ULFA: The Mirage of Dawn by Rajeev Bhattacharyya, HarperCollins Publishers India, 599 rupees (US$7.20)
Northeastern India is one of Asia’s oldest yet least-known conflict-ridden areas. The Naga people, a tribal and predominantly Christian community, rose in rebellion in the 1950s, followed by the Mizo, another Christian tribe, in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, left-wing guerrillas wreaked havoc among the Hindu Meitei population in the Imphal Valley in Manipur. But the most serious threat to the Indian state came from the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Assam, the largest and most populous state in India’s northeast. Founded in 1979, ULFA grew out of a popular, student-led movement against an influx of foreigners, mainly Bangladeshis, into Assam, which the activists said threatened the ethnic integrity of their state.
But, almost inevitably, because of the proximity to Myanmar, those rebellions have never been solely an internal affair for India. Myanmar first became drawn into the conflicts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Naga and Mizo rebels trekked through northern Sagaing Region and Kachin State to China, where they were trained and received weapons with which to fight the Indian Army. The ambiguous role Myanmar played, and still is playing, in those insurgencies
became even more evident in the late 1970s when the Indian Army had managed to drive the Naga rebels out of areas on the Indian side of the border. They regrouped in the rugged Naga Hills of northern Sagaing Region. There, beyond the reach of the Indian Army, they could launch cross-border raids into India and then withdraw into Myanmar after carrying out their raids.
Those cross-border sanctuaries also became bases for ULFA and several Manipuri groups as they forged alliances with the main Naga rebel army, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). The Myanmar military establishment was, naturally, aware of the presence of such camps, but paid little attention to them as it had more pressing security priorities elsewhere in the country such as fighting Kachin, Karen, Shan and other non-foreign rebels. Despite occasional attacks on the Indian rebel camps, the Myanmar military ignored them—and paid little attention to repeated pleas by the Indian side to move against them, unilaterally or in joint operations with the Indian Army.
And it was in one of those camps, at Taga near the Chindwin River in northern Sagaing Region, that Assamese journalist Rajeev Bhattacharyya in December 2011-January 2012 met and interviewed Paresh Baruah, the elusive leader of ULFA. Bhattacharyya had trekked for weeks over some of the most hostile terrain imaginable to reach the rebel hideout, and that led him to write Rendezvous with Rebels: Journey to Meet India’s Most Wanted Men, which was published, also by HarperCollins, in 2014.
Bhattacharyya is obviously not a lazy armchair journalist, but he goes to places where few reporters would even think of going, and he has managed to interview rebel personalities who would not normally talk to newsmen. ULFA: The Mirage of Dawn is no exception to that kind of quality, investigative journalism. Beautifully written, it details the rise and fall of ULFA and does so without editorializing. He is an objective observer who tells what he saw and heard. He notes that during the 1980s and well into the 1990s, ULFA enjoyed widespread popular support in Assam, but then goes on to describe how successive Indian Army operations, and splits and defections within the organization, have weakened it to what it is today.
After heavy fighting that raged from December 2003 to January 2004, ULFA was driven out of the bases it had managed to establish in remote areas of eastern Bhutan in the 1990s. The next major setback came in late 2009 when ULFA chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, and several of his close associates were arrested in Bangladesh. They had had been able to conduct their political activities there for years, but now they were handed over to the Indian authorities — and began to engage in peace talks with the government. What remains today is a much smaller group of Myanmar-based militants.
But, as Bhattacharyya points out, many of the problems that gave birth to ULFA remain. Illegal immigration from Bangladesh is an issue that never seems to go away, and there is still a wide gap in economic development between the northeastern states and other parts of India. Unemployment is rife, and many young people move to other parts of the country to find jobs. Geographical factors also play their role in fostering a feeling of isolation and neglect. India’s seven northeastern states—Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland—form not only the most ethnically diverse region of India, but the area is also connected with the rest of the country only by a 20-22-km-wide gap between the borders with Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal called alternatively the Siliguri Corridor or the Chicken’s Neck. It is, therefore, why many northeasterners often refer to the rest of the country as “mainland India.” As Bhattacharyya writes: “The issues are manifold and interlinked, making the state [Assam] a tinder box that successive governments, both at the state and Centre, and society have preferred to overlook…only salvaging existing efforts on many of the many burning issues may prevent further turmoil.”
Bhattacharyya takes us through the entire history of the turmoil, mainly in the plains of Assam but also in the surrounding hill states. He examines the origin of the discontent, why the movement grew, and how it managed to establish cross-border sanctuaries in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan. His detailed accounts of ULFA’s interactions with the intelligence services of, especially, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China, cannot be found anywhere else in the literature—media reports, academic papers and books—about the upheavals in India’s northeast.
He also goes into ULFA’s often troubled relations with other ethnic rebel armies in the region: the Naga, the Manipuris and the Bodo plain tribals of Assam, or course, but also the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Myanmar. The Assamese militants, led by Baruah, went there to get training and weapons, but after some initial success, Indian intelligence contacted the Kachin and told them they could set up an unofficial office in New Delhi and get some limited support—if they agreed to expel the ULFA and a Manipuri group from their territory. That worked, and all operational ties with the KIA were severed.
We also learn a lot about the peace negotiations that have been held between what is called “the pro-talks faction” of ULFA, led by Rajkhowa, and the Indian authorities. Bhattacharyya reveals what has happened publicly as well as behind the scenes, and why nothing substantial has been achieved. Then there is Baruah’s “anti-talk faction”, which is opposed to such dealings with the Indian authorities, and is trying, against the odds, to keep its Myanmar-based cadres motivated. Baruah himself, by the way, seems to be spending most of his time in Yunnan, China, where he is being looked after by China’s security authorities. One day, Baruah and his comrades may prove useful if relations between India and China were to deteriorate.
The book was also written recently enough to include a section about events after the February 2021 coup in Myanmar—and how the Myanmar military has, reportedly, been using Manipuri groups to fight pro-democracy forces in Chin State and Sagaing Region. In more recent forays across the border, Bhattacharyya has been to those areas as well. And, as he concludes: “The continuation of the conflict in Myanmar and the country’s geopolitics will continue to provide space for Indian rebel outfits to sustain their establishments in the country. In any given circumstances, the Junta [in Naypyitaw] is unlikely to adopt a belligerent posture towards them at the behest of the Indian government.” That, and the section about the Kachin, make Bhattacharyya’s book a must-read not only for readers who are interested in ethnic strife in northeastern India, but also those who are following Myanmar’s internal, ethnic as well as mainstream politics.
