SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 29, February 3, 2003

NEPAL

Uncertain Truce
Guest Writer: Yubaraj Ghimire in Kathmandu
Editor, Kantipur

It has been a time of the most extraordinary developments in Nepal. First, the cold blooded murder of Nepal's Armed Police Force (APF) Chief Krishna Mohan Shrestha was unlike any other incident of violence that this Himalayan kingdom has witnessed during the Maoist insurgency that has plagued it for the past seven years. The APF was raised two years ago to combat the 'Maoist terrorists', much against the rebels' protests, as the Government felt that the civil police was not adequately trained to counter the guerrillas. Shrestha (56) was silenced with a burst of bullets in his face, along with his wife Nudup Shrestha, a teacher in the prestigious Lincoln School. His bodyguard, Surya Regmi, also died in the attack during Shrestha's routine morning walk on January 26, 2003. The message that raced across the country was that the Maoists were now going to target individuals occupying high positions in the capital, and that the Maoists had clearly abandoned the option for a dialogue.

In an apparently dramatic reversal, however, the killing of one of the most respected men in uniform was followed by an announcement by the Government and the Maoists on Wednesday, January 29, that a cease-fire would be observed to facilitate the commencement of a peace process. The government readily agreed to remove Maoists off the list of terrorist organizations, and to erase reward fixed on heads of certain Maoist leaders. The government would also notify the international community, including INTERPOL, that the red-corner notices issued against some Maoist leaders should be annulled.

Just before the ceasefire announcement, Norway had offered to mediate in the conflict if both sides sought its role, at the same time threatening a drastic cut in assistance if the prevailing violence endangered the country's fledgling democracy. The sudden truce and possible dialogue, however, remain essentially a bilateral domestic effort at present.

The sudden ceasefire, which generated astonishment, disbelief and euphoria all at once, was engineered by Narayan Singh Pun, Minister for Physical Planning in the present Government. A retired colonel of the Nepal Army and a pilot, Pun also runs a private airline service. He belongs to the same ethnic background as the most admired and feared guerrilla commander, Ram Bahadur Thapa alias Badal, as well as most guerrillas from Maoist ruled pockets of mid-west Nepal. His army background puts him in the category whose loyalty to the king and the security forces cannot be suspect. "I had series of deliberations with Maoist supremo Prachanda and with Badal," Pun disclosed soon after the two sides announced the cease-fire, "We all agreed that sovereignty and nationalism have to be saved at any cost, and that peace was the best instrument to achieve this."

A measure of skepticism, however, still prevails. The past experience with cease-fires and dialogues has not been very encouraging. Even before Sher Bahadur Deuba took the oath of office following his election to the post of Prime Minister way back in July 2001, the Maoists agreed to his proposal for a cease-fire and a peace initiative "in deference to the people's will". This was followed by three rounds of talks between the two sides in which neither sides conceded anything. The Maoists walked out of the negotiating table in November and struck terror when its armed guerrillas successfully raided a military barracks in Dang (western Nepal), killing more than a dozen Army personnel and officers and capturing the armoury of sophisticated arms and ammunitions in what was, till that time, the first such attack on an Army establishment. The state retaliated swiftly, bringing the country under a state of emergency that lasted nearly nine months, and deployed joint units of the Army, the APF and the police to combat Maoists. The Maoists were also branded terrorists thereafter and the 9/11 incidents in the US brought them and their possible terrorist links under microscopic observation by the US and its allies in the 'Global War against Terror'. The international community promised more aid and military support (in terms of hardware, logistics and training) to the Government of Nepal in its fight against 'terrorism'. India, the US and Belgium have already supplied weapons to the security forces. The seven year long conflict, which witnessed the most intense and mindless killings by the warring sides, has so far claimed over 7,500 lives. The Maoists have forced the closure of nearly three thousand schools all over the country through 'extortion terror' in some places, and by killing or threatening teachers in others. Reports of large-scale recruitment of children have been denied by the top Maoist leadership, but there is hard evidence corroborated by the victims of such 'abduction and forced recruitment'. The post-Emergency phase also witnessed the gratuitous destruction of the country's physical infrastructures, including drinking water projects, for which the Maoists have now expressed remorse and pledged not to repeat such acts.

Launched in 1996 February, the Maoist movement initially envisaged a 'republic of Nepal'. But Maoists now appear keen on an elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution, which could allow the constitutional monarchy and an all party government to remain in place if the negotiation results in luring the Maoists into the fold of main-stream politics. At this stage, however, such an outcome remains quite doubtful.

Another widespread apprehension is whether the Maoists are going to use the present truce to rebuild their organisational and communication networks which have been substantially destroyed during the Emergency, to strike again once they have recovered.

Most Maoist leaders fled the country during the Emergency, most likely across the open border with India. The menace of the guerillas within the country, however, did not diminish. They ravaged half a dozen District Headquarters, moving gradually closer to the capital. IGP Shrestha's assassination last week was proof and a message that the capital was no longer safe from terror-strikes.

The truth is, what Maoists have been able to do has largely been made possible by the confusion among the country's political parties and their growing confrontation with the King. On October 4, 2002, King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his government, on grounds of 'incompetence' when Deuba sought to defer Elections to the House of Representatives a year beyond the scheduled date in November 2002. Deuba had argued that elections were not possible in view of the widespread Maoist terror and the violence unleashed by them in different parts of the country. Deuba had, in fact, been advised by all political parties to seek postponement of the Elections, as the democratic formations in the country were not in a position to field candidates and to mount an election campaign for fear that the Maoists would target them. The Maoists, in short, held the key even to the parliamentary elections.

The King nominated Lokendra Bahadur Chand as the Prime Minister a week after Deuba's dismissal, tasking him with the creation of a 'conducive atmosphere for elections at the earliest'. A weak and timid Chand, however, may not have been the right person for this daunting assignment. Minister Narayan Singh Pun appears to have 'saved his reputation', though it is too early to say that the Prime Minister's chair is safe.

Political parties who have been crying themselves hoarse and calling for the rectification of the 'unconstitutional move' of October 4, 2002, have not yet recognised the legitimacy of the Chand government. A negotiation with the Maoists, which keeps other political forces out of the scene would, consequently, just be a 'deal between the state's Army and the rebel forces', and the political parties fear that the consequences of such a deal would be disastrous for democracy. Even Pun concurs: "All of us have to be party to this national task."

Whether such a participatory approach will be encouraged by the King, who is now at the actual helm of affairs, will largely decide whether the present ceasefire and the anticipated peace process can result in a durable peace.

INDIA

Tripura: A Bloody Prelude to Elections
Guest Writer: Sekhar Datta in Agartala
Principal Correspondent, TheTelegraph

The massacre of eleven non-tribal civilians in the night preceding India's 54th Republic day celebrations revived memories of the bloody run-up to the 1988 assembly election in the north eastern State of Tripura. Once again, the prelude to the assembly elections slated for February 26 promises to be a violent, blood-soaked affair, in keeping what has become the 'tradition' in Tripura over the past two decades.

Pre-election insurgent violence had first rocked the state in December 1982, weeks before the Assembly Elections of January 5, 1983. That was the heyday of the erstwhile Tribal National Volunteer (TNV) militants led by Bijay Kumar Hrangkhawal, the key man behind the tribal insurgency in Tripura and a prime accused in the ethnic carnage of June 1980. Shortly after the riots, Hrangkhawal bought peace with the Left Front Government through the then Chief Minister, Nripen Chakraborty, and was living a happy family life at his residence at Kamalacherra in Dhalai district, after receiving generous government bounties. However, his erstwhile followers kidnapped Hrangkahwal and his family in August 1982, forcing him to lead the renewed insurgency in Tripura. The killer squads of the TNV had chosen the eve of the 1983 Assembly polls to pull off a series of ambushes on the security forces, including one on the escort vehicle of legendary tribal leader and former chief minister Dasharath Deb of the Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M), and a succession of attacks on civilians as well. 'Greater things' were, however, to follow.

Before the 1988 Assembly Elections, the erstwhile TNV insurgents got in touch with the Congress party led Central Government headed by prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, through the then Mizoram chief minister Lalthanhawala, for a settlement of the problem through negotiations. In reply to the TNV's letter delivered by Lalthanhawala, the then Union Home Minister, Buta Singh, had categorically said that unless a Congress-led government was installed in Tripura, the Centre would not take any initiative on peace talks. An implicit arrangement appears to have been reached at this stage, and was followed by an unprecedented bloodbath, as groups of TNV insurgents massacred a record 102 non-tribals in a series of attacks all over the State during the week preceding the Election of February 2. The State had also come under the Disturbed Areas Act on January 29, three days ahead of the polls, which also witnessed a majority (non-tribal) backlash, and lead to the installation of a Congress - Tripura Upjati Juba Samiti (TUJS) coalition government by a wafer-thin majority of 31-29 in the sixty-member Assembly. A few months before the tripartite Peace Accord was signed in Delhi on August 12, 1988, ending the TNV's insurgency, the entire correspondence between the TNV and the Central Government was published in an Aizawl-based daily newspaper in Mizoram. The Congress Government, which still held sway over Delhi, had to swallow a bitter pill even as the CPI (M)'s central leadership launched an orchestrated tirade over the 'unholy TNV-Congress nexus'.

For its part, the CPI (M) or, more correctly, the Left Front retaliated in kind by floating the All Tripura Tribal Force (ATTF) in May 1990, ostensibly in order to protect the tribal-compact areas under the Autonomous District Council (ADC) from encroachment by non-tribals under the sponsorship of the ruling Congress-TUJS combine, as well as to prevent mass rigging in the Elections. After coming to power in February 1988, the Congress-TUJS resorted to organised rigging to capture an Assembly seat in a by-election in April that year, both the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) seats in the State in the Elections of December 1989. The ruling combine also dissolved, by administrative order, all the elected panchayats (village councils) and municipalities, and was preparing to rig the election to the Autonomous District Council (ADC), which held the key to political supremacy in tribal areas, scheduled for July 1990. This, apparently, was why the CPI (M) leadership decided to float its own militant front.

Thus formed, the ATTF selectively targeted Congress-TUJS leaders and workers throughout the coalition Government's rule till March 1993, and through the run-up to the Assembly Elections of April 3, 1993, after a brief spell of President's rule. The ATTF surrendered en masse on September 6 that year, within five months of the installation of the fourth Left Front government in the State, headed by Dasharath Deb. A nucleus of the group led by Ranjit Debbarma, however, remained underground and continues to operate under the marginally changed banner of All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF).

The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), initially comprising a group of surrendered commanders of the TNV, had been launched in April 1989, and continues to operate even now with the vague demand for a 'free holy land of Tripura'. During the run-up to the assembly elections held on February 16, 1998, the ATTF had pulled off a series of killings, particularly in the CPI-M dominated Khowai subdivison, and subsequently, in the Lok Sabha polls of October 1999, both the ATTF and the NLFT carried out a series of murderous operations against civilians and security forces. It is now clear from all indications that these militant groups - both banned since 1997 - particularly the NLFT, will play a key role in the forthcoming Election.

The ATTF, in its new incarnation, continues to pay lip service to its sole political demand: deportation of all non-tribals settled in Tripura after October 15, 1949, when the State merged with the Indian Union. The group has issued a call for the boycott of the impending polls. On the other hand, NLFT rebels have been actively campaigning for a Congress - Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) victory. (The INPT is headed by former TNV leader, Bijay Kumar Hrangkhawal). In the rural interior, gun-toting NLFT militants hold small meetings to intimidate voters into supporting INPT candidates. According to CPI-M State secretariat member Gautam Das, they have also threatened at least one CPI-M candidate, Nakshatra Jamatya, in the Ampi constituency of south Tripura, with dire consequences unless he withdrew from the polls. Das asserted that, in parts of Ampi, Kanchanpur, Chhawmanu, Takarjala and Raima Valley constituencies spread over all four districts of the State, CPI-M candidates were finding it impossible to visit and approach voters as a result of NLFT intimidation. The NLFT's refrain in its public meetings in the villages is that the security forces deployed for the Elections would not stay for long, and those who did not vote for the INPT would be liquidated after the forces go back. On the other hand, though the Left Front insists that there will be 'no repetition of 1988' and of the ADC polls of 2000, the pre-poll scenario clearly suggests possibilities of large-scale violence.

During the ADC polls of 2000, NLFT rebels had actively campaigned for candidates of the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT, now part of the INPT), intimidating voters and abducting several CPI-M candidates and their relatives. As a result, the IPFT snatched a neat majority in the 28 member Autonomous District Council (ADC). Exactly what happened during the ADC polls can best be seen in the fact that the erstwhile TUJS, an established tribal-based regional party since June 1967, was forced to opt out of the contest because of threats and intimidation from the NLFT and its overground agents. Current evidence suggests that the militant group is trying to re-enact the drama that preceded the ADC polls, using the same tactics.

Having already lost more than two hundred party leaders and workers to the NLFT's bullets over the past few years, the CPI-M led Left Front has tried to strengthen security in the hilly interior areas by setting up more than a hundred new camps manned by the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) to prevent movement of NLFT guerrillas. Whether this will be sufficient to cope with the emerging situation remains to be seen, as the NLFT is also desperate for a Congress-INPT victory, which it views as a passport to an honourable settlement of the insurgency through negotiations. The ongoing peace-talks between the government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim - Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) leaders has made their condition the more desperate, since the NLFT has always looked towards the NSCN, not only for inspiration and moral support, but for material backing in the form of arms and ammunition as well. Once the NSCN reaches a settlement with the Government, groups like the NLFT will be in dire straits.

Over the past years, both the ATTF and the NLFT have spurned repeated appeals made by Chief Minister Manik Sarkar to enter into negotiations and 'join the mainstream'. Shortly after the ADC polls of year 2000, the NLFT also rejected a proposal for surrender to the Assam Rifles Colonel A.K. Sachdeb. Informed sources indicate that the NLFT is banking heavily on a Congress-INPT victory for an honourable way out of their jungle life. The only way this can be secured is is by engineering a total polarisation on ethnic lines and by strong-arm tactics in the twenty tribal reserve assembly constituencies.

As for the ATTF - the group thought to be soft on the Left Front - its cadres are likely to indulge in violence in their areas of hegemony in the Sadar (North) and parts of Khowai subdivision to enforce their call for a boycott of the Elections. Official sources say the ATTF was 'not soft on the Left Front or any other front, but they will never want to do anything that will help their arch rivals, the NLFT.' The dissident NLFT group led by Nayanbasi Jamatya also has pockets of control in parts of Takarjala, Golaghati and Charilam constituencies under Bishalgarh subdivision, and they are also likely engage in violence during the run-up to the polls. The Nayanbasi group of the NLFT is yet to clarify its stand vis-à-vis the Elections, but they are also likely to issue a boycott call with an expected impact on some Assembly constituencies in west Tripura in the form of violence and disruption of electoral processes.

BANGLADESH	INDIA

Mounting Tensions over Illegal Migrants and Terror Bases
Sanjay K. Jha
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Tensions between India and Bangladesh have mounted over attempts by India's Border Security Force (BSF) to deport a number of Bangladeshis who have been staying illegally in India. The Bangladesh government maintains that the alleged illegal migrants are Indian citizens, and has consistently maintained that 'there are no Bangladeshis in India'. Dakha now insists that India is just trying to throw out Bengali-speaking Muslims from their country by branding them Bangladeshi migrants. At a weekly press briefing in Dhaka on January 30, Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shamsher Mobin Choudhary said that, since January 22, 2003, the BSF has made 30 'push-in attempts' through several border points into Bangladeshi territory. The Bangladesh government also issued an aide memoire regarding repeated 'push-in attempts' to the Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka.

The Indian government, on the other hand, has rejected as 'baseless and absurd' the allegation that India was trying to push in Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims into Bangladesh. Speaking to media persons in Delhi on February 1, 2003, the Director General of the BSF, Ajai Raj Sharma, rejected the charges and asserted that it was 'established practice' that, whenever police took action against them, the migrants were taken to the borders, and the BSF 'handed them over' to Bangladesh. The Indian Government has asked Bangladesh to recognize the gravity of the problem of illegal immigration and to cooperate in tackling the issue. On January 30, 2003, the Indian Government summoned Bangladesh's Acting Deputy High Commissioner to New Delhi, Shahadat Hussain, and conveyed to him Indian concerns over "illegal immigration of Bangladeshi nationals into India".

Amidst these allegations and counter allegations, tension continues to mount at several border points, particularly in the State of West Bengal. On January 31, 2003, for instance, the BSF intercepted 213 Bangladeshis forcibly pushed in by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) into India at Satgachi outpost in West Bengal's Coochbehar district. Since then these Bangladeshis are squatting on the zero line at the Indian side, exposed to rain and the exceptional chill of this year's winter. A BSF spokesperson at Kolkata disclosed on February 1, 2003, that the BDR had conspired to infiltrate Bangladeshi nationals into India, and that such movements had been occurring along both the southern and northern frontiers over the preceding 10 days.

The current crisis is the manifestation of fundamental differences between the two countries over critical issues such as illegal migration and the use of Bangladeshi territory for terrorist and subversive activities against India. In the recent past, there has been a growing realization within the Indian establishment that the threat posed by illegal migration and terrorist and extremist Islamist groups operating from or within Bangladesh had serious security implications for India. At the end of the two-day meeting of the India-Bangladesh Joint Working Group in Dhaka on January 23, 2003, India had conveyed its concerns over the presence in Bangladesh of training camps of terrorist groups operating in India's Northeast (and had earlier identified 99 such camps and their location). India also asked Bangladesh to hand over 88 prominent insurgent leaders currently living in Bangladesh. Earlier on January 7, 2003, India's Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, during a conference of Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police in Delhi, observed that there were approximately 15 million Bangladeshis staying illegally in India, and that they posed a serious threat to the country's internal security. It was during this meeting that it was decided that the identification and deportation of foreigners staying in India illegally was to be assigned the highest priority. To facilitate the process, the meeting agreed that the Government would launch the Multi-purpose Identity Cards scheme as a pilot project in 13 States from April 1, 2003.

India's porous 4,095-kilometre border with Bangladesh is prone to large-scale illegal immigration, smuggling, drug trafficking, gun running and cross-filtration by terrorists. Unofficial estimates put the number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants even higher than the official figure, and there is clear evidence of the demographic destabilization of a large swathe of territory all along the Indo-Bangladesh border. One estimate assesses the illegal influx at about 300,000 persons per year. Demographic transformations have been brought about in the border belts of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya as a result of largescale migration, and according to one estimate, illegal immigrants are in a position to influence the electoral outcome in 25 Parliamentary and 125 Assembly constituencies in the country. Apart from illegal immigration, the porous India-Bangladesh border also fuels smuggling, the drug trade and proliferation of small arms. Available evidence suggests a collusive network between smugglers, a section of illegal migrants and terrorist groups operating in India's Northeast. However, the most serious threat to India's security is the increasing use of the Indo-Bangladesh border by Pakistan's external intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), for its larger design to destabilize India through a range of subversive movements.

The Indian Government has, on a number of occasions, stated that the ISI makes direct use of Bangladeshi territory to infiltrate its agents and saboteurs across the border into India, and that it is assisted in this task by the Directorate General of Field Intelligence (DGFI) and other state agencies of Bangladesh. Speaking in the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament), on November 27, 2002, India's External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, had explicitly stated that the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka had become the nerve center of ISI activities in promoting terrorism and insurgency in India. He also asserted that "Some Al Qaeda elements have taken shelter in Bangladesh… the foreign media has… reported several such instances, our own sources have also confirmed many of these reports."

A number of transnational Islamist terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda, are now known to have established a presence in Bangladesh in alliance with various militant fundamentalist organisations there. The Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-BD) was created with direct aid from Osama bin Laden in 1992. The group has linkages with Pakistan-based terrorist groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). It also maintains very close links with the ISI. Reports also suggest that the ISI, in collaboration with the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and extremist Islamist groups, has networked and coordinates activities with insurgent groups in India's Northeast and Islamist extremist elements in Bangladesh. India's list of 99 terrorist training camps in Bangladesh includes the facilities provided to groups such as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).

The current Bangladesh National Party (BNP) government, led by Begum Khaleda Zia has been insisting that her government would not allow anti-India activities from its soil. However, the internal political situation in the country provides a favourable context for Islamist groups to operate. Since the elections of October 2001, and the installation of the new right wing regime, backed by the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), Islamist extremist mobilisation has also risen dramatically. The militant and pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami has 17 elected members in the Bangladesh Parliament and two Ministers in the new Government. The JeI also receives support from the ISI, which includes funding arms flows, and technical and training support. The current regime in Bangladesh, moreover, is regarded as being much 'closer' to Pakistan than its predecessor, and the linkages between the Bangladesh Army and intelligence apparatus, on the one hand, and their Pakistani counterparts, on the other, are known to be strong, and growing stronger.

It is, consequently, not surprising that Bangladesh refuses to acknowledge the presence of very large numbers of its citizens staying illegally in India, or to accept the covert subversive activities directed against India from Bangladeshi soil. In the past, successive Indian governments have been slow to act decisively on these issues due to the electoral compulsions of political parties at the helm of affairs at the Centre and in the affected States. Although it would be premature to say that the current engagement with Bangladesh is part of a comprehensive strategy to deal with the issue of illegal migration and use of Bangladeshi territory for anti-India activities, the preliminary steps in this direction appear now to have been taken. Policy reversal, however, can never entirely be ruled out in the habitual vacillation of the Indian political leadership, and an unconfirmed media report, citing intelligence sources, indicated on February 1 that a truckload of illegal migrants, who were being transported to West Bengal for deportation to Bangladesh, were already on their way back to Delhi.