Indian official calls for real-time intelligence sharing

10 November 2017
Indian official calls for real-time intelligence sharing
Rajindar Khanna (C). Photo: Thet Ko for Mizzima

Rajinder Khanna, the former chief of India's external intelligence R&AW, today called for 'real-time intelligence sharing'  between India and Myanmar to fight the latest bout of Islamist jihad in Rakhine.
Speaking at the conference on 'India-Myanmar relations: Way Forward", Khanna said Indian intelligence has monitored the emergence of the new phase of Rohingya insurgency since the lid on it was blown by the huge arms haul at Chittagong port in April 2004.
"Though most of those weapons were meant for rebels in India's Northeast, a part of it was to a faction of Rohingya rebels," Khanna said.
He asserted that India has hard evidence of the 'active involvement' of Pakistani military intelligence agency ISI in nurturing the new crop of Rohingya terrorists, many of whom are born and educated in hardline Islamist seminaries in Pakistan.
"We do not fight these Islamist jihadis the way we fight ethnic rebels," he said.
Khanna provided details of activists of Pakistan's terror group Lashkar e Tayyaba (LET) who have armed and trained ARSA and other Rohingya rebels.
"Their trainers operate under cover of humanitarian agencies," he said, providing details of the nexus of LET and its humanitarian front Fala E Insaniyat and the JMB in Bangladesh and the ARSA in Rakhine.
"You can combat these terrorists only if you have solid intelligence. That holds the key to victory in this battle."