caution: lost tiger ahead

Long ago when newspapers came up with the news that some villains in Pakistan's ISI had with the full backing of the government there come up with something called the 'bleeding India' policy- basically to bleed with constant fighting the superior conventional powers of the Indian Army- a lot many balked at the sheer audacity of the whole thought.
Two days ago as television channels beamed in visuals of the encounter at Sopore in J&K- truck after truck of army commandos armed to the teeth moving into the war theatre- some of that audacity didn’t look that misplaced.
Confirmation came when these very TV channels beamed footage again of soldiers walking off the action zone after the encounter had ended. There was none of the V for victory signs, none of the bravo smiles for the camera, none of the swagger associated with commando units worldwide. All we could see were tired soldiers with faces betraying a mix of disgust- probably at the death of a colleague- and incredulousness that one militant had held more than two Indian Army battalions for fifteen long hours before getting gunned down.
When those villains at the ISI sit down to make a balance sheet of the encounter, they would all be probably laughing. A militant killed, a few hundred bullets expended for them and for the Indian Army- a blow deep inside its heart. Is one of the world's finest conventional fighting forces slowly, bone by bone, blood drop by blood drop getting undone by the guerilla tactics of the enemy?
As the army gets bogged down by the enemy in the northern tip of the country, at the southern tip, India and its intelligence agencies and Pakistan's ISI stand on the threshold of something very very dangerous.
As the rejuvenated Lankan Army fights the fight of its life against the world's finest guerilla force ever- the Tamil Tigers- and decimates it by the passing day, the danger arising out of a Lankan victory moves towards India.
Hundreds of these superbly trained rebel fighters will in all probability hide their weapons, lick their wounds and cross into designated refugee camps in Tamil Nadu- mostly through Rameshwaram- as refugees.
Trained to fight and nothing else, many of them will feel the disgrace of a war lost and the disgust of refugee status in Tamil Nadu cutting right into the bone.Standing in line for food as cops bring down their lathis on calves and legs not in queue, fighting for the extra morsel that years of soldier's diet demands will be too much to take for many of these once-proud Eelam warriors.
Let me try to explain what I’m getting at. Have you ever been one of the lakhs who stand in serpentine queues to get the blessings of Lalbaugcha Raja every year? Have you in that case seen those twits who roam around with the organisers' badges on their chests and whistles in their mouths minding the queue?
Have you ever felt the arrogance- or menace depending on how you see it- with which these chaps- most in their teens or early twenties- go about the work? They hustle poor people standing in the queue, crowd those who answer back and push and shove on the strength of those badges, whistles and of course the numbers.
The fighters from the LTTE have been doing this for almost two decades now, in an area several times the size of Mumbai and to people far more combative. They developed the skill of menace so well that it soon gave rise to kangaroo courts, police forces, naval suicide bombers, armour-plated submarines and planes and pilots that guide WWII vintage warplanes and glide over Colombo and bomb its installations.
Back in the camps of Tamil Nadu, several of them will not be the ones with the badges and the whistles; they will be in the lines of the frightened and the needy. That feeling is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And the ISI is a good detonator of bombs we've seen.
Tamil Nadu has had an underground Free Tamil movement for years now. Some of its major parties have in the past advocated independence from India. Its hatred for all things north Indian, Hindi especially, has toned down largely in the past two decades but fringe hardcore elements exist.
In the past few days Tamil Nadu has once again erupted politically and socially in support of the Eelam cause. Be it its chief minister Karunanidhi who has given the Centre an ultimatum or be it rabid LTTE sympathizers like Vaiko, Nedumaran and Ramadoss. Youth in several of the interior districts have been holding protest rallies and a lad has burnt himself to death in protest, his funeral attracting massive crowds and a statement from LLTE supremo Prabhakaran himself calling this chap a martyr.
It is this cocktail that the ISI can exploit. If the training is a problem in most insurgency movements, here they get several hundred fresh from a bitter battle- their hearts burning with the fire of revenge- and almost legendary in their training as guerillas.
The Lankans would only be too happy to see these chaps escape and cross over into India and bring their brand of madness into India.
The last thing India would want is super-trained LTTE fighters mingling with the local Tamil supremacist hotheads and coming up with a movement armed with the kind of violence- for the sake of the Periya Tamizh Naad- that would make Kashmir look like the paradise poets once described it as.
The ISI I’m sure must be waiting.