As the whole of India almost went berserk after the report of the country’s Special Forces having launched a clandestine attack on Naga militant camps in neighboring Myanmar to avenge the killing of 18 soldiers in the northeastern theater was made public, a strategic intelligence official (SIO) lamented “there is something seriously wrong with today’s political leadership or else exploiting such covert operation for accruing political dividends so blatantly is unimaginable.”
Indeed, the Modi government has violated the cardinal principles of covert missions by tom-tomming the minutest details of the operation grotesquely. Appalling was Indian Army’s own faux-pas as blow-by-blow account of the assets deployed and operational technique employed was fed to a pliant media to enhance Modi’s image that too when the organization is headed by someone who had the prior experience of leading India’s most lethal and secretive special unit. And, instructors from this very unit have undergone surreptitious stints inside Myanmar’s treacherous terrain where the writ of the Myanmarese state hardly runs. But what struck this author is one interesting observation of the SIO, who participated in several “blue missions” beyond India’s boundary. “Why did Ajit (India’s national security adviser), with years of experience in clandestine espionage, chose to sensationalize this event by involving the para-commandos?” wondered the SIO while adding that “this was a fairly insignificant operation with modest objective that has in the past been successfully accomplished by the routine infantry unit of Indian Army.”
To the SIO “this adventure was a camouflage for something that the government wants to hide from the public and hence this diversionary media propaganda.” He seems to be certain that “henceforth, Myanmar will shy away from providing any help to the Indian security forces.”
How true the SIO was became evident when a reliable source in Myanmar confirmed that Naypyidaw has informally registered its protest with the Indian ambassador over New Delhi’s aggressive public relations propaganda which undermined Thein Sein government’s credibility at home, that too in an election year. And Modi was forced to dispatch Ajit Doval to placate the Myanmarese leadership after Zaw Htay, director of Myanmar's presidential office, categorically asserted “we will not allow any foreign military operations in Myanmar territory” and ended with a clear message to New Delhi by urging every country to “respect other’s sovereignty.”
In fact, a reliable source revealed that New Delhi has opened secret channels of communication with Shangwang Shangyung Khaplang, the ailing Burmese-Naga guerrilla supremo who walked out of a 14-year old cease-fire agreement with India early this year. According to the same source, “Doval’s sudden visit to Myanmar is linked to the desperation creeping in at the top echelon of the Modi-government over the anti-terror operation fiasco that has put New Delhi in a spot of bother, with smaller neighbors beginning to suspect Modi’s intention.”
Zaw Htay’s revelation, about India providing a fake assurance to the Myanmarese political leadership, does put a big question mark over the Modi-government’s real intent. If the Indian ambassador had indeed made a commitment to the Myanmarese deputy foreign minister that the anti-militant operation would be restricted to the Indian side of the Indo-Myanmar border, who ordered the intrusive raid, which is clearly in violation of the United Nations’ Charter? Intriguing it is because Indian Foreign Secretary Jaishankar had quietly struck a quid-pro-quo deal with Myanmarese authorities concerning joint attack on rebel camps in Myanmarese territory in exchange of India’s assistance to contain Kokang and Kachin rebel activities.
“A trapped India is now desperate to bring Khaplang back to the dialogue table after Doval’s cobwebbed plot of quelling one of the world’s oldest active violent movements went awry” confirmed the source from across India’s eastern frontier. Questions will be justifiably raised over what this covert-mission actually achieved and who exactly were the victims. As the SIO points out “if indeed there is any casualty, there is every possibility that the boys may have eliminated some indigenous tribal people of the Burmese-Naga hills across Patkai Range, who carries traditional weapons with them. Anybody who has the slightest idea of this terrain would expose the gaping holes in Ajit’s propaganda story. This base area of militants, located between Indian border and Namphuk River, is one of the wildest-cum-deadliest territories on earth with no map-making ground-survey having been conducted at any time in history.
An operation with no Indian combat-casualty in a pitch-dark booby-trapped terrain, as stars explode in the sky amid serpentine-hiss and rattle while wild animals and frogs calls out intermittently, can happen only in movies. Moreover, the heavily-armed rebels have a gem of an information-network system and will not stay put to become a sitting duck.” So, New Delhi creating this ruckus in the backdrop of Beijing courting Aung San Suu Kyi raises some valid questions about the underlying motive of India’s shady military operation. True, the June 4 insurgent attack on Indian Army convoy was the deadliest in the past 33 years — resembling in ferocity to the one that occurred in 1982 — signaling an escalation of militancy in India’s troubled northeast and did warrant appropriate response. But then, similar Indo-Myanmarese joint military trans-border operations were held in the past to destroy militant hideouts without any accompanying hoopla. Modi must realize that hot-pursuit or military-coercion is not an answer to complex ethnic insurgency. Rather, unrestrained triumphalism will only widen the already existing psychological-gap between India’s mainstream and those living in the unstable periphery.
