CIA’s Eye on South Asia

CIA’s Eye on South Asia offers an insight into the working of the world’s foremost spy agency through various reports presented to top US officials from 1951-2001. These previously secret CIA reports have become available largely because of a recent Presidential Executive order which ushered in a golden era of declassification in the United States. Unlikely all other foreign intelligence agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency undertakes large-scale declassification. In about a decade, the Agency screened about 95 million records – mostly held in the Agency Archives and Records Center in Langley – and released 30 million of them. This treasure trove of informtion contains plenty of material on South Asia. Reproduced in this book are the reports on India’s policy through the Nehru-Shastri-Indira-Morarji-Rajiv-Gowda years, drifts in Pakistan’s external outlook, the question of US military aid to Pakistan, India-China War of 1962, politics of undivided Communist Party of India, the Soviet policy toward Kashmir, the Bangladesh war, South Asia power matrix, nuclear proliferation in the region, Emergency in India, Islamic economy drive under Zia-ul-Haq, Rajiv Gandhi’s handling of a major espionage scandal, the BJP’s orientation – and numerious other dispatches. Especially narrated by the author is the story of India’s biggest spy scandal, which tarnished the image of no less than a former Prime Minister and two Deputy Prime Ministers. The author pieces together the accont of how a cabinet minister, and a CIA operative, wrecked India’s plan to annihilate Pakistan in 1971. Contents : Early Assessments (1951-1964); 2. India-China Relations; 3. Crisis in Kashmir; 4. Birth of Bangladesh; 5. Nuclear Proliferation; 6. Regional Politics; 7. Later Assessments (1974-2001).