India takes the fight to
guerrillas By Ramtanu Maitra
Recent
Indian intelligence reports indicate that the
Indian army is in the process of developing a guerrilla
training school in the jungles of Kaziranga National
Park to provide special jungle warfare training and
anti-terrorist operation skills to junior and
middle-level officers. Kaziranga National Park, noted
for the one-horn rhinos that make their home there, is
in the state of Assam, a hotbed of secessionist
activities.
The Kazirnaga special jungle
warfare training school will not be the first of its kind
in northeastern India. Hidden away in the thick jungles
of the northeastern state of Mizoram, some 100
American infantry soldiers honed their firing skills
against unconventional targets for three weeks (March
28-April 16) at Vairengte. The joint Indo-US defense
cooperation exercise was yet another example of the kind of
close collaboration that has developed between the Indian
and US military since September 11, 2001.
A
top-quality school established in 1970, the Counter
Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) in
Vairengte is considered one of world's leading
anti-terrorist institutions. The motto of the institute
is "fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla".
It is
no surprise that India is developing top-quality
counter-insurgency training schools in its northeastern
region. That area remains troubled; there are about 40
small insurgent groups in India's northeast with demands
that range from independent homelands to greater
autonomy. They claim to be protecting their ethnic
identities and have accused the Indian government of
exploiting the mineral and oil-rich region. The
insurgency has claimed more than 15,000 lives in the
past decade.
Due to years of neglect by New Delhi,
and the lack of adequate integration of the region's
population with the rest of the country, the region
has remained a seat of violence. A number of other
factors, such as the success of Christian missionaries
since the British days in alienating many northeasterners
from the Hindu-Muslim-Buddhist-dominated mainstream
India; the presence of a copious supply of opium
in Myanmar and small arms in Southeast Asia; and the
presence of a number of inadequately governed
nations, such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar around
India's northeast, have helped fuel the insurgency.
In a recent report, The Economist pointed out that
the "instability and political violence in neighboring
[Myanmar], Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and
Nepal gives India reason to fear that its own delicate
political balance could shatter". Although a "composite
peace dialogue" is under way between India and
Pakistan, India continues to suspect Pakistani
intelligence of fomenting unrest not just in
Indian-administered Kashmir, but also in many other
parts of India, The Economist added. Last year, a joint
operation by the Royal Bhutan Army and Indian security
forces scattered the militant anti-New Delhi insurgents
from the Bhutan-India border. The operation was an
absolute success and has set a precedent for what
Bangladesh and Myanmar must do, New Delhi believes.
Encouraged by the outcome of the military
operations against insurgents, India and Bhutan have
decided to hold secretary-level and border district
coordination dialogues every six months on combating the
insurgency along the border of the two countries. The
decision came when the present Indian External Affairs
Minister K Natwar Singh was on a visit to Bhutan to
thank the Royal Bhutan government for flushing out the
militants from the country, where he met King Jigme
Singye Wangchuk. Reports indicate that India and Bhutan
are jointly developing security measures necessary for
protecting Bhutanese vehicles traveling on Indian
highways.
Meanwhile, New Delhi is particularly
concerned about developments in Nepal. There, a bloody
eight-year-old insurgency has resulted in Maoist
guerrillas obtaining control of 68 of Nepal's 75
districts. A greater danger is the announced merger of
the two largest groups among the 20-odd Indian Maoist,
or "Naxalite", insurgent movement; the People's War
Group and the Maoist Communist Center. Of India's 593
districts, 157 are now affected in some measure by
Naxalism, with 102 newly affected regions added to the
roster during 2004.
Bangladesh is also high on
India's list of concerns. The ruling coalition of
Khaleda Zia includes an Islamic party that is accused by
the local opposition of encouraging the spread of
Islamic extremism. After terrorist attacks last month on
civilians in the Indian states of Assam and Nagaland,
Indian officials stepped up their criticism of
Bangladesh for harboring and supporting militants.
New Delhi conveyed a similar message in
softer tones to Than Shwe, the top general in Myanmar's
ruling junta when he visited India in October. India
believes that some 1,500 insurgents are based across the
border between the Indian state of Manipur and western
Myanmar.
New equation with
Myanmar After General Than Shwe's visit, there
are indications that India and Myanmar may launch a
joint offensive against rebels who are mostly Nagas
fighting in India's northeast and who have bases hidden
just over the border in the jungles of Myanmar. C
Singson, a senior leader of the oldest separatist group
in northeastern India, the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland, affirmed the plans for an offensive. He said
insurgents in the region have been anticipating such an
operation for some time, but their fears deepened after
Than Shwe's visit.
"The Indo-Burma [Myanmar]
pact on flushing out northeast insurgents and to combat
terrorism in the border regions is a matter of grave
alarm, and Nagas need to understand the broader
political implications of the politics of artificial
boundaries that has been created to divide the Naga
people so as to limit our struggle against occupation
and for our inalienable right to self-determination,"
said a statement from the Naga People's Movement of
Human Rights. Various Naga tribes straddling the
India-Myanmar borders have picked up arms against India,
demanding a Greater Nagaland encompassing the lands
where Nagas reside.
Judging by reports,
the Kazirnaga special jungle-warfare school, which is
expected to be fully operative in 2007, intends to
impart capsule courses for senior officers who are
already in counter-insurgency operations or expecting
tenure in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast. The new
security environment in India's northeast no doubt needs
new input and new skills to deal with semi-urban and
semi-jungle warfare.
Unique training
center The quality of the Kaziranga school
will be judged against the Vairengte school. The
sprawling campus of the CIJWS is a unique military training
center for honing soldiers' skills to fight terrorists
in natural surroundings. Established in 1970, the CIJWS
was set up after Indian army personnel suffered
heavy casualties in their efforts to subdue India's
fiercely independent tribes in the northeast. Over the years,
the CIJWS, situated in the midst of bamboo forests where
it rains eight months a year and humidity never goes
below 90%, had become the training ground for not only
Indian troops but for others as well. Besides the US
troops, the CIJWS has received requests for enrollment
from several foreign armed forces including those of
France, Russia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and several Central
Asian countries, CIJWS commandant B K Panwar told a
correspondent of the Indian English daily, The Hindu.
After the joint Indo-US training
at Vairengte, Lieutenant-Colonel David Wisecarver,
commanding officer of the US infantry unit, said the
exercise was a unique opportunity for the Americans
because the "US doesn't have a jungle warfare school"
and his unit would impart the lessons learned in Mizoram
to other soldiers in the United States.
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