Posted on 12/18/2003 5:22:57 PM PST by CanadianLibertarian
Bhutan won’t stop cracking down on N-E militants Jaideep Mazumdar and PTI Kolkata/Samdrup Jongkhar, December 18
Bhutan on Thursday rejected the Ulfa's appeal for a ceasefire and vowed to continue the "short but decisive" military operation to flush out anti-India insurgents from its soil.
The Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) has met with major successes in expelling the 3,000-odd militants of the Ulfa, National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) who had taken refuge in the Dragon Kingdom.
According to reports, so far more than 150 militants have been killed and hundreds captured, including Ulfa publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary, his NDFB counterpart B Erakda and top KLO leaders Tom Adhikary and Dalton Burman. Jiban Singha, the KLO chief, is among those killed.
Fourteen of the 30 camps set up in Bhutan have been overrun. The flush-out operations received a major boost on Thursday, when 104 Ulfa cadres surrendered.
"The captured militants will be handed over to us as soon as the legal formalities are cleared by New Delhi and Thimpu," GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, Lieutenant General Jitendra Singh Varma told HT.
There have also been reports of a large number of insurgents sneaking into West Bengal after most of their 30 camps were pounded by the RBA.
Rejecting the ceasefire appeal, Yeshey Dorjee, director in the Bhutanese Foreign Ministry, said it had no value at the current stage as Bhutan had been talking to the Ulfa for the past six years without success.
Reports from Thimpu said that though fierce fighting was still on in the northern areas of Samdrup-Jongkhar province, the militants' fighting capability had been eroded. "We expect them to surrender very soon," Bhutan Premier Lyonpo Jigmi Y Thinley said.
The RBA has been trained and equipped by the Indian Army. "We have provided the RBA with all sorts of military hardware, including arms, mine detectors, night-vision devices and vital counter-insurgency and jungle warfare training," said a senior army officer.
Sure enough, the international scourge of terrorism has reached it; anti-India rebels have placed their camps in Bhutan for years.
Note the "great success" of the Bhutanese army. The actual combat is undoubtedly being conducted by the Indian military, lots of reports of bodies being flown out wrapped in Indian flags and Indian helicopter gunships over Bhutanese territory.
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