I/II.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/myanmar-denies-india-killed-rebels-inside-its-territory-says-won-t-let-foreign-attackers-use-its-territory/article1-1357203.aspx
Myanmar denies India killed rebels on its soil, says won't let foreign
attackers use its territory
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, New Delhi| Updated: Jun 11,
2015 07:41 IST
This Mi-35 chopper was one of five flying in the direction of the
Manipur-Myanmar border near Haflong on June 6. (Biju Boro/HT Photo)
Myanmar on Wednesday denied Indian forces had carried out an attack on
insurgents inside its territory, adding it would not tolerate rebel
groups using its soil to attack neighbours.
In a Facebook post, Zaw Htay, director of Myanmar's presidential
office, said: "According to the information sent by Tatmadaw (Myanmar
army) battalions on the ground, we have learned that the military
operation was performed on the Indian side at India-Myanmar border."
"Myanmar will not accept any foreigner who attacks neighbouring
countries in the back and creates problems by using our own
territory," he added.
II.
http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/both-active-and-effective-a-short-history-of-indian-special-ops/
Both active and effective: A short history of Indian Special Ops
For years now, Pakistan has claimed the massacre at Lanjote was
carried out by Indian special forces.
Like everything to do with successful covert operations, this story is
opaque — and the facts hard to establish.
Written by Praveen Swami | Updated: June 11, 2015 9:34 am
The dawn would have illuminated the pools of blood, as the villagers
emerged to count their dead. For all of the night of February 24,
2000, residents of the hamlet of Lanjote had bunkered down, hoping not
to be hit by artillery fire arcing across the LoC. The 16 bodies on
the streets, though, bore evidence of the precision savagery of the
knife, not the shell: 90-year-old Mohammad Alam Wali, and a young
couple, Mohammad Murtaza and Kali Begum, had been decapitated. Limbs
were severed; heads hacked. The youngest victim, Ahmad Niaz, was just
two.
With deliberation, it seemed, the killers left behind a watch,
Indian-made, and a hand-written note: “how does your own blood feel”.
For years now, Pakistan has claimed the massacre at Lanjote was
carried out by Indian special forces. In private, some Indian
intelligence officials admit the killings were carried out through
pro-India insurgents — as revenge for the near-identical massacres of
scores of Hindus by the Lashkar-e-Toiba in J&K’s Doda and Rajouri
districts.
Like everything to do with successful covert operations, this story is
opaque — and the facts hard to establish. For those who imagine that
Tuesday’s strike deep across the border into Myanmar marked a new
chapter in India’s military history, though, the Lanjote killings
should give reason to pause.
***
Independent India came to covert warfare late. In 1947, imperial
Britain stripped the assets of India’s covert arsenal as it left. The
seniormost British Indian police officer in the Intelligence Bureau,
Qurban Ali Khan, left for Pakistan with what few sensitive files
departing British officials had neglected to destroy. The Intelligence
Bureau, Lt Gen L P Singh has recorded, was reduced to a “tragicomic
state of helplessness”, possessing nothing but “empty racks and
cupboards”.
The Military Intelligence Directorate in Delhi didn’t even have a map
of J&K to make sense of the first radio intercepts signalling the
beginning of the war of 1947-48.
Faced with a larger and infinitely better-resourced neighbour,
Pakistan knew it could not compete in conventional military terms.
Khan’s doctrine posited that sub-conventional offensive warfare could
provide it defence. From 1947, Pakistan engaged India in what
Jawaharlal Nehru would later call “an informal war” — sponsoring
terrorist groups in both Kashmir and the Northeast.
Nehru was, in general, content to use conventional military force
against this aggression. Indira Gandhi used air power to bomb Mizo
insurgents in March 1966, killing dozens of civilians in Aizawl in the
process.
India’s covert capabilities grew in the wake of the 1962 war, after
which technical assistance from the US and trainers from the UK became
available. Helped by the US, the newly-founded RAW developed the
capacities for deep-penetration espionage meant to target China. It
used its new tools to target Pakistan in 1971.
Establishment 22, operating under the command of Maj Gen Surjit Singh
Uban, carried out a secret war in what is now Bangladesh — using
Tibetan troops trained by the CIA to fight the US-equipped Pakistani
forces. Later, Establishment 22 personnel aided Sikkim’s accession to
India, trained Tamil terrorists, and armed rebels operating against
the pro-China regime in Myanmar.
***
For India, the experience was transformative. From the early 1980s,
Khalistan terrorists began receiving weapons and arms from the ISI.
Rajiv Gandhi ordered retaliation. RAW set up two covert groups, known
as Counter Intelligence Team-X and Counter Intelligence Team-J — the
first targeting Pakistan in general, the second directed in particular
at Khalistani groups. Each Khalistani terror attack on India’s cities
was met with retaliatory attacks in Lahore or Karachi.
“The role of our covert action capability in putting an end to the
ISI’s interference in Punjab,” former RAW officer B Raman wrote in
2002, “by making such interference prohibitively costly is little
known”.
In one famous incident, now National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is
said to have penetrated Khalistan terrorist Surjit Singh Penta’s
networks, posing as an ISI operative. He entered the Golden Temple,
the story goes, and rigged it with fake explosives — ensuring that
Penta could not blow it up when Operation Black Thunder began in 1988.
Doval also penetrated Mizo insurgent groups’ networks in the 1980s,
forcing a peace accord — compensating, in part, for Indira Gandhi’s
brutal use of force.
I K Gujral, though, ended RAW’s offensive operations against Pakistan
— and his predecessor, P V Narasimha Rao, wound up its eastern
operations. India continued to possess a superior conventional
military, but as it became known in the late 1980s that Pakistan
possessed a nuclear weapon, it became clear this sword would remain
sheathed.
***
Has Prime Minister Narendra Modi changed the rules of the game? Yes,
and no. It’s often imagined that the Indian Army has been a passive
victim of enemy atrocities — but it has, in fact, dished out at least
as good as it has got. In Myanmar, the Indian Army has staged
largescale cross-border operations in 1999 and 2006. In 2009, it
pushed Northeast insurgents out of Bhutan. Indian intelligence
services have successfully operated in Nepal, Bangladesh, and even
Pakistan.
For the most part, the Army is also believed to have retaliated
against atrocities — though without publicity.
In May 1999, Capt Saurabh Kalia and five sepoys were kidnapped by
Pakistani troops. Post mortem revealed bodies burnt with
cigarette-ends, and genitals mutilated.
In January 2000, seven Pakistani soldiers were alleged to have been
captured in a raid across the Neelam River. The bodies were returned,
according to Pakistan, bearing signs of brutal torture.
There have been a string of smaller incidents. In June 2008, Pakistani
troops attacked a border observation post in Poonch, killing a
soldier. In retaliation, Pakistani officials allege, Indian troops
beheaded a Pakistani soldier on June 19, 2008 in the Bhattal sector.
[email protected]
First Published on: June 11, 2015 5:00 am
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