’s visit on 7 February and Vorontsov flew into Islamabad for the most important round of discussions, which was aimed at restraining Pakistan from disturbing Gorbachev’s plans. Despite the Soviet announcement setting a specific date for withdrawal from Afghanistan, the regional scene was chaotic on 8 February 1988. All sides

indulged in a blame game while the US came around to believe that Rajiv’s role had been of an insider turning against his partners when he spoiled Zahir Shah’s chances. It was at this moment, exactly a year after Zia’s cricket diplomacy, that reports reached Washington DC that Rajiv had requested a meeting with Zia to find a diplomatic solution to growing India–Pakistan problem that arose after the shocking resolution of the US Congress and Zia’s apparent reluctance to cede ground on Afghan situation.41 The information was traced to the Hindujas who had acquired a strong connection with Dean in Delhi.42 Vorontsov was welcomed warmly with traditional Pakistani hospitality at the airport by Amin.43 Vorontsov admired the cool spring of Islamabad and its flower-bedecked avenues. The purple jacaranda and the green environs were soothing to the nerves and Vorontsov loved the climate and the Margalla hills that guard the Pakistani capital. In Islamabad, Vorontsov generally expressed satisfaction with the situation in Kabul and requested Pakistan to delink the issue of government formation from the evacuation of Soviet troops. The Pakistanis assured Vorontsov that they had no problems with the Soviet Union as the focus shifted to the date of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Zia praised the Soviet withdrawal plans, but also highlighted the challenges ahead in the post-withdrawal implementation of the accord, because the Geneva Accords were to be based on the premise that both sides would follow the principle of ‘Negative Symmetry’ to ensure that the arms flow into Afghanistan’s two warring sides stopped. Zia doubted if the Soviets were serious about ensuring a negative arms flow into the hands of the government in Kabul. The meeting snowballed into an argument, which revealed that the agreement in Geneva was an expansive charade, as the key decision makers did not agree on the critical issues. India, the USSR, Pakistan and Afghanistan were on different pages while the United States kept supporting Pakistan in arming the mujahideen. The Zia–Vorontsov meet was to decide the flow of events to ensure that the Geneva Accords were concluded as desired by Gorbachev. Instead, the

conversation began a deconstruction of all that the affected parties had been trying to build over the previous five years. Overall, the situation before the Pakistani decision makers was frightening. The hard work for a broad-based government led by Zahir Shah had evaporated even before the government could be constituted. That left Zia with the option of pushing ahead with his mujahideen and trying a compromise with Najibullah, or a violent solution. Various options were evaluated by the Pakistanis and the Soviet visitor. Vorontsov wanted the Pakistanis to not insist on the formation of a transition government in Kabul before the withdrawal could begin. Zia responded that the biggest issue was the return of the three million Afghan refugees and that the Geneva process was incomplete without ensuring their return. The fundamental problems were: One, Zia had no assurance of a friendly or neutral government in Kabul after having fought the jihad for eight years. Without options for a breakthrough, Zia thought of buying time and made a surprise demand: he wanted the Afghan refugees to return home from Pakistan and felt that the refugees could return only when they had a government of their own in Kabul. So a government formation in Kabul was more necessary than the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Zia’s argument stumped Vorontsov44 and came as a surprise to the Soviets as well as the Americans. It was a typical strategy that Zia resorted to so as to avoid a Kabul government controlled by Delhi in his backyard, and the Soviets understood the Pakistani move. But, unimpressed by Zia’s somersault, the Soviets insisted on leaving as soon as possible, since government formation (after the exhaustion of the broad-based option) was a matter for the Afghans to resolve.45 The Soviets suspected that by insisting on a new government in Kabul before withdrawal, Zia had begun bargaining for a fresh deadline before which he would violate the principle of Negative Symmetry. Negative Symmetry, in the Cordovez-led negotiations, stood for the cessation of the sending of weapons and ammunition into Afghanistan once the agreement was signed between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Geneva. But Zia wanted to delay the actual signing of the agreement and thereby delay the Soviet withdrawal.

A Soviet agreement to Zia’s request would have meant more Soviet casualties at the hands of the mujahideen in the coming months. How Zia reached this irrational request can be explained only by referring to the elimination of the option of broad-based government by Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv’s revenge for American humiliation was now complete.46 He had surprised both his friend the Soviet Union and the not-so-friendly US by nudging Zia towards irrational options. Having suffered at the hands of the US-backed jihad in Afghanistan, the Soviets had reasons to be satisfied by the turn of events resulting from Rajiv Gandhi’s Afghan diplomacy. Vorontsov had come to Islamabad to finalize the nitty-gritties of Soviet withdrawal but instead he had to respond to President Zia’s irrational demand. At the formal dinner Vorontsov spoke of the possibility that Pakistan was hurtling towards a new regional conflagration by delaying the deal: ‘The consequences would be unpredictable. Why should it suit Pakistan?’ Such was the tone of Vorontsov’s speech that the Pakistani ambassador to Moscow, Amin, also present in the room, felt that Vorontsov had delivered a clear warning to President Zia. The obvious fallout of Zia’s request for more time and the implied violation of Negative Symmetry meant more dead soldiers for Mikhail Gorbachev. Zia came up with a flippant argument about how the implementation of the Geneva Accords would be the real issue and not the withdrawal itself. Zia argued that if the Geneva Accords were signed and the Soviets went back and yet the refugees stayed back, Pakistan’s core interests would not be served. Zia and Vorontsov were stuck where the Soviets and the Pakistanis were four years ago. The echoes of the Mattani incident reappeared as Vorontsov spoke of a new conflagration. Vorontsov stressed that the Soviets had explored all options before Gorbachev decided on withdrawal from Afghanistan. He stressed that there would be ample time to bring all parties to the Afghan civil war together once the Geneva Accords were signed (and Negative Symmetry upheld by both Pakistan–US and the Soviet Union): ‘Withdrawal is the key element in solving the problem. This is a historic moment.’ Zia wanted to delay history.

With threats and intimidation, the conversation turned into a confrontation. Zia repeatedly argued for more time for the return of refugees. Vorontsov assured Zia of Soviet support after withdrawal but said that if the mujahideen expected that the Soviets would make them the new rulers of Kabul before leaving, that was not going to happen. Zia proposed that the Soviets take three of the main constituents – the refugees staying in Pakistan and Iran, the immigrants in the West, and the mujahideen – minus the government of Najibullah, to form the government in Kabul before Soviet withdrawal. Vorontsov in response agreed to consider this latest proposal from Zia, but did not believe that the mujahideen commanders would show maturity in this regard. But Zia assured him that this formula could be made to work by 31 March. Vorontsov stuck to the Soviet line that the return of the refugees and the formation of a government recognized by the refugees was an ‘artificial problem’. ‘Why don’t they go back to the 80 per cent area not under the control of Kabul? Please think big. This is not a threat. The time for manoeuvring is over.’47 Vorontsov was not being impatient; he merely reflected the impatience of the Kremlin in resolving problems at home because the occupation of Afghanistan had become a major burden – politically and financially – for the Soviet Union, and Moscow wanted to exit, at all costs, at the earliest. Vorontsov continued the same discussion with Junejo the next day, 11 February, minus the bitterness and frequent Soviet threats. Shahid M. Amin observed that all sides had dramatically changed their positions at the last moment. He recognized the hard work that all sides put in on creating a broad-based government, but no one had any interest in that now. The shadow of Pakistan’s regional rival was evident over Af–Pak’s future. The Soviets had held detailed discussions on Zahir Shah with Armand Hammer and his Pakistani contact, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan. But by early 1988, as India embraced Najibullah, the USSR suddenly came to the conclusion that the mujahideen would not allow any meaningful participation of Najibullah and his PDPA in a future broad-based government. On the other hand, the Pakistanis began giving more

importance to the formation of the government in Kabul than to actually ending the occupation itself. In the meanwhile, news reports suggested that India was eager to reach out to Zia for creating an understanding on issues of mutual interest. Sen informed Dean that Rajiv Gandhi genuinely wished to send his emissary to a meeting with President Zia. The Indian understanding was that the mujahideen commanders inside Afghanistan had more credibility than those who operated from Peshawar. The emissary was likely to push Zia to accept Rajiv’s invitation to him to visit India. India, however, did not desire to crash into Pakistan’s victory march following the successful eviction of the Soviets. The visit of the emissary to Pakistan and a possible visit by Zia to India were aimed at creating new working relations between the two sides following Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Indian emissary was expected to be K.P.S. Menon, the foreign secretary.48 While briefing Dean, Sen revealed that India had no desire to get involved in Afghanistan beyond meeting the humanitarian needs that emerged in the war. But he went on to elaborate that the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, though meant for children, was taking in a large number of mujahideen and India had made its initial contacts with the mujahideen in that hospital.49 All talk of Menon’s visit to Islamabad and Zia’s visit to Delhi evaporated as quickly as it had emerged since President Zia’s priorities had shifted away from engaging India to ensure peace in Afghanistan. As Gorbachev announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was President Zia who appeared tall in Washington DC. After eight years, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan was ending. This was made possible by the tenacity of the military ruler of Pakistan who believed that an armed resistance was the only option against the Soviets. Rajiv was a feel-good deviation, Zia in comparison was the leader that Washington DC loved. Zia was not keen to be welcomed in Delhi. He wanted to be welcomed like a statesman in the capitals that held him as the deliverer of military promises. The finest hour of Pakistan’s diplomacy came during the Zia regime when, despite opposition from India, the US Congress released the security assistance grant for Pakistan in December 1987. At the same time, the

Inouye–Kasten resolution also gave a veiled recognition to Pakistan’s nuclear policy, which equated Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme with the Indian nuclear programme. To add to that achievement, Pakistan had forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan. And for Washington DC, President Zia was the tallest South Asian statesman, despite the muddled view of the Geneva Accords and the future.

In Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi met with US Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost on 26 February and discussed the possibility of regional cooperation on Afghanistan.50 Next day, Zia declined Rajiv’s invitation to a working visit to New Delhi for a discussion on Afghanistan. Rajiv received a phone call from Zia who formally expressed his inability to travel to Delhi. In view of the momentous Geneva Accords, it was not possible for India to neglect Pakistan even though Zia played hard-to-get. Rajiv instructed Menon to visit Pakistan. On 1 March, dressed in a grey tracksuit, Rajiv joined the Great Freedom Run. But the Indian prime minister was a lonely figure internationally. His friendship with Najibullah had not yet fully blossomed. Zia had declined his invite. The Soviets were focused on the Geneva Accords, and the Americans were light years away. Rajiv Gandhi, and more importantly, India, needed new friends. March 1988 was to mark Pakistan’s arrival on the international scene, as Zia’s victory healed the scars of defeat in wars with its giant eastern neighbour. At this juncture, a careful handling of the Afghan crisis could bring great success to Pakistan. But Zia had made a career in war. Would he succeed in peace? For successful peace on the Af–Pak front, Mikhail Gorbachev’s promise of withdrawal from Afghanistan had to be executed flawlessly. For Rajiv Gandhi, the options were not yet exhausted. Some of them were accidental and they came naturally. Some were not so accidental and had to be created by Rajiv. One option, that of the Arshad Pervez affair, had been playing in the background soon after India was snubbed in the US Congress in December 1987.

India had found a handle in this case and argued against Pakistan getting advantages in the US Congress. But such was the mood in Washington DC that nothing could shake Zia’s ties with the White House, which obviously was tracking the developments in Islamabad, Moscow and Kabul. Now having defeated the Soviets, Zia wanted to play them. He instructed Marker to work the corridors of Congress and the State Department so that Pakistan could buy more time. The Americans were stumped, like Vorontsov was earlier, by Zia’s plans to delay the Soviet withdrawal.51 He asked for more weapons for Afghanistan’s mujahideen before the final agreement was sealed in Geneva. It created a curious situation with Zia arguing for more arms and more time and Prime Minister Junejo asking for the opposite. In the State Department, Shultz bore an expression of ‘astonished disbelief’ on hearing Marker’s request. Shultz could not comprehend the strategic calculations that made Zia ask Marker to campaign afresh in Washington DC. Shultz advised caution to Pakistan and warned Marker that the Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was a sign of its sagacity and the desire to leave Afghanistan might just dry up if Zia asked for more time, which obviously meant more body bags for Moscow. But Marker was under pressure and he kept working the corridors of Capitol Hill. He made a serious pitch for delaying the accord with anti-Soviet Senator Robert Byrd. Byrd always suspected the Soviets and responded positively to Marker by making a strong intervention in the Senate to influence the conclusions being reached in Moscow, Islamabad and Geneva.52 Marker sent a cipher telegram to Zia following Byrd’s speech. The cipher telegram was not shown to Junejo, who had an argument with Zia. Junejo hit back by trying to channelize all information flow regarding foreign affairs through his office. It was the last straw that broke the already fragile relation between hawkish Zia and pragmatic Junejo. Disregarding the momentous occasion, Zia created an internal political problem for himself. What is striking about this phase is that the Pakistani establishment at this point was clearly divided into two. On one side of the divide were President Zia-ul-Haq, his ISI chief Hamid Gul and the mujahideen of Peshawar, while on the other side of the divide were Prime Minister Junejo

and senior diplomats like Marker and Amin. Zia demanded more time to conclude the Geneva Accords, while asking for more weapons from the CIA. His diplomatic arm quite clearly disagreed. But Zia was on a victory march. Who could stop him? Thanks to the delaying tactics, Pakistan managed to have a few extra days for its strategic gains, though extreme displeasure grew in Moscow and ‘astonished disbelief’ reigned in Washington DC about the rationale behind Zia’s last-minute brinkmanship. But both the US and the USSR wanted Pakistan and Afghanistan to conclude the Geneva Accords by 15 March.53 Zia managed to scuttle that deadline. Ironically, both sides agreed on the inevitability of the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan but doubts and secret manoeuvres in Islamabad, Moscow and Washington DC prevented a closure in Geneva. In the first week of February, Pakistan claimed that a transitional government was necessary for the return of the refugees. But Pakistan and the US now brought up their doubts on violation of ‘symmetry’ by Moscow. This was a major diversionary tactic at the last moment. From the Soviet point of view, the evacuation of Afghanistan was the biggest commitment. After that, its military or defence ties with a friendly Afghan government would be dealt with bilaterally, independent of any international negotiations. The main commitments under the Geneva Accords that Moscow argued for were the end of occupation of Afghanistan and cessation of outside interference by the US and Pakistan in Afghanistan. The disagreement was serious and brought out the worst on all sides. At one point, Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Komplectov warned that Moscow would dismiss the Geneva process and walk out of Afghanistan on its own without any commitment of any kind. Pakistan, which was to have a great deal, could have ended up with the worst deal because of its lastminute shenanigans. On 25 March, Amin invited well-known Soviet academics Yevgeny Primakov and Yuri Gankovsky to dinner in Moscow. Primakov, who was leading a think tank at that time, said that the Soviet Union had other options on Afghanistan and that it could pursue them if things did not move ahead in Geneva. The mood at the dinner was tense and Gankovsky said if

the impasse continued, ‘Moscow could do something nasty in a week or ten days’.54 By then, two deadlines had been missed, on 15 and 31 March. Moscow was infuriated by the last-minute delays.55 The delay meant last-minute difficulties, as the agreement was expected to come into force on 15 May 1988. Zia, who sought Soviet guarantees on ‘symmetry’, had been using the last moments to his advantage. After having acquired arms and explosives over the last few years from the CIA, Zia gave a last-minute push to acquire as many weapons as possible for potential future use, in case the adversaries were to stage a surprise. Pakistan activated all channels and finally, Zia himself worked the phone to order Marker to get more American weapons for the Afghan mujahideen. The charade gave itself away: Zia who was to maintain ‘Negative Symmetry’ after the Geneva Accords in fact began storing enormous amount of weapons just in case he would have to break the ‘symmetry’ soon after the agreement was signed. This tug-of-war continued over the final scene of the Geneva Accords as Pakistan and the US gave a last push to arm the mujahideen before a peace deal was reached.

April 1988 began as a month of high tension. Talks were stuck and, despite threats from Moscow, Pakistan exchanged leisurely letters with Soviet leaders even as weapons flew into Peshawar and Islamabad from the US. The greatest amount of pressure was on the suppliers and handlers of explosives, weapons and ammunition in the US and in Pakistan’s ammunition dumps. As Zia ordered storing up of ammunition, Pakistan’s ordnance dumps worked feverishly to adjust and make space for new weapons. That’s when Ojhri explosions happened. Ojhri, a small township between Islamabad and Rawalpindi, was an old colonial military outpost that had grown in profile thanks to the jihad in Afghanistan. It was controlled by the ISI. In the first week of April, Ojhri was humming with trucks rolling in to dump their explosive loads that Zia wanted. A vast section of the camp held the ammunition storage for weapons that began their journey from CENTCOM (Central Command

Headquarters) in Tampa, Florida and landed in Afghanistan after a stopover at Ojhri. Ojhri was a symbol of President Zia’s military genius and diplomatic success because the ISI reported directly to Zia on Ojhri and to no one else. Outsiders and specialists worked at the ammunition dump daily. Workers pushed and dragged trolleys and stacks of dangerous explosives daily. Reports suggest that on the morning of 10 April, a few workers were dragging a consignment of mortars in the low-roof storage facility when they stumbled, and the safety catches of the mortars came apart. It was an accident that was waiting to happen. But the magnitude of the accident was not expected. At first, a small explosion was heard by outsiders as workers scattered to save their lives. After a brief pause, a major explosion could be heard in the dump. Ojhri, the legend of Pakistan’s armed might, had been blown away. The biggest explosion was recorded at 3.5 on the Richter scale. A gigantic mushroom cloud rose on the horizon as citizens and diplomats in Islamabad tried to record the unending explosion on their Japanese video cameras. Bombs kept exploding throughout the day. Ojhri’s blasts equalled a nuclear strike. Fireworks launched bombs into Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Lawns were littered with mortars and unexploded ordnance that killed many and it would be weeks before unexploded ordnance could be cleared out of civilian areas. The total number of casualties remains unknown. Pakistani reports claim that more than a thousand perished in that ordnance blast, one of the worst ordnance incidents in the history of South Asia.56 President Zia who was travelling at that time returned to Islamabad and took charge of the situation. He dialled Marker in Washington DC ordering him to hurriedly send more weapons to Pakistan. When Marker met William Webster, the CIA director, with requests for more weapons, Webster and his colleagues were astonished. The demand for more weapons for the Pakistani armed forces came so soon after the Ojhri blast that Marker felt that Zia could still hear the ammunition dump exploding in a distance while talking into the phone. ‘The guy’s got balls,’ Marker overheard one of Webster’s colleagues saying about Zia.57

The Ojhri blast came a day after the Soviets and the Pakistanis removed the last hurdles on ‘symmetry’ and the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. But before sanctioning his delegates to sign the documents with the Pakistanis, Najibullah sent a delegation to Delhi which landed a day after the Ojhri blasts in Islamabad. The minister of civil aviation and family welfare, Motilal Vora, and his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Aziz Negahban met in Delhi to conclude deals between the Afghan and Indian national carriers to increase passenger and cargo movements on both sides. Negahban’s visit to Delhi was proof of Rajiv Gandhi’s growing search for a new set of friends.58 Delhi’s diplomatic circle was abuzz with information that India was to throw a red-carpet welcome for Najibullah shortly. It was a big show of support for Najibullah, who had concluded the Geneva Accords with Pakistan and required strong regional friendship. No other Afghan leader had been courted in this way and Rajiv Gandhi made it a point to inform the Indian parliament regarding his plans to court Najibullah, evidently to avoid any criticism of his policy. The parliament, which had criticized his foreign policy just six months ago, sat quietly this time. Rajiv Gandhi was speaking during the discussion on budgetary demand for grants of the Ministry of External Affairs.59 The speech spelt out the change in India’s foreign and strategic affairs and dealt with all aspects of foreign affairs like Sri Lanka, nuclear disarmament and superpower relations. Then Rajiv spoke about Afghanistan: A little further west in Afghanistan, we welcome the Geneva Accords. It should lead to a cessation of interference and intervention in Afghanistan. It should lead to the return of refugees. The Agreement in Geneva has opened a window of opportunity for peace and stability in Afghanistan assuring its independence and sovereignty and its non-alignment. We have played our role constructively and quietly in facilitating this process. We regret that Pakistan did not respond to our invitation for consultations. We could have made things a little smoother, perhaps. In our view the best guarantee of peace,

stability and non-alignment in Afghanistan is a strong Government in Afghanistan. And, we would like to see a strong Government in Kabul. We have vital stakes in this. Therefore, we are inviting President Najibullah to visit India to discuss all aspects of the post-Accord situation. We wish the people of Afghanistan an era of progress and reconstruction, of rehabilitation and we pledge our support in this endeavour.60 India’s prime minister had turned full circle. Barely five months ago, his officials had been apologetic about Najibullah’s visit to New Delhi, which lasted barely three hours. But now as the parliamentarians clapped in approval, Rajiv read out a bold scheme of regional networking. India had found its feet after being sidelined for almost seven months. Rajiv spoke of the ‘constructive role’ that he had played ‘quietly in facilitating’ the dialogue for peace in Af–Pak and to avoid an escalation of confrontation between the superpowers in the region. Never before, nor later, did Rajiv refer to the role that he and his officials had played in the Afghan affairs backed by his friends in Moscow and Washington DC, which went on to shape Cordovez’s peace plan, though it did not shape the final doomed agreement signed in Geneva. The letters exchanged between Reagan and Rajiv and the series of dialogue between his top diplomats and American and Soviet diplomats would stay buried till the State Department declassified the papers in 2014. But in the last eight months, Rajiv’s quiet role had been anything but constructive from the American point of view. The speech in parliament was aimed at confirming the rumours of an Indian role in maintaining the Track II approach while it also confirmed that India would now pursue its foreign policy more independently than it had done during the early phase of Rajiv’s leadership. The result of this open defiance of the victorious superpower in the Afghan crisis was assured. Discussion intensified on the American side regarding supplying Pakistan with two force multipliers. The first was the M-1 tank, and the second the AEWS. Both had been under consideration for some years. But now American diplomats like Richard Armitage began

discussing the possibility of supplying them to Pakistan at the risk of enraging India. In a prophetic dispatch in the first week of June, Arnold Raphel, the US ambassador to Pakistan who would die with Zia in the air crash, advised caution.61 Raphel felt, given the heated context of moves and countermoves, supplying such systems to Pakistan would finally convince Rajiv Gandhi that the US government was not serious about having a longterm good relationship with India. ‘And he would revert to the policies of the 1970s,’ he said.62 But Rajiv Gandhi did not announce a return to the foreign policies of the previous decade, though his diplomacy and the idioms hinted strongly that he had indeed begun using the riskier diplomatic options that India used in the 1970s. Najibullah was the first of the strongmen that Rajiv would sound out after being snubbed by the US. There was no going back for Rajiv Gandhi. So on 4 May 1988, as announced by Rajiv Gandhi, Najibullah was given a warm welcome in Delhi. The Indians displayed their confidence in Najibullah as the Government of Afghanistan had signed an international agreement ending one of the biggest cold war confrontations between the two superpowers. Najibullah, the terror of the terrorists of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the feared ‘Ox’ of Afghanistan who captured and tortured CIA spies and saboteurs, the killer of the Islamic resistance fighters, was warmly welcomed in the forecourt of Delhi’s Rashtrapati Bhavan by President R. Venkataraman and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Najibullah’s visit was quite significant for India as just a few days earlier President Zia had declined an invitation to visit Delhi to be felicitated on the successful signing of the Geneva Accords. It was a landmark visit by all standards. Najibullah was enjoying his new-found acceptance in South Asia. He wore a dark suit in the hot Indian May. It was the first time that the Indian political class were to be introduced to the man who was the prime enemy of the CIA and Pakistan. Najibullah was received with full state honours complete with a twentyone-gun salute. He then proceeded for a two-hour-long talk with Rajiv Gandhi. In his speech at the state banquet, Venkataraman praised Najibullah and Afghanistan’s resilience.

Najibullah had concluded the deal at Geneva but he was not secure. The last-moment surge in armaments to Pakistan had emboldened the mujahideen. President Zia interpreted the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as a victory for Pakistan against a superpower, which gave the impression to the seven Peshawar-based commanders that they were about to replace the Najibullah government in Kabul. Pakistan continued its propaganda to topple Najibullah’s government. The overall impression was that instead of a cessation of external interference, Pakistan had very much intensified interference in Afghanistan following the Geneva Accords. The Soviets were also worried that the process of implementation of the Geneva Accords, which was a delicate business, was in jeopardy as Pakistan appeared to break all the promises it had made about noninterference in Afghanistan. The problem was that the Soviets had just begun withdrawing and the process could get disrupted because of the direct participation of Pakistani forces in Afghan affairs. The most important issue was the release of Russian POWs by the mujahideen, which had to be ensured by Pakistan. The Indian welcome to Najibullah at this moment, therefore, was aimed at conveying to Pakistan and the United States that Najibullah was not alone in his hour of difficulty. President Venkataraman remarked that ‘if sincerely implemented’ the Geneva Accords could end difficulties in Af–Pak and would end the ‘excuse for the induction of sophisticated weapons’ by Pakistan which could be used only against India.63 As you are aware, Excellency, we, in India, would like to see friendly Afghanistan as a strong, stable and non-aligned State, whose independence is never in jeopardy. This is possible only if the Geneva Accords are properly implemented and the process of consolidation of national unity is carried forward. You have made a valuable contribution in this direction. We wish you all success in your endeavours and recognise that the process of national reconciliation can only be brought to its logical culmination by the people of Afghanistan themselves. This is not something which can be or should be imposed from

without. We are confident that the people of Afghanistan will show the requisite maturity, courage and political wisdom to bring about a genuine consensus and a meeting of minds in the country.64 Najibullah’s visit to Delhi was at a crucial moment in the history of India–Afghanistan relations and it was expected that India’s friendship and support would be reflected in the agreements that were being prepared. All eyes then were on the declaration that leaders of India and Afghanistan would make on bilateral ties at the end of the visit. But no landmark agreement was announced. What came next was the ‘Long-Term Agreement for Supply of Tea to Afghanistan’.65 This curiously titled agreement sounded highly ironical given that the fighting that had broken out between the mujahideen forces from Peshawar and Najibullah’s government threatened to dismantle the Geneva Accords within a fortnight after it was concluded. But then, the Afghans can’t bear life without tea. Najibullah finalized the deal for supply of two thousand tonnes of packet tea for Afghanistan. Three-and-a-half years into his prime ministership, Rajiv made a bold turnaround in international relations. India had drifted away from the strategic relationship that it had entered into with the US. Rajiv Gandhi now began to focus on improving India’s ties with countries known for being tough with their neighbours. Of course, there was no meeting ground between Rajiv and Zia on the future of Najibullah. While Zia predicted Najibullah’s fall from power,66 India was sure Najibullah would survive the storm.67 The Najibullah government did not fall immediately with the withdrawal of the Soviets. The Soviet assessments were conveyed to the Pakistanis as well as Indians as both sides made their moves on Kabul. A new chapter had begun as the Soviets began withdrawing.

Postscript: Shot across the Bow

When Rajiv Gandhi spoke for the first time about the quiet role India had played in maintaining open channels between the USSR and the USA, what he left unsaid was that in the previous three years, both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev personally used Rajiv Gandhi and his office to reach out to each other on Afghanistan. He also left it unspoken that the backchannel maintained by India regarding the US and the USSR helped in diffusing the tension between the two superpowers and their interlocutors in Pakistan. He also did not mention the bitter spat that broke out right before the Inouye–Kasten resolution was passed in the US Congress and the acrimonious exchanges that turned India–US ties – in the words of Rajiv’s ambassador to Washington DC – to zero. Apart from the big changes, Rajiv maintained routine contacts with the US. He allowed the briefings between Sen and Dean to convey his latest thinking to the White House. On 25 April, Sen arrived in Dean’s office in the US embassy to explain the PM’s announcement in the parliament about Najibullah’s visit. Dean wanted to convey to Sen the American concerns on the invitation to Najibullah. India had made up its mind, he was told. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the seven-party alliance in Peshawar, was a zealot who would force his version of Islam on the country if he made it to Kabul. India suspected that Hekmatyar would also betray his benefactors in a distant future. But for the moment he and his co-fighters were the real threat to South Asia. India was worried that fundamentalism would spread quickly across South Asia due to the jihad in Afghanistan. Dean was told that India was frustrated but not helpless in Af–Pak. India wanted to work together with Pakistan to stabilize a post-Soviet Afghanistan. But Zia had denied them a chance to work together. India was left with no option but to entertain Najibullah because the bigger threats to the region were the zealots who had been turned into friends of Pakistan and Zia wanted to use them for a future fight with India. India wanted to convince Pakistan that there was no way that it could win this war. India was ready to face the battle ahead that would rage on for months and years due to the failure of the Geneva Accords to produce peace in the region. India hoped, Sen told Dean, that Pakistan would see merit in greater consultations with New Delhi on Afghanistan. Before taking leave, Sen

stunned Dean by sharing his impression of the Ojhri blasts and the subsequent fire. It was not an accident, Dean was told. ‘It was intended as “a shot across the bow” of Pakistan by forces opposed to the Pakistanbacked Peshawar Alliance.’68 Zia was invited to work together with other stakeholders on Afghanistan, but he declined. So he was told, through the blast at the Ojhri ammunition dump, that Pakistan’s new-found ‘strategic depth’ was not an asset, and indeed increased its vulnerabilities. A stunned Dean was told that the Geneva Accords had triggered a major conflict in South Asia because Pakistan wanted to play in the Afghan arena without realizing that its own home turf had turned into a playground for those who wanted Pakistan to appreciate their viewpoints.69

6 August 1988 Sen received the Padma Bhushan, one of the high civilian awards of the Indian state. The award marked a fulfilling end to Sen’s active diplomatic career. It was bestowed upon him after he had served his last big diplomatic assignment as the Indian envoy to the United Statesfrom 2004 to 2009. It is ironical that Sen, who headed the Indian embassy in the US during the period when the India–US nuclear deal of 2006–09 was being negotiated, had also served in the office of the prime minister of India in the turbulent period of India–US relations from 1985 to 1989. Sen had the opportunity to work with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, especially on her trips to Moscow, but it was Rajiv Gandhi who made Sen the confidential official for daily diplomacy that the Indian prime minister is expected to do. It was a unique and challenging opportunity to work with Rajiv Gandhi’s highly charged office. India had a structured diplomatic service under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and during the thirty-four-month rule by the Janata Party government. But the changes in world affairs that could be merely sensed during the last years of Indira Gandhi confronted India and the office of the prime minister emerged as the nodal agency for everything, beginning with initiatives on science and technology, economic aid, space IN 2012, AMBASSADOR RONEN

applications, nuclear issues, conventional and unconventional threats, and the rapidly expanding Indian interests abroad. Sitting in the PMO as the official who was in charge of ‘everything that was strategic in nature’ Sen had a systemic view of the way India changed permanently during the Rajiv Gandhi years. There were many like Chinmaya Gharekhan, A.P. Venkateswaran and K.P.S. Menon who worked with Rajiv Gandhi but Sen, by far the youngest of the lot, was a different case. Variously described as ‘arrogant’, plainspoken and tough, he was the man that Rajiv turned to often with, ‘Ronen, you come with me,’ before some of the most important discussions that Rajiv Gandhi conducted with foreign interlocutors. From the early days of his stint at the PMO in South Block, Sen put in long hours. Rajiv Gandhi worked hard and often reached home well past midnight. His family waited up for him, sometimes till 4 a.m.1 Sen also did the same. Sen was the official in charge of national security, nuclear affairs, regional conflicts and foreign affairs. Rajiv Gandhi would be briefed by him before every crucial meeting. Rajiv’s meetings with Casper Weinberger, Peter Galbraith, John Dean and other American interlocutors would be preceded by extensive sessions with Sen. Their relations were not one of friendship but defined by extreme professionalism. Sen’s government accommodation was at Bapa Nagar near India Gate and he would reach the Prime Minister’s Office at South Block at 9 a.m. and stay at work often till 2 a.m. There were no weekends or Diwalis for this confidant of Rajiv’s. He had strict instructions from the prime minister himself to focus on the leaders and people and would stay invisible from the photographers who captured the PM’s entire team. Sen often emerged at the scene right before Rajiv Gandhi would hold the most important dialogue with foreign leaders. He would delay stepping out of the aircraft to avoid being seen in the PM’s company. Videos of Rajiv Gandhi’s foreign trips show many officials but not Sen, who was in charge of nuclear affairs and critical foreign-affairs-related negotiations. Some of the photographs from Peshawar of 20 January 1988 show Rajiv Gandhi praying beside the mortal remains of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, but Sen is not anywhere in those pictures.

‘I had strong instructions from the prime minister himself to conduct my work in a way I was comfortable,’ is all that Sen told me. But the fact is that this soft-spoken diplomat with a piercing gaze handled nuclear issues, Afghanistan–Pakistan and electronic intelligence, and therefore had to remain in the shadows. One of his key responsibilities was to fly out discreetly to deliver personal messages from the Indian prime minister to foreign leaders and friends. The logistics for such trips would be taken care of by the intelligence agencies and Sen would fly at short notice to Colombo, Male, Victoria (Seychelles), Moscow, Washington DC, London and Islamabad. For months, he would work without ever meeting his daughter. His wife would serve him a sleepy dinner and would watch him get ready early and leave. Family and friends were offended at Sen’s absence from gatherings and emergencies. ‘But that was a price that I had to pay for my work,’ Sen said while recounting how people found him ‘stand-offish’ and arrogant due to his proximity to the centre of power. Keeping the critical nature of his job in view, Sen also kept himself away from all the social and ceremonial gatherings that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was required to attend. He would work on the social network of the prime minister across the world. He would often leave a small note for his wife asking her to look after the family and vanish for days. Most of these travels were sudden and secret, and neither he nor his boss wanted to keep any evidence of those meetings. He cultivated both President Zia and also maintained a communication channel with Benazir Bhutto through direct and indirect means. Several such trips were to meet Afghan principals like the mujahideen leaders and Najibullah. Sen had the detailed knowledge of how things can go wrong in international relations and perhaps that is why he survived five years in Rajiv Gandhi’s office despite kicking up occasional controversies with his comments. Used to addressing the complex needs of the Indian state, Sen has a unique style of conversation. Sen would sound outraged one moment and calm next, something which I experienced while talking in connection with this book. But the quintessential diplomat that he is, he expresses his admiration, and opposition, in clear terms without quite expressly stating

them. At one point, during our conversations, Sen finally said that there has never been a better American ambassador to India than Dean. ‘A true American patriot. The best that they sent to India so far,’ Sen told me at the end of a particularly volatile telephone conversation. I could sense the tears that old rivals shed for each other when they meet long after the bitterness of war is past. I communicated to Dean about Sen’s appreciation and received a similar comment: ‘You should tell him that I think of him as the same from the Indian side. He is among the best,’ Dean said in his clearly enunciated style. Ambassador Ronen Sen lives in one of New Delhi’s gated communities. It’s an amazing residential club of retired people who never retired because the secrets in their hearts never allow them a moment’s rest. Unassuming and tough, Sen can fix his rivals with a cold stare and a smile. Married to a former airhostess, Sen has never spoken about his life and its secrets. He deliberately never kept any records, even as he remained part of the top diplomatic team of India since the days of Indira Gandhi’s second stint in power till he retired as the Indian ambassador to the US.

Sen rightly conveyed to John Gunther Dean that though Zia had succeeded in securing Afghanistan for Pakistan, he left Pakistan itself vulnerable to the ‘shot across the bow’.2 The meltdown in Afghanistan–Pakistan relations, he told Dean, was the direct result of Zia’s inability to take all sides on board for a lasting solution to the Afghanistan crisis. In his drive to conquer Afghanistan for securing ‘strategic depth’ for Pakistan, Zia had left Pakistan unprotected – both politically and strategically. Early in 1988, Jordan’s King Hussein had offered his good offices for connecting Rajiv and Zia, and Sen went on a series of highly sensitive meetings in Geneva and Amman with top security officials from Pakistan, including ISI chief Hamid Gul. However, the efforts to convince Zia to stop the flow of arms into Afghanistan failed, evidently because Zia wanted to place the Islamists in power in Kabul at the shortest possible time and dislodge the Najibullah government.

Though Pakistani victory seemed imminent in April 1988, fear of defeat hung in the air due to the fireworks at Ojhri. The biggest setback, however, happened not at Ojhri, or in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan’s political battlefield that had begun to surprise Zia repeatedly. Though a good listener and communicator with a sharp intellect, Zia remained a poor orator all his life. He was in command when he spoke on military matters but his public speeches as the ‘civilian’ president during the mid-1980s were not at all inspiring. Though a ruthless military dictator, Zia’s political moves regarding Prime Minister Junejo began to falter by the spring of 1988. He opened the political field after holding on to power for eight years with an election in March 1985. But before the election, he scheduled a national referendum for 20 December 1984 to coincide with the electoral process in India. The referendum set the tone for the election of March 1985 as it firmed up the Islamic nature of Pakistan under military rule. The election of March 1985, which was boycotted by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), was held on the basis of the principle of party-less democracy.3 No one knew how a democracy was possible without political parties. Zia nevertheless managed to enforce the election. Following the election, Sindhi landlord and politician Muhammad Khan Junejo was chosen as the prime minister of Pakistan. From the beginning, Junejo proved to be a difficult politician to control. He failed to be grateful to the military dictator who tolerated his premiership. Soon after being elected, Junejo declared that he had no intention to crack down on the Pakistan Peoples Party of Benazir Bhutto,4 even though she kept up her attack on Junejo as a tool in the hands of Zia. At the same time, he kept demanding his own space in the Pakistani government under President Zia and Junejo soon proved that there is no half-democracy in politics. From March 1985 to the Ojhri blast on 10 April 1988, Junejo had built himself up as a force to reckon with. Junejo demanded that he be kept in the loop on official issues and loathed it when Zia kept the Afghan operation strictly with the ISI and himself. The Ojhri blast finally precipitated a crisis in Pakistan. Junejo had instituted an inquiry by a three-member ministerial committee into the Ojhri blast. The report of the inquiry committee led by

Junejo himself charged Pakistani elements of negligence and mishandling of the explosives at Ojhri.5 However, in view of the South Asian events and problems, Zia refused to believe that the largest ordnance blast in Pakistan’s history was on account of negligence on the part of Pakistani handlers of explosives. Instead, he dismissed Prime Minister Junejo on 29 May. Zia and Junejo, the first a Punjabi and an alumnus of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and the second a proud Sindhi landlord, had little in common. After two-and-a-half years of bickering, Junejo–Zia ties nosedived as the Afghanistan negotiation reached its climax in January 1988. The fact that Zia kept the secret negotiations with oil tycoon Armand Hammer and the Americans almost exclusively to himself resulted in personal humiliation for Junejo as the latter often found himself clueless in official briefings with senior ISI figures. And this led to the worsening of relations between Zia and Junejo. Ironically, Pakistan’s biggest strategic victory in securing the evacuation of the Soviets from Afghanistan failed to secure Pakistan and the political crisis between Zia and Junejo was just the beginning of the greater meltdown. Though Zia won the war against the Soviets with help from his friends abroad, his friends at home were deserting him. Zia was victorious but a lonely figure, with political rivals like Benazir Bhutto demanding that he be held to account for his deeds at home. With the dismissal of the civilian government, Zia also lost the crucial fig leaf of democracy protecting him against Benazir’s increasingly potent political attacks. But the irony of April 1988 was not lost on Zia’s team that worked on Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since being posted as Zia’s ambassador in Moscow in August 1984, Shahid M. Amin had worked effectively to help achieve Zia’s strategic agenda of freeing Afghanistan of Soviet occupation. His reports helped shape Zia’s perspectives and gave diplomatic ammunition to the jet-setting foreign minister Yaqub Khan. Amin had felt for years that the Soviets would never withdraw from Afghanistan. But finally, the ‘miracle of the 20th century’ (in the words of Zia) took place and the Soviets began the withdrawal process. Though the political battle in Islamabad intensified, the predominant sentiment among the Pakistani diplomats6 was that Zia had taken an enormous and almost

irrational risk in confronting the Soviet might, albeit with US support and, to that extent, the credit for the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan went to Zia.7 He armed and funded the mujahideen, tolerated an often atrocious diplomatic fight with Afghanistan and fought many low-intensity military battles from 1980 till the Geneva Accords were signed. Though relations did not improve between the Najibullah-led government in Kabul and Zia in Islamabad, the Geneva Accords gave the Soviets the fig leaf they needed to withdraw from Afghanistan with whatever remained of their superpower status. At long last, it was a moment to celebrate, thought Amin. He wrote a speech to celebrate the Pakistani success in forcing the Soviet Union through a carefully planned and staged proxy war – an enormous achievement by any means – for the ambassadors’ conference planned in Islamabad. The three-day conference which began on 18 July 1988 was presided over by Zia. It was a time to celebrate the general and his strategic foresight. Diplomats praised Zia and perhaps gave Zia the last big official applause of his life.8

Despite the enormous strategic success in Afghanistan, there was little security and satisfaction in Zia’s diplomatic machinery. At the conference, Amin, perhaps swayed by his personal role in the success, highlighted the ‘miracle of the 20th century’ but his colleagues did not respond to his comments positively, indicating a new crisis was in the making following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.9 Amin had expected that after his Moscow stint he would be sent to India perhaps to prove a point to the Indians, but President Zia quickly sent him off to Paris as the new Pakistan ambassador to France. Amin was rewarded but not in the way he had expected. From April 1988 onwards, it became obvious that President Zia was fast becoming friendless and by July it would be clear that not even Zia’s best friends and associates were going to be happy with his post-Afghanistan initiatives.

In Delhi, meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi had begun making friends with a group of leaders who were known for being anti-US. Throwing out the champagne-and-caviar set that he entertained in Washington DC in June 1985, Rajiv now celebrated leaders who lived every day in a contest with the United States. After welcoming Najibullah, Rajjiv Gandhi planned to court Hafez alAssad of Syria. President Assad was one of the most astute and ruthless rulers of the Arab world. He combined great knowledge of his society with regional and global politics and created a powerful militarized state in Syria that stood in the way of Israel’s regional domination. His country had lost the Golan Heights to Israel in the 1967 war. Then it joined the coalition of front-line states in 1973, but unlike others following the war, Syria under his rule maintained its total hostility towards Israel. On the morning of 3 June 1988, Rajiv sat down with Dean to discuss his visit to Syria the next day. From Syria, the prime minister of India was scheduled to travel to West Germany and the United Nations in New York. The meeting lasted fifty minutes, with Rajiv doing most of the talking. Rajiv hoped that the Soviet withdrawal plans as announced by Mikhail Gorbachev would be implemented. Rajiv justified his meeting Najibullah and hosting him as a state guest in Delhi.10 Rajiv’s assessment of Najibullah was markedly different from that of the Americans and President Zia. In his meeting with the envoys in July, Zia would dismiss the possibility of Najibullah lasting in Kabul.11 But Rajiv believed that Najibullah was committed ‘to keeping the fundamentalists like Hekmatyar from taking control of the government in Kabul’.12 For him, Najibullah was a good guy fighting a bunch of fundamentalists and terrorists who were determined to cause a regional breakdown, and he was determined to support the good guy. Rajiv Gandhi was not particularly fond of Najibullah’s leadership and style, but shared Najibullah’s objective of keeping the fundamentalists out of Kabul. He said India was prepared to live with any kind of government in Kabul, as long as they did not represent the Islamic fundamentalist variety. It did not matter to Rajiv Gandhi that Najibullah had acquired a reputation for brutality as the head of KHAD. His torture methods and

summary executions struck fear among the resistance fighters. Najibullah’s enemies had nicknamed him ‘the Ox’. Rajiv Gandhi had taken tough decisions in the past six months. He had warmed up to all the stakeholders in Afghanistan, especially with the government under Najibullah. Rajiv Gandhi conveyed to the US ambassador that he believed that the American government did not share his objective of keeping the fundamentalists out of Kabul.13 He told Dean that the US should think of the long-term situation arising out of supporting a fundamentalist group to replace the Najibullah-led government in Afghanistan. The consequence of the rise of Islamist forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan would not be in anyone’s interest, he warned.14 The bilateral relationship between the government of Rajiv Gandhi and the United States had turned full circle by this time. From being a collaborator, a man who was pro-West to the extent that Dean described him as someone ‘imported back to India’ from London, Rajiv Gandhi assumed an unlikely cynical attitude towards the United States because the US had become the key supporter of the same forces that India hoped to keep out of Afghanistan.15 India’s policy of seeking a common ground for cooperation with the US on the biggest issue of South Asian security had failed. Rajiv’s new set of friends could help him recover what he had lost to Zia. On the afternoon of 4 June 1988, Rajiv and Sonia left for Syria. They arrived in Damascus on a sunny afternoon. Rajiv looked every bit a confident leader. His dark glasses in place, he inspected the guard of honour and was warmly greeted by the legendary dictator. Hafez al-Assad was a seasoned leader of Syrian society. But he was also well connected with South Asian politics. Among his many strong friendships, the one with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his family stood out.16 President Assad was also a committed leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and despite his troubling relationship with PLO leader Yasser Arafat, he remained consistent in his support of the Palestinian cause. Rajiv Gandhi struck a chord with the Syrians by supporting the Palestinian cause and by supporting an immediate solution to the Iran–Iraq war, which had been raging for almost eight years.

Rajiv Gandhi added a new and adventurous dimension to this visit to Syria. On 5 June, accompanied by Sonia Gandhi and Syrian prime minister Al Qubi, he visited the Golan Heights. The visit was a rare gesture by the Indian leader and it raised eyebrows as the Golan Heights were the scene of war between Israel and Syria. Internationally recognized as Syrian territory, the Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel since 1967. In 1973, Assad’s forces triggered the war in the Heights and liberated some portion of the occupied territory from Israeli control. The Syrian government took the Indian guests to Quneitra, a city which was part of the liberated zone.17 Golan Heights resembled an active war zone as skirmishes were common between Israel and Syria and Quneitra continued to bear witness to the 1973 war in its damaged and shelled-out ruins. The Indian prime minister’s visit to Golan Heights touched an emotional chord with the Arabs as it was the first such visit. Given the context and its symbolic importance, the visit spoke volumes about what India’s leadership thought of Western sensitivities as of June 1988. By this time, it was obvious to Rajiv and his team that the USSR was not going to last long and the world was fast moving towards a unipolar phase.18 Yet, he networked with leaders known for being anti-US, which gave the impression that India was working to prevent the onset of unipolarity. After welcoming Najibullah to New Delhi Rajiv Gandhi went a step ahead by courting Hafez al-Assad. Assad’s South Asia ties went back a long way and his antipathy for Zia reportedly had its roots in the Black September operations by King Hussein of Jordan against the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1970. Zia was then a key military adviser to the Jordanian government.19 Assad had attended the Islamic Summit of Lahore in 1974 and supported Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s vision of Islam. In 1977, following the overthrow of Bhutto, Assad was among the first to request a pardon for Bhutto, which was dismissed by Zia. The cold vibes between Assad and Zia turned into a dirty war when Murtaza Bhutto sought Assad’s help to build the AZO. Assad and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi provided the resources to AZO during its most potent phase from 1979 to approximately 1982.

Benazir Bhutto in her autobiography avoided getting into the details of AZO but mentioned that her younger brother Shah Nawaz was a wanted terrorist and his careless life in exile worried her. But she gave details of her demand for amnesty for several AZO members who were hanged by Zia during the immediate aftermath of the democratic election of 1985.20 Subsequently ties worsened with Zia’s role in the Iran–Iraq war.21A committed Arab nationalist, President Assad’s differences with Zia intensified during the Iran–Iraq war wherein Pakistan under Zia supported Saudi-backed Saddam Hussein, Assad’s worst enemy.22 From Syria to Germany and from Germany to New York City, Rajiv Gandhi kept up the heat on President Zia’s government and accused Pakistan of being the largest exporter of terror in the world. On 10 June perhaps in a rare interview with CNN, Rajiv Gandhi remarked how some supporters of Pakistan were turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme. Rajiv Gandhi spoke repeatedly about how clandestine Pakistan’s entire nuclear programme was.23 He did not know that in less than a week, his own nuclear policy would be brought into the spotlight.

On Wednesday, 15 June, The Indian Express carried a news item which sent shock waves across South Block. The report was sensational because it revealed that an important intelligence operation took place on 31 May in Bombay, leading to the arrest of Captain Subbarao, a former Indian Navy officer, just as he was boarding a flight bound for the United States. The Intelligence Bureau, which conducted the arrest, found the details of India’s top-secret indigenous nuclear submarine programme on him. Subbarao was a disgruntled former captain who believed that India could build a nuclear submarine by following his plan. But India did not wait for Subbarao’s plan and instead had acquired a nuclear submarine on lease from the Soviet Union. The lease of INS Chakra was an outcome of the successful visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to New Delhi in November 1986 and the vessel was leased on 1 September 1987.24 When it sailed from the eastern coast of the USSR, American surveillance networks reportedly picked up its movement and tracked it all the way to the Bay of Bengal.25

INS Chakra was a nuclear attack submarine and India’s decision to acquire this submarine against the backdrop of the ongoing developments in South Asia triggered alarm.26 Rajiv Gandhi in his discussions with the US ambassador and visiting guests from the US tried to convince them that India had no intention of using the submarine in a warlike situation and that the vessel was meant to provide the experience of using a nuclear submarine to naval personnel.27 From the beginning, INS Chakra caused quite a commotion, and Dean carefully observed the developments. At one point he was told of the intelligence plan to unmask India’s real intention of using the INS Chakra. It was obvious to the Americans that Rajiv Gandhi’s commitments could not be trusted as INS Chakra was a major strategic weapon which gave India a strategic nuclear triad albeit temporarily. Captain Subbarao was an electrical engineer and was closely associated with the ATV Project, or the Advanced Technology Vessel programme of the Indian Navy. The ATV was a stepping stone to the subsequent Arihantnuclear submarine. Subbarao was deputed to work in the nuclear power plant of the submarine but as differences rose between the BARC and the Indian Navy, the project was subsequently shelved. Subbarao retired from service in 1987 and the oral testimony of Dean hints at an American intelligence operation that targeted the former navy official. Indian intelligence services arrested Subbarao just before he was going abroad with the blueprint of the submarine, apparently for academic research.28 Subbarao’s planned departure gave rise to uncomfortable questions about possible involvement of a foreign agency in the case. Without sharing the details of the operation that led to Subbarao’s decision to leave India, Dean said that he had to step in and evacuate the intelligence officer who was in charge of the operation. But on 15 June, Rajiv Gandhi’s office asked Dean to meet him. The conversation that followed showed that India–US ties had reached breaking point. Rajiv Gandhi accused US intelligence agencies of executing espionage plots in Delhi. ‘It was the toughest of all the meetings that I had in Delhi with Rajiv Gandhi,’ Dean recounted. After venting his fury over the Subbarao case, Rajiv calmed down a bit. Dean grabbed the moment and

said that Rajiv should appreciate that Dean also had certain legitimate interests in India’s undeclared nuclear ambition. ‘As a diplomat I have to look into the legitimate interests,’ Dean told him. Dean’s calm defence brought a brief chuckle to Rajiv and he said: ‘I cannot tell you anything more than what I have already told you, after all you are a friend.’ Though friendly ties between the two were kept alive, Dean had no doubt that the bad phase in India–US ties was not yet over.29 By the spring of 1988, Dean was in an unprecedented phase of his career. India and the United States had disagreed on fundamental issues like Afghanistan’s future and Pakistan’s nuclear affairs and drifted apart. The task for which Dean was sent to Delhi, that is, to preside over a new phase of India–US ties had crumbled. Dean’s importance in Washington DC dwindled as the State Department considered sending a new ambassador to New Delhi. One thing that kept him in Delhi was the Indian government’s reluctance to accept a new US envoy. Under the circumstances, Dean had become a mere witness to the downward spiral of India–US ties.30 The fortune of the leaders had also changed. The Indian leader was no longer popular with Washington DC and was aggressively trying to reinvent himself, while across the border Zia had become an increasingly lonely figure, despite his strategic victory in Afghanistan. Both Rajiv and Zia had lost their respective utility and charm for their American friends. But most importantly, the failure of Rajiv Gandhi’s efforts at solving the Afghan problem in the winter of 1987 had evidently created a big chasm between India and Pakistan. In the meanwhile, it became amply clear that the Geneva Accords that helped to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan had itself become irrelevant within months. A large number of Soviet soldiers were still held captive as POWs in the Afghanistan–Pakistan border areas, presumably by the mujahideen under the protection of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. Soviet news agencies began a campaign to bring back the POWs from Pakistan but President Zia did not show any interest in fast-tracking the process.31 On 27 June, a large number of relatives of the POWs demonstrated in front of the Pakistan embassy in Moscow. The Soviets also pointed out that the Pakistanis, after the Geneva Accords, had not paid heed

to the persistent Soviet request to control the mujahideen who were operating from Peshawar.32 Though the Soviet–Pakistan relations had been difficult since 1979, the verbal fight of the summer of 1988 was unusual and unexpected. The Soviets expected Pakistan to stick to the principle of ‘symmetry’ defined in the context of Afghanistan.33 But the continuing supply of weapons to the mujahideen showed that President Zia had no intention of keeping his part of the bargain. Having failed to convince Zia, the Soviets began to issue open threats. The seriousness of the threats became clear because these were being issued not by the PDPA government in Kabul under Najibullah but by higher-ups in the Soviet Union. The problem of the continuing militarization of Afghanistan through Pakistan found space in Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Reports further suggested that the withdrawal of Soviet troops had been temporarily stopped in response to the ongoing violation of the Geneva Accords by Pakistan.34 Finally, the warnings began flowing out of the office of Vorontsov himself who expressed Moscow’s displeasure on Pakistan’s failure to safeguard the principle of ‘symmetry’. Following weeks of tension, Soviet spokesperson Yuri Gerasimov warned that ‘Pakistan should be aware of the extent of the negative consequences,’ of violating the Geneva Accords. It was the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Islamabad on 26 June 1988. To mark the occasion, the Pakistani embassy in Moscow organized a lunch for the friends and officials of Pakistan in Moscow. The lunch gave an indication of the breakdown of ties between Moscow and Islamabad as the Soviet guests surrounded the Pakistani ambassador and one by one and collectively, accused Pakistan of breaking the solemn promises made under the Geneva Accords. Humiliation apart, there was nothing to celebrate the four decades of diplomatic ties between the two sides. Ties between Pakistan and the Soviet Union hit rock bottom by the end of June when the Pakistani ambassador in Moscow sent a report to President Zia that Moscow had gathered the impression that Pakistan acted as if the

only obligation flowing out of the Geneva Accords was for the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan.35 Secondly, Moscow felt that Pakistan had violated the Geneva agreement by continuing to supply arms to the mujahideen and by not taking any steps to curtail the operations of the mujahideen leaders who were based in Peshawar. What made matters worse was that the mujahideen commanders had made it difficult for Pakistan by holding frequent bellicose press conferences where they issued statements against Kabul. The Russians felt that the Pakistanis were going ahead with their plan to bring in a government led by the mujahideen in Kabul.36 The Geneva Accords had brought a temporary pause in the hostilities between Kabul and Islamabad but Zia failed to disengage himself from the Afghan crisis. Continued violation of the principle of symmetry, and mujahideen attacks against the government of Najibullah, triggered a new phase of Afghan crisis even as the Soviet withdrawal began. It was clear that all sides were readying for a new round of conflict. Rajiv Gandhi undertook a four-country tour from 11 to 19 July and visited Jordan, Yugoslavia, Spain and Turkey. Throughout his interviews and interactions during this round of visits, Rajiv emphasized that Pakistan was close to acquiring a nuclear bomb and that the fundamentalists were poised for a takeover in Afghanistan.37 In the rush of events, the ominous month of August was inching closer.

By August 1988, South Asia was a crowded place. Apart from the traditional rivals and players, the other new player was Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran who had given the Shias of India and Pakistan a much-needed connect with a globally spread community. The ayatollah’s sermons were popular and his audiotapes and posters sprang up across Pakistan and in parts of India. His comments were taken seriously and so were his fulminations against the United States. Though Khomeini was a spiritual leader, he also emerged as a kind of a political pope to his admirers. His support was eagerly sought by his followers, and the Shia clergy in South Asia did not hide its admiration for the Shia leader in Tehran.

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, the Shia-driven political fervour also reached Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this context, the strategically located Shia community in Pakistan’s north-west emerged as a focal point of the non-Sunni Islamic movements in Pakistan. The arrival of General Zia and his harsh anti-minorities and anti-Shia measures coincided with the rise of the Shia power in Iran. To counter the repressive rule of General Zia, some of the leading Shias of Pakistan formed Tehreek-eNafaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jaffariya which emerged as the pre-eminent Shia organization of Pakistan. The star of the organization in the tribal northwest was Arif Hussein Al Husseini. Though the movement was headquartered in Rawalpindi, under his leadership Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Fiqhe-Jaffariya’s work in the north-west emerged as vital for the Shia community across Pakistan. Shias were opposed to the Islamic rule of President Zia, which targeted them and other non-Sunnis like the Ahmadiyas. Forty-two-year-old Arif Hussein Al Husseini was a dynamic figure. He was a family man with five sons and two daughters and lived the orthodox life of a cleric. But he was also well networked internationally and gained widespread popularity in the Shia arc spreading from Pakistan to Lebanon via the Gulf monarchies. His powerful sermons ensured him Shia superstardom with millions of followers in Pakistan. Diplomats from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the Gulf visited him, and President Zia watched his moves carefully for traces of transnational tendencies. It was 5 August 1988, a Friday. It was a special day as the sermon that Al Husseini was to deliver would be his last before the beginning of the Muslim month of Muharram when the Shias pay homage to Imam Hussein ibn Ali. The atmosphere was surcharged as the war between Iraq and Iran was fast drawing to a close amidst disputes on who was the winner in the eight-year-long pointless war. As he had done many times before, Al Husseini delivered a rousing sermon in his mosque. But just as he stepped out of the gate of the mosque an assassin sprang from the corner and shot him dead with a few rounds of pistol fire. The young cleric with millions of followers and admirers riding

the airwaves was dead in minutes. No one had foreseen that the highly charismatic cleric was totally defenceless against possible attacks. Al Husseini’s murder sent Pakistan into a shock like few other incidents. His death was mourned by leaders of many Islamic countries, including by Ayatollah Khomeini. President Zia and diplomatic representatives of Syria, Lebanon and Iran participated in his funeral. Al Husseini’s assassination was never explained. Like many other violent incidents of 1988, the violent death of the charismatic Shia cleric too remains a mystery. The sectarian shock delivered by the murder of Al Husseini ricocheted across Pakistan as rumours suggested that it was Zia himself who had ordered the elimination of Al Husseini. Zia already had enough on his hands due to the breakdown of the ties with Afghanistan after the Geneva Accords. Rumours, insinuations, murders and conspiracies were all part of Zia’s rule. Though the assassination of Al Husseini was not enough to shake the foundation of the military dictatorship, it nevertheless added to the problems in South Asia.38 During the monsoon of 1988, there were sufficient reasons to link the murder of Al Husseini with Zia’s game plan. Though the reign of Zia would end twelve days later, the demise of Arif Hussein Al Husseini indicated that Zia’s political project of turning Pakistan into a theocracy had failed. When General Zia donned civvies in 1985 and became President Zia, he placed the February 1985 election before Pakistan as if it was a test of faith for his country. With a series of religion-inspired laws, President Zia tried his best to convert Pakistan into a theocracy unmindful of the fact that though the Saudi funds pouring into his coffers might create the illusion of a uniform Islam, in reality, heterodox Islam was the reality in Pakistan.39 A large section of Pakistan’s Muslim population followed Shia Islam, and was greatly inspired by Iran’s Shia leadership. Between 1979 and 1988, the Shias of Pakistan had grown from strength to strength and Al Husseini, their radical cleric, reminded them that they had no space in the externally funded, mercenary Pakistan of President Zia. Al Husseini challenged and was totally opposed to the puritanical Pakistan under Zia.

Official papers at that time speculated about Zia’s motives as he violated the Geneva Accords right from the beginning. One possible explanation was that having secured the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, President Zia had now sensed the historic opportunity of ridding Afghanistan of a hostile government. But an aroused Shia community on Pakistan’s frontier with its strong ties with Iran had emerged as a barrier for Saudi-backed Pakistan. But the sudden setbacks to the Shia movement in Pakistan, after almost eight years of a continuous growth, came as a rude jolt that was to impact the Shia opposition to the military rule of Zia. In New Delhi, meanwhile, August began by reminding India of the assassination of Indira Gandhi four years ago. On 3 August, a division bench of the Supreme Court by three separate but concurring judgments delivered in the Indira Gandhi assassination case confirmed the death sentence handed out to assassin Satwant Singh and an alleged accomplice Kehar Singh even as it acquitted one of the prime accused, Balbir Singh. The bench of Justice G.L. Oza, Justice B.C. Ray and Justice K. Jagannath Shetty dismissed the pleas of Satwant and declared the death sentence as ‘just and proper’. As old wars that raged in the last decade of the cold war were ending, old wounds began to heal. But they were also leaving behind a legacy for a new phase of conflict. The Iran–Iraq war was drawing to a close. Rajiv Gandhi received a message from the Iranian president Mir Hossein Musavi through his special envoy giving him advance information of a coming truce between the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the Islamic revolutionary government of Tehran. The world was fast changing and the capitals in the South Asian and West Asian countries were informing each other about what they foresaw for themselves. On 13 August, President Zia gave a long interview to the National Press Trust of Pakistan, which sounded like a wrap-up of his career over the last decade.40 It was a moment to celebrate the pinnacle of glory that he touched with the Geneva Accords and also a sobering moment to mark the despair that opened up due to the speed with which he betrayed the accord. The interview showed that the leader of Pakistan had made it a point to convey

his position on various key issues to the stakeholders in the region and beyond. Always a master of diplomatic jugglery, Zia pointed out that the Soviet Union had committed to ‘Negative Symmetry’ and as a result had given space to the mujahideen to continue with their resistance against the government of Mohammed Najibullah in Kabul. The statement was astounding as it showed that Zia was determined to swiftly execute the endgame in Kabul. Zia’s last big interview was full of information that explained the world according to his military vision. About Najibullah’s government in Kabul, the Pakistani president said that it was going to fall soon. He cited a humanitarian argument to justify the downfall of Najibullah’s government suggesting that the millions of refugees in Pakistan would not return home unless Afghanistan was rid of the government of Najibullah. Zia’s harshest words were reserved for India whom he accused of attempting to ‘join the Afghan bandwagon’ belatedly.41 After criticizing his Indian, Soviet and Afghan tormentors, President Zia turned to the internal enemies of his government. As the interview progressed, it became clear that Zia had a long list of adversaries and there was no end in sight of the conflict in Afghanistan. Zia showed signs of redundancy when he supported the idea of ‘party-less democracy and elections’. Considering that by 1988, democracy had become a buzzword even in the Eastern Bloc of the cold war, Zia’s proposal to push Pakistan down the road to endless military rule revealed a lack of connect with contemporary realities. Though politicians were the norm in the world, Zia still blamed the ‘die-hard politicians’ for all the ills of the world. He blamed the Indian lobby in the United States for a recent pro-democracy resolution in Washington DC.42

Pakistan–Soviet relations were exceptionally tense during the first fortnight of August 1988. The tension was due to the discovery of renewed Pakistani supply of arms and ammunition to the anti-Kabul rebels inside the Afghan territory bordering Pakistan. Pakistan had guaranteed safety for Soviet

soldiers while the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was under way, but high-altitude reconnaissance flights noticed that neither the Pakistanis nor the Americans were serious about keeping the promises made in Geneva. Pakistan began arming the rebels with a new round of weapons to dislodge the government in Kabul. With the new weapons, the mujahideen would now not only be able to attack Kabul but in the process jeopardize the Soviet forces in withdrawal mode and hence more vulnerable. Soviet flights picked up military movements in and out of Miram Shah airbase in Pakistan where American aircraft were bringing fresh supplies. On 4 August a decorated Soviet war hero, Air Force Colonel Alexander Rutskoi, took off in a MiG-23 to enter Pakistan airspace and photograph the Miram Shah airbase. Colonel Rutskoi personally saw a vast convoy of military trucks at the airbase and ordered an immediate attack on the airbase later that night. A new conflict was to break out that night as Rutskoi’s order to destroy the convoy of trucks carrying American weapons would have led to a confrontation between Pakistan–US alliance and the Soviet–Afghan alliance. That same evening Rutskoi led a team of eight Su-25s and four MiG-23s for the daring mission. Thankfully for the world, Colonel Rutskoi’s order was leaked to the Pakistani side by a pilot in his team who worked for Pakistan. A team of Pakistani F-16s challenged Rutskoi’s team and shot down his aircraft. Rutskoi landed in the forests near Parachinar with the help of a parachute just a day before the frontier city was to be rocked by the murder of Shia cleric Al Husseini. Next day, Rutskoi was arrested by the Pakistani forces and taken to a safe house. On 16 August, Rutskoi was exchanged for a CIA spy.43 During the period when Soviet flights were taking photographs of Miram Shah airbase from the sky, angry Soviets cornered Pakistani diplomats in Paris. During one such meeting Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had a bitter and angry exchange with Foreign Minister Yaqub Khan on 3 August. Shahid M. Amin, in his own recollection of the chain of events in the run-up to the 17 August air crash, said that it was probably following that meeting that Moscow decided to get rid of President Zia who already had too much Soviet and Afghan blood on his hands to be forgiven. Shahid

M. Amin met Yuli Vorontsov on 12 August to convey his impending departure to Paris as the next Pakistani ambassador. Vorontsov replied that the Pakistani ambassador could see ‘some fireworks’ during his stay in Moscow.44

The idea behind this book is not to find out the killer or killers of Zia-ulHaq, who gave Pakistan perhaps its biggest strategic victory but who also led his country to a much greater crisis after the Geneva Accords, in his endless quest for ‘strategic depth’. Zia had deadly enemies in New Delhi, Moscow and Kabul but the fact is that many others too could have plotted to take out Zia. However, Zia could have avoided the fate of dying in an air crash had the internationally backed plan to have a coalition government in Kabul, representing all sides in Afghanistan, been implemented. We will never know what Rajiv Gandhi and Mohammed Najibullah discussed over lunch on 24 December 1987. The substance of that meeting must have been significant enough to accord a grand welcome to Najibullah on 4 May 1988. Some of these details perhaps are locked away in the old Soviet papers that will be known in due course of time. However, what we have is Sen’s cryptic analysis45 of 23 April 1988 indicating that Zia was told of the new reality through the Ojhri blast that if he left his home turf in Pakistan in his quest for a ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan, it would become a playground for his rivals. The message to the US ambassador, Sen told me, was delivered following instruction from Rajiv Gandhi. Moscow, New Delhi and Kabul shared the same sense of animosity towards Zia. While Pakistan recovered slowly from the political turmoil triggered by Zia’s apparent assassination, rumours abounded. On 26 August, the Muslim reported the news of two Russian helicopters landing in Pakistan.46 It was reported that six occupants of that helicopter, including an Indian, were arrested by Pakistani forces. After the downing of Rutskoi’s MiG-23 on 4 August, this was the second incident involving Soviet personnel. But it was the only incidence of the arrest of an Indian in Pakistan during that time.

Less than three-and-a-half years later, Alexander Rutskoi would become a powerful Russian figure and would go on to be the leader of a nationalist group in the Kremlin, finally becoming a vice-president in post-communist Russia. He could pursue his career, thanks to the exchange of prisoners in Islamabad a day before Zia died in the air crash. But the Indian arrested in the Parachinar area remains unaccounted for till now.47 Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities had their version of the murder of Al Husseini. The killer of the Shia preacher was also a Shia, said General Mirza Aslam Beg during a meeting with the new US ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley, who had been hurriedly sent to Islamabad after Ambassador Arnold Raphel’s death. General Beg informed the new US ambassador that the murderer had apparently confessed that the crime was a hit job by the KHAD, the intelligence agency of President Najibullah.48 Meanwhile in Delhi, Dean spent a few days following the air crash of 17 August discussing the condition of South Asia with colleagues in Delhi’s diplomatic circle. He discussed the air crash and the dangerous nuclear race in South Asia with Ambassador Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, with other diplomats and with General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, the chief of staff of the Indian Army. Discussing the mysterious air crash, which bore signs of a carefully plotted assassination of the entire top brass of the Pakistani state, Sundarji blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. A few years later, General Sundarji, however, had changed his theory on the air crash and told Dean that the Americans were behind it. ‘You (the Americans) did it,’ he told Dean on 25 June 1993 when he and his wife Vani came to visit the Deans at their large Paris home. Ever since Zia’s death, Dean and his contemporaries have blamed a number of actors for the assassination of President Zia. But without evidence such suspicions have remained just that, suspicions. What, however, appears plausible is that the external enemies of Pakistan probably were aided by internal elements who executed the air crash.49

With the situation spiralling downward in India as Rajiv Gandhi dealt with his growing unpopularity and the removal of Zia from Pakistan, Dean

prepared two memos for Reagan and Shultz. The first was titled ‘What can be done to send the right signals to India?’, and the second was focused on the conjectures and possible plots and conspiracies behind Zia’s assassination, which could precipitate a regional crisis in South Asia. With these two papers ready, Dean sought urgent official appointments in the White House and the State Department. In the meanwhile, a new ambassador, John R. Hubbard, was appointed to replace Dean in Delhi. Dean felt that the Reagan administration had abused his professional career built over some of the exceptional conflict zones in Africa, SouthEast Asia and the Arab world to serve its own interest and that having used him, they were eager to retire him. But Dean did not like the idea of going down without confronting Shultz and he wanted to know why the peace plan for Afghanistan, which was being discussed from 1985 to the summer of 1987, was shelved unceremoniously, why the US did not pressure President Zia to adhere to the Geneva Accords and why the US had supplied weapons to Pakistan even after Soviet leader Gorbachev declared his plan for a fast withdrawal from Afghanistan?50 The confrontation in Washington DC that Dean was headed towards was expected but not planned. But Dean would have liked that conversation to take place to clear his name of the failed diplomacy in South Asia with which he was otherwise going to be associated. By then Dean had become a liability and not even the embassy of the United States in New Delhi was in his control. A few days before his planned trip to the US, service on the secure telephone lines between his office and the State Department went dead. He hoped that the mechanical failure would be rectified and issued several orders for quick work, but his staff refused to obey. Nobody seemed to pay attention to him any more. On 10 September, Dean requested for tickets and they soon arrived.

Martine had observed the meltdown around her husband and had kept quiet all this while. But sensing that her husband was hurtling towards a clash with the ruling elite in Washington DC, Martine asked Dean to cancel his trip.

‘We can take a break and go for a vacation,’ she suggested.51 In all the four decades that she saw her husband conduct serious diplomacy, Martine never stepped into his realm, always maintaining a distance between his work and her passion for art, cookbooks and travel. But in the first fortnight of September 1988, Martine repeatedly asked Dean to end his ambassadorship quietly and to proceed to a quiet retired life in their homes in Paris and Switzerland. But nothing could stop Dean from catching the flight to Dulles Airport. Dean had been handed out ‘phony’ confirmation letters as bait from the administration and the first thing that he was told at the airport was that his meetings with Shultz and Bush had been cancelled. Dean was told that he had the option of either going on a break and subsequent retirement or be placed at a facility for the mentally ill in the United States. George Vest, the director general of the foreign service, revealed the astonishing information that the doctors under his command had determined (without even seeing Dean in person) that he had suffered a terrible psychological breakdown, which left him incapable of performing critical diplomacy. Without giving Dean the time to respond or seek legal help, the State Department took away Dean’s medical clearance necessary for his service. A whole host of psychiatrists and doctors working for the State Department had done the necessary paper work and within a few days of Dean landing in Washington DC, he was certified mentally deranged. Dean is hesitant to speak in detail about the painful personal experience, but he states that the whole charade was meant to keep him away from approaching the media or hold any press conference in Washington DC over the South Asian policy of the Reagan administration, which was going to be exacerbated during the next presidency of George H.W. Bush. For some time, the State Department even toyed with the idea of sending Dean to an asylum.52 Thankfully that thought was discarded as Dean suggested that he had no further interest in this charade of tests and physical exercise and would like to go to his home in Paris or Switzerland. Dean said: ‘This was the kind of technique that the Stalinist regime used to silence its critics in the Soviet Union. I could not imagine that these

methods could be employed by an American administration on one of its senior foreign service officers.’53 The entire set of expensive procedures to declare one of the senior American diplomats mentally unstable and unfit to serve was unnecessary. It is true that he felt that the US was responsible for the current state of affairs in South Asia and he wanted to have a chat with his bosses over why for nearly three years, they pretended to be ready with a peace plan for Afghanistan backed by all the regional players and why finally they turned around to support President Zia’s plans to arm Pakistan to the teeth. But he was by no means desperate for the job. He had served more than four decades as a diplomat and though diplomacy did not turn him into a billionaire or a multimillionaire, he definitely was confident of leading a comfortable post-retirement life. Dean was aware that presidents and secretaries had greater and more complex things to worry about and sometimes they had to disregard and dismiss the suggestions of the diplomats. ‘I considered myself privileged to have served five presidents as chief of mission. I would leave if asked,’ he stated. But apparently a letter of resignation would not serve the purpose. Dean ‘had to be cut off – completely – from anyone who might want to hear my thoughts about the controversies on the subcontinent of Asia. It was too much of a risk to set me free, where I could talk to newspaper reporters or old colleagues from the foreign service or officials from India or any other government.’54

The series of cataclysmic incidents in the summer and monsoon of 1988 were possible because they were moves and countermoves in a fastunfolding sequence of a war which was to last for the next three decades. But very few people in the capitals of South Asia or beyond had the full picture of the genesis of the crisis. Dean was one of the few with the encyclopedic knowledge of the crisis. From his office, Dean had collected all the papers over the past few years that gave him the ability to put together the jigsaw puzzle of South Asia. He realized that the costly dirty war which had escalated with Zia’s betrayal of the Soviet Union after the

Geneva Accords had begun earlier when the American government wasted no time in betraying Rajiv Gandhi’s support to an internationally backed coalition government in Kabul. He understood that while the American administration required fall guys in an election year to blame for the blowback expected from Afghanistan, they were unwilling to introspect and understand that some of the actions taken by the American leaders were responsible for the fight that broke out. ‘President Reagan obviously had his domestic politics in mind and he did not understand the complexity of Afghanistan and South Asia,’ Dean said, reflecting on the developments around August 1988.55 By 1988–89, the Americans had begun to realize that the support to the mujahideen had been stretched for too long and the Pakistani demand to arm the anti-Kabul fighters was proving to be costly. Dean was sympathetic to Rajiv Gandhi’s concerns over Pakistan and the terrorism that was emanating from Afghanistan. High-profile careers were ending – Ronald Reagan was giving way to George H.W. Bush – and the end of the cold war meant a whole array of decision makers were fast being challenged by the new world order. Zia was dead. Rajiv Gandhi was dealing with the fallout of a shaky regional order and a nosediving political career at home as elections neared. Dean, the seasoned diplomat, felt that there was nothing more left to pursue in the formal world of American diplomacy.

The life of the diplomat in the new era would not be like the one that they lived earlier. ‘There was a lot of scope for original thinking and troubleshooting in the earlier era. The life of a diplomat was far more challenging. Every day could be different as the American ambassador would truly be the only representative of his country in a foreign country away from home. That challenge was fast vanishing by the time John ended his stint in India,’ said Martine, explaining how she witnessed the change in the life of her husband in New Delhi. Dean and his family were back in Delhi in November 1988 to pack up and leave. A new American ambassador was expected to take charge within

days. The Deans stayed at the embassy and met friends in Delhi. They spent time with the Indian prime minister who counted them as his friends. Rajiv Gandhi, despite facing a grim political future, threw a party in honour of Dean and discussed his children’s education with him. Journalist Qamar Agha, who remembers the party, recounted that it is difficult to make sense of what prompted the prime minister of India to organize a farewell party for the ambassador of the United States.56 That Dean had been declared deranged was of no consequence either to Rajiv Gandhi or other friends of Dean in New Delhi. He had cemented solid friendships and in the coming years, his services would be sought by the industrial houses in India keen to reach out to world commerce. A new career as international business consultant beckoned Ambassador Dean. The brief spell of social life in New Delhi helped Dean recover from the jolt of being declared clinically deranged by his employers. With his wife and son, Dean left for Goa. Finally, the Dean family left Goa and flew to Paris from Bombay. It was in Paris that Dean spent the most disturbing part of his life. For several months following Dean’s return from Delhi, he was not visited by his colleagues or friends. His family was his only support. Such is the enduring pain of those months that even now conversation ends, whenever I ask Dean about how he felt on retiring in 1989. The Deans have not moved from their home at 29 Jules Sandeau since they returned to Paris in January 1989. The large flat is U-shaped, Martine loves to tell guests. The neighbourhood is ultra-chic and aristocratic. Though they purchased the flat during Dean’s career in the US foreign service, they found the flat was comfortable for their post-retirement needs. It had the shops, the salons, the fine dining restaurants, Quai D’Orsay, all nearby. The drive to the airport did not take more than an hour. But they did not like the silence around them initially. The Deans spent a lifetime travelling across the world. While John travelled on work, Martine travelled in South-East Asia, the Arab world and Africa. Martine found it difficult to adjust for a while to the new routine. But she nevertheless was the first one to take to the daily life in Paris. After all, Paris was where she grew up and returned every year to meet her family. Every morning she stepped out to shop and chat with friends.

Sometimes, she prepared meals at home and often they dined at famed Parisian restaurants. But what Dean sensed was that, unlike other diplomats who enjoyed freedom of employment and meeting after retirement, he was kept under surveillance. Diplomats from the United States called him or called on him often to make sure that he stayed away from the media. He was under pressure and it was obvious that for some time his former bosses expected him to maintain a low profile. Dean spent the long days reading newspapers and watching news on TV and he watched the world glide by. After more than four decades of intense work, Dean found it almost impossible to spend days on his own without getting into some challenging professional situation, or without writing a diplomatic cable. ‘For days, no one came to visit us. Family members came and went. But friends were absent. That was a very difficult time,’ Dean told me sitting near the window of his drawing room. Amazingly, for Dean who survived unimaginable rancour and acrimony, his voice had no anger or rage while recounting those early days of 1989, away from the action-filled days of New Delhi, and the psychiatrists of Washington DC.

Making Sense of It All But Dean had a great pastime that quickly gave him a self-made therapeutic break. The massive collection of papers that he had gathered since his days in Paris in the late 1960s had grown into a treasure trove. In the long hours, he read through every piece of paper that he had been storing in his Paris apartment. The collection had grown over more than two decades with letters, certificates, official cables, executive communications, newspaper cuttings, important and classified communication. Every morning, after breakfast, Dean, dressed in his business suit and blue tie, would sit on his chair and read and arrange the papers. He catalogued the papers into sections on Africa, France, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and India. He marked the important meetings and visits aside and created folders and files for each item and photograph.

The Dean residence has three large rooms that are for their personal use and three large rooms that are for their guests. It is in the study that Dean maintained his massive collection of papers, books, photographs that gave him the scope to unwind during those intensely unhappy days of the spring of 1989. Dean was the only one who could handle all the papers. So every day, he would sit down with a particular section of the collection and would write the citations for the papers. Thus began the ‘John Gunther Dean collection’, which was to become one of the finest collections of diplomatic papers that the National Archives of the United States would acquire. When I contacted the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Chief Archivist Keith Shuler said that the papers, including the classified ones, are indeed the best collection in their possession. What distinguishes the collection is that whether in the case of Lebanon, Cambodia or India, they tell a story from a certain point of view. However, what stands out is that the collector, in this case Dean, had an acute sense of being in the midst of historical currents and therefore kept collecting documents that were passing through his desk. It is this sense of history and perhaps quite a bit of old-fashioned sense of self-importance that made Dean collect all the papers.

After 9/11, as the world began speaking more and more about the terror threats from Af–Pak, Dean felt vindicated. He believes that the string of violent acts including the attack on the US on 9/11, that triggered the war on terror in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries could have been avoided if sincere attempts had been made for a broad-based government in Afghanistan, the need for which all sides appeared to have been in agreement initially.57 He also felt the need to tell the story of international peacemaking efforts in Afghanistan with supporting documents from his papers. As the diplomat looking after American interests in India, Dean chronicled almost everything in his papers. The chronology and discussion of various issues in the papers show that the Indian prime minister extended help to the US since he expected certain indirect benefits to flow to India

out of this cooperation. But those benefits did not flow in and Pakistan which was flush with weapons, and stored weapons for the next round of proxy war with India over Kashmir and Punjab, was not persuaded strongly to give up its policy of cross-border support to Punjab militants and the nuclear weapons plans. By the time he visited Washington DC in October 1987, Rajiv Gandhi and the United States had entered a cold phase in bilateral ties. The White House visit further established that the distance between both sides had increased. As the Pakistan-specific legislation was being discussed in the US Senate, a curious event took place in Delhi, which hinted that India and Afghanistan had begun collaborating even a month before the first visit by President Najibullah. On 19 November 1987, exactly a month after Rajiv Gandhi’s Washington DC trip, a security official noticed a wooden crate spilling ammunition on the conveyor belt of the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The box was one of the several that had arrived a little while ago on an Indian Airlines flight from Kabul. After scanning, a large number of boxes were found to contain rocket launchers, bullets and sophisticated weapons. As the airport security staff began the process, a person claiming to be working for the Research and Analysis Wing demanded that the boxes be released. Such was the influence of the official papers that the person showed the airport authorities that the boxes were immediately released. While the discovery of the boxes was reported, its significance was not analysed by the media at large. On 21 March 1988, a post of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) outside Vishvakarma temple in Phagwara in Punjab was targeted by the militants using rocket launchers. It was a sensational attack as use of rocket launchers in the attack indicated changing rules of security scenario in Punjab. Next day, the Lok Sabha passed the fifty-ninth amendment to the Constitution which empowered the government to impose a state of emergency in Punjab. Only one journalist, Dhiren Bhagat, connected the discovery of the wooden boxes filled with weapons with the first rocket attacks in Punjab and the imposition of emergency in the state. In a major article published in

April 1988, Bhagat claimed that India had imported the weapons to supply them to agent provocateurs in Punjab in order to change the dynamics of the Sikh militancy in the state. Bhagat reported that the crates were sent from Pul-e-Bagh-e-Umumi, Kabul. Bhagat and veteran journalist Rajinder Puri indicated that the weapons that passed through the airport in Delhi had been passed on to some ‘agent provocateurs’ in Punjab who carried out the attack in Phagwara to strengthen Rajiv’s hands to fight insurgency in Punjab.58 Dhiren’s story caused a furore as he indicated that India was importing some of the weapons from the Afghan government, to build a case against the insurgency in Punjab that was allegedly fuelled by Zia. The situation turned volatile with pressure mounting on the Indian government to come clean on how it planned to deal with the insurgents in Punjab. But before long, Dhiren was killed in a traffic accident as he was driving his new Suzuki Gypsy to work in April 1988. The weapons that flew into New Delhi from Kabul, however, were tiny compared to the humongous consignment that the mujahideen had taken into Afghanistan during those months of 1987 and 1988. While the early years of the jihad under Zia’s patronage saw a minuscule amount of weapons flow into Peshawar, after the clearance of foreign assistance to Pakistan by the US Congress, weapons for the jihad in Afghanistan alone had almost touched the $400 million mark.59 Added to the possible sale of force multipliers like fighter jets and battle tanks, President Zia’s forces had reached an unusually battle-ready state, which could have inspired military adventurism. A victorious President Zia chose to continue the war in Afghanistan, irrespective of the Geneva Accords. However, the Soviet occupation was still a few months away from ending at the time of President Zia’s air crash. Zia, who armed his country to fight the Afghan jihad, also prepared his forces for the next jihad in Kashmir and inside India. While India absorbed the blowback from the Afghan jihad in the form of insurgency in Punjab from the early 1980s, its government was in no position to stop the next jihad that would not be personally directed by Zia or his ISI director General Akhtar Rahman. The next round would be driven by the ideology that Zia created and fostered.

For the next one-and-a-half years, Najibullah’s government, armed by the retreating and angry Soviet forces, fought the mujahideen who had already begun a deadly internal battle. The jihad for India would take a decisive turn just as Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure was ending in November 1989. Though the years from 1984 to August 1988 provided a lot of twists and turns, without a great challenger like Zia being around, the spark had gone out of the diplomatic row that had erupted between New Delhi and Islamabad. But the failure of diplomacy during Zia’s last months would lead to the next round of conflict over Afghanistan, which would continue into the twentyfirst century. The election of November 1988 threw up Benazir Bhutto as the new prime minister of Pakistan. Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto met each other in two famous meetings to make a fresh beginning, but facing a political backlash because of political scandals at home, Rajiv Gandhi failed to make a mark during the last year of his government. In the meanwhile, without Zia, the ISI chief Hamid Gul intensified the jihad in Peshawar. Zia had believed that the government in Kabul would fall with the departure of the Soviets, but Najibullah was still around. Under pressure, ISI and the mujahideen framed a new policy. A new jihadi leadership was being born where the Afghan mujahideen would be overtaken by a global jihadi leadership. The new round of jihad would throw up the leaders like Osama bin Laden. In Peshawar, a booby-trapped car blew up with a Palestinian named Abdullah Azzam on 24 November 1989. With that explosion, a possible challenger and a rival to bin Laden was wiped out. Azzam, a charismatic young man was the top ideologue of global jihad like bin Laden but the latter was more resourceful and could deliver the global project. Azzam was one of the thousands of Arab jihadis who, for a decade, had gone to Afghanistan through Pakistan to fight the Soviets. But with the declaration of the Soviet withdrawal, the jihad was free to move elsewhere. Abdullah Azzam’s ideology of exporting the jihad to the rest of the globe would first afflict India, beginning with the state of Jammu and Kashmir. On 2 December, Vishwanath Pratap Singh would be sworn in as the seventh prime minister of India. His administration was characterized by

intense internal political rivalry, which gave ample time to Pakistan’s jihadis, now in the care of ISI chief Hamid Gul, to spread into Kashmir. Soon after Singh became prime minister, Kashmir exploded in waves of militancy as the world took note of extraordinary firepower of the ISItrained militants and India’s cluelessness about a containing strategy, which led to serious allegations of human rights violations in the Kashmir Valley. The period after Zia has been described as ‘Omar’s Jihad’60 by Bruce Reidel. Driven by cultural conflict with the West and the deep state in Islamabad, young Western-educated Pakistanis felt it right to fight the jihad abroad. Their first stop was Kashmir where the insurgent battle against India had found a new cause following the state election in 1987 which was widely viewed as rigged. The jihad, backed by the upcoming Taliban figures like Mullah Omar raged in Kashmir, and quickly spread to parts of northern India. In one stunning act, a UK national of Pakistani origin Omar Saeed Sheikh took westerners hostage in Uttar Pradesh in 1994 in an act which remains unparalleled in the history of India–Pakistan proxy war. But the first shots of this war, which raged throughout the 1990s, leading up to the hijacking of IC 814 on 25 December1999 and the 9/11 attack in New York, were not fired from the guns of the mujahideen. The global jihad was the outcome of the failure to have a peaceful transition in Afghanistan that all interested parties wanted initially but scuttled finally.

However, the flow of events from 17 August 1988 to the series of crossborder attacks by Pakistan-backed insurgents, all the way to the first shots of the ‘War on Terror’ took a curious turn with the 16 November 1988 victory of Benazir Bhutto in the general election in Pakistan after the death of Zia. The Pakistan Army that had just months earlier been her sworn enemy was now forced to witness her swearing-in ceremony. The absurd equation of power soon became clear as Benazir, despite being the prime minister, had no role in the nuclear weapon programme of Pakistan, which remained under the control of the Pakistan military. Given this state of affairs, a military victory would help Benazir improve her standing with the armed forces. It would also help ISI the most whose calculations about

Najibullah’s departure had gone wrong. ISI chief Hamid Gul planned an offensive with the help of irregular fighters. To hasten what Benazir and Hamid Gul felt would be the ultimate dissolution of the government in Kabul, Benazir sent her advisers along with the mujahideen to the city of Jalalabad in the spring of 1989. The siege of Jalalabad ruined the city but the government of Afghanistan could not be dislodged from the city. Najibullah’s troops held on to Jalalabad, with the substantial help that Moscow continued to provide. The irony of the Jalalabad operation was that less than a year ago, Zia and Benazir had been deadly enemies, but in the spring of 1989, Benazir was trying to realize Zia’s dream and trigger the dissolution of Afghanistan’s government led by Najibullah. Though he had to deal with factional politics as well as the initial blows coming from the new Taliban–al Qaeda combine, Najibullah would survive the next few years. In Benazir’s rocky first term as the prime minister of Pakistan, there were mistakes galore and she failed to strike a working relationship with the Indian prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. On 13 March 1990 in a speech in Muzaffarabad, Benazir Bhutto announced her intention to support the militants in Kashmir and promised a ‘thousand-year war’.61 The Jalalabad misadventure proved to be costly for Benazir as she had to remove her intelligence chief Gul, who became her sworn enemy and conspired to remove her from the post of the prime minister. The crisis that began to engulf South Asia in 1988 was also an immense personal setback for John Gunther Dean as it undermined his reputation as a good diplomat, and destroyed any chances of a bright future for Rajiv Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and of course for Mohammed Najibullah of Afghanistan, as the regional meltdown expanded and morphed to produce Afghanistan’s failed state. It was in this mood of deep personal anguish that Ambassador Dean began chastising his bosses about the air crash of 17 August. But the US State Department very obviously did not want anyone to remember or remind them about the way the meltdown in South Asia had been a gradual affair stemming from the continued US aid to Pakistan and the growing interest of a US-backed president Zia to conquer Kabul by his proxy fundamentalists.

Two days after the air crash of 17 August, Rajiv Gandhi turned forty-four. August 1988 had been the most turbulent month. The Soviet Union kept its promise of withdrawing from Afghanistan within a short time. Helicopters, aircraft, tanks and armoured carriers began moving out of Afghanistan all the way back to their Central Asian bases. The Soviet plan was to present the withdrawal as a success but the reality was far from that. Without the broad-based government that Rajiv, Reagan, Gorbachev, Zia, Najibullah and the mujahideen chiefs had worked on, peace would not return to Afghanistan or South Asia for the post-cold-war era. Between 1988 and his assassination on 21 May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi did not speak about the unsuccessful attempts at peacemaking in Afghanistan that was scuttled by a combination of failures at the diplomatic level with the US and with Pakistan. Lessons drawn from Rajiv Gandhi’s failed efforts to restore peace in Afghanistan remain relevant to South Asia. It has been more than three decades since India planned the biggest ‘Afghan-led’ peace process for Afghanistan. It was in this context that the first visit of Rajiv Gandhi to the United States took place. His second official visit to the White House in 1987 happened even as startling revelations about Pakistan’s nuclear smuggling were published in the US media. Given the revelations about the smuggling network of Pakistan, the visit should have drawn both India and the US closer. But the opposite of that happened. The more the counter-proliferation section of the CIA wanted to highlight the nuclear smuggling by the A.Q. Khan network, the closer Pakistan and the US became in 1987 and in 1988. The closeness of relations between Pakistan and the US, despite the revelations of Pakistan’s nuclear perfidy, disturbed Richard Barlow, a gutsy young CIA officer in charge of counter-proliferation. In the summer of 1987, even as Rajiv Gandhi’s ties with the United States was undamaged, Barlow proved that the long-suspected nuclear smuggling charges against President Zia’s government were not fictional. Barlow had set up an elaborate network of agents to expose the people whom Pakistan was using to smuggle out components needed for producing nuclear weapons.

The 1987 arrest of Arshad Parvez, a Canadian of Pakistani origin in the US, and Barlow’s briefings to the members of the US Congress threatened to trigger the Solarz amendment which could have stopped support to Pakistan. But the United States was determined to look the other way and proceeded to pass laws that would ensure the flow of weapons and foreign assistance under the Inouye–Kasten Act, disregarding India’s previous support in the coalition plans for Afghanistan. The nuclear ambitions of Pakistan were not proved in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi pledged to send Romesh Bhandari to Moscow to start a secret Indian channel to connect President Ronald Reagan with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev over Afghanistan. But the same channel dried up when Barlow discovered Pakistan’s nuclear smuggling activities in the West. Despite reports of Pakistan’s smuggling of nuclear-grade material, the country that was punished was India, which was subjected to a technology denial regime. The US appeared to believe that it was India, the ‘big boy’ of the region that triggered all troubles. This episode of US foreign policy prompted Rajiv Gandhi’s retributive diplomacy which further jeopardized the delicate peace plan for a coalition in Afghanistan. The rewards for Barlow were bitter. Official investigations haunted him for twenty-three years. Barlow did not meet Rajiv Gandhi during his trips to the US in the 1980s as he was not expected to brief foreign dignitaries. Yet he, like John Gunther Dean, has been questioning the wisdom of the Reagan administration’s decision to assist a nuclear-armed Pakistan with more money and weapons. Faced with the end of the cold war, and new business opportunities in the Gulf region, the US capital had little interest in promoting peace in Afghanistan. Powerful forces in the important Western capitals wanted to invest in the free market that was opening up by the end of the cold war. For such powerful figures, peace in Afghanistan was secondary; what mattered more was to keep a foreign government in good humour. Zia, for the US administration, was just another dictator with a few nuclear weapons. The decision makers of the US in the 1980s did not foresee that the Pakistani nuclear technology could travel to North Korea that would use it to threaten the US.

The present-day global nuclear scenario can be traced to the Reagan administration’s tolerance of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and its violation of the Geneva Accords despite India’s moves for regional stability. Three decades have passed since the India–US dialogue over Afghanistan and Pakistan’s nuclear plans broke up, but the fallout of those days can still be felt and without doubt will continue to be felt in world affairs in the coming days.

Notes

Introduction: An Undiplomatic Question 1.

John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing/Vellum, 2009, p. 190. 2. Ibid., p. 197. 3. Ibid., p. 201. 4. Ibid., p. 194. 5. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/findingaids/Dean_John_G unther.pdf, accessed on 5 January 2017. 6. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 108. 7. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/In dia.pdf, p. 1, accessed on 5 January 2017. 8. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/05/us/deaver-s-trip-to-india-and-amatter-of-trade-c71.html, accessed on 5 February 2016. 9. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. 10. Jamsheed Marker, Cover Point: Impressions of Leadership in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 150. 11. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 51. 12. Cable to Secretary of State, 7.12.1987, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87-12/87’, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister

Gandhi, 1985-1988’, Box 6, Part 1, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta. 13. Cable to Secretary of State, 6.9.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985-1988’, Box 5, Part 1, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta.

1. ‘Who killed Zia?’ 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing/Vellum, 2009, p. x. Ibid., p. 189. B. Raman, The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 2007, pp. 194–95. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia: Pakistan’s Power Politics 1977-1988, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 400. Ibid., p. 404. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of The East: An Autobiography, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 379. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia, p. 407. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p.189. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, p. 375. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia, p. 401. Ibid., p. 402. Ibid., pp. 402–03 John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. ix. Ibid., p. xii. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen.

20. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p.196. 21. Ibid., p. xii 22. Ibid., p. xi. During the presidential election of 1988, Vice-President George H. W. Bush faced a tough challenge from Governor Michael Dukakis. But the vice-president soon hit his challenger with allegations of lack of patriotism. But an ‘October Surprise’, a major development delivering a blow to one of the candidates could change the election narrative. 23. K. Natwar Singh, One Life is Not Enough: An Autobiography, New Delhi: Rupa, 2014. The biography has a section on Rajiv Gandhi years, but does not share details of the Afghanistan policy of Rajiv Gandhi. 24. S.K. Dhawan, Day By Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), Volume One (1944-1988), Delhi: Wave Publications, 1993, p. 281. 25. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy: Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 343. 26. Ibid., pp. 188–89. 27. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, p. 86. 28. Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, London: Penguin/Viking, 2010, p. 172. 29. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince: The Life and Death of Murtaza Bhutto, London: Viking, 1997, pp. 41–69. 30. Ibid., pp. 70–80. 31. Author’s interview with Satish Jacob. 32. Kuldip Nayar, Report on Afghanistan, New Delhi: Allied Publishers Private Limited, 1981, pp. 176–77. 33. Ibid., p. 32. 34. Ibid., p. 55. An immediate fallout of the Soviet intervention was the turnaround by Egypt, a Soviet ally which had recently concluded the Camp David agreement with Israel. Egypt demanded that an Islamic summit should be convened to discuss Afghanistan. 35. Ibid., p. 51 36. Ibid., p. 59

37. Ibid., p. 77. Indira Gandhi demanded a firm date of withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Soviet forces during her talks with Andrei Gromyko during his 12–14 February 1980 visit to India and was told that the Soviets were willing to leave, though a deadline was not given. 38. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 80. 39. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. 40. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 83. The recollection by Diego Cordovez provides a fascinating study of the challenges before the mild-mannered diplomat as neither the Government of Afghanistan nor the mujahideen–Pakistan alliance wanted to talk to each other. 41. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, p. 130.

2. John Gunther Dean 1. 2.

3.

4.

Indrani Bagchi, ‘End of nuclear apartheid against India’, The Times of India, 4 August 2007. S. Jaishankar, ‘India and USA: New Directions’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, p. 771. Ashok Parthasarathy, Technology at the Core: Science and Technology with Indira Gandhi, New Delhi: Pearson, 2006, p. 113. Ashok Parthasarathy point out the difficult conditions that the US imposed on India during the 1960s and the abrupt termination of Western support to India’s nuclear energy programme following the peaceful nuclear explosion in Pokhran, 1974. Letter from Erich Bloch, Director, National Science Foundation, Washington DC, to John Gunther Dean, 19 May 1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence Between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985-1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing/Vellum, 2009, p. 169. Bruce Riedel, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of Global Jihad, New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2011, p. 40. Riedel’s reading of the cross-border terror from Pakistan recognized that it was a spillover of the Afghan jihad that hit India in Kashmir in the early 1990s. However, he viewed it as a bilateral issue. Letter from Richard W. Murphy to Michael Armacost, ‘Visit of Indian Prime Minister, 20 October 1987’, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegraphs, 10/20/1987’ (Prime Minister Gandhi’s visit to US), Box 6. This cable shows clearly that while India and the US aspired for convergence in economic and technological front, they failed to separate this agenda from the differences on Afghanistan, Pakistan and US global strategy. Mr Murphy said: ‘For India, major irritant is follow-on package of US security assistance to Pakistan, particularly in view of reports of Pakistani progress towards nuclear weapons.’ John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 191. The Deans met the Sundarjis in Delhi in the 1980s. During General Sundarji’s visit to Paris on 25 June 1993, he accused the United States for being behind the assassination of Zia. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 134. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/In dia.pdf, accessed on 16 January 2016. Dean mentions in his testimony to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library that Steven Solarz was keen to promote Israeli interest with foreign governments like India. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 51.

3. Rajiv’s Western Affinities 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

US intelligence note on Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, John Gunther Dean Papers, Personal Collection of John Gunther Dean. Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi: A Biography, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992, p. 402. J.N. Dixit, An Afghan Diary: Zahir Shah to Taliban, New Delhi: Konark Publishing Pvt Ltd, 2000, pp. 404–06. Ibid. Ibid., 407. Author’s interview with Natwar Singh. Ansari was travelling in Sa’na on 31 October 1984 with President Zail Singh but returned and took charge. Tavleen Singh, Durbar, New Delhi: Hachette, 2012, pp. 224–26. Tavleen Singh wrote about the investigation that rode on rumours of a foreign angle to the assassination of Indira Gandhi with the help of insiders. C.P. Ramachandran, ‘The Leap Year’, The Week, 3–9 November, 1985. J.N. Dixit, An Afghan Diary, p. 409. Ibid., p. 412. Tavleen Singh, Durbar, pp. 228–29. Ibid. Tavleen Singh narrated incidents depicting that shadowy intelligence officials conducted random inquiry to uncover the truth behind the assassination of Indira Gandhi and went to the extent of suspecting family members and friends. R.D. Pradhan, My Years with Rajiv and Sonia, New Delhi: Hay House India, 2014, pp. 19–21. Ibid. Vinod Sharma and G.K. Singh, ‘The man called MAK: Quite a few embassy officials are not what their designations mean’, The Week, 3– 9 February 1985. J.N. Dixit, An Afghan Diary, p. 405.

17. I.K. Gujral, Matters of Discretion: An Autobiography, Delhi: Hay House India, 2011, pp. 177–83. 18. Ibid. 19. John Gunther Dean’s oral testimony, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA, https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/In dia.pdf, accessed on 26 March 2016. 20. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing/Vellum, 2009, pp. 151–52. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 165. 23. US State Department’s intelligence assessment note, ‘India’s response to US initiatives’, 1985, personal collection of John Gunther Dean. 24. Ibid. 25. Vinod Sharma, ‘Spies in the PM’s office’, The Week, 27 January–2 February, 1985, p. 23. 26. Vinod Sharma and G.K. Singh, ‘Selling the nation’s secrets: the spy scandal has exposed glaring deficiencies in the security set up’, The Week, 3–9 February 1985, pp. 18–22. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Vinod Sharma, ‘A jinxed house: The prime minister will shift to a new building’, The Week, 27 January–2 February 1985, p. 27. 30. Letter from John Gunther Dean to Sonia Gandhi, 25 February 1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, ‘India – Correspondence Between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2. 31. US State Department’s intelligence assessment note, ‘India’s response to US initiatives’, 1985, personal collection of John Gunther Dean. 32. T.V. R. Shenoy, ‘Triumph’, The Week, 6–12 January, 1985, p. 18. 33. US State Department’s intelligence assessment note, ‘India’s response to US initiatives’, 1985, personal collection of John Gunther Dean. 34. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean.

35. Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2007, p. 299. 36. Ibid., p. 326. 37. Ibid. 38. P.N.Dhar, Indira Gandhi, The Emergency and Indian Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 325. 39. Ibid., pp. 304, 305, 320. 40. US State Department’s intelligence assessment note, ‘India’s response to US initiatives’, 1985, personal collection of John Gunther Dean. 41. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. 42. Vinod Sharma, ‘Defection or elimination?’, The Week, 31 March–6 April 1985, pp. 14–16. 43. Oral testimony by John Gunther Dean, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 44. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, Karachi: Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law, 2009, pp. 168–69. 45. Ibid., p. 169. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., p. 171. 48. Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan, New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, pp. 268–69. 49. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, pp. 172–73. 50. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East: An Autobiography, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 274. 51. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince: The Life and Death of Murtaza Bhutto, London: Verso, 1997, pp. 95–120. 52. Ibid., p. 42. 53. Ibid., p. 75. Anwar narrated Jacob’s meeting with Murtaza during a visit to Delhi. Jacob recounted in an interview with the author that the meeting led to a long drinking session with Murtaza and Raja Anwar. 54. Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, London: Penguin, pp. 176–78. 55. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, pp. 70–80.

56. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State George Shultz, 23.12.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86-6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Natwar Singh told Solarz that India had taken up training of terrorists in Faisalabad Jail which prompted Zia to invite an Indian team to check the jail. Indians rejected Zia’s offer in the belief that ‘there would be nothing to see by the time the Indian inspection team reached Faisalabad.’ 57. S. K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), Volume One (1944-1988), Delhi: Wave Publications, 1993, p. 122. 58. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 171. 59. Vinod Sharma, ‘Selling the nation’s secrets’, The Week, 3–9 February 1985, pp. 18–25. 60. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. 61. ‘Prime Minister’s Broadcast to the Nation’ over A.I.R and Doordarshan, 5 January 1985, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. 62. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 169. 63. Letter from Ronald Reagan to Rajiv Gandhi, 15.12.1985, John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, ‘India – Correspondence Between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2. 64. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 31.1.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, 1/86-6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 65. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 185.

4. Annapurna in Moscow 1.

A.P. Venkateswaran was secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) during Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari’s tenure and succeeded him in 1986. The Hindujas continued to prosper during the Rajiv Gandhi period and had set up a $2 million

endowment at Harvard to promote research and education projects on India. See, T.P. Sreenivasan and James M. Peck (eds), Forever Venkat: A Tribute to Ambassador A.P. Venkateswaran, New Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 2015, p. 25. John Gunther Dean’s collection contains a folder on the Hindujas showing how during Rajiv years, the Hindujas expanded their influence in the US. 2. B. Raman, Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 2007, p. 90. 3. K. Gopalakrishnan and G.K. Singh, ‘It’s not my exhibition, says Pupul Jayakar’, The Week, 28 April–4 May 1985, pp. 11–12. 4. John Russel, ‘ Art and the Life of India’, New York Times, 2 June 1985. 5 Bhabani Sengupta, The Gorbachev Factor in World Affairs: An Indian Interpretation, Delhi: BR Publishing Corporation, 1989, p. 73. 6. K. Gopalakrishnan, ‘Festival of sacrilege: Hindu sentiment is hurt at the thoughtless removal of temple idols’, The Week, 28 April–4 May, 1985, pp. 10–11. Apart from the enormous financial cost, the exhibition generated controversy for the removal of icons and deities from India without adequate consultation. 7. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. 8. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, (with copies to US embassies in Kabul, Islamabad and Moscow), New Delhi, 24. 11. 1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86-6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 9. Author’s interview with Vijay Dhar. 10. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, New Delhi, 24.11.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86-6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 11. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, New Delhi,14.9.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 20.10.1987 (Prime Minister Gandhi’s

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

visit to US)’, (a stand-alone folder in Box 6), Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 27.9.1985, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 9/85 – 12/85’, Box 6, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 13.11.1985, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 9/85 – 12/85’, Box 6, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. In this cable, Dean reported on his first formal meeting with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on 13 November 1985. He informed the Secretary of State that Gandhi promised to personally brief Dean as and when required. B.M. Oza, Bofors: The Ambassador’s Evidence, New Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1997, p. 21. Author’s interview with Vani Sundarji. In the John Gunther Dean Papers, Michael Armacost refers to India as a ‘big boy’. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East: An Autobiography, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 274. After the election conducted in the last week of February 1985, Zia began executing the militant supporters of Murtaza Bhutto. First to be hanged was Ayaz Sammu on 1 March; Nasser Baloch was hanged on 5 March. Baloch was part of the March 1981 hijacking of a PIA jet and Sammu was part of the plot to kill Zahoor-ul-Hassan in September 1982. Sammu and Baloch belonged to the Al Zulfikar Organization. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, Karachi: Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law, 2009, p. 169. ‘Speech by Secretary of State George Shultz at the State Department Luncheon, Washington DC’, MEA, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, 12 June 1985, p. 176. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi: (1944-1991), Volume One (1944-1988), Delhi: Wave Publications, 1993, p. 187. This was the second time in a year that both leaders agreed on a no-

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

first-strike understanding. The first time, they had agreed on the principle in Moscow following Chernenko funeral. But this time, they addressed a joint press conference after the meeting. Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, London: Penguin/Viking, 2010, pp. 247–55. Benazir Bhutto and Jamsheed Marker have also mentioned the death of Shah Nawaz but each of these accounts differ from the other, though Fatima Bhutto’s narration seems to be more realistic as it contains details of the scene of the incident. As the military and intelligence chief of anti-Zia Al Zulfikar Organization, Shah Nawaz Bhutto was a notch above his contemporary international fugitives/terrorists as he also enjoyed much greater international patronage due to his family connections. Shahid M. Amin, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: A Reappraisal, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 87. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 174. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p.181. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, p. 319. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of Pakistani Diplomat, p. 182. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy: Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 290–92. Rajiv Gandhi’s speech at ‘Beyond war Award’ event, 14 December 1985, MEA, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol. XXXI, No 1, 1985, p. 586. The Group of Six went a step ahead of disarmament and demanded that both the superpowers and other nuclear powers opt for a twelvemonth moratorium on underground nuclear testing, which would be monitored through globally dispersed censors and monitoring stations. A month after the ‘peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE)’ in May 1974, the Zangger Committee adopted a trigger list of nuclear components for export to the Third World. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was revised a year later in May 1975 to make it more stringent, and in January 1976, at the London meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a special provision for the sale of nuclear components to non-

31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

nuclear weapons states and non-NPT member states was adopted. These measures restricted India’s nuclear energy sector and India continued to work around the barriers for the next four decades till the India–US nuclear deal in 2008. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 31.1.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/866/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. During this meeting, Chinmaya Gharekhan sought a US assessment of the Gorbachev proposals on disarmament. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, ‘Meeting with Prime Minister Gandhi’, 13.3.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86 – 6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Letter from President Ronald Reagan to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, 7.3.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. In the meanwhile, Reagan had sent his envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, to brief Rajiv on the Soviet–US talks which boosted mutual confidence. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscence of a Pakistani Diplomat, pp. 184–85. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 30.5.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86 – 6/86’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. During this discussion, Rajiv Gandhi spoke of accelerating Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Bulk of the withdrawal was to be completed in the first year, while the entire withdrawal process was to take three-and-half years as decided by the Soviets as part of the seventh round of negotiations in Geneva during May–July 1986. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), p. 285. Initial reports appeared to trust that the emergency landing was caused by a smoking engine, but Rajiv himself set the media to speculate soon by saying that the sudden visit was not due to the

39. 40.

41

42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

fifteenth anniversary of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. Subsequent reports indicated that Rajiv met Mikhail Gorbachev during the emergency stopover. Ibid., p. 298. R.D. Pradhan, My Years with Rajiv and Sonia, New Delhi: Hay House India, 2014, p. 100. Amarjit Singh, a disgruntled Sikh activist fired a sawn-off shotgun but the weapon failed, preventing a bloodbath. Cable from Vice-President George H.W. Bush to Rajiv Gandhi, 20.10.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence Between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Prabhu Chawla and Inderjit Badhwar, ‘Arun Nehru: Life without Power’, India Today, 30 November 1986, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mystery-surrounds-circumstancesunder-which-arun-nehru-was-ousted-from-power/1/349062.html, accessed on 31 December 2016. R.D. Pradhan, My Years with Rajiv and Sonia, pp.84–86. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. Cable from Secretary of State to US Embassy, 22.11.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 24.11.1986, (copies marked to US embassies in Kabul, Moscow and Islamabad), John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86 – 6/86’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. This cable refers to a landmark conversation between Foreign Secretary Venkateswaran and Dean, a day before Gorbachev was to land in Delhi. The discussion was around the letter from President Reagan to Rajiv wherein Reagan asked Rajiv to discuss Afghanistan with Gorbachev: ‘Currently, the UN-sponsored negotiations are stalemated over the length of the Soviet withdrawal timetable. The last round of talks in August produced no forward movement on this

48. 49.

50.

51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

key issue and no subsequent round has been scheduled. I urge you to use your talks with the general secretary to discuss the need to hasten resolution of this issue which is of such great concern to people everywhere’, said President Reagan in the letter. Ibid. Cable from Richard W. Murphy to Michael Armacost, 24.5.1986, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/86 – 6/86’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. This crucial cable shows that Rajiv Gandhi had dispatched Romesh Bhandari for backchannel talks on Afghanistan with the Soviets soon after his visit to Washington DC. Bhandari’s discussion in Moscow was to convey US–India talks on Afghanistan, and the cable notes the development as part of the backgrounder for the possible visit by Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 238–39. Ibid., p. 208. Gorbachev called Najibullah to Moscow and informed him that the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was inevitable and promised ‘full support’ to the government in the form of economic and military assistance, but it would have to look after itself after withdrawal. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 190. Ibid., pp. 193–94. Rajiv Gandhi’s speech to the US Congress, 13 June 1985, ‘Prime Minister’s address to the US Congress’, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol. XXXI, No 1, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi,1985. John Gunther Dean’s notes, File 13, ‘Exchange of Letters between President Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi of India, 1985-1988’, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence Between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), p. 345.

57. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 194. 58 Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 299. Negotiations between the UN negotiator Cordovez backed by Pakistan, the United States and the Soviets led to a paper titled, ‘Scenario for an Accelerated Process of National Reconciliation’ – the ultimate framework for a coalition government which was to govern Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. It was a landmark achievement considering that the formula had the support of all the stakeholders – Pakistan, Afghanistan, the mujahideen, Moscow, Washington DC – and it matched Rajiv Gandhi’s formula. 59. Cable from US Embassy, Tokyo, to US Embassy, New Delhi, 12.5.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/87 – 6/87, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. This cable is illustrative of the problems between the State Department and John Gunther Dean. It more or less accuses Dean of not always having the best interests of the US in mind. 60. John Gunther Dean’s cable to Secretary of State, 5.2.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/87 – 6/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable describes Pakistan’s response to Operation Brasstacks as ‘flawed’ but also blames India for the escalation. ‘There was no good guys or bad guys in this confrontation,’ the cable observes about the exercise which might have hardened the Pakistan position at a time when sensitive discussions on Afghanistan were under way at a multilateral level. 61. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. 62. Kuldeep Nayar, Scoop: Inside Stories from the Partition to the Present, New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2006, pp. 171– 80. 63. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, pp. 214, 219. Senator Clairborne Pell and Congressman Stephen Solarz opposed Zia because of the political repression against democratic forces in Pakistan.

64. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 11. 6. 1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/87 – 6/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 65. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy, p. 327. Marker told Zia that the discovery of the Arshad Pervez network could trigger the Solarz Amendment jeopardizing the congressional move for foreign assistance to Pakistan. 66. Ibid., pp. 330–32. 67. Ibid., 331. 68. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 14.9.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 20.10.1987 (Prime Minister Gandhi’s visit to US), Box 6. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 69. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. 70. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), p. 461. 71. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. 72. Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriation Bill, December 4 (legislative day December 3), 1987, pp. 33–44. 73. Ibid., p. 35. 74. The Hindu, 4 December 1987, p. 1. 75. Ibid. 76. Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriation Bill, December 4 (legislative day December 3), 1987, p. 34. 77. Cable from John Gunther Dean to the Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor Colin Powell), 2.12.1987. John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 78. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), p. 486. 79. Cable from Secretary of State to John Gunther Dean, 3.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta,

80.

81. 82.

83.

84.

85. 86.

87.

USA. The cable contains details of Ambassador P.K. Kaul’s interaction with Under Secretary Michael Armacost. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 5.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy, p. 331. Cable from Arnold Raphel to Secretary of State, 14.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 14.12. 1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. Dean reported, ‘Gandhi said he was at a loss to understand what suddenly brought about a change in both the atmosphere and direction of US policy. He pointed out that if the efforts of the last two years to build a more trusting relationship between our two countries were to flounder, it would be a long time before any prime minister could ever openly advocate working closely with the United States.’ Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy, p. 332. Cable from John Gunther Dean to the Secretary of State, 23.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 - 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ronen Sen said that it was ‘impossible’ for Rajiv Gandhi to cancel the meeting with Najibullah. ‘As a matter of fact, it in no way represents a change of Indian policy. Indians are maintaining contact with “all repeat all” Afghan elements in a possible solution to the Afghan problem,’ Sen told Dean. Letter from Rajiv Gandhi to Ronald Reagan, 24.12. 1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 – 1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2.

88

Letter from Rajiv Gandhi to George H. W. Bush, 24.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985-1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 89. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), p. 499.

5. The Playground Opens Up 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

B. S. Das, Memoirs of an Indian Diplomat, New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited, 2010, p. 48. During the first four decades after Independence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was often helped by India. In the 1960s following his imprisonment, he visited London for treatment and received support from India that was routed through non-government channels. He never felt at home in Pakistan. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), Volume One (1944–1988), Delhi: Wave Publications, 1993, p. 504. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 325. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, Karachi: Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law, 2009, p. 205. J.N. Parimoo, ‘US intelligence chief new envoy to India’, The Times of India, 1 January 1988. Author’s interview with Natwar Singh. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 23.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid.

10. Ibid. Ronen Sen told Dean, after he met with Rajiv Gandhi on 23 December 1987, that India has been in touch with all sides of the Afghan war, ‘including groups in Pakistan’. 11. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 14.9.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 20/10/87’ (Prime Minister Gandhi’s visit to the US), Box 6, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. By the autumn of 1987, the Reagan administration was well informed that Rajiv Gandhi had begun to face strong criticism from both the Right and the Left for his work and was under pressure. 12. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 7.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. This cable contains some of the strongest reaction from India to the Inouye–Kasten resolution. 13. Ibid. 14. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 4.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable was sent after Rajiv Gandhi told Dean that he was ‘deeply shocked’ by the efforts of the Senate subcommittee to use India as a vehicle to obtain appropriations for the US aid program to Pakistan’. Though Rajiv met Dean on several occasions, this email is special as he spoke frankly about the impact of the Inouye–Kasten resolution on India–US ties. 15. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 7.12.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 7/87 – 12/87’, Box, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. This cable contains some of the strongest reaction from India to the Inouye-Kasten resolution. The Inouye–Kasten resolution had triggered a strong response in the Lok Sabha and the Prime Minister’s Office tried to reduce the humiliation that Rajiv faced in parliament. ‘Gandhi feels the administration in Washington has probably inadvertently undercut the pro-US stance he has personally taken

publicly in the Indian parliament when he characterised his trip to Washington DC as highly successful, stating that his American interlocutors had a greater understanding for India’s policies. The gist of what Ronen Sen said was that we have created a political problem for Gandhi domestically and that the opposition will use it for all it is worth,’ Dean reported. 16. The relevant three-page document is undated but is part of the Box 6 of 1988 of John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. However, it mentions that it was meant to be an assessment of fundamentalism and Islam in the Afghan resistance which was part of the briefing material prepared for Under Secretary Michael Armacost’s January 1988 trip to Islamabad. Divided into six segments, the note says that the Islamists are not fundamentalists in Afghanistan and describes the seven-party mujahideen alliance in positive terms. Apart from presenting fundamentalist leaders Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Yunis Khalis as highly influential leaders, the document reveals that Khalis held a meeting with the US consulate in Peshawar on 28 December 1987 when he gave assurance that an ‘Islamic government in Kabul would be very different from that in Tehran and would pose no threat to the US.’ Khalis also sought American help in finding out the Soviet position on accepting an Islamic government in Kabul following the completion of withdrawal. The paper illustrated clearly the gulf between Indian approach to the fundamentalist forces among the mujahideen and the US willingness to work with the same forces. 17. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 3.2.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/ Telegrams, 1/885/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Galbraith’s visit, ostensibly to assess the damage caused to India–US ties touched upon many things, but most importantly on Af–Pak interests of India. Rajiv Gandhi insisted that the United States should stop sending weapons into Afghanistan to help create stability in Kabul. 18. Ibid.

19. Cable from Michael Armacost to John Gunther Dean, 12.2.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Armacost says in this startling message, ‘I believe that candor and frankness are the touchstone of mature political relationships. If our relations with the Indians can’t stand this kind of candor, then the foundation may not be as strong as the reporting from New Delhi has been suggesting.’ 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 333. Unaware of Rajiv’s personal involvement in the intervention, Cordovez viewed Natwar Singh’s Rome visit as a ‘marginal incursion’ which however diverged from Rajiv Gandhi’s passionate articulation of his role in support of seeking stability in Kabul. However, Cordovez acknowledged the impact of this visit on his efforts and said, ‘The Indian marginal incursion into the Afghan conflict had irritated the President of Pakistan and had thwarted my efforts to achieve a more forceful involvement of the cautious monarch in the reconciliation process.’ 23. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 212. 24. The discussion between Yuli Vorontsov and Zia is stunning as it portrays that how the hard bargaining of Zia had pushed the Soviets to the corner. In this meeting held on 10 February 1988, Zia sprang a surprise and said that Pakistan would prefer a transition government (led by the mujahideen) in place before signing the Geneva Accords. The new position of Zia was a rude jolt to all the diplomatic efforts of Cordovez and Vorontsov. 25. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State (apparently meant for Michael Armacost as it drew a response from him), 11.2.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable says that Natwar

26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35 36. 37. 38. 39.

took the demarche to the Indian ambassador to Washington DC, ‘very personally’. Cable from Michael Armacost to John Gunther Dean, 12.2.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. Inderjit Badhwar, Madhu Trehan and Sunil Sethi, ‘Passage to the West’, India Today, 3 September 1985. Letter from Armand Hammer (Occidental Petroleum Corporation) to George H.W. Bush, 26.2.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence between Reagan and Prime Minister Gandhi, 1985 -1988’, Box 5, Part 1 of 2. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Author’s interviews with Jamsheed Marker and John Gunther Dean. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Author’s interview with Jamsheed Marker. Ibid. Joseph E. Persico, ‘The Last Tycoon’, The New York Times, 13 October 1996. Serge Schmemenn, ‘Chernenko buried in the Red Square to the funeral strains of Chopin’, The New York Times, 14 March 1985. Author’s interview with Jamsheed Marker. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 11.6.1987, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/87 – 6/87’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. In June 1987, Rajiv Gandhi delivered two speeches where he spoke about a ‘foreign hand’ trying to destabilize India. The meeting was noticed by the US embassy and Dean sought explanation from Gopi Arora and Cabinet Secretary B.G. Deshmukh about Rajiv’s comments as the ‘foreign hand’ harked back to the 1970s when critics from the Left often referred to the US as the ‘foreign hand’. Rajiv’s

40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

comments were first signs that he had noted the reports of campaign in the US to provide more assistance to Pakistan. This followed Rajiv telling Stephen Solarz on 30.5.1986 that ‘some high source in the United States’ had informed him that the US government had failed to penalize Pakistan despite knowing that Pakistan had made significant progress towards making their own nuclear weapons. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State (Additional readout on Vorontsov–Rajiv meeting by Ronen Sen), John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88,’ Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Cable from Arnold Raphel to Secretary of State, 3.5.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Attempts for Rajiv–Zia talks for a compromise on reducing tension continued from spring to summer but Raphel noted that Zia remained firm that his government would not discuss the future internal situation of Afghanistan with India, having worked hard for eight years to gain an upper hand in Kabul. John Gunther Dean Papers have a folder (India – Role played by House of Hinduja in Advancing US–Indian Relations, 1985-1988) on the Hindujas and their international network spread across, Iran, India, US and Europe. It was quite obvious that from defence procurement, banking to international relations, the Indian government under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi chose to use transnational business entities for diplomacy. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, pp. 215–16. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid. At this point, both Zia and Rajiv conceptualized the transition government in Kabul differently. For Zia, a transitional government had to consist of the mujahideen, led by the fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Rajiv thought of a transition government led by Zahir Shah and supported by Najibullah and moderate mujahideen leaders could still be achieved under India’s guidance.

47. Ibid. 48. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 23.3.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/ Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable contained details of Ronen Sen’s briefing to Dean on the nascent peace process to convince Zia to stop escalation in Afghanistan. Sen said that the ‘Pakistan government is divided over how to handle the suggested consultations with India’. 49. Ibid. 50. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 8.3.1988, (Subject: Follow-up to Armacost meeting with Prime Minister Gandhi), John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Rajiv Gandhi told Michael Armacost that India wanted cessation of military supplies to Pakistan – at least ‘for a certain period of time’ till a ‘broad-based government’ had been set up in Afghanistan. 51. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy: Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan, Karachi/London: Oxford, 2010, p.344. 52. Ibid. 53. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 346. 54. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 222. 55. Ibid., pp. 224–28. 56. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia: Pakistan’s Power Politics 1977-1988, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 385–88. 57. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy, p. 346. 58. Press Release on Indo-Afghanistan Cooperation on Civil Aviation, Ministry of External Affairs, 11 April 1988, Foreign Affairs Record, Volume XXXIV, No. 1, 1988, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. 59. ‘Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s speech in the Parliament on the occasion of “Demand for Grants of the Ministry of External

60. 61.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

69.

Affairs”’, 20.4.1988, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol XXXIV, No. 1, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, India, 1988. Ibid. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Michael Armacost, 31.8.1988, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 to 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable contains a paragraph from Raphel’s mail where he anticipated Rajiv Gandhi’s hard-line position. Ibid. ‘Banquet Speech by President R. Venkataraman’, 4.5.1988, Foreign Affairs Record, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, India. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Long-term Agreement for Supply of Tea to Afghanistan’, 6. 5. 1988. President Zia’s last interview, National Press Trust of Pakistan, 13.8.1988. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 9.2.1988, regarding Ronen Sen’s briefing to John Gunther Dean on Rajiv Gandhi’s discussion with Yuli Vorontsov, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. During the briefing, Ronen Sen conveyed that the Soviets and the Indians believed that Najibullah would survive without outside support. This assessment turned out to be correct as Najibullah held on to Kabul till his assassination in 1994. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State (Najibullah’s visit to India: Conversation with Ronen Sen), 25.4.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid.

6. August 1988 1. 2.

Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv, Delhi: Viking, 1992, p. 10. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State (Najibullah’s visit to India: Conversation with Ronen Sen), 25.4.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 3. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East: An Autobiography, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, pp. 269–70. 4. Ibid., p. 296. Zia and Junejo remained on separate tracks from the beginning. Soon after the election of 1985 Zia began his crackdown against Bhutto supporters but Junejo announced end of Martial law later that year. 5. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Obituary: Muhammad Khan Junejo’, Independent, London, 19 March 1993. 6. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat: Karachi: Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law, 2009, pp. 235–37. 7. Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, London: Simon & Schuster, pp. 310–12. Zia never claimed credit for pushing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But it’s well documented that without his political will, routing of vital weapons to the mujahideen would not have been possible. Zia’s officials recognized the role that he played in the Afghan jihad. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., p. 236. 10. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 3.6.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India Correspondence/ Telegrams, 1/885/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. 11. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 237. 12. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 3.6.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India Correspondence/ Telegrams, 1/88-

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. Ibid. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince: The Life and Death of Murtaza Bhutto, London: Viking, 1997, pp. 112–20. P.R. Kumaraswamy, India’s Israel Policy, New Delhi: Magnum Books Pvt. Ltd, p. 227. Author’s interview with Ronen Sen. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, p. 117. Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, p. 275. Raja Anwar, The Terrorist Prince, p. 117. Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History, London: Penguin Books, 2010, pp. 551–52. S.K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), Volume One (1944–1988), Delhi, Wave Publications, 1993, p. 632. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 15.6.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/ Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. ‘Soviet submarine K-43’, www.revolvy.com, accessed on 31 December 2016. Dean 353, ‘India’, John Gunther Dean’s Oral History, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/In dia.pdf, accessed on 18 March 2017. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 3.2.1988, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. In his discussion with Peter Galbraith, Rajiv explained that the nuclear submarine was not an offensive project. Cable from American consul general, Bombay, to John Gunther Dean, ‘Arrest of Retired Indian Naval Officer for Attempting to smuggle

29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

classified documents on India’s nuclear submarine project,’ John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Dean 353, ‘India’ John Gunther Dean’s Oral History, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/In dia.pdf, accessed on 5 May 2017. And the author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. Warren Unna, ‘Academician coming as US envoy’, Statesman, 20.3.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 1 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan, New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, pp. 262–69. Ibid., p. 242. Ibid., p. 238. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 372. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 232. Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble, p. 242. After the Geneva Accords, Soviet aerial reconnaissance revealed continued supply of weapons from Pakistan to the mujahideen. S. K. Dhawan, Day by Day Account of Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991), p. 654. Cable from US embassy, Islamabad, to US embassies in Moscow and Delhi, 31.8.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. M.J. Akbar, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2011, pp. 257–70. President Zia’s interview to National Press Trust of Pakistan, 13.8.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India –

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53 54. 55.

Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. Ibid. Ibid. Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble, pp. 241–49. Shahid M. Amin, Reminiscences of a Pakistani Diplomat, p. 243. Cable from John Gunther Dean to Secretary of State, 25.4.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The cable informed the Secretary of State about the message that Dean had received from Ronen Sen, which hinted that India was aware that the Ojhri blast was not accidental. Cable from US embassy to US missions in Kabul, New Delhi and Moscow, 27.8.1988, ‘India – Correspondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, John Gunther Dean Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA. The US missions speculated about the truth behind the news but felt that the details in the story gave credibility to it. Cable from US embassy, Islamabad, to US embassies in Kabul and Delhi, 31.8.1988, John Gunther Dean Papers, ‘IndiaCorrespondence/Telegrams, 1/88 – 5/88’, Box 6, Part 2 of 2, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, USA John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing, 2009, pp. 190– 94. Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 372. Arnold Raphel told Cordovez that discontinuing weapons supply was not possible as it was necessary to replenish the supplies destroyed in the 10 April blast in Ojhri. Author’s interview with Martine Dean. John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones, p. 196. Ibid. Ibid., p. 195 Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean.

56. Author’s interview with Qamar Agha. 57. Author’s interview with John Gunther Dean. 58. Dhiren Bhagat, ‘Rajiv’s spies smuggle arms’, Observer, London, 24 April 1988. 59. Jamsheed Marker, Quiet Diplomacy: Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan, New York: OUP, 2010, p. 331. 60. Bruce Reidel, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad, New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2011, p. 36. 61. Ibid., p. 41.

Index

Abramowitz, Mort Afghan Liberation Front (ALF) Afghan resistance Afghanistan, coalition government in Aiyar, Mani Shankar Al Zulfikar Organization (AZO) Alexander, P.C. Amin, Hafizullah Amin, Shahid M. Anderson, Warren Arbatov, Georgi Arkadyevich Armacost, Michael Armitage, Richard Azzam, Abdullah Beg, Gen Mirza Aslam Bhagat, Bali Ram Bhandari, Romesh Bhutto, Benazir

Bhutto, Murtaza Bhutto, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Blackwill, Robert Bofors Bondarevsky, Grigory Brezhnev, Leonid Brzezinski, Zbigniew Bush, George H.W. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chernenko, Konstantin Ustinovich at the funeral of China Clinton, Bill Cold war Cordovez, Diego Dean, John Gunther and India and Rajiv Gandhi and R. Sen and R. Venkatraman and US State Department early life of on Zia’s air crash phony mental illness of postings of Delhi

job clear-cut in others post-retirement days of Desai, Morarji Disarmament Duphenieux, Martine (J.G. Dean’s wife) Ford, Gerald Gaddafi, Muammar Galbraith, Peter Gandhi, Indira Emergency declared by Gandhi, Rajiv and anti-US groups and Hafez al-Assad(Syria) and Mir Hossein Musavi (Iran) personal side of Rajiv–Galbraith meeting Rajiv–Reagan initiative on Afghanistan vision for India Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Sonia Geneva Accords Gharekhan, Chinmaya Gorbachev, Mikhail and India and Pakistan Gromyko, Andrei

Group of Six Gujral, Inder Kumar Gul, General Hamid Haas, Richard Hafez al-Assad Hammer, Armand Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin Hindujas Holbrooke, Richard Husseini, Arif Hussein Al India and Soviets concerns of foreign policy of Indian aircraft hijacked India–Soviet ties India–Sri Lanka Accord India–US Civil Nuclear Agreement disagreements high-tech cooperation relations impact of Bhopal gas tragedy espionage scandal US attacks against Vietnam Pakistan on

Indo–Soviet Friendship Treaty INS Chakra intelligence agencies of Afghanistan Najibullah (KHAD) India Israel Pakistan US, 235, see CIA West World Inouye-Kasten resolution Iran–Iraq war Israel and India Pakistan Syria US Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Jamaati-Islamia Jayakar, Pupul Johnson, Lyndon Junejo, Muhammad Khan –Zia ties Kampelman, Max Kapitsa, Mikhail S. Karamat, Maj. Gen. Jehangir

Karmal, Babrak and India Kaul, P.K. Kerry, John KHAD Khan, A.Q. Khan, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Air Marshal Hakimullah Khan, Gen. Yahya Khan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Mohammed Daud Khan, Sahibzada Yaqub Khomeini, Ayatollah Kissinger, Henry Marker, Jamsheed and Zimmermann Menon, K.P.S. Mishra, Brajesh Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) mujahideen and Pakistan and PDPA and Soviets and US Mulford, David C. Najibullah, Mohammed and India

Narain, Coomar, spy scandal Narayan (JP), Jayaprakash narcotics trade in Asia Nehru, Arun Nehru, Jawaharlal Niazi, Gen. A.A.K. Niemann, Leona Nooristan nuclear disarmament nuclear issue and technology transfer Omar, Mullah Operation Blue Star Operation Brasstacks Palme, Olof Pakistan Afghan refugees in and Arab world and mujahideen and US nuclear capability of nuclear smuggling activity of Ojhri, blast in Pakistan–Soviet relations Parthasarathy, G. Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and mujahideen Pervez, Arshad

Rahman, Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rao, P.V. Narasimha Raphel, Arnold Reagan, Ronald and Gorbachev and India and Pakistan Reagan–Bush government Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Rutskoi, Col Alexander Sen, Ronen and J.G. Dean and Rajiv Gandhi Sengupta, Bhabhani Shah Bano case Shah, King Zahir and India and Pakistan and Soviets Shevardnadze, Eduard Shias Shultz, George Sihanouk, Prince Norodom (Cambodia) and Dean Singh, Arun Singh, Manmohan Singh, Natwar and Rajiv Gandhi

and Zahir Shah Singh, Vishwanath Pratap Six Nation Summit Solarz, Stephen South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Soviet diplomat, mystery of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan space -age gadgets disarmament of militarization of Stinger missiles Subbarao, Capt. Swaroop, Rama Taraki, Nur Mohammad Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jaffariya Tito, Josep Broz United States (US) aid for Pakistan Festival of India in Vaidya, Gen. Arun Kumar Vajpayee, Atal Bihari Venkateswaran, A.P. Venkataraman, R. Vest, George

Vorontsov, Yuli Wassom, Brig. Gen. Herbert Wilson, Charlie Wisner, Frank Zia-ul-Haq, Gen. Mohammed air crash of and Afghanistan and Benazir Bhutto and Bhutto brothers and Geneva Accord and India and Rajiv Gandhi and Soviets and US and Z.A. Bhutto anti-Zia elements party-less democracy of problems of 1985 wanted Islamist power in Afghanistan Zimmermann, Walter

Acknowledgements

have been written but for the boundless support of Martine Duphenieux Dean and John Gunther Dean. Their account of the events during the period when Dean was the US ambassador to India has been supplemented by the information I gathered from my conversations with Ronen Sen who was Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomatic aide. Ronen who had not spoken about the diplomatic efforts of Rajiv Gandhi all these years, was kind enough to speak about them for this book. Dean and Sen worked closely in the late 1980s but drifted apart following the ‘Who killed Zia’ controversy of 1988–89. I am glad that the research for this book brought them closer as both supported my research and Ronen reconnected with Dean on his ninetieth birthday in 2016. While narrating the course of events, I have banked upon the corroborating accounts provided by Dean and Sen. Important support also came from Jamsheed Marker, who at ninety-three makes it a point to personally answer my emails and phone calls from Karachi. His support was constant and he helped me in checking the facts on several occasions. The support from these three remarkable gentlemen – John Gunther Dean, Jamsheed Marker and Ronen Sen – made this book a reality. My heartfelt thanks to all of them. While John Dean prefers to communicate over the phone, Martine Dean has handled all my requests for photographs and papers through email. My thanks to her. THIS BOOK WOULD NOT

The account of Michael Armacost and George Shultz was sourced from the John Gunther Dean collection of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Though I was keen to get Armacost on board, he excused himself on the plea that he has not read the declassified papers that he drafted in the 1980s while working with the Ronald Reagan administration. I am grateful for the support of my parents, Didibhai and Arunamoyee Dida who have been at the core of my life. Santu Kaku, Kakimoni, Dillir Dadu and Dida have made me feel secure throughout. Moon with frequent long-distance phone calls often helped during the months when I worked on this book. I am deeply grateful to Antony Thomas at HarperCollins India who worked on this project and helped me enormously in streamlining the narrative. This book would not have been possible without the support of Anuj Bahri and his team and I remain indebted to them. Support of V.K. Karthika was crucial and I thank her for being there for this project. My special thanks to Namit Verma who was one of the first to hear this story. Heartfelt thanks to Rameshji for his continuous support. I also thank Somak Ghoshal who took the proposal to HarperCollins India. Michael Chisolm in New York has been a constant source of support. This book has introduced me to Bonita Shimray and Hasnain Waris and I enjoyed my creative exchanges with both of them. Bonita has come up with a lovely cover for the book. The Great Game began during my stint in The Week and I wrote most of it while working at The Hindu. Support from colleagues at work has meant a great deal for me.

About the Book is one of the pulse points of the violent and insidiously interconnected conflicts that grip South Asia today. At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a complex multinational diplomacy had proposed setting up a coalition government in Kabul as a solution to the ‘Afghan problem’. Even as all sides worked on the coalition, the US took steps that India considered a ‘stab in the back’. Rajiv Gandhi, who played an integral part in this diplomacy, reacted by joining hands with President Najibullah of Afghanistan, which eventually wrecked the chances of the coalition. Interestingly, US ambassador John Gunther Dean blamed his country for letting down Rajiv Gandhi. AFGHANISTAN

General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan queered the pitch by going against the Geneva Accord of 14 April 1988, which required him to end the supply of weapons to the mujahideen in exchange for Soviet withdrawal. Shortly after, General Zia died in a mysterious air crash, complicating the Afghan muddle. Relying on the official papers that Dean collected between 1985 and 1988, and conversations with Ronen Sen, Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomatic aide during those crucial years, Kallol Bhattacherjee investigates the crucial years that could have changed the course of the region’s blood-soaked history.

About the Author

has been a journalist since 2001 and has reported extensively on South Asian affairs and about the conflicts in West Asia and North Africa. He has worked in the past with the Iranian News Agency, The Week and is currently a Senior Assistant Editor with The Hindu, where he reports on diplomatic affairs. KALLOL BHATTACHERJEE

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First published in India in 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers India Copyright © Kallol Bhattacherjee 2017 P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-439-1 Epub Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 978-93-5264-440-7 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Kallol Bhattacherjee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India. Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers India www.harpercollins.co.in

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