April-June 2013 - Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies

April-June 16
Commentary
India's Northeast: Islamist Militancy in Assam?
Bibhu Prasad Routray
Visiting Fellow, IPCS
On 6 April 2000, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, then Chief Minister
of Assam presented a statement detailing the activities of the
Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in the state legislative
assembly. Its document titled, ISI Activities in Assam, was the
first ever attempt by the Assam government to compile the
strategy by Islamic militant outfits in Assam. Although the
alarmist prediction of the document has largely been
unfounded in subsequent years, it has served as a key
reference material to periodically blow a mostly dormant
threat out of proportion.
In a nutshell, the document termed the growth of Islamist
militancy as an ISI-initiative and went on to elaborate a sixpoint
strategy of the Pakistani agency to provide support to
local militant outfits; create new militant outfits along ethnic
and communal lines; supply explosives and sophisticated
arms to various terrorist groups; indulge in sabotage; promote
fundamentalism and militancy among local Muslim youth;
and promote communal tensions between Hindus and
Muslims.
A glance through some of the statements made by different
ministers and police officials in Assam since the year 2000,
provides a conflicting scenario regarding the potency of ISIpromoted
Islamist militancy in the state. For example, on 10
August 2004, the then Assam Home Minister Rockybul
Hussain stated that his government did not have any direct
evidence of ISI activities in the state. Interestingly, on the
same day, Mr. Hussain filed another reply acknowledging the
activities of various ISI-backed fundamentalist organisations
in Assam.
In the next two years, the Assam Police department sought to
shift the blame from the ISI to the Bangladesh-based Jamatul
Mujahideen. Speaking at an annual conference of Director
Generals of Police (DGPs) and regional heads of various
security agencies in Guwahati in November 2006, the then
Assam DGP DN Dutt claimed that the "Afghanistan-trained
rebel-led Jamatul Mujahideen" is not only controlling Islamic
militant outfits in Bangladesh, but is also reaching out to other
non-Islamist groups across the Northeast. In the same
conference, the intelligence chief of Assam police, Khagen
Sarma, indicated that "around 200 youths trained in
Bangladesh by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and the JM
have been arrested from different parts of Assam since 2001”.
In July 2009, Rockybul Hussain, Assam's forest minister
replying on behalf of Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi who held the
Home portfolio, indulged in another round of panic
mongering. He indicated that 182 cadres of only two Islamist
groups - the Muslim United Liberation Tigers Front of Asom
(MULTA) and the HuM are operating in Assam, with the
former being more active. In August 2012, the Ministry of
Home Affairs (MHA) in New Delhi, joining the chorus,
identified 14 Islamic radical organisations who it stated were
trying to ferment trouble in Assam.
Truth and facts on the ground, amid such incongruous claims,
remain a casualty. The fact remains that the Islamist militancy
in Assam, in its entirety, has remained at best a fringe
movement, failing to both attract cadres and also to upgrade
the quality of arms in its possession. Attacks involving the
outfits were few and far between, failing to parallel the tactics
of both mainstream outfits such as the United Liberation
Front of Asom (ULFA) and also the peripheral groupings of the
Dimasas and Karbis. Throughout its existence, the activities of
the Islamist militants remained confined to a couple of lower
Assam districts, along the international border with
Bangladesh.
The arrests of cadres, mostly in situations which did not
involve any armed encounters, thus, represented a persistent
weakness in the movement and a lack in the commitment of
foot soldiers, rather than any counter-insurgency successes
for the state. As a senior serving Assam police official told the
author in 2005, "It was very much possible to convince an
Islamist cadre to surrender through an half hour persuasion".
More importantly, the formation of political parties seeking to
espouse the cause of the Muslims led to the swift closure of
the narrow window for radical mobilisation, which could have
contributed to the growth of these Islamists. The installation
of the Awami League (AL) government in Bangladesh in 2008
and its initiation of a range of steps to bring the activities of
the North-eastern militants to a close, effectively sealed the
fate of the Islamists in its entirety.
It may be useful to locate the source of such alarmist
projections in the attempts made by various agencies - both
state and central - to bring the North-eastern Islamists under
the broader global jihadi umbrella, and subsequently under
the American radar, especially in a post-9/11 era. The state
governments in the Northeast, the media, as well as select
commentators, are willing players in the game for selfish
motives. The sheer inconsistency in the assessment on
Islamist militancy bears testimony to this.
The issue of Islamist militancy also did not find a mention in
the address of the Assam Governor in the two-day Conference
of Governors convened by President Pranab Mukherjee in
New Delhi on 11-12 February 2013. JB Patnaik chose to only
highlight the growing influence of the anti-talk faction of the
ULFA and the Maoist insurgency. However, as the trend
demonstrates, this does not signify in any way, the end of
doom-laden assertions on Islamist militancy in Assam.