Siliguri, Sept. 19: A year after being deployed to guard international borders in an insurgency-infested region, the Sashastra Suraksha Bal (SSB) has finally woken up to the need of the hour ? training its personnel in the basics of counter-insurgency operations.

The decision to alter its training manual coincides with a demand from chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, urging the Centre to explore the feasibility of deploying Indo-Tibetan Border Police along the state?s border with Nepal.

The SSB, formerly known as Special Services Bureau, was earlier confined to intelligence gathering and training deprived and threatened ethnic communities to counter security threats, but its training was not enough to tackle the heightened security threats posed by the Maoist guerrillas of Nepal.

SSB inspector-general in-charge of the Patna and Guwahati frontier headquarters Jag Bahadur Singh Negi told The Telegraph: ?We have revised our training manual to deal with the newer threats posed by the Maoist guerrillas of Nepal close to the international border. The revision stresses on counter-insurgency tactics and other skills that will be acquired by our men to combat the insurgents of the Himalayan kingdom.?

The authorities hope to stymie insurgent attacks by fortifying the guards with quick reaction techniques and camouflage tactics. Quick-Reaction Teams will comprise around 11 to 12 members of the force who will be assigned to repel rebels targeting SSB camps. These techniques are also expected to come in handy while preventing kidnapping bids.

Rock-climbing and rough-terrain drills, which will also form part of the training programme, are expected to give the border guards the advantage of the element of surprise over their enemies.

Not content with the training the personnel have been receiving in the three training schools ? at Salonibari (Assam), Goaltam (Uttaranchal) and Sapri (Himachal Pradesh) ? ?two more are going to be set up at Barauni and Gorakhpur,? Negi said. A group of ?specially trained? officers will teach the men at these schools.

Sources said the old SSB training manual focused chiefly on simple border management strategies, like land patrol and a point-to-point co-ordination between units and that did not prepare them for guarding the 1751-km stretch of porous border.