Pakistan and India’s Missed Security Exchange in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana
The encounter between R.N. Kao and Fazal Muqeem Khan that never happened
In the 1950s, R.N. Kao was working in India's Intelligence Bureau (IB) as Deputy Director and was designated incharge of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's security [he would later become handpicked founder of India's external intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing, or R&AW, in 1968].
Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister of the Gold Coast, corresponded with Nehru beginning January 1957 for training of Ghanaian officers in intelligence functions. He initially requested India's help in setting up a 'Code and Cypher Section', which was accepted. In October 1957, a few months after Ghana declared independence from British rule and Nkrumah continued as the new country's first Prime Minister, he once again sought Nehru's help in establishing a foreign intelligence service. The agency would be known as 'Foreign Service Research Bureau (FSRB)'.
After thorough deliberation, Nehru once again obliged and entrusted the task to his aide and confidante, B.N. Mullik [India's second and longest-serving IB chief to date]. Mullik nominated one of his senior principals, Kao, to take charge of the assignment. Consequently, from 1958 till 1960, Kao was 'loaned' to the Ghanaian government [succeeded later by his handpicked contemporary K Sankaran Nair from 1959 till 1961]. Kao not only managed to establish a cordial working relationship with Nkrumah and the British secretary to his cabinet, but also with security liaison officers from Britain, the US and Israel [these would help entrench India's influence following Kao's return to New Delhi and succession by Nair].
Nehru had explicitly instructed Mullik that no Indian officer in Ghana would assume even temporary headship of the FSRB. Thus, while Kao and later Nair were serving as advisers and instructors, they were nonetheless de facto chiefs of the new setup. While Congress-led India's influence in Africa was growing, helping cement Nehru's ambitions of being a reliable integrator of the Afro-Asian solidary network, Pakistan's establishment had its own reservations. They raised concerns about the 'quality' of India's service delivery to the Ghanaians and even complained to a British High Commissioner of the time (A.A. Golds) that India had been "stealing a march over Pakistan, particularly in Ghana".
The backdrop to these developments merit attention: Like India, Pakistan was also newly liberated from the British Empire and was beholden to its former colonial overlords for patronage and support. The Pakistan Army's Commander-in-Chief General General Ayub Khan (in office 1951-58) was bent in favour of the Americans with whom he would later, as martial law dictator and President, sign a strategic partnership. The concerns of Pakistan, as a key ally of Trans-Atlantic powers, was therefore something that could not be whisked away.
Perhaps for this reason, Nkrumah may have decided (on British insistence?) that a representative from Pakistan would be included, along side Britain and Canada, to join a review committee on national security. In early 1958, the Tribune newspaper of India carried a report mentioning Pakistan's inclusion. Per his own private notes, Kao was "immensely intrigued" because "we felt that if we were advising Dr Nkrumah regarding foreign intelligence, then there could hardly be any scope for Pakistan to be a member of the committee set up to deal with security matters pertaining to Ghana". He adds that discreet efforts to corroborate this report came back negative and so the IB concluded, albeit mistakenly, that this news was a rumour.
In May 1958, however, Nkrumah's office issued a public release confirming the institution of this review committee and detailing names of foreign representatives. Brigadier Fazal Muqeem Khan was nominated by Pakistan as its representative [who would later become Defence Secretary and retire as a Major General]. The Terms of Reference for this committee, including gist of its meetings, remain unknown.
Khan's position at the time is also not known, but we can safely speculate that this committee may have a had a largely inconsequential role. This assertion is premised on two facts:
Firstly, Kao confesses in his private notes that during his term of stay in Ghana, he was unaware of what the committee did nor was he ever engaged by it. In his own words, "...for all practical purposes in connection with the scheme with which I was involved, this matter could be completely ignored". Rather unusual, considering that the rationale for constituting the committee was to supervise the activities of all security organs. Secondly, available records show that Khan had been appointed Commandant of Pakistan Military Academy [briefly from May to October 1959] and subsequently assumed charge as Master General of Ordnance (MGO), Pakistan Army Headquarters. His deputation to Ghana's committee was somewhere between May 1958 and April 1959, a very short lived period [as of yet, there is no further information about successive/ substituted members of this committee].
The general and logical assumption would be that Kao and Khan should have interacted in principle but the former's private notes confirm this never happened. For all practical purposes, therefore, Pakistan's role in Ghana's 'security advisory' matters was symbolic. After his departure from Ghana, Khan enjoyed a stable military career and wrote several books on the Pakistan Army and its history while Kao would enjoy a relatively illustrious career as founder and Secretary of R&AW and also aide to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
India’s pivotal role in Ghana’s intelligence and security training during Kwame Nkrumah’s rule are already well documented. The future, however, seems to have undone many of Kao and Nair’s efforts; Nkrumah was ousted through a coup to prevent his consolidation of long-term power and the FSRB appears to have been disbanded.
What survives is the National Intelligence Bureau in Ghana, which between 1996 and 2020 was known as the Bureau of National Investigations.
References
Nitin Gokhale, 'R.N. Kao - Gentleman Spymaster', published 2019 by Bloomsbury India
Avinash Paliwal, 'Colonial Sinews of Postcolonial Espionage - India and theMaking of Ghana’s External Intelligence Agency, 1958-61', The International History Review 2022, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp 914-934
The Army List 1960, published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office
Judith Lamiokor Lamptey, 'BNI changes name to National Intelligence Bureau (NIB)', Graphic Online Ghana, 23 November 2020, https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/bni-changes-name-to-national-intelligence-bureau-nib.html