Author:
Publication: Stratfor
Date: April 20, 2007
URL: http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=287580
Summary
India's insurgent-ridden northeastern region
has long given foreign powers a gamut of exploitable secessionist movements
to use to prevent India from emerging as a major global player. Though India
has grown accustomed to the ongoing volatility in its northeastern corridor,
growing Islamization in the region -- spurred by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency and instability in neighboring Bangladesh -- will give
New Delhi a good reason to pay closer attention to its porous northeastern
border.
Analysis
Northeastern India is a region wracked by
secessionist violence, where wide networks of drug smuggling, extortion and
arms trafficking run rampant. India has traditionally dealt with the myriad
secessionist movements through force, fearing that any concessions made to
one group would only exacerbate the others' secessionist tendencies and further
undermine the country's territorial integrity.
The balkanization of the region and the constant
drain on Indian resources required to deal with these rebel movements was
all part of the United Kingdom's blueprint for the Indian subcontinent to
prevent its former colony from developing a strong national identity and emerging
as a major Asiatic power. Up until the partition in 1947, the British played
a major role in encouraging tribal, ethnic, religious and linguistic identities,
and in isolating various tribal groups from the mainland and the plains areas
in Assam for the British East India Co. to secure its commercial enterprise.
Pakistan did not hesitate to jump in where the British left off in the post-partition
period, and has since used its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to
fund, train and arm these rebel groups in order to keep India's hands tied.
The largest and most powerful of the northeast secessionist movements is the
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Once a student movement with populist
aims to redistribute the state's oil wealth, ULFA has gradually changed into
what appears to be a moneymaking machine with a strong willingness to do the
ISI's bidding. ULFA runs an impressive extortion racket in the northeast,
where Assam's tea plantation owners and corporate leaders are regularly targeted.
The group maintains that its armed campaign
will not let up until the Indian government engages it in unconditional peace
talks. Yet, when New Delhi makes such an offer, ULFA usually responds with
a bombing, as was the case in the April 9 bomb attack near Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's motorcade in the Assamese capital of Guwahati. ULFA's leadership
understands that New Delhi is not about to reward the armed movement with
political concessions, and does not wish to disturb the financial networks
it has running throughout the region. Moreover, to preserve their militant
proxy, the group's handlers in both Pakistan's and Bangladesh's intelligence
services have told ULFA not to hold peace talks with the Indian government.
Pakistan's ISI, in cooperation with Bangladesh's
Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), appears to be investing
a considerable amount of resources in solidifying India's militant corridor.
There are growing indications that these two agencies are working clandestinely
in Bangladesh to bring all the northeast-based insurgent outfits and jihadist
elements under one umbrella. The ISI has facilitated cooperation between ULFA
and other northeastern militant outfits with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam in Sri Lanka, Islamist militant groups in Kashmir, Islamist groups in
Bangladesh and a growing number of al Qaeda-linked jihadist groups operating
in the region.
Religion, ethnicity and ideology lose relevance
within this militant network, as each group has a common interest in furthering
their militant and financial capabilities by working together. For example,
Tigers cadres organize training camps in the northeast and use their maritime
contacts to assist ULFA in transporting arms and narcotics up to Cambodia
in ULFA-owned shrimp trawlers that operate out of Bangladesh's Chittagong
port. The Tigers have also been known to train Maoist rebels in Nepal and
India at camps in the jungles of India's eastern state of Bihar.
ULFA's growing links with Bangladeshi Islamists
and jihadist elements in the area are increasingly coming to light. The April
9 attack timed with Singh's visit to Assam marked the group's first-ever suicide
bombing, a tactic that was pioneered by the Tigers (a non-Islamist, majority
Hindu group) and has been frequently employed by Islamist militants. Prior
to the attack, ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa warned that New Delhi's offer
for unconditional peace talks was not acceptable, and that that ULFA cadres
"have reached such a stage they would strap bombs on their chest and
attack." ULFA's adoption of suicide bombing looks to be the result of
the group's increased Islamization caused by collusion with Islamist outfits
in the region. The bomber in the April 9 suicide attack was Ainul Ali, a Muslim.
Indian security sources revealed that ULFA did not have many Muslim cadres
in its fold in the past, but the increasing flow of Bangladeshi refugees across
the border has given the group more -- and more capable -- members willing
to sacrifice their lives for the group's cause with nudging from the ISI.
Collaboration between ULFA and the Islamist
militants will expand further, as political conditions in Bangladesh appear
to be indirectly contributing to the empowerment of Islamists there. Using
the Pakistani military regime as an example, Bangladeshi army chief Lt. Gen.
Moeen U. Ahmed is reasserting the army's role in Bangladeshi politics -- which
have long suffered from a bitter political feud between the family dynasties
represented by the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party, led by Begum Khaleda Zia. With both party leaders driven
into exile, a political vacuum has started to take root in the country, and
Bangladesh's Islamist parties are anxiously waiting to fill it.
India will be taking note of these political
developments in Dhaka, though there is not much New Delhi can or wants to
do to intervene. As a result, New Delhi is facing a bleak situation in which
the ISI's maneuvers and Bangladesh's political troubles are sure to further
constrain India's ability to dig itself out of the militant trap Pakistan
has set.
