In the first eight months of year 2006, a total of 42 people have been killed in militancy-related violence in Tripura, which includes nine civilians, an equal number of security force (SF) personnel and 24 militants. During this period, at least 240 militants - 86 belonging to the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), and 154 from the Bru Liberation Front of Mizoram (BLFM) have surrendered to the authorities. Militancy has indeed been successfully contained in this State to a significant extent.
Following are the major incidents of violence in 2006:
February 14: Three employees of the Gas Authority of India Limited are shot dead in an ambush by cadres belonging to the Biswamohan Debbarma faction of the NLFT at Badaniapara in West Tripura district.
April 27: Two ATTF cadres are killed when SF personnel retaliate to firing by the militants at Basanta Kobra Para village under Khowai police station in the West Tripura district.
April 29: NLFT militants kill four SF personnel and injure eight civilians in an ambush at Karnamuni Para in the Dhalai district. NLFT militant, Paitya Debbarma, was also killed in retaliatory action by the troops.
July 10: Two suspected NLFT cadres are shot dead in an encounter with the SFs at Gudaibari in the Dhalai district.
July 16: Two ATTF cadres, Binoy Debbarma and Amulya Debbarma, are shot dead in an encounter with the SFs at Abhirampara in the West Tripura district.
July 29: Two NLFT cadres belonging to the Biswamohan Debbarma faction are killed in an encounter with the SFs at Nilecherra in the North Tripura district.
Following are the major incidents of violence during 2005:
April 13: Three NLFT cadres are killed and three others sustain injuries during an internecine clash at Padmamohanpara in the Dhalai district.
April 17: An engineer of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) is killed by the ATTF at Montfort village in the West Tripura district.
April 25: Three Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel are killed and four others sustain injuries during an ambush by the ATTF at Naraynabari in the West Tripura district.
May 10: NLFT terrorists raid two villages, Madanjoypara and Jogendra Karbaripara, under Raishyabari police station in the Dhalai district and kill five villagers belonging to the Chakma tribe.
August 15: Four NLFT terrorists are killed and another two sustains injuries during an internecine clash between two groups of the outfit over the issue of surrender at Longtarai hill range in the Dhalai district.
September 25: NLFT terrorists kill eight non-tribal villagers, including four women and two children, and injure three others at Debnath Para in the West Tripura district.
October 26: NLFT militants kill two TSR personnel and injure another during an ambush at Nandakumarpara in the West Tripura district.
November 15: Suspected NLFT militants kill three women and injure two other villagers at Bambpur in the South Tripura district.
November 21: One civilian and three Border Security Force (BSF) personnel are killed and six others sustain injuries in an ambush by the NLFT at Chandrakantapara in the Dhalai district.
December 19: Three NLFT militants are killed in an encounter with the SFs in Kill area of South Tripura district.
December 28: Four tribal civilians are killed by unidentified militants at Panbari in the West Tripura district.
In the year 2005, a total of 73 people were killed in militancy-related violence in Tripura, which includes 34 (46.56 per cent) civilians, eight (10.95 per cent) SF personnel and another 31 (42.46 per cent) militants. During the same period, at least 30 militants belonging to the ATTF and NLFT were arrested, while another 125 militants surrendered to the authorities.
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2004
Tripura is carving out a success story in the troubled setting of India’s Northeast, as its police force reorganizes radically to evolve a counter-insurgency strategy that has left entrenched militant groups in disarray. Building on a model of a police-led response to terrorism, which saw the country’s most dramatic victory over this modern scourge in Punjab in the early 1990s, Tripura’s Police has reversed the trajectory of insurgent violence and, crucially, mobilization, despite continued and vigorous support provided to the insurgent groups by Bangladesh, and the safe haven each of these outfits has been provided in that country.
This is more remarkable in view of the fact that Tripura is a narrow wedge, enveloped on three sides by Bangladesh. As much as 856 kilometers of its boundary of 1,018 kilometers (84.08 per cent of the total) lie along the porous international border with Bangladesh, and much of this is located in dense forest terrain that is nigh impossible to police within existing resource constraints (Tripura shares its remaining State boundary with Assam and Mizoram in India).
The numbers alone tell an extraordinary – though necessarily incomplete – story. The number of extremist incidents declined further from 2004 to 2005. Civilian fatalities were down from 66 to 34 and SF fatalities from 38 to 8. Terrorist fatalities also fell from 63 in 2004 to 31 in 2005.
More crucially, as many as 698 militants have surrendered to the authorities over the past three years (2003: 251; 2004: 322; 2005: 125). The year 2005 saw the surrender of 86 cadres of the NLFT and ATTF, on September 2. The combined result of the losses inflicted on the insurgent groups as well as their failure to replenish these losses through recruitment, is that the cadre-strength of all groups is estimated to have declined significantly.
In the early 2000s, Tripura had emerged as the ‘abduction centre’ of the Northeast, accounting for nearly half of all abductions for ransom in the region. A dramatic decline, from 542 abductions in 2000, through 177 in 2001, 159 in 2002, 216 in 2003, to 105 in 2004, and 62 in 2005 signals the diminishing sway of the insurgent groups, and their inability to exploit what constituted the major source of revenues in the past. Police sources indicate that militant capacities to secure revenues by extortion have also declined radically, and the NLFT’s collection in 2004 is estimated to have fallen short of targets by about 50 per cent, while the ATTF collections were even lower, at 60 per cent of targeted revenues. The failure to extort monies is among the most significant indices of the success of counter-insurgency strategy.
The most dramatic impact of these developments was visible in the elections for the Tripura Tribal Area Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) held on March 5, 2005. Traditionally, the TTAADC elections have been the playground of militant groups that have terrorized tribal voters, abducted and killed candidates, political workers and their relatives, and undermined the polling process. During the three months preceding the last TTAADC elections in 2000, there were 176 extremist incidents, with 100 persons killed, another 86 injured and 172 persons abducted – including 12 relatives of candidates abducted in the month prior to the elections. This had allowed the militant backed Indigenous National Party of Tripura to dominate the elections.
This time around, however, TTAADC elections were nearly completely peaceful, with just one significant incident, an ambush on personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force escorting ballot papers after the polls, on March 6, 2005 in the Dhalai district, in which one police personnel was killed.
These conditions have been secured despite the extraordinary challenges of counter-insurgency in a State marked by hilly and densely forested terrain that lends itself perfectly to the terrorist enterprise and the generous provision of logistical support and safe haven by Bangladesh – in a cooperative arrangement with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In early 2005, intelligence sources indicated that there were at least 47 camps hosting militants from Tripura in Bangladesh.
Tripura’s main towns, and the State’s connections with its neighbours, rely almost exclusively on a single tenuous link – National Highway (NH) 44 – that snakes its way through dense tropical jungles across the three mountain ranges that cut across the entire length of the State. Keeping this road link open and safe has long been an enormous challenge, with the militants choosing the most favourable locations for ambush on security force transports, as well as on the escorted convoys of private transport on which the entire State depended for its supplies and markets. The forested interior areas were poorly manned, allowing their domination by the extremists. With all four of the State’s districts sharing borders with Bangladesh, periodic counter-insurgency operations had limited impact, as the militants simply crossed the international border into safety, to return the moment the troops had pulled back.
The core of the police strategy of response over the past two years is to dominate the most remote areas in the State, and to minimize the reaction time for counter-insurgent operations. As many as 386 camps of police and security force personnel are now being maintained in the interior areas, providing immediate access to the people in the event of militant movement, and reducing operational and reaction time to a minimum. In addition, 2,600 Special Police Officers (SPOs) in another 105 ‘Special Police Pickets’ (SPPs) have also been located in the strategic interior. This network of camps and pickets is backed by the existing network of 37 police outposts and 55 police stations in the 20 police sub-divisions that control the States four districts. Each of these police stations, posts and camps has been upgraded in terms of arms, communications, and where possible, vehicles and bullet-proofing, improving response capacities and reducing response time to a minimum, and placing a very substantial, dispersed but coordinated force at the command of each District’s Superintendent of Police.
There has also been a dramatic augmentation of the Police intelligence network. The improved geographical dominance of the Forces has resulted in increasing flows of information from the general public, who have long borne the brunt of militant excesses, but had been too terrorized to extend cooperation to the Police in the past. Significantly, the network of SPPs has also generated large volumes of local intelligence and improved the interface between security forces and the general public. These advantages have combined with spotter operations, which use surrendered militants to identify active terrorist cadres and their over-ground collaborators, as well as a range of social, developmental and psychological operations that have enormously eroded militant capacities, and enhanced the presence and legitimacy of state Forces and institutions in the most remote and isolated areas of the State.
Simultaneously, the militant intelligence and support network has been systematically dismantled. A wide complex of over-ground collaborators has traditionally supplied intelligence and logistic support to the militants, and this system of collaborators and collusive organisations have been targeted. The disruption of these networks of local support has made militant operations in the State increasingly difficult.
Improved geographical dominance has also cut the lifelines of militant survival in terms of finance. Traditional targets of extortion and abduction particularly included traders, the tea gardens, railway and road construction organisations and workers, in addition to the hapless civilians in the countryside. Virtually every significant developmental and construction project, as well as major commercial organisations and companies, have specifically been allocated an enhanced security cover, choking off avenues of extortion.
The cumulative impact of these initiatives and operations has drastically affected militant morale. Indeed, in June 2005, with the dramatic improvement in the law and order situation, the State police discontinued the practice of providing escorts to vehicles on NH 44.
Nevertheless, the days of militancy in Tripura are not yet over. Further, all the three major insurgent groups, NLFT’s Biswamohan Debbarma and Joshua factions and the Ranjit Debbarma-led ATTF, continue to operate from their bases in Bangladesh, and there is a strong conviction in strategic circles that militancy cannot be completely ended as long as safe havens continue to exist across the border. On June 28, 2005, the Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar told Press Trust of India in New Delhi: “The terrorist camps operating in Bangladesh should be smashed and terrorists should be handed over to India.” Such an eventuality, however, remains remote, given the troubled relations with Bangladesh.
Within Tripura too, areas like Ampi, Udaipur, Taidu, Takarjala, Bishalgarh, Srinagar and Jirania in the West and South Tripura districts continue to witness militant movements and sporadic activities, if not large scale attacks. On June 15, Tripura Police and para-military forces launched a six-day Operation Washout to clean up these areas. However, the ATTF, on its ‘foundation day’ – July 10 – did manage to force villagers in a few remote hamlets in the hilly areas under the Sidhai, Jirania and Takarjala Police Stations to hoist the group’s flag and paste posters on trees and houses. On July 9, a group of NLFT-Biswamohan militants assaulted 14 villagers at Karnakishorepara in Gandacherra subdivision for delay in the payment of ‘annual tax’. The villagers, mostly tribal shifting cultivators, had reportedly cleared their ‘annual tax’ in May instead of the first week of April – the deadline set by the militants for payment.
Despite their marginalisation in the State, the militants have not entirely lost their operational capacities and spheres of influence. Bangladeshi support remains – and will remain – a critical factor in the persistence of these movements, albeit at a significantly lower level. The tardy pace of border fencing (the process is expected only to be completed in 2007), and the muddle-headedness of the national policy on Bangladesh, have made the task of the Tripura Police the more difficult. Given these enormous obstacles and limitations, the State’s achievements in counter-insurgency have, indeed, been exemplary.