ISI tipped off India about Al Qaeda attack in 2019 to avoid Pulwama repeat: Ex-envoy to Pakistan

Former Indian envoy Ajay Bisaria revealed in his latest book how ISI's tip-off helped India avert a major revenge attack planned by Al Qaeda in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.

Bisaria was the India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan from 2017 to August 2019. He was expelled by the Pakistani government in response to the abrogation of Article 370.

In his book, 'Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan', Bisaria said that the Indian High Commission in Islamabad was used as a point of communication by the Pakistan Army to pass off the information.

The Al Qaeda terror group planned an imminent attack in Kashmir in revenge for the killing of its operative Zakir Musa, a close aide of slain terrorist Burhan Wani.

Musa had split from the Kashmir-focused militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, to declare his allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2017.

Bisara said that he was initially sceptical of the information, but added that it turned out to be true as the Indian security agencies were able to thwart the attack.

The former envoy said that the reason behind the tip-off was that ISI wanted to convey to the Indian establishment it was not involved in the planned attacks, and was hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2019 Pulwama attacks, in which 40 Indian security personnel were killed, prompting air strikes by India at Balakot.

“I asked if this information had been conveyed through the normal military channels, the DGMO hotline. I was told it might have been, but that the ISI leadership was keen to escalate the information to my level so that I could convey this to India. At this point, Asim Munir was the DG of the ISI. I passed on this information to India, concerned this was some kind of game,” he writes, according to Indian Express newspaper.

“It turned out that this was a genuine enough tip-off when an attack was indeed attempted close to the predicted time and place. This was an unusual input that Pakistan seemed to be giving to India. One theory about why the high commission was used as a channel was that the ISI was taking no chances and wanted no repeat of Pulwama; it wanted to make it clear at a political level it was not involved with the revenge attack being planned, but was only giving India a friendly tip-off with a piece of intercepted intelligence,” he writes.

In another excerpt, Bisaria revealed that "General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, the army chief, through the ISI, was trying to improve the atmospherics in the relationship in the run-up to the Bishkek summit of 14 June, hoping that Pakistan’s sincerity about trying to better relations would register on the Indian side. Perhaps coincidentally, a day before the attack, the ISI chief, Asim Munir, lost his job."

(With inputs from agencies)