Northeast Terror Groups’ Red links

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Linkage between Naxal-Maoists and Northeastern terrorist groups, brought out by this newspaper a year ago, has now being elaborated in the media, following the apprehension of some of the latter groups’ leaders/senior operatives. Interrogation and investigation following the arrests of Raj Kumar Meghen, heading the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), Anthony Shimray, a key operative of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim’s Isak-Muivah faction (NSCN-IM) and Aditya Bora, formerly of United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), caught over the past few months, have revealed a number of links with Naxal-Maoists apart from other anti-India activities and plans thereof.
According to a Manipur news portal, Meghen was arrested by a combined team of Bangladesh intelligence officials and Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) officials from India on the outskirts of Dhaka on September 23, 2010. Meghen alias Sanayaima, is the great grandson of the legendary General Bir Tikendrajit Singh, a commander of the erstwhile Manipur kingdom’s army, which fiercely fought against the British. He was hanged by them in 1891 at Kangjeibung, the polo field in the heart of Imphal.
On March 3, 2011, the Union ministry of home affairs is reported to have accorded sanction for prosecution of Meghen and 18 other members of the outfit. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has chargesheeted 19 UNLF members arrested from different locations in Guwahati and other parts of the country for plotting a “systematic war against India” and trying to bring Maoists and three other outfits of Manipur under one umbrella to “destabilise” the country, and hatching an anti-India conspiracy from China and Nepal. By reportedly retrieving email communications of the accused, NIA has obtained details of 149 incidents of violence by UNLF, involved in murder, kidnapping, extortion and arms-snatching in Manipur for many years.
Media reports from Imphal in November 2009 stated that 50 hardcore terrorists from Manipur’s People Liberation Army (PLA, a close ally of the (UNLF), are imparting armed training to Naxal-Maoists while NSCN(IM) is supplying arms to them.
A thoroughly planned operation by the RAW and NIA culminated on October 2, 2010, when they apprehend Anthony Shimray, a key operative of NSCN(IM) outside Patna railway station. Shimray, the nephew of its general secretary, T. Muivah, is not only a powerful member of the outfit’s top leadership, but also its chief arms procurer and its major China link. He also turned out to be a gold mine of information about China’a support to NSCN(IM) and other insurgent-turned-terrorist groups in India.
As Shimray was in Bangkok, some painstaking intelligence work was done in getting to know his travel plans to renew his visa from Thailand to Nepal to Bihar to eventually reach Manipur and Nagaland for meeting the NSCN(IM) leaders and cadres. Kept under observation, he was arrested before he could reach his destinations in the Northeast.
While Shimray’s interrogation disclosures reportedly amounting to a hundred pages only confirm and elaborate on what was mentioned in features written by this writer in this newspaper about Naxal-Maoists, Ulfa, NSCN(IM), UNLF and other groups of Manipur and Assam, they clearly highlight yet again the duplicity of China, Pakistan and Burma. Speaking at length about NSCN(IM), Shimray also revealed Chinese intelligence agencies’ links with the Ulfa and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the UNLF. These links have significantly increased and extended since Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government assumed charge in Bangladesh, before which Pakistan’s ISI had wide presence, with a firm hold on Ulfa and other Northeast based groups whose representatives and camps were based there.
As recently as September 2010, Shimray held talks with his Bangkok middleman Willy Narue for procuring arms. He even requested his suppliers to deliver a consignment meant for Arunachal Pradesh directly “from the Chinese side”. His covert trip to India in October 2010, when he got caught, was quite obviously in connection with trafficking arms. Shimray also told his interrogators how he procured arms from the Chinese in the late 2007.
“It was decided by our leadership stationed in New Delhi to strengthen the weaponry of organisation,” he revealed. With Narue’s help, he contacted one Yuthuna, a Chinese representative of Bangkok-based “TCL”, the authorised subsidiary of the Chinese arms company China Xinshidai, Beijing, described on its website as dealing in the import and export of specialised products by China’s defence industries. The final shopping list included 600 AK series rifles, nearly six lakh ammunition rounds, 200 sub-machine guns, pistols, rocket launchers, light machine guns and 200 kg of RDX. The deal was worth $1.2 million, with an additional $1 million for shipment from China. The consignment was sent through a shipping agent in Kittichai of Bangkok-based Intermarine Shipping. It was to be “loaded from Beihei, a south Chinese port. The destination was Cox Bazar”, a major landing station on the Bangladesh coast. “All the correspondence with Willy Narue, our leadership in New Delhi, Nagaland and others in Thailand and China,” Shimray says, “was made on email to maintain the secrecy of the entire project”. The information was saved as a draft and accessed by the Chinese intelligence using Shimray’s password. Shimray also recalled his visit to China in 1994 for a joint arms deal for the NDFB. The “procurement of arms and ammunition was made from the Chinese company NORINCO”. The consignment included “1,800 pieces of arms and one lakh rounds, which included AK series rifles, M16 automatic assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and pistols”. The money came from a Naga businessman using Calcutta-based hawala operators. Again in 1996, “arms and ammunition were brought from Beijing to Cox Bazar in a North Korean ship”. After the consignment was unloaded in small boats on the high seas and transferred in trucks to NSCN(IM) camps in Bangladesh, it travelled to the Northeast.
In another significant revelation, Shimray details how China’s relationship with the NSCN(IM) was streng-thened in 2008 when it agreed to host their “permanent representative”. This newspaper’s Guwahati correspondent recently wrote a detailed report on China’s assured support to the Northeast terrorist groups.
On 12 February 2011, in what was reported to be the first direct evidence of the Naxal-Maoist link in Assam and other Northeastern states, the Orissa police arrested three Assamese youth from Saranda forest area of Sunderdgarh district in Orissa bordering Jharkhand, while they were coming from a Maoist camp. Rourkela SP, Diptesh Patnaik reportedly claimed that one of the arrested Maoists, Aditya Bora, was a former Ulfa member. He said Bora was the head of Upper Assam leading committee of CPI(Maoist), floated early in 2010. Since few weeks prior to his arrest, Bora had circulated press statement in the local media claiming the existence of the Naxal-Maoists’ base in Assam, Though, top Maoist leaders were found to have been in touch with elusive Ulfa boss Paresh Baruah and other terrorist outfits of Manipur, this was the first time that their direct link in Assam was found. On November 6, 2010, the interrogation of Ulfa operative Tarjan Majhi, who was arrested by the Assam police, revealed that Maoists have established links with another insurgent outfit raised in Assam’s Sonitpur district through the Ulfa. Majhi claimed that an Ulfa self-styled sergeant-major Das had provided arms to Adivasi People’s Army (APA) cadre in Majbat area of Udalguri district and helped them contact the Maoists. He also admitted that APA rebels were formed in Sonitpur in 2001 and had the strength of 150 cadres operating in Darrang and Udalguri districts. Earlier, a senior police official from the Chhattisgarh told a Nagaland-based daily that Maoists felt that the “Northeast insurgent camps provide expertise in guerrilla training and especially smuggling of arms and ammunition from neighbouring countries”.
Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi recently confirmed close operational cooperation between Naxal elements. and “anti-talk faction of the Ulfa” under Paresh Baruah, who has threatened him and his Assam Congress colleagues. Baruah is also trying hard to recruit more cadres.
What has clearly emerged is (a) China is upping the ante against India by renewing and reinvigorating old growing connections with the NSCN(IM), offering/in-creasing its support to the Ulfa and other terrorist groups in the Northeast, which lost their foothold/sa-nctuary in Bangladesh as well as to the Naxal-Maoists, (b) NSCN(IM)’s renewed efforts to arm itself despite 14 years of its dialogue with New Delhi, (c) Ulfa, NSCN(IM) and PLA actively providing training and weapons to Naxal-Maoists and (d) Burma’s insincerity about denying sanctuary and support to these terrorist groups despite the quid-pro-quo of doing so for much assistance it is getting from India.
While New Delhi maintains a studied silence on the Chinese hand in the Northeast or arms from across the border reaching Naxal-Maoists in central India, the RAW and NIA have shown some positive results, a trend which must be improved upon and relentlessly maintained.

Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi