Pakistan aids insurgency in Afghanistan

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harboured strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public on Sunday.

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside al-Qaida to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and al-Qaida work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with al-Qaida is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaida havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

This month, secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, in one of the frequent visits by American officials to Islamabad, announced $500 million in assistance and called the United States and Pakistan "partners joined in common cause."

The reports suggest, however, that the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy, as its spy agency runs what American officials have long suspected is a double game — appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while angling to exert influence in Afghanistan through many of the same insurgent networks that the Americans are fighting to eliminate.

Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials as well as top American commanders have confronted top Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented top Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants.

Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that Pakistan had been an important ally in the battle against militant groups, and that Pakistani soldiers and intelligence officials had worked alongside the United States to capture or kill Qaida and Taliban leaders.

Still, he said that the "status quo is not acceptable," and that the havens for militants in Pakistan "pose an intolerable threat" that Pakistan must do more to address.

"The Pakistani government — and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services — must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders," he said. American military support to Pakistan would continue, he said.

Several Congressional officials said that despite repeated requests over the years for information about Pakistani support for militant groups, they usually receive vague and inconclusive briefings from the Pentagon and CIA

Nonetheless, senior lawmakers say they have no doubt that Pakistan is aiding insurgent groups. "The burden of proof is on the government of Pakistan and the ISI to show they don’t have ongoing contacts," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who visited Pakistan this month and said he and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman, confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, yet again over the allegations.

Such accusations are usually met with angry denials, particularly by the Pakistani military, which insists that the ISI severed its remaining ties to the groups years ago. An ISI spokesman in Islamabad said Sunday that the agency would have no comment until it saw the documents. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said, "The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities."

The man the United States has depended on for cooperation in fighting the militants and who holds most power in Pakistan, the head of the army, Gen Parvez Ashfaq Kayani, ran the ISI from 2004 to 2007, a period from which many of the reports are drawn. American officials have frequently praised General Kayani for what they say are his efforts to purge the military of officers with ties to militants.

American officials have described Pakistan’s spy service as a rigidly hierarchical organization that has little tolerance for "rogue" activity. But Pakistani military officials give the spy service’s "S Wing" — which runs external operations against the Afghan government and India — broad autonomy, a buffer that allows top military officials deniability.

American officials have rarely uncovered definitive evidence of direct ISI involvement in a major attack. But in July 2008, the CIA’s deputy director, Stephen R Kappes, confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that the ISI helped plan the deadly suicide bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul.

From the current trove, one report shows that Polish intelligence warned of a complex attack against the Indian Embassy a week before that bombing, though the attackers and their methods differed. The ISI was not named in the report warning of the attack.

Another, dated August 2008, identifies a colonel in the ISI plotting with a Taliban official to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. The report says there was no information about how or when this would be carried out. The account could not be verified.

General linked to militants

Lt Gen Hamid Gul ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, a time when Pakistani spies and the CIA joined forces to run guns and money to Afghan militias who were battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. After the fighting stopped, he maintained his contacts with the former Mujahedeen, who would eventually transform themselves into the Taliban.

And more than two decades later, it appears that General Gul is still at work. The documents indicate that he has worked tirelessly to reactivate his old networks, employing familiar allies like Jaluluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose networks of thousands of fighters are responsible for waves of violence in Afghanistan.

General Gul is mentioned so many times in the reports, if they are to be believed, that it seems unlikely that Pakistan’s current military and intelligence officials could not know of at least some of his wide-ranging activities.

For example, one intelligence report describes him meeting with a group of militants in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, in January 2009. There, he met with three senior Afghan insurgent commanders and three "older" Arab men, presumably representatives of al-Qaida, who the report suggests were important "because they had a large security contingent with them."

The gathering was designed to hatch a plan to avenge the death of "Zamarai," the nom de guerre of Osama al-Kini, who had been killed days earlier by a CIA drone attack. Mr Kini had directed Qaida operations in Pakistan and had spearheaded some of the group’s most devastating attacks.

The plot hatched in Wana that day, according to the report, involved driving a dark blue Mazda truck rigged with explosives from South Waziristan to Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, a route well known to be used by the insurgents to move weapons, suicide bombers and fighters from Pakistan.

In a show of strength, the Taliban leaders approved a plan to send 50 Arab and 50 Waziri fighters to Ghazni Province in Afghanistan, the report said.

General Gul urged the Taliban commanders to focus their operations inside Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan turning "a blind eye" to their presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas. It was unclear whether the attack was ever executed.

The United States has pushed the United Nations to put General Gul on a list of international terrorists, and top American officials said they believed he was an important link between active-duty Pakistani officers and militant groups.

General Gul, who says he is retired and lives on his pension, dismissed the allegations as "absolute nonsense," speaking by telephone from his home in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters. "I have had no hand in it." He added, "American intelligence is pulling cotton wool over your eyes."

Senior Pakistani officials consistently deny that General Gul still works at the ISI’s behest, though several years ago, after mounting American complaints, Pakistan’s president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, was forced publicly to acknowledge the possibility that former ISI officials were assisting the Afghan insurgency. Despite his denials, General Gul keeps close ties to his former employers. When a reporter visited General Gul this spring for an interview at his home, the former spy master canceled the appointment. According to his son, he had to attend meetings at army headquarters.

Suicide bomber network

The reports also chronicle efforts by ISI officers to run the networks of suicide bombers that emerged as a sudden, terrible force in Afghanistan in 2006.

The detailed reports indicate that American officials had a relatively clear understanding of how the suicide networks presumably functioned, even if some of the threats did not materialize. It is impossible to know why the attacks never came off — either they were thwarted, the attackers shifted targets, or the reports were deliberately planted as Taliban disinformation.

One report, from Dec 18, 2006, describes a cyclical process to develop the suicide bombers. First, the suicide attacker is recruited and trained in Pakistan. Then, reconnaissance and operational planning gets underway, including scouting to find a place for "hosting" the suicide bomber near the target before carrying out the attack. The network, it says, receives help from the Afghan police and the Ministry of Interior.

In many cases, the reports are complete with names and ages of bombers, as well as license plate numbers, but the Americans gathering the intelligence struggle to accurately portray many other details, introducing sometimes comical renderings of places and Taliban commanders.

In one case, a report rated by the American military as credible states that a gray Toyota Corolla had been loaded with explosives between the Afghan border and Landik Hotel, in Pakistan, apparently a mangled reference to Landi Kotal, in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The target of the plot, however, is a real hotel in downtown Kabul, the Ariana.

"It is likely that ISI may be involved as supporter of this attack," reads a comment in the report.

Several of the reports describe current and former ISI operatives, including General Gul, visiting madrasas near the city of Peshawar, a gateway to the tribal areas, to recruit new fodder for suicide bombings.

One report, labeled a "real threat warning" because of its detail and the reliability of its source, described how commanders of Mr Hekmatyar’s insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, ordered the delivery of a suicide bomber from the Hashimiye madrasa, run by Afghans.

The boy was to be used in an attack on American or NATO vehicles in Kabul during the Muslim Festival of Sacrifices that opened Dec. 31, 2006. According to the report, the boy was taken to the Afghan city of Jalalabad to buy a car for the bombing, and was later brought to Kabul. It was unclear whether the attack took place.

The documents indicate that these types of activities continued throughout last year. From July to October 2009, nine threat reports detailed movements by suicide bombers from Pakistan into populated areas of Afghanistan, including Kandahar, Kunduz and Kabul.

Some of the bombers were sent to disrupt Afghanistan’s presidential elections, held last August. In other instances, American intelligence learned that the Haqqani network sent bombers at the ISI’s behest to strike Indian officials, development workers and engineers in Afghanistan. Other plots were aimed at the Afghan government.

Sometimes the intelligence documents twin seemingly credible detail with plots that seem fantastical or utterly implausible assertions. For instance, one report describes an ISI plan to use a remote-controlled bomb disguised as a golden Koran to assassinate Afghan government officials. Another report documents an alleged plot by the ISI and Taliban to ship poisoned alcoholic beverages to Afghanistan to kill American troops.

But the reports also charge that the ISI directly helped organize Taliban offensives at key junctures of the war. On June 19, 2006, ISI operatives allegedly met with the Taliban leaders in Quetta, the city in southern Pakistan where American and other Western officials have long believed top Taliban leaders have been given refuge by the Pakistani authorities. At the meeting, according to the report, they pressed the Taliban to mount attacks on Maruf, a district of Kandahar that lies along the Pakistani border.

The planned offensive would be carried out primarily by Arabs and Pakistanis, the report said, and a Taliban commander, "Akhtar Mansoor," warned that the men should be prepared for heavy losses. "The foreigners agreed to this operation and have assembled 20 4x4 trucks to carry the fighters into areas in question," it said.

While the specifics about the foreign fighters and the ISI are difficult to verify, the Taliban did indeed mount an offensive to seize control in Maruf in 2006.

Afghan government officials and Taliban fighters have widely acknowledged that the offensive was led by the Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was then the Taliban shadow governor of Kandahar.

Mullah Mansour tried to claw out a base for himself inside Afghanistan, but just as the report quotes him predicting, the Taliban suffered heavy losses and eventually pulled back.

Another report goes on to describe detailed plans for a large-scale assault, timed for September 2007, aimed at the American forward operating base in Managi, in Kunar Province.

"It will be a five-pronged attack consisting of 83-millimeter artillery, rockets, foot soldiers, and multiple suicide bombers," it says.

It is not clear that the attack ever came off, but its planning foreshadowed another, seminal attack that came months later, in July 2008. At that time, about 200 Taliban insurgents nearly overran an American base in Wanat, in Nuristan, killing nine American soldiers. For the Americans, it was one of the highest single-day tolls of the war.

Tensions with Pakistan

The flood of reports of Pakistani complicity in the insurgency has at times led to barely disguised tensions between American and Pakistani officers on the ground.

Meetings at border outposts set up to develop common strategies to seal the frontier and disrupt Taliban movements reveal deep distrust among the Americans of their Pakistani counterparts.

On Feb. 7, 2007, American officers met with Pakistani troops on a dry riverbed to discuss the borderlands surrounding Afghanistan’s Khost Province.

According to notes from the meeting, the Pakistanis portrayed their soldiers as conducting around-the-clock patrols. Asked if he expected a violent spring, a man identified in the report as Lt. Col. Bilal, the Pakistani officer in charge, said no. His troops were in firm control.

The Americans were incredulous. Their record noted that there had been a 300 percent increase in militant activity in Khost before the meeting.

"This comment alone shows how disconnected this particular group of leadership is from what is going on in reality," the notes said.

The Pakistanis told the Americans to contact them if they spotted insurgent activity along the border. "I doubt this would do any good," the American author of the report wrote, "because PAKMIL/ISI is likely involved with the border crossings." "PAKMIL" refers to the Pakistani military.

A year earlier, the Americans became so frustrated at the increase in roadside bombs in Afghanistan that they hand-delivered folders with names, locations, aerial photographs and map coordinates to help the Pakistani military hunt down the militants the Americans believed were responsible.

Nothing happened, wrote Col Barry Shapiro, an American military liaison officer with experience in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, after an Oct. 13, 2006, meeting. "Despite the number of reports and information detailing the concerns," Colonel Shapiro wrote, "we continue to see no change in the cross-border activity and continue to see little to no initiative along the PAK border" by Pakistan troops. The Pakistani Army "will only react when asked to do so by US forces," he concluded.

Missiles in news

India today successfully test-fired indigenously developed ballistic missiles 'Prithvi II' and 'Dhanush' from different locations off the Orissa coast, adding more firepower to the armed forces.

"The tests were successful. Both the missiles test-fired early today met all the parameters," the director of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur, S P Dash, told PTI.

While the 'Prithvi II' was test-fired from complex-3 of ITR Chandipur, 15 km from here, from a mobile launcher at around 0548 hours, the 'Dhanush' was fired from INS-Subhadra in the Bay of Bengal near Puri at around 0544 hours by the Navy personnel as part of user training exercise.

The test firing of the short-range, surface-to-surface 'Prithvi II' ballistic missile having a range of 295 km, which has already been inducted into the armed forces, was a user trial by the Army.

The sleek missile is "handled by the strategic force command", the sources said.

Prithvi, the first ballistic missile developed under the country's prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), has the capability to carry 500 kg of warhead and has liquid propulsion twine engine.

With a nine-metre length and one-metre diameter, Prithvi II uses an advanced inertial guidance system with manoeuvring trajectory and reach the targets with a few metre accuracy.

The entire trajectory of today's trial was tracked down by a battery of sophisticated radars and an electro-optic telemetry stations were positioned in different locations for post-launch analysis, defence sources said.

The nuclear-capable 'Dhanush', the naval version of Prithvi, followed the pre-designated trajectory with text-book precision and two naval ships located near the target have tracked the splash, sources said.

The 350-km range missile will give the Navy the capability to attack enemy targets with great precision.

The sophisticated radar systems located along the coast monitored its entire trajectory, the sources said.

The single stage missile, weighing six tonnes, is powered by liquid propellants.

India plans to progressively base six surface-to-air Akash missile squadrons in the North-East to counter the threat posed by Chinese fighters, helicopters and drones in the region.

Sources say IAF will get eight Akash tactical air defence squadrons by 2015, with the first one becoming operational by 2011 itself, at a cost of over Rs 6,100 crore. Every squadron will have two `flights' of four Akash launchers each. Moreover, the Army is now poised to order two Akash regiments, with six firing batteries each, for around Rs 4,000 crore.

With an effective interception range of 25 km, the DRDO-developed Akash system with supersonic missiles and a network of radars is designed to neutralise multiple aerial targets attacking from several directions simultaneously in all-weather conditions. With an 88% "kill probability'', it can even take on sub-sonic cruise missiles.

The plan to base Akash squadrons in North-East constitutes yet another step to counter China's massive build-up of military infrastructure all along the unresolved 4,057-km Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Though it woke up quite late, India is now fastracking measures like raising of two new specialised infantry mountain divisions and an artillery brigade for Arunachal Pradesh and basing of two Sukhoi-30MKI squadrons (36 fighters) each at Tezpur and Chabua in Assam.

India is also looking to deploy the 3,500-km Agni-III and the under-development over 5,000-km Agni-V ballistic missiles as soon as possible. While Agni-III will be operationally ready by 2011-2012, the two new infantry divisions, with 1,260 officers and 35,011 soldiers, will be in place by 2012.

The government, of course, likes to downplay all this. Defence minister A K Antony on Monday said the two new divisions were part of the overall strategy to strengthen the armed forces.

"It's not directed at China or any country. The aim is to have an effective deterrent against any threat or eventuality,'' said Antony, after inaugurating DefExpo-2010, which has attracted a record 650 companies.

India is not "a war-mongering country'', nor does it covet "even an inch'' of any country's territory. "But we are ready to defend every inch of our territory... Our aim is to give the most modern equipment to our armed forces so that they can meet any challenge from any quarter at any time,'' said Antony.

Yes, there is the long-pending border dispute with China, but both New Delhi and Beijing are trying to "amicably resolve'' it through talks. Relations with China in other sectors like trade have dramatically improved, said Antony.

While this is certainly true, China is upgrading as many as 14 airfields in Tibet, of which at least half are now fully-operational. Its Linzi airbase, for instance, is not even 30 km away from the LAC in Arunachal.

With straight double-digit hikes in its defence budget for over 20 years, the 2.25-million strong People's Liberation Army has swiftly enhanced its transborder and `area-denial' military capabilities as well as bolstered its nuclear missile arsenal.

Brimming with confidence after last week's successful Agni-III test, India now hopes to test its first-ever intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) within a year. This nuclear-capable Agni-V missile will be able to hit even northernmost China.

Moreover, in the backdrop of Beijing testing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems, DRDO chief V K Saraswat on Wednesday said India already had the 'building blocks' for ASAT weapons and was far ahead of China in the BMD arena.

DRDO, in fact, will conduct the fourth test of its two-tier BMD system, designed to track and destroy hostile missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth's atmosphere, towards end-March/early-April. But all eyes are now on Agni-V, which with a range of over 5,000-km can arguably be called an ICBM, usually used to denote a missile capable of hitting targets over 5,500 km away.

Why is India not developing true-blue ICBMs, especially since Chinese missiles like Dong Feng-31A have a range of 11,200-km?

"We have the capability. But the missile's range and lethality is based on the immediate objective of threat mitigation. Agni-V suits our present requirements," said Saraswat.

Being designed by adding a third composite stage to the two-stage 3,500-km Agni-III, the 17.5-metre tall Agni-V will be a canister-launch missile system to ensure it has the requisite operational flexibility to be swiftly transported and fired from anywhere. Consequently, if launched from near the Line of Actual Control, the solid-fuelled Agni-V will be able to hit China's northernmost city of Habin. Both Agni-III, which DRDO says is now 'mature' for induction, and Agni-V will add muscle to India's 'dissuasive deterrence' posture against China.

Moreover, DRDO is also developing MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) warheads for Agni missiles. An MIRV payload on a missile carries several nuclear warheads, which can be programmed to hit different targets. A flurry of such missiles can hence completely overwhelm BMD systems.

But unlike China, which fired a missile to bring down a satellite in January 2007, India will not test a 'real' ASAT weapon. "It will lead to debris in space. We can simulate a test on ground using an 'electronic' satellite. We have the building blocks for it," said Saraswat.

"Agni-III's propulsion system coupled with the BMD system's 'kill vehicle' will compose an ASAT weapon. The propulsion system is adequate to carry the ASAT warhead to 1,000-km altitude," said Saraswat.

India today "successfully" test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni-III ballistic missile with a range of more than 3,000 km from the Wheeler Island off Orissa coast.

The indigenously developed surface-to-surface missile was tested from a rail mobile launcher near Dhamara, about 100 km from here, at about 1046 hours, defence sources said.

"All mission parameters were met," they said, adding the test was a success.

This was the fourth flight test in the Agni-III series carried out to establish the "repeatability" of the missile's performance, they said.

The entire trajectory of today's trial was monitored through various telemetry stations, electro-optic systems and sophisticated radars located along the coast, in Port Blair and by Naval ships anchored near the impact point in the down range area for data analysis, the sources said.

Agni-III missile is powered by a two-stage solid propellant system. With a length of 17 metres, the missile's diameter is 2 metres and launch weight is 50 tonnes.

It can carry a payload of 1.5 tonnes which is protected by carbon-carbon all composite heat shield.

India on Sunday became the first country to have a 'maneuverable' supersonic cruise missile when it successfully test-fired the vertical-launch version of 290-km range BrahMos from a warship in the Bay of Bengal off the Orissa coast.

"The vertical-launch version of missile was launched at 1130 hours today from Indian Navy ship INS Ranvir and it maneuvered successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission," BrahMos aerospace chief A Sivathanu Pillai said.

After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a "maneuverable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory," he said in New Delhi.

In separate messages, President Pratibha Patil and Defence Minister A K Antony congratulated the BrahMos scientists and the navy for the successful test-launch. Pillai said the software of the missile was improved and today's test proved its capability of maneuverability at supersonic speeds before hitting the target.

"During the test, the missile hit a free-floating ship piercing it above the waterline and destroying it completely," BrahMos officials said.

The test-firing was part of the pre-induction tests by the Navy as moves are afoot to deploy the vertical-launch version of the missile in ships. The weapon system has been designed and developed by the Indo-Russian joint venture company.

All the three Indian Navy's Talwar class ships, under construction in Russia, have been fitted with vertical launchers and many other ships will also be equipped with them, officials said.

The navy had earlier carried out several tests of the BrahMos but most of them had been done from inclined launchers abroad INS Rajput. The missile is already in service with the Navy and its Shivalik class frigates have been equipped with it.

BrahMos has also been inducted into the Army and preparations are on to develop its air-launched and the submarine-launched versions, officials said.

In a significant step towards boosting ''second-strike'' capabilities, India on Wednesday tested a new 600-km range 'Shaurya' ballistic missile, which can fired from underground silos unlike the Prithvi and Agni missiles.

The surface-to-surface missile, capable of carrying a one-tonne conventional or nuclear warhead, was successfully fired from a 30 to 40-feet deep pit with an in-built canister to mimic an underground silo at about 11.25 am.

''The successful test-firing of the new state-of-the-art canisterised missile marks another milestone in the country's missile programme,'' said defence minister A K Antony.

The Prithvi (150-350-km range), Agni-I (700-km) and Agni-II (2000-km-plus) missiles already inducted into the armed forces, as also the almost-ready Agni-III (3,500-km), are all transported on special vehicles or trains. Though this gives them flexibility in deployment, it also makes them vulnerable to enemy pre-emptive strikes.

Conversely, Shaurya missiles can remain hidden or camouflaged in underground silos from enemy surveillance or satellites till they are fired from the special storage-cum-launch canisters. ''Consequently, the Shaurya system will strengthen our second-strike capabilities,'' said a top official.

Silos are the primary basing system for land-based ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles, with strike ranges over 5,500-km) of countries like the US, Russia and China.

Defence scientists admit that given Shaurya's limited range at present, either the silos will have to be constructed closer to India's borders or longer-range canisterised missiles will have to be developed.

''Wednesday's test was part of the ongoing technology development work by DRDO. The Shaurya system will require some more tests before it becomes fully operational in two-three years,'' he added.

The composite canister make the missile much easier to store for long periods without maintenance as well as to handle and transport. It also houses the gas generator to eject the missile from the canister before its solid propellant motors take over to hurl it at the intended target.

Moreover, defence scientists say the high-speed, two-stage Shaurya has ''high manoeuvrability'' which also makes it ''less vulnerable'' to existing anti-missile defence systems.

The absence of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the most reliable and survivable nuclear strike weapons, has long troubled the Indian defence establishment, especially since India has a ''no first-use'' nuclear doctrine.

It is, therefore, important to have nuclear-powered submarines armed with nuclear-tipped missiles, remaining quietly underwater for long periods, to deter an adversary from launching first strikes or to carry out a second-strike in retaliation.

The Shaurya project is intended to plug this gap somewhat. The Shaurya missile system has clear parallels with the under-development K-15 SLBM, as part of the overall secretive Sagarika project, with an initial 700-km strike range.

The canisterised K-15 missiles will arm the indigenous nuclear-powered submarines being built under the 26-year-old ATV (advanced technology vessel) programme at Visakhapatnam, with the first vessel slated to begin sea-trials in early 2009.

The around 10-metre long Shaurya, in turn, will be operated by the Army. ''Like Sagarika, which is fired from an underwater silo in the shape of a submarine, the Shaurya comes out from an underground silo on land,'' said a scientist.

In Wednesday's test, the missile took off vertically and its entire trajectory was tracked through an integrated system of radars, electro-optical tracking instruments, telemetry stations and two naval ships located close to the impact point deep in Bay of Bengal. ''With a flight duration of 485 seconds, it reached the full range and hit the target as intended,'' said the official.

The test comes at time when India is finally getting ready to gate-crash into the exclusive club of the Big Five countries -- US, Russia, China, France and UK -- which field SLBMs.

The 'K-15' is near-about ready after over a decade of hits and misses, and four tests from 'submersible pontoon launchers' in the last couple of years, for integration with the 6,000-tonne ATVs, each designed to carry 12 vertical-launched nuclear-tipped SLBMs.

India will then finally achieve its long-standing aim to have an operational nuclear weapon triad -- the capability to fire nukes from the land, air and sea.

A 700 to 750-km SLBM will, of course, still fall short of the over 5,000-km range SLBMs deployed by countries like US and Russia. But, as reported earlier, DRDO is already working on a submarine-launched version of Agni-III, which is to be followed by the Agni-V missile with a strike range of 5,000-km.

India is developing a sub-sonic 1,000-km range cruise missile "Nirbhay" which can be used for a "variety of applications", a top military scientist said today.

The 1000-kg "missile is getting into some shape", Dr V K Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister and Chief of Defence Research and Development Organisation said.

He also said the flight-trial of air-to-air missile 'Astra', having a range of 45 to 100 km, is on the cards.

Saraswat was delivering the keynote address at a national convention on 'The Frontiers of Aeronautical Technologies', organised by the Aeronautical Society of India here.

He said India's armed forces are looking for long duration loitering missiles which can enter "enemy territory", search targets such as radars, concentration of assets and "a variety of movements of enemy", "home-on" the targets and "bang" them.

"We need to develop (loitering missiles)", he said. Saraswat made a strong push for deploying space-based sensors to keep tab on "adversaries" and gather intelligence via-a-vis defence surveillance.

He said space-based sensors are a must for tracking and detection of movements of enemies. Unless it have space-based sensors, India would not be able to make its ballistic missile defence system a "potent weapon", the scientist said.

India is launching a major programme for surveillance, particularly space-based, in terms of electro-optical payload and synthetic aperture radar. "So, unless we prepare ourselves for future space-based systems, security is going to be a major issue," he said.

The third successful test of the ballistic missile defence (BMD) system on Friday has put India into an exclusive club of countries such as the US, Russia and Israel which are developing Star War kind of capabilities.

With this test, India reached another milestone towards making the home-grown BMD system operational by 2011-12.

The test was carried out from Wheeler Island in Orissa around 4.30 pm when the two-stage "exo-atmospheric" hypersonic interceptor missile fitted with advance systems hit the target at an altitude of 75 km.

A complex and expensive technology, the BMD system provides India an effective defence shield against both China and Pakistan fielding a wide variety of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

Though these capabilities are a crucial necessity, a BMD system can be overwhelmed by a flurry of ballistic missiles. It's quite vulnerable to cruise missiles since they fly at low altitudes.

The two-tier BMD system being developed by DRDO, capable of tracking and destroying hostile missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth's atmosphere, has already been tested two times — the exo-atmospheric test at 48-km altitude on November 27, 2006, and the endo-atmospheric at 15-km on December 6, 2007. The two tests had demonstrated India's capabilities akin to the Israeli Arrow-2 BMD system and the US Patriot system.

After the third test, DRDO plans to test both the "exo" and "endo" interceptor missiles together in an integrated mode by September-October. In Phase-I, a BMD system capable of taking on "2,000-km class targets" is being developed. Phase-II, in turn, will be geared towards tackling threats from missiles up to 5,000-km, said sources.

DRDO chief controller for missiles, V K Saraswat, had earlier told TOI that the BMD system of Phase-I should be ready for deployment by 2011 or so, after several tests against a variety of missiles to ensure "a kill probability of 99.8%".

There have been some Israeli and French imprints in the ongoing development of India's BMD system. The crucial long-range tracking radars (LRTRs) used to detect and track the `enemy' missile as well as guide the interceptor to it, for instance, can be traced to the two Israeli Green Pine early-warning and fire control radars imported by India in 2001-2002.

Similarly, some guidance and other technologies like IIR (imaging infra-red) seekers will require international collaboration in Phase-II.

After Israeli UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or spy drones which act like cruise missiles, the Indian armed forces are looking to induct `loitering' missiles that hover before selecting and hitting targets of greater priority.

Army has issued a global RFI (request for information) about medium-range loitering missile systems, seeking details about their day and night camera payloads, ground control stations, data links, launchers and the like. Only a few armament majors like Israeli Aerospace Industries and Raytheon make such missile systems.

"The RFI was issued earlier this month. The loitering missile is basically a UAV which can transmit data after hovering over a target undetected for about 20-30 minutes and then hit a selected target,'' said an officer.

The RFI has sought details on the missile's cruising speed, maximum range at which it can engage a target, its loitering time, data link's range and the like. The system should also have the capability to abort an attack after locking on to a target and then later hit another redesignated target.

Army wants the loitering missile to have a conventional warhead, apart from anti-tank and anti-material warheads with deep armour-penetrating capabilities.

The armed forces, of course, are still some years away from inducting combat UAVs like the American Predators, which let loose Hellfire missiles with devastating effect, which are being used in operations against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

They are, however, inducting some loitering killer drones like the Israeli Harpy UAVs, which are designed to detect and attack enemy radars as anti-radiation missiles.

Such a UAV first tracks and verifies hostile radar emissions after being launched in any kind of weather. It then enters into an attack mode to dive almost vertically and finally, detonates its warhead just above the enemy radar to effectively `kill' it.

IAF has also ordered the advanced version of these UAVs, called Harop, which add electro-optical sensors to the radio-frequency seekers to ensure they can hit even enemy missile sites and other important military installations.

Since the 1999 Kargil conflict, Indian forces have inducted over 100 Israeli Searcher-II, Heron and other UAVs as `force-multipliers' in reconnaissance missions as well as for precision-strike operations.

The Caucasus Cauldron

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend. Her itinerary included Poland and Ukraine, both intriguing choices in light of the recent Obama-Medvedev talks in Washington. But she also traveled to a region that has not been on the American radar screen much in the last two years — namely, the Caucasus — visiting Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The stop in Poland coincided with the signing of a new agreement on ballistic missile defense and was designed to sustain U.S.-Polish relations in the face of the German-Russian discussions we have discussed. The stop in Ukraine was meant simply to show the flag in a country rapidly moving into the Russian orbit. In both cases, the trip was about the Russians. Regardless of how warm the atmospherics are between the United States and Russia, the fact is that the Russians are continuing to rebuild their regional influence and are taking advantage of European disequilibrium to build new relationships there, too. The United States, still focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, has limited surplus capacity to apply to resisting the Russians. No amount of atmospherics can hide that fact, certainly not from the Poles or the Ukrainians. Therefore, if not a substantial contribution, the secretary of state’s visit was a symbolic one. But when there is little of substance, symbols matter.

That the Poland and Ukraine stops so obviously were about the Russians makes the stops in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all the more interesting. Clinton’s statements during the Caucasian leg of her visit were positive, as one would expect. She expressed her support for Georgia without committing the United States to any arms shipments for Georgia to resist the Russians, who currently are stationed inside Georgia’s northern secessionist regions. In Azerbaijan and Armenia, she called on both countries to settle the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region within western Azerbaijan proper. Armenia took control of the region by force following the Soviet collapse. For Azerbaijan, the return of Nagorno-Karabakh under a U.N. resolution is fundamental to its national security and political strategy. For Armenia, retreat is not politically possible.

This means Clinton’s call for negotiations and her offer of U.S. help are not particularly significant, especially since the call was for Washington to help under the guise of international, not bilateral, negotiations. This is particularly true after Clinton seemed to indicate that the collapse in Turkish-Armenian talks was Turkey’s responsibility and that it was up to Turkey to make the next move. Given that her visit to the region seems on the surface to have achieved little — and indeed, little seems to have been intended — it is worth taking time to understand why she went there in the first place, and the region’s strategic significance.

The Strategic Significance of the Caucasus

The Caucasus is the point where Russia, Iran and Turkey meet. For most of the 19th century, the three powers dueled for dominance of the region. This dispute froze during the Soviet period but is certainly in motion again. With none of these primary powers directly controlling the region, there are secondary competitions involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, both among these secondary powers and between the secondary powers and the major powers. And given that the region involves the Russians, Iranians and Turks, it is inevitable that the global power would have an interest as well — hence, Hillary Clinton’s visit.

Of all the regions of the world, this one is among the most potentially explosive. It is the most likely to draw in major powers and the most likely to involve the United States. It is quiet now — but like the Balkans in 1990, quiet does not necessarily reassure any of the players. Therefore, seven players are involved in a very small space. Think of it as a cauldron framed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, occasionally stirred by Washington, for whom each of the other three major powers poses special challenges of varying degrees.

The Caucasus region dominates a land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas. The bridge connects Turkey and Iran to the south with Russia in the north. The region is divided between two mountain ranges, the Greater Caucasus to the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south; and two plains divided from one another, one in Western Georgia on the Black Sea and another, larger plain in the east in Azerbaijan along the Kura River. A narrow river valley cuts through Georgia, connecting the two plains.

The Greater Caucasus Mountains serve as the southern frontier of Russia. To the north of these mountains, running east to west, lies the Russian agricultural heartland, flat and without any natural barriers. Thus, ever since the beginning of the 19th century, Russia has fought for a significant portion of the Caucasus to block any ambitions by the Turkish or Persian empires. The Caucasus mountains are so difficult to traverse by major military forces that as long as Russia maintains a hold somewhere in the Caucasus, its southern frontier is secure. During the latter part of the 19th century and for most of the Soviet period (except a brief time at the beginning of the era), the Soviet position in the Caucasus ran along the frontier with Turkey and Persia (later Iran). Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were incorporated into the Soviet Union, giving the Soviets a deep penetration of the Caucasus and, along with this, security.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the three Caucasian republics broke free of Moscow, pushing Russia’s frontier north by between about 160 to 320 kilometers (100-200 miles). The Russians still maintained a position in the Caucasus, but their position was not secure. The northern portion of the Caucasus consisted of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and others, all of which had significant Islamist insurgencies under way. If the Russians abandoned the northeastern Caucasus, their position was breached. But if they stood, they faced an interminable fight.

Georgia borders most of the Russian frontier. In the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union, various Georgian regions attempted to secede from Georgia with Russian encouragement. From the Georgian point of view, Russia represented a threat. But from the Russian point of view, Georgia represented a double threat. First, the Russians suspected the Georgians of supporting Chechen rebels in the 1990s — a charge the Georgians deny. The more important threat was that the United States selected Georgia as its main ally in the region. The choice made sense if the United States was conducting an encirclement strategy of Russia, which Washington was doing in the 1990s (though it became somewhat distracted from this strategy after 2001). In response to what it saw as U.S. pressure around its periphery, the Russians countered in Georgia in 2008 to demonstrate U.S. impotence in the region.

The Russians also maintained a close relationship with Armenia, where they continue to station more than 3,000 troops. The Armenians are deeply hostile to the Turks over demands that Turkey admit to massacres of large number of Armenians in 1915-16. The Armenians and Turks were recently involved in negotiations over the normalization of relations, but these talks collapsed — in our view, because of Russian interference. The issue was further complicated when a U.S. congressional committee passed a resolution in March condemning Turkey for committing genocide, infuriating the Turks.

One of the countercharges against Armenia is that it has conducted its own massacres of Azerbaijanis. Around the time of the Soviet breakup, it conducted a war against Azerbaijan, replete with the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis in a region known as Nagorno-Karabakh in western Azerbaijan, leaving Azerbaijan with a massive refugee problem. While the U.N. Security Council condemned the invasion, the conflict has been frozen, to use the jargon of diplomats.

The Importance of Azerbaijan

For its part, Azerbaijan cannot afford to fight a war against Russian troops in Armenia while it also shares a northern border with Russia. Azerbaijan also faces a significant Iranian problem. There are more Azerbaijanis living in Iran than in Azerbaijan; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a prominent Azerbaijani-Iranian. The Soviets occupied all of Azerbaijan during World War II but were forced to retreat under British and American pressure after the war, leaving most of Azerbaijan inside Iran. The remainder became a Soviet republic and then an independent state.

The Azerbaijanis are deeply concerned about the Iranians. Azerbaijan is profoundly different from Iran. It is Muslim but heavily secular. It maintains close and formal relations with Israel. It has supported the war in Afghanistan and made logistical facilities available to the United States. The Azerbaijanis claim that Iran is sending clerics north to build Shiite schools that threaten the regime. Obviously, Iran also operates an intelligence network there.

Adding to the complexity, Azerbaijan has long been a major producer of oil and has recently become an exporter of natural gas near the capital of Baku, exporting it to Turkey via a pipeline passing through Georgia. From the Turkish point of view, this provides alternative sources of energy to Russia and Iran, something that obviously pleases the United States. It is also an obvious reason why Russia sees Azerbaijan as undermining its position as the region’s dominant energy exporter.

The Russians have an interest, demonstrated in 2008, to move southward into Georgia. Obviously, if they were able to do this — preferably by a change in government and policy in Tbilisi — they would link up with their position in Armenia, becoming a force both on the Turkish border and facing Azerbaijan. The Russians would like to be able to integrate Azerbaijan’s exports into its broader energy policy, which would concentrate power in Russian hands and increase Russian influence on Russia’s periphery. This was made clear by Russia’s recent offer to buy all of Azerbaijan’s natural gas at European-level prices. The Turks would obviously oppose this for the same reason the Russians would want it. Hence, the Turks must support Georgia.

Iran, which should be viewed as an Azerbaijani country as well as a Persian one, has two reasons to want to dominate Azerbaijan. First, it would give Tehran access to Baku oil, and second, it would give Tehran strategic bargaining power with the Russians, something it does not currently have. In addition, talk of present unrest in Iran notwithstanding, Iran’s single most vulnerable point in the long term is the potential for Azerbaijanis living in Iran to want to unite with an independent Azerbaijani state. This is not in the offing, but if any critical vulnerability exists in the Iranian polity, this is it.

Consider this from the American side. When we look at the map, we notice that Azerbaijan borders both Russia and Iran. That strategic position alone makes it a major asset to the United States. Add to it oil in Baku and investment by U.S. companies, and Azerbaijan becomes even more attractive. Add to this that its oil exports support Turkey and weaken Russian influence, and its value goes up again. Finally, add to it that Turkey infuriated Azerbaijan by negotiating with Armenia without tying the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh to any Turkish-Armenian settlement. Altogether, the United States has the opportunity to forge a beneficial relationship with Azerbaijan that would put U.S. hands on one of Turkey’s sources of oil. At a time when the Turks recognize a declining dependence on the United States, anything that could increase that dependence helps Washington. Moreover, Azerbaijan is a platform from which Washington could make the Iranians uncomfortable, or from which to conduct negotiations with Iran.

An American strategy should include Georgia, but Georgia is always going to be weaker than Russia, and unless the United States is prepared to commit major forces there, the Russians can act, overtly and covertly, at their discretion. A Georgian strategy requires a strong rear base, which Azerbaijan provides, not only strategically but also as a source of capital for Georgia. Georgian-Azerbaijani relations are good, and in the long run so is Turkey’s relation with these two countries.

For Azerbaijan, the burning issue is Nagorno-Karabakh. This is not a burning issue for the United States, but the creation of a stable platform in the region is. Armenia, by far the weakest country economically, is allied with the Russians, and it has Russian troops on its territory. Given that the United States has no interest in who governs Nagorno-Karabakh and there is a U.N. resolution on the table favoring Azerbaijan that serves as cover, it is difficult to understand why the United States is effectively neutral. If the United States is committed to Georgia, which is official policy, then it follows that satisfying Azerbaijan and bringing it into a close relationship to the United States would be beneficial to Washington’s ability to manage relations with Russia, Iran and Turkey.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Azerbaijan a month ago and Clinton visited this weekend. As complex as the politics of this region are to outsiders, they are clearly increasing in importance to the United States. We could put it this way: Bosnia and Kosovo were obscure concepts to the world until they blew up. Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are equally obscure now. They will not remain obscure unless strategic measures are taken. It is not clear to us that Clinton was simply making a courtesy call or had strategy on her mind. But the logic of the American position is that it should think strategically about the Caucasus, and in doing so, logic and regional dynamics point to a strong relationship with Azerbaijan.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"