What Is Five Eyes Alliance? History, Concept And Its Role In India-Canada Standoff

India-Canada Standoff: The India-Canada diplomatic row has brought the 'Five Eyes' intelligence alliance into the spotlight. A top US diplomat said last week it was “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners” that prompted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to publicly allege last Monday that “Indian agents” were involved in the killing of Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. Nijjar was killed outside a gurdwara near Vancouver in June this year. “There was shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to make the statements that the Prime Minister made,” US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen was <a href="https://ift.tt/l8u4AeW" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quoted as saying</a> on Canada's CTV News Channel. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance — both surveillance-based and signals intelligence — comprises the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, besides Canada, and it is reported to have backed Ottawa’s claims against India, calling the allegations serious.  Citing sources, The New York Times also <a href="https://ift.tt/5zlYLna" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported that</a> the US provided Canada with intelligence on Nijjar killing.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday they were “closely coordinating” with Ottawa on the issue. Other Five Eyes nations Australia and the UK have also said they are in touch with Indian officials and monitoring the situation. <a href="https://ift.tt/C1Zf40H" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ALSO READ | ‘No Special Exemption’ For India, Closely Consulting Concerns With Canada, Says US NSA</a> <h3>What Is Five Eyes Alliance And Why Was It Formed?</h3> The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance, and the member nations — US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — are bound by a tightly-knit multilateral UKUSA Agreement for cooperation in signals and electronic intelligence. As part of the collaboration, the five English-speaking nations exchange a wide range of intelligence within the grouping. Formed in 1941, it is said to be one of the most secretive and powerful intelligence-sharing alliances in the world. “The Five Eyes is still very active in the 21st century, even though it’s not as well known as its younger sibling NATO,” US analyst Joshua Holzer wrote in a July 2023 article published in The Conversation. The Five Eyes nations are “diverse societies, governed by rule of law and robust human rights and are bonded by a common language”, the official Canadian government website notes, adding: “These characteristics aid the partners in sharing information with one another to protect their shared national interests.” <h3>History Of Five Eyes Alliance</h3> While the origins of the Five Eyes alliance date back to World War I when the US and the UK would share “training, advice, and tactical intelligence”, it wasn’t until World War II — 1941, to be precise — that the alliance started to take a formal shape, the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the intelligence, security and cyber agency of the country, says on its website. In August 1941, UK and US intelligence members signed the Atlantic Charter, which listed global goals for the two countries after the end of WWII and later became the basis for the United Nations that it is now. This charter paved the way for the Britain-USA (BRUSA) agreement that was signed in 1943 “to share intelligence information between the two countries to support US forces in Europe, exchange personnel and develop joint regulations for the handling and distribution of highly sensitive material”, according to the GCHQ.   BRUSA laid the foundations for the UKUSA Agreement, which was eventually signed between the two countries on March 5, 1946. Canada joined the UKUSA in 1949, followed by Australia and New Zealand in 1956, together forming the alliance that later came to be known as Five Eyes. When the five-nation alliance took final shape, the US was fighting the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Covert intelligence operations were carried out throughout this period. The GCHQ notes on its website how the UKUSA Agreement had not been officially acknowledged for long. While the world had known about its existence from the 1980s, it was only in 2010 that files containing details of the agreement were released to the National Archives for the first time. The declassified files included “end product reports" from the initial years of the Cold War, the GCHQ says.  The name, ‘Five Eyes’, was publicly acknowledged much later. According to The Interpreter, published by the Lowy Institute, an Australian prime minister publicly referred to the “Five Eyes” in 2014 for the first time. The name first appeared in an Australian Defence White Paper in 2016, the report said, adding that meetings between ministers from these five nations were first identified as ‘Five Eyes’.  <a href="https://ift.tt/fRHhOWw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ALSO READ | India-Canada Diplomatic Row: Why Canada Is Important For India And Why Both Sides Need To Settle Row</a> <h3>Five Eyes Expansion Plans And What It Has Been Up To</h3> It was reported by a section of the media last year that the US wanted to invite certain countries, including India, to join the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing alliance.  In its report, the congressional Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations that had reviewed the draft National Defense Authorisation bill for fiscal 2022 mentioned the Five Eyes alliance.  Noting that the Five Eye countries “must work closer together, as well as expand the circle of trust to other like-minded democracies”, the report had said: “The committee directs the Director of National Intelligence, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, to provide a report to the House Committee on Armed Services, the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and the congressional intelligence committees, not later than May 20, 2022, on current intelligence and resource sharing agreements between the United States and the countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom; as well as opportunities to expand intelligence sharing with South Korea, Japan, India, and Germany.” The Conversation article cited above noted that the members of the Five Eyes have of late expanded its scope beyond intelligence, entering into the realm of policy, “to address the rising power of China”. Attorneys general from the five nations, besides their respective defence and finance ministers, now regularly meet.  What used to be a secretive alliance went ahead and issued a joint statement in November 2020 when it sought to condemn China’s National Security Law that “undermin[ed] Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy”. In 2016, the alliance had formed the Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council comprising the non-political intelligence oversight, review, and security entities of the member nations. The council exchanges views on “subjects of mutual interest and concern; compare best practices in review and oversight methodology; explore areas where cooperation on reviews and the sharing of results is permitted where appropriate; encourage transparency to the largest extent possible to enhance public trust; and maintain contact with political offices, oversight and review committees, and countries as appropriate”, the US Office of the Director of  National Intelligence notes on its website. Recent years have seen a closer alignment among the five countries due to different geopolitical factors, including the rise of China. The closeness, however, does not always reflect in their foreign policy. In January 2021, when the Five Eyes countries issued a joint statement to condemn “the mass arrests of 55 politicians and activists in Hong Kong for subversion under the National Security Law”, New Zealand abstained from it. It signed an upgraded free trade deal the same month. The US has since kept New Zealand away from other agreements. In September 2021, the US, along with Australia and the UK formed the AUKUS partnership to “expand and accelerate [the] sharing of sensitive information”, keeping New Zealand and Canada out of it, though the latter has expressed its desire to be a part of the grouping. In 2013, as reported by the media at the time, the alliance found itself at the centre of a controversy when whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked intelligence documents from the US National Security Agency, which showed the Five Eyes member nations were spying on their own citizens, besides collecting data on foreign countries. 

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What Is Five Eyes Alliance? History, Concept And Its Role In India-Canada Standoff

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