SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 2, No. 50, June 28, 2004

 

INDIA

Assam: Spreading Terror From the 'Kashmir Camp'?
Wasbir Hussain
Associate Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi; Consulting Editor, The Sentinel, Guwahati

Sunan Gogoi alias Mrityunjoy Maladharia's mission did not succeed. This hardcore militant belonging to the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom's (ULFA) crack Myanmar-based '28th Battalion' had just arrived last fortnight in Tinsukia district, in Northeast India's Assam state, when he fell into the police dragnet. Sunan has since disclosed to police and intelligence officials interrogating him that ULFA's '28th Battalion', also known as the 'Kashmir Camp,' was alive and kicking with its 150-member specially-trained hit-squad.

This information suggests that ULFA had, in fact, never disbanded or 'de-grouped', in the first place in most locations where its cadres have been based, and it was, consequently, wrong for the security forces or analysts to link the recent spurt in violence by the rebel outfit as signs of its 'regrouping'. After the Bhutanese military assault on the ULFA and other Northeast Indian rebels based in the Himalayan kingdom, it was generally thought that the militants had lost their staging areas and had ceased to act as a cohesive force thereafter. But, the 'Kashmir Camp', it appears, filled the void after the ULFA rebels were expelled from Bhutan, with reports stating that several of the rebels had landed up in Myanmar, and joined the Myanmar-based unit after being thrown out by the Bhutanese military.

Led by dreaded ULFA leader Jibon Moran, the 'Kashmir Camp' is located in part at the Council Headquarters of the Naga guerrilla group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland - Khaplang faction (NSCN-K), and an advance camp closer to Assam, based at what the rebels call '04'. This advance camp has a bomb squad attached to it. Top intelligence officials disclose that the '28th Battalion' operates with an estimated 90 AK series assault rifles, universal machine guns and some rocket propelled grenades and two inch mortars. Moran, the officials said, himself operates out of the NSCN-K 'Council Headquarters' with 25 of his carefully chosen rebel cadres.

During the past 19 days, beginning June 9, 2004, ULFA rebels have struck five times in Assam - the group has been seeking 'liberation' of the State since its formation on April 7, 1979 - killing seven people, all civilians, and injuring at least 52 others. Three of these five attacks were carried out in the eastern tea growing district of Tinsukia, 550 kilometres from Guwahati, the State capital, and bordering the adjoining State of Arunachal Pradesh, which in turn has a heavily wooded and porous border with Myanmar. The three attacks in the Tinsukia district, the area in Assam closest to the 'Kashmir Camp', include:
· June 9: A Chinese-made grenade was used to attack movie goers inside the Paradise Cinema, in downtown Tinsukia, just as the Hindi film Aan had begun around 1.30 PM. A total of 23 people, all seated on the ground floor of the theatre, were injured.
· June 19: An improvised explosive device went off at a public toilet at the crowded Chamber Road, in the heart of Tinsukia town, injuring 13 people, five of them seriously.
· June 19: A coal-laden goods train was blown up near Ultapool railway station, close to the oil town of Digboi, around 9.15 PM, leading to eight bogies jumping rails and injury to one of the train's two drivers.

Slowly, the ULFA attacks spread to other districts. On June 21, a telephone exchange of the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) was blown up with a timed device at the small town of Tengakhat, in Dibrugarh district, also in eastern Assam. If these four blasts, in quick succession, rattled the police, paramilitary and the Army, engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Assam under a unified command, the explosion inside a moving private passenger bus in the district of Sivasagar, bordering Nagaland, on June 24, 2004, made the State administration sit up and conclude that the rebels were bent on restoring their movement to spread terror. Seven passengers were killed and 15 others wounded when the explosive device, apparently carried in a school bag, went off around 10.30 AM, just as a youth who had boarded the bus with the piece of luggage settled down on his seat.

"We have reasons to believe that the ULFA rebels were transporting the explosive to be planted at some vital oil installation in Sivasagar district, which hosts the Eastern Region headquarters of the public sector Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), as well as facilities of the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL)," Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Eastern Range), told this writer. ULFA 'Chairman' Arabinda Rajkhowa, in a statement e-mailed to some local newspapers in Guwahati, sought to deny his group's involvement in the death of the innocent people in the explosion inside the bus. But, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, in an unusually tough posture against the rebel group, called the ULFA chief a 'liar,' and accused him of trying to get off a sticky wicket by denying involvement in the killing of innocent civilians.

What do these attacks mean? Does it signify that the ULFA has succeeded in restoring its capabilities after it was battered by the Bhutanese Army assault inside the Himalayan Kingdom in December 2003? Does it mean that the ULFA has embarked on a calculated terror campaign to instill a sense of fear and extract money from the trade and business community to replenish its cash-starved coffers? Top intelligence officials agree that the ULFA, by launching a series of attacks on soft targets, was demonstrating its strike potential as well as trying to terrorize the business community as a prelude to an extortion drive. Assam Inspector General of Police, Khagen Sharma, in charge of the intelligence wing of the State Police, told this writer that, in recent weeks, the ULFA had served extortion demands on several small tea planters in the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts (reports say at least 20 to 24 tea gardens were served such extortion notices) and that the rebels may have decided to escalate terror to force these planters, and other businessmen, to concede to their demands for cash.

Over the past few years, tea companies, in a departure from the trend in the late Eighties and early Nineties, started bringing extortion demands made on them by the ULFA to the notice of the authorities. Corporate giant Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), part of the multinational Unilever Group, approached the authorities in Assam last year, when the company was served a Rupees 20 million extortion demand by the ULFA. Security was increased in all HLL plantations and around its executives and no money was paid to the rebels. The ULFA may have concluded that unless a reign of terror was created once again, no one was going to take the outfit seriously. Chief Minister Gogoi, on his part, stated that the ULFA was trying to reassert itself and stake its claim in the 'State's political consciousness'. After its camps were busted and the battering the rebel group received at the hands of the Royal Bhutan Army and the Royal Body Guards, there was a general perception that the ULFA threat has reduced considerably. Extortion demands made by the group were, consequently, largely ignored, or the recipients of such demands refused to pay the amounts asked for and negotiated for substantially smaller payments.

The loss of the bases in Bhutan may have been a body blow to the ULFA, but it is clear that this had not resulted in a dispersal or collapse of its operational capacities. Had this occurred, it could not have succeeded in launching as many as 44 separate attacks in Tinsukia district alone in 2003. Some of the major attacks in the eastern district by the ULFA last year include the rocket raid at the historic Digboi oil refinery (March 8, 2003), another rocket attack at a Hindustan Lever facility near Doomdooma (November 26, 2003), the killing of two Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) men guarding an oil collecting station (June 20, 2003), and an ambush on the Army in September. Taking these incidents of violence into account, the current string of attacks by the ULFA over the past three weeks seems to be nothing more than a logical progression of its armed activities.

The whole of Assam is under the Unified Headquarters, with the Army in charge of counter-insurgency operations, and the so-called 'strategy group' headed by the Chief Secretary, the highest-ranking civilian official in the State. By all accounts, the State response over the past months has been minimal, although ULFA had been steadily asserting itself in the eastern tea, oil and coal producing areas of Assam. Now, Army authorities have been quoted in the media on June 26 as stating that troops would soon begin area domination exercises in eastern Assam. Does this imply that such activities had been suspended in recent months? What, then, were the troops doing as part of their routine counter-insurgency operations in the State? There is at least some evidence that the Unified Command is turning out to be a 'competitive command' between different Security Forces, rather than an efficient structure of coordination and cooperation.

The timing of the last five attacks also needs to be taken into account, coming as they did when reports were flying thick and fast of a section within the ULFA coming around to the idea of entering into peace talks with the Indian Government. Chief Minister Gogoi had, in fact, stated just last fortnight (June 18, 2004) that the ULFA had expressed its 'desire for a negotiated settlement of the issues it has raised.' Gogoi, however, had made it clear that the Government had not established direct contact with the rebel group. Of late, there have been formal deliberations among groups close to the ULFA on the need for a negotiated political settlement to the insurgency problem in Assam. Many would like to believe that the hawks within the ULFA, including its elusive commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah, who remained determined in their opposition to negotiations, may have ordered the recent attacks to underscore their position and scuttle any such initiatives.

 

INDIA

Nagaland: Arresting the Slide
Bibhu Prasad Routray
Acting Director, ICM Database & Documentation Centre, Guwahati

Ending speculation on the future of peace in Nagaland, interlocutors of the Union Government and the top leadership of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) conducted negotiations over three days on June 25-27, 2004, in Amsterdam.

A high measure of ambiguity is considered vital for the continuation of the negotiating process, and very little concrete could be expected to emerge out of a single round of dialogue, given the complexity of the issues involved. The round of talks, nevertheless, constitutes a significant step in maintaining peace in Nagaland.

The immediate objective of the negotiations in Amsterdam was to extend the ceasefire with the rebel group beyond July 31, 2004. That, however, is a mere formality compared to several other complicated issues, which continue to badger process. The most complicated of these is the demand for the integration of the Naga inhabited areas in the Northeast, a process that effectively means a redrawing of the State boundaries of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Over the years, the NSCN-IM and its various protagonists have remained obdurate in this demand, making it intrinsic to any peaceful resolution of the "Indo-Naga conflict".

The previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government's apparently accommodating attitude on such an option had been checkmated by virulent mass protests in the streets of Manipur in June 2001. However, the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government's commitment to maintaining status quo on State boundaries, enshrined in its Common Minimum Programme (CMP), makes progress in the current peace process difficult, unless either or both sides are willing to make partial or significant departures from their projected positions.

The current round of talks are the first contact between the new UPA government at New Delhi and the rebel group. The NSCN-IM had acquired a measure of confidence after nearly five years of negotiating with the previous NDA Government, but an element of uncertainty has now entered the process of negotiations, articulated in the NSCN-IM General Secretary's May 26 statement, "We do hope they are for peace and honourable solution". Such symptoms of fretfulness had been overcome under the last regime, not only by the sheer frequency of the meetings held, but also in the way the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went about placating the NSCN-IM. The largesse doled out was not only visible in the Prime Minister's package of Rupees 10.5 billion to the Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN) Government in Nagaland - considered close to the NSCN-IM leadership - in October 2003, a gesture usually reserved for friendly State Governments, but also in the coup orchestrated in Arunachal Pradesh in August 2003, where 39 Members of the Legislative Assembly, with a number of proclaimed NSCN-IM sympathisers, changed their political affiliations to herald in the first-ever BJP-led Government in that State. Soon after, the Arunachal Government not only repealed the Arunachal Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act (APCOCA), 2002, which had been legislated to contain the activities of the NSCN in the State, but also began talking about providing autonomy to the Naga dominated districts of Tirap and Changlang, a known hunting ground of the outfit.

It is well known that the Union Government today is faced with a far stronger NSCN-IM than its predecessor NDA. The group today enjoys a far greater clout, not only in Nagaland, but also in the hill areas of Manipur and in three districts of Arunachal Pradesh. The rebel organisation's widening sphere of influence has been achieved not only through its appeal among the Naga population in these States, but was substantially facilitated by the NDA Government's efforts to install non-Congress Governments in the not-so-Hindu Northeast. The growth of NSCN-IM has, in fact, been directly proportional to the growth of the NDA in the region. If the NSCN-IM was showing signs of nervousness regarding the installation of the new UPA Government at Delhi, consequently, this has less to do with movement on the peace talks, and probably far more to do with the probable halt on its sweep over the proposed 'Nagalim' areas in the absence of a central facilitator.

A recently submitted 'Confidential' dossier by the Congress leaders in different States of the Northeast, titled "Law & Order Scenario in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh", accused the NSCN-IM of continuing its militant activities and pursuing a "grand design to subjugate the entire population." It further requested the Union Government to implement the 'ceasefire ground rules strictly- in letter and spirit.'

Over the past years of facilitated consolidation, moreover, the IM group has cut into the strongholds of other dissident and rebel groups as well, and this process is still to be contained. Just over the last couple of months, the NSCN-IM has gained control over sizeable stretches of Phek district, mostly in the Chakhesang region, the last remaining bastion of the significantly marginalized Naga National Council (NNC). An NNC press statement on June 19, 2004, asserted further, "In the latest situation in Chakhesang region, hundreds of armed NSCN-IM cadres freely roam every nook and corner of the region carrying out their mission of extortion and terrorism in every village openly in front of the so called law enforcing agencies." On June 12, speaking at the general session of the Chakhesang Public Organisation at Pfütsero, Finance Minister K. Therie accused the group of not adhering to the ceasefire ground rules and asked its cadre to stop moving around in uniform in Phek district. Similar NSCN-IM activities in Tuensang and Mon district have also been reported.

Several cases of the violation of ceasefire norms have been noted, and the IM cadres have been involved in large-scale extortion. On June 22, State Home Minister Dr. T.H. Lotha admitted that some of the State departments had received extortion notes from the militant groups. The Government had given a standing order to all departments to refer all such cases to the State Director General of Police (DGP). However, given the State Government's much-professed policy of 'equi-closeness' to all the underground outfits, complaints of this nature are never filed. Earlier, two IM cadres were arrested on June 12 while looting money from a truck and some labourers in Kohima. In a move, which could be seen as a confirmation of the existing regime of extortion, and the State Government's inability to deal with it, the DAN Government, in June 2004, proposed that the Union Government provide financial grants to both the major underground groups, the NSCN-IM and its rival, the Khaplang faction (NSCN-K), in order to prevent them from collecting illegal 'tax' from civilians.

Another mater of grave concern is the provision of arms training and camping facilities by the NSCN-IM to other insurgent groups. On May 11, 2004, 31 United People's Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) cadres (anti-talks faction), along with five NSCN-IM militants, were arrested from a bus on the Paren-Ghaspani Road on their way to Dimapur. These cadres had undergone training at an NSCN-IM camp. There are similar reports of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) cadres, after being ousted from their camps in Bhutan, having been provided shelter at some of the NSCN-IM's designated camps. Recently, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi described the development as 'very disturbing'. The timely help provided by the NSCN-IM could be a significant factor behind the ULFA's resurgence in the districts of Upper Assam.

The NSCN-IM's steady gains have forced many of its opponents to fall in line, and have also encouraged many tacit supporters to come out in the open. Recently, NSCN-K cadres of the Chang region defected to the NSCN-IM. Over a hundred cadres of the Khaplang group have changed their loyalty in past one year. Additionally, organisations like the Naga People's Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), Naga Students' Federation (NSF) and Naga Mothers' Association (NMA), which previously operated under a veil of neutrality, are now willing to come out of the closet in support of the IM group. Thus, in response to a recent allegation by the NSCN-K, censuring these organisations for their biased stand, the NMA, NSF and NPMHR, in a press statement on June 20, claimed that they were, indeed, "proud to support the NSCN-IM." Reiterating their newfound bluntness, these organisations, on June 26, cautioned the Union Government that the NSCN-IM would not extend the ceasefire unless the UPA government modifies its CMP.

What stares the Union Government in the face, today, is a rebel group that has judiciously exploited the conditions of the ceasefire to significantly augment its authority over the region. The UPA Government appears to have vested its faith in continuing with the old set of negotiators. It is not clear whether these have the will and capacity to guide the Government out of the current logjam in Nagaland.

SOUTH ASIA	USA

RPGT 2003: Flogging a Dead Horse
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

The US Department of State's (DoS) intrinsically flawed Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 Report was dead on arrival at the moment of its release on May 26, 2004. Nevertheless, a promise of a miraculous resurrection had been briefly held out by the DoS, when they acknowledged some errors and omissions, promising a comprehensive review and revision. That revised report (RPGT 2003) has now been released and, unfortunately, reflects no more than the efforts of a shoddy mortician trying to make a badly disfigured corpse presentable for its final interment.

The evident and gross internal errors of calculation have been eliminated in the revision, some incidents have been added, and some extreme errors of fact have been eliminated. Nevertheless, the essential content and structure of the report remains untouched, and Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted, "On balance, it is a good report. The narrative is sound and we're not changing any of the narrative."

It is generally unrealistic to expect bureaucracies to be honest about their mistakes, and the current US Administration is an exception only in the fact that it has displayed an even more extraordinary propensity to distort reality than is generally the case. More dangerously, this Administration has demonstrated a parallel propensity to act on such distorted perceptions and intelligence, with the most manifestly disastrous consequences in Iraq. The same predilection is, however, playing out, perhaps more insidiously but just as insistently, in South Asia, where US policies continue to wink at very substantial patterns of terrorist activity and state support to such activity, apparently under the mistaken belief that movements that focus on targets within this region do not constitute an imminent danger to 'American interests', and that the 'franchised' war against terrorism that the Pervez Musharraf regime in Pakistan is currently engaged in, is sufficient to protect such interests. This, for one, wilfully ignores the continued presence in Pakistan of large groups of terrorists, terrorist training facilities, and the 'schools of hate' that have spawned much of the contemporary jihad, as well as significant evidence of continued, if selective, support by the Musharraf regime to at least some virulent terrorist groups and their leaders.

Ambassador Cofer Black, the Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, under whose authority the Report is issued, assures us that, "my staff here and John's (John Brennan, Director Terrorism Threat Integration Centre) at TTIC, and others in the U.S. Government counterterrorism community have conducted a comprehensive review of the figures in the 2003 Patterns report." Despite the 'comprehensive review' by such an authoritative fraternity, however, the results are far from satisfactory, and suggest little more than reluctant tinkering to silence, at best, the more sympathetic among critics.

Within the South Asian context, the revised report has added eight incidents in its chronology for India (five of these for the months of November and December, the period completely missed out by the original report), and excluded four minor incidents. This takes up total incidents to 53 - all but one located in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) - and fatalities to 150 (up from 99 in the original report). This is still a far cry from the reality of thousands of terrorist incidents in the country, and even the 477 attacks on civilians, with 807 civilian fatalities, in J&K alone.

RPGT 2003 corrects the error relating to the Sopat incident of September 9, in which a former state forest minister had been reported killed in PGT 2003. The Revised Report clarifies that the former minister was injured 'slightly', while one security officer was killed.

The most significant addition to the chronology relates to the twin Mumbai blasts of August 25. RPGT however, gets the number of fatalities wrong again. The original report put the number killed at 97 in the captions to the photographs of the incidents; this has now been arbitrarily reduced to a round 40, a number that does not correspond to the final figure on any reliable Indian source (the actual fatalities were 52). It is, however, the only incident listed in India in which even qualified suspicion has been cast on a Pakistan-based terrorist group. The Revised Report notes, "The Mumbai police commissioner reportedly suspects Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, but no group has claimed responsibility."

Not a single incident out of the 11 'notable omissions' listed by this writer [SAIR 48] has been included in the revised chronology for India.

Pakistan remains a very safe country indeed, according to RPGT 2003. In fact, the revised chronology suggests that it just got a little safer, with the total number of 'significant incidents' in the country declining from four to two. The January 12 incident of a bomb 'safely defused' in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Hyderabad, and the May 15 incidents involving "firecrackers fitted with timing devices" at various foreign owned petrol stations in Karachi, have been excluded.

The chronology lists no 'significant' incidents of terrorism in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, each of which actually saw very significant terrorist activity. RPGT 2003 fails, equally, to acknowledge the extraordinary anti-terrorism initiative by the Royal Bhutan Government, which took military action to expel a number of Indian terrorist groups - including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) - from camps long established on Bhutanese soil.

RPGT 2003 has, once again, raised the question of intent. Were the errors motivated and deliberately intended to mislead, or are they a 'good faith' reflection of what is available to American intelligence and policy makers? One commentator in The New York Times, for instance, wonders, "Was the report's squishy math politically motivated? Well, the Bush administration has cooked the books in many areas, including budget projections, tax policy, environmental policy and stem cell research. Why wouldn't it do the same on terrorism?" Secretary Powell, however, asserts, "We have only one goal with this report, and that is to accurately reflect the pattern of terrorism that existed throughout the world during the period of the report. The report is not designed to make our efforts look better or worse, or terrorism look better or worse, but to provide the facts to the American people." If that is truly the case, there is even greater danger: cynical manipulation of information by those who are aware of facts may be immoral and unprincipled, but its purveyors would not be tempted to rely on such distorted intelligence flows while framing policy on critical issues; but the absence of credible intelligence at the decisive nodes of governance in the world's 'sole hyperpower' would be infinitely more perilous to the global future.