Understanding Indian Insurgencies

[VCheng]

from: India

India’s north-east
A neglected crisis
Violence in distant Assam boils over in the rest of the country
Aug 25th 2012 | KOKRAJHAR, ASSAM AND PUNE | from the print edition


On July 6th, a month after an altercation at a mosque in a region run by (non-Muslim) tribesmen in north-east India, four men on motorcycles shot and killed two Muslims. Six weeks later, some 80 people have been killed in communal bloodletting; the army has been sent into Assam with orders to shoot to kill; tens of thousands of north-easterners in other parts of India have fled homeward in fear of their lives; India has accused Pakistanis of being the origin of doctored video messages designed to stir up religious hatred; and 400,000-500,000 Indians are homeless or displaced within Assam, the largest involuntary movement of people inside the country since independence. How on earth did a local conflict, one of many in the area, produce such devastating nationwide consequences?

The spark for the extraordinary sequence of events was a fight in western Assam between indigenous Bodo tribesmen (pronounced Boro) and Bengali-speakers who have been moving into the area for more than a century. The Bodo say the incomers are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and want them to be kicked out.

The migrants are mostly Muslim. The Bodo are animist or Christian. Muslims have grown modestly as a share of Assam’s population (from 24% to 31% in the three decades to 2001). No surge explains the latest violence, although the Muslim population of western Assam is growing faster. In some villages the Bodo are now a minority. They say they feel swamped by Muslim immigrants.

However, the conflict is not primarily about religion. It is about land. The Bodo hold land in common. The Bengali-speakers are settled farmers, anxious to establish private-property rights as protection against dispossession. In 2003, after a long, violent campaign for autonomy, the Bodo got their own Bodo Territorial Council, on whose turf outsiders may not own property. The Bodo consider all Muslims outsiders—hence the dispute at the mosque.

Assam’s conflict has been going on for decades. A massacre in 1983 was far more brutal than this year’s violence. Yet until now the dispute, like other insurgencies of the north-east, has had no real impact elsewhere in the country.

This time, there were riots in Mumbai and attacks in nearby Pune on people from Manipur. Some 30,000 north-easterners fled from Bangalore, nine of them being thrown off a moving train. Some authorities encouraged the exodus by laying on special trains: 30,000 tickets to Guwahati, Assam’s capital, were sold in three days.

The impact of mobile phones has made a difference. On August 12th people started getting text messages warning north-easterners to go home before the end of Ramadan (August 20th). They also got video messages with doctored images purporting to show the bodies of Muslims killed in Assam. In fact these were victims of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 in Myanmar.

India’s home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, said that many of the fake images came from websites in Pakistan and asked for the Pakistani government’s help in closing them down. Pakistan denied involvement. India ordered the blocking of over 250 websites and asked mobile-service providers to restrict the number of SMS messages. Yet the images have gone viral.

The Assam conflict also spread because people elsewhere sought to capitalise on it. Mumbai saw rival protests by a big Muslim organisation, the Raza Academy, then a big Hindu one, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. The opposition (Hindu-nationalist) Bharatiya Janata Party said Assam’s problem is illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Assam is ruled by the Congress party. Its chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, said bluntly “there are no Bangladeshis in the clash but Indian citizens.” The Assam conflict has not been such partisan fodder before.

The reverberations across the rest of the country may force Indians to focus for once on the chronic failings of government policy in the north-east. Linked to the rest of the country only by a “chicken’s neck” stretch of land 22km wide, the region is isolated, poor and different. Assam, easily its biggest state, is one of India’s poorest. North-easterners look different: a Manipuri teacher in Pune says everyone from passers-by to his pupils calls him, offensively, “Chinky”. North-easterners call the rest of the country “mainland India”.

One manifestation of this distinctiveness is the persistence of insurgencies. The Institute for Conflict Management, a think-tank, lists 26 active armed groups in the region, and ten organisations proscribed by India’s home ministry. There are armed separatists in five of the seven states. In the early 2000s the death toll was 1,700 a year.

Dealing with such a region was always going to be hard. Yet successive governments have made things worse. They have attempted to placate insurgent groups by giving them more autonomy. The north-east has 16 such areas, more than the rest of India. But giving each group a place of its own creates restive new minorities within the area—as in Bodoland.

National politicians have also shied away from dealing with illegal migration, partly because the issue is toxic and partly because local politicians like to register newcomers as voters. For a while, Assam even had its own immigration policy, until that was struck down by the Supreme Court. By letting ambiguity about incomers’ legal status persist, politicians leave the field open to armed extremists who want to kick all Muslims out.

Central governments have attempted to buy peace. Between 20% and 55% of north-eastern states’ GDP comes in transfers from the centre—a huge proportion. It keeps their economies going, but turns local governments into client states surrounded by autonomous areas ruled by former insurgents, while armed gangs wage guerrilla campaigns at the margins.

It is fair to say there have been some improvements. Fatalities have fallen since 2008, thanks to a deal with Bangladesh which denied some insurgents their former bases. But as is clear from the Bodo conflict, the grievances which produced the insurgencies remain. India’s long-term goals in the region are to encourage its integration with the rest of the country, to use the north-east to boost economic ties with South-East Asia, and to check China’s influence in Myanmar. At the moment, none of those aims is being advanced.

from the print edition | Asia

[Ray]

It is an undeniable fact that in the hierarchy of what passes off as “national” news, northeastern India occupies the lowest rung. While periodic lip-service is paid to the need to rectify matters and bring this much-neglected part of India into the “mainstream” discourse, the bewildering complexity of the region and its relative inaccessibility has ensured that the Northeast remains an afterthought, a sort of fourth world in the third world.......

Was it, as many insisted, a “communal” clash involving Hindu Bodos and Muslim settlers who had arrived from what is now Bangladesh? Alternatively, was it an ethnic clash involving the indigenous Bodos and Bengali-speaking immigrants? The underlying presumption was that while a “communal” clash was unacceptable, an “ethnic” conflict was nominally less damning.....


However, what is clear is that in trying to slot the violence into pre-determined compartments and exploring the vexed question of administrative culpability, the media and the political class are taking evasive action. There is an uncomfortable dimension to this ethnic-communal flare-up in Kokrajhar and Dhubri that decision-makers would rather not address, not least because they have no answers to offer.

That the origins of the violence lie in the demographic upheaval Assam has been witnessing for the past 100 years is undeniable. Thanks to waves of immigration from the region that is now Bangladesh, the population of Assam increased from 3.29 million in 1901 to 14.6 million in 1971, a 343.7 per cent increase compared to the all-India increase of nearly 150 per cent in the same period. Public intellectuals in Assam have stressed that the increase of the Muslim population has been disproportionate. In an unusual intervention last week, the election commissioner, H.S. Brahma suggested that the details of the 2011 census may reveal that 11 of the 27 districts of Assam now have a Muslim majority.

While the issue of “illegal immigration” from Bangladesh has formed an important part of the public discourse of the Assamese-speaking Hindus of the Brahmaputra valley, it has become a paramount issue for the Bodo-speaking minority living in the areas that constituted the undivided Goalpara district. The Bodo-speaking minority, which accounts for only five per cent of the population, perceives a dual threat to their existence: a cultural challenge from the Assamese-speaking majority and a physical challenge from Bangladeshi Muslims who constitute the majority in Dhubri and whose presence is increasingly being felt in the Bodo heartland of Kokrajhar district.

The emergence of militant Bodo sub-nationalism in the 1990s was an attempt to cope with these twin challenges and led to the formation of the semi-autonomous Bodoland Territorial Council in 2003. However, much of the political gains from militant identity politics have been offset by the growing assertiveness of the Muslim community. The rise of the All India United Democratic Front led by Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, the All Assam Minority Students Union and the Asom Mia Parishad has triggered a frontal Bodo-Muslim confrontation. Tensions have further risen following the AIUDF demand that the BTC be abolished because Bodos no longer constitute a majority in large areas governed by it. In an astute move, Ajmal has taken care to develop links with major Muslim organizations throughout India to ensure that the concerns of his social base are easily translated into “national” Muslim concerns.

Confronted with this seemingly intractable situation, both Delhi and Dispur have fallen back on homilies. Following his tour of the relief camps earlier this week, (then) Home Minister P. Chidambaram took recourse to pious platitudes: “There are people from a variety of communities living in Assam now. Ultimately, people of all communities would have to learn to live together in peace.” There was not a word about border fencing or possible modifications to the farcical Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act. Dependant on Bodo support in Dispur but equally concerned with Muslim support at an all-India level, the Congress has very little space to manoeuvre. It can merely hope that any future conflict can be averted by more efficient administrative measures. Meanwhile, ground reports suggest an ongoing process of ethnic cleansing. Bodos in Dhubri are moving to Kokrajhar, and dispossessed Muslims of Kokrajhar are moving to Dhubri. Some may even find their way into West Bengal.

In 1947, the Muslim community was a frightened minority, unsure of its position in an India that never took too kindly to the painful Partition in two wings. In 2012, Indian secularism is deeply entrenched and has ensured both dignity and political empowerment to religious minorities, sometimes by way of exceptional consideration. A problem, however, is likely to arise if the empowerment of minorities becomes a byword for injustice to others. For the Bodo minority of Assam, the practice of secular politics is coming to imply the possible extinction of their very identity.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/112080...p#.UBtN-U3ia8s

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This issue in this area is:

1. It is a communal clash as also an ethnic clash.

2. As per the Indian law, no non tribal can settle or buy land in tribal area. The areas where the clash have taken place is Bodo, territory, which mean tribal territory.

3. It is a well known fact that there has been immigrants coming into Assam and since Bodoland is where there was land, they have settled there.

4. It is also a known fact that certain political parties turned a blind eye to illegal immigrants since they being 'minorities' would increase their vote bank and ensure that they remain in power. This is not confined to Assam alone, but all States bordering Bangladesh.

5. Statistically it is unique that the population of Assam increased from 3.29 million in 1901 to 14.6 million in 1971, a 343.7 per cent increase compared to the all-India increase of nearly 150 per cent in the same period.

6. Statitcally, it is also unique that the 2011 census reveals that 11 of the 27 districts of Assam now have a Muslim majority, how did that happen?

Therefore, there are good reasons for conflicts in this region.

[Ray]

‘Illegal Immigrants’ Awareness Campaign in Nagaland

Described as an awareness campaign, the Public Action Committee (PAC) on illegal immigrants Thursday visited Hazi Park and Burma Camp East Block Dimapur where around 200 Muslim settlers were made to sign a bond providing three days to prove themselves as Indian citizens. In the event of failure to honour the undertaking, the business establishments of the signatories would be closed down by the PAC and the illegal immigrants would be deported.

PAC Co-ordinator, Joel said that since 1963, the government has identified only 28 illegal immigrants and that only 20 were deported. He also said that around 6000 illegal immigrants enter Dimapur daily from Lahorijan, Assam and engage in various livelihood means as labourers, businessmen, butchers, contract killers etc. He expressed apprehension that a time might come when the illegal immigrants would overshadow the Nagas even politically.

http://www.northeasttoday.in/our-sta...n-in-nagaland/

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Christianity is the predominant religion of Nagaland. The state's population is 1.988 million, out of which 90.02% are Christians. The census of 2001 recorded the state's Christian population at 1,790,349, making it, with Meghalaya and Mizoram, one of the three Christian-majority states in India and the only state where Christians form 90% of the population. The state has a very high church attendance rate in both urban and rural areas. Huge churches dominate the skylines of Kohima, Dimapur, and Mokokchung.

Nagaland is known as "the only predominantly Baptist state in the world."

Therefore, the issue is not communal per se and instead is basically of being swamped by illegal Bangaldeshi Muslims.

The manner the Bangladeshi Muslims have made an inroad in Bodo area and are now demanding that they are the majority as also are now a force in the politics of Assam (Bodoland is a part of Assam) has made all worried that one day their identity, culture, and everything will be swamped and the Bangladeshis will take over their State.

And who knows, they may become a part of Greater Bangladesh.

[Ray]

Greater Bangladesh is a political theory that People's Republic of Bangladesh is trying for the territorial expansion to include the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and others in northeastern India.

The theory is principally based on fact that a large number of Bangladeshi illegal immigrants reside in Indian territory.

In 2002, nine Islamic groups including Indian militant organizations Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA), Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA) and Muslim Volunteer Force (MVF), Pakistani militant organization Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), Myanmar groups Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and Arakan Ronhingya Islamic Front of Mynamar (ARIFM), and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, a pan-South Asian militant organization outlawed in Bangladesh with leaders sentenced to death,formed a coalition that declared the formation Greater Bangladesh as one of their aims

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Bangladesh

[Ray]

Mumbai's Azad Maidan violence: Masterminds still on the run

Fifty one people have been arrested on charges of murder and rioting from various parts of Mumbai, like, Govandi, Kurla, Wadala, Malvani and even Thane.
CCTV footage, mobile footage, mobile tower locations and witness statements have led to these arrests.
But, investigators are yet to nab the ringleaders who co-ordinated and marshalled these groups to execute the pre-planned mayhem.
The questions which remain unanswered are, how can isolated groups of rioters from different parts of Mumbai act in such a well-coordinated manner? And, with many of those arrested having criminal records, were some of the known criminal elements at work?
And why still no action against speakers? Out of the 17 speakers at the gathering, the violence erupted during the 5th speaker's speech. Two of those speeches have been termed 'aggressive'....

Is the police under political pressure to not to act against some elements? And where are the missing weapons?

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/azad-maid...738-3-237.html

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Indeed the police is under political pressure.

Without the Muslim votebank, those in power will not be in power.

That is a well known fact and is known universally in India, as the "Vote-Bank" politics.

[Ray]

On 11 August 2012, a Muslim protest against the riots in Assam and attacks on Muslims in Burma was held at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. The protest was organised by Raza Academy, and was attended by two other groups, Sunni Jamaitul Ulma and Jamate Raza-e-Mustafa.

Amar Jawan Jyoti memorial for martyred soldiers in South Mumbai was destroyed by the mob.

On August 17, 2012, Muslim mobs resorted to large scale violence against mediapersons, bystanders, shops, vehicles and tourists in several cities including Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad.

In Lucknow, after the Friday Namaz, a mob of 500 ravaged various landmarks of the city including Buddha Park, Haathi Park, Shaheed Smarak and Parivartan Chowk, and vandalized many statues including those of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira.

30,000 people from North East India have fled Bangalore after attacks and threats of more impending attacks on them after Ramzan. Shiyeto from Nagaland, resident of Bangalore, was attacked by a group of people who threatened to kill him if he did not leave the city before Ramzan which is on August 20.

Cities of Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad also witnessed exodus of people from North East. In national capital Delhi, messages claiming that people from the North-East will be targeted, particularly after Ramzan, have started circulating.

Union Home Ministry has banned bulk SMS, MMS for 15 days to quell rumours and threats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Assam_violence

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Morphed MMSes showing pictures of the Tibetan Uprising and passing it off as Burmese atrocities against the Rohingyas (Muslims of the Arakan) and riots in Bodo areas and inflammatory SMSes, apart from radical Muslim organisation holding rallies with fiery speech agitated a large section of the Indian Muslim community.

Then the threat SMSes to the North Eastern people in Mumbai, Pune and South India (which is the education hub and IT hub and where there are many NE people) were sent.

Given the aggressiveness associated with the Muslim, the people left and went back to their respective States.

The NE is predominantly Christians, animist and Buddhist. Assam is Hindu.

It is interesting to wonder as to how India is anyway connected to what the Burmese are doing to the Rohingyas of Burma.

This is the type of irrationality that prevails and is employed to engineer riots.

[Dayuhan]

Muslims have grown modestly as a share of Assam’s population (from 24% to 31% in the three decades to 2001). No surge explains the latest violence, although the Muslim population of western Assam is growing faster. In some villages the Bodo are now a minority. They say they feel swamped by Muslim immigrants.

However, the conflict is not primarily about religion. It is about land. The Bodo hold land in common. The Bengali-speakers are settled farmers, anxious to establish private-property rights as protection against dispossession. In 2003, after a long, violent campaign for autonomy, the Bodo got their own Bodo Territorial Council, on whose turf outsiders may not own property. The Bodo consider all Muslims outsiders—hence the dispute at the mosque.

This sounds an awful lot like Mindanao, though of course in Mindanao Muslims and animists were swamped by Christian settlers. These situations can produce extremely intractable conflicts, especially if government is perceived as aiding or siding with the immigrants, and if no action is taken until the settlers are well entrenched and approaching (or have attained) majority status.

If the settlers are in fact illegal immigrants the government will have some basis to act, but I'd guess they'll need to act sooner rather than later.

[davidbfpo]

An Indian journalist writes on the COIN campaign:

Spent Force
Amidst the bullets and bloodshed, what has the government's counterinsurgency program in Chhattisgarh achieved?

This is the conflict with India's Maoists and appears quite different to the thred on Kashmir:

“The insistence on operations, operations and more operations has reduced the entire anti-Naxal operation business to sheer mazdoori—and that’s why it is now done without any heart or mind in it,” said a senior police officer, explaining that most operations had no coherent aim beyond signaling the presence of troops in Maoist affected areas. “Troops are marching day in day out—without any intelligence worth its name… They are just going into jungles and coming back.”

Link:http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story/...nt-Force-.html

[Ray]

The Army is not involved in the anti Maoist operations.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is involved. They are policemen and have very little military training. Hence, they operate like a police force, treating the matter as if it were a law and order problem.

However, in Bengal, the paramilitary forces and with pro tribal initiatives by the State Govt have been able to achieve some results.

[SWJ Blog]

Counter-Insurgency Best Practices: Applicability to Northeast India

Copied here for reference.

[blueblood]

JeM's last visible commander killed

The “divisional commander” of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Yasir alias Yasir Tunda was killed in Rafiabad area of Baramulla district in the early hours of Saturday in a joint operation by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir Police and the army.

Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Shiv Murari Sahai, told The Hindu that the operation was launched after Sopore Police received a tip off late on Friday, suggesting the presence of the JeM commander at the hideout. SOG Sopore and Rashtriya Rifles 22 Bn swooped on the militant at the house of Ali Mohammad Bhat at Chatlora village.

[blueblood]

Originally Posted by SWJ Blog

Counter-Insurgency Best Practices: Applicability to Northeast India

Copied here for reference.

Lengthy but nice article.

[davidbfpo]

This thread has posts on the Maoist insurgency in Chhattisgarh and an ambush this week has led to renewed local press commentary. So what was different with this ambush?

Answer - politics:

Suspected Maoist rebels set off a landmine and opened fire on a convoy of cars carrying local leaders and supporters of India's ruling Congress party in eastern India, killing at least 23 people and wounding 32 others, local police said.

Politics plus revenge are not a good mix:

Police identified one of those killed as Mahendra Karma, a Congress leader in Chhattisgarh state who founded a local militia, the Salwa Judum, to combat the Maoist rebels. The anti-rebel militia had to be reined in after it was accused of atrocities against tribals – indigenous people at the bottom of India's rigid social ladder.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...illing-23.html

Having Israeli-supplied drones, flown by the Air Force, has a few local problems - poor quarters for the pilots - and there remains:

.. despite having hardware, the coordination and sharing of intelligence data remains a deeply problematic issue for the Indian forces.

Link:http://www.firstpost.com/india/exclu...rh-816465.html

[Ray]

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

This thread has posts on the Maoist insurgency in Chhattisgarh and an ambush this week has led to renewed local press commentary. So what was different with this ambush?

Answer - politics:

Politics plus revenge are not a good mix:

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...illing-23.html

Having Israeli-supplied drones, flown by the Air Force, has a few local problems - poor quarters for the pilots - and there remains:

Link:http://www.firstpost.com/india/exclu...rh-816465.html

This typifies motivated reporting.

Salwa Judum means “Peace March” or “Purification Hunt’ in Gondi language, which is a tribal language. This was raised with local tribal youth to counter the Maoist violence and was assisted by the Chattisgarh Govt. The person who was killed and who founded this organisation was himself a tribal! That he was a very popular person was exhibited by the unprecedented and massive turnout of tribal people at his funeral!

The Maoists have repeatedly prevented the Govt from doing any constructive work in the areas the Maoist control and have prevented electricity, road, water supply constructions reaching the tribal areas. They attack all efforts to put up TV transmission towers (terrestrial TV) in order to keep the tribal belt ignorant of the happenings around the country and progress planned.

The Supreme Court of India passed a judgement, on a plea from the Human Rights organisations, that the militia is unconstitutional, and ordered its disbanding.

It has to be said that Human Rights organisations in India are more of ‘wannabes’ attempting to clone themselves on western concepts without a shred of knowledge of the issues since they operate from air conditioned offices in Delhi with occasional forays in the danger zones on Maoist sponsored conducted tours. Likewise, the Judges have no experience of insurgency or counter insurgency and hence their judgement on these issues is more academic than practical.

Also interesting is that the so called Human Rights NGOs and the Judges conveniently forget the havoc, murder, loot and killing the Maoists are indulging in these areas and make no mention of the same. There are even those who glibly laud the Maoist and their activities! Even on National TV!

It maybe added that one Binayak Sen, who was promoting Maoist sympathies and literature and assisting Maoist overtly was jailed. However, under the barrage of international bigwigs and intellectuals and Pollyannas, he was released. What is most surprising is that the Govt of India, which is also battling Naxals and Maoists, appointed this very same man as a Member of the Planning Commission (the supreme body that decides and suggest national policies to the Govt of India)!

The whole problem is that there is a total lack of political will to fight the Maoists and Naxal and instead meander like a rudderless leaky boat with the cox having gone off to sleep at the rudder.

On the issue of Drones, there are very few available to carry out 24 x 7 surveillance over all areas of strategic importance to India, to include the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal as also sensitive areas in the massive land mass of India. Yet, the knowalls are ready to excoriate all concerned and nitpick, conveniently missing the woods for the trees and misinforming the readers!

[Red Rat]

Interesting analysis of Security Force problems in Chhattisgarh.

Praveen Swami is probably one to track on twitter feed for those interested in the situation there.

Chhattisgarh Attack: Why India is losing its war against the Naxals

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Red Rat

Interesting analysis of Security Force problems in Chhattisgarh.

Praveen Swami is probably one to track on twitter feed for those interested in the situation there.

Chhattisgarh Attack: Why India is losing its war against the Naxals

With a caveat that he is a journalist and has no hands on experience, unlike many western journalists who have had military training and experience and can understand issues more incisively.

Notwithstanding, he is more knowledgeable amongst journalists on security issues.