Rise of Selfie GNLA: From Facebook to Twitter-Virtually soaring high!

2016 marked the worst of the outfit with most surrenders, top members leaving the organisations and joining mainstream. What has set aside this once potent militant force from Meghalaya is the amount of media publicity and information network it builds. The group self styled Commander-in chief Sohan Shira who took over the group after the arrest of founding member and former Meghalaya Police Service (MPS) officer Champion Sangma. Sohan Shira seems to have bucked the trend and allowing himself to be more of a limelight militant rather than a dreaded cold blooded killer unlike United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA-I) and NSCN-K chiefs Khaplang and Paresh Barua who very media shy and do not operate much on the virtual world unless maverick journalists visit their camp and interview them personally(Rendezous with Rebels)!

Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram are much popular today with young men and women even the elderly spend much of their time socializing with love ones or sharing a picture or a video for instance but this network which have its own pros and cons have been misused by Terrorists organisations such as Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and the much known Islamic State(IS), these terror organisations are doing it to pass on their messages and gather more footsoldiers waging a broader conflict of war but in the case of insurgent outfits in the northeastern region, GNLA surpasses all and no ideological agenda has found in their textbooks besides just for personal gains.

Comparing Sohan Shira to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi the once vicious and violent terrorist leader who founded Islamic State will be much to the asking but insurgent leaders are learning much through the internet than through books.

–By Christopher Gatphoh 

christopher@thenortheasttoday.com

All opinions expressed in the article are those of the writer's and TNT-the northeast Today may or may not subscribe to the same views