Following the inhuman ethnic cleansing against non-Assamese by the
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the Indian Army has begun
counter-insurgency operations in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. This
is a placebo that bypasses the real cancer breeding outside India's
borders. While discrimination, underdevelopment and unemployment in
Assam are serious internal failures of the Indian government that
explain the origins and early legitimacy of ULFA in the 1980s, the
current savagery of this discredited terrorist group owes to India's
failed foreign policy towards Burma (Myanmar).
The mayhem unleashed by ULFA cadres on poor immigrant laborers from
other parts of India can be traced back to terrorist camps located
in Burma. ULFA's killing machines utilize Arunachal as a conduit
that connects to their hideouts in Burma's northern Kachin state.
The death shrieks of non-Assamese in Assam are stinging reminders
that India's policy of cooperating with the military junta in Burma
has flopped.
The mass abuses of human rights being committed by the junta in
Kachin state provide ULFA the backdrop for a safe haven in Burma.
Forced labor, natural resource depletion, seizure of farmlands,
disappearances and mass graves mark the history of Kachins since
Burma's first military coup in 1962. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA),
whose factions now shelter and train ULFA warriors, was created in
response to the unilateral abrogation of minority rights by the Ne
Win dictatorship in the 1960s. Had Burma remained democratic and in
civilian hands, the 'ethnicity problem' would never have exploded
into incessant warfare and cycles of destruction.
Waves of Burmese Army incursions to assert central government
control over the Kachin people and the area's jade, timber and opium
wealth created the fertile instability for ULFA and other northeast
Indian insurgent groups like the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (NSCN) and the United Liberation Front of Bodoland to find
a foothold. Around 1986, ULFA approached the KIA through the 'good
offices' of the Naga rebels. At a time when ULFA's stock in Assam
itself was on a downward slope, its recruits learnt the rudiments of
fighting in Burma from the KIA, which reportedly charged 100,000
rupees per trainee.
As long as Bangladesh and Bhutan were the main staging arenas for
ULFA, Burma played second fiddle in the outfit's overall priorities.
ULFA shifted bases from Bangladesh to Bhutan in 1997 after Sheikh
Hasina's government assisted New Delhi in flushing it out. At
India's behest, the Royal Bhutanese Army destroyed most of ULFA's
camps and observation posts by 2003. Hounded everywhere, ULFA
returned to its first love: the war-devastated Kachin hills of
Burma, where the KIA was ever ready to indulge in quid pro quos.
Some observers perceive India and the Burmese military junta to have
common interests when it comes to acting against ULFA, since its
partner, the KIA, is opposed to Yangon. This hides a more complex
reality wherein the KIA's political wing signed a peace treaty with
the Burmese military in 1994 and many elite Kachin guerrilla leaders
have developed a tight relationship with the generals in Yangon to
jointly benefit from the war economy in Kachin state. Numerous
splits within the KIA occurred owing to divide-and-rule ploys of
Yangon. The segment of the KIA that is allied with the junta and has
a hand in the narcotics business is now ULFA's launching pad. The
so-called animosity between Yangon and the KIA is limited to those
factions that oppose the junta's militarization of the region and
plunder of natural resources.
While sporadic junta operations to drive out ULFA and NSCN have
received attention, why has Yangon not eliminated ULFA, root and
branch, from Burmese soil? If Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina and
Bhutan could do it, why not Burma, a military state? Burma is the
world's second largest opium-producing country and Kachin state is
next only to Shan state in overall production of this deadly crop.
Several top Burmese military generals have proven involvement in the
drug trade and are close to KIA faction leaders on the ground who
double up as mafia barons. General Zau Mai, a former Chairman of the
KIA's political wing, was one such figure who fixed deals with the
junta on logging, gold and jade mining in Kachin territory.
In December 2006, three ULFA terrorists were nabbed by the Indian
army in Assam with a haul of brown sugar worth 10.3 million rupees.
This was the first evidence that the KIO-junta duet in Burma had an
ULFA angle. The porous India-Burma border opens gigantic market for
drugs, with ULFA acting as an intermediary that finances its hit
squads with illegal business investments and transportation of
contraband commodities.
ULFA is thus useful for the Burmese junta both as a business partner
and as a bargaining chip against India cheering for Aung San Suu
Kyi's pro-democracy movement. Yangon proves itself 'useful' to India
by occasionally cracking the whip on ULFA and NSCN while not
entirely smashing their redoubts on Burmese soil. This delicate
strategy of keeping the ULFA menace simmering enables Yangon to buy
New Delhi's tolerance for Burma's absence of democracy. India ends
up as the biggest loser of this triangular junta-KIO-ULFA game that
is destroying the social fabric and economy of Assam.
For over a decade, India has been betting on the wrong horse in
Burma. If New Delhi hopes to counter Chinese influence in Yangon and
defeat ULFA, democracy in Burma is the only honorable and pragmatic
solution.
(Sreeram Chaulia is is a researcher on world affairs based at
Syracuse University, New York. He can be reached at
sreeramchaulia@hotmail.com)
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