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Forcing Peace
Secretly
warned by a Bangladeshi bureaucrat, the ULFA chief evades arrest. But
a recalcitrant Bhutan, where he is holed up, may just see him coming to
the negotiating table, writes India Today's Suman K. Chakrabarti.
Hours
before Union Minister Yashwant Sinha arrived in Bhutan
on August 4 for a three-day visit, Arabinda Rajkhowa, chairman of the
outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), was on his way to Bhutan's
Paro Airport. Travelling on a fake Thai passport, the ULFA chairman was
booked on Druk Air's morning flight to Bangkok via Kolkata, en-route Dhaka.
Holed up in the jungles of southern Bhutan for over a month
and desperate to get back to his lair in Bangladesh, he had no wind about
the reception meant for him at Kolkata's Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International
Airport. But Rajkhowa's Bangladeshi handlers knew: the Indian intelligence
had fanned out in Kolkata airport with an elaborate "snatch operation"
plan
to nab the elusive militant. Rajkhowa was pulled back moments before boarding
the Druk Air flight by a Bangladeshi diplomat, a staffer of the National
Security & Intelligence (NSI), the country's domestic spy agency in
Bhutan. This diplomat had
been told by his colleague in Kolkata (also working under consular cover
in the country's deputy high commission in the city) that Dhaka was against
"our friend going for treatment to Kolkata".
For well over a decade, the ULFA has maintained a string of bases in the
southern jungles of the Himalayan Kingdom. Despite Indian pressure, the
Royal Government has insisted it prefers persuasion to military action
to push the Assamese militants out of the kingdom. But last week, it lost
patience and nearly turned the ULFA chairman in.
A brief telephone conversation between the two Bangladesh diplomats based
in Kolkota and Thimphu, on the night before Sinha's Bhutan visit, has
Indian intelligence worried, but grinning. Rajkhowa was travelling back
to Bangladesh, where he and other senior ULFA leaders like military wing
chief Paresh Barua now stay, protected by its military intelligence, after
several unsuccessful attempts on Barua's life in Dhaka last year. "It
is a mystery how the DGFI came to know that we were aware of Rajkhowa's
plans," says a deputy director in the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau
(SIB). Intercepts from wireless communication suggest that Barua was keen
to have Rajkhowa back in Bangladesh during Pakistan Prime Minister Pervez
Musharraf's recent visit to the neighbouring country.
A Bangladeshi
bureaucrat in Dhaka told India Today that Barua, ULFA's "foreign
secretary" Sashadhar Chowdhury and "Central
Auditor" Chtrabon Hazarika had a meeting with Musharraf's Military
Secretary Brigadier Nadim Taj during the general's visit to Bangladesh.
Rajkhowa had gone to Bhutan from Bangladesh on July 17 to tour the ULFA's
bases at Sukhni, Sandrup Jongkhar, Nganglam and Pemagatsel Complex in
the southern jungles. Khagen Sharma, Inspector General (Special Branch)
of the Assam police told India Today the ULFA chairman was trying to boost
the dampened morale of his cadres, many of whom had deserted and surrendered
in the months before.
But his long stay in Bhutan had the Dhaka-based Barua worried. "He
(Barua) suspects Rajkhowa could open talks with us if he was free from
his shackles, so he kept pestering the chairman to return to Dhaka,"
Sharma said.
But Rajkhowa found it was impossible to return to Bangladesh by
land. The troops of the Red Horns division (21st Mountain Division) of
the Indian Army were far too active on the Assam-Bhutan border and patrolling
of border guards and police have been tightened in northern Bengal as
well, ever since the Assam police put out an alert that Rajkhowa would
try to sneak back to Bangladesh from Bhutan through Assam or the Siliguri
Corridor. Suspecting that the Indians would, during Sinha's visit, put
enormous pressure on Bhutan to either force the ULFA chairman to start
talks or hand him over, Paresh Barua asked Rajkhowa to return to Bangladesh
without any further delay. And so, Rajkhowa decided to fly.
As it happened, the Bhutanese, also suspecting huge Indian pressure during
Sinha's visit, decided to placate Delhi with a significant gesture. The
Indian embassy in Thimphu was informed of Rajkhowa's plans. The sleuths
in Kolkata got ready for the reception. "Our only worry was how to
pull down a passenger proceeding to Bangkok from a Bhutanese plane during
the stopover at Kolkota. We needed to be fully sure first," said
the SIB deputy director. The sleuths came up with an ingenous plan. They
would create a bomb scare and pull all the passengers on the Druk Air
flight out within minutes of its landing at Kolkata. Once identified,
Rajkhowa would be whisked away. Intelligence sources said that the Rajkhowa
is now trapped in Bhutan and by all indications will take the land route
to Bangladesh from Bhutan - unless he has other ideas. This helped India
formulate a new strategy and when Sinha met King Jigme Singye Wangchuk
on August 5, Thimphu was given a new alternative from the earlier line
to "have them (ULFA) pushed out of the kingdom": "Bring
the ULFA to the table".
"We have plugged this border and gone on a major counter-offensive
to create a situation where ULFA cadres are now deserting their ranks
and their morale is at an all- time low. This would force ULFA's top leadership
to come out for talks," Major General Gaganjeet Singh, GOC of the
21 Mountain Division stationed at Rangiya on the Indo-Bhutan border in
Assam, said.
Rajkhowa has twice before come close to opening talks with Delhi. And
ULFA watchers like security analyst Jaideep Saikia feel if any leader
from this separatist outfit could lead the Assamese militants out of the
jungles of Bhutan, it would be Rajkhowa. In 1992, Rajkhowa and two senior
comrades - Anup Chetia and Pradip Gogoi - were flown to Delhi by the SIB.
During a meeting with the erstwhile Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao,
Rajkhowa committed himself to a "peaceful solution". But he
argued there was no chance for that unless the hardline "Commander-in-Chief"
(C-in-C) Barua could be convinced to travel the road to peace. But as
he went back to Dhaka, it was Barua instead who forced him back to the
violent ways. Surrendered ULFA leader Lohit Deury, once close aide of
Barua, said that his C-in-C humiliated Rajkhowa in front of younger cadres
for his peace effort - and threw his own security cordon round him, with
trusted lieutenants guarding the chairman to ensure he never went back
to Delhi.
In 1999, Rajkhowa received an emissary of Assam governor
S.K. Sinha in Manila and told him he could start talks without
preconditions if all the top leaders in ULFA agreed that enough
was enough. But Barua again caught up with his chairman's
plans and had him brought back to Bangladesh. Since then, Rajkhowa has
lived at Tarabon, a small base in the Chittagong
Hill Tracts, which the ULFA shares with the All Tripura Tiger
Force (ATTF). His visits to other foreign capitals became rare. The failure
to bring the ULFA to the table was followed by a furious covert offensive
unleashed by the Assam police and the central agencies against Barua.
Four times between December 2000 and October 2001, Bangladesh mercenaries
and surrendered ULFA rebels (SULFA) "controlled" by Indian agencies
attacked Barua, once on a highway towards Chittagong Hill Tracts and thrice
in Dhaka. And twice, the strike squad came close to eliminating Barua
but his goalkeeper reflexes ( Baruah kept goal for the Assam juniors before
going underground) saved him on both the occassions. A senior Assam police
official, shunted out after the Congress government came to power in 2001,
connected with planning the attacks said, "We would have got him
if we continued the chase. At least he would have left Dhaka and fled
to some distant land from where he would not be able to control the ULFA
. That would give the peace lobby led by the Rajkhowa a chance to come
out for talks."
Assam's new Congress government came to power in May last year campaigning
for stopping the "secret killings" by
surrendered militants and the police, and vowed to start a dialogue with
ULFA. A number of Assam police officials who had run the special operations
across the border, carrying the battle to the enemy camp in a covert war,
were shunted out to insignificant positions. Most of them left for Delhi
on deputation to central forces. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and S.K. Sinha
continued their efforts to get the ULFA to the table. Governor Sinha even
sent a junior state civil services officer to meet the ULFA's "foreign
secretary" Sashadhar Choudhury at Singapore. But Barua torpedoed
the parleys.
Since Barua is now much safer in Bangladesh - he reportedly stays in the
Rajendrapur cantonment area near Dhaka in a DGFI safehouse guarded by
heavily armed plainclothes -- he has no great urge to talk to Delhi. The
new hardline Islamic regime in Bangladesh led by the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party and the Jamait-e-Islami has intensified support for the ULFA hardliners,
and the pro-Awami League musclemen who were used by Indian intelligence
to attack Barua are fugitives in India instead. But hoping to get the
Bangladesh government to agree to allow gas exports to India, Delhi has
overlooked the security concerns of the North-Eastern states. The chief
ministers of these states recently asked Delhi to pressurize Bangladesh
to push out the rebels from North-East much in the same way Delhi is asking
Islamabad to hand over the Kashmir jehadis and the likes of Dawood Ibrahim.
"Delhi
is being fooled by this new regime in Dhaka. They will
neither give us gas nor push out the terrorists we are looking
for. Islamic radicalism and northeastern ethnic militancy will be
given a boost by this government in Dhaka," says former additional
secretary of Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), Bibhuti Bhusan Nandy.
But Sinha's visit and the pressure he piled on Bhutan to "either
bring the ULFA to the table or push them out" might just about
indicate that Delhi is getting impatient with the situation in
Assam and the rest of the northeast. That leaves Thimphu with less choice
than ever before.
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