ABSTRACT
I could see the ambush’s aftermath. It had been a blood bath. In 1964, I was deployed as a young Captain in the Indian Army in Nagaland at a village called Khonoma. Just prior to my arrival, Naga insurgents had killed Indian Army troops at a river where the troops bathed. I learned, to my astonishment, that women from the village who collected water from the river had helped the insurgents stage the ambush. This ambush was my initiation into a different kind of war, a kind of war that Indian Army soldiers had not been trained to fight, but one that the Republic of India was forced to wage. At that river, and in the surrounding jungles and mountains of Nagaland, India first confronted the challenge of mounting counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This chapter explores India’s COIN campaign in Nagaland in order to illu-
minate this important case study in India’s history of waging COIN and lowintensity conflicts and to draw from this episode lessons for other governments facing the need to engage in civilian and military COIN operations. To achieve these objectives, the chapter analyzes the insurgency movements in Nagaland, how the Indian government responded to the challenge, and what lessons the Indian government’s successes and failures can teach others interested in mounting more effective COIN operations. My experiences fighting COIN campaigns in Nagaland and elsewhere in India inform my analyses, but I have attempted to make my “war stories” transcend personal experiences in order to contribute to the growing interest in finding the most humane and effective ways to counter the threats violent insurgencies pose to countries and peoples.
Nagaland is in India’s northeastern region, located east of Bangladesh and with its eastern border touching Myanmar. Nagaland is mountainous, with the average altitude ranging from 900 to 1,500 meters above sea level. Most of Nagaland’s 16,488 square kilometers is covered with thick, tropical forest and is very humid. Nagaland’s relative isolation and difficult geographical terrain help explain how, over time, the complex and diverse mix of up to
