Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** India claims more evidence of Pakistani subversion.  India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) says that it has evidence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is funding the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) group in an attempt to revive militancy in Punjab.  Funds are said to be reaching BKI via informal money-transfer networks in Britain, Thailand, and Malaysia.

NIA says that BKI has a “large network” of sleeper cells in Punjab and that these are at the centre of a plot to revive 1980s-style militancy in the region.  BKI’s two top leaders, Wadhwa Singh and Mehal Singh, are believed to have been in Pakistan recently for meetings with top ISI officials.

Last week we reported that Indian counter-intelligence had sent out a special advisory to police intelligence units and special branches in southern India warning about Pakistani spy activity.  The advisory said that Pakistan had developed a “formidable” network in Sri Lanka with a view to spying on key Indian defence and strategic installations in the southern region.  The advisory called for “a special drive to target ISI [Pakistani intelligence] backed espionage networks in the area”.

*** German warning on Salafist activity.  Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has warned that hardline Salafists are trying to spread their influence among Islamists in Germany.  A German-language media centre has been set up with the intention “to exert influence on Islamists in Germany”.  It is said that over the past few months some 50 Salafists have left Germany to go abroad, mostly to Egypt.

*** Surge in North Korean trade with China.  A South Korean parliamentary report on 8 October revealed that trading volumes between China and North Korea reached US$3.54bn in the first seven months of 2012, an increase of 14.5% over the same period in 2011.  The trade figure for 2011 ($5.62bn) was itself up 62.4% on the previous year.

The same report showed that in 2011 China accounted for 89.1% of North Korea’s trading with foreign countries.  This is up from 67% in 2007, 72.9% in 2008, and 82.9% in 2010.  The North’s annual food imports from China came to 155,000 tons in 2008.  In 2011 the figure was 380,000 tons.

By contrast, aid to North Korea from South Korea has plummeted under President Lee Myung-bak.  The total amount of government and private-sector aid between early 2008 and August 2012 came to US215.1m, which is about a quarter of the average level of aid to the North provided under the two previous administrations.