ULFA, ISI and Terrorism

Last week, I wrote about how “Islamisation of North-East” is now a real threat to the security of India – especially as there is increasing evidence of ISI coordinating its activities across our borders.

Below are two excellent articles which provide some more background to ULFA and its links with ISI within the context of terrorism in Assam.

The first of these is very well-researched article by Shri Maloy Krishna Dhar, former joint director, IB and author of “Open Secrets and Fulcrum of Evil-ISI, CIA, Al Qaeda Nexus”. It exposes the links between ULFA and ISI and the connection with Bangladesh. In the rediff story, “Assam: The Bangla hand“ published in Jan this year, Shri Dhar writes:

Excerpts:

The latest (Jan ’07) ULFA carnage in Assam has been diagnosed by top leaders like quack doctors, broadcasting panic, and their diagnosis is wide off the mark.

…The ISI alone has not adopted ULFA. The collateral adopter is the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh, DGFI. It is necessary to understand the quantum dynamics of inter-relationship between the ISI, DGFI and Indian terrorist groups like ULFA.

…Mir (DGFI’s Chief Deputy) is the son of Golam Azam, the former Jamait-e-Islami chief, who collaborated with Pakistan in carrying out the 1971 genocide.

The agency is divided into 12 bureaus, each handling subject and territory desks. The India division is headed by a colonel.

…The India desk has four distinct sections, which handle the North Eastern states, West Bengal, the rest of India and Muslim affairs in India.

In 2000 a new Bureau X was started to oversee the activities of domestic and international jihadi tanzeems, or local level outfits. Bureau X also plans and executes subversive operations in India.

A part of the Bureau known as the Dawa section handles Islamic NGOs and supervises internal and external money flow to these organisations.

…Bangladeshi military and civilian intelligence officers were initially trained by the ISI. Some special units of the DGFI were trained along with ISI operatives at the Harvey Point Defence Testing Activity, a high-security compound in a quiet corner of a marshland near Hertford, North Carolina, USA. The facility, officially owned by the Pentagon, serve as the CIA’s secret commando training base since 1961.

…The DGFI has achieved excellent penetration amongst the Indian intelligentsia, academia, print and electronic media, political parties, business community and certain minority organisations and institutions. The allegation that the DGFI achieved penetration in the National Security Advisory Board cannot be shrugged off.

The ISI and DGFI often jointly operate inside India…The DGFI supports the Achik National Volunteer Council and Hynniewtrep Achik Liberation Council of Meghalaya, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, the Kamtapuri Liberation Organisation in West Bengal, the Dima Halam Daoga and the United Peoples Democratic Solidarity of Assam.

In Manipur, the DGFI’s main tools are the separatist United National Liberation Front, the People’s Liberation Army, PREPAK, the People’s United Liberation Front, the United Islamic Revolutionary Army, the North East Minority Front and the Indigenous People’s Revolutionary Alliance.

…In Assam, besides ULFA, the DGFI’s main clients are the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, United Liberation Front of Barak Valley, Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam, United Liberation Militia of Assam, Islamic Sevak Sangh, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam and Revolutionary Muslim Commandos etc.

…Indian intelligence agencies and others are aware that the DGFI played significant roles in the January 22, 2002 attack on the US consulate in Kolkata, the New Delhi bomb blasts on October 29, 2005, the Varanasi blasts and the Mumbai train blasts. These were ISI and DGFI joint operations.

…In the Varanasi serial blasts both Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Harkat ul-Jihad-i-Islami members took leading roles after they were housed and trained at Char Gopalnagar, Khulna, in Bangladesh and traveled to Varanasi through cell-points at Berhampur in West Bengal Bhagalpur and Bare in Bihar.

There is supporting information that an undercover officer of the ISI at Dhaka and a captain of the DGFI special operations cell visited Isurdi in Bangladesh to contact Harkat ul-Jihad-i-Islami area commander Barkatul Rahman Bablu. He was supposed to be the liaison man between the agencies and the tanzeem members responsible for the Varanasi incident.

The story of ISI and DGFI collaboration is thus of epic proportions. However, in the context of the latest carnage in Tinsukia, Dhemaji and Dibrugarh there is reliable information that this was a joint operation by the ULFA and DGFI.

…About 10 trained DGFI special task force members infiltrated into Assam and teamed up with ULFA cadres to carry out the mass killings. The infiltration of DGFI personnel into Assam is not a new development.

…Some DGFI commandos are housed by Assam-based Muslim jihadi groups.

The ISI input cannot be discounted, as ULFA leaders Paresh Barua and Arabinda Rajkhowa returned to Dhaka from a trip to Pakistan around December 20.

*** END OF EXCERPTS ***

Unfortunately, Shri Dhar’s conclusion is rather grim: “Is there any one in India to pay adequate attention to the DGFI and Pakistan’s ‘theopolitical’ allies in Bangladesh?”

Image of the Rang Ghar in Sibsagar, Assam: courtesy Wikipedia

Next, an article by Amulya Ganguli, “The ULFA: Assam’s Hindu terrorists“ published also in January this year

Excerpts:

…there is a curious aspect about the ULFA’s marauding tactics, of which the attack on the Bihar Hindu labourers was a prime example.

Although the Sikh and Muslim terrorists mainly targeted Hindus, a large number of Sikhs and Muslims also died as a result of their depredation, like bomb blasts in crowded places.

The ULFA, however, has taken care to see that the Muslims do not come to any harm in Assam presumably because of its close links with Bangladesh. This attitude is in striking contrast to the origin of the movement for a ‘swadhin’ – Assam.

Based on a feeling of neglect by New Delhi and the rest of India towards the Assamese, the secessionist ideas received a boost with the launching of an agitation in 1979 against the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh by the All Assam Students Union -.

The AASU’s case was that the unchecked inflow from the neighbouring country was upsetting Assam’s demographic and denominational balance.

Since the immigrants were Muslims, the AASU received vociferous support from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and especially one of its most vocal members, Arun Shourie, who became some kind of a hero to the AASU.

However, the campaign against the Bangladeshis soon engendered so much violence that the Bengalis from West Bengal, mainly Hindus, also began to feel the heat and started leaving Assam.

It has to be remembered that the Bengalis were the targets in the 1960s of a now virtually defunct militant Assamese outfit, the Lachit Sena.

…Perhaps realising that the movement was getting out of hand, the AASU agreed to a pact with the Rajiv Gandhi government, leading to the termination of its agitation. The organisation also came to power in Assam in 1985 under the name of Asom Gana Parishad.

But the end of the AASU’s anti-foreigner movement did not entail the curbing of chauvinistic instincts in the state, entertained mainly by the upper and middle class Hindus of the Brahmaputra valley.

In place of the AASU, which had become a part of the establishment committed to finding a peaceful solution to the problem of Bangladeshi immigrants, the ULFA began to make its presence felt…

Since the ULFA was an underground organisation from the start -, it had to find shelter in neighbouring countries like Bhutan and Bangladesh. After it was driven out of Bhutan by a combined operation of the Indian and Bhutanese security forces, Bangladesh proved to be its main sanctuary. The two senior leaders of the outfit, Arabinda Rajkhowa and Paresh Barua, are said to live there.

But an outcome of the help the ULFA is receiving from Bangladesh is that it has had to dissociate itself from the campaign against illegal immigrants, which was a cornerstone of Assamese parochialism from the time of the Lachit Sena. (Note that the Hindi-speaking labourers are legal immigrants and Indian citizens – B Shantanu)

…the ULFA has to avoid harming the Muslim communities lest this should anger its patrons in Dhaka, which reportedly includes the Inter-services Intelligence – of Pakistan, apart from the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence – of Bangladesh.

This somersault of the ULFA from the Lachit Sena-AASU line explains why it launched a vicious attack on the poor Bihari Hindu labourers. It had to undertake the operation to please its DGFI-ISI mentors in Dhaka and also to keep up its ‘revolutionary’ credentials in the eyes of its dwindling group of supporters in Assam.

But since it could attack neither the Bangladeshis nor the Bengalis, the Biharis had to be singled out….

*** END OF EXCERPTS ***

As I write this, there is more news of ULFA violence against Hindi-speaking (mostly Bihari) labourers in Assam: “Migrant workers killed in Assam” – sad.