South Asia Terrorism Portal

Ever-present Threat
Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

On March 17, 2019, at least five passengers were killed and seven others wounded in an explosion inside a moving train near Shaheed Aziz Billo checkpost in Naseerabad District of Balochistan.

On March 15, 2019, a Police Constable attached to the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) was killed by unidentified assailants in the Muddy Area of Kulachi tehsil (revenue division) in the Dera Ismail Khan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

On March 14, 2019, two persons were killed and nine injured in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in the Chatkan area of Panjgur District in Balochistan.

On the same day, a Doctor was killed by assailants in the Zangal Khel area of Kohat District in KP.

On March 8, 2019, four Defence Service Guard (DSG) personnel were killed while two local employees were injured in an explosion in a gas pipeline in the Sui area of Balochistan.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Pakistan has recorded at least 71 fatalities (25 civilians, 29 Security Force (SF) personnel and 17 militants) in 2019 (data till March 17, 2019). During the corresponding period of 2018, there were at least 134 fatalities (36 civilians, 49 SF personnel and 49 militants). Through 2018, Pakistan recorded a total of 691 terrorism-linked fatalities. There were 1,260 such fatalities in 2017; 1,803 in 2016; 3,682 in 2015; 5,496 in 2014 and 5,379 in 2013. A sharp fall in overall fatalities is evident since 2015.

The number of major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) and resultant fatalities have also witnessed declining trends. There were a total of 446 major incidents and 3,737 fatalities in 2014; 310 incidents and 2,495 fatalities in 2015; 149 incidents and 1,169 fatalities in 2016; 143 incidents and 994 fatalities in 2017; and 67 incidents with 534 fatalities in 2018. At least nine such incidents with 48 fatalities have already occurred in 2019 (data till March 17, 2019).

Incidents of explosion and resultant fatalities have also declined. There were a total of 429 incidents with 1,019 fatalities in 2014; 232 incidents with 548 fatalities in 2015; 148 incidents with 538 fatalities in 2016; 119 incidents with 528 fatalities in 2017 and 78 incidents with 352 fatalities in 2018. 2019 has so far recorded 10 such incidents resulting in 22 fatalities (data till March 17, 2019).

Meanwhile, the number of suicide attacks has also declined, with an aberration in 2017. There were 38 suicide attacks in 2014; 31 in 2015; 23 in 2016; 25 in 2017; and 19 in 2018. Resultant fatalities in such attacks stood at 556 in 2014; 235 in 2015; 371 in 2016; 318 in 2017; and 302 in 2018. There has already been one incident in 2019, with 12 fatalities. While the number of suicide attacks has been declining, their intensity, in terms of fatalities, has increased.   

A comparative analysis of the proportion of civilian fatalities in total fatalities registered in the country during this period, indicates that civilians are increasingly bearing the brunt of terrorist violence. Of 3,682 fatalities 2015, 940 were civilians, i.e. 25.52 per cent. This percentage increased to 33.94 in 2016 (612 civilians in a total of 1,803); 42.85 in 2017 (540 civilians in a total of 1,260), and 53.40 per cent in 2018 (369 civilians in a total of 691).

On the other hand, the proportion of militant fatalities has declined considerably. Militants accounted for 65.26 per cent of total fatalities in 2015 (2,403 militants in a total of 3,682); 49.80 per cent in 2016 (898 militants in a total of 1,803); 40.63 per cent in 2017 (512 militants in a total of 1,260); and 22.72 in 2018 (157 militants in a total of 691).

At peak in 2009, Pakistan recorded 11,704 terrorism linked fatalities; with the proportion of militants killed at 71.67, as against 19.85 per cent of civilians. In the subsequent years, even as overall fatalities started declining, the proportion of militant fatalities also declined, while that of civilians has been on the rise.  This trend continued recorded aberrant reversals in 2014 and 2015.    

2018 witnessed at least three prominent incidents targeting civilians: 

November 23: At least 33 people, including 22 Shias, were killed and more than injured in a suicide attack at a crowded marketplace near an imambargah (Shia place of worship) in the Juma Bazar (Friday Market) of Kalaya town in the Lower Orakzai District of KP.

July 13: A suicide bomber targeting a political rally of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) killed at least 149 people and injured over 200 at Dringarh village in Mastung District, Balochistan.

July 10: At least 22 persons, including Awami National Party (ANP) leader Haroon Bilour, were killed in a suicide blast which targeted an ANP election gathering in the Yakatoot area of Peshawar, the provincial capital of KP.

While the decline in fatalities is indicative of sweeping gains across the country, deep concerns remain. In Balochistan, though levels of violence have been relatively low, a smoldering discontent continues to feed the fires of rebellion. In Sindh, the Pakistan Rangers’ operations have marginalised terrorist and organized criminal gangs, but persistent street crime remains significant and retains the potential for resurgence once the operational deployment of the Rangers is withdrawn. In KP, while the fruits of successful SF operations are visible in terms of declining terrorism and related fatalities, irritants persists, with violence disrupting tranquility at regular intervals. People’s grievances remain unaddressed in Gilgit Baltistan, where Islamabad has ensured 'peace' only with the help of draconian laws and brutal military repression, and is likely to use the provisions of the Gilgit Baltistan Order 2018 (with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval) to intensify the use of brute force, this time ‘more legally’. In Punjab, radicalized forces continue to find fertile ground, support and a feeder line of recruits.

Meanwhile, Islamabad’s open support to terrorist formations operating out of its soil remains intact, creating mayhem in neighboring countries. They prominently include the Hafiz Muhammad Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the front organisation of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which openly engages in anti-India activities and operates out of its Headquarters in Murdike in the Sheikhupura District of Punjab. Saeed operates freely across the country, holding rallies dominated by anti-India and Islamist hate speech, inciting cadres to wage jihad against India. For instance, on December 18, 2018, addressing a rally at Mall Road in Lahore under the banner of Difa-e-Pakistan Council, Saeed threatened, "You forgot Somnath, (Prime Minister) Modi. The time is near when this war will be fought in your cities not at the borders. You will not be able to hide your terrorism behind curtains." Most recently, following the February 5, 2019, rally in Lahore addressed by Saeed, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on February 6 issued a note verbale to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi and registered India's strong protest at the "continued use of Pakistan controlled territory by extremist and terrorist elements" to freely propagate and promote violence and terror against India.

Similarly, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) ‘chief’ Maulana Masood Azhar, the architect of the February 14, 2019, Pulwama attack, continues to operate freely out of Pakistani soil. In an audio tape he is heard threatening, "If Kashmir is not surrendered, the fire will reach Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow and subsequently engulf the entire country." On March 6, 2019, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf admitted that JeM was a terror outfit and his his country's intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had used it to carry out attacks in India during his tenure. Making the disclosure in a telephonic interview to Pakistani journalist Nadeem Malik of Hum News in his talk show, Musharraf added that JeM had tried to assassinate him twice in December 2003.

Recent cosmetic actions again these groups and their front organizations in the wake of the Pulwama attack are no more than another eyewash, as Pakistan has taken several such measures in the past as well, without any real impact on ground and even as these terrorist formations and their leaders continue to be protected by the state and military intelligence apparatus. Both Rawalpindi and Islamabad continue to treat these groups as state assets in their geostrategic overreach into India.

There is, however, no guarantee that these groups will not turn rogue and start targeting Pakistan, joining groups of domestically oriented terror groups operating in Pakistan. This happened with elements within JeM, when it targeted Parvez Musharraf, though the group was subsequently purged and its leadership reinstated.

Pakistan continues, moreover, to support terrorist adventurism against its other neighbours as well, with the continuing and bloody campaigns of the Taliban and Haqqani network drawing resources from and receiving safe haven in Pakistan. Similarly, Iran has suffered attacks by the Jaish-al-Adl, again from Pakistani soil, the most recent of which was the February 13, 2019, Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) attack on the Revolutionary Guard Corps bus, which killed 27 soldiers and injured another 17.

Towards the latter part of 2018, some analysts had been hoping that Pakistan would change for the better under the new Prime Minister Imran Khan, who took the oath of office on August 13, 2018. Very quickly, it has become apparent that Khan is a product of the deep state driven democracy, essentially a nominee of the Army establishment, and, expectedly nothing has changed on the ground.

Despite the sustained decline in terrorism-linked fatalities and incidents over the last four years, a festering wound continues to afflict Pakistan. Islamabad continues use terrorism as an instrument to fulfil its ‘national goal’, exporting terror in neighboring countries including India, Afghanistan and Iran, and well beyond, even as wide spaces remain for domestic and renegade groups to engineer a resurgence, despite their present and substantial repression. America’s imminent flight from Afghanistan and the absence of effective international pressure to compel Islamabad to reorient its policies, have enormously encouraged the establishment in Pakistan to stay the course in its support to terrorism, particularly in the immediate neighbourhood.

Nagaland: Unresolved Reconciliation
Giriraj Bhattacharjee
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

On March 10, 2019, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, while disclosing the fact that "we were hoping against hope that the solution will come before the election", warned that "if it (the Naga political solution) does not come...it will be problem for our Naga society to carry on". Rio was referring to the long delay in finding the ‘solution’ for the ‘Naga problem’ despite the much publicized signing of the August 3, 2015, Framework Agreement between the Government of India (GoI) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM). Meanwhile, on March 10, 2019, the Election Commission of India announced that a seven-phase General Elections would be held from April 11 to May 19 across India. Elections in Nagaland are scheduled to be held on April 11, 2019.

Interestingly, Rio’s statement is much more forthright than the mistaken claim made by the GoI’s interlocutor for Naga talks, R.N. Ravi who stated, on March 1, 2019,

He could not, however, provide any deadline.

Interestingly, Ravi also admitted,

Ravi’s statements appear contradictory and divorced from reality. The issues of flag and constitution are the trickiest, and are the ones on which NSCN-IM has long had the strongest reservations. ‘Ato Kilonser (Prime Minister)’, Thuingaleng Muivah, in an interview to Northeast Live on February 16, 2019, declared, “there will be one Nagalim, only one government our flag and our constitution must be there. This is the stand we have given…”

That the peace process is not on track is also evident from the fact that prominent civil society bodies of the State refused to meet Ravi during his stay at State capital Kohima on February 26-27, 2019. Naga Hoho (the apex body of all Naga tribes of Nagaland) ‘president’ Chuba Ozukum, according to a report dated February 28, 2019, noted,

Meanwhile, the two most prominent Naga insurgent outfits – NSCN-IM and National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) – saw changes in terms of their leadership structures.

On February 11, 2019, NSCN-IM elected Qhehezu Tuccu as the new ‘chairman’ and Tongmeth Wangnao as ‘vice-chairman’. The process was conducted at camp Hebron in Dimapur and the leadership has been elected for a tenure of six years. On August 17, 2018, NSCN-K had split into two factions, led by Yung Aung, a Myanmarese national, and Khango Konyak, respectively. The Khango Konyak led NSCN-K faction subsequently joined the peace talks on January 29, 2019, as part of the six-member Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs), further widening the talks.

The impact of change in leadership in these two major players and the NNPGs joining the talks is still to be seen. Muivah in his February 16, 2019 interview demanded, “…these six-seven groups, NNPGs, what is that, what is the policy behind them and why government of India is talking with them?” Muivah, added, further, that when NSCN-IM raised the issue of the involvement of NNPGs in the talks and threatened to move out of the process with GoI, since GoI had earlier stated that only NSCN-IM represented the Naga people; the GoI assured them that the discussions with NNPGs were ‘informal in nature’.

Significantly, while signing the Framework Agreement on August 3, 2015, the GoI had projected the impression that the resolution of the vexed Naga issue was imminent. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his remarks after the signing of the Agreement, declared,

Subsequently, on March 3, 2018, Neiphiu Rio had declared that the Naga Accord would be signed on August 10, 2018.

Despite the growing restiveness over the delay in ‘solving the Naga problem’, insurgency-related violence in the State continues to record declines. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the State registered a total of seven insurgency-linked fatalities, including three Security Force (SF) personnel and four militants, in 2018. There were eight such fatalities, including four civilians, one SF trooper and three militants, in 2017. There was no civilian fatality in 2018, something that has happened only once before, in 2010. Not a single fatality has been recorded in the current year, so far (data till March 17, 2019). The last insurgency-linked fatalities were on December 3, 2018, when the 12 Para Special Force of the Indian Army killed three militants between Wangla and Oting villages in the Mon District. The militants reportedly belonged to a joint team of the Aung Yung led NSCN-Khaplang faction and United Liberation Front of Asom-Independence (ULFA-I).

At the peak of the insurgency, Nagaland recorded 360 fatalities (104 civilians, 38 SF personnel, and 218 militants) in 1997. The highest civilian fatalities, 144, were recorded in 1996. The maximum number of SFs, 48, were also killed in 1996.

Significantly, no incident of internecine clashes between the various insurgent factions was reported in the State through 2018, as in 2017. Turf wars between the factions were common in the past, but the last such clash was reported on July 2, 2015, when the body of Mannyei Konyak, an ex-NSCN-Khaplang (NSCN-K) militant who had joined NSCN-Reformation (NSCN-R), was recovered from Sheanghah Wamsa in Mon District.

There has, however, been a slight increase in incidents of internecine clashes between Naga militant groups outside Nagaland. Six instances of such clashes, resulting in seven fatalities (two civilians and five militants) were recorded in 2018 – one in Arunachal Pradesh and five in Manipur – as against two incidents reported in 2017, one each in Assam and Manipur. No fatality was reported in these two incidents. Most recently, on November 22, 2018, one suspected NSCN-IM cadre was killed in a shootout with cadres of the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) between Taosang and Lubanglong villages under the Khoupum Police Station in the Noney District of Manipur.

The geographic spread of violence has also been contained. In 2018, fatalities were recorded from two Districts in the State – Mon (6) and Paren (1). In 2017, fatalities were recorded from three Districts – Mon (5), Dimapur (2) and Kohima (1).

Only one incident of explosion was reported in 2018, with one person injured. Two incidents of explosion were recorded through 2017, leading to the death of one civilian and injuries to four. Further, the State recorded three incidents of abduction in 2018, in which five persons were abducted, as against four incidents, in which five persons were abducted, through 2017. Four instances of extortion were also recorded in 2018, as against 13 such incidents in 2017.

Both abduction and extortion tend to be grossly under-reported and the actual incidence is significantly higher. Indeed, there is widespread consensus that abduction and extortion constitute the backbone of a parallel economy in the State and the wider Northeast region. R.N. Ravi, in his March 1, 2019, interview, conceded,

SFs arrested 148 militants in 92 incidents in 2018, in addition to 148 such arrests in 82 incidents through 2017. Those arrested in 2018 included 36 NSCN-K militants; 22 NSCN-IM militants; 14 NSCN-R militants; 12 of the Kitovi Neopak faction of NSCN (NSCN-KN); seven of the Unification faction (NSCN-U); six of the Non-Accordist faction of the Naga National Council (NNC-NA); five each from NNC and National Democratic Front of Bodoland-Saoraigwra (NDFB-S); and two militants from the Barak State Liberation Force (BSLF).

Elsewhere, in an encouraging development, the Myanmar based Yung faction of NSCN-K is facing action from Tatmadaw [the Myanmar Army]. NSCN-K camps in Myanmar have reportedly been taken over by the Myanmar Army.  

The insurgency is clearly under control. For further improvement, effective cooperation between the security agencies of India and Myanmar is crucial, to deny safe havens to the insurgent groups operating in the State. The protective safeguards related to the Free Movement Regime (FMR) with Myanmar need be effectively implemented to check the abuse of these provisions by the militants operating along the Indo-Myanmar border. According to a October 25, 2018 report New Delhi and Naypyidaw have decided to facilitate trade along the 32-kilometres FMR belt (16 kilometers on either side of the border), to aid the villagers along the Indo-Myanmar border. 

The environment of peace that has been created over the years by continuous SF action and simultaneous negotiations with major Naga militant formations provides an opportunity to resolve this long festering conflict. The growing sense of weariness among civil society groups as well as political and insurgent formations due to the perceived delays in reaching a final agreement undermine the possibilities of reaching a comprehensive accord.