SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 3, No. 16, November 1, 2004

Data and assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

PAKISTAN

"Food for Thought"
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

President and General Pervez Musharraf has successfully engineered another media storm over a new set of 'proposals' for the 'resolution' of the 'Kashmir issue', which he offers, with a studied air of insouciance, as 'food for thought'. The remarks were made at a gathering of editors and senior journalists at an iftar dinner hosted for him and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz by Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and State Minister Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli on October 25, 2004, at Islamabad. As was the case with the General's earlier proposals regarding the 'four steps process' [December 18, 2003], the new proposals are both arbitrary and nonsensical, though this has not prevented a number of informed commentators from taking them very seriously and beginning a debate on the exigencies of their translation into policy.

In sum, Musharraf proposes:

Pakistan would no longer insist on a plebiscite in Kashmir.
Since India would not accept a 'religion-based solution', a solution could be formulated in 'geographical terms'.
'Kashmir' can be divided into seven regions - five with India and two with Pakistan.
A three-stage process should be employed to secure a 'solution': First, identify the region at stake. Second, demilitarize it. Third, change its status.
As regards the 'status', various options could be examined including "ideas for joint control, UN mandates, condominiums, and so on."

There are several aspects of these proposals that are, at best, disingenuous. In the first instance, Musharraf adroitly transforms the three regions within Indian controlled Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) into five. At the same time, he cleverly notes that "The beauty of these regions is that they are still religion-based even if we consider them geographically." In other words, what Musharraf offers is, again, the principle of religious exclusivism - the unfinished agenda of the two-nation theory - which underpins the ideology of extremist political Islam and the creation of Pakistan, and which is in irreducible conflict with the pluralist democratic polity of India. Though the proposals are formulated in 'geographical terms', they remain at best, and by Musharraf's own admission, proposals for the communal vivisection of J&K - an outcome that cannot be acceptable to India.

Further, Musharraf presents the geographical division of J&K as a fait accompli, making only the modalities of its realisation a matter of negotiation with India (India has consistently rejected the possibility of any territorial concessions in J&K). In this, he develops on his earlier 'four steps' thesis, in which 'Step 3' required that all those options for a solution of J&K that were not acceptable to either side be "eliminated from the dialogue". This is, in essence, a dog in the manger perversity masquerading as 'high policy'. The sheer audacity of what is proposed here is concealed by the 'reasonableness' of the language in which the proposition is cast. To take an analogy, if a usurper and a legitimate claimant, or a thief and his victim, are in conflict, our objective should not be to determine whose claims are supported by law and considerations of justice, but rather to equally deny the claims of either side, and to create an alternative structure of possession that offers conditional access to the goods, properties or rights in dispute to both parties - an option that quite naturally favours the usurper and the thief. Such an outcome cannot be consistent with any considerations of morality or law, which would require that competing claims be settled on the justice, the legality and the principles underlying respective claims, and at least in some measure, the methods by which these have been pursued. The fact that one party in the Kashmir 'dispute' has engaged in a murderous terrorist campaign for a decade and a half - a campaign that has already claimed nearly 38,000 lives in Indian-controlled J&K, and that still continues, and which has found a majority of victims among the very people, the Kashmiri Muslims, who it claims to seek to 'liberate' - cannot be irrelevant to such considerations of morality, justice and law. Nor, indeed, can the fact be irrelevant that the regions of J&K - 'Azad Kashmir' and the Northern Areas - which have been occupied by Pakistan for over half a century, have witnessed a complete denial of human and political rights, as of all vestiges of development. The mere fact that the aggressor in a particular case is unwilling to relinquish his claim cannot create moral or legal grounds for the rightful possessor to relinquish or dilute his entitlement.

This, however, is precisely what Musharraf is proposing, and he is not alone in this logic. In recent years, terrorists, their various advocates, and their sponsors in different theatres have repeatedly advanced the thesis that the only 'solution' to terrorism is that its victim-societies offer its perpetrators some concessions - and much of the liberal democratic world has bought into this argument, with devastating impact on political will in the free world.

The potential consequences of this policy of appeasement, and of Musharraf's 'options for control' of the various 'demilitarized regions' need to be examined in some detail, particularly in view of the fact that Musharraf's proposals build on or echo several 'solutions' that have been doing the rounds over the past years, including the Kashmir Study Group (KSG) formula, and some loose talk of an 'Andorra solution', and the fact that these various formulae have been eagerly embraced by many among the weak-willed and weak-minded among the regional and global leadership. First, another communal partition of India - and that is precisely what is being proposed by all these 'alternatives' - simply cannot be 'sold' in India, politically. Any sundering of territories in Kashmir will be politically volatile, and will unleash a backlash of violence across the sub-continent. The 'Andorra formula' had a peculiar and benign history in Europe, and will find little resonance here. This is South Asia - where passions run deep and long histories of hatred and mutual slaughter have been compounded by ideologies of envy, exclusion and communal polarisation that inflame every sore into a cancerous wound.

Moreover, even if such a 'solution' was hypothetically possible, the area of 'joint control', the 'condominium', or whatever else may be created, would remain a region in which Indo-Pak squabbling and covert efforts for domination would be a permanent feature, and would intertwine continuously with the larger enterprise of Islamist extremist terrorism that currently plagues so much of the world. Such a 'solution' would, in other words, fail altogether to address the basic conflict between the two countries - and this conflict, as has been repeatedly emphasised, is a conflict of irreducible ideologies, the one committed to exclusionary religious identities and quasi theocratic-domination, and the other to liberal, secular and democratic values.

Both on grounds of justice and considerations of the future stability in the region, it is, consequently, a survival imperative for South Asia that no further part of it be transformed by vivisection into another communal ghetto, and that those who have long harnessed terrorism to secure this end be comprehensively defeated, not appeased.

On a diplomatic level, India has refused to respond to Musharraf's new proposals on the ground that these have not been formally presented, though many a feather has obviously been ruffled. The proposals have, moreover, been widely rejected both within Pakistan and in Indian circles. Significantly, this is a time when Musharraf is alienated from virtually every element of his domestic political constituency as a result of his engagement with the US in the 'war against terrorism', of holding on to the uniform, proclaimed madrassah reforms, reforms for the protection of women and prevention of 'honour killings', the military campaigns in Baluchistan and the NWFP, etc. However tardy or tentative his reform initiatives may be, each has won him a different set of enemies in the country. He has, of course, consolidated his position within the military hierarchy through the reshuffle on October 3. But, his dilution of Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite, virtually gospel for the Army and a sheet anchor of the Pakistani position for over five decades, can only create more enemies in key institutions.

What, precisely, could Musharraf have hoped to gain by articulating these proposals at this time and in this manner. Taking the negotiations process with India forward cannot have been an objective: the hard core of diplomatic negotiations is never advanced through media posturing, and is often obstructed by ill conceived proposals aired in public fora at the highest levels of leadership. The rare occasion on which such announcements serve a positive purpose are cases where diplomatic relations have broken down or are so strained as to make meaningful discourse impossible - as was the case with then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's 'offer of friendship' to Pakistan at a public meeting in Srinagar, which eventually translated itself into the present dialogue process. Such a situation clearly does not prevail at present, and an institutional process of negotiations has been established and has widely been proclaimed to be 'moving forward'.

Despite their air of spontaneity, there is evidence that Musharraf's statements are part of a considered strategy. For one thing, they elaborated on earlier statements that he made during an interview with an Indian journalist, published on October 13, 2004. Moreover, past experience suggests that Musharraf's public declarations are often of the nature of establishing new goalposts, and he can be relied on to follow his declared ends, albeit with a great deal of tactical flexibility. Clearly, then, the new 'formulae' are intended to be pursued as goals of national policy over the foreseeable future. It is evident, now, that the processes of jehadi attrition, which Pakistan had deployed against India, cannot be sustained indefinitely at required levels of intensity. As a result, a process of political and diplomatic attrition would need to be intensified if even limited Pakistani objectives with regard to J&K are to be secured. Musharraf's proposal for a resolution of the 'Kashmir issue' in 'geographical terms' remains part of the continued effort to fulfil his country's communal mandate and agenda 'through other means'.

INDIA

MYANMAR

Salvaging a Relationship
Guest Writer: E.N. Rammohan
Member, National Security Advisory Board; Former Director General, Border Security Force

During the five-day state visit to India by the Chairman of Myanmar's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Senior General Than Shwe, from October 25-29, 2004, three agreements were signed between the two countries, including a critical 'Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of Non-Traditional Security Issues'. The Agreement affirmed the commitment to "enhance cooperation against terrorism, arms smuggling, money laundering, drug trafficking, organized crime, international economic crime and cyber crime". General Than Shwe also assured the Indian leadership that Myanmar would not permit its territory to be used by any hostile element for harming Indian interests and whenever information on such activity came to Myanmar's notice, they would not hesitate to take appropriate action against such groups. This agreement signaled a return to classical diplomacy, as India abandoned its rigidly moralistic posture on the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and acknowledged that it needed Yangon's full cooperation to ensure that insurgent groups operating in India's Northeast did not continue to secure sanctuary on Myanmarese soil. Other ways would have to be found to encourage democracy movements in neighbouring countries.

The location of Indian insurgent groups in Myanmar dates back to the 1950s, when Independent India's first insurgent group, the Naga Underground Army first sought shelter in the Sagaing region there. Since then, several insurgent groups from India's Northeast have followed suit. This is, in a sense, natural for insurgent groups from Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, since these States have extensive borders with Myanmar.

During the first thirty years of independence, the Myanmar Government did not have much control over its border areas. Going in an arc from the southwest to the southeast, the Arakanese, Chins, Nagas, Kachins, Was, Shans, Karens and Karennis were all against the mainland Burmese. This had a parallel in India's northeastern regions - the Khasi Hills, Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, Mizo Hills, Naga Hills, and the tribes in the Churachandpur, Ukhrul and Senapati districts of Manipur. These tribes were, by and large, Christian while the plains people were Hindus or Muslims. In Myanmar, the tribes listed were also predominantly Christian, while the Myanmarese in the mainland were Buddhist. All the tribes on the periphery feared domination by the more powerful and culturally dissimilar Centre, and all of them, without exception, took to arms and fought bush wars against Yangon (then Rangoon). As a result the border areas were neither properly developed nor adequately policed and it was natural for insurgent groups from India's Northeast to cross over and seek support from groups like the Kachin Independent Army (KIA). The process was facilitated even further by the fact that tribes had a great deal in common with contiguously located tribes across the border - the Nagas, for instance, have long settled on both sides of what is now the Indo-Myanmar border (and, indeed, the 'Greater Nagalim' that Naga rebel groups seek to secure claims significant parts of Myanmarese territory). After, the Shillong Accord was signed with the Naga Underground Army in 1975, one section broke away to subsequently form the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), and it was in the Sagaing Division of Myanmar, that its headquarters was set up, with the Hemi Naga leader, Khaplang as its Chief, along with Thuingaleng Muivah and Isaac Swu. After the split in the NSCN on April 30, 1988, the Khaplang faction continued to maintain its headquarters in the Sagaing Division in Myanmar.

Similarly, during Manipur's long history, their Rajas controlled the whole of Kebaw Valley for the better part of a thousand years, and during this period hundred's of Meiteis settled in that Valley and even beyond in what is now Myanmar. When Meitei insurgent groups were formed in Manipur, such as the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in 1978, the Peoples Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) in 1977, and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) in 1964, they all took sanctuary in Myanmar and established camps there.

During all these years, the Myanmar Army conducted sporadic operations in their tribal areas, but the Army returned to its bases in the mainland after each operation. It was only after the military took over the Government after the coup in 1988 that the problem in the border areas was properly addressed. The Army conducted operations in the Karen areas, driving their insurgent groups into Thailand. The Karens were also divided, as Yangon bolstered a Buddhist faction among them. Rangoon also managed to convince the Kachins to sign a peace treaty. Khun Sa, the drug baron, also negotiated a settlement with the Military Government and the Shan State Army was neutralized. The drug trade, however, continued and it was widely known that the architect of some of these agreements, Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt the former Military Intelligence Chief, had a share in its control. (Prime Minister Khin Nyunt was removed from his post in a recent purge authored by Than Shwe)

After the military coup in 1988, the Foreign Minister of Myanmar begged India to help rebuild their country, but Delhi, regrettably, turned a deaf year and Myanmar was treated as a pariah nation. China saw the vacuum and stepped in. Today, the Myanmar Army is fully equipped with Chinese arms, the Myanmar market is flooded with Chinese goods that find their way into the Northeast through the porous borders between Myanmar and India. In the meanwhile, the Indian Government continued moralizing about the way the Military Government had crushed democracy in Myanmar by not allowing Aung San Su Kyi to form the Government after her National League for Democracy (NLD) won the elections in 1990.

In 1995, after some persuasion, the Myanmar Army agreed to conduct joint counter-insurgency operations with the Indian Army. Operation Golden bird was launched to intercept a party of the NSCN - Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) which was ferrying arms from Bandarban through the Chin Hills to Manipur. In the midst of the operation, after thirty-eight militants had been killed and more than a hundred weapons captured, New Delhi announced the Nehru Award to Aung San Su Kyi. Offended, the Myanmar Army abruptly called off the Operation, and it is estimated that more than a hundred militants escaped with their weapons.

At least one major group of Indian insurgents, the UNLF from Manipur, has procured all its weapons from Myanmar. With an estimated strength of 2,000 cadres and as many AK rifles, the group has also acquired some RPG-7 rocket launchers, RPD 7.62 light machine guns, and even one Air Defence gun. In 2000-2001 the Myanmar Army reportedly captured more than a hundred cadres of the UNLF in the Kebaw valley. The cadres were released, but the weapons were confiscated. Clearly the Myanmar Army did not care to hand the militants over to the Indian side.

What is not well known is that India's intelligence agencies had, at one time, helped the Khaplang faction with weapons to fight the Myanmar Army. This was done to persuade Khaplang to fight the NSCN-IM after their split, and this is something Yangon will not easily forget.

Incidentally the NSCN-IM has used Myanmar territory to go to Bangladesh to collect arms that they procured through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Bangladesh Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). The arms were procured from Thailand, brought by coastal steamer to Cox's Bazaar and then carried overland via Bandarban into Myanmar and then into Manipur across the Chin Hills. The first consignment was brought in 1992, and two consignments are presumed to have followed in 1993 and 1994.

It is rather late in the day to salvage something from India's tattered relationship with Myanmar. India had completely thrown to the winds all practical norms of diplomacy and international relations in taking an arrogant and judgmental moral stance towards a country bordering its sensitive and volatile Northeast. China has already donned the key role in aiding and assisting Myanmar in every sphere, and has established a Naval station in the Cocos Islands on Myanmar's western coast, which monitors the movement of the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal. It is not clear how much of this can be reversed and whether India's proposed cultural, economic and 'non-traditional security' cooperation can help restore relations to the strength and profundity that strategic considerations would demand.

Insurgent groups in India's Northeast have found secure safe havens in three countries in their neighbourhood over the years - Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar. With Bhutan's military operation against the insurgent camps of the ULFA, the NDFB and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) in December 2003, Bhutanese soil was cleared of the insurgent presence. However, a significant proportion of the cadres of the ULFA and the NDFB who were squeezed out of Bhutan, have crossed over to Myanmar. Both these groups had already established camps in Myanmar with the NSCN-K's support, long before the Bhutan Operations. Effective joint operations after the new agreement between Delhi and Yangon on non-traditional security cooperation - if it is implemented in good faith and with some vigour on both sides - may help clear Myanmar of the scourge as well, leaving Bangladesh as the only safe-haven for insurgent and terrorist groups in the region.

Some elements in India's foreign office believe that the 'isolation' of Bangladesh in this manner would force the country to rethink its support to Indian insurgent groups and anti-state terrorism in India. This expectation, however, is far from realistic. Bangladesh has its objectives clear: they want the whole of India's Northeast and Myanmar's Arakans for their 'homeland', and have repeatedly articulated this idea, often under the objectionable title of "Lebensraum for Bangladesh" (as in an article published in Holiday of October 1991). All India's pleas for action against camps of Indian insurgent groups in Bangladesh have met with bland denials, and it is folly to persist in giving Dhaka lists of camps with grid references. Subsequent reports have repeatedly shown what happens on the ground after each such list is given to Dhaka: Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officials or representatives of the DGFI visit the camps and have them shifted a few hundred yards. No automatic changes can be expected in Bangladesh's postures and policies in the wake of any major cooperative action between India and Myanmar. Much more pragmatic action is required if insurgent groups are to be discouraged from camping comfortably in Bangladesh.

NEWS BRIEFS

Weekly Fatalities: Major Conflicts in South Asia
October 25-31, 2004

	Civilian	Security Force Personnel	Terrorist	Total
BANGLADESH	1	0	5	6
INDIA
Assam	0	0	5	5
Jammu & Kashmir	4	3	20	27
Left-wing extremism	2	0	0	2
Manipur	2	2	7	11
Meghalaya	0	0	1	1
Nagaland	1	0	0	1
Tripura	3	0	3	6
Total (INDIA)	12	5	36	53
NEPAL	1	0	14	15
PAKISTAN	19	1	3	23
SRI LANKA	0	0	1	1

Provisional data compiled from English language media sources.

INDIA

Next round of talks with Naxalites linked to laying down of arms, says Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police: The Director-General of Police in Andhra Pradesh, S.R. Sukumara, has stated that the laying down of arms by left wing extremists (also known as Naxalites) will be the key to holding the second round of talks with them. In an interview to a national daily on October 27, the senior police official said that the Government had made its stand clear and was awaiting a response from extremists. Depending upon the extremists' reply, the Government would take a final decision on holding the next round of talks or, in the extreme, "resume combing", he added. To a question whether the Government was heading towards a situation where the ceasefire would be violated by taking up 'combing', Sukumara said there was never a ceasefire agreement with the Naxalites. It was only a "no first fire agreement". The Hindu, October 28, 2004

Assam Government asks National Democratic Front of Bodoland to depute representatives: The Assam government, on October 25, asked the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) to depute representatives to finalise the ground rules of ceasefire. Addressing a press conference in Guwahati, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said that the State Government has written to the NDFB 'chairman' Ranjan Daimari alias D.R. Nabla to nominate a few leaders who would represent the organization during formulation of the ceasefire ground rules and in the peace talks that would follow. Sentinel Assam, October 26, 2004

PAKISTAN

Pakistan bureau of Al Jazeera received latest Bin Laden tape: The Pakistan bureau of Al Jazeera television received the latest videotape of Osama bin Laden, in which he warned the United States of more attacks like those on September 11, 2001, its bureau chief said on October 30 in Islamabad. "Someone came on Friday and dropped an envelope at our gate. When I opened and played it, it was a great scoop," Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan told Reuters, adding that he did not know who had delivered the tape. Zaidan, a Syrian, had reportedly met bin Laden several times before the September 11 attacks and had published a book based on his interviews with him in 2002. The News, October 31, 2004

17 tribesmen killed in South Waziristan: 17 tribesmen of the Mahsud jirga were killed and many were injured in a rocket attack near Jandola, 65 kilometres east of Wana in the South Waziristan agency on October 26 afternoon. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan blamed militants for the incident that occurred in Sheikh Ziarat near Jandola and said, "Militants fired a 107mm rocket at the jirga". However, resident tribesmen disputed the spokesman's claim and accused the security forces of targeting the tribesmen. Daily Times, October 27, 2004

President Pervez Musharraf proposes new solutions for resolving Kashmir issue: Addressing a gathering of editors and senior journalists at an iftar dinner in Islamabad on October 25, President General Pervez Musharraf said a stage had come to move forward for a solution to the Kashmir issue since a great deal of progress in this direction had been made already. Rejecting the Line of Control (LoC) as a permanent border, he explained the geographical status of Kashmir, which, he said, was divided in seven regions - five with India and two with Pakistan. "The beauty of these regions is that they are still religion based even if we consider them geographically." President Musharraf offered "food for thought" by suggesting that the debate could be initiated in the context of a three-pronged discourse. First, identify the region at stake. Second, demilitarize it. Third, change its status. He suggested there were many options which could then be considered, and legal experts on both sides could then look at the pros and cons of ideas for joint control, UN mandates, condominiums, and so on. He added Pakistan had proposed demilitarization of 'held Kashmir' and if India came up with a similar proposal asking Pakistan to do likewise in 'Azad Kashmir', then these issues would need to be discussed and Pakistan would have to build a consensus for moving forward. Dawn, The News, Daily Times, October 26, 2004

SRI LANKA

LTTE has not abandoned the 'right to secede', states Anton Balasingham: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW Weekly Assessments & Briefings Volume 3, No. 16, November 1, 2004

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 3, No. 16, November 1, 2004