MBA Education & C areers

Assam: Rivers of Blood

BHARAT JAIN

I
ndia’s North-East, today marketed as an In India today, regionalism has assumed two
‘Unexplored Paradise’, is characterized by major forms. In its most radical form, regionalism
religious, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural is violent, making a demand of secession of a
diversity. The region is home to some of the most particular region from India thus generating a
serious internal conflicts that have plagued our centrifugal force. Such a demand for secession
country since the time of its independence from directly threatens the unity and integrity of India.
British rule. Almost all conflicts in the North-East The current situations in J&K and Nagaland are
are based on ethnic, linguistic, and political of this form.
ideologies. Analysts attribute the disturbances in
the north-east to the strong growth of extreme
regionalism among the people inhabiting these
states.
In January 2007, the United Liberation Front of
Asom (ULFA) killed over 70 people, mostly poor
migrant workers. Such poor non-Assamese
migrants are an easy game for a ruthless militant
organisation like the ULFA. Ever since its
foundation in 1979, the ULFA has been
demanding that the non-Assamese, especially
Hindi-speaking people, leave Assam.
Before we venture out to analyse the causes and The second major form that regionalism takes on
consequences of the ULFA’s killing spree, it is a demand for autonomy within the political
would help if the reader is aware of the ‘idea’ of border of an existing state. The demand for
regionalism as well as the ‘idea’ of secession. Bodoland within the existing state of Assam is an
What is regionalism? example of this type of regionalism.
Regionalism refers to a feeling of distinctiveness,
Why do the demands for secession or for greater
group consciousness or sectional identification
and loyalty shared by people who live in a autonomy, both manifestations of regionalism,
particular area. Often, groups of people seek to arise?
politicize the territorial predicaments of their Political geographers and ethnographers cite the
region, with the intent of protecting and rise of secessionist tendencies or demand for
advancing their regional interests. greater autonomy to three significant factors: lack

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of a strong nationalistic feeling, lack of effective
linkages, and reorganization of states on linguistic
basis. Also, economic backwardness, regional
imbalances, and cultural segregation of the people
living in border states, peripheral areas, and remote
and backward places, all combine to illustrate the
fact that people living in these places have not
been assimilated into the Indian
mainstream – social, cultural, economic, and
political system.
In his scholarly study of South Asian history,
Revenge & Reconciliation, Rajmohan Gandhi
elucidates on the Assam identity crisis: “Feeding
on Assam’s steady truncation over the years and
on allegations that Assam’s electoral rolls
contain a huge number of foreigners (mostly
Bangladeshis), militant Assamese rhetoric
nonetheless asserts at times a non-Indian
identity, an alienation unaffected by the fact that
most ULFA leaders are Hindus… [Assam’s]
complaints against New Delhi, which include a
charge of poor recompense for its oil and tea,
are paralleled by grievances against Assam by
several tribal groups that continue to inhabit
truncated Assam.
“The demand of the Bodos, a substantial group
in the plains of Assam, for a state of their own
has led to numerous incidents of violence
involving security forces, Bodos, Assamese and
other ethnic communities.
“Perhaps the bloodiest fight over land between
neighbouring ethnic groups, or between old and
new settlers, occurred in Nellie in Assam’s Nagaon
district in 1983, when over a thousand immigrant
Muslims, including women and children, were
killed in attacks by Lalung tribals.”
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ULFA: A backgrounder
The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was
formed on April 7, 1979, by Bhimakanta
Buragohain, Rajiv Rajkonwar alias Arabinda
Rajkhowa, Golap Baruah alias Anup Chetia,
Samiran Gogoi alias Pradip Gogoi, Bhadreshwar
Gohain, and Paresh Baruah at the Rang Ghar in
Sibsagar to establish a “sovereign socialist
Assam” through an armed struggle.
ULFA’s chairman is Arabinda Rajkhowa; its
vice-chairman, Pradip Gogoi, was arrested in 1998,
and is currently lodged in a Guwahati jail. Anup
Chetia, the militant organisation’s general
secretary, is under detention in Bangladesh after
being arrested in December 1997. The other
founding members including Bhimakanta
Buragohain, were arrested during the Indian
Army’s military operations in Bhutan in
December 2003.
The organisation is divided into two wings:
political and military. The chief of the military
wing is titled ‘commander-in-chief’. A military
wing of the ULFA, the Sanjukta Mukti Fouj (SMF)
was formed in March 1996.
ULFA’s aims & demands
The creation of an independent and sovereign
socialist Assam is the avowed goal of the ULFA.
Apart from this, the following are the major
demands of the separatist ULFA:
♦ Demand to end, or suspend, army operations
against its cadres;
♦ Release of its top leaders captured by the
security forces;
♦ Information about those cadres captured
during ‘Operation Flush Out’ in Bhutan in
2003;
♦ Third party mediation for peace talks, and
♦ Holding talks in world fora like the United
Nations (UN).
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External linkages
The ULFA has links with a large number of
external organizations. Some of these are
intelligence agencies of countries that directly
aid and abet anti-India activities.
In 1986, ULFA first established contacts with the
then unified National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (NSCN), and the Kachin Independence
Army (KIA) of Myanmar, for training and arms.
Naga rebels helped the ULFA establish a
working relationship with the Kachins.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ULFA joined
hands with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI). Indian intelligence agencies believe that the
ULFA also has links with Afghan militants. In
fact, there are reports that the ULFA militants have
received training in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Bangladesh Angle
If there is one country that occupies a strategic
place in the ULFA’s scheme of things, then it has
to be Bangladesh. According to Indian intelligence
agencies, Bangladesh has also provided safe
haven to the top leadership of the ULFA. Since
1989, the ULFA has had a number of training
camps in Bangladesh. The Directorate General of
Field Intelligence (DGFI) of Bangladesh
reportedly facilitates the ULFA’s presence and
its nefarious operations against India. In fact,
seized documents and interrogation of some
arrested activists revealed that the DGFI had also
trained ULFA cadres in camps close to the
international boundary.
Also, the ULFA has often used other outfits to
smuggle arms and ammunition into India. Two of
these are the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of
Assam (MULTA) and the Muslim United
Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA).
To generate funds for financing its operations,
ULFA launched several income generating
projects in Bangladesh. It has set up a number of
firms in Dhaka, including media consultancies and
soft drink manufacturing units.
The recent spurt in militant activity in Assam has
occupied the minds of those in the external affairs
establishment in India. The covert support
provided by the Bangladesh defence
establishment to anti-India militants has begun
to worry the Indian policy makers. Not only do
these militants use Bangladeshi territory to run
training camps but they also use the banking
channels — legal and illegal — to finance their
anti-India terrorist activities.
While India continues to put pressure on
Bangladesh to put an end to all such activities
being carried out from its territory, it seems the
latter has chosen to ignore this. The reasons could
be domestic compulsions and the need to pander
to the anti-India rhetoric of the Islamic parties, on
the support of which hangs the fate of the ruling
party in Bangladesh.
Pakistan’s ISI hand in glove with ULFA
Pakistan has seldom lost a chance to hit India in
any way possible. Given this, common sense
would indicate that if there is any nation or group
that is anti-India, Pakistan would, without doubt,
lend them a “helping hand”. In the light of this,
Pakistan’s support to the ULFA should come as
no surprise.
Indian intelligence agencies have said that the
separatist group’s top leaders maintain a very
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strong liaison with the In September 2006, the ULFA

Pakistani intelligence It must be walked out of the talks with
establishment. Safely the Union government after
ensconced in protected a peace the latter withdrew from a six-
shelters in Bangladesh, these week ceasefire saying that the
leaders are reported to have without victory. ULFA had violated truce
visited Pakistan on several conditions. Since then, the
occasions. — Woodrow Wilson, state has seen a steep surge
in the violence unleashed by
The fact that the ULFA have Jan. 1917 the ULFA on the innocent
received material and military
civilians, especially against
support from Pakistan could be gauged from one
the Hindi-speaking migrants.
crucial fact: During the 1999 Kargil War, the ULFA
came out in open support of Pakistan and Recent developments
described the Pakistani intruders as ‘freedom The January 2007 attack is the second major
fighters’. attack by the ULFA on migrant workers on non-
Assamese; the first such major attack took place
Another important link in the ULFA’s external
in 2000 when over 100 non-Assamese were killed.
network is the Sri Lankan terror group, LTTE. It was,
again, the ISI which brokered a deal for the ULFA Soon after the recent attacks, the Indian military
with the LTTE: In return for hard cash, the LTTE forces launched an all-out military offensive
would smuggle arms into the dense forests of against the separatist group. In this massive
Myanmar where the ULFA’s cadre would take operation, the Indian Army is being aided by
delivery. The LTTE, it is believed, has trained the state as well as other central forces.
ULFA cadre in making sophisticated explosive In the past, whenever the ULFA suffered serious
devices. setbacks at the hands of the military, its cadre
Bhutan and Operation Flush Out would resort to senseless killings of innocent
In the early 1990s, the ULFA sought shelter in the citizens and cause widespread damage to public
forests on the Indo-Bhutan border and property. Says a strategic affairs expert: “The
established several camps in the forest areas of reasons for such indiscriminate killings are not
southern Bhutan. Under intense pressure from far to seek. In the first place, by indulging in
India, the Royal Bhutan Army, under the direct such indiscriminate killings, the outfits are
command of the kingdom’s monarch, launched making a determined effort to disgrace the state
“Operation Flush Out” in December 2003, which government, which has taken a hard line
is reported to have destroyed all the separatist approach to the problem of insurgency. Secondly,
outfit’s camps and observation posts. plagued by the ideological differences cropping

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up between the middle and lower level cadres of
the outfits with the top brass (which have caused
some of the middle and lower level functionaries
to return to the mainstream by laying down
arms), the outfits have suffered a great setback
and are indulging in more and more
indiscriminate killings in a desperate bid to
prove their existence and to boost the sagging
morale of their remaining cadres. Thirdly, the
top brass, including a section of hardcore cadres
of the outfits, do not want the peace process
initiated by the state government to succeed and
they have perpetrated the gruesome violence to
derail the ongoing peace process. Lastly, with
the public of the state rising in revolt against the
outfits, the frustration and desperation of the
outfits seem to have reached the limit.”
Assam’s chief minister, Mr. Tarun Gogoi lashed
out at the ULFA for threatening Hindi-speaking
people. “The ULFA has no authority to issue
such threats to anybody. These threats and
killings have only shown whose purpose the
ULFA is serving,” Mr. Gogoi said. “They are only
going to serve those forces that are inimical to
the interest of the country. Welfare of Assam is
not on the agenda of the ULFA. They want Assam
to remain backward and full of problems. They
want the people of Assam to remain poor.”
The economy of Assam has been shattered
during the last 26 years and no significant
development work has commenced. Political
parties and civil society organisations are also
pressurizing the ULFA to negotiate with the
Union government.
The People’s Consultative Group (PCG), a body
of eminent citizens nominated by the ULFA, is
negotiating with the Government of India on its
behalf. However, while the negotiations between
the Government of India and the ULFA-nominated
PCG are on, the separatist outfit continues to
unleash violent attacks against innocent civilians,
security personnel, and public property. In this
kind of a situation, trust becomes a casualty.
India’s sovereignty is non-negotiable, and this
has been the government’s consistent stance
in all peace talks with secessionist bodies of
every hue. The ULFA’s demand for a sovereign
state and independence from India has been
categorically rejected by the Government of
India, which has emphasized the need to
resolve this issue within the purview of the
Constitution of India. For any lasting solution,
the GoI should ensure that the ULFA abjures
armed struggle. As the late Ms. Indira Gandhi
famously put it, “You cannot shake hands with
a clenched fist.” ME &C
(The author is Deputy Editor,
MBA Education & Careers.)
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