The latter part of May 2012 saw Assam gearing up security following the anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa)’s “welcome programme” for Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s visit to the state. Its call for a bandh and threats was a tactic to make its presence felt as the flow of funds to its coffers has been down as many people refused to heed to their extortion demands. While timely recovery of explosives may have foiled some earlier attempts to target oil pipelines and other installations, two developments require not only inter-state and intra-state security of north-eastern states to be tightened but also diplomatic pressure on Burma to be raised to evict Indian insurgent-turned terrorists groups hiding there. One is of the Naxal-Maoists spreading to the northeast, aided by China-supported Ulfa, and other terrorist groups of the region, and the other is reuniting of many of these groups.
Yet again, the Maoist moves in the northeast have been acknowledged by the Union home minister and the chief minister of Assam. Addressing the chief ministers’ conference on internal security on April 16, home minister P Chidambaram had said that Assam has emerged as the new theatre of Maoist activity and there were also inputs about links of CPI (Maoist) with insurgent-turned-terrorist groups in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.
On May 12, while on a tour of Arunachal Pradesh, Mr Chidambaram is reported to have said in Itanagar that there would be no compromise with Maoists trying to destabilise peace in the northeast. He said the Centre was alive to the situation created by such groups in the region and was taking concrete steps to curb them and said state governments of the region had been asked to deal with the ultras with “a firm hand.”
Stating that there was “minimal presence” of Maoists in the region, he expressed appreciation of the steps taken by Assam and Arunachal Pradesh governments to deal with them. “There is no reason to allow such elements (Maoists) to settle in the region and create disturbances,” he said and appealed to the people not to encourage the Maoists. Accompanied by Union minister of state for home Jitendra Singh, he held a high-level meeting to review the security situation in the state. While on the one hand he expressed satisfaction with the security system of the state, on the other he stressed that much more needs to be done. “Efforts will continue as per plan,” he was quoted. On April 8, the National Investigating Agency (NIA) scored a success in snapping a major link between the Maoist rebel groups and Manipur based militant group Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) by arresting a hardcore cadre, Arnold Singh alias Bekon, working at a call centre in Siliguri. According to official sources, Arnold, who originally is from Guwahati, joined the PLA in 2003 and following the signing of an agreement between the Maoist rebels and PLA, he led a four member team of the PLA to Jharkhand where they imparted training to several batches of Maoist rebels. One of the indicators of this incident is the outreach or spread of northeast terrorist groups away from their respective states. While PLA of Manipur has had major links with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in Bangladesh, it also has bases in a number of northeastern states.
On May 9, the Assam police claimed to have killed four unidentified Maoists activists in an encounter at Deopani Borgora Nepali Gaon near Buraburhi Than under Chapakhowa police station of Sadiya in Tinsukia district. The police recovered two AK-47 and one AK-56 rifles, 3 live grenades, 53 rounds of live ammunition, a detonator and several extortion demand notes from them.
While this operation by the Assam police was successful, it exposes only a tip of the iceberg. Because it is not only the advent of Maoists making inroads into Assam as the late leader Kishenji’s visit there proved, the fact that there are ethnic Assamese being identified as Maoists means that the process of recruiting Assamese into their organigation has progressed.
Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi is reported to have directed top state officials to immediately prepare an action plan for setting up a task force to contain the increasing Maoist activities in the state and announced that an Assam police task force/core group would be formed under an additional director general of police to contain Maoist activities and counterfeit currency racket in the state. “Maoist activities” in Assam will no doubt be supported by the so-called anti-talks United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and if not nipped in the bud, will spread to other states of the northeast with support from Ulfa’s other crony groups comprising Bodos, Nagas, and Meiteis. National Socialist Council of Nagaland/Nagalim-Isaac-Muivah (NSCN-IM) and PLA. Further, there has been a major development of yet another attempt at bringing together fourteen terrorist groups of the northeast together. So Mr Gogoi’s formula of raising yet another police or special force or reorganising the existing one will be easier said than done, because neutralising a combo of pan northeast groups and Naxals together, that too with Chinese support over and above substantial long-standing support of ISI, will require a complete makeover of state and central police, if the Army is to be kept out of the ambit. This will involve substantially increasing the numbers of the force, providing it good training at institutes like Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte, Mizoram, providing better weapons, communications and mobility and most important, dynamic leadership.
In February, this year, Rajeev Bhattacharyya, working for a northeast media publication, spent a few days in an Ulfa camp set up ideally in eastern Nagaland with advantages like it being contiguous to Nagaland and Manipur, proximity to Burma, only a few days walk from Upper Assam and well connected by rivers and jungle pathways, making the delivery of weapons and supplies easy. In that camp, he witnessed a huge consignment of European 9mm pistols and HK33 assault rifles being delivered. Though Heckler and Koch do not make the HK33 anymore, variants of the rifle were produced under licence in some south Asian countries. Once the consignment was unpacked, young cadres test-fired the guns before putting them into storage. Sources were cited that orders were being placed for the Chinese Type 81 rifles and the American M16, both in the price range of `2,00,000 to `3,00,000. Interestingly, “concessional rates” apply for orders that are placed in bulk. The other very exciting but ominously significant event he witnessed was a soccer match, in which Paresh Baruah’s blue team, comprising cadres from Ulfa, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) played against the opposing team made up of Manipuri terrorist groups, which won, 4-2.