ULFA: Beginning of the end? http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14539725&vsv=SHGTslot2
Monday, 08 October , 2007, 23:55 *Bhaskar Roy**, who retired recently as a senior government official with decades of national and international experience, is an expert on international relations and Indian strategic interests. In this exclusive column for Sify.com, he says the cadres of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) are getting embittered with the state of affairs in the organisation.* The Commander of the United Liberation Front of Assam's feared 28 Battalion, Prabal Neog, surrendered quietly to the Assam police on September 17. Neog surrendered after a lot of deliberation. He had no arms on him, and was accompanied by his wife Purabi, also a cadre, and their two year old son. He was not, as some reports suggest, apprehended in any army or police action. In a sign of the growing disillusionment within the movement, Prabal Neog has been talking to his interrogators more philosophically than a militant cadre. Where did the movement for liberation of Assam go wrong? More significantly, was there a real reason to take up arms and kill innocent Hindi speaking labourers and small businessmen who came from other parts of the country to eke out a livelihood? The origin of the ULFA was ideology and nationalism driven. The division of Assam between India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during partition in 1947 saw a lot of bloodshed. After partition, Bengali speaking Muslims from East Pakistan/Bangladesh began infiltrating into Assam in large numbers as illegal settlers. This was perceived as a demographic invasion threatening to overwhelm the Hindu Assamese. The Assamese blamed this situation on the state government and the Centre. This, to a large extent, is true. The illegal immigrants were used as vote bank by the ruling party and, in return were helped to acquire Indian citizenship by questionable means. The situation in Assam became a gift for aggressive foreign intelligence operations to dismember India. A strong wind of separation from India was blowing across Assam in the late 1970 and early 1980s. The ULFA leadership claims the Assamese are ethnically not Indians and had migrated from South East Asia, and thus demanded a separate identity and separate nation. But when quizzed, they find it difficult to explain why their names, language and religion are so similar to other ethnic diaspora of eastern India. Some Assamese intellectuals had once retorted that if the ULFA feel so strongly about their separate identity, they should go back where they came from. China under Mao Zedong openly supported and assisted armed communist movements and ethnic nationalist movements in Asia. Since Mao believed in armed strength, Beijing assisted these groups to follow Mao's and China's examples, and assisted them with arms and training. The biggest China-backed communist revolution was in Indonesia in 1965. This, was, however, put down by the Indonesian army. Similarly, the Chinese also supported the Naga separatists of North-East India at that time. The Assam movement did not exist then. It was with great sigh of relief that governments of the region welcomed Deng Xiaoping's 1982 statement that earlier Chinese policies were wrong and Chinese would no longer support communist and nationalist movements abroad. Beijing no longer does so officially, and denies any allegation on this issue. Unfortunately, however, evidence suggests the policy continues covertly but very selectively. In the last two decades or so the onslaught on India's security and territorial integrity has increased manifold. It is a coordinated enterprise among our neighbours, though the level of participation varies between the individual countries. Till recently. China supported Pakistan's political position on Kashmir, although Beijing has now retreated to a neutral public position, realizing that India could respond similarly with China's troubled areas like Xingiang and Tibet. Bangladesh, particularly the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) parties and the country's external intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, has given support to Pakistan and its ISI on Bangladeshi soil against India, where the ULFA has emerged as the central character. Arms and equipments are procured by the ULFA and Naga (NSCN II/M) clandestinely from China's Yunan province through Bangladesh and Myanmar. The roll call in the ULFA hierarchy was pretty rigid. The top four or five leaders were immune and not answerable or accountable to anyone. This was bound to happen as the organisation moved away from its ideology to serving the orders and self-interests of these top leaders. Since high level meetings of panels like the central committee were not held for different reasons including security, democratic centralism, when it came to decisions, became redundant. The character of the ULFA movement thus underwent a Kafkasque metamorphosis. It was the converse of Valmiki: instead of bandit to saint, ULFA changed from the so-called saint to bandit. Two prominent activities of the ULFA stand out today. One is killing of innocent Hindi speaking poor labourers who are trying hard to earn two meals a day. The other is kidnapping and extortion, mainly from the corporate sector, and now expanding to Public Sector Units (PSUs) of the central government. Yet there is hardly any accountability of the top ULFA leaders. For example, where does the huge amount of money gained from extortion go? How much of that is spent on the junior cadres and grass-roots level fighters and their families? Interrogation of their young fighters who either surrendered or were captured reveal they have no knowledge. They joined the ULFA convinced by propaganda, but in time they discovered that beyond some killings of innocents and banditry there is little else. Ideology and idealism are used to recruit young cadres. Prabal Neog dropped out of college mesmerised by ULFA propaganda. Although he came from a poor peasant family, he rose up the ULFA corporate ladder because of his competence: he was sharp, a good planner, and ruthless. A large number of killings of the Hindi speaking people in Assam were executed by the 28 Battalion under Neog. Neog now regrets his past actions. Before surrendering, he was well aware his interrogators would want to know the organisation's foreign links and support. He came prepared to divulge whatever he knew. For Neog to take this momentous step, something is very wrong with the ULFA. Which begs a series of questions. Next: Some serious questions<http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14539725&page=2> 1 | 2 <http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14539725&page=2> Next >><http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14539725&page=2> ULFA: Beginning of the end? Monday, 08 October , 2007, 23:55 Previous: Where did the ULFA go wrong?<http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14539725> First: Are the ULFA leaders ensconced in Bangladesh totally free to act as they desire? Very unlikely. The top leaders who are in Bangladesh or regularly take refuge there are certainly under the control of DGFI. For example, the ULFA's Commander in Chief, Paresh Barua, lives in Dhaka with his family. He runs businesses both in Dhaka and Chittagong. He holds a Bangladeshi passport, one in the name of Azam Khan. He travels to meet his ISI controllers in Pakistan on this Bangladeshi passport stamped with a Pakistani visa. Pakistan and Bangladesh are working together with Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs) on Bangladesh soil. Similarly, the ISI is increasingly launching terrorist attacks in the heartland of India using Bangladesh as the base. The ISI network in the country is very well known to the DGFI and concerned Bangladeshi authorities at the highest levels. These terrorists mostly come in through the West Bengal border. In 2005, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Morshed Khan, also a leader of the BNP, had warned that "If India surrounds Bangladesh, Bangladesh also surrounds India'. It was no idle observation. It was a conscious threat. If we look at the 4,000 km long India-Bangladesh border, one segment is used by IIGs and the other segment by Islamic terrorists, to enter and exit India. Top ULFA leaders in Bangladesh include its Chairman Arbinda Rajkhowa, General Secretary Anup Chetia, Commander in Chief Paresh Barua and Vice-Chairman Pradip Gogoi. The ULFA camps are in the general region of Sylhet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. These camps are mobile, i.e. can be quickly dismantled and moved. The ULFA cadres in India are getting embittered with the state of affairs in the organisation. In revolution and national liberation movements the leadership spend their times in hardship with the fighting cadres. ULFA indoctrination include stories of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevera and Fidel Castro. But the ULFA leaders do not practise what they preach. While the fighting cadres and commanders live in appalling adverse conditions, it would have been palatable if the top leaders joined them from time to time. On the contrary, the ULFA leaders live in ostentatious luxury in Bangladesh. The ULFA leaders and cadres in India do not know from their leadership how much they are earning in Bangladesh, including from weapons business. The ULFA is very much in league with Bangladeshi illegal arms importers who were either from the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI). Part of the arms and ammunition are in turn sold to other IIGs also present in Bangladesh. Paresh Barua was in Chittagong on that fateful night in 2004 when a huge amount of arms and ammunitions were being taken out of the sea port. The exercise was inadvertently botched up and the media get hold of the news. The arms were smuggled in by a ship owned by Sallauddin Qader Choudhury, the Parliamentary Adviser to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. Although a member of the BNP, Salauddin is a die-hard Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI). That anti-India BNP-Jamaat government was working with Pakistan against India is well known. Next question: How do ULFA cadres see their future? At the moment they see living in jungle camps with mosquitoes and malaria, killing, avoiding the bullets of the Indian security forces, and no real destination in sight. They realise their ULFA has lost out, and the movement got derailed and captured by a bigger enemy. On the other hand, their compatriots in Bangladesh camps are yet to realise what is about to hit them since they have no access to outside information. The top leadership working out of Bangladesh is increasingly becoming prisoners of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi security agencies. According to some information emanating from Dhaka, the ULFA has been trying to acquire property in England for opening a sanctuary base. The ULFA is not on the UK list of terrorist organisations. Third question: Can and will the ULFA leaders in Bangladesh return to India and hold talks with the Indian authorities? Or rather, will they be allowed to do so by Pakistan and the Bangladeshi agencies? *By the same author: Northeast is more dangerous than Kashmir<http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14521199> * | *A black mark on 'Made in China' products*<http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14529242> Consider this: If Dawood Ibrahim is allowed by Pakistan to surrender to the Indian agencies, one can imagine the disaster that he could reveal about Pakistan's covert war against India. Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, known as the father of the "Islamic" nuclear bomb, and mother of all nuclear proliferators, was shielded by the Pakistani regime from international interlocutors, including the US and the MEA. The surrender of the ULFA leaders to the Indian authorities is thus a remote possibility. Their confessions will implicate both the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshi agencies in terrorism against India. Pakistan may turn its back, but Bangladesh will be in a more difficult position including with their own people. For the ISI there is no accountability. For the Bangladeshi institutions and agencies, accountability will certainly be called for by the liberal faction. Fourth and final question. Do the Assamese people see the ULFA movement as a beneficial and healthy activity for the betterment of the Assamese people? Do the Assamese people really feel they are not part of India and are being exploited by New Delhi? Of course, there was an initial euphoria and an unnaturally heightened sense of alienation in the initial stages of the movement. The truth has since been gradually realised and that sense of alienation has died. To the mainstream Assamese the ULFA is no longer a struggle for national salvation but one that keeps life disturbed. The ULFA's cooperation with the Pakistani and Bangladeshi agencies is not seen as "my enemy's enemy is my (tactical) friend". The ULFA has joined the very people they were to oppose: the Bengali Muslims migrants from Bangladesh. Paresh Barua and company are actively collaborating with the growing underground Islamic terrorist organisations comprising the same Bangladeshi migrants like the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA) who are working against the Assamese people. A lot about the ULFA was fictitious propaganda At the same time it cannot be denied the Central Government had ignored North-East India. But things are changing fast, though a lot of repair work has to be done by all concerned. Prabal Neog's surrender has raised the white flag. The distance between the ULFA cadres in India and the top leadership in Bangladesh is rapidly widening. While a discredited and dying movement, a few more drastic militant actions by them in the immediate future is a real possibility, as the leadership will try to shore up their morale. Bangladesh may get into some serious trouble internationally if they do not eject the ULFA from their soil. An US NGO which monitors terrorism and extremism and enjoy international credibility has recently exposed new information on ULFA's nexus. Stratfor.com has recently revealed that the ULFA is also working with the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Bangladesh. HUJAI's link with the ISI and the Al Qaida is known. This bring in another dimension since the HUJAI has been linked with a number of terrorist attacks in India, the last being in Hyderabad. The BNP-Jamaat led government in Bangladesh (2201-2005) had tried to protect the HUJAI but had to declare it a terrorist organisation under US pressure. The interim caretaker government which the backing of the armed forces was expected to clean up the act. But they have been unsuccessful even if some of them had the will. The entire establishment including the security agencies and courts are packed with BNP-Jamaat appointees. The Bangladesh authorities, at least, cannot deny the presence of Anup Chetia in the country. He is still in jail with all amenities provided although he has served his sentence for having entered Bangladesh illegally. The Indian government has been more than accommodative of Bangladesh. But patience is beginning to wear thin. It is time to take definitive steps to eradicate the sanctions of IIGs in Bangladesh. The time is not too far away. It is hoped Dhaka is listening.
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