ISI Spreads a Net in Northeast India
Nava Thakuria Sentinel Assam
The land of armed movements sustained by the anti-New Delhi separatists´
militias has woken up to a new threat from religious fundamentalists fuelled by
Pakistan´s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to make Northeastern India a
volatile region in the continent.
The Northeastern region is no stranger to banned armed groups and their
destructive activities, but the recent development where it has emerged that
the Pakistani agency has engaged scores of its operatives in the region and
also sponsored a number of indigenous armed groups has come as a shocking
revelation.
But unfortunately for the people of Northeast, a most influential armed group
of Assam has reportedly maintained close links with ISI. The local media
quoting different government and non-government sources claimed that the United
Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is in touch with Islamic terrorists too.
Launched in 1979 with the aim to make Assam an independent country, the banned
armed group is blamed for numerous killings, explosions, kidnappings and a huge
number of extortion cases.
But what is appalling for the people of the region is that not less than 20
native militia groups have come closer to ISI. It was disclosed during the
interrogation of an ISI operative, who was arrested by the Assam police in
Guwahati on December 14. More shocking revelation for the entire nation is that
the alliance has slowly pushed the insurgents groups into the clutches of
Islamic militants.
The Assam police termed it a big catch in its counter-terrorism operations in
the Northeast. The arrested ISI operative was identified as S.M. Alam alias
Mujibullah Alam alias Asfi Alam. Hailing from Ajampur village under Uttara
police station in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Alam (35) has been recognised as an
important functionary of the ISI incharge of Assam and the Northeast.
The police said that Alam was a member of Jamat-e-Islami and Chatra Shibir of
Bangladesh and joined the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in 1993. The
hardcore Bangladeshi national underwent training in Pakistan occupied Kashmir
(PoK) also. Later, he joined Jamat-ul-Mujahideen in 2005 and afterward he was
recruited by the ISI. Soon he shifted his base to the restive Northeast in
2006. What, however was alarming was Alam confessed that 24 militant outfits in
the region had maintained communication with the ISI network.
Headquartered at Islamabad, the ISI is known as a disciplined army unit with
around 10,000 staff members. It however faces allegations of meddling in the
internal affairs of its neighbouring countries.
The Indian police have time to time claimed that ISI was involved in many
explosions in the country. The Mumbai police asserted that it had enough proof
of ISI involvement in the July 2006 blast in a local train. The ISI is also
blamed for masterminding explosions in many other cities of the country
including Hyderabad, Lucknow, Sri Nagar, Malegaon, Varanasi, Guwahati and
Imphal among others.
This reporter tried to contact the officers of the Inter Services Public
Relations, Pakistan Armed Forces, of which ISI is an unit, for their reactions
regarding the arrest of Alam in Assam. While responding to the phone calls, an
additional director (incharge of foreign media) of Inter Services Public
Relations only said that the arrest of the ISI operative was not in his
knowledge. He assured of his inputs later, though it has not reached till date.
Moreover, a query submitted in the website of ISPR also did not result in any
response. What is significant is that, the officials of ISPR, while responding
to the phone calls, did not summarily reject the news that one of their
operatives had been arrested in India.
Dr M. Amarjeet Singh, a research scholar at the Institute for Defence Studies
and Analyses, New Delhi, wrote in one of his articles, Apart from aiding and
abetting terrorism in Kashmir, ISI has also been fully engaged in building
terror infrastructures in the rest of India, including the Northeast, which has
long been infested with multiple insurgencies. This attempt to fish in troubled
waters of the Northeast poses a formidable risk to India´s security.
The Indian security agencies have already gathered evidence to establish that
the ISI had been sponsoring violence in many parts of the country. The ISI
takes responsibility of supplying sophisticated arms and also guerrilla
training to several militant groups based in the Northeast.
Brig. (retired) Dr S.P. Sinha, who served Northeast for many decades, claimed
that the ISI had now formed a new base in Bangladesh to carry on anti-India
operations. In his recent book titled Lost Opportunities: 50 years of
Insurgency in the Northeast and India´s Response, Dr Sinha, who led the Gorkha
Rifles, also narrated that Pakistan had shifted nearly 200 terrorist training
camps from the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) to Bangladesh.
His comment is supplemented by a senior Bangladeshi journalist. The Pakistani
intelligence agency (ISI) has been actively operating in Bangladesh under a
number of cover-ups. In recent months, a large number of former army officials
from Pakistan have come to Bangladesh to work for different business groups.
Most of the top figures in these companies are either former military personnel
or well connected to the Pakistan Army.
The journalist, who sought anonymity added, Personally I believe, these
Pakistani Army officials are not retired personnel. They might be important
officials of the ISI. My information is a huge amount of profit of those
companies goes to the hidden activities of the agency. I suspect, the ISI has a
significant amount of shares in those companies (including one mobile phone
service provider) working in Bangladesh.
A few companies owned by foreign nationals have emerged as a major base for
the ISI in Bangladesh. Naming one, Chowdhury, a pro-Pakistani politician in
Bangladesh, the journalist alleged that the controversial person had business
tie-ups with these companies. He (Chowdhury) has also links with many
Northeastern militants including ULFA and is suspected to be involved with an
armed gang in the hill tracts of Chittagong, the journalist added.
The links of Northeastern militants with the ISI found space for discussion in
the Parliament too. Available inputs indicate that some Indian insurgent
groups active in the northeastern region have been using the territory of
Bangladesh, and have links with Pakistan´s ISI, Shriprakash Jaiswal, the
Minister of state for Home, informed Rajya Sabha on December 5. The Minister,
while admitting reports of alliances among the outfits for tactical purposes of
shelter, hideouts, procurement of arms, also added that New Delhi had taken up
the issue with Islamabad.
Weeks ago, a reputed US intelligence think-tank reported about ULFA´s
increasing financial enterprises with Islamic militant groups. Stratfor, in one
of its analytical reports stated that ULFA leaders preferred to maintain their
financial network with Pakistan´s intelligence agency and ´its financial
enterprise and strong links with Islamist militant groups have made it a threat
that New Delhi will not be able to ignore much longer´.
The report also added that ´though India has largely turned a blind eye to
militant groups operating in its far-flung Northeast´, the growing Islamisation
of the region provides ´more than enough reasons for New Delhi to start paying
closer attention to its Northeastern border´. Stratfor has been closely
monitoring the growing nexus between India´s North Eastern insurgent outfits
and militant Islamist groups that regularly traverse India´s extremely porous
border with Bangladesh.
The Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi maintained that ULFA is in the clutches of
the ISI and that is why they cannot come for talks. Attending a meeting on
internal security affairs, which was chaired by the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh on December 20 in New Delhi, Gogoi expressed serious concern that the ISI
had been trying its best to make the Northeast a hub of terrorism. Gogoi argued
that, a grave threat the Northeast is facing, is with the abundant aid and
sustenance poured in for various anti-national armed groups from outside the
country.
Critical concern on ISI´s active involvement in Northeast has already been
expressed in the mainstream media. The Assam Tribune, the oldest English daily
of the region in an editorial said, It is a fact that presence of foreign
nationals gave a chance to the ISI agents and other fundamentalist forces
having roots in Bangladesh to establish their bases not only in Assam but also
in other states of the Northeast, which has posed a grave security threat to
the nation. Quoting the revelation of the ISI operative, the editorial also
argued that it ´highlights the gravity of the situation as the Pakistani agency
can always engage the militant outfits having links with it to create
disturbance in this part of the country without sending its own men to do such
dirty work´.
All the security agencies involved in the counter-insurgency operations must
launch a coordinated effort to prevent the ISI and other fundamentalist forces
inimical to India from establishing roots in the East, while at the same time
coordination and intelligence sharing between the police forces of the
Northeastern states must be improved to deal with the security threat. On its
part, the Government of India must take all possible steps to complete the
border roads and fencing along the Indo-Bangla border and the strength of the
Border Security Force should be increased along the international border, it
added.
Shri J.P. Rajkhowa, a bureaucrat turned media columnist, while quoting
intelligence reports, stated that over 20 jehadi groups including Muslim Tiger
Force of Assam, Muslim United Liberation Force of Assam, Muslim United
Liberation Army, United Muslim Front of Assam, United Islamic Reformation
Movement of India, Muslim Security Force, United Liberation Militia of Assam,
Muslim Security Council of Assam, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,
Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami, People´s United Liberation Front, Revolutionary
Muslim Commandos, Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Students´ Islamic Movement of
India, Laskar-e-Taiba, etc. are active in the region. All these groups want to
carve out an Islamic state of Assam, he commented.
We have had occasion in the past to hammer the fact that both the ISI and the
fundamentalist and terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh have taken a
solemn vow to create a greater Islamic state in the subcontinent by including
in it Assam and other suitable areas of the Northeast, said an editorial of
The Sentinel, another important English daily of Northeast. So why does not
the State Government (of Assam) wake up to the reality, admit to having
provided an opportunity to the ISI-jehadis combine to freely operate in the
State the editorial asked. It concluded with criticism of Tarun Gogoi and his
Congress party-led cabinet as the government intelligence agencies were
outsmarted by the ISI, and asserted that an arrest or two will just not do.
The government must be able to break the whole ISI network in the State.
---------------------------------
Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
assam@assamnet.org
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
