SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 11, No. 13, October 1, 2012

INDIA

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Assam: Witches Brew in BTAD
Giriraj Bhattacharjee
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On September 1, 2012, the Army launched what has been described as “one of its biggest search operations ever”, covering six Districts – Kokrajhar, Dhubri, Bongaigaon, Chirang, Baksa and Nalbari – of Lower Assam, to unearth and confiscate illegal arms and explosives in the aftermath of ethnic clashes in the State. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi declared, "The Army is out and is helping us. It has been given full powers to seize illegal arms and ammunition and I believe we will get results very soon".

Unnamed Defence sources observed, in this regard, "The Army's focus has now been shifted to seizing all the illegal weapons out in the open. There are explosives too out there, and the Army's job is to push its intelligence gathering and get hold of all these weapons and explosives. There are reports that even normal people who have no links with rebel outfits may possess arms."

The recoveries following the launch of this ‘biggest search operation’ have, at best, been modest, with four incidents of recovery and arrest presently recorded:

September 23: Security Forces (SFs) neutralized an extremist hideout in the Guma Forest in Gossaigaon sub-division of Kokrajhar District and recovered 17 gelatin sticks, 28 detonators and circuit boards. SFs suspect the hideout to be of either a breakaway Adivasi factions or elements of the Rabha Viper Army (RVA).

September 20: SFs recovered two AK-56 rifles, two magazines and 20 rounds of ammunition at Sonajuli village under Dhimakuchi Police Station in Udalguri District. However, no one was arrested in this context.

September 19: SFs recovered two AK-47 rifles along with three magazines and 23 rounds of live ammunition from an arms dealer at Samtaibari in Chirang District.

September 18: SFs arrested four suspected cadres of the Ranjan Daimari faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB-RD) and four other linkmen from a house in Simaluguri village under the Paneri Police Station in Udalguri District. SFs found four AK-56 rifles, four magazines and 65 rounds of ammunition in their possession.

September 17: Two hand grenades and as many detonators were recovered from the house of a former NDFB insurgent identified as Rakesh Bodo at Kotabari village, under the Tamulpur Police Station in Baksa District. During interrogation, Rakesh told the Police that the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) party’s Darangajuli vice-president, Sanatan Sarania, had asked him to keep the explosives in his house. Both Rakesh and Sarania were arrested.

The Army was deployed on July 25, 2012, to assist the civil administration in subduing the ethnic clashes in Lower Assam, primarily in the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD) and the adjoining District of Dhubri. The clashes commenced on July 20, 2012, when bodies of four Bodo tribes-people [ex-Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT)] militants] were recovered in the Joypur Namapara locality in Kokrajhar. Earlier, unidentified gunman on July 19 shot at and injured suspended Police constable Mohibur Islam alias Ratul and All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU) leader Siddique Ali.

The ethnic clashes, according to Union Minister of Home Affairs (UMHA) Sushil Kumar Shinde’s statement on August 9, 2012, left 77 persons dead. Partial data collected by South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) puts the number of civilian killed at 109 until October 1. Further, according to the State Home Department, 5,000 houses were set ablaze in 244 villages. 187,052 persons affected by the violence between Bodos and Muslims were still lodged in 206 camps even after nearly two months since trouble broke out in five Lower Assam Districts. These included 168,875 Muslims, housed in 174 camps; 17,344 Bodos in 29 camps; and 833 belonging to other communities, in three camps, official sources disclosed, on September 16. Dhubri has the highest number of 101,373 inmates in 129 camps, followed by Kokrajhar with 55,760 inmates in 43 camps, Chirang with 23,609 inmates in 22 camps, Bongaigaon with 5,554 inmates in nine camps and 756 people in three camps in Barpeta. This is the second such clash involving Bodos and Muslims.

Bodo areas also have witnessed ethnic clashes earlier as well, between Bodos and Adivasis, and Bodos and Koch-Rajbongshi in the late 1980’s and mid 1990’s.

The BTAD extends over an area of 8,970 square kilometres in the four Districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri, and is administered by the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), which was created following the accord with the BLT in 2003.  The largest Plains’ tribal movement has seen many peaks and lows, from the call of the Plain Tribals Council of Assam (PTCA) in 1967 for a separate union territory of Udayachal, to the All Bodo Students’ Union’s (ABSU) demand for a “50-50 division” of Assam in 1987. The earlier agitations included all the plains’ tribal populations, such as the Mishing, Rabha, Mech, Deori and Sonowal, among others, in addition to the Bodos. The first phase of the Bodo agitation, in the late 1980’s, culminated in the first Bodo Accord of 1993, which led to the formation of Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC). The accord failed to meet the aspirations of the agitating groups, and led to the formation of the militant BLT.

The first Bodo Accord collapsed due to the failure to demarcate the boundary of the Council’s jurisdiction. The second Bodo Accord, signed in 2003, led to the formation of a Territorial Council under the sixth schedule of the Indian Constitution, and at the same time preserved the rights of non-tribal landowners in the tribal area. According to the BTC Act, 2003, "the existing rights and privileges of any citizen in respect of his land at the date of commencement of the act" are retained. Further, the provisions of the BTC Act do not "disallow any citizen from acquiring land either by way of inheritance, allotment, settlement, or by any other way of transfer, if such citizen is otherwise eligible for such acquisition". Many Bodo leaders have questioned the logic behind these provisions.

After the signing of the 2003 Bodo Accord and surrender of the BLT militants, the united National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) remained the active militant outfit operating in the Bodo-inhabitated areas of Assam. However, the united NDFB also entered into a cease-fire agreement (CFA) with the Central and State Governments in 2005. This was followed by 855 NDFB cadres moving into designated camps. However, following the October 30, 2008, serial blasts in Guwahati, the organization suffered a vertical split, and now has two factions, the Pro-Talks Faction led by B. Sungthagra alias Dhiren Boro (NDFB-PTF), and an Anti-talks faction, led by the now jailed Ranjan Daimari alias D.R. Nabla (NDFB-RD). Ranjan Daimari declared a unilateral ceasefire, effective from August 1, 2011, though SFs have continued operations against the group in the absence of a formal commitment from military commanders of the outfit.

Even after several rounds of informal talks between NDFB-PTF and the ‘central interlocutor’ P.C Halder, little visible progress is evident. The failure to secure a substantive breakthrough had led to indiscipline in the outfit, and NDFB-PTF members are frequently found to be involved in acts of extortion and abduction, despite the ceasefire.

According to a February 11, 2012, report, the SFs had arrested 46 NDFB-PTF militants on charges of kidnapping and extortion, recovering 37 weapons from them. Further, a February 8, 2012, report claimed that 108 NDFB-PTF militant had fled their designated camps since 2010. However, a clarification issued by NDFB-PTF on February 9, 2012, declared that none of its 1,027 cadres had left their designated camps.

On February 17, 2012, NDFB-PTF had asked then UMHA P. Chidambaram to immediately relieve former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief P.C. Haldar of his charge as interlocutor, not just for peace talks with the group, but from any exercise undertaken by the Centre to resolve the Bodo issue. Haldar is also the interlocutor for talks with the rival NDFB-RD. Haldar last met NDFB-RD leader, Daimary, in Guwahati Central Jail on August 28, 2012. He has held five rounds of informal talks with Daimari.

The failure to secure any substantive settlement with NDFB-PTF has reportedly led the Government to intensify parleys with Daimary’s NDFB-RD. Civil society groups, including the Bodo National Council (BNC), appear to be backing this move. NDFB-PTF was, earlier, part of BNC; it withdrew from the council on November 5, 2011, due to difference with BNC ‘chairman’ Hagrama Mohilary.

The NDFB-RD leadership consists of its ‘president’ Ranjan Daimari, arrested from Bangladesh in 2010; ‘vice president’, G. Rifikhang, taken into custody by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on April 20, 2011; ‘deputy chief of army staff’ of the ‘Bodoland army’; and Jwngkhang Boro, arrested on December 10, 2010 .The leaders still at large include ‘chief of NDFB army staff’ I.K. Songbijit; ‘information and publicity secretary’ Ohnjalu Basumatary; and 'finance secretary’ Rifikhang Goyar. The group’s ‘general secretary’, Dinthi Gwra Narzary, was killed on January 18, 2011, in Meghalaya. The group has an estimated cadre-strength of around 350.

With most of the leadership in jail, reports suggest that the outfit’s central command leadership is weak. Bedai, NDFB-RD’s ‘western Assam commander’, and his group are reported to be hiding in the Chirang Reserved Forest and engage in extortion and kidnapping. There are also signs of rank dissatisfaction. A reshuffle of the middle rung leaders of the outfit was reportedly carried out in December 2011 to avert any showdown between armed factions within the outfit. The weakness in the chain of command became manifest when Myanmar-based I.K. Songbijit, the chief of the NDFB-RD's armed wing called off the ceasefire on August 8, 2012. The move was later dismissed by NDFB-RD publicity secretary.

The group is also suspected to be behind at least one incident of killing in the ongoing Bodo-Muslim clashes, the August 13, 2012 incident in which a Muslim labourer from West Bengal was shot dead, and three others were injured, in Chirang District, on the Indo-Bhutan border. All four were returning from Bhutan, and planned to take a train to their hometown of Malda in West Bengal. The NDFB-RD has, however, denied involvement in any violence, including the August 13 killing.

Despite the group’s unilateral declaration of an indefinite ceasefire sinc August 2011, several instances of extortion and abduction, involving NDFB-RD cadres, have come to light. Partial data compiled by SATP has recorded at least seven cases of extortion by NDFB-RD militants in 2012, though the number may well be greater, with a large proportion of such cases going unreported. The BTC leadership has admitted to the rampant extortion prevalent in BTAD areas. BTC 'chairperson' Hagrama Mohilary, on January 6, 2012, conceded, "In the BTAD area, the situation has reached such an alarming level that even the poor villagers are not being spared. We have reports that in some areas the extortionists are collecting anything between INR 50 and INR 100 from each village household." A July 30, 2012, report quotes an unnamed ‘Bodo leader’ as stating that  ‘volunteers’ could be hired for INR 2,000-3,000 a month”, and, “in these difficult times, a firearm is a prized possession.”

Unsurprisingly, the SFs continue their offensive against the NDFB-RD, despite the outfit’s unilateral ceasefire.

The demographic structure of the Bodo areas constitutes a potent danger to peace and public security in the region. A secret report of the Assam Police provides a demographic break-up of the Kokrajhar District, indicating that Bodos, at 310,000, constitute 30 per cent of the population, and Muslims, at 236,000, 25.15 per cent, something the tribals have been repeatedly pointing out as a cause for worry and evidence that illegal migration from Bangladesh into Bodo areas continues. Of the nearly 1,050,000- people in the District, the Rajbongshis account for 165,000, the Adivasis 186,000, and others, mainly Nepalis and Bengalis, another 133,000. This tenuous demographic ‘balance’ is further complicated by the substantial availability of illegal arms.

Crucially, the Bodo demand for Bodoland also overlaps with the Adivasi groups’ demand for a separate Kamtapur. On July 10, 2012, Adivasi militant outfits, during their talks with the Joint Secretary (North-east) of the UMHA, Shambhu Singh, and Assam’s Additional Director General of Police – Special Branch (ADGP-SB), Khagen Sarma, reiterated their demand for the creation of an Adivasi land to be carved out of the BTC area. The Adivasi groups include the All Adivasi National Liberation Army (AANLA), Adivasi Cobra Military of Assam (ACMA), Adivasi Peoples’ Army (APA), Birsa Commando Force (BCF) and Santhal Tiger Force (STF). The other major demand of the five outfits is Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the Adivasi community. The All Koch Rajbongshi Students’ Union (AKRSU) has also revived the Kamtapur State movement in 2011.

The administration argues that a leadership deficit within the Police Force, thin presence on the ground, lack of mobility, the difficulty of the terrain and a complex and volatile ethnic mix, make it difficult to maintain law and order in the area. The overlapping and irreconcilable demands of divergent ethnic and religious groups make the situation nearly impossible to resolve, even as the administration chooses to bury its head in the sand with regard to the most significant elements of the demographic destabilization of the area. With growing land alienation among the tribals and continuing illegal migration, and with no principled effort to distinguish illegal migrants from legitimate citizens in the State at large, there is little possibility of an enduring peace in the BTA Districts, even is the augmented presence of SFs and the deployment of the Army are able to put a lid on immediate violence for the time being.

PAKISTAN

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Education: Leading into Darkness
Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

The deteriorating quality of education in Pakistan is a result of four principal factors: the increase of hate content in school textbooks; the rise of religious schools (madrassas); the increasing militancy targeting Government primary schools in the north western region: and, the perpetual political impasse leading to irregularity in the allocation of resources to education.

The offensive content in educational material in both religious and non-religious schools in Pakistan has been forcing young minds into the fanatical cast of ‘communal unity’ and ‘loyalty’ towards Islam and an Islamist Pakistan. Little of this is new, but years of empty rhetoric have not even begun the processes of any noticeable transformation.

The findings of a report, under the aegis of the training and advocacy organisation, Peace, Education and Development (PEAD), released on April 19, 2012, revealed that the contents of textbooks taught at schools and colleges in the Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) overemphasised aspects that could undermine social peace and incite violence in society. The report observed that the content of textbooks, particularly in the context of the Afghan jihad, were not consistent with existing socio-political realities, and contained controversial, discriminatory and gender-insensitive material.

Commenting on the patterns of hate doctrine and their consequences, Doctor Mehdi Hasan, Dean of the School of Media and Communications at the Beacon House National University, observed that Muslims posed a greater danger to their fellow Muslims than to non-Muslims in Pakistan. According to him the seminaries, where less than four per cent of Pakistani children studied, did not pose a greater threat than schools, where hate material was being taught to students as young as Standard I pupils.

A content analysis report published by Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) on August 30, 2012, noted that hate content in textbooks used in the country’s Punjab Province has increased from “45 lines in 2009 to 122 in 2012” The study examined 22 textbooks for the academic year 2012-13 in the Punjab and Sindh from classes 1 to 10. The report, titled Education or Promotion of Hatred, was distributed at a conference, Biases in Textbooks and Education Policy, organised by the NCJP.

Distortion of, and overemphasis on some of the tenets have created a jihadi terrain within the structure of the schools. This is compounded by anti-America, anti-India and anti-minority ideologies that are a common narrative in textbooks prescribed and in use in schools in Pakistan. On May 6, 2012, the Jinnah Institute claimed that school textbooks in Pakistan had toned down the element of jihad, but conceded that they were still permeated with an undisguised anti-India and anti-minority sentiment. The effort of ‘toning down’ jihad content, under tremendous international pressure, however, doesn’t mean that this has been completely excluded from textbooks. “Passing references” to jihad in numerous text books create opportunities for course instructors, some of whom are affiliated to radical Islamist organisations, or are sympathetic to the ideology of the so-called ‘Nazariya-e-Pakistan’ (Pakistani viewpoint), to propagate extremist dogma. The Jinnah Institute report downplays the seriousness of the threat posed by the mere ‘passing references’, asserting that the connotation of violence that was associated with the term jihad had been ‘toned down’.

There has been no such cosmetic ‘toning down’ in the curriculum of the numerous madrassas (seminaries) across the country. There are a reported 18,000 to 24,000 registered madrassas in Pakistan, in addition to unnumbered unregistered seminaries. The continuous burgeoning of madrassas in lands fertile for the propagation of a militant jihadist ideology are a matter of grave concern. Increasing poverty, a crippled government schooling system and the desperation of parents pushes them hard to enrol their children in madrassas that claim to cater to their needs. The presence of foreigners aggravates such concerns. On January 30, 2012, for instance, a Federal intelligence agency urged the Punjab Government and Police to bring the Madrassa Madina Jadeed at Muhammadabad on Raiwind Road on the outskirts of Lahore District, under surveillance, as most of the students were from outside Punjab and many from outside Pakistan. The madrassa had 33 foreign students, including 30 Afghans and three Burmese; 511 from outside Punjab, including, 297 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 122 from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 56 from Balochistan, 16 from Sindh, 11 from ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’, six from Gilgit Baltistan, and three from Islamabad; and 247 from Punjab itself. Even though the visas issued to the foreign students at many seminaries have expired, they continue to live in Pakistan. According to a report titled, ‘Foreign Students Studying in Madaris of Punjab on Invalid Visa’ only 31 out of a total of 329 foreign students surveyed, had a valid visa. The current security situation in Pakistan does not permit this kind of administrative laxity. Ignoring the security threat posed by the illegal stay of madrassa students, however, the outlawed Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jama’at’s (ASWJ) ‘central secretary’, General Khadim Hussain Dhillon, asserted that visa status should not matter when it comes to religious education. Expired visas are no justification for deporting foreign students, he insisted.

It is significant that, according to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), there have been at least 43,868 fatalities relating to Islamist terrorist violence over the past decade (2003 to September 30, 2012). Of these, at least 2,626 have been the result of targeted sectarian violence. Every institution in Pakistan, today, is under Islamist terrorist attack or intimidation, even as the extremists propagate their agenda and their doctrines of hate openly, often forcibly.

In the chilling case of December 12, 2011, the Gadap Town Police in Karachi, the Provincial capital of Sindh, rescued 53 children chained in an underground dungeon at a seminary, the Jamia Masjid Zakaria Kandhelwi Madrassa Arabia, situated in the Afghan Basti in the Sohrab Goth area. These children had been chained in a basement for 30 days. Unearthing tales of torture, the Police revealed that the children were being forcibly indoctrinated by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) instructors, preparing them to join the outfit’s ‘jihad’ on the Afghan front. One of the rescued students stated, "We are being made mujahedeen (holy warriors) here. We are being made Taliban here. They say you should get training... we will send you to fight."

Subsequently, on December 19, 2011, the Federal Government decided to demolish the madrassas that were not registered with Wafaqul Madaris Al-Arabia Pakistan and Tanzeemul Madaris Pakistan. Unfortunately, the programme remained on paper, with no serious effort of implementation. Fearing a 2007 Lal Masjid type backlash, the Government has failed to crack down on any of the unregistered madrassas till date. The madrassas continue to nurture extremist passions, producing a blinkered generation galloping towards a political and sectarian violence unprecedented in the history of the subcontinent.

The madrassas and the ideological bias of school curricula are, however, only part of the problem. The jihadists have pursued a broad agenda against all school education, particularly for girls, and the result has been the regular bombing of schools, particularly in the North-West region of KP and FATA. According to partial data compiled by the SATP, at least 52 schools were destroyed in 33 incidents in KP in 2009; 28 were destroyed in 22 such incidents in 2010; 59 schools were blown up in 69 incidents in 2011; and 45 schools were attacked in 47 incidents in 2012. Similarly, in FATA, a total of 28 schools were destroyed in 25 incidents in 2009; 44 in 44 such incidents in 2010, 57 schools in 76 incidents in 2011; and 26 in 30 incidents in 2012 (data till September 30, 2012). 

The TTP, in its systematic war against education, wants all girls to be barred from “western style” education. TTP violence and threats have led thousands of girls to quit schools. In their quest to impose Taliban-style Sharia’h, the TTP aim to reconfigure the private and the public spheres, where women would live confined within the four walls of the house without access to education. Shah Dauran, second in command of TTP’s Swat Chapter, in his daily radio broadcast in 2009, declared, "Female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society."

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Report of March 2012, in its annual assessment, observed that the dropout rate from primary to secondary schools in 2011 stood at an appalling 50 per cent for the country. The then Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, speaking on the “Education Emergency in Pakistan” on March 8, 2011, committed the Government’s full support to the “year of education” declaration, but little by way of follow-up is visible, and fear of an “impending disaster” linger on. Hobbled by extremist interventions, the system suffers further as a result of enormous political interferences. On July 17, 2012, a conference jointly organised by the Pakistan Education Taskforce (PET), Provincial Education Department, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) noted that the appointment of teachers and transfers and postings to key positions in the Education Department on recommendations of legislators and ministers was badly affecting the sector, and immediate reforms were needed to improve its performance. Speakers at the Conference stated that even an Executive District Education Officer, for instance, could not be appointed without the consent of a local politician in any area of Balochistan, adding that over 5,000 primary schools had only one teacher and lacked boundary walls and other facilities. The PET Chairperson Shahnaz Wazir Ali noted further that the politicisation of the Education Department made the situation worse. Pakistan’s education sector has travelled an uneasy road, beginning with the fundamental objective of ‘universalisation of primary education’, but declining, progressively, to a state of benighted ignorance and the virtual ‘death of education’.

No regime or institution in Pakistan, whether military or civilian, has demonstrated any will to confront religious extremism within the country. Dysfunctional civil-military relations, an ersatz model of democracy, the destruction and distortion of history through educational curricula at all levels, the influence of Islamist extremist sympathisers within political, bureaucratic and military structures, and increasing support to the jihadist agenda, have progressively brought Pakistan to a point of an extreme crisis of survival. Pakistan is, today, caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to sever its ties with the Islamists; and equally unable to openly forge an alliance with them.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

INDIA

Assam

Jammu and Kashmir

Manipur

Nagaland

Left-wing Extremism

Bihar

Chhattisgarh

Jharkhand

Odisha

West Bengal

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)