The Hindu : ULFA: victor or vanquished?

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Monday, Mar 24, 2003

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ULFA: victor or vanquished?

By Wasbir Hussain

What needs to be found out is whether the outfit has succeeded in regrouping, which actually seems likely.

AFTER WHAT appears to be a tactical hibernation, the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was on a rampage earlier this month, hitting at soft targets across the State. The outfit's hit-squads launched a rocket attack on the 102-year-old Digboi Refinery in eastern Assam, setting a 5 million litre petrol tank ablaze, blew up a gas pipeline of the public sector Oil India Limited (OIL), swooped on a village and shot three Hindi-speaking persons dead, and fired a mortar at a police line in the western district of Bongaigaon, missing the actual target of the armoury.

The ULFA's elusive commander-in-chief, Paresh Barua, was quick to claim responsibility for the raids at the oil installations. He called newspaper offices in Guwahati to say that oil has been made the target to protest against New Delhi's "continued exploitation of Assam's natural resources". The ULFA leader signed off on an ominous note, saying such attacks as the ones carried out between March 7 and 8 would continue in the days to come. As if to prove the threat, the ULFA in the next few days lobbed grenades at a police station, injuring seven, and exploded a landmine under a bus, killing seven and wounding more than 50 others.

Now, what does this stepped-up offensive mean? Does it indicate a resurgence of the ULFA? Providing an answer to this is not easy. But, these attacks came less than 36 hours after the Assam Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, made an unprecedented speech in the State Assembly saying he was ready to travel to either Bhutan or Bangladesh to meet the ULFA leadership and start the peace process, provided the rebel group and New Delhi were ready to approve of the move.

By striking within a day of Mr. Gogoi's peace overture, the ULFA could well have sought to send out a message that it was opposed to the idea of possible peace talks with the Chief Minister or the Government of India itself. This brings us to the question of ULFA-Government talks. At least for general consumption, the ULFA is still sticking to its three pre-conditions for a peace dialogue: talks outside India, on the core issue of Assam's sovereignty, and under the supervision of the United Nations.

Talking outside India is not a problem for New Delhi. The Centre can even decide to hear out ULFA's arguments in favour of a sovereign Assam.

But, involving a third party in any talks is the one condition that is totally unacceptable to the Government of India. But, what needs to be examined is whether the ULFA is at all interested in peace talks in the first place. Reports suggest that while the rebel group's political wing headed by the chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, is not averse to entering into peace negotiations with New Delhi, the military wing commanded by Mr. Barua is against any such move.

It is against this backdrop that the renewed offensive by the ULFA to mark or coincide with its "Sainik Divas" or "Army Day" on March 16 needs to be viewed.

Nothing much was heard of the ULFA observing "Sainik Divas" in any big way in the past although the rebel group has always stepped up its offensive around its foundation day on April 7 every year, besides important Indian national days as Independence Day and Republic Day.

Is there a hidden message in the ULFA's decision to observe "Sainik Divas" this time? Not unlikely. After all, Mr. Barua and his key aides who are controlling the ULFA's army may well have tried to send out clear signals to its cadre, and to the authorities, that it is the armed wing and not the political wing of the outfit that calls the shots. In fact, the sudden decision to actually observe the "Sainik Divas" could be an outcome of the ULFA's inner contradictions.

The authorities battling the ULFA are still fond of fire-fighting measures, 13 years after the Army was first put on the trail of these rebels (Operation Bajrang, that began in November 1990) and six years after the Army, the police and the paramilitary in the State were brought under a Unified Command.

The first response of both Mr. Gogoi as well as security officials has been that the fresh attacks were nothing but "desperate acts" by the ULFA that is "cornered". The Assam Government was quick to seek an additional 30 paramilitary companies from the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, for specific deployment in oil installations, and reiterated its demand for deployment of a "dedicated force" to guard the 265-km porous border with Bhutan where the ULFA has well-entrenched bases. The point that needs to be noted here is that Digboi and Duliajan, where the oil facilities were attacked, are located 600 km away from the Bhutan border.

Therefore, the Digboi Refinery attack in all probability was carried out by ULFA cadres located in the vicinity and not those from their Bhutan bases who would have had to travel across almost the entire State to reach the oil town in eastern Assam. If the Refinery attack was carried out by the ULFA's Myanmar-based rebels, as suggested by security agencies, it would again mean that the militants of the group are still spread out, and are mobile. In reality, the ULFA may not be in as bad a shape as one might believe or be made to believe. The spate of mortar attacks indicates that the rebel group has a good stockpile of this form of weapon. Besides, the use of mortars, fired from a distance of anywhere between 400 metres and 1.5 km, looks like a new strategy adopted by the ULFA to avoid carrying out strikes from close range. This might mean that the ULFA does not want to lose more of its men in view of the fact that it has lost quite a number of its cadres in recent months who have either been killed by the security forces or arrested.

Dismissing the latest strikes by the ULFA as nothing but "acts of desperation" would be much too simplistic an assessment. If the ULFA has indeed lost nearly 14,000 cadres in the past six years and is still capable of striking at will deep inside the State, it means that the outfit has been engaged in a continuous recruitment drive. What needs to be found out is whether the outfit has succeeded in regrouping, which actually seems likely.

Instead of allowing complacency to creep in, the counter-insurgency authorities would do well to analyse whether the Unified Command has been a success, and find out the gaps that need to be plugged.

The Government leaders must also avoid airing such contradictory positions as dismissing the ULFA as a spent force that is trying to stay afloat by indulging in "desperate acts", and saying at the same time that they are ready to travel to a foreign country to talk to the rebel leaders. After all, the ULFA may not be the victor, but it is certainly not vanquished yet.

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

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