Insurgency / Northeast

Agartala, May 23: The Union home ministry has blacklisted as many as 824 NGOs operating in the Northeast and Sikkim for suspected links with militant outfits.

Sources said the ministry last week informed the governments of six states of the region ? only Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh do not figure in the list ? about the presence of pro-militant NGOs in their areas and specifically asked them not to extend any form of assistance to these.

Meghalaya tops the list with 323 NGOs of doubtful integrity, followed by Manipur, which has 197. Assam is third with 151 such organisations, Nagaland has...

AIZAWL, May 23 ? India urged Myanmar to rein in the North-east insurgents who have taken shelter in that country and make efforts to stop arms smuggling by the rebel groups, reports PTI.

Rajeev Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, who led the 17-member Indian delegation in the two-day sectoral level Indo-Myanmar talks here, sought the cooperation of Myanmar government in curtailing the operations of the insurgent groups from across the border.

Agarwal said that North-east insurgent groups like the NSCN(K), PLA, UNLF and ULFA have camps in Myanmar from where they create...

Guwahati, May 22: Set to replace the army in counter-insurgency operations by 2005, CRPF personnel are undergoing ?specialised training? and acquiring sophisticated weapons to take on the heavily-armed militants in the Northeast.

At present, the CRPF is engaged in counter-insurgency operations along with the army and police under the three-tier Unified Command structure in Assam. The jawans are also deployed in the disputed areas along the inter-state boundaries as a ?neutral force?.

CRPF inspector-general (Northeast sector) Rajdeep Singh today told reporters that going by the Centre?s...

GUWAHATI, May 22? The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is preparing itself to take over the responsibility of internal security duty or counter insurgency operations from the Army in the Northeastern region. The Inspector General of CRPF, North Eastern Region, Raj Deep Singh today informed that as per the recommendations made by the Group of Ministers formed by the Central government, the CRPF was expected to relieve the Army of its responsibility to counter the insurgents in the region and other parts of the country as well by the end of the year 2005.

The para-military force is now...

Guwahati, May 20: Ulfa ideologue and the outfit?s vice-chairman, Pradip Gogoi, today said a military operation by Bhutan to dismantle militant camps there would be the ?wrong move?.

Reacting to a report in The Telegraph today about Thimphu?s plans to dismantle all camps of the Ulfa and the NDFB by November, the jailed militant leader told newspersons outside a Tada court here that Bhutan could not expect to resolve the issue through aggression.

The Ulfa alone has nine camps in Bhutan.

Gogoi, who has been languishing in jail in Guwahati since his arrest in Calcutta in 1997, said Bhutan should...

GUWAHATI, May 19: The Royal Government of Bhutan has called upon its nationals to voluntarily join a government militia force to fight and remove the ULFA, NDFB and Kamatapur Liberation Organization (KLO) rebels operating from bases inside the tiny Himalayan kingdom, reports today said.

"When the security and sovereignty of our country is under threat, the true sons of the soil must step forward and not wait to be called upon to serve their country," Bhutan?s King Jigme Singhye Wangchuk was quoted as saying by Kuensel, the country?s national newspaper.

Addressing a group of people?s...

NEW DELHI, May 19 ? Alarmed at the presence of Northeast militants on its soil, Bhutan has decided to set up a counter-insurgency force to fight them and asked India to ensure that no more militants enter the tiny Himalayan Kingdom, reports PTI. ?They (North-east militants) have to be made to leave the country before they strengthened their presence in Bhutan,? a senior Bhutanese official Sonam Tshering was quoted as saying on the internet edition of government funded newspaper Kuensel.

Bhutan has asked militants to wind up their camps before June 30 failing which Government would take...

GUWAHATI, May 16? A bitter rivalry is slowly developing between the ULFA and the NSCN (IM) following the recent killing of an ULFA cadre at the hands of the NSCN(IM) in Nagaland. And at a time when the North-east is passing through violence and ethnic unrest, this certainly bodes ill for the future.

Revealing this, intelligence sources said the ULFA which has for long been a close ally of the NSCN (K), a sworn enemy of the NSCN(IM), used to maintain a distance with the NSCN (IM), without never really coming into a direct confrontation so far. Similarly, the NSCN (IM) too normally...

NEW DELHI, May 11 – Notwithstanding Bangladesh’s denials, India has given a list of 155 terrorist training camps operating at various places in that country, many with the help of ISI and Al-Qaeda and asked it to shut them down, reports PTI. While conveying its concern over the support by some fundamentalist organisations of Bangladesh to North-east terrorists, India at a recent high-level meeting has also sought deportation of 85 insurgents from the neighbouring country, official sources told PTI here today.

“We have information that ISI activities directed against India are on the rise in...

KOHIMA, May 8 – The National Socialist Council of Nagalim (IM) said it was committed to “peaceful means for solution” to the more-than-half-a-century old Indo-Naga political problem but lamented that “Indians’ commitment leaves much to be desired despite assurances” reports NEPS. In an exclusive interview to a Netherlands based national daily that made available to North East Press Service Tuesday, General Secretary of the NSCN (IM) Thuingaleng Muivah, however, asserted that the unification of “Naga territories” and their national identities were “non-negotiable. “In other words, the...