The Hindu : Ominous signs in the northeast

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Monday, Sep 09, 2002

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Ominous signs in the northeast

By Wasbir Hussain

New Delhi and the States in the northeast must now put in place a workable counter-insurgency strategy with the focus on coordination, not competition.

THE VAST majority of the northeast's 38 million people may be craving for peace, but the region's separatist rebel groups are forging strategic alliances amongst themselves, broadening their area of operation, and making forays into newer theatres, indicating that they are bent on continuing with their bush war against the Indian state. Some of the recent pacts sealing the coming together of frontline insurgent outfits do not augur well for the Indian security establishment, obsessed as it is with Kashmir. And, if some of these alliances have actually been clinched at the behest of hostile forces and agencies in Pakistan on the eve of the elections in Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi could well be forced to concentrate more on the northeastern theatre, where `little wars', if anything, are still raging.

Insurgent politics in the northeast saw a very important development in recent weeks — the signing of a deal for joint operations by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF). While the ULFA is active in Assam and has a number of well-entrenched bases in the adjoining Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the UNLF's primary area of operation has been Manipur's Jiribam Valley and Assam's Cachar district. A UNLF statement on July 29 disclosed for the first time the agreement with the ULFA.

Significantly, that statement came less than a fortnight after the UNLF claimed responsibility for the July 16 killing of three Jat Regiment soldiers in Assam's Cachar district. Given the admission about the agreement, the ULFA could well have provided logistic support to the UNLF in carrying out that ambush.

The UNLF, formed on November 24, 1964, under the leadership of Areambam Samarendra Singh to establish an independent socialist Manipur, has a rather frightening history, insofar as its one-time allies are concerned. The outfit shared a close "political relationship" with the then East Pakistani regime, and in 1969 its cadres underwent military training in that country. The group is also said to have backed the Pakistani army during the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971. In 1975, a team headed by N. Bisheswar Singh proceeded to Lhasa to ask for Beijing's assistance. Now headed by Rajkumar Meghen alias Sana Yaima, the UNLF is also close to the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and has training camps in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

It is linkages such as these and the potential for immense trans-border movement by men of these groups that has made the ULFA-UNLF pact so significant. The ULFA would like to describe the agreement as a "fraternal bond sealed to fulfil certain tactical goals". It may not have been an exclusive bilateral pact, but both the ULFA and the UNLF were part of the loose pan-Mongoloid coalition forged in May 1990 called the Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front (IBRF). Formed to wage a "united struggle for the independence of Indo-Burma", the IBRF was a failure primarily because it was too much of a problem for its leaders to hold on to a group of rebel outfits which claimed to represent diverse tribes and communities.

What then was the need for the ULFA — fighting for a "sovereign, socialist Assam" since its formation in April 1979 — to now tie up with the UNLF or vice-versa? The ULFA's main fighting machine is located in Bhutan, across western Assam. Of late, the ULFA is under pressure from Bhutanese citizens and the Government to pull out from the kingdom. The latest session of the Bhutanese National Assembly or Parliament that concluded in July has reiterated its call to the ULFA to withdraw in a peaceful manner or face military action. The Royal Government has since decided to hold one last round of talks with the ULFA leadership to persuade them to leave the country.

Under the circumstances, the ULFA perhaps was eyeing the UNLF's bases and training facilities in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Denials from Dhaka notwithstanding, it is a fact that Bangladesh has been a favourite "hiding" place for ULFA leaders. The group's general secretary, Anup Chetia, was arrested by Bangladeshi security forces from a locality in Dhaka in December 1997 and has been in prison there ever since. But, in the event of a possible joint Indo-Bhutanese assault on the ULFA inside Bhutan, the group would like to have an alternative destination to head for. And, that will obviously be either Bangladesh or Myanmar, or both. The pact with the UNLF was, therefore, a must for the ULFA.

At one stage, intelligence officials had traced some of the ULFA arms consignments to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, a deal brokered in 1993 by Bo Mya's Karen National Union (KNU), an anti-Yangon guerrilla group. Today, with increased surveillance making the bringing in of weaponry more difficult, the UNLF could well serve as a conduit for shipment of military hardware between Myanmarese rebels and the ULFA. Between January and July this year, the UNLF has carried out at least three major attacks on security forces in Manipur and Assam, besides clamping a ban on two Manipur-based newspapers before lifting the restrictions. That means the UNLF is very much active and additional funds were only welcome. The ULFA is obviously a bigger group to which the UNLF could charge a hefty fee for services rendered. The Assam Police have claimed that the outlawed ULFA has in recent weeks stepped up its extortion drive, targeting professionals, aside from the tea industry. Whether the outfit was trying to garner funds to pay the UNLF is not immediately known.

The UNLF's equations with the military junta in Myanmar also appear extraordinary, a fact the ULFA may have taken note of. In December 2001, as many as 192 UNLF cadres, including some top leaders, were "arrested" by the Myanmarese army. Interestingly, all of them were set free by February 14 this year in four phases. The entire episode is still shrouded in mystery, particularly because Yangon has been almost simultaneously promising Indian leaders of support in checking cross-border insurgency. Does this mean the UNLF has some sort of an understanding with the ruling junta in Myanmar, or a section of it? Answers are difficult to find, but theories abound.

The nexus between the ULFA and the Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) is also worth watching. Security sources would have one believe that it was the ULFA that propped up and got the KLO formed in December 1995. The KLO's aim is to achieve a separate Kamatapur State for the Koch-Rajbongshi community comprising six districts of north Bengal and four districts in adjoining western Assam.

That is a different story, but the ULFA's alliance with the KLO gives it access to certain KLO-controlled corridors that provide the rebels from Assam a bridge linking their bases in Bhutan with hideouts in Bangladesh. The alliances between the ULFA and other rebel groups in the region may have neutralised the reverses the former has been facing in Assam in the wake of a sustained counter-insurgency offensive.

In western Assam's Nalbari district alone, supposedely an ULFA stronghold, up to 50 rebels were killed in shootouts with security forces between January and August this year. The authorities would insist the ULFA has been "marginalised". The very next moment, analysts and intelligence agencies would sound a note of caution, taking into account the new equations emerging among the rebel groups and their expanding theatres of war. New Delhi and the States in the northeast must now put in place a workable counter-insurgency strategy with the focus on coordination, not competition.

(The writer is Associate Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi.)

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