The Spy Chronicles by A.S. Dulat

Author:A.S. Dulat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2018-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

17

The Doval Doctrine

A.S. Dulat: Ajit Doval keeps coming up in our intel dialogue. For the Pakistanis, he’s the devil incarnate.

Asad Durrani: I don’t want to put it like that. Maybe some in the Pakistani press do give that impression. In the business he’s just another person doing his duty, probably doing it well. But what has he done to deserve a mention in our book? Even if one mentioned him negatively.

I met Doval a couple of times, even before I met Mr Dulat. The first time was in Muscat, Oman, at an India-Pakistan Track-II in 2005, organised by the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Recently liberated from service he sat there quietly.

They seated three of us with intelligence backgrounds together, and by chance our microphones weren’t wired. Doval had just stepped out. I made a crack that we weren’t wired to the same system as our monitoring was being done elsewhere, and Mr Doval has gone to activate our channels. There was a good amount of laughter.

He was also at the Tehelka meet I mentioned. Quiet, observing, difficult to read. Ultimately he also spoke, and that is where one could assess that his experience in Pakistan affected him in a different way. He’s no Mani Shankar Aiyar.1

Dulat: He was part of our intel dialogue and attended the first few sessions.

I’ve known Ajit for a long time. He’s been a colleague and good friend too. When he joined this group I told Peter, I now see hope in this process because we have here a gentleman who is going to go places. Everyone looked around and realised I was talking about Ajit. He has gone places but he hasn’t helped the process, and then he just opted out.

As far as his capabilities go, he’s one of our outstanding operational guys. He’s a field man.

The trouble, though, with people who are so much into themselves, is that they’re lonesome and they stay aloof. In A Legacy of Spies2 there’s a relevant line that says, the trouble with spooks is that they find it difficult to invest in trust.

These high-profile guys who keep to themselves have a problem of trust. Ajit is a guy who won’t trust anybody. In our business it is, in any case, not easy to trust. He’s not the only one, incidentally. Other big names in Indian intelligence have been similarly lonely.

Aditya Sinha: You never hear in the Indian press about the Pakistani NSA, General Janjua, in the way Doval is mentioned in the Pakistani media.

Durrani: Sometimes when the press finds a target, it benefits the person. He hasn’t changed policy. He’s just a little more hardline but it’s still what I believe has been Indian policy for a long time. He shouts more, like Trump does, a lot of hot air. He provides that masala.

We’re talking more of the substance of the relationship, not of people who froth at the mouth. One met him later in this intel dialogue once or twice. He spoke with a swagger, so I thought he has gained confidence.

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