Two foreign journalists had post-Pulwama back channel role between India-Pakistan, says book

NSA Ajit Doval tells authors Pakistan’s ISI is the ‘forever enemy’

National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) exchanged messages with top Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials as part of a unique back channel connection between the two countries that involved two foreign journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in 2018-2019, including after the , according to a new book by the journalists that quotes the NSA and other senior intelligence officials. According to the authors, ISI officials disclaimed all knowledge of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) attack in Pulwama within hours of the incident, which was apparently planned in Afghanistan’s Helmand, and not Pakistan. Mr. Doval and Deputy NSA Rajinder Khanna disbelieved the Pakistani messages, however, and carried out the Balakot strikes to “humiliate the Pakistan military”, the book recounts. In another disclosure, the authors say that Indian investigators found “corrupt local police officers” had helped four JeM terrorists sneak into the Pathankot airbase, in which seven personnel of security forces were killed. In a surprise move, the Modi government had invited a team of Pakistani investigators to Pathankot to jointly investigate the terror attack, but relations broke down between the two countries shortly after, and the joint investigation plan went nowhere. The NIA charge-sheet filed the same year against JeM doesn’t mention that the terrorists were helped by uniformed men.