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SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 15, No. 18, October 31, 2016
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
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Balochistan:
Reaping the Whirlwind
Tushar
Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
At least
61 Security Force (SF) personnel were killed, and another
164 were injured as terrorists stormed the New Sariab
Police Training College (PTC), some 13 kilometres from
Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, in the
night of October 24, 2016. Three militants entered the
PTC and headed straight for the hostel, where around 700
Police recruits were sleeping. The attack began at around
11:10 pm, with gunfire continuing to ring out at the site
for several hours. Major causalities were inflicted when
two suicide bombers blew themselves up. One of the militants
wearing suicide vest was killed by the SFs. 250 cadets
who were held hostage were rescued by the SFs. SFs were
able to clear the area after five hours. Entry and exit
routes to the area were opened for traffic the next morning.
There has
been a multiplicity of claims among terrorist groups for
responsibility of this high-profile attack. The Hakimullah
faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
declared, “TTP Hakimullah group’s Karachi unit was behind
the attack”, adding that four of its militants were involved.
However, Major General Sher Afghan, chief of the paramilitary
Frontier Corps in Balochistan, which led the response
operation, claimed that the terrorists belonged to the
Al-Alami (international) faction of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
(LeJ)
– which is affiliated to the TPP, adding, “They were in
communication with operatives in Afghanistan.” The Daesh
(Islamic State, IS) also claimed responsibility and released
photos of the fighters involved, one of whom bore a strong
resemblance to an attacker who was killed by SFs in the
assault.
On the
same day, elsewhere in the Province, unidentified terrorists
shot dead two Pakistan Customs’ officials in the Shamsabad
area of Mastung District. A third customs official was
critically wounded in the armed attack. Captain (Retd.)
Farraukh Atiq, Deputy Commissioner of Mastung District,
stated, “Armed men opened fire at a customs vehicle in
the Shamsabad area of Mastung city.” The terrorists escaped
from the scene of the attack without facing any resistance.
On October
23, 2016, two Pakistan Coast Guard personnel were killed
while two civilians were injured by unidentified armed
assailants in the Jiwani Bazaar area of Gwadar District
in Balochistan. No outfit claimed responsibility for the
attack.
On October
14, 2016, three Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were shot
dead in the Sabzal Road area of Quetta. According to Police
sources, suspected militants opened fire at the FC men.
Two men died on the spot, whereas the third succumbed
to his injuries on the way to hospital. The attackers
escaped unharmed. There has been no claim of responsibility
for the attack.
Between
October 14, 2016 and October 24, 2016, the Province has
thus recorded 68 SF fatalities. There has been a rise
in violence against Security Force (SF) personnel in Balochistan
since the beginning of the current year. According to
partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict
Management (ICM), Balochistan has recorded at least
145 SF fatalities between January and October 2016, as
against 82 such fatalities during the corresponding period
of 2015, an increase of 76.82 per cent.
Significantly,
out of the 145 SF personnel killed in 2016, 126 were killed
in Northern Balochistan, while the remaining 19 were killed
in Southern Balochistan. As has been noted in the past
, the North is afflicted by Islamist extremist groups
such as TTP and LeJ; the Baloch insurgent groups operate
in the South. The major Baloch insurgent groups include
the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), Baloch Liberation Army
(BLA), Balochistan Liberation Tigers (BLT) and United
Baloch Army (UBA).
A North-South
breakup of SF fatalities over the last six years indicate
that SF fatalities in North Balochistan are consistently
higher than South Balochistan, while extra-judicial killings
of civilians account for a large proportion of the killings
in South Balochistan.
Balochistan
North-South SFs breakup
Year
|
Balochistan
|
North
|
South
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2011
|
122
|
79
|
43
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2012
|
178
|
116
|
62
|
2013
|
137
|
79
|
58
|
2014
|
83
|
60
|
23
|
2015
|
90
|
61
|
29
|
2016
|
145
|
126
|
19
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Total
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755
|
521
|
234
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Though
the number of civilian fatalities in 2016, till end-October,
stood at 191, down from 247 through 2015, extra
judicial killings by State agencies
and their proxies in Southern Balochistan remained rampant.
Through 2016, at least 191 civilians were killed in Balochistan,
of which some 86 were attributable to one or other militant
outfit. The remaining 105 ‘unattributed’ fatalities are
overwhelmingly the work of the State apparatus and its
surrogates. Of the 3,758 civilian fatalities recorded
in Balochistan since 2004 [data till October 30, 2016],
at least 999 civilian killings are attributable to one
or other militant outfit. Of these, 361 civilian killings
(205 in the South and 156 in the North) have been claimed
by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian
extremist formations – primarily LeJ, TTP and Ahrar-ul-Hind
(Liberators of India) – claimed responsibility for another
638 civilian killings, 631 in the North (mostly in and
around Quetta) and seven in the South. The 363 civilian
killings attributed to Baloch formations include at least
155 Punjabi settlers since 2006. The remaining 2,759 civilian
fatalities – 1,667 in the South and 1,092 in the North
– remain ‘unattributed’. A large proportion of the ‘unattributed’
fatalities, particularly in the Southern region, are believed
to be the result of enforced disappearances carried out
by state agencies, or by their proxies, prominently including
the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Aman Balochistan (TNAB, Movement
for the Restoration of Peace, Balochistan). The large
number of unattributed civilian fatalities strengthens
the widespread conviction that Security Agencies engage
in “kill and dump” operations against local Baloch dissidents,
a reality that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has clearly
recognized.
While the
SFs are engaged in a systematic campaign of extermination
of ethnic Baloch people through enforced disappearances
and extrajudicial
killings, which continue unabated
in the southern Districts of Balochistan, they are, in
turn, frequently targeted by Islamist terrorist formations
such as TTP and LeJ in the northern Districts. Though
the number of incidents of attacks on SFs declined to
35 in 2016, in comparison to 55 the previous year, their
lethality and intensity can be assessed by the October
24attack at the Quetta PTC. Some of the major attacks
on SFs in the northern Balochistan in 2016 include:
January
13: At least 15 people, among them 13 Police personnel,
an FC soldier and a civilian, were killed while another
25 were injured, when a suicide bomber blew himself up
near a Government health centre in the Satellite Town
area of Quetta.
January
18: Six FC personnel were killed and one was injured in
an IED blast near FC's Margat Checkpoint in Quetta.
February
6: At least 12 persons, including four FC personnel, were
killed and another 38 persons injured in a suicide blast
in the Multan Chowk area of Quetta.
June 29:
Four FC personnel were shot dead by unidentified armed
assailants on Double Road in Quetta.
After the
attack of the night of October 24 at the PTC, the Balochistan
Government seems to have lost faith in the capacity of
Federal Forces, and had demanded the restoration of pre-1958
powers under the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) to
curb crimes and prevent acts of terror in the Province.
“The provincial administration has no legal powers in
Balochistan that has become a war zone (sic),”
Home Secretary Mohammad Akbar told a meeting of the Senate’s
Functional Committee on Human Rights, adding, “Balochistan
has become a cocktail of insurgencies, religious extremism
and other criminal activities. We cannot hide that the
system has failed in Balochistan.
SFs in
Balochistan have been reaping what they had sown over
past decades. The TTP and LeJ are both products of the
sustained strategy of State supported terrorism, now gone
rogue at the margins. While some feeble and fitful efforts
are directed against Islamist terrorist formations in
Balochistan, this strategy continues to provide spaces
to Taliban and al Qaeda related formations which are hosted
in the Province and directed against Afghanistan, and
that are ideologically indistinguishable from the Pakistan-directed
‘renegade’ groupings.
On the
other hand, overwhelming and indiscriminate force is deployed
against the Baloch separatists in the south of the Province,
where gross human right violations and forced disappearances
are endemic. Islamabad deploys disproportionate and lawless
force to suppress all Baloch dissidence, including political
activists raising genuine grievances, despite the fact
that the Forces engaged in the ‘fight against terror’
have lost far more personnel to Islamist groupings in
the north than to Baloch insurgents in the south.
On August
30,2016, on the occasion of the International Day for
Enforced Disappearance, consequently, the Voice for Baloch
Missing Persons (VBMP) once again invited the attention
of political parties, human rights organizations, the
judiciary and the international community, urging them
to investigate the “catastrophic human rights abuses in
Balochistan,” ‘’
Balochistan
has, over the past months, secured somewhat greater attention
at international fora than was the case in the past, but
there appears to be little possibility of any measurable
impact of such limited initiatives on the bloodied ground
of the Province. Indeed, Pakistan continues to find willing
dupes in the international community and the comity of
nations, who are eager to go along with Islamabad’s twisted
narrative that the country is a ‘victim of terrorism’,
suppressing the increasingly obvious reality that this
is a terrorism created and sustained against others by
the Pakistani State, and that its domestic outbursts are
nothing more than a ‘blowback’ of its own continuing global
malfeasance.
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Maoists:
Shock in a 'Safe Haven'
Deepak
Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant,
Institute for Conflict Management
In the
most successful operation ever conducted by the Security
Forces (SFs) against the Communist Party of India-Maoist
(CPI-Maoist),
since the formation of the outfit in September 2004, SFs
killed at least 24 CPI-Maoist cadres in two successive
encounters in the Bejingi forest area, between Ramgarh
and Panasput, in the Malkangiri District of Odisha on
October 24, 2016. One Greyhound [the elite anti-Maoist
force of the Andhra Pradesh (AP) Police] commando, Mohammed
Abu Bakar, was also killed during the operation, while
another commando was injured. A large quantity of arms
and ammunition, including four AK-47 rifles, 10.303 rifles,
three Self-Loading Rifles (SLRs), two INSAS (Indian Small
Arms System) rifles, and four SBBL (Smooth Bore Breech
Loading) guns were recovered from the encounter site.
Police also recovered about 50 kit bags, one laptop, INR
216,000 in cash and a large quantity of Maoist literature.
Another four Maoists were killed during the subsequent
combing operation in the same area on October 25. Two
Maoists were also killed in the same area on October 27,
yielding a total of 30 Maoists killed in a quick succession
of SF operations in the region.
Following
a tip-off about movement of the Maoists in the area which
falls along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha Border (AOB), Odisha
Police sought the help of the AP Police and, subsequently,
a combined team of AP Police, Greyhounds, Odisha
Police Special Operations Group (SOG) and the District
Volunteer Force (DVF, mostly comprising ex-service men)
carried out the operation. Between 50 and 60 Maoists were
reportedly holding a ‘plenary session’, which was also
attended by the Maoist Central Committee (CC) member Akkiraju
Hargopal aka Ramakrishna aka RK, the ‘secretary’
of the Andhra-Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee (AOBSZC)
and overall in-charge of Maoist activity in the region.
The Maoists had assembled there to discuss their tactical
counter offensive campaign (TCOC) against the SFs and
were reportedly planning ‘something big’ to revive their
movement in the region.
On October
26, 2016, Odisha State Home Secretary, Asit Tripathy disclosed
that, of the 28 bodies recovered by the Police, 18 had
been identified. Those killed included Bakuri Venkata
Ramana Murthy aka Ganesh aka Prasad aka
Ramireddy, ‘official spokesman’ of AOBSZC and ‘secretary’
of east division unit of the party; Chemella Krishnaiah
aka Bhaskar aka Daya, 'secretary' of the
Koraput-Srikakulam 'joint division' of the AOBSZC; Gamelli
Kesava Rao aka Birsu, ‘area commander’ of First
Central Regional Committee (CRC) and ‘divisional committee
secretary’ of the Koraput-Srikakulam ‘division’; Anna
Parthi Dasu aka Madhu (50), member of the inner
protection team around Bakuri Venkata Ramana Murthy and
‘divisional committee member’ (DCM), technical team of
West Godavari; Geddam Suvarnaraju aka Kiran (38),
brother-in-law of Madhu; Prabhakar Kapukka alias
PKM aka Devendra, DCM; Latha aka Jyothi
aka Padma, DCM and wife of Dubashi Shankar aka
Mahendra, ‘Special Zonal Committee Member’, (SZCM),
of the Hyderabad area; Rajesh aka Bimal, ‘area
commander’ of First CRC and DCM from Chhattisgarh; Mamata
aka Banajalas Nirmala aka Boddu Kundanalu
Maru (DCM of Third CRC of the party and wife of Suresh,
SZCM of the Srikakulam area); Yamalapalli Simhachalam
aka Murali aka Krishna aka Hari,
key member of Central Committee member RK’s protection
team and DCM of the Vizianagaram District; Kameswari aka
Swarna aka Swaroopa aka Ricky, part of cadre
supply team and DCM of Pedabayalu; Kilo Sita aka
Swetha, part of cadre supply team and ‘area committee
member’ (ACM) of Pedabayalu; Budri, woman bodyguard of
RK’s inner protection team and ACM from Chhattisgarh;
and key members in RK’s security cordon, Munna aka
Akkiraju Prithvi aka Shivaji (27), an ACM of
Malkangiri’s cut-off area Local Guerrilla Squad (LGS),
and Raino aka Sunil aka Jalmuri Srinu Babu,
DCM of Third CRC of the party. Ganesh and Daya carried
a reward of INR two million each.
The second
most successful operation in terms of fatalities among
Maoists across India was the November 23, 2010, incident
in which 20 CPI-Maoist cadres were killed in an encounter
with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and State
Police personnel near Aasrampura village of the Jagargunda
area in the Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh. There
were three earlier operations in which 20 Maoists had
been killed: On February 17, 2008, at least 20 CPI-Maoist
cadres were killed during ongoing combing operations by
SFs in the border area of the Nayagarh-Ganjam-Kandhamal
Districts of Odisha; on July 9, 2007, at least 24 SF personnel
and 20 CPI-Maoist cadres were killed in a gun battle that
occurred when a joint team of the CRPF and Chhattisgarh
Police were combing the Elampatti-Regadgatta forest area
of Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh; and on June 24,
2005, SFs killed at least 20 CPI-Maoist cadres during
a nightlong operation in the East Champaran and Sheohar
Districts of Bihar.
The most
successful previous operation in the AOB region in terms
of fatalities among Maoists had been carried out in September
2013, in Malkangiri District. On September 14, 2013, at
least 14 Maoists were killed in an encounter with the
State Police SOG and the DVF near Silakota village under
the Podia Block of Malkangiri District. However, no senior
Maoist leader was killed in that encounter. A CPI-Maoist
‘divisional committee’ member, identified as Rakesh, who
was present at the encounter site, had managed to escape.
The AOB
region comprises of nine Districts –East Godavari, Khammam,
Srikakulam, Vishakhapatnam and Vizianagaram Districts
of AP; and Gajapati, Koraput Malkangiri and Rayagada of
Odisha. Presently, Khammam is a part of Telangana. Between
September 21, 2004 and October 2016, the region witnessed
at least 715 Maoist-related fatalities, including 298
civilians, 147 SFs and 270 Maoists. During the same period,
7,254 such fatalities, including 2,926 civilians, 1,847
SFs and 2,481 Maoists, had been recorded across India.
The AOB region has thus accounted for almost 10 per cent
of the total Maoist-related fatalities during this period
across India.
The AOB
region has long been one of the Maoists’ strongholds.
A small part of the region situated at the tri-junction
of three states – AP, Chhattisgarh and Odisha– acts as
a bridge for the Maoists to cross freely from one State
to the other. This served as a ‘safe haven’ for the Maoists,
as the region’s difficult terrain made it tougher for
SFs to carry out combing operations. According to an unnamed
senior Police officer involved in anti-Maoist operations,
“It is very difficult to enter the cut-off area located
in AOB. The area is covered with thick forests and water
bodies are in full spate during monsoon and now. Maoists
who consider AOB as a safe zone conduct plenary and plenums
during this chosen season (sic).”
The Maoist
‘movement’ is presently facing severe challenges across
India due to various
factors, the primary among which has
been successful intelligence-based operations launched
by SFs, and spearheaded by the AP Police Special Intelligence
Branch (SIB) over the past years, which have helped neutralize
top cadres among the extremists. According to the partial
database compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal
(SATP), between 2010 and 2016 (till October 30), at least
775 Maoist leadership elements have been neutralized (93
killed, 434 arrested, 248 surrendered). According to UMHA
data, the total number of LWE cadres arrested between
2010 and 2015 stood at 11,608. During the same period
at least 633 LWE cadres surrendered. From a peak of 1,180
Maoist-linked fatalities across India in 2010, the fatalities
came down to 215 in 2015. Unsurprisingly, the ‘movement’
is also waning in the AOB region. Overall fatalities in
Maoist violence in the region witnessed sharp decline
from a peak of 93 in 2010 to 35 in 2015.
Meanwhile,
the AP Government gave permission to private bauxite mining
companies in the Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam tribal
belts of AP in 2008 to set up a mining-cum-refinery project.
This irked the tribals and provided an opportunity to
the Maoists to expand their base. They resorted to several
abductions of public representatives and officials, including
Vineel
Krishna, the then District Collector
of Malkangiri, in 2011, besides killing a few public representatives
and Policemen in the border villages. The Maoists have
also called for frequent shutdowns in the towns and villages
of the AOB area and conducted ‘public meetings’ in the
forests. Nevertheless, they have failed in their efforts
to revive their ‘movement’.
Documents
recovered at the encounter site in Malkangiri on October
24-25, 2016, indicate that the Maoists are deeply concerned
about the status of their ‘movement’ in the AOB region
and were desperate to do ‘something big’. The loss of
leadership elements of the region during the encounter,
however, has served a body blow to the outfit and will
impact severely on their operational capabilities.
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Weekly Fatalities: Major
Conflicts in South Asia
October
24-30, 2016
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Civilians
|
Security
Force Personnel
|
Terrorists/Insurgents
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Total
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BANGLADESH
|
|
Islamist Terrorism
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
2
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Left-wing
Extremism
|
0
|
0
|
4
|
4
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Total (BANGLADESH)
|
0
|
0
|
6
|
6
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INDIA
|
|
Assam
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
2
|
Jammu and
Kashmir
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
5
|
Manipur
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
Meghalaya
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
Left-Wing
Extremism
|
|
Chhattisgarh
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
Odisha
|
2
|
1
|
12
|
15
|
Total (INDIA)
|
6
|
3
|
17
|
26
|
PAKISTAN
|
|
Balochistan
|
1
|
63
|
11
|
75
|
FATA
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
Punjab
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
5
|
KP
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
Sindh
|
1
|
0
|
6
|
7
|
Total (PAKISTAN)
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|
|
|
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Provisional
data compiled from English language media sources.
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