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Two spy chiefs and the lost art of diplomacy

Both profoundly impressed me with their deep analytical skills. It was a privilege to listen to them.

I recently watched Raazi, which tells the story of a Kashmiri girl who spied on her Pakistani in-laws on behalf of India in the lead-up to the 1971 war. I quite liked Raazi; Alia Bhatt in the lead role of Sehmat did a marvelous job of carrying forward the film and was reinforced by a fine supporting cast - Bollywood arguably has the deepest reservoir of character acting talent in the world. The dialogues were super, and though the film was written by Bhavani Iyer and Meghna Gulzar (also the director), I wonder whether the director's dad, Gulzar Saheb, quietly added his "old school" magic to the dialogue.
The film's story was exaggerated, but that's presumably "poetic license". I say this because I've come across a few spies during my career. In fact, today marks the release of my latest book, The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace (HarperCollins India), written with two former spychiefs - Amarjit Singh Dulat of India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and General Asad Durrani of the Pakistan army's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate. It's unprecedented: never during the Cold War did CIA and KGB (of the erstwhile USSR) collaborate on such a project; and neither did the East and West Germans, though John le Carré set many of his espionage novels in divided Berlin. Even now, though the North and South Korean spy chiefs are working behind the scenes for a rapproachment, they have never collaborated on such a project.
The two Germanies reunited in 1990 and each Korea occasionally mentions reunification, but India and Pakistan currently have the frostiest relations. The irony is that these retired spychiefs - the keepers of their nation's deepest secrets - have, despite the near-absence of a bilateral relationship, found it possible to collaborate on a book whose main theme is hope.
The two men are worlds apart in temperament. Dulat spent three decades in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the same that ran Sehmat as an agent; indeed, Dulat was the IB's chief in Jammu and Kashmir when insurgency broke out during 1989-90. In 1999, he took over the RAW and when his tenure ended he joined the then Prime Minister AB Vajpayee's office. Durrani was an armyman who stumbled into intelligence work, first as the head of Military Intelligence in the late 1980s and then as the ISI head in 1990 - the fateful year for Kashmir.
He later served in two ambassadorial postings, in Germany and in Saudi Arabia.
Both preferred doing this book as an essay-writing exercise, collaborating on e-mail. I preferred a lively discussion, moderated (or provoked) by me. Since the three of us could not meet in either India or Pakistan, we met beginning in May 2016 in Istanbul, in Bangkok twice, and in Kathmandu. During those sessions I got to know the two a bit better.
Whereas Dulat is an eternal optimist and appears laidback, Durrani is a cold-eyed realist. Dulat believes that India-Pakistan peace was best served by confidence building measures, like liberalising the visa regime, expanding high-level visits between the countries, and allowing Pakistani cricketers to play in the Indian Premier League (the Twenty20 format which is wildly popular in India). Durrani believes peace has to be arrived at carefully and quietly, and with a medium-term plan of action - he talks specifically about placing two trusted men of their respective establishments out of the limelight to discuss, maybe over a period of ten years, ways to conclusively seal a deal. Dulat desperately wants India to do something politically positive in Kashmir; Durrani is happy to let the Indians shoot themselves in the foot in the Valley. Dulat is happy to talk to anyone, even the most dreaded terrorist; Durrani is more circumspect and relies on chain-of-command.
Both profoundly impressed me with their deep analytical skills. It was a privilege to listen to them casually discuss the complexity of international diplomacy. The book itself, whatever it may contain in its pages, is proof that India and Pakistan can together achieve even the unthinkable. I am proud to have been a part of it.
Aditya Sinha's latest book, 'The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace' is available now