The Indian Punjab has now experienced nearly seven years of peace, after the terrorist movement for ‘Khalistan’ was comprehensively defeated in 1993. There have, however, been continuous efforts from across the border to revive terrorism, but these have met with little success, and have only resulted in an occasional incident of random and aimless terrorist violence, such as the bomb planted in a bus from Jammu to New Delhi which killed eight persons at Fatehgarh Sahib on March 3, 2000. It is not yet clear whether Punjab terrorists or Kashmiri secessionists were responsible for this specific act.
The greater danger in Punjab today is the character of its politics, the continuous regime of poor governance, and the financial mismanagement and corruption that have brought the State government to the brink of bankruptcy. Within the ruling Akali Dal, there has been an intense churning between the moderate and extremist factions. The widening gulf between various groups within the Sikh clergy and rising Akali factionalism have spilled into the year 2000, and have substantial potential for violence. In a significant realignment of power, Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal outmanoeuvred the Gurcharan Singh Tohra group, which had reigned over the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) for the past fourteen years, and succeeded in installing Bibi Jagir Kaur (incidentally the first woman) as the head of the Sikh body responsible for the management of Sikh shrines. There is a danger that these manipulations could encourage militant activities, or that these various factions may themselves incite violence. This risks are heightened by the fact that the Akali government, which came to power with an agenda of speedy development, has dissipated its energies and resources in constant internal feuds, populist policies, and in pandering to religious sentiments. The rate of economic growth in the State plummeted to 1.91 per cent in 1999, less than a third of the national average, which was 6.8 percent.
The encouraging factor was that despite the prevailing political and economic instability, the year 1999 was free of terrorist killings, though arrests and seizures of arms and ammunition continued. The Punjab Police launched two operations, Operation Khoj and Operation Pehchan, to identify militants from various groups. 55 terrorists were arrested during the year, and another five surrendered. Many of the arrests were made outside Punjab. In the most significant of these arrests, three militants of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) were arrested near Ludhiana with 20 slabs of RDX, 1.5 kilograms of PETN, as well as other arms and some heroin. Another BKI militant was arrested on March 28, 1999, and 32 kilograms of RDX was recovered from him. The BKI is presently the most active militant group in the State. In total, the Police seized 144 kilograms of explosives, including 131 kilograms of RDX in 1999. These seizures indicate that a substantial militant threat persists in Punjab.
Another significant develoment was the surrender of former Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) leader Manjinder Singh Issi, who had been held responsible for the kidnapping of a Romanian diplomat, and an attack on former SGPC Chief, Gurcharan Tohra, as well as for the murder of a former Punjab Finance Minister, Balwant Singh. In July 1999, 12 Babbar Khalsa men were arrested over two weeks from different locations. Some of these arrests were made as far off as Baroda and Ahmedabad in Gujarat, and demonstrated an emerging link between criminal groups operating in western India and militants from Punjab.
Among the various incidents of sporadic violence in the State, the explosion at the Chakki Bank station on November 11, 1999, was suspected to be a joint venture between various militant outfits. Earlier, on June 30, a bomb blast occurred in the State capital, Chandigarh, but no one was hurt. The blast was linked to Rattanpreet Singh of the Khalistan Commando Force – Panjwar (KCF-Panjwar). There were another couple of blasts linked to Punjab militants in the neighbouring State of Harayana, and at Delhi. As pressure on militants is high within Punjab, a new axis appears to be emerging in neighbouring areas, centred somewhere around Shahabad in Harayana, where significant quantities of RDX have been recovered. A blast had also taken place in a train near Panipat in Harayana.
Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) continues to pursue its vigorous hands-on policy in the Indian Punjab. Several smugglers and criminals close to that agency have been apprehended trying to develop new routes into Punjab for use of militant groups at a later stage. Crucially, Pakistan appointed a former Chief of the ISI as the head of the Gurudwara Committee in Pakistan, which is responsible for the care of important Sikh shrines in that country. These shrines have long been used by Pakistan for indoctrination and recruitment among the thousands of pilgrims who visit them from India each year. A meeting was also organised at Lahore to commemorate the anniversary of Operation Bluestar, the Army operation carried out in 1984 to flush out militants from the Golden Temple complex. At the commemoration gathering, Jamaat-i-Islami leaders expressed sympathy with the ‘Sikh cause of Khalistan’. Many militants belonging to various factions, including the Dal Khalsa, the Babbar Khalsa and the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), attended the meeting.
At present, the most active militant group in the State is the Babbar Khalsa. There were reports that the Babbars had aligned with Ranjit Singh Neeta’s new formation, the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF). Two other groups currently active in Punjab are the KCF-Panjwar and the ISYF-Rode. Various factions of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) are presently striving for a merger of their splinter groups under the leadership of Navneet Singh Qadian.
Militant activity in Punjab is at present no longer linked to the politics of the State. An unstable Akali regime, which has not succeeded in fulfilling its developmental promises, is however, continuously pandering to religious sentiments and destabilising existing equations within Sikh Gurudwara politics. These developments could push the fringe elements within the Akali parties, the hardliners, who have been marginalised over the past years, into the forefront, threatening the hard-won peace of the State.