Mossad by Michael Bar-Zohar & Nissim Mishal HARPER COLLINS; Price: Rs.999; Pages 390

Contrary to the fervid and over-blown imagination of Hollywood movie directors, the lives of spies and counter-spies, intelligence and counter-intelligence agents are nasty, brutal and usually short. The voyage of their lives comprises dangerous clandestine meetings, long hours of surveillance, interrogation, torture, isolation and anonymity.

With gunboat diplomacy dead, nuclear stockpiles ruling out conventional wars, and jet travel and ICT (information communication technologies) shrinking distances and reducing national boundaries, to mere nuisances, the covert operations of sophisticated intelligence services such as America’s CIA, Russia’s KGB, Britain’s MI6, Pakistan’s ISI, Israel’s Mossad, Iran’s Mukhbarat and even our own RAW (Research & Analysis Wing), are increasingly shaping the politics, foreign policy and even the future of nations.

While the CIA and MI6 have been glamourised — and often parodied — by Hollywood and potboilers, perhaps the world’s most admired secret service is Israel’s Mossad. It has played a major role in this tiny country (pop.8.2 million) surviving the sustained hostility of its Arab neighbours whose combined population exceeds 100 million, and whose enormous oil and petroleum wealth enables them to purchase the latest hi-tech weaponry and armaments.

How successive ramsads (directors) of Mossad working in close cooperation with democratically elected governments subject to the supervision of the Knesset (parliament) and an intrusive free press, have managed to nip every conspiracy and extract revenge for historical wrongs against the Jewish people and terrorist atrocities against citizens of Israel (estb.1948), is recounted in this collection of non-fiction case histories detailing the greatest triumphs of this fearsome intelligence agency.   

Written in a fluid and economic style by Dr. Michael Bar-Zohar, a former member of the Knesset, professor at Haifa and Emory (USA) universities and author of several fiction and non-fiction works, together with historian and former head of Israel Television, Nissim  Mishal, Mossad begins with the description of a huge explosion in November 2011 of a secret missile base on the outskirts of Teheran which killed Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, mastermind of Iran’s Shehab long-range missiles programme. “But the secret target of the bombing was not Moghaddam. It was a solid fuel rocket engine, able to carry a nuclear missile more than six thousand miles across the globe, from Iran’s underground silos to the US mainland,” write the authors. Indeed a major objective of this compendium seems to be a thinly veiled warning to the theocracy in Iran whose leadership is developing a nuclear programme to make good its “blunt and explicit promise… to obliterate Israel from the (world) map”. 

The authors freely acknowledge that even as the US government is conducting slow and tortuous negotiations to persuade hardliners in Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, Mossad is waging a “stubborn shadow war” against it by “sabotaging nuclear facilities, assassinating scientists, supplying plants with faulty equipment and raw materials via bogus companies, organising  desertions of high-ranking military officers and introducing ferocious viruses into Iran’s computer systems”. And since the Iranian leadership doesn’t seem to be deterred from pursuing its nuclear ambitions, the power of Israel’s fearsome secret service is a reminder to Iran’s leaders.

Yet, whatever the objective of this history of Mossad, the outcome is a gripping narrative offering illuminating insights into the crucial role spy masters and counter-spies play in plots and counter-plots for eliminating terrorists and antisocials beyond the reach of national and international laws and preventing full-scale wars.

This book can also serve as a primer for third world intelligence agencies yet learning the ropes of spy games. According to several reliable sources, in a naïve quest to rapidly improve Indo-Pak amity during the late 1990s, India’s late and unlamented former prime minister Inder Gujral let slip information which resulted in the capture and execution of over a dozen RAW agents operating under cover in Pakistan. Such worthies within the establishment could draw lessons from these narratives of complex missions intricately planned and executed by successive Mossad directors, working in close cooperation with elected governments of differing ideologies and objectives.

For India’s community of sleuths in government and the armed forces, Mossad is an insightful account of the huge amount of research, investigation, international coordination, personnel and technology training which are prerequisites of success in the byzantine world of international espionage.

And to the credit of the authors, the stories behind some of the world’s biggest headlines grabbing news reports — the tracking, kidnapping and trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann captured in distant Argentina in 1960; the tracking and execution of the Black September terrorists who assassinated nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, 1972;  discovery of the actual text of Russian dictator Nikita Krushchev’s famous speech denouncing Stalin (1956); the first ever hijack of a first Russian made  MiG 21 to Israel (1966); the rescue of dozens of Jewish virgins from Syria (1971-73) and the sabotage of a grandiose plan of Iraq’s notorious dictator Saddam Hussein to manufacture a super gun 150 meters long and weighing 2,100 tonnes (1990) plus 15 other stories — are delineated in this clutch of  factual case histories.

Moreover a pleasant surprise of this book is that it also describes some of the agency’s goof ups, such as the ease with which a disgruntled technician working in Israel’s top-secret nuclear arsenal project was able to photograph vital installations and sell them to the Sunday Times, London. 

With communist China determined to emerge as the dominant power of Asia and actively suborning our neighbour nations including Burma, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and nuclear-armed Pakistan also sliding into anarchy, counter-intelligence and anti-terrorist policing is becoming increasingly vital for India. Clearly, our goal should be to support the democracy movements of China, Pakistan and neighbouring countries.

Recently, RAW pulled off a spectacular coup in Sri Lanka by splitting the Sri Lanka Freedom Party of two-term, pro-China president Mahinda Rajapaksa and getting a former president and the opposition to unite behind Rajapaksa’s ex-cabinet minister Maithripala Sirisena who won the presidential election against all expectations.

Quite clearly, with a substantial climate change imminent in South Asia’s geopolitical environment, India’s secret services including RAW and IB (Intelligence Bureau), CBI and the corps of detectives of the state governments, need to get their sloppy acts together. Which is a tall order in a society where petty corruption is pervasive, and top secrets of governments and corporates are bought and sold for a song.

Meanwhile, the keystone cops of the country’s intelligence agencies would do well to read this valuable primer.       
Dilip Thakore

Bold critique

Islam and world peace by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan GOODWORD BOOKS; Price: Rs.100; Pages 200

One of the most tireless advocates of tolerance, dialogue and harmony between Muslims and Hindus and people of all religious persuasions is 90-year-old Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, founder of the Delhi-based Centre for Peace and Spirituality (estb. 2001). 

A prolific writer and one of the very few traditionally-trained ulemas or Islamic scholars across the world actively engaged in promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding, the Maulana has taken a consistent stand on terror being waged in the name of Islam. According to him, terrorism does not lend itself to Islam and has absolutely no Islamic sanction. “God has no mercy for him who has no mercy for his fellows,” the author cites Prophet Mohammed with approval.

This timely book touches on various dimensions of ongoing debates about Islam, peace, conflict and terrorism. In contrast to the radical Islamists’ supremacist and hate-driven interpretations of the holy Quran, Maulana Wahiduddin proffers peace as the essence of Islam. As in several other religions, he says, Islam sanctions violence only in very rare, exceptional and unavoidable circumstances. To stress this point, he provides a broad overview of some of the defensive and unavoidable battles Prophet Mohammad was obliged to fight in his lifetime.

Maulana Wahiduddin’s uncompromising stand against militant (mis-)interpretations of Islam and his advocacy of peace, harmony and dialogue between Muslims and others, backed by deep scholarship, is a breath of fresh air in the Muslim world, whose reputation has been ruined by the brutalities of terrorist groups, the latest being Boko Haram in Nigeria and the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These so-called jihadist groups practising terror and torture are purveyors of fasad or strife, and have no legitimacy in Islam, insists the Maulana.
Maulana Wahiduddin writes that in Islam war can be fought only in defence, and that, too, as a last resort when all peaceful initiatives have failed. Moreover, wars can be waged only by duly-established governments. 

Therefore, he argues, vicious guerrilla wars conducted by non-state actors, including Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban, ISIS and so on, have no endorsement in Islam. Also forbidden are proxy wars, such as the war being waged by Pakistan-backed terror groups in Kashmir, because, according to Islam, there must be open declaration of hostilities if a Muslim country goes to war, he writes.

The author also denounces liberal usage of the word jihad by religious extremists. The Arabic word jihad, he indicates, is greatly misunderstood, not least by Muslims themselves. In reality, the word is synonymous with ‘much effort’ or ‘struggle’, and is not analogous with ‘holy war’. The greatest jihad Islamic texts underscore is the struggle against one’s baser instincts — an interpretation terror groups don’t seem to care about at all. Therefore, to reduce jihad to just one form — physical war or qital — is totally unacceptable, and contrary to spirit and purpose of the faith. What such groups are engaged in, he says is, “Anti-Islam in the name of Islam”. 

A major factor behind conflicts in large parts of the world involving people of different faiths is widespread misunderstandings of theological prescriptions about inter-community relations and conflicting notions of national identity. The Maulana concedes that it’s futile to wish away real differences that exist between religions at the doctrinal level, and warns that contrived uniformity which denies religious differences cannot be sustained. Such distinctions need to be acknowledged, but people of different religious faiths and traditions can — and should — work together for the common good. 

Maulana Wahiduddin is one of the few ulemas genuinely engaged in promoting peace in Kashmir. He has written extensively on the subject, and in the concluding chapter of this book, titled ‘Peace in Kashmir’, he once again asserts that the ongoing conflict in Kashmir is not Islamic jihad. It does not fulfil “a single” condition of jihad in the true sense of the term. Nor is it an “Islamic movement”, he writes.

With its wealth of detail, penetrating insights and bold critique of radical Islamist discourse and politics, Islam and World Peace is a much-needed advocacy of inter-community harmony and dialogue between Muslims, Hindus and people of all religious persuasions.

Roshan shah