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High in the Land of the Thunder Dragon,
terror
By Wasbir Hussain
Separatist insurgencies in India’s northeast
have long had an external dimension. In 1956, Angami
Zapu Phizo, who started the first tribal insurgency in
the country, went into exile in Britain, via then East
Pakistan, from where he led the Naga bush war against
New Delhi until his death in April 1990. Phizo’s
successors in the Naga movement, as also a multiplicity
of other separatist militancies, have also long operated
out of bases outside India.
This has been a
problem that has strained India’s ties with Bhutan since
a band of heavily armed militants belonging to the
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) moved into the
adjoining Himalayan kingdom in the early 1990s, and
established well-entrenched bases there, somewhat
souring an otherwise agreeable bilateral relationship
between New Delhi and Thimpu. ULFA’s surviving capacity
to carry out violent operations in the northeastern
Indian State of Assam - where the group seeks to
establish a sovereign homeland - is essentially based on
their ability to cross over into safe havens in the
jungles of southern Bhutan.
Indian intelligence
agencies put the number of ULFA camps inside Bhutan at
36 until recently, including its general headquarters,
council headquarters and a number of training
establishments. An estimated 2,000 cadres, both men and
women, live in these camps, mostly located in the
southern Bhutan district of Samdrup Jhongkar, which has
a contiguous border with Assam’s western district of
Nalbari some 100 kilometers west of the state capital,
Guwahati. It is to these bases that the ULFA hit squads
mostly return after attacks in Indian territory,
traversing the densely wooded and porous international
border. The situation is complicated further by the
presence in Bhutan of the National Democratic Front of
Bodoland and Kamatapur Liberation Organization, two
other terrorist groups active in Assam. Supported by the
ULFA, these groups have established many camps on
Bhutanese soil, with an estimated 21 such camps run by
the first group alone, though many of these are common
to the ULFA.
The presence of the Indian
separatists now tops Bhutan’s national agenda, with the
royal government describing it as a great threat to
national security and sovereignty. Counter-insurgency
officials and policy makers in India, including Assam’s
Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, are of the view that unless
the rebels are denied sanctuary in the kingdom,
militancy in Assam will remain impossible to contain. In
a conversation with the author, Chief Minister Gogoi
stated that he had already urged India's Deputy Prime
Minister and Federal Home Minister, L K Advani, to take
up the issue of the rebels’ presence in Bhutan with the
royal government.
In accordance with an existing
agreement, Indian paramilitary and police personnel,
though not the army, can enter Bhutanese territory in an
extraordinary hot pursuit situation. In reality,
considering the terrain, the rebels can only be taken on
in a pincer attack backed by Bhutanese soldiers. New
Delhi consequently had some reasons for satisfaction
when Bhutan’s National Assembly once again deliberated
on the presence of the Indian militants in the kingdom
during its session earlier this month and reiterated its
call to the rebels to pull out from the kingdom in a
peaceful manner or face physical eviction through
military force.
Such pullout calls to the rebels
have been given by Bhutan several times in the past. In
June 2001, the ULFA and the Bhutanese government arrived
at an agreement which required the militants to reduce
the number of their camps and the strength of their
cadres in the kingdom, as a prelude to final withdrawal
from the country. In December 2001, Bhutanese
authorities claimed that the ULFA had "closed down four
of nine camps" in the country. That position has now
changed, with King Jigme Singhye Wangchuk informing the
National Assembly that it was of "no use" if the ULFA
agreed to move two or three camps, because it would not
be possible for the authorities to determine whether
remaining camps had simply been merged or relocated
elsewhere within Bhutan. The country’s home minister,
Thinley Gyamtsho, has stated that the ULFA had opened a
new camp on a mountain ridge above the Samdrup
Jongkhar-Tashigang Highway, a fact corroborated by
Indian intelligence officials.
As a result, this
time round, Bhutan’s National Assembly has decided to
ask the ULFA to shut down its headquarters and presence
on Bhutanese soil, not just a few specific camps. The
National Assembly thus concluded, "If the leaders of the
ULFA refuse to relocate their headquarters, then it will
be clear to the government and people of Bhutan that the
outfit has no intention of leaving Bhutanese territory
and there would be no other option but to evict them
physically." This is a tough stance for Thimphu to
maintain, and for the ULFA, it is a difficult demand to
comply with.
Evicting the heavily armed ULFA
cadres from Bhutan is easier said than done, and here
lies Assam’s problem. It is not clear whether the Royal
Bhutan Police and the Royal Bhutan Army, despite the
presence of some commando units trained by the Indian
security establishment, can take on the trained ULFA
rebels. Will Bhutan finally agree to let the Indian army
into the kingdom for a joint offensive? How does one
flush out the rebels if Indian forces are to keep
waiting on the borders to trap the fleeing militants?
The greatest fear is that of possible retaliation by the
ULFA on innocent Bhutanese citizens in case of firm
action by the royal government.
There are other
problem areas. New Delhi will certainly be concerned
over suggestions by a few Bhutanese National Assembly
members that Thimphu should look towards China for help
in tackling the insurgents, rather than rely totally on
India. These members suggested that India may be keeping
its forces on the border with Bhutan in order to
deliberately confine the rebels within the kingdom,
though this perspective was discounted by Bhutanese Home
Minister Gyamtsho.
Bhutanese authorities now say
they will have one last sitting with the ULFA leadership
in a bid to persuade them to leave the kingdom, lock,
stock and barrel. Clearly, the royal government is still
keen to resolve the matter without having to shed blood.
But where will the ULFA shift its men and
materials if it were to honor King Wangchuk’s wishes?
Indications suggest exploratory moves towards the
Indo-Myanmar border in the northeastern Indian state of
Arunachal Pradesh, to link up with the group’s ally, the
Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of
Nagalim, who have bases in the area. Bangladesh is
another option, with much of the organization’s senior
leadership already based there.
In a telephone
interview with the author, Bhutan Foreign Secretary
Ugyen Tshering stated that the ULFA leadership had told
the Bhutanese authorities that they could not fulfil
their commitment to withdraw from the kingdom because of
the increased presence of Indian troops on the
Indo-Bhutan border in the Assam sector. Thimphu has
since taken up this issue with New Delhi, Tshering said.
At one stage, key officials of the Indian
Ministry of Home Affairs had mentioned the possibility
of granting the rebels safe passage to move through
Assam, if the ULFA wanted to move from Bhutan into
another country. That, again, is a decision that will
have to be taken at the highest level, and is unlikely
in the present situation. Gyamtsho suggested that New
Delhi might grant the rebels amnesty if they were to
withdraw from the kingdom and return to India. As things
stand now, however, the stage has not reached for the
ULFA to take up an amnesty offer even if New Delhi were
to make one. Under the circumstances, both India and
Bhutan will continue to be haunted by the presence of
the Assamese separatists in the Land of the Thunder
Dragon.
Wasbir Hussain is consulting
editor, The Sentinel, Guwahati; associate fellow, the
Institute for Conflict Management, a non-profit society
set up in 1997 in New Delhi which is committed to the
continuous evaluation and resolution of problems of
internal security in South Asia
Printed with
permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review of
the South Asia Terrorism
Portal
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