Insurgency in the North East

Subir Bhaumik

Introduction

The 1962 war with China, and the War with Pakistan in 1965 coincide with the outbreak of several ethnic insurgencies in North-East India. The Mizos, Manipuris and the Tripuris raised insurgent groups, which began to tread the path of the insurgent Nagas.

In the first stages of these movements, the insurgents avoided soft targets. But as the going got difficult, the Nagas and the Mizos resorted to urban terrorism. Often targets in towns came under attack- the Mizo National Front even eliminated three senior Mizoram police officials in 1975 in their headquarters in Aizwal.

The Manipuri People's Liberation Army and the United National Liberation Front are almost wholly urban guerilla groups, though they maintain jungle bases. The United Liberation Front of Asom also started as a rural-based insurgent group, but soon took to urban terrorism. In recent years, it has raised small hunter-killer units in some Assam cities. These units attack soft targets, even military personnel when they are off duty.

Apart from developing a capacity for urban terrorism signified by the growing use of explosives against soft targets and assassinations, all the insurgent groups in the North-East have now become notorious for systematic extortion.

North-East India is a creation of the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Prior to the Partition, there was no concept of a separate North-East region, as every single Province or hill region that now constitutes it was closely linked, for trade, economy, movement and education, to the adjoining areas of the East Bengal or Burma. The Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills maintained close relations with Sylhet, the Mizo hills with the Chittagong Hills Tracts and Tripura with Comilla, Noakhali and Sylhet. Parts of the Mizo Hills, Manipur and the Naga hills had direct links with Burma, where many of their ethnic kinsmen lived. The areas of the former North-East Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) had close contacts with Tibet and Bhutan. In fact, these tribal regions had closer ties with the adjoining areas of Bengal and Burma, than with each other. These areas enjoyed various degrees of independence. All this changed rather suddenly in 1947.

The Partition and the Chinese takeover of Tibet resulted in the creation of new international political boundaries, replacing the soft territorial frontiers of South Asia. Post-colonial India found itself saddled with a difficult problem in the North-East, as an area of 225,000 square kilometers bordering Tibet, Burma, Bangladesh and Bhutan now had only a tenuous connection with the rest of the country by a 21-kilometre wide 'Siliguri corridor' in North Bengal.

During the first Years of independence, three major developments affected India's policy outlook on this newly created frontier region:

1) The Chinese takeover of Tibet, which led to the disappearance of a crucial buffer and brought the Chinese Army right to the borders of India,

2) The outbreak of the Naga insurgency (India's first ethnic revolt), and Pakistan's covert support for the insurgents,

3) The change in East Pakistan's political climate, where the communal outlook of the Partition days slowly gave way to the Bengali language movement and a challenge to Pakistani authority. As a result of these developments, Muslims communalism was replaced by Bengali linguistic assertion.

The Security Scenario

The Chinese presence on India's borders, and the covert Pakistani support to the Naga (and later to the Mizo, Manipuri and Tripura insurgents) came to be perceived as a major security threat, leading to an 'insecurity syndrome' in New Delhi. Later the growing tensions in East Pakistan came to be seen as an advantage. After Pakistani's military crackdown on the Bengalis had started in March 1971, a senior Indian intelligence officer reportedly told his subordinates that cutting Pakistan into two would prevent a Sino-Pakistani axis in the east, and that would help protect India's north-east.[i]

The war with China in 1962 left a strong impression on India's policy planners. It had established the decisive superiority of China's land army, and its capability of sweeping away India's Himalayan defenses. It raised the specter of a Chinese thrust southwards to the Bay of Bengal, and as long as Pakistan had firm control over its eastern wing, the fear of a Sino-Pakistani nexus loomed large in Delhi. The 1962 war with China, and the one in 1965 with Pakistan, coincided with the outbreak of several ethnic insurgencies in North-East India. The Mizos, Manipuris and the Tripuris raised insurgent groups one after another, and began to tread the path of the insurgent Nagas. From 1956 onwards, the Nagas had been receiving weapons and training in East Pakistan. In that year, A.Z. Phizo, who led the Naga insurgency, had fled to Dhaka, from where he was flown to London On a false passport provided by the Pakistani authorities.[ii] From 1956 to 1966, Pakistan trained at least eight batches of Naga insurgents (1700 people in all), and armed them.[iii] In the late sixties, the Pakistanis also started training and arming the Mizo National Front, Manipur and Tripura insurgents. And in 1966, the insurgent Nagas started going to China for advanced training in guerilla warfare.

The spread of the prairie fires in North-East India, and the growing involvement of China and Pakistan in promoting these insurgencies, provoked alarm in New Delhi. Along with the normal measures to counter the insurgencies by greater deployment of army and paramilitary forces, in an attempt to seek a political solution to the problems, Delhi tried to initiate dialogues with the insurgent groups, particularly the Nagas. At one stage, India was even willing to consider a protectorate status for Nagaland[iv] but once the Bengali upsurge started in East Pakistan in early 1971, the Indian state saw a great opportunity in it to solve its northeastern problem. Though initially unsure of whether intervention was the right course of action, it soon dawned on Indian policy planners that the division of Pakistan was essential for a long-standing solution of India's security concerns in the North-East. The end of Pakistani control of its eastern wing, and the emergence of a friendly Bangladesh were seen as crucial to break the Sino-Pakistani nexus to destabilize North-East India[v]. From an Achilles Heel, India's North-East was now becoming a useful launch-pad for offensive operations against a hostile neighbor.

With the emergence of Bangladesh, the security scenario in the North-East began to undergo a sea change. Within four years of this, Sikkim was merged with India in 1975 in controversial circumstances. In that year, the Shillong Accord was signed with a faction of Naga insurgents. Phizo did not accept the accord, and the breakaway group of the Naga national Council soon resumed its armed activities. This group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), was mostly made up of Chinese-trained guerrillas. In 1976, the Mizo National Front also signed an agreement with the Indian government at Calcutta. Though it took another 10 years to give final shape to the settlement, the sting of the Mizo insurgency began to wane in the late seventies. The defeat of the hardliners in the factional battle within the Chinese Communist Party-the Gang of Four who had supported the Cultural Revolution and were believed to be responsible for its excesses-also marked the gradual end of the aggressive Chinese patronage to guerrilla groups from North-East India and Burma. By 1982, the Chinese had discontinued the export of revolution, and stopped helping the insurgent groups from North-East India.[vi]

The security scenario in North-East India, which had looked rather bleak from New Delhi's point of view in the late sixties, began to look better in the seventies. The creation of Bangladesh, the change in Chinese policy, the partial settlements of the Naga and Mizo problems, and the growing effectiveness of India's counter-insurgency operations, also contributed to Delhi's increased control over the situation in the North-East. But the feeling of relief in Delhi was short-lived. By the late seventies, India had lost the advantage gained in 1971-the friendly government of Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman had been replaced by that of generals, who were less than warm to India. In fact, Indira Gandhi's instant reaction to the Sheikh's assassination was to start aiding the Shanti Bahini guerrillas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts[vii]. Almost immediately, Bangladesh's new regime led by Lieutenant General Zia-ur-Rehman started aiding the insurgents from North-East India. The guerrilla movements, which had been simmering (but dormant for a while), began to gain momentum once again. They also multiplied in number, and gained in intensity.

Changing Indian Policies

In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi assumed power as Prime minister of India. He made an immediate impact by reorienting the national policy towards the region. In next three years, his government signed a string of accords with separatist groups of North-East India. The accords brought an end to the fierce anti-foreigner agitation in Assam, the insurrections in Mizoram and Tripura, and the agitation for a separate state of Gorkhaland in North Bengal. Efforts were also to open negotiations with the NSCN. Rajiv Gandhi, the peacemaker, seemed to have arrived, and the North-East, more than any other region appeared to get the benefit of his attention. The thrust of Indian policy in the region apparently swung away from military action, to focus on political settlement, but his trend lasted only for a while.

In the late eighties, the central intelligence was accused of backing the Bodo insurgency in Assam as a way of embarrassing the state government. Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta alleged that the Central agencies had unleashed Operation Zoom-Zoom to bring down his government, and he said that the operation centered on the use of the Bodo insurgents to achieve the purpose.[viii]

The All-Bodo Students Union, and its allied groups led by Upendranth Brahma, intensified the agitation for a separate Bodo state on the northern banks of the Brahmaputra River after the 20th convention of the All-Bodo Students Union held in December 1987. The agitation was marked by thee regular use of explosives on public transport, road and rail bridges. It was alleged that the Bodo leaders were provided monetary assistance by the central agencies, and regular stayed in safe houses of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau. It is alleged that senior officers of the bureau wrote even their press notes that mostly originated in Shillong.[ix] Similar allegations were leveled by west Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu against the central agencies-he accused them for helping the Gorkhaland agitation.[x]

While the Gorkhaland agitation was brought to an end by the accord in 1988, the Bodo agitation continued to fester until 1993, when an accord was signed with the Bodos on New Delhi's initiative. However the accord could not be implemented, as a result of which Bodo insurgent groups are still active in the western and central parts of Assam.

For a government which had initially adopted a sound strategy of resorting to settlements that were intended to bring to an end long-standing insurgencies and /or agitations, this was a strange departure which unsettled a strategically important area. If the Gorkha-populated areas sit on the western flank of the Siliguri corridor that links the North-East tenuously with the rest of the country, the Bodo-dominated areas are located on the eastern flank of the same corridor. No government with any sensible strategy would have allowed the areas around this corridor to be disturbed, let alone back forces that could unleash substantial disruption.

Rajiv Gandhi's fall from power and the coming to power of Viswanath Pratap Singh, and later Chandrashekhar, marked the return of the military option in the North-East. The Chandrashekhar government gave the green signal for the first major counter-insurgency operation in Assam, Operation Bajrang. It was launched against the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which had become a potent force in the late eighties, and had unleashed a campaign of terror and extortion to build up its insurgent forces. This was the time when the NSCN (now split into two constantly warring rival factions), started developing satellite groups elsewhere in the North-East by conscious patronage. In Tripura, new insurgent groups like the All-Tripura Tiger Force and the National Liberation front of Tripura emerged. The insurgency in the Imphal valley now manifested itself through several groups, but the activities of the People's Liberation Army remained as a confusing as ever.

The threat of an insurgent consolidation also emerged in the security scenario of North-East India, as the Naga insurgent groups tried to develop their own underground alliances. While the Khaplang group of the NSCN brought together ULFA and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur into the rather short-lived Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front, the Isaac Muivah group of the NSCN roped in the Bodo Security Force (now the National Democratic Front of Bodoland), the National Liberation Front of Tripura, and some smaller tribal insurgent groups into an informal alliance.

Threats in the Nineties

In the 1990s, three other developments in and around the North-East came to be seen as security threats by Indian defence planners:

(a)   The growing influence of China in Myanmar;

(b)   The resurgence of insurgent movements in North-East India (with support from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence or (ISI), and the opening of a new sea route for arms smuggling from Southeast Asia's black-markets to North-East India; and

(c)   The renewal of the use of Bangladesh territory by insurgents, with the support of certain anti-Indian elements in that country.

The Chinese have emerged as the most important suppliers of military hardware to Myanmar's military regime. China's arms exports to Myanmar since 1990 run into over two billion US dollars. The Chinese have also reportedly secured radar, refit and refuel (three R's) facilities at three Myanmarese ports-Haingyi, the Coco Islands, and Mergui. The naval unit of the pro-Indian insurgent group, the National Unity Party of Arakan, discovered Chinese survey activity around the island of Kyaw Pyu off the Arakan coast, suggesting that the Chinese might be looking for another naval base in the Bay of Bengal. The Chinese threat to Indian security, so long seen as a land based one, now had a naval dimension to it[xi]. Some argue that China's quest to develop a blue water Navy will mean that Calcutta, Madras and Visakhapatnam (Vizag) will be directly threatened by Chinese missiles in the near future[xii]. In addition to the North-East, where the Chinese land threat remains, New Delhi seems to be worried about the security of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the country's eastern coastal regions.

In the 1990s, ULFA, NSCN and other insurgent groups of the North-East developed contacts with the ISI of Pakistan. Confessional statements so some surrendered guerrillas, quoted in certain studies, indicate that the ISI wanted to use the insurgent forces to open a second front of subversion in the North-East, in addition to the one in Kashmir.[xiii]

What is more significant is the emergence of a new weapons procurement source frequently used by the insurgent groups. It has now become evident that groups like ULFA, NSCN or PLA depend for much of their weapons supply on the black-markets of Thailand, were arms sold by the largely marginalized Khmer Rouge are available cheaply and easily[xiv]. Whether there is ISI funding for such procurement, or the insurgents pay for them their own funds raised through extortion and collection, is not yet clear.

After purchase, these weapons are loaded on ships-which have false papers-manned by Thai and Myanmarese nationals, and brought to the coastal areas of Bangladesh and Burma. Wyakaung beach, that lies between Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh and Myanmar's Arakan province has been the favorite landing site for these weapons[xv].

In April-May 1995, a column of 200 ULFA, PLA and NSCN insurgents, carrying weapons from Wyakaung, was intercepted by 57 Mountain Division after it had entered India's state of Mizoram from Bangladesh. More than 40 insurgents were killed, and a large number of weapons and insurgents were captured during the military operation that was christened Operation Golden Duck. In February 1996, the Bangladesh Navy intercepted a ship full of weapons meant for North-East Indian insurgents, and in 1997 the Thai Navy intercepted a similar cargo. Unconfirmed reports suggest that another ship carrying weapons blew up mysteriously off the Gulf of Martian in November 1996. Insurgent leaders who were to receive the weapons allege that the Indian intelligence agency RAW was behind the explosion. North-East India's proximity to the low-intensity battle zones of Southeast Asia makes it easy for insurgents to procure weapons from that region.

It has now been established that Bangladesh's former military rulers (and even the BNP government) provided the insurgent front North-East India shelter and material support. Most insurgent leaders of North-East India, who have since been arrested, carried Bangladeshi passports. In 1992, the Bangladesh Rifles did hand over three top Manipuri insurgents leaders to the Indian Border Security force, but that was seen more as a gesture on the eve of erstwhile Prime Minster Begum Khaleda Zia's visit to Delhi. With the coming to power to the Awami League government in Bangladesh, Dhaka had cracked down on Indian insurgents based in that country-recently the Bangladesh police arrested Golap Barua alias Anup Chetia, the general secretary of ULFA. He has been prosecuted for offences in that country. While the Awami League government is not expected to allow ISI operatives to operate freely from its territory, and has become down heavily on Indian insurgents, it is now evident that these insurgents have the support of some opposition parties, notably the BNP, whose leaders have described ULFA and NSCN as freedom fighters trying to liberate their motherlands from Indian occupation[xvi].

The Indian government has intensified operations against the insurgents in the North-East. The Assam government has even discovered the sources of financial support of some insurgent groups. Some top executives of business houses have been arrested, interrogated and tried. The outlook for the North-East from India's security point of view is mixed. While some ominous portents like the growing incidence of ethnic cleansing -like the frequent clashes between the Nagas and the Kukis, or the Bodo attacks on non-Bodos have seem to be suffering from battle fatigue, and many insurgent groups are willing to open negotiations with Delhi. The NSCN (Issac-Muivah) has already started negotiations with the Government of India.

Changing Patterns Of Insurgency

Over the 40 years insurgency first started in the Naga Hills, the character of insurgent warfare in North-East India has changed. The Nagas and the Mizo were hill insurgents, who established controlled zones-if not liberated areas in the Maoist mould-from where they launched regular attacks against security forces and ran a parallel administration. In the first stages of two movements, the insurgents avoided attacking soft targets. With the passage of time however both the Nagas and the Mizos resorted to urban terrorism. The Manipuri PLA and UNLF groups and the ULFA of Assam also followed in suit. These groups have special units that attack soft targets in cities and even hit military officers when they are out of uniform.  

Apart from developing a capacity for urban terrorism signified by the growing use of explosives against soft targets and assassinations, all the insurgent groups in the North-East have now become notorious for systematic extortion. Until the mid-seventies, the insurgent Nagas and Mizos raised tax from every family in the state (including outsiders serving in the state government). This was done to create a stable working fund to finance separatist campaigns, as also to assert their authority as a parallel administration. Weapons and training initially came gratis from Pakistan and patronage stopped in the late seventies, the insurgents turned to large-scale fund-raising through systematic extortion. ULFA military wing chief Paresh Barua admitted in an interview with the BBC that the group's war fund ran into hundreds of corers of rupees[xvii]. He also stated that some big companies like the Tatas had provided 'war material' to the insurgent group under pressure.

Fund-raising, unless controlled centrally, can damage the moral fabric and the command structure of insurgent group seriously. The insurgent groups in Tripura have turned extortion into an industry. Since 1994, they have kidnapped, 1,550 people and extracted huge ransoms. These groups hardly attack security forces or other targets. They have organized small actions groups of three to four armed insurgents who abduct targeted individuals. In fact, hostages who have been kidnapped say that the insurgents' camps are ringed with hostages' quarters, which are being used as shields against possible attacks by security forces.  The government of Tripura has failed to attack the financial pipeline of theses insurgent groups: it has followed middlemen negotiations ransoms to operate freely, despite suggestions that, instead of blaming the center for not sending adequate central forces to the state, the state government should use its police forces to crack down on the middlemen. That would dry up the insurgents' coffers and weaken their movements.

Most insurgent organizations, with the exception of ULFA and the Manipuri groups, now attack ethnic groups perceived as enemies. Systematically ethnic cleansing a la Bosnia has become a norm in North-East India. The insurgent groups in Tripura regularly attack villages of Bengali settlers, the Naga insurgents attack the Kukis and vice versa, and the Bodo insurgents attack the non-Bodo settlements. Creating compact population zones to back demands for ethnic homelands have become part and parcel of the armed separatist movements in North-East India.

Indian security concerns in the North-East can be best addressed by a mix of military action and political negotiations with the insurgent organizations, along with constant monitoring of Chinese military and diplomatic activities in countries bordering North-East India, by plugging the sources of weapons and insurgents' funds, and by developing a strong legitimate economy in the region, sustained by large-scale Indian and foreign investment, which will prevent the growth of a smuggling-oriented economy that can be easily subverted by drug lords and their cohorts.

References