    
Nag_rocks
Bewarse ke Bewarse!
Username: Nag_rocks
Post Number: 17722
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 65.15.78.43
| | Posted on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 6:41 pm: |    |
Guwahati, Sept 1: A team of 50 American army officers is arriving next week to receive training in low-intensity guerrilla warfare from Indian anti-terror experts in the jungles of Mizoram, military officials said.
An Indian army commander said Thursday the two-week training in unconventional warfare at the Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) at Vairengte in Mizoram in northeastern India begins Sep 13.
"Apart from a rigorous drill on how to tackle an unconventional war or low intensity conflict, the training module would have a session of simulated anti-insurgency operations for the American soldiers," a commander at the CIJWS told IANS requesting anonymity.
The school at Vairengte is considered as one of world's most prestigious anti-terrorist institution with troops from several countries getting counter-insurgency training.
"The motto of this institute is to fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla," the commander said. "The training module is non-conventional and once a soldier undergoes training here, he can face all deadly situations anywhere in the world."
About 150 American soldiers have already undergone training at Vairengte in a six-week course in 2004.
"The troops are taught to live in difficult and hostile terrain, eat and sleep like the guerrilla and strike as silently as the guerrilla," an instructor at the CIJWS said.
"The exercise is aimed at honing special skills for soldiers who are exposed to terrorist attacks in recent years."
Spurred by the successes in combating militancy to a great extent, New Delhi in 2001 opened the school at Vairengte for soldiers from abroad with three US army officers being the first overseas batch to be trained.
But it was only after the Sep 11, 2001, terror strikes in the US that the jungle warfare school at Vairengte began attracting military cadets from across the world.
"Soldiers from the US, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal have already undergone training here and we are now getting queries from France, Uzbekistan and Italy, besides some African countries willing to get their soldiers trained here at Vairengte," the commander said.
The British government recently sought the services of experts from the CIJWS to set up a similar institute in Britain, the official said. The training module include among other things lectures, seminars, besides mock operations in the rugged jungles in 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.
The school was set up in 1970 after Indian soldiers suffered heavy casualties at the hands of northeastern rebels who were adept at hit-and-run guerrilla strikes.
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