BHUTAN: Bhutan's royal army launched its first offensive in its history at dawn yesterday against Indian separatist rebels operating from inside the tiny Himalayan kingdom.
"Military action has been initiated to flush out militants from the kingdom," Mr Thinley Penjor, the Bhutanese embassy spokesman in New Delhi said. Officials in Bhutan's capital, Thimpu, declined to comment on the action, but one home ministry official, declining to be named, said locals were holding special rituals and prayers for the kingdom's security.
He said people were also holding meetings to raise additional militia volunteers. "If there is a need for support from the public, the government will make a formal announcement," he said adding that in such an eventuality every Bhutanese "must be ready to serve the country with full loyalty and dedication".
Bhutan's National Assembly recently mandated its 6,000-strong army, including the Royal Bhutan Guards who protect King Jigme Singye Wangchuk's large family, to attack Indian militants operating from its territory following futile efforts to "persuade" them to leave.
King Jigme, who spent four years at school in England, claimed there were 19 to 20 militant camps that have "illegally and forcefully" established themselves inside his territory, which shares an extensive, unfenced frontier with the Indian states of Assam and Bengal. Other Bhutanese officials estimate that around 3,000 rebels belonging to three separatist groups fighting for varying degrees of independence and autonomy in India for several years operate from the hilly and thickly forested remote border regions.
Security officials in Delhi said the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland and the separatist Kamatapur Liberation Organisation run around 36 camps with firing ranges and training grounds.
From these hideouts they conducted hit-and-run strikes on the Indian army. Assam's insurgency has claimed over 10,000 lives since it erupted in 1979.
Bhutan, wedged between India and China in the Himalayas, is largely a Buddhist nation of around 750,000 people. It is also one of the world's last surviving absolute monarchies, which dates back to the 8th century and has close military and diplomatic ties to Delhi.
India's foreign minister Mr Yashwant Sinha told parliament that King Jigme, who informed Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee of the impending action at the weekend, was promised all "necessary support". Consequently, the Indian army had been deployed along Bhutan's border to prevent rebels fleeing to India, officials said.