Operation Golden Bird
Operation Golden Bird was an Indian-Myanmar military operation conducted by the Indian Army in April–May 1995.
The operation was initiated by the 57th Mountain Division of the Indian Army, which tracked down and decapitated a rebel column that had picked up a huge consignment of weapons at the Wyakaung beach, on the Myanmar-Bangladesh coast south of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, and was moving that through the jungles of Mizoram, Northeast India. The consignment was to be delivered in Manipur, India. The operation was named after a Grimm Brothers fairytale. Operation Golden Bird was a joint India-Myanmar military operation carried out along the Mizoram border that led to the killing of dozens of militants. It was considered to be a successful counter-insurgency operation by the Indian Army.
Background
The weapons were purchased in Thailand and were brought by sea to Bangladesh, before being smuggled back to Northeast India by groups of rebel guerrillas. Wyakaung beach, located south of Bangladesh's coastal town of Cox's Bazar, was the most common landing spot for these weapons, but at least six other points in the Cox's Bazar district were also used. The guerrillas of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the Manipuri groups, the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Democratic Front of Boroland would then collect the weapons and carry them back via one of three routes: the Chittagong Hill Tracts-south Mizoram-east Manipur route, skirting the border with Burma; the Chittagong Hill Tracts-tripura-west Mizoram-west Manipur route; or the Chittagong-Sylhet-Meghalaya-Assam route. In the preceding several years, Sylhet-Meghalaya had been used more frequently by the rebels.The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence helped the Northeast Indian rebel groups to safely land these weapons, and only on a few occasions were weapons meant for the rebel groups intercepted by the Bangladesh police, who believed that the weapons were intended for criminals in that country. With Bangladesh emerging as the gateway to Northeast India for weapons imported from Thailand, the rebels in Tripura were best located to carry them back. Both the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All-Tripura Tiger Force secured weapons from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. The National Democratic Front of Boroland and the United Liberation Front of Assam helped them cache the weapons at their bases in the Chittagong Hill Tracts before they were carried to their respective base areas in Northeast India.