
Reclaiming the Heartland: How State Capacity And Intent Defeated the Maoist Insurgency swarajyamag.com/commentary/rec…
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Reclaiming the Heartland: How State Capacity And Intent Defeated the Maoist Insurgency swarajyamag.com/commentary/rec…





JUST IN: The New York Times confirmed the unit. Navy SEAL Team 6. The same operators who killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011 extracted a downed Air Force colonel from the Zagros Mountains of Iran in 2026. The parallels are exact and the differences are what matter. In 2011, 24 SEALs flew two stealth Black Hawks into Pakistan, spent 40 minutes on the ground, destroyed one crashed helicopter to protect its classified stealth modifications, and flew out with bin Laden’s body. Zero casualties. In 2026, according to the Times, hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel, dozens of warplanes and helicopters, and the full spectrum of cyber, space, and intelligence capabilities were deployed to extract one injured weapons systems officer who had been evading capture for over 24 hours while IRGC forces and Bakhtiari tribesmen hunted him through mountains 200 miles inside Iran. The operation that killed the world’s most wanted man used two helicopters. The operation that rescued one pilot used an air armada. The WSO ejected when his F-15E was shot down on April 3, the first American combat aircraft lost in the war. He landed in the mountains of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province. He had a pistol, an encrypted beacon, and SERE training. He hiked to a 7,000-foot ridgeline, found a rock crevice, and activated his signal while Iranian state television broadcast a bounty for his capture. The CIA ran a deception campaign to misdirect Iranian search parties. Israeli intelligence provided real-time tracking of IRGC ground force movements and the Israeli Air Force halted its own strike campaign for 36 hours to create a rescue corridor. A senior US official told the Times it was “one of the most challenging and complex rescues in the history of American special operations.” The rescue force established a forward arming and refuelling point on an abandoned airstrip approximately 50 kilometres southeast of Isfahan, deep inside Iranian territory. Two MC-130J Commando II transports and associated MH-6 Little Bird helicopters landed to support the extraction. Both transports became immobilised. The operators destroyed them on the ground, detonating charges on classified avionics, communications systems, and software rather than allow the IRGC to capture American technology. Then they called for more aircraft. Three additional transports arrived under fire. SEAL Team 6 loaded the WSO and the stranded rescue team and flew out of Iran. Zero American casualties. The WSO was flown to Kuwait for treatment. The President said he “will be just fine.” In 2011, one stealth Black Hawk was destroyed to protect its secrets. In 2026, two MC-130Js and their associated rotary-wing aircraft were destroyed for the same reason. The doctrine is identical: hardware is expendable when the alternative is technology transfer to an adversary. The scale is what changed. Abbottabad was a scalpel. Dehdasht was a sledgehammer wrapped in a scalpel. The scalpel was SEAL Team 6. The sledgehammer was everything else the United States military sent into Iran to make sure the scalpel could do its work and come home. This was the first confirmed American ground operation of the 2026 Iran war. Not a missile strike. Not an air sortie. Boots on Iranian soil, weapons fired at Iranian forces, aircraft destroyed on Iranian territory, and every person who went in came out. The country that failed at Desert One in 1980 just succeeded at Dehdasht in 2026, and the unit that made the difference is the same unit that was created because Desert One failed. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Zakir Khan at Screen Awards naming and shaming Bollywood for DHURANDHAR. This is the power of Real Cinema 🔥🔥 #Dhurandhar #DhurandharTheRevenge

He climbed a ridge. That is where the story turns. When the F-15E was hit on Friday morning, both crew members ejected over the mountains of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province in southwestern Iran. The pilot was located first and extracted by HH-60 rescue helicopters within hours, under small arms fire that wounded crew aboard the recovery aircraft. The weapons systems officer landed deeper in hostile terrain. He was alone on the ground in a country where state television was broadcasting a bounty for his capture and Basij militia were flooding the mountain roads below. According to reports now confirmed by Fox News citing two senior US officials, the WSO used his SERE training, the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape doctrine drilled into every American combat aircrew. He moved on foot through rugged terrain. He climbed to an elevated ridge near the city of Dehdasht. He activated his encrypted emergency beacon. And he waited. The beacon was the thread. Everything that followed pulled on it. US Joint Special Operations Command launched a night extraction package. Reports indicate Delta Force operators and Pararescuemen from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron inserted via helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, the unit that flew the Bin Laden raid. A-10 Warthogs from the 355th Wing provided close air support, running gun passes on IRGC and Basij convoys advancing toward the WSO’s position. HC-130J tankers kept the package airborne. Multiple aircraft were dispatched to establish a temporary fire zone around Dehdasht, a no-entry perimeter enforced with precision strikes on a telecommunications tower and approaching vehicles. Iranian local officials reported at least four killed and several wounded from the strikes. Then the operation went sideways. According to reports corroborated by Fox News’s confirmation that US forces destroyed “aircraft which have sensitive equipment,” two C-130 transports landed at a remote forward arming and refuelling point inside Iran to support the extraction. Both became stuck. Rather than allow the aircraft and their classified systems to fall into IRGC hands, American forces destroyed both planes on the ground. The deliberate destruction of two US military aircraft inside Iran to deny equipment to the enemy is the detail that separates a clean extraction from an operation that nearly failed before it succeeded. Additional transports arrived under A-10 cover. The Delta operators and Pararescuemen who were now themselves stranded at the destroyed landing zone loaded the WSO and extracted under ongoing fire. Fox News reported that the WSO “and the members of the rescue team are all safely out of Iran.” Zero American casualties. Desert One in 1980 ended when a helicopter collided with a C-130 on a remote Iranian airstrip, killing eight Americans before the mission reached Tehran. Forty-six years later, C-130s were destroyed on Iranian soil again. This time the destruction was deliberate. This time the team got out. This time the man they came for came with them. The operation confirms two truths that cannot be separated. American special operations forces can penetrate, fight inside, and extract from Iran. And the war that was supposed to be over required the most elite soldiers in the US military to fight a ground battle in Iranian mountains to recover one man from a country with no air defences. Both statements are true. The rescue proves American capability. The need for the rescue proves Iranian capability. And the 48-hour countdown is still running. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Sooner or later, he will be kicked out by his own people but by then the damage he leaves behind will burden generations.


Muhammad is dead. Krishna is dead. Buddah is dead. Confucius is dead. Jesus Christ is alive. That is the truth that has remade the world. Glory to God.

The story of the world fattest man that consumes 30,000 calories a day



The left is Apollo 17. The right is Artemis II some 50 years later, today. I feel the atmosphere of Earth on the right looks more hazy with the blue sea looking tinged at places due to effects of pollution, though the picture is of much higher resolution today. What do you think?


A Peak detailing from Aditya Dhar 👏 Do you know what was the best thing about the movie Dhurandhar.. As explained below it was the courage of director, It was the way Aditya Dhar presented "Bade Sahab" in #Dhurandhar2TheRevenge .. Coz, when we remember Dawood Ibrahim or look at his photos, the first thing that comes to mind is his "Attitude". Despite the many crimes he has committed in his lifetime, he often appears almost like a hero in those images. We rarely see him aged or suffering and we don’t even know whether he is alive or dead. But in Dhurandhar, they gave him a different form, stripping away his swag and reshaping how we remember him. They clearly wanted to change the perception of his image like he doesn’t deserve to be remembered with power, attitude, or a smile. Instead, he should be seen as aged, weak, and suffering. So now, even when we think of him through his photos, the Dhurandhar portrayal comes to mind first rather than the earlier image. The impact of this on the current generation is significant.. And it needed lot of courage from Dhar to make this reality .. This is reason I call him now .. Modi of Film Industry ..