Despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s characterisation of the Naxalite movement as the biggest threat to India’s internal security, for years, the Indian government showed little imagination and resolve in earnestly confronting it. While the Naxalite movement consolidated across the country, moving cadre, arms and funds across state and international borders, the Indian government’s response was [...]
Fly or die?
The anonymous Western diplomat got it right:
One Western diplomat said if Prabhakaran were to flee, it would be viewed as cowardice by his followers, ending Tamil militancy for a generation.
But the diplomat, who did not want to be named because he is not authorized by his government to speak on record, said the [...]
Nepal’s Maoists splinter along predictable lines
Over at mesocosm Aditya Adhikari has cogent analysis of the factional disputes among Nepal’s Maoists.
(Prachanda), the Maoist chairman is facing the greatest threat to his leadership at a time when his party has gained the strongest position ever. According to conventional narrative, the Prachanda faction wishes to institutionalize the federal [...]
The flying assassin
In line with what some readers suggested, and also in line with Sharon Weiberger’s post over at Danger Room, the new secret technique that the Americans have brought to bear in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan (possibly) involves unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with a networked “tagging, tracking and locating” system.
The new system [...]
A revolution in counter-insurgency affairs?
Bob Woodward claims that the United States used a new “secret technique” in its counter-insurgency operations in Iraq.
But beyond all of that, Woodward reports, for the first time, that there is a secret behind the success of the surge: a sophisticated and lethal special operations program.
“This is very sensitive and [...]
…played into the Hurriyat’s hands
Praveen Swami’s indictment is damning: “New Delhi’s well-meaning but ill-conceived dialogue process communalised Jammu and Kashmir and laid the ground for the ongoing crisis”
Experts have been telling New Delhi that the solution to this Islamist upsurge lies in negotiations which will give power—if not independence—to secessionists. Both the premise of this [...]
It’s not going to move India
It is said to be the worst terrorist attack in Kabul since 2001—terrorists killed over 41 people and left more than 139 injured in a suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy in Kabul today. Four of those killed were Indians. The rest, most likely, were all Afghans.
According to early reports, [...]
Pakistani soldiers get killed…by jihadis
Last week Pakistani soldiers were killed in an air-strike by US forces in the Mohmand Agency, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
And yesterday, four Pakistani soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire along the Line of Control in Kashmir…by jihadis, who, it is suspected, failed to cross over to the Indian [...]
Has anyone articulated how the citizen’s militia will be disbanded?
Prakash Singh, a distinguished police officer and a member of an expert group set up by the Planning Commission to study the Naxalite problem, dissents from the group’s conclusions and argues that the Salwa Judum was a “spontaneous movement expressing the resentment of the tribals against [...]
Should India really bother?
Let’s consider one narrative: India is opposed to the LTTE, but can’t support the Sri Lanka army because of a number of reasons—mostly having to do with domestic politics, but also perhaps for strategic reasons. So when Pakistan becomes a big supplier of small arms to Colombo, should India really worry?
Rather than [...]
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