Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil's admission that at least a part of the Centre's development fund for the Northeastern States goes to finance terrorist activities there, hardly comes as a surprise. The fact has been known for decades to people familiar with developments in the region. Contractors implementing Central projects-and projects run with Central grants-in the power and other infrastructure sectors regularly pay a percentage of the total amount spent. An alarmingly large number of employees of these as well as Central and State Government offices, also contribute a part of their salaries every month- some because they are from the region and sympathetic to a particular terrorist group; others because they are intimidated into doing it by assaults, murders and abductions.
Mr Patil, who was responding to a question at the Intelligence Bureau's annual Centenary Endowment lecture in Delhi last Thursday, was doubtless right when he pointed out that besides receiving foreign funds, terrorist and insurgent groups also financed themselves though gun-running, abductions for ransom, narcotics smuggling, bank robberies and extortion. It is common knowledge that tea gardens in Assam regularly pay huge amounts to the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and organisations like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). The basic fact, however, remains that these outfits can indulge in all this because of the Government's failure to stamp out the insurgency that began in the region in the 1950s when the Nagas took to arms.
Of course, nobody can under-estimate
the problems that the Central and State Governments face in combating insurgency
in the Northeast-difficult terrain, hilly and densely forested; lack of
roads; porous borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar, and the active assistance
and sanctuary the former provides to secessionist rebels from the region
who have 195 camps on its soil. While all this is true, the fact remains
that there has been, for long spells, a lack of the kind of focus and determination
that successful conduct of counter-insurgency operations require. In Assam,
the Congress has not been above playing footsie with the ULFA for electoral
support. In Nagaland, a Congress Chief Minister's links with the National-Socialist
Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) is hardly a secret. There is besides, a lack
of sensitivity and alertness which was most glaringly underlined by the
recent flare-up in Manipur which might have been prevented if Delhi had
taken prompt measures to defuse the tension building up over the alleged
rape and murder of a young woman by men of the Assam Rifles. The impression
that India's counter-insurgency operations lack a resolute and coordinated
thrust, that all this has served to convey, has been reinforced by the
revocation of POTA. This is most unfortunate. Counter-insurgency is as
much a military as a psychological operation which targets the hope of
eventual success that keeps most insurgent and terrorist groups going.