Armed struggle is poised precariously to go the dinosaur way. Partly this is due to international community's increasing role in conflicts resolution in any part of the world and partly because today's armed rebel groups are handicapped more than ever before by sheer limitation in size and scale of the force they command and lack of access to advanced military technology that States have deployed.

As globalization shrinks the world, the international community is taking notice of local upheavals around the world. No country is immune to scrutiny of the world opinion. It seems that countries of the world are governed by a new set of unwritten rules and not on individual nation's whims and fancies.

Consider the case of Israel and Palestine's love-and-hate relationship. By all accounts, the military might of the Israel combined with its formidable spy agency Mossad is far superior to the ramshackle suicide squads of the Palestine. If Israel is allowed to have its way, a week long air strikes laced with few crude nuclear aloos can wipe out the entire Palestine population, and thereby the decades old conflict that has seen lot of bloodshed on both sides. If Israel is showing more patience, (forget which is right or wrong), it is because it is held back by the strident world pressure to respect human rights and out of fear for attracting the pariah status to itself from the comity of world.

The point is: no nation can afford to antagonize the world opinion. This also equally applies to rebel groups, which resort to violence as a weapon to push their agenda. The armed groups are no more justified than the state they are fighting when it comes to infringing on people's rights, no matter how noble is the cause for their acts. But invariably, the very nature of the armed struggle ensures that its violent way of propagating their cause often causes human rights violations involving innocent civilians. It is beyond my authority to surmise that the rights of the people are deliberately ignored, or even sacrificed as a price to pay for the "revolution". What matters is that human rights of the common people are violated routinely.

Killing people on supposed grounds on guilt of anti social activities - or anti revolution activities - is fine to ears, but this practice greatly undermines rule of basic humanitarian laws and rights of every human being irrespective of race and creed. Wags may justify capital punishment as an effective way of keeping the populace in thrall or awe, but this flawed policy will become a liability when exposed in the spotlight of international community whose support is crucial in the success of any peoples' movement.

This scenario poses an uneasy dilemma to the armed groups, which have no quick solution. Should they abjure violence, it obliterates the very foundation on which they stand: violence and fear factor. And if they choose to fight only against the might of the state and not intervene in social issues, they are doomed to fail, what with their rusty, outdated, stolen weapons from another era. The size of the state will crush them slowly but surely.

You might counter attack my viewpoint by drawing attention to the "success" of the NSCN (IM). As a matter of fact, the powers of the NSCN (IM) are not derived from its guns, but rather from the Christian community of the world behind its back, almost prodding it and the consensus of the Naga's society. Notwithstanding its predatory demand for a Greater Nagaland that cuts at the core of Manipur's territorial integrity, its other demands are legitimate and genuine and have a long history dating back to 1929 when Nagas told the Simon Commission that they would not join India.

The armed groups - if they have to survive - have to rethink on its policies especially the ones concerning the use of violence that might attract the ire of the world community. Banking only on raw force may be rewarding to some extent in the initial stages of the movement to force the state to take the Cause seriously, but it is a lost battle to persist with guerilla warfare against a limitless military juggernaut of the state.

It all boils down to sustained meticulous information warfare - not guerilla - to win war of nerves. The stage of a battle is the world. In this age of Internet, nations are just a locality in a village. The governments are only panchayats, the real arbiter of disputes are international community. The only way out for movements to achieve their goals is to appeal to the world.

India desperately wants to play an active role in international politics in its quest for a superpower status. Tell you what; she is ill at ease trying to please the nations of the world to gain that tag. It is her weakness. Any people's movement in India can play on her weakness and benefit from it by pleading with the world to pressurize India to take note of it (people's movement). To adopt this option, any group - armed or not - will need a lot of persuading to do at the world forum. And for this, they would need a lot of intellectual teeth and gray cells, not just guns and visceral threats. Otherwise they are obsolete like their antiquated country made guns.

* The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi. The author can be reached at [email protected]