Pigeons, Khalistan and the Rothschild dynasty

For a Pakistani citizen travel to India is a complicated matter. Visas are practically impossible to obtain. Additionally, visas restrict visits to two or three specified cities where daily reports to the local police station are required.

That is, unless the Pakistani 'citizen' happens to be a pigeon. (Yes, pigeons have nationalities too!)

Indian paranoia, justified or not, stems in part from the unique capabilities ascribed to Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country's largest intelligence agency.

With precision matched only by Swiss watches, any act of terrorism in India is routinely blamed on the machinations of the ISI by the Indian establishment. Many Pakistani security analysts are currently speculating how much longer before the Naxalite insurgency engulfing much of Eastern India will be placed on the ISI's doorsteps.

In the past, India's problems with the Nagaland, Mizoram, and Assamese separatist movements were said to have been exacerbated by militant training camps run by the ISI on Bangladeshi soil – with the connivance of Bangladeshi intelligence agencies.

However, it was the movement to create a separate Sikh state of Khalistan in East Punjab in the 1980s that rattled the Indian establishment, possibly as much as the Kashmiri separatist movement. Needless to say, the Indian security establishment saw Pakistan's hand in stoking Sikh separatism.

In June 1984, the Indian military's Operation Blue Star used tanks against separatists holed up in Sikhism's holiest shrine, Amritsar's Golden Temple. Until today, the leader of the Sikh separatist movement, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, remains a controversial figure within the Sikh community. Many Sikhs consider Bhindranwale to be a martyr.

What is undisputed is that the repercussions of Operation Blue Star were severe. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984. The assassination precipitated severe anti-Sikh riots across India.

It is estimated that at least 3,000 Sikhs were killed in just three days following Indira Gandhi's assassination.

In this historical context, when a 'Pakistani' pigeon strays across the international border into India it is serious business.

Ramdas (Amritsar) A pigeon from Pakistan suspected to be on a "spying mission" was caught on Thursday near the Indo-Pak border here, police said here. The white pigeon carrying a Pakistani phone number and address on its body besides a rubber ring in its feet ... Police suspect that the pigeon, which landed in Indian territory, may be on "special mission of spying" and might have been pushed by Pakistan intelligence agency ISI.

The pigeon is being kept in an air conditioned room which is being guarded by policemen.

Excerpted from Express India, May 27, 2010

The Rothschild brothers used pigeons as a means of express communication in the 1800s. With the help of carrier pigeons, the Rothschilds' made serious money trading British financial assets on the basis of 'advance information' about the Battle of Waterloo. (Such trading is referred to as insider trading today.)

But in 2010, an era of nanotechnology which makes advancements first seen in the Star Wars movie seem almost real, the use of spying pigeons sounds absurd. Especially when the pigeon carries a return address and telephone number!

Who needs 'humint,' or human intelligence, when 'pigint' is available?

PS - Perhaps a reader in Pakistan will be kind enough to telephone the pigeon's ISI handler on her cellphone at +92 303 628 4620 to inform her that the pigeon needs legal assistance from the Pakistan Embassy in New Delhi? (The number was painted on the pigeon's wing feathers so it must be bona-fide.)