SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 44, May 19, 2003

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

J&K: The Small Print - Is Infiltration Up? Down? Just Middling? And Does It Really Matter?
Guest Writer: Praveen Swami
Special Correspondent, Frontline

Ask any politician, lawyer, or second-hand car salesman: truth resides in the small print, and the world works on the assumption that people won't read it.

The fate of this summer's India-Pakistan détente lies, quite obviously, in detail, not grand gesture. India has made it plain that no serious dialogue is possible without an end to cross-border terrorism. Pakistan has responded by insisting that there is none. India, like much of the world, seems deeply confused about how seriously to take the word of Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. Speaking in Bangalore on May 13, India's Defence Minister, George Fernandes, said that infiltration was "looking down" for now, although he was careful to add that it this "does not mean tomorrow it may not go up." Just a day earlier, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had rejected the notion that infiltration was down. "I am not aware of any such trend", the Chief Minister had said.

So just what is going on? The Union Home Ministry's estimates of infiltration, drawn from a variety of military and intelligence sources, suggest that cross-border movement from January to April this year has been considerably lower than in previous years. The proposition is borne out by the actual levels of violence in the State, which, along with the killings of civilians, security force personnel and terrorists, has indeed come down during this period . It isn't clear, however, if this is the outcome of any clear tactical intent. Unusually high levels of snow and rain from January to March might, for example, have been a key factor in reducing crossings across the Line of Control (LoC).

Things aren't helped, as Musharraf never tires of pointing out, by the fact that there is no real way of reliably counting just how many people cross the LoC. There is, however, a way to empirically test whether infiltration is increasing or declining, one which sadly few analysts have applied their mind to. Every year, a certain number of terrorists are killed in ambushes along the LoC, obviously attempting to cross it one way or the other. If one makes the not-unreasonable assumption that the Army's efficiency in interdicting terrorists doesn't change dramatically from year to year, those engagements ought to roughly indicate the volume of cross-border infiltration.

Consider the case of Poonch, the sprawling western region of Jammu, which records the highest levels of terrorist violence of any district in the State. In January, and March, killings of terrorists on the LoC were lower than in the same months of 2001 and 2002. That seems to bear out the proposition of lowered infiltration. But in February and April, the month when the peace initiative gathered momentum, killings of terrorists were actually higher than in past years! Overall, more terrorists have been killed along the LoC in Poonch in the January-April period than in the same periods of 2001 and 2002: hardly bearing out Fernandes' certificate of good conduct for Musharraf.

But even this data doesn't settle the issue. Climate conditions had a considerable bearing on infiltration on Poonch. Heavy rain made the Poonch river impassable for much of this winter, while snowfall sealed off the mountain passes in the key passage routes of Mandi-Loran and Saujian. The Army's 16 Corps was able to re-deploy personnel along the remaining infiltration routes in Poonch, in Mendhar and Balnoi, creating a second line of counter-infiltration defences. Thus, even though intelligence estimates suggest that there has been less infiltration in Poonch in January-April 2003, compared to the same period in 2002, there has been higher interdiction.

The major success in February and April, where killings of terrorists showed an upsurge, came with the interdiction of large groups in these regions, with 8 killed at Hari Galla on February 23-24, and 9 at Balnoi on April 20-21. The funnelling of terrorists into narrower belts because of weather seems to have played a key role through the entire 16 Corps region. Fire contact with infiltrating terrorists, 16 Corps data shows, was higher in January and February 2003 than in January and February 2002, but lower in subsequent months as the weather improved and more routes began to become available.

The truth, then, is that we still have no means of knowing just what the truth is on infiltration. Ground-level experience of the patters on terrorism in Poonch show that violence has escalated sharply from May each year, when warm weather sets in, and then tapers off again each November, bar in low-snowfall years like 2001. This suggests there is an organic linkage between infiltration, which reaches a peak during these months, and security force engagement with terrorists.

Events this summer, not impressionistic ideas about infiltration levels, are what New Delhi and the world should be paying attention to. So far, the peace offerings from Islamabad have been profoundly deceptive. Reports came in that key Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM) camps like Tarbela and Jabbar have been closed down, but the import of this is less clear than most people imagine. The closure of Jabbar, for example, is widely believed to have been the outcome of violent feuding between supporters of its official head, Mohammad Yusuf Shah @ Syed Salahuddin, and dissidents grouped under the banner of his assassinated rival, Abdul Majid Dar. Their latest clash, on May 9 at Jabbar, is believed to have left a dozen Hizb cadre seriously injured.

Camps belonging to other organisations like the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), it bears mention, have not so far been touched; neither, contrary to the assertions of some media pundits, have their websites or magazines. On May 14, 2003, Pakistan made a show of banning Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar from visiting Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but he openly harangued a large gathering there the very next day, evidently unhindered. Within Jammu and Kashmir itself, brutal killings of civilians continue unabated, notably among these the May 10 execution of three People's Democratic Party cadre, including Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's relative Gul Mohammad Mir.

We will only really know as the summer progresses, then, whether Musharraf acts to make concrete his favourite fiction that "nothing is going on across the LoC." Firm assertions on infiltration levels, like those emanating from Vajpayee and Fernandes, are essentially political, not founded on any testable ground appraisal. So, too, is United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's description of Musharraf as "a man of his word." Just over a year ago, Armitage had secured promises from Musharraf that cross-border terrorism would end, and that terrorist groups would be banned. Terrorism declined, and leaders of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba were arrested - but after the briefest interval, Pakistan's state-sponsored jihad was up and running again.

India ought to be paying close attention to the small print in any deal Musharraf offers: even more so because the conditions, so to speak, are written in invisible ink. Sadly, there is no sign that those who matter, in New Delhi, Washington or anywhere else, have the time or inclination for patient reading.

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

Assam: The IM (DT) Act - Of Aliens, Natives and Politics
Bibhu Prasad Routray
Acting Director, Institute for Conflict Management Database & Documentation Centre, Guwahati

The introduction of a Bill to repeal the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) [IM (DT)] Act in the Indian Parliament has brought the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migration and its large-scale impact on the State of Assam into fresh focus. Whether or not the Act is finally repealed - given the fact that the Congress and the Left parties remain opposed to such an eventuality - it is high time that the seriousness of the threat is recognised, and the exploitation of this issue for partisan political objectives and 'vote bank' politics is brought to an end.

The IM (DT) Act was enacted in 1983 with the purported objective of the "establishment of Tribunals for the determination, in a fair manner, of the question whether a person is an illegal migrant to enable the Central Government to expel illegal migrants from India and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto." Some of the requirements of the Act have proven discriminatory and biased in favour of illegal migrants. These include:

1. Every application made against any person 'shall be accompanied by affidavits sworn by not less than two persons residing within the jurisdiction of the same police station in which the person referred to in the application is found, or residing.' (No authority can, consequently, take cognisance of an offence under the Act without such a complaint. Such complaints are rare, since people living close by may be intimidated or may not wish to antagonize neighbours of a community that is increasingly numerically stronger, and that is seen to enjoy substantial political patronage).
2. The application shall be accompanied by a "fee, being not less than ten and not more than one hundred, rupees, (later fixed at Rupees Twenty-five) as may be prescribed". (The provision of a fee is a further deterrent as people refrain from filing complaints to avoid personal expenditure).
3. The onus of proof lies with the complainant.

There is no authoritative estimate of the actual number of illegal migrants in the State. Figures vary from a few hundred thousand to as much as four million. Former Union Minister for Home Affairs, Indrajit Gupta had put the figures at four million in a statement to Parliament in 1997. Nearly two decades ago, the then Chief Minister of Assam, Jogen Hazarika, had estimated the number of foreigners in Assam at only 200,00. At the same time, however, other claims by other organisations and individuals placed the population of illegal migrants variously between 1.3 million to 4.5 million, accounting for between 10 and 50 per cent of the total population in the State. Former Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia, on April 10, 1992, indicated that there were three million illegal Bangladeshis in Assam, only to retract his words two days later. The Congress party, as the prime beneficiary of this 'vote bank', has always tended to underplay the numbers. The divergent contentions apart, however, the fact that cannot be missed by anyone travelling through the State is that migration has affected the demography of several districts in Assam.

Migrants are also alleged to be responsible for the denudation of forest areas, for the encroachment of the living space of the locals, and for monopolising the service sector by undercutting local labour. It is, of course, a different matter that the Assamese have generally been disinclined towards manual labour. Additionally, it now increasingly being established that sections of the migrant population bring the fundamentalist and overtly anti-Indian sentiments along with them, creating fertile grounds for the designs of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Police sources reveal that Islamist insurgency in Assam has its genesis in the unabated migration from Bangladesh. Even though few would risk asserting a direct co-relation between Bangladeshi migration and the growth of Islamist insurgent groups in the State, the fact remains that it is the migrant inhabited areas that provide a steady recruitment ground for the organisations such as the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA) in Assam. The existence of as many as eleven Islamic militant organisations in the State has significantly widened the options available to the forces of destabilisation in the region.

The absolute impact of illegal migration in Assam, however, is political. Demographic movements are, of course, a fait accompli, with the State situated in close proximity to a region that is comparatively less attractive for its own population in terms of economic opportunities. Many proud Assamese would agree, albeit silently, that political power has slipped away from the hands of the ethnic Assamese over the years. It is noticeable that the Congress party in Assam, which remains the preferred political party for the minority community (the indigenous Muslims who are, according to one estimate, nearly 20 per cent of the State's population), has systematically extended its sphere of influence over the immigrant Muslims as well. As a result, the Muslims of Assam have never felt the need to organise themselves into communal political groupings (the formation of the United Minorities Front in 1985 was a localised aberration and the whole experiment was a failure), unlike States like Kerala, where parties like the Muslim League have carved out a niche for themselves. 'Vote bank' politics has made Muslims in Assam (indigenous as well as illegal immigrants) more secure under a Congress regime. The enactment of the IM (DT) Act by the Congress Party at the centre in 1983 was essentially an attempt to protect its traditional vote bank from harassment and legitimate expulsion.

Political patronage and the demands of realpolitik have made the makeover from migrant status to 'legal citizens' of the State relatively uncomplicated. Political leaders have not only prevented the existing machinery from identifying and deporting aliens, but have legalised their presence through instrumentalities like generous distribution of ration cards and even citizenship certificates.

The IM (DT) Act itself is an anomaly. It is far from judicious to try to deal with the problem of illegal migration within one State under a separate Act, while the rest of the country continues to be governed by the Foreigners Act. It is probably even more ludicrous to fall back upon an Act which protects the illegal migrant by putting the responsibility of proof on the complainant. Given the way successive State Governments have manoeuvred the setting up of tribunals under the IMDT, with retired judges at their helm, a Guwahati based English language newspaper, The Sentinel, in an editorial in the early 1990s, calculated that 'at the rates the tribunals were going, it would take 200 years to identify all the foreigners illegally residing in Assam, even if there was increase in their (the tribunals') number.' Only 1,501 illegal migrants had been deported by the tribunals set up under the IM (DT) Act over the past 16 years, even though an amount of Rupees 128,928,385 has been spent on these tribunals (figure quoted by the Minister in charge of Assam Accord Implementation, Pankaj Bora, in the State Assembly on March 13, 2003).

Assam's illegal immigrants have, over the years, acquired enormous mobility, and now threaten to impact on the demography of neighbouring States like Nagaland, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh as well. Places like Dimapur and Niuland in Nagaland now have a significant Bangladeshi population, with estimates putting their numbers around 300,000. The Nagaland Government claim to have deported 20,000 foreign nationals between 1994 and 1997. The Garo Hills area in Meghalaya is also being swamped by the Bangladeshi migrants.

In his report on Illegal Migration into Assam in 1998, to the President of India, the then Governor of Assam, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) S.K. Sinha maintained that "as deportation of such a large number of illegal migrants is no longer a viable option and because of the numerous infirmities in the IMDT Act which have rendered its continuation a wasteful exercise, it is imperative that this Act be repealed." Lt. Gen. Sinha recommended that the IM (DT) Act should be "replaced by a more just, workable and fair enactment."

The moot question is: will the proposed repeal of the act be able to deal with the problem? The answer is probably in the negative. According to the Deputy Prime Minister and Union Home Minister L.K. Advani's admission earlier this year, 20 million Bangladeshis are staying illegally in India. If the performance of the rest of India, which is not under a discriminatory Act like the IM (DT) and is governed by the Foreigners Act, is any indication, ground realities in Assam cannot be expected to undergo any dramatic transformation after the IM (DT) Act is annulled. It will also be foolhardy to imagine that migrants in search of greener pastures will abruptly be stopped by any successor arrangement. The repeal of the Act may, however, pave the way for an atmosphere in which deportation is not handicapped by the presence of a bad law, and illegal migrants cannot benefit from their lawless acts to secure the protection of easy citizenship. The repeal of the Act will also be consistent with India's dealings with the Government of Bangladesh, which has recently been accused of providing shelter to 155 training camps for terrorist and insurgent groups operating in India's Northeast.