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Introduction: Top ULFA leadership is in close touch with officials of the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka. Hundreds of ULFA cadres have been getting training in Pakistan. The State police by now have recorded emergence of eight Muslim militant groups which are apparently getting financial help from the ISI.
Prakash Singh is no ordinary policeman. His credentials for writing authoritatively on terrorism are impressive. During thirty-five years of service as a police officer he has served in almost all the troubled theatres in India. He started with service in Kohima in 1965. Then he was called upon by the Government of India to monitor the Naxalite movement in the country. Then he was posted in Punjab when terrorism was at its peak in the State, actively assisted by Pakistan. Then he was returned to Assam. Subsequently he was made the police chief in Uttar Pradesh where he commanded the largest police force in the country and had to grapple, among others, with the problem of terrorism in the Terai region. Later, as Director General of the Border Security force he commanded the largest paramilitary outfit, the Border Security Force (BSF) when Kashmir engaged him full-time. That as a hands-on leader he often escaped death he attributes it to the mercy of God. That he even survived political interference is an indication of his tough mental and moral calibre. He says blandly that as a middle-level officer he had to face the wrath of the Home Minister of India for no fault of his, leading to his humiliation and digrace.
Prakash Singh is nothing if not blunt and transparent. He records instances of how he was cover-ruled by politicians and Chief Secretaries. In Uttar Pradesh he records sadly that “the State police was, in fact, under unrelenting pressure from the political leadership to lower the guard at Ayodhya” during the Babri Masjid trouble. According to him he found himself isolated because “the senior bureaucrats, particularly the Chief Secretary, were submissive” and would “either keep mum or sheepishly accept the diktat of the political masters”. Prakash Singh has his likes and dislikes. P.V. Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister he dismisses for his “incapacity to take firm decisions”. Of all the Chief Ministers he came across during his long career Prakash Singh believes Hiteshwar Saikia of Assam was the “cleverest”. As he says. “It was difficult to fathom him. Realpolitik was his governing principle.” There is a lengthy chapter on Assam and the ULFA. Prakash Singh has some harsh-and. no doubt, true-things to say about Assamese leaders. Many ULFA leaders who were to be arrested, he writes, “managed to escape, possibly because they were tipped off by highly placed source within the administration”, which is a serious charge. Of ULFA’ growth, he later adds, it was because of the “clandestine patronage given by the AGP government” to it. Yet, he adds, he has no hesitation in saying that “the Assam police is one of the finest police forces in the country”. If their performance was found to be indifferent, Prakash Singh attributes it to “the failure of leadership or unwarranted political meddling in police matters”. At one time ULFA cadres had launched a massive fund collection drive and extorted huge sums of money from members of the business community, industrial houses, tea gardens et al mopping up over Rs 100 crore. The Assam Government could do little to stop this. Prakash Singh believes that Hiteshwar Saikia's effort to win over the ULFA cadres was unfortunate. The surrendered ULFA (SULFA) proved to be a financial disaster insofar as the Government lost Rs 25 crore by way of seed money given to those who surrendered and the banks lost Rs 75 crore because loans given to SULFA were never repaid. Terrorism has been stopped in the Punjab but it has yet to be controlled in Jammu and Kashmir. As for the Naxalite movement, Prakash Singh conceded that it is in a “fragmented state” though he warns that there are some forty odd groups operating under various names in no less than ten states of the Union. Naxalite have been killing over five hundred persons each year in the 1990s. But the author lays special emphasis on conditions in Assam (apart from such conditions in Jammu and Kashmir) where the top ULFA leadership is in close touch with officials of the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka. Evidence reportedly has shown that “hundreds of ULFA cadres” have been getting training in Pakistan. The State, police by now have recorded emergence of eight Muslim militant groups, namely, the Islamic Revolutionary Army (IRA), Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA), Muslim Liberation Front of Assam (MLFA), Muslim Security Force (MSF), United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam (UMLFA), Muslim United Liberation Army (MULA), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) Peoples United Liberation Force (PULF). These are apparently getting financial help from the ISI.
According to Prakash Singh presently there are about 16 insurgent groups in the State out of which twelve are demanding secession from India. In a way this can be directly traced to the influx of Bangladeshis into India on a massive scale. According to Democratic Aggression Against India, Bangladeshi infiltrators in West Bengal number 40 lakh and in Assam also 40 lakh! Prakash Singh quotes from a report submitted in November 1998 by Assam's Governor Lt Gen. S.K. Sinha to the effect that “the” specter looms large of the indigenous people of Assam being reduced to a minority in their home State”. Said the report: “This silent and invidious demographic invasion of Assam may result in the loss of the geostrategically vital districts of lower Assam (on the border of Bangladesh). The influx of these illegal migrants is turning these districts into a Muslim majority region. It will then only he a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh may be made”.
It is a timely warning. So what
should be done? Prakash Singh is very pessimistic. He says: “We have a
peculiar trait of not consolidating our gains after a victory. The situation
in J&K took a nose-dive in spite of the decisive victory in Kargil.
Three other examples from the post-independence period would prove my point.”
How right he is. As for the north-cast in general, the author says: “The
Government should make it clear that there would be n o compromise on the
integrity of the country, that any demand for secession shall under no
circumstances be considered, that regional aspirations would be respected...
(and) such an attitude would have to be backed by modernisation of the
State police forces, insistence on accountability in the utilisation of
funds released for development, taking of strict action against those officers
and politicians who are running with the hare and hunting with the hound
and launching vigourous-counter-insurgency operations with the cooperation
wherever necessary, of the neighbouring countries.” This book is a wakeup
call to the NDA and the BJP-and to the country at large. Let it never be
said that we let down the good people of Assam in their hour of trial.
Hovering in the skies are the vultures from Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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