Xenophobia or plain lawlessness?

By Wasbir Hussain

HIT-AND-RUN OFFENSIVES by elusive guerrillas fighting for independent homelands have long ceased to be big news in Assam. But when gunmen with automatic weapons emerge from nowhere and kill 40 people - mostly Hindi-speaking - in five different attacks within a month, it certainly is news and ominous at that. Call it xenophobia or plain lawlessness, the fact remains that the recent organised violence against Marwaris (from Rajasthan) and Biharis marks the beginning of a new round of terror in Assam. From Tinsukia and Sivasagar in the east to Nalbari in the north, the pattern is the same, a sort of pogrom.

On October 21, unidentified gunmen descended on village Nauholia in the eastern tea growing district of Dibrugarh and killed four persons, all Hindi-speaking. The next day, a strike at village Kakojan in adjoining Tinsukia district took a toll of 11 lives, all Biharis. On October 27, Diwali day, armed men alighted from a vehicle in the heart of the western district town of Nalbari and pumped bullets into nine unsuspecting persons, eight of them Marwaris, mostly traders. They died on the spot. The next massacre was in Barpeta district on November 8. The toll: eight killed, seven of them non-Assamese. Gunmen then struck on November 16 in Sivasagar district, once the capital of the Ahom royalty who ruled Assam for 600 years. Here, seven Marwaris were killed, three of them from one family.

Except for the November 8 attack in Barpeta district where the hand of the banned National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) - a separatist group fighting since 1986 for an independent Bodo homeland - is almost confirmed, there is a dispute over who is behind the killings of the Marwaris and the Biharis. The police and the highest authorities in the Assam Government insist that the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is carrying out these massacres. The ULFA, however, has denied its involvement. The mystery deepened with the surfacing of pamphlets in the name of the unheard of Assam Tiger Force after the October 27 massacre at Nalbari. The ATF owned up the three attacks in Dibrugarh, Tinsukia and Nalbari, a claim dismissed by the Assam Police. According to the police, the ULFA carried out these killings and wanted to pass it off as acts of the non-existent Assam Tiger Force. The dispute aside, the ATF pamphlets spoke of its opposition to all outsiders living in Assam, not just the illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

Things though are not so simple. Assam has been in the grip of insurgency since the mid-1980s. Except for the Bodo rebels who had carried out selective killings of immigrant Muslim settlers and Jharkhandi Santhal tribespeople, the ULFA does not have a history of such organised killing of civilians, irrespective of whether they are locals or Hindi-speaking. In fact, the ULFA, despite its attempt to project itself as the most potent symbol of Assamese nationalism, has not taken a hardline position even against the illegal Bangladeshi migrants. This is significant because almost all the radical Assamese groups and organisations such as the All Assam Students Union, the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad and others have been crying hoarse about the demographic change in the State caused by the continued illegal influx from Bangladesh that could soon reduce the indigenous Assamese to a minority in their own homeland. The ULFA on the contrary went to the extent of saying a couple of years ago that the migrant settlers should not be disturbed.

Therefore, it is difficult to imagine why the outfit would carry out an organised offensive against the Hindi-speaking people living in Assam when it has not adopted a tough posture against the illegal migrants from Bangladesh despite the general anger in the State over the aliens. It is an open secret that top ULFA leaders have been operating out of Bangladesh. But, can the outfit afford to keep quiet or go against the popular sentiment in Assam against illegal Bangladesh migrants just because its leaders could be staying in Dhaka? The answer is both yes and no.

Strategies of a guerrilla group faced with a sustained counter- insurgency offensive can, however, change. The Army, police and paramilitary authorities agree (despite differences in approach and claims over success in counter-insurgency operations) that the ULFA, of late, is facing a severe fund crunch. They argue that since the rebel outfit has ceased to act as a cohesive force any longer in the wake of the sustained security offensives, its extortion operations have been hit hard, leading to cash reserves drying up.

Therefore, these officials say, the ULFA could be covertly engaged in attacking the wealthy Marwari and Bihari business community to instil a sense of fear among the non-Assamese before slapping hefty extortion demands on them. One does not know for sure, but there is some weight in this argument. Because, ever since the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta Government brought the security forces in Assam under a Unified Headquarters, with the Army heading the counter-insurgency operations, businessmen and others receiving extortion notices have started reporting such matters to the authorities. This was not the case earlier. Even big tea companies paid protection money to the ULFA without letting the authorities know anything whatsoever.

The serial killings on the eve of the State Assembly elections (polls are due by February-March next year) has led to a blistering statement war in Assam with political parties accusing each other of being hand-in-glove with the rebels and so on.

The ruling Asom Gana Parishad accuses the opposition Congress of having a nexus with the ULFA. The Congress throws back the same charge at the AGP. The BJP, fast becoming a key player in Assam's murky political arena, has accused both the AGP and the Congress of maintaining links with the rebels.

Could there be a deeper game at work at this crucial poll-eve juncture? Are the selective attacks on the Hindi-speaking people engineered by political forces out to dislodge the AGP-led Government so as to have the polls under a spell of President's Rule? Nothing can actually be ruled out. After all, the murderous attacks on the Marwaris and the Biharis have already led to a national concern, both in the media as well as in political circles. For once, after a long time, the killings have got front-page coverage in most metropolitan dailies.

In so far as the response of the political parties is concerned, the BJP president, Mr. Bangaru Laxman, has said that a Jammu & Kashmir type situation is prevailing in Assam. A BJP fact-finding team arrived in Assam from New Delhi and returned after making an on-the-spot assessment of the security situation in the State in the wake of the serial killings.

In the winter of 1990, a massive fear psychosis had gripped the State's tea industry due to stepped-up insurgent attacks. That led, among other things, to the secret air-evacuation of several executives belonging to subsidiaries of the U.K.-based Unilever Group. This state of affairs had eventually brought down the Mahanta Government and President's Rule was imposed. Could the recent killings push the Mahanta Government to the brink of collapse once again?

(The writer is Editor, The Northeast Daily, Guwahati)

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