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TOPSHOTS-PAKISTAN-INDIA-UNREST-TALIBAN
Indian Border Security Forces (brown uniforms) and Pakistani Rangers (black uniforms) perform a daily military ceremony at the Wagah border, where the historical tensions between political rivalry and geographic intimacy are laid most bare.
Imagine the ex-heads of the CIA and the KGB cooperating on writing a book at the height of the Cold War.
In a saga that’s being called stranger than fiction (including by the protagonists themselves), the former chiefs of the Indian and Pakistani spy agencies have collaborated on a book calling for peace between the two constantly feuding nations.
The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace is co-authored by A.S. Dulat, former head of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) in India, and retired General Asad Durrani, who led Pakistan’s spy outfit, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Dulat helmed RAW from 1999 to 2000, while Durrani was ISI’s director general from 1990 to 1991. They worked on the book with a third author, journalist Aditya Sinha.
‘Frankly, when Dulat suggested that we could do a book together, I suspected that it might be a trap.’
I was a classmate of A.S. Dulat’s son, Arjun, all the way from elementary through middle and high school in northwestern India. When I learned of the book’s publication, its plea for India-Pakistan rapprochement grabbed my attention. I contacted my old friend to arrange an interview with the elder Mr. Dulat. He readily agreed.
As I found out, the Illusion of Peace bit, well, that is meant in a good way, like an “optimistic illusion.”
While it may surprise anyone aware of the historically bloody and tumultuous relationship between India and Pakistan, many individuals and organizations in those countries are constantly making efforts to create peace. Retired officials from the two nations regularly meet, most often in third-party countries accessible from India and Pakistan. It is in this context that Dulat encountered his Pakistani comrade-in-spying, Asad Durrani. Over the course of eight to ten years, they came to know and trust each other. Friends and acquaintances suggested that perhaps they could do a book together.
“People said that it would be stranger than fiction,” says Dulat. “No one would believe this.”
In fact, Durrani was taken aback when Dulat broached the subject. “Frankly, when Dulat suggested that we could do a book together,” he quipped in a video message at the launch of the book in India, “I suspected that it might be a trap.’’
When the two men approached the publisher with the proposal, those working there “grabbed the idea with both hands,” says Dulat, quoting co-author Sinha. Starting a couple of years ago, when Dulat and Durrani met at peace conferences, they “stayed an extra day or two to talk peace” with Sinha in attendance, Dulat says.
The book contains a number of startling revelations: RAW passed on information to Pakistan about an assassination attempt on Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf that helped save his life. Dulat facilitated the invitation of then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the inauguration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. And, heartwarmingly, Dulat got Durrani’s son out of a bureaucratic snafu in India.
But the most jaw-dropping disclosure is that the Pakistani deep state cooperated with the United States to catch Osama bin Laden—and feigned surprise to minimize outrage in its country. (This seems to have been the revelation that has gotten Durrani into trouble, but more on that later.)
The book's most jaw-dropping disclosure is that the Pakistani deep state cooperated with the United States to catch Osama bin Laden—and feigned surprise to minimize outrage in its country.
The authors wrote the book in the hope of ending the interminable discord between India and Pakistan. “The general and I put our heads together in a hope for peace,” says Dulat. He quotes a question posed to Durrani by Hamid Ansari, formerly India’s vice president: “Yeh deewangi kab khatam hogi?” When will this obsessiveness end?
The key, says Dulat, is “engaging in talking to each other and never stop talking. That is the answer.”
The book has a number of concrete recommendations for the two countries, ranging from parleys on the disputed region of Kashmir and relaxed visa rules, to the resumption of cricket matches (the two cricket-obsessed countries currently don’t play each other bilaterally!) and the formation of negotiation teams.
Throughout most of the book, Dulat comes across as more of an optimist than Durrani, whom he deems a “realist.” But for a “realist,” Durrani drops a bombshell toward the end of the book when he envisions a possible future merger of India and Pakistan.
“At some stage we can think of a common currency, or laws applicable to when we develop the new South Asian Union: a Confederation of South Asia,” he says in the book. “The reason one should discuss this is to not rule out any possibility.”
To call this a radical proposal would be an understatement. And, in fact, Dulat is dismissive of his co-author on this point, saying “a reunion will never happen. The general is dreaming a bit.”
But in our interview, Dulat says he takes inspiration from an unlikely source: Donald Trump. If the U.S. President can meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, he asks, “what is stopping us?”
Still, Trump’s rightwing match in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, tempers Dulat’s optimism. He notes that Modi has largely dashed hopes that he would continue the more moderate and humanistic style of the previous prime minister from his party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004), in whose administration Dulat served.
If the U.S. President can meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Dulat asks, ‘what is stopping us?’
“There was a lot of affection for Vajpayee in Kashmir, and when Modi came to power, Kashmiris thought he’d be a continuation of Vajpayee,” says Dulat. “Unfortunately, the ruling party under him had a different agenda in Kashmir, and the same goes when it comes to Pakistan.”
The Spy Chronicles has been number one on the Indian best-seller list, which delights Dulat. It is already into its second printing and is being translated into a number of Indian languages (a U.S. edition hasn’t been planned yet). But the Indian establishment is not pleased with the book—it denied Durrani a visa to come to New Delhi for the book release.
“The government is unhappy with The Spy Chronicles,” co-author Sinha writes in a column for Mumbai’s Mid Day newspaper. “It is ‘unauthorised.’ It runs contrary to official policy towards Pakistan, which is a hardline, muscular policy . . . . The establishment’s anger in Pakistan is overt; in India it is covert.”
The blowback on Durrani has been more severe. The Pakistani authorities seem to have taken personally Durrani’s assertion that they collaborated in bin Laden’s capture.
‘The establishment’s anger in Pakistan is overt; in India it is covert.’
“If Dulat is being trolled in India, the Pakistani army has ordered a court of inquiry against Durrani,” reports The Week, an Indian publication. “He has also been banned from travelling outside Pakistan.”
Dulat defends his Pakistani counterpart.
“He hasn’t said anything in the book that he hasn’t said before,” he observes. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction by people who haven’t read the book. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Regardless of the official response on both sides, Dulat says he is an “incurable optimist” who is confident there will soon be movement toward peace between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
“Maybe it’s just a dream,” he says.
Perhaps, but it is a dream that the world should help make a reality.
Amitabh Pal worked at The Progressive for eighteen years, including twelve as managing editor. He is currently writing a book about Donald Trump and Narendra Modi.