The news source is Tehelka. Not worth the paper or bandwidth it is printed on.
A small Indian token contingent will be useful - live coordination between multiple powers, real targets, and battlefield experience. Even if not in a combat role, just sending a token 5 men team will earn lots of goodies. Also remember that the Air Force has got nothing to play with, other than routine exercises. Just saying.
This is not a conflict for tokenism. You are either all in or all out, any "token" participation will be taken the same way as a full force participation by these IS scumbags.
Well, would be interesting to see the blow back among the resident ISIS supporters and how such a blowback would politically effect the country.
"Interesting" is not the right word bro, the blow back would be potentially deadly, nothing interesting about that.
We 'd literally burnt our fingers back then and it was for the same reason we later declined help to Nepal and Maldives.
In the Maldives case India had no reason to intervene
@levina but I agree that, to an extent, the IPKF still casts a long shadow today and perhaps this is a good thing, it means political leaders are not committing Indian forces willy nilly around the globe for other people's fights.
The experience that our troops get will only be a bonus.
The IA doesn't need to go abroad for experience, for COIN experience they have more than enough hands-on experience in JK and the NE and don't need lessons from anyone on that.
And lets not forget that India figures among the 11 countries the Islamic State has threatened. We will have to face ISIS sooner or later.
This is a valid point but I think India needs to be smart about the way it goes about tackling this threat- go after the supporters of IS in India (doing a decent job so far), tackle and attempts to make inroads into India by IS and then help the Western intel agencies with any information they need o the IS threat.
You cannot deny the awesomeness of an Indian CBG in the persian gulf. It would be some much needed experience for our naval and air units who are stuck doing military excersices.
It would be a display of power yes but save it for more noble causes, there is little tangible military benefit for sending the CBG to that part of the world and you can expect blowback from such a move.
I support India taking part in the actions against IS. But with no boots on the ground. And its not possible to defeat IS with no boots on the ground. Taking part in Aerial Bombardment is almost a waste , as Western countries are already Bombarding them day and night with little effective control.
We can send troops only if NATO commits troops. I believe, if India does commit Fighters and troops, Russia would step in directly.
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NATO is not inclined to send troops (again) into Iraq or Syria, they are looking to outsource this to India (again). Remember back in 2003 when Bush was trying so hard to get India to commit two divisions to Iraq, the GoI made a very intelligent call and told them it wasn't India's fight and realised that it was a hopeless cause. The Indian military at the time told the politicians that the number of forces needed to stabilise Iraq were far more than the US was looking to commit and even with two divisions of Indian forces it wouldn't be enough, the politicians listened and look how right the Indian military's assessment was.
This just reminds me of the colonial era where the British Empire got Indian troops to fight their colonial wars for them except this time there is no British Empire there is just the Western world.
