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Subject:
counter insurgency trainning...
kommando
2/1/2006 3:53:25 AM
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SOLDIERS ON ANTI-INSURGENCY TRAINING AT INDIA'S GUERRILLA WARFARE SCHOOL. THE SCHOOL, ONE OF THE FINEST GUERRILLA WARFARE TRAINING CENTERS, IS ATTRACTING TRAINEES FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
VAIRENGTE (MIZORAM) Last spring when Alaska Guardsmen Staff Sgt. Michael Grunst and eight other American infantry soldiers arrived at this hilltop village in India's remote northeastern state of Mizoram, they were not at all thrilled.
Little did they know that in the tiny tribal hamlet, wedged on the border between Mizoram and the state of Assam, lay one of the world's best guerrilla warfare schools.
After six weeks at the Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) at Vairengte, the nine soldiers of the Alaska Army National Guard's Long Range Surveillance Detachment were left awestruck.
"This was the most amazing military education facility anywhere," Grunst told his superiors on returning to Alaska.
Grunst's comments were subsequently reproduced in the unit's in-house journal.
The school at Vairengte is today considered as one of world's most prestigious anti-terrorist institution with troops from several countries receiving counter-insurgency training here.
"The motto of this institute is to fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla," the commandant of the CIJWS, Brigadier Basant Kumar Ponwar, told IANS.
The idea to set up the jungle warfare school was conceived by former Indian Army chief Field Marshal S.H.F.J. Manekshaw some time in 1967 when federal soldiers suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the northeastern rebels who were adept at hit-and-run guerrilla strikes.
The institute finally came into being in May 1970 with Brigadier Mathew Thomas at the helm of affairs.
SOLDIERS SHOOT AT PRACTICE TARGETS AT INDIA'S GUERRILLA WARFARE SCHOOL. THE SCHOOL IS REGARDED AS ONE OF BEST ARMY TRAINING CENTERS IN THE WORLD AND DRAWS CADRES FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE.
But one year down the line, Indian soldiers undergoing training in the school were pushed to the battlefront - they took part in Operation Jackpot to help the then East Pakistan gain independence and become Bangladesh.
But once the mission was accomplished, the CIJWS reverted to its task of imparting serious counter-insurgency lessons to federal soldiers for which the institute was established.
And during the next three decades, the school at Vairengte prepared troops to fight anti-India separatists engaged in low-intensity and unconventional guerrilla warfare against the state forces in different parts of the country, particularly in the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.
"The troops are taught to live in difficult and hostile terrain, eat and sleep like the guerrillas and strike as silently as the guerrillas," an instructor at the CIJWS said.
Spurred by the successes in combating militancy to a great extent, New Delhi in 2001 threw the school at Vairengte open for soldiers from abroad with three US army officers being the first overseas batch to be trained.
After the 9/11 terror strikes in the US the jungle warfare school at Vairengte began attracting military cadets from across the world.
In 2003, a group of about 100 elite US commandos completed a three-week anti-insurgency combat training at the institute.
The exercise, codenamed Balance Iroquois, saw personnel of the US Special Forces undergo an intensive exercise along with soldiers from the Indian Special Forces battalion at Vairengte.
Lieutenant Colonel David Alan Wisecarver, commanding the US contingent, said the training at Vairengte would add more teeth to its unconventional combat units.
Defence officials said they were flooded with queries from several Western nations for sending their troops for anti-insurgency training.
"We are getting a lot of queries with many countries sending their troops for training here," Ponwar said.
Another instructor said Britain even wants some Indian trainers from the institute to go and train their soldiers.
Expert instructors in combating both rural and urban terrorist attacks have already trained hundreds of soldiers from 19 countries including Uganda, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Nigeria, besides the US.
The reputation of the CIJWS lies in the fact that the training module is framed in a highly scientific manner - soldiers receive training in identifying improvised explosive devices (IED), jungle survival, counter terrorism, and interrogation techniques.
Soldiers are also trained in jungle reflexive shooting and a fast roping technique called "slithering", used by the Indian Army.
The exercises are aimed at honing special skills for soldiers exposed to terrorist attacks in recent years.
The training module includes lectures and seminars, besides mock operations in the rugged jungles of Mizoram.
The Vairengte school at present runs four counter-insurgency and jungle warfare courses open only to officers and soldiers below 28 years of age, with expert instructors in combating both rural and urban |
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