It would be no surprise to those who had handled Myanmar affairs that Naypyidaw would be reluctant to agree to organise joint operations against Naga rebels – as requested by NSA Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar during their June 17 visit.
This impression is clearly emerging, despite officially sponsored publicity in some sections of the media that the Indian team “has secured that country’s consent for joint operations” but with a caveat “when feasible”.
I should also quote Bertil Lintner, one of the most knowledgeable authorities on Myanmar telling an Indian correspondent in November 2011 that Myanmar “fights insurgents on its own terms” and did not “want to get into the kind of joint operations that India wants”.
This impression was quite clear to us in the early 1990s when we had conducted a very discreet but highly productive dialogue with them – after which they themselves smashed some of our rebel structures in their territory.