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The military delegation will be in Delhi “shortly” and confer with top Indian Army officials as well as those in the ministry of external affairs to evolve a road map for a counter-insurgency strategy, reports Nitin Gokhale.
A high-level military delegation from Myanmar is scheduled to visit India in the coming days to work out a joint strategy against insurgents operating along the Indo-Myanmar border as well as in the Sagiang division of that country, top sources have revealed.
The delegation will be in Delhi “shortly” and confer with top Indian Army officials as well as those in the ministry of external affairs before visiting FortWilliams, the Army's eastern command HQ, to evolve a road map for a counter-insurgency strategy, the sources added.
The decision to send the military delegation to India was taken after a meeting that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had with the top leadership of Myanmar last week. Doval, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen MMS Rai, among others, conferred with all stakeholders in Nay Pyi Taw.
The Myanmarese leadership, including President Thein Sein, assured the Indian delegation that insurgents group from India's north-east will not be allowed to use Myanmar's territory for anti-India activities. However, the Indian delegation was also told that the Myanmarese army's presence along the Indian border is thin on the ground an therefore it is not always possible to curb the activities of Indian insurgent groups in those areas.
Aware of the practical difficulties faced by the Myanmarese army, India has offered to step up its vigil along the border and share real-time intelligence about the movement of insurgent groups. Myanmar in return has indicated it will not be averse to “joint operations” with the Indian Army in the border areas.
The Myanmarese team will chalk out details of such counter-insurgency operations during its India trip by fine-tuning existing cooperative mechanisms, both at the apex as well as at the tactical level.
Several Indian insurgent groups led by the SS Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland have been using the lightly guarded areas in western Mayanmar along the Indian border as safe sanctuaries, but following the cross-border raid by Indian Army's Special Forces on June 9 on two of their camps inside Myanmar, the insurgent have been forced to hide among civilian population inside Myanmar.
Nay Pyi Taw has assured New Delhi that it will step up vigil on these groups, besides deploying as many more troops along the border as possible to prevent the free movement of the insurgents across the porous border.
Indian Army's eastern command, in the meantime, has tweaked its deployment along the Indo-Myanmar border by posting more troops of the paramilitary Assam Rifles closer to the border.