Major David Manlun, Manipur

Bijay Sankar Bora

Tribune News Service

Guwahati, June 7

An Army officer and three militants were killed during a gunbattle in interior Lappa of Mon district in Nagaland last night. A civilian was also killed in the fire exchange.Kohima-based Defence spokesman Col Chiranjeet Konwer identified the slain officer as Major David Manlun of Territorial Army’s 164 Brigade. While the officer belongs to Manipur, his body was taken to Shillong where his family lives.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)The bodies of the militants, who belonged to a combined group of the banned ULFA (Independent) and NSCN (Khaplang), were handed over to the police.Col Konwer said the identity of the civilian was yet to be ascertained.Lappa is located close to the Assam-Nagaland border, about 330 km from state capital Kohima.The encounter took place when a team led by Maj Manlun went to Lappa following specific information on the presence of a group of militants in the area.During a search, the militants lobbed a grenade and fired at the Army men, killing the Major.The Army later found an AK-56 assault rifle, two Chinese AK series rifles, two grenades, three IEDs and 270 live rounds of AK series at the encounter site. 

Pakistan is still a sanctuary for the Taliban and the Haqqani network and more of a threat than an ally, a top US think tank has said, while asserting that the Trump administration should make it clear to Islamabad that it will face sanctions if it continues to support them.

“Afghanistan is currently doing badly both in the fighting and in its civilian politics, governance, and poverty. Pakistan is still a sanctuary for the Taliban and Haqqani network and more of a threat than an ally,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report released yesterday.

Authored by Anthony H Cordesman, CSIS’s Arleigh A Burke, Chair in Strategy, the report said there has to be a better strategy and a better approach to both the military and civil dimensions of the war to provide a reason to stay.

“No commitment should be open ended. The Afghans have to do far more, and do it far better, to justify each future year of US commitment,” the report said.

“The United States should make it clear to Pakistan that it faces a total end to aid, and the imposition of sanctions, if it continues to support the Taliban and tolerate the Haqqani network,” it said.

Russia should be told that any end to US sanctions will depend on it not supporting the Taliban, and the Unites States should reach out to China to make it clear that Chinese cooperation in dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan can serve both Chinese and American interests, the report said.

CSIS said the US should make it totally clear that it will conduct a public annual review of its commitments to Afghanistan and the Afghan performance.

“It should make it clear that it can and will leave in the face of Afghan failure. If necessary, the United States should make good on such a threat,” it said.

“It should send a clear message to all ‘partner states’ that they must meet reasonable standards of performance. The United States should never bully its allies, but it also should not be bullied — or let nations slip into the kind of overdependence that ultimately undermines rather than aids them,” the CSIS said.

Maj Gen Sanjeev Gupta

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 4

A Major General posted in Chandimandir, Sanjeev Harbans Gupta, died today while reportedly indulging in sports activities. He was the Commandant of the Western Command Military Dental Centre.The Army, while refusing to release specific details, said he suffered grievous injuries while participating in a sports activity at the Chandimandir Military Station and was rushed to the Command Hospital. Doctors could not revive him despite best efforts and he passed away at 2 pm.Born on March 13, 1959, General Gupta was commissioned into the Army Dental Corps in September 1981. A senior dental officer with a distinguished professional repute, he had an outstanding career having performed with great distinction in all courses and appointments held by him.The Western Army Commander, Lt Gen Surinder Singh, offered his condolences on the untimely demise of a highly competent professional and outstanding human being.General Gupta belonged to Gurdaspur in Punjab and is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son. His cremation will be held here on arrival of his children.While the Army is refusing to reveal details, sources said he suffered head and spinal injuries while playing golf. This resulted in internal bleeding and led to other complications as well.

SL Ganga during the flagging-off ceremony in Kolkata on Thursday. PTI

Kolkata, June 1

The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) today unveiled two hydrographic survey and inspection vessels to be deployed in Ganga along the Haldia-Allahabad stretch of National Waterway-1. The vessels – SL Ganga and SL Jhanvi – were constructed at a cost of Rs 3.24 crore.IWAI chairman Nutan Guha Biswas said these specialised survey vessels would help identify the exact nature of dredging requirements and sites to get assured three-metre draft which the body has planned to maintain all along the stretch.In West Bengal, upstream of Tribeni there are six to seven pockets where dredging is required.Biswas met senior West Bengal Government officials to apprise them about the developments of the first phase of Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) on National Waterways-I between Haldia and Varanasi.The work on Farraka lock gate work has commenced and it is expected to be completed by 2019, IWAI officials said.Asked about the proposal for a second multimodal terminal at Kalyani, Tribeni or Balagarh, besides Haldia, they said the second one would depend upon the dedicated freight corridor coming up at Dankuni. — PTI

Navy sailor found dead aboard INS Rana in Vizag

Visakhapatnam, June 1

A 21-year-old sailor was found dead with bullet injuries on board Navy vessel INS Rana in Visakhapatnam today.A spokesman for Eastern Naval Command said there was no clue yet on whether sailor Vikash Yadav, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, shot himself or if his gun went off accidentally.“A Board of Inquiry is being constituted to investigate the incident,” the spokesman added.“Yadav, an electrical mechanic of power class 1, sustained a bullet injury while on duty as security sentry in the early hours today. He was immediately shifted to the navy hospital where he was declared brought dead,” the Navy spokesman said.He hailed from Bhind and was unmarried. No case has been registered so far. PTI

CENTRE AND STATE GOVT MUST DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TERRORISTS — WHO PULLED FAYAZ OUT OF A FUNCTION — AND ALIENATED YOUTH WHO TAKE TO THE STREETS

NEW DELHI : The brutal killing of a young Kashmiri Lieutenant, who had returned home unarmed for a family wedding, has been termed a ‘watershed moment’ that will help turn the tide against terrorism, by the Indian Army. It would not be wrong to say that the kidnapping and deliberate killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz is also a political watershed moment that New Delhi must seize.

On a trip to the Valley last week, it was evident, that the average local Kashmiri is against such acts of terror. A police officer posted in South Kashmir, where five Jammu and Kashmir policemen and two bank staffers were pulled out of a car and shot dead on May 1, said he “saw the anger and the silent protest in the eyes of the villagers in Kulgam” when he visited the spot.

The governments, both at the Centre and the state, must distinguish between the terrorists — who pulled Fayaz out of a wedding function — and the alienated youth who take to the streets. An outreach to the Kashmiris at this very juncture will go a long way in helping Srinagar and New Delhi draw that crucial line.

An outreach is important because the contours of the 27-year-old insurgency changed for the worse last year after the encounter that killed Burhan Wani, the poster-boy militant who emerged as a role model after he posted videos on social media platforms.

Till Wani was killed in July 2016, the insurgency was largely an urban phenomenon. It has now penetrated deep into the rural swathes of South Kashmir and as one official told us, “There are several villages which are like liberated zones.”

In such ‘liberated’ villages, almost the entire population is willing to side with the militants – who are now home grown. The local militants outnumber those who manage to sneak in from Pakistan and alienated locals are not only happy to give them shelter; they also gather in large numbers each time the security forces lay a cordon for a counter-insurgency operation.

Only last week, men drawn from the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the army were ambushed when they were returning after a huge anti-terror operation spread across 20 villages across Shopian in South Kashmir. Fayaz’s bullet-ridden body was found in the same district.

The targeted killing of Kashmiris is worrying the locals and last week, many were asking themselves if they were now staring at a return of the ’90s — a decade marked by everyday violence, custodial killings and random shootings of ‘police informers.’

Then, the locals found themselves trapped between two sets of guns: the terrorists’ and the security forces’.

At present, no one is voicing the condemnation that the killings of Fayaz, the policemen and the bank officials deserve.

The separatists, always quick to call a hartal after a civilian is killed, have not had the courage to speak up against such killings, despite knowing that the constituency they claim to represent is getting increasingly uneasy.

New Delhi must seize the political opportunity and help a sullen population ‘turn the tide against terrorism’.

Isolation in view of Saudi Arabia, China summits a major concern

Right moves: China has had its way, be it the CPEC or OBOR.

THREE events, one a week ago and the others in the coming week, will shape geo-politics. First, the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election with 65 per cent vote has redefined politics of the left and right as traditionally understood. Then the One-Belt One-Road summit in China on May 14-15 is to re-configure trade routes and production lines linking China and Asia to Europe, Africa and Latin America. China is imposing a new geography on the old trading order dominated by the US and Europe. Finally, Donald Trump’s opening foray abroad to attend three summits in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia i.e. bilateral summit with hosts, with leaders of six GCC (Gulf Coordination Council) nations and of a Sunni/Islamic alliance to counter the IS and Iran. Each one requires closer examination.The terms left and right in politics emanate from the French Revolution in 1789. In the French national assembly, pro-revolution elements sat on the left while those for the old monarchical and feudal order sat on the right. The rise and success of Emmanuel Macron, after abandoning the socialists in whose government he was a minister, on a new centrist pro-Europe and calibrated reform agenda, has redefined the traditional left-right binaries of French politics. In the process, he demolished traditional ruling parties of either block, the final contest being between him and the extreme right wing leader, Marine Le Pen of the National Front. Paradoxically, while he is a former investment banker and advocates economic reform and moderate and inclusive policies, Le Pen shed tears for ‘the real people… the ordinary decent people’. The right was sounding almost Marxist, wrapping blatant racism and xenophobia in populist clothing. In the US too, President Trump rejigged the traditional Republican Party agenda to espouse a populist, anti-globalisation and xenophobic platform, claiming to speak for the ‘small’ people. Macron’s centrism in the face of rampant counter-liberalism in Europe became a test case for the soul of the EU. Although the next month’s election in the UK will revive debate about the future of the European Union, for the moment, the French electorate has shown more maturity than those in the US and the UK, even though the issues were identical. In the past too, political parties on the left learnt to adapt to confront conservative forces. Labour in the UK under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rebranded itself as ‘New Labour’ by abandoning in 1986 traditional commitment to strikes, collective bargaining and nationalisation. They espoused issues, normally reserved for conservatives, like law and order, welfare reform, small businesses and taxation burden. Thus they put Labour on the side of Britain’s aspirational majority. Similarly, Bill Clinton was able to nudge Democrats to more centrist positions in 1994. His wife Hillary in 2016, desiring to retain the rainbow coalition of her predecessor Barack Obama, contrariwise ended up driving the white majority into the Trump tent playing the siren song to their fears and prejudices. India too has seen a similar shift of electoral plates from caste, populist or simply region-driven platforms of the Congress and the opposition parties to the rise of Narendra Modi. The BJP under Modi is combining the cultural and religious agenda of the extreme right wing Hindutva proponents with nationalism, often relapsing into jingoism, and an economic platform with traces of Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi hatao’ and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s partiality to oligarchs livened with selective economic reform. Demonetisation was and tax terror continues to be aimed at both garnering revenue and providing the poor and marginalised cathartic pleasure. The Chinese summit is the culmination of President Xi Jinping’s idea, first mooted in 2013, for seamless connectivity across Eurasia and the oceans. China expects 110 countries and 28 heads of state and government to attend, including those of Russia, Turkey, Argentina and Italy. The sheer scale is mind-boggling. About 50 Chinese state-owned corporations have participated in 1,700 projects to develop ports, roads, rail-lines and industrial parks. China thus will utilise its surplus productive capacity in steel, etc. abroad. It also plans to pass on low-income jobs to partner nations while moving its economy to a higher-income employment mode. India’s immediate neighbours like Bangladesh and Nepal are on board the Chinese bandwagon. Pakistan’s participation has put India in a quandary as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through portions of erstwhile kingdom of Kashmir which India claims. Indian attendance would grant de facto legitimacy to the CPEC part of the OBOR. Indian absence in the face of regional tilt towards participation risks isolation. On balance, the Modi government is right in not conceding strategic space to China. But a solution will have to be found by India conditionally accepting CPEC, provided a broader Sino-Pak entente with India is worked out.The Riyadh summit upends Obama’s West Asia policy which leveraged the P5-Iran nuclear deal to rebalance traditional US dependence on Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Israel to backstop its interests in the region. Trump is reversing course to resurrect a Sunni alliance. Simultaneously, Trump is attempting to wean away Russia from supporting Iran and Assad regime in Syria. Putin’s price to oblige may be major concessions by the West on NATO, Ukraine, etc. The sudden sacking of the FBI director, overseeing the enquiry into Trump campaign links to Russia, will cause political turbulence in Washington and may further damage Trump presidency. Of note to India is the announced presence of Nawaz Sharif at Riyadh. He will, no doubt, meet Trump and other Sunni alliance grandees. The geo-politics is rearranging to Pakistan’s liking. The isolation of India, in view of the two summits in Saudi Arabia and China, should concern the Modi government. Jingoism, cultural and religious evangelism and misplaced sense of global predominance are producing hubris. Allowing two neighbours, Pakistan and China, always in cahoots, to openly align is poor conduct of foreign policy. Basing it on continued US backing and GCC neutrality, while ignoring gaurakshaks baiting Muslims, is irrational. All three events lead to the same question: can India throw up a Macron? Normally it is easier for that in a presidential system than the Westminster one. The Opposition does not merely need unity; it needs a new liberal-centrist face.

The Army pays homage to the three slain soldiers in the Badamibagh Cantonment in Srinagar.

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 22

The Army on Monday saluted the three Nepalese soldiers who were killed in the two-day-long counter-infiltration operation in Nowgam which concluded this morning. Four militants, suspected to be members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were also killed in the operation.Three soldiers Havaldar Giris Gurung, 38, Havaldar Damar Bahadur Pun, 40, and Rifleman Rabin Sharma, 23, of 4/1 Gorkha Regiment were killed in the Nowgam operation while foiling a major infiltration bid in the sector.Joined by top officials of the civil administration and other security forces operating in the Valley, Chinar Corps Commander Lt Gen J S Sandhu paid rich tributes to the three soldiers in a solemn ceremony in Badmibagh Cantonment, Srinagar, an Army spokesman said.Havaldar Giris Gurung from Nagidhar village in Kaski, Nepal, had a distinguished service spanning 19 years and had been a part of many counter-terrorist operations earlier. He is survived by his wife Panch Maya Gurung and two young children.Havaldar Damar Bahadur Pun, who hails from Karaing Tun in Gulmi, Nepal, was an experienced soldier with 21 years of selfless service. He is survived by his wife Kalpana Pun and two young children.Rifleman Rabin Sharma, 23, a resident of Nepal’s Chuwa village in Parbat district had joined the Army in 2013. He is survived by his wife Sabita Sharma.The mortal remains of the three will be taken by service aircraft to Subathu in Himachal Pradesh for their last rites with full military honours, he said.Meanwhile, sources said the recoveries made at the encounter site indicate that the four slain militants belonged to the Lashkar.This year the Army has foiled two major infiltration bids in Kashmir and killed at least eight militants.