Opinion
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News Analysis
Assam's trauma
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The hard reality, despite official claims that the militants' backs have been broken, is that insurgency in Assam continues to fester, writes BARUN DAS GUPTA.
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Even children were not spared by Bodo militants in Darrang.
AFTER A relative lull, the two main militant outfits operating in Assam, NDFB and ULFA, have struck again. On January 15, the NDFB killed 13 non-tribals at a village near the Indo-Bhutan border in Bongaigaon district. Five days later, it killed 18 non-tribals at Jangalbari village in Darrang district. However, at the Republic Day function in Guwahati on January 26, the Governor, S. K. Sinha, claimed that Assam was "emerging from the dark tunnel of violence".
The next day, the ULFA ambushed a police party at Balapara village in Kamrup district, just 50 km from Guwahati, killing a DSP and a police driver, and injuring four constables.
The day before, the NDFB had made an abortive bid on a CRPF police party in Barpeta district. On January 20, four ULFA militants were killed in Dhubri district in an encounter with the security forces.
Those experienced in counter-insurgency operations say neither "the end of the tunnel" nor ``light'' is visible. Extortion, violence, murder, smuggling of narcotics and gun-running have become a way of life with the militants. They target the police, the security forces and individual political leaders to show they are still a force to reckon with and to strike terror in the people. This makes extortion easy.
Their ranks have not been depleted to any significant extent. While some are killed or are captured by the security forces and some others are allowed to take abyahati (retirement), new recruits mainly from lower middle class sections in towns and poor families in rural areas are taking their place.
Narrating his personal experience, an official says he has found parents asking their jobless sons to join the militant groups to "either earn some money or get killed". The lure of earning money by joining the ULFA or the NDFB will always be there in a State with limited employment opportunities, he says. Extortion is going on as before. The main victims are the tea plantation owners, rich businessmen and disbursing officers of different Government departments. At one traffic check-post, the NDFB is known to have raised Rs. 1 crore in a year.
An enormous amount of money is required to maintain the luxurious lifestyles of the top leaders of the two outfits, who live abroad with their families; to buy arms, and to run camps in Bhutan and Bangladesh. Part of the money is spent to buy gold and dollars from markets in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai and heroin from Myanmar. The narcotics are then converted into cash.
According to the rules of the ULFA, half of the money collected by a local unit is retained by it while the other half is sent to the Central Committee. Since there is no knowing whether the individual who collects the money keeps a part for himself before turning it over to his committee, it acts as an added incentive for extortion.
The main problem in tackling insurgency is the cross-border terrorism facing the State. The ULFA and the NDFB have camps in Bhutan and Bangladesh. The previous Sheikh Hasina regime in Dhaka, which was friendly to India, was unable to disband the camps and flush out the militants.
The Government of Khaleda Zia that came to power after last year's general election is openly hostile to India. Begum Zia, while in the Opposition, had openly declared support for the various militant groups in northeast India engaged in a "freedom struggle". The situation in Bhutan, despite the Government's periodic announcements that it will not tolerate the presence of militants on its soil and its efforts to persuade them to leave, remains unchanged. In December, the ULFA said it was closing down four of its camps, but reports are that the camps were in fact shifted deeper inside Bhutan. Intelligence sources say the ULFA will not leave Bhutan so easily because its operations will suffer.
The hills of Bhutan give the outfit far better logistics than the flat terrain of Bangla0desh. The Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, is sore with the Centre for its inability to persuade Bhutan to flush out the militants and thinks the Centre has not put enough pressure on Bhutan. He has his reasons.
The NDFB militants who massacred some Bengalis in Bongaigaon district came from the Bishnupur camp in Bhutan, while the group that massacred Biharis near Udalguri in Darrang district came from the Daifun camp, also in Bhutan. In both cases they fled back to Bhutan after committing the crime.
Mr. Gogoi wants the entire 260-km stretch of the Indo-Bhutan border fenced and the BSF given the responsibility of guarding it. During discussions with the Union Home Minister, L. K. Advani, in New Delhi on Wednesday, Mr. Gogoi also asked for 60 additional companies of the CRPF.
The hard reality, despite official claims that the militants' "backs have been broken", and that they have lost public support and sympathy, is that insurgency continues to fester in Assam. The ULFA leaders are plainly not interested in talks, unless they are held to discuss sovereignty for Assam which they know the Government will never agree to. The State will see periods of relative calm followed by spurts in violence.
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