Deadly Terror Strike In Manipur Shakes Up The Indian Security Establishment
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-11-14 14:38:09
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The deadly ambush by insurgents in Manipur was "well-planned and executed with precision" and the Indian security establishment has acknowledged it as such. The planting of the IED device on the route, exploding it at the right moment and then attacking the convoy with heavily-armed personnel points to military-style operation. Security forces everywhere have a network of informers who alert them about unknown persons or suspicious activities in their assigned areas. It goes without saying that to carry out such a precise strike, the insurgents must have carried out reconnaissance in the area, brought in equipment and personnel, studied the movement of the troops and done several other things which would have made them conspicuous as they did not belong to the villages nearby. Why, then, were the security forces not alerted about such activities in the area? Obviously, it was a huge intelligence failure.
Although the security forces have joined hands to launch a combing operation to nab the perpetrators, given that India shares a porous border with Myanmar, they are likely to have crossed over. In the past, Indian forces have carried out operations against the insurgents jointly with forces from Myanmar and have caught or eliminated many insurgents and destroyed their camps in such operations. But the fact remains that insurgents in Manipur make good use of the porous border to slip in and out at will. They also get deadly arms from Myanmar as the country is flush with such arms illegally smuggled from China. It also needs to be found out if China is helping these insurgents to conduct a proxy war against India.
The short term response to the strike will obviously have to be a swift, deadly and sustained operation against insurgent camps and sealing of some routes, along with increased patrolling of the border areas. The conspiracy must be uncovered and the perpetrators brought to justice. But to prevent such strikes, the security establishment will have to strengthen the informer network to gain advance information of infiltration, suspicious movements and activity and try and eliminate these groups. On the political side, the government must do all to bring peace to the state as it remains the last frontier of insurgents in the North-East with other states having gained an upper hand over insurgency through political initiatives and counter-insurgency operations.
