SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 34, March 10, 2003

INDIA

J&K: The Opportunities of Another Peace Process
K.P.S. Gill
President, Institute for Conflict Management

With the appointment of a new 'interlocutor' by the Union Government in February, the wayward 'peace process' in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) appears to be limping into a new phase. N.N. Vohra has, in the past, served as Home Secretary and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, and is eminently qualified for his new assignment. As in the past, however, apart from the persuasive credentials of the designated interlocutor, there is little by way of clarity of mandate, purpose or strategy beyond the generally vague counsel to 'talk to everybody' in order to 'restore peace' in J&K. To this extent, the new process appears indistinguishable - with the exception of the identity of the interlocutor - from its manifestly unsuccessful predecessors.

In April 2001, K.C. Pant, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, had been appointed as interlocutor, but had little to show for his 'mission' beyond a few desultory rounds of discussions with some fringe separatist groups. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), at that time the primary target of the 'peace mission', rejected dialogue with Pant, demanding recognition as the 'only representative body' of the Kashmiri people, and inclusion of Pakistan in the negotiations.

In a more dilatory approach to a negotiated peace, the Union Government appointed the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, as the negotiator for talks on devolution of powers/autonomy for J&K, on July 16, 2002. Jaitley's terms of reference included talks with the J&K government as well as political parties and leaders. With minimal evidence of activity, it is safe to assume that this process has also been mothballed.

As failures go, Pant and Jaitley are in eminent company in the long and misguided search for peace in J&K [K.P.S. Gill & Ajai Sahni, "The J&K 'Peace Process': Chasing the Chimera"]. This prominently includes three misconceived Prime Ministerial initiatives - the bus ride to Lahore in February 1999, the Ramadan cease fire of November 2000, and the Agra Summit of July 2001. It must also include the utterly ludicrous 'solutions' proposed by the Washington based 'Kashmir Study Group' under the active patronage of the then US President, Bill Clinton, that sought to appease terrorism with the proposal for a potentially catastrophic dissection of J&K along its communal faultlines, ignoring the subcontinent's bloody and inconclusive history of Partition. Clinton was fond of propounding the 'IRA model' of negotiations with which, he believed, he had facilitated the return of peace to Northern Ireland. All Clinton actually did was to legitimise fund-raising for the IRA in the US - and consequently, fundraising by a number of other extremist and terrorist organisations across the world - something for which America is now paying the price. All terrorist groupings benefited from the ambiguities that were encouraged by such misguided 'liberal' support to extremist creeds in the name of the 'struggle for freedom'.

The failures of the past, however, do not bind the future. They are a caution, nevertheless, that, if real solutions are to be secured, it will be necessary to escape the false - though possibly well-intentioned - paradigms that have only created confusion and added to the prevailing violence and bloodshed in the past. The first among these crippling paradigms is the idea that peace is possible through the appeasement of terrorists, and through a process of communal separation, either within the State of J&K through greater autonomy to units defined by their religious majorities, or from India, by any process of amalgamation of communally defined territories with Pakistan, or the creation of new sovereign or quasi-sovereign entities. Regrettably, most of the formulations of the past, including several that have been authored in India, do not appear to go beyond these counterproductive confines.

The most crucial realisation that must inform the peace process is that you cannot find a solution to the Kashmir problem in Kashmir, but must look at the world well beyond. The structure of the peace that is sought must be defined in terms of the strategic architecture that is emerging, and that India seeks to realize, in Asia over the coming 20 years. The truth is, Kashmir has now become a peculiar case that is affected more by the developments in the international scenario, and particularly in the 'Islamic world', than by developments within India. It is useful to notice that even the Gujarat riots, despite vigorous efforts to exploit the opportunities they created for extremist propaganda, had little, if any impact on the situation in Kashmir. And, despite a decade and a half of concentrated Pakistani efforts to give Kashmiri militancy a pan-Islamist character, and despite the operational alliances and linkages that may have emerged with pan-Islamist organisations such as al Qaeda and various Pakistani terrorist formations, it is still the case that not a single Kashmiri or any other Indian has yet been found to have been involved in a single act of international terrorism anywhere in the world outside India.

The enormity of this fact is little understood. There are close to a hundred and fifty million Muslims in India - more than the entire population of Pakistan. And while much smaller communities of Muslims, even in the 'advanced' Western nations - such as the US, France, UK and Germany - have been significantly radicalised and have produced volunteers for acts of international terrorism, not a single Indian Muslim has yet been seduced by this creed of hatred, or by the enormous inducements its practitioners offer.

It must, equally, be understood that the world is changing, and the world of Islam is not immune to such transformation. There is evidence, today, of the Organisation of Islamic Countries finally questioning Pakistan's role in international terrorism; and questioning, simultaneously, the character of extremist Islam and the ethos of terror that it has produced in many parts of the world. There is, equally, a greater realization that these countries need to accept the realities of the outside world, and cannot continue to exist in their self-imposed cocoons of historical isolation.

There is mounting evidence, moreover, of the crippling impact that Pakistan's own misadventures in this direction have had on that country's future, and these must not be under-estimated. Pakistan's competitive strength in the present and protracted competition with India has declined dramatically over the past two years, and cannot be revived, or even sustained, within the prevailing global context, despite occasional and generous infusions of American aid as a reward for reluctant 'cooperation' in the Global War against Terror.

The difficulty is that Pakistan refuses to change - and its intransigence is rooted in the failure of democracy and the persistence of militarism in that country. Nevertheless, those who are charged with shaping events in this region - and particularly its areas of conflict, such as Kashmir - must realize clearly that the imperatives of the evolving global order will eventually force change, or engineer the destruction of entities that resist the tide of time. Pakistan and the Generals who rule it remain trapped in the strategies of the 'last war' and fail to realize that movements that are not in consonance with the broad contours of technologically-determined international transformations are destined to die. The truth is, the irrevocable and irresistible technology-driven impulse towards globalisation cannot coexist with the 'ghettoisation' that the Pakistani perspective reflects and seeks to impose.

These are factors that will come to the aid of the new interlocutor in J&K, and he can inscribe a new chapter in the history of the State if he avoids the facile solutions of past negotiations, the effort to simply purchase the pliable and the corrupt in the State, or to work out deals with terrorists and their sponsors in the pursuit of a false peace. Towards the people of Kashmir - as of other parts of India - all concessions and compromises are acceptable; but to the terrorists, and those who support and sponsor them, nothing must be conceded. Our faith must be invested in India's immense and unparalleled capacity to accommodate and absorb diversity; to withstand and neutralize violence; and, eventually, to assimilate all elements in the larger, pluralistic Indian identity and ethos.

INDIA	NEPAL

The Compact Revolutionary Zone
Sanjay K. Jha
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Deepening linkages between Indian Left-Wing extremists - Naxalites - and Maoist insurgents in Nepal came to the fore, once again, in the last week of February 2003 when the police in the State of Bihar and West Bengal unearthed a network of the Nepalese Maoists active in Kolkata and Patna and arrested 15 of their cadres. These arrests only reconfirm the fact that the cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) are increasingly using Indian territory and working closely with Naxalite groups, particularly the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the People's War Group (PWG), to achieve their larger goal of the creation of a 'Compact Revolutionary Zone' (CRZ) extending from Nepal through Bihar and the Dandakaranya region to Andhra Pradesh [Sanjay K Jha, "The Maoist Maze", SAIR, 1.14]. The establishment of this CRZ is conceptualized as a prelude to the further expansion of Left Wing extremism in the subcontinent.

In Patna, Bihar, on February 25, 2003, police unearthed a hideout of the MCC and arrested five Nepalese Maoists and three cadres of the MCC. MCC leader Pramod Mishra's son Subhash alias Suchit was among those arrested. Interrogation of the arrested Maoists, led to the arrest of another four Maoists from the Gandhi Maidan area, Patna on February 27, 2003. One of the arrested extremists was believed to be the chief of the Poorvanchal Zonal Bureau of the CPN-M. Again, during a raid on February 28, 2003, police recovered a huge cache of arms belonging to the Nepalese Maoists from Lalji Tola, Patna. The seized arms included automatic rifles and 8,000 live cartridges. Police sources said the arrested Maoists were engaged in arranging finances for the CPN-M by extorting money and printing and circulating Naxalite documents in Bihar. Before this arrest, the Bihar police had earlier arrested 18 activists of the CPN-M, of whom 15 had already been handed over to the Nepalese authorities. Following the recent arrests in Patna, a senior Bihar police official stated that the Left Wing extremist groups had already secured an approximate '60 per cent success' in their mission to create the CRZ.

In West Bengal, four Maoist insurgents were arrested from Howrah railway station on February 26, 2003, for allegedly distributing inflammatory literature in support of the Maoist insurgents in Nepal. They had been staying in Kolkata for some time and were involved in propaganda and recruitment activities targeting youth of Nepalese origin. Their interrogation led to the discovery of a Maoist network operating from Kolkata. The arrested Maoists revealed that they had recruited 30 youth from the city in January 2003 and sent them to Nepal to join the Maoist insurgency there.

There is growing concern within India over the growing nexus between Nepalese Maoists and Indian Naxalite groups. Addressing a Chief Minister's conference in New Delhi on February 8, 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee voiced concern over the problem of Left Wing extremism from the Nepal border to Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, on January 2, 2003, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani said Nepalese Maoists had been attempting to step up Naxal violence in some Indian States close to Nepal. He added that, as after increasing political instability in Nepal, Maoists from that country had begun to infiltrate into India to increase Naxalite violence in Bihar, Jharkhand and other States.

The Naxalites have long been active in parts of the States of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Apart from their traditional strongholds, there has been a significant expansion of Naxalite activities into new areas such as North Bihar, North and West Orissa, central Chhattisgarh, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of West Bengal. The Naxal groups feel that expansion in these areas could hasten the process of crystallizing the CRZ, that is, creating a 'Red corridor' stretching from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh as a 'liberated zone'. This expansion has been reflected in a significant growth of Naxalite related violence as well. The continuous decline in violence between 1996 and 2001 was reversed in 2001 and the upward swing continued through 2002 and into the current year.

The linkages between Left Wing extremist groups in the region are not new, though the idea of the CRZ crystallized in August 2001, when leaders of the Nepal Maoists and the Indian Naxalites had a meeting in Siliguri. The leaders discussed various ways to make the CRZ a continuous zone to facilitate the easy movement of extremists from one area in the proposed zone to another. There were, however, two roadblocks to the development of the CRZ: the first was the discontinuities in areas of Left Wing activities, which required their expansion and consolidation into new areas; the second was the fragmentation and factionalism within the Left Wing movement, which required greater unity among hitherto warring groups such as the MCC and the PWG. Earlier, in July 2001, extreme Left Wing (Maoist) groups in South Asia formed the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). Subsequently, some time in December 2001 the MCC and PWG reportedly held a summit in the forest areas of Jharkhand to discuss support to the Nepalese Maoist movement.

A consolidation in West Bengal and Bihar is key to the achievement of the CRZ. The Naxalites plan to use West Bengal as a corridor between their areas of domination in India and Nepal, and are, consequently, consolidating their presence in West Midnapore district, Bankura and Purulia. The Nepalese Maoists have also infiltrated the border areas of Darjeeling and Siliguri. In Siliguri, they have been trying to consolidate their position in North Bengal by establishing links with the insurgent Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO). In Darjeeling and surrounding areas, moreover, the Maoists have been instigating people of Nepalese origin to assert their 'right to self-determination' in Nepalese dominated areas in Darjeeling and Sikkim.

In Bihar, there has been considerable expansion of Naxalite activities in the Northern parts bordering Nepal. In these areas, the MCC, which is active in Motihari, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga, has also deepened linkages with the Maoists in Nepal. They have constituted a joint Indo-Nepal Border Regional Committee (INBRC) to secure their common objectives. There have been several reports indicating frequent crossing over of Nepalese Maoists into Bihar for shelter since the crackdown against them in their country. They are also reports of training camps in the jungles of West Champaran district. Official sources indicate that, while Naxalite violence between 2001 and 2002 showed a decline in the worst Naxalite hit States like Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, Bihar's share in Left Wing violence is on the rise.

The MCC and the PWG have, to a great extent, resolved their differences and there are reports of a possible merger between the two groups. If the Naxalite groups are able to come together and fill the 'vacuum areas', their plan to establish a CRZ could fructify in the foreseeable future. Developments over the last two years are in conformity with the broad concept of an evolving CRZ. The setting up of a 'revolutionary corridor' would give a boost to Left Wing extremist groups and could make the Naxalite movement in India more violent than it currently is. There is also some apprehension that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) may catalyze further destabilization by pumping arms into the projected area of the CRZ. Drug trafficking and the circulation of fake currency through the border are already in evidence.

The ongoing peace process in Nepal is not likely to alter the situation drastically. The Nepalese Maoists have tended to maintain a staunchly anti-Indian posture, and have tended to argue that successive monarchs and Nepal's political leadership have compromised Nepal's national interests vis-à-vis India. The fear of Indian expansionism and India's 'hegemonic' image has figured prominently in speeches by Maoist leaders. It is, consequently, likely that the Maoists will continue their relationship with Naxalites in India even if they reach a negotiated settlement in Nepal.

The problem is compounded further by the fact that the region over which the proposed CRZ is intended to extend, particularly the stretch from Nepal to Chhattisgarh, is marked by widespread poverty, unemployment, and lack of economic development, coupled with strong regional imbalances, very poor governance, the existence of powerful traditional structures of exploitation and an under-equipped police force. In many of these areas, the institutions of the state have virtually ceased to exist, or have, at best, a nominal existence. Naxalites fill the vacuum and exploit the poor performance of the institutions of governance on issues such as land rights, minimum wages, education and anti-corruption. In some areas they have assumed many of the tasks of the state and run a parallel administration. Any further crystallization of the idea of the CRZ can only aggravate the substantial security challenges that already exist in this wide swathe of territory, and have the potential to destabilize a much wider region.

 

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

Nagaland: Hope and Uncertainty
Guest Writer: Pinaki Bhattacharya
Special Correspondent, Kolkata, Mathrubhumi

When a big tree falls, they say, the earth will tremble. In Nagaland, however, the ground beneath has shaken for so long that this time around there was barely a tremor when a genuine tectonic shift took place in State's politics. S.C. Jamir's extended political career as the chief helmsman of the State, is poised for an eclipse. The Nagaland State Legislature elections last fortnight, which witnessed the departure of the Congress from the seat of power at Kohima - to be replaced by a regional grouping led by the Nagaland Peoples' Front (NPF) -, may have signaled more than a mere passage of an epoch. It possibly signified the birth of new constituency in the long-troubled State - one that favoured peace over militancy; and one that promised a better quality of life over empty convictions. The transformations wrought by this election may give the Nagas faith that the ballot is better as an instrument of change, than the bullet.

Clearly, the 87.89 per cent of the electorate in the State who came out and voted this time did not want a repetition of the farce enacted in 1998, when the separatist National Socialist Council for Nagalim - Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) had 'proscribed' polling in the State. The ceasefire between the insurgent group and the Union Government was young then, and little confidence had been built. The Congress got a walkover as a result, winning 53 seats, virtually uncontested, in a legislative assembly of 60 members, with the rest going over to independents. In fact, the charade was completed all but one of the independents eventually joined the Congress. Most people in the State believe, that the nominal one-man opposition was allowed to survive because even Jamir was embarrassed at this travesty of democracy. This time around there were as many as ten political parties vying for the honours in a hotly contested election.

So, six years down the ceasefire road, the NSCN-IM appears more confident of managing peace and politics, and there were no calls to boycott the vote this time. Indeed, there were reports that insurgent cadres were actively campaigning and in some cases, 'strongarming' for the NPF and its alliance partners like the BJP. Even the NSCN-IM leaders who interacted with this writer, coyly welcomed the outcome of the elections, more because it saw Jamir's removal. Jamir has long been considered their number one enemy in the State, and the NSCN-IM has unsuccessfully targeted him for assassination at least four times. Neither was Jamir restrained in his defeat, and he has openly charged the insurgent group for causing it. The NSCN-I-M, on the other hand, point to the 20 seats that Congress has got, as a product of its 'money power.' The NSCN has, however, persisted with the 'regulation' disavowal of the polls on record as 'one organized by the Indian authorities', and continues with its dutiful obeisance at the altar of the idea of Naga 'sovereignty'.

Now that the NPF-led Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN) is on the hot seat, a lot of the 'developmental issues' confronting it are expected to be about the NSCN cadres cashing in their chips. A sort of political quid pro quo for the services provided during the elections. The new State government will, naturally, be keenly watched to gauge its instincts, as it confronts the challenge of 'managing the peace'. It would not be a surprise if the NSCN-IM emerges as the 'moral guardian' of the new regime.

The rival faction of the NSCN - the Khaplang group (NSCN-K), is also playing its role by the book. Two days after the poll results were out, its self styled 'Minister for Information and Publicity', Mulatonu, issued a statement from Mokokchung identifying 17 legislators - 11 of the NPF and six of the BJP - as their targets, if the latter "seek to enter the NSCN-K areas." Mulatonu was explicit in clarifying where he got his inspiration: in 1999 the NSCN-IM had ambushed the then Chief Minister, S.C. Jamir's motorcade despite the fact that the ceasefire was on. In Mulatonu's and the Khaplang group's view, history can repeat itself with a role reversal. Thus, even as the implications of the election results sink in, the dies are being cast. It may, however, be an opportunity missed by Jamir, if he cannot now reinvent himself as an 'elder statesman' of Nagaland. The election results appear to suggest that the public sentiment is now against his politics of pitching the 1963 Accord with the Union Government against any arrangement that the NSCN-IM may secure with the present powers in New Delhi. Such a dilatory posture - though it may secure narrow partisan gains - goes against the grain of emerging processes of amalgamation and the pursuit of a permanent peace.

Meanwhile, many in the NSCN-IM leadership are chary still of doing business with the Centre. A senior member of the apex steering council of the NSCN-IM, Rh Raising, during a recent conversation with this writer in Dimapur, stated that an 'external guarantor' may become necessary in later stages of the ongoing peace talks between the insurgents and the Union Government. Raising is considered to be a possible successor to the mantle of the NSCN stalwarts, Thuingaleng Muivah and Isak Chisi Swu. Both Raising and the self-styled Deputy Home Minister of the NSCN 'government', V. Horam, however, expressed satisfaction that New Delhi had accepted the three facilitating factors for the talks: talks without preconditions; talks at the highest level; and preferably in third countries. They also perceive a noticeable change in the attitude of the Union Government. Earlier, they say, the Indian government took a militarist view of the problem, harbouring a belief that they could defeat the NSCN-IM with force. This conviction, the NSCN leadership now feels, has been shed by the Government and the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, believes that the Naga problem is political in nature and needs to be tackled politically.

The recently concluded New Delhi round of talks, when the NSCN leaders Isak Swu and Muivah visited the country for the first time in many years, had encompassed issues of mutual confidence building and deepened the level of interactions between the two sides. In the process, Prime Minister Vajpayee's acknowledgement of the "uniqueness of the historical heritage of the Nagas" went a long way in assuaging the feelings of the people of this long embattled State. The NSCN leaders also see this statement as a triumph for their own long held position. The NSCN-IM now accepts the fact that compromises need to be struck by both sides, but its leaders insist that a solution was acceptable only if it did not betray their basic principles. They also remain firm that the five-decade-old Naga struggle is not about gaining 'autonomy', and, in fact, vociferously argue the old case of international and intra-national boundaries having been drawn arbitrarily, thus dividing the Naga people. They also draw great solace from the post-Cold War phenomena of oppressed people rising in protest in various parts of the world, and refuse to accept the argument that contemporary international opinion is positioned against the redrawing of national maps - as evidenced in the Norwegian-facilitated Sri Lankan peace process between the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government in Colombo.

Whether the coalition government, with its strong regional and centrist constituents and the inevitable payback pressure from the NSCN-IM, will be able to handle these many contradictions, and at the same time meet at least some of the developmental aspirations of the people, will determine the future of peace in this violence wracked State.