Bertil Lintner’s ” Great Game East ” seems to be unfolding in right earnest on the mountainous borderlands where South Asia links up to the Southeast.   

Western mercenaries, possibly supported by US intelligence, are smuggling weapons and sneaking in to train and arm multiple local insurgent groups fighting Myanmar’s China-backed military junta. It has the trappings of the  Big Power rivalry involving an aggressive US and a rising China  , with both backing rivals in a nagging civil war between Myanmar’s military junta and the country’s many ethnic rebel armies.

Neighbouring countries like India, Bangladesh and Thailand  are getting  dragged into another  forever  conflict, which can only unsettle their vulnerable frontier regions.

Seven Foreigners Nabbed

The arrest of six Ukrainians and one US national by Indian counter-terrorism agency NIA has finally blown the lid on a major covert operation involving Western mercenaries using Northeast Indian states to join rebel groups fighting the  Myanmar military junta in the ongoing civil war.

Though the NIA showed them arrested in three different Indian cities, some suggest they were all picked up in the northeastern states of Mizoram, when on their way back from Myanmar.

A special NIA court in New Delhi remanded the seven foreigners – six Ukrainians and one American- to 11 days in custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) custody until March 27. The hearing was conducted in a closed courtroom and the NIA, as of now, seems keen to keep it all under the wraps .

They only told the court that three Ukrainians were arrested from Delhi and three from Lucknow and the US citizen was nabbed from Kolkata airport. NIA sources say these seven  came to India on valid visas but surreptitiously entered Mizoram without the mandatory Restricted Area Permit (RAP). 

NIA officials say these seven were closely connected with ethnic rebel groups in Myanmar and had used Mizoram to........

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