|
 he
only case of indigenous insurgency movement in
Arunachal Pradesh was the rise of the Arunachal
Dragon Force (ADF), which was rechristened as
East India Liberation Front (EALF) in 2001. The
outfit remained active in the Lohit district,
before being neutralised by the state police forces.
Indigenous insurgency movements have only been
a fraction of the problem that Arunachal Pradesh
has come to encounter in the past years. A variety
of factors including its geographical contiguity
with Myanmar and ethnic similarities among the
residents in some of Arunachal Pradesh’s
districts with the locals in Nagaland has been
the reasons why insurgent outfits from Assam and
Nagaland have exploited the State for their activities.
Traditionally, the south-western districts of
Tirap and Changlang, in the proximity of Nagaland,
have been a happy hunting ground for both the
factions of the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (NSCN). While the Khaplang faction (NSCN-K)
made its first inroads into the virgin territory
in the early 1990s, the NSCN-IM faction soon made
its move and carved out separate areas of influence
in the district. In recent times, both the districts
have witnessed occasional factional clashes between
the outfits. Both outfits are known to run wide
extortion network in these districts. According
to intelligence reports, every government employee
and businessman in Tirap is forced to pay nearly
25 per cent of his or her gross income as a tax
for the outfits. Shutting down of banks in these
districts due to extortion demands by outfits
too has come to light. In 2001, the Oil India
Limited stopped its activities in the Changlang
district and pulled out 130 of its technical staff
from the area after the NSCN-IM demanded an amount
of INR 6 million.
Arunachal Pradesh has also been used as a transit
route by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).
While the movement of the ULFA cadres between
the easternmost districts of Assam and the outfit’s
facilities in the Sagaing division in Myanmar
through Arunachal Pradesh can be traced back to
the late 1980s, the State’s strategic importance
for the ULFA has grown manifold after the outfit’s
December 2003 ouster from Bhutan, following a
military crackdown. The outfit’s dependence
on its 28th battalion headquartered in Myanmar,
for its hit and run activities in Assam, has become
almost irreversible. There has, however, been
a setback for the ULFA after two of the main strike
units of the group’s 28th battalion entered
into a ceasefire with the government in June 2008,
diminishing the outfit’s fire power to a
great extent. ULFA cadres traversing the Assam-Arunachal
Pradesh and Myanmar route had set up transit camps
and safe houses in the Manabhum Reserve Forest,
spread over 1500 square kilometres in the Lohit
district.
This has necessitated launching of several security
force operations in these areas, especially by
the Army's 2nd Mountain Division, based near the
eastern Assam district town of Dibrugarh. The
'Operation Blazing Khukri' conducted by the Army
on the fringes of the Manabhum forest between
April 5 and 10, 2007 and killed eight ULFA cadres,
including two women. This was followed up with
'Operation Blooming Orchid', inside the Manabhum
forest, between April 27 and May 1, 2007. Two
ULFA camps were destroyed and the area was 'successfully
sanitized' during the operations by nearly 500
soldiers. These reverses were perhaps responsible
to some extent in the two companies of the ULFA’s
28th battalion agreeing to a truce with the authorities,
leaving the outfit with its ‘Bravo’
company.
There were a few insurgency related incident
in Arunachal Pradesh in 2008. Most of the incidents
involved the NSCN or the ULFA militants. There
were also a few incidents which revealed a nexus
between the militants and the politicians, like
the arrest of a NSCN (IM) militant from the residence
of a former Minister of Arunachal Pradesh in Itanagar.
Instances of forceful recruitments of tribal youths
by the militant organizations, especially NSCN-K
were also found.
In a Conference of Chief Ministers on internal
security, held at New Delhi on August 17, 2009
and attended by the Prime Minister and the Home
Minister, the Arunachal Pradesh government asked
the Centre to seal the entire stretch of the 440-km-long
India-Myanmar border along the state in order
to check the movement of insurgent outfits.
The State administration’s counter-insurgency
efforts, especially against the Naga outfits have
been laced with political overtones. For example,
on February 24, 2002 a minister of the State issued
an appeal to the NSCN militants not to harass
civilians. A month later, on March 22, 2002 the
Home Minister of the State attributed the insurgent
menace to the ‘non-cooperation by the people’.
In August 2002, the then Chief Minister Mukut
Mithi, enacted the Arunachal Pradesh Control of
Organized Crime Act (APCOCA) to control the worsening
law and order situation in the State, primarily
in the districts of Tirap and Changlang. With
the change of political formations in the State,
on August 19, 2003, Chief Minister Gegong Apang,
whose cabinet was accused of having known NSCN-IM
sympathisers as ministers, repealed the Act terming
it as ‘draconian’.
The military manoeuvres against the ULFA in recent
years have remained the responsibility of the
security forces based in Assam.
In order to give impetus to development process
in the insurgency-hit districts of Tirap and Changlang,
the state overnment allocated Rs 25 crore under
Department of Tirap and Changlang Affairs in 2008.
The state government has also constituted a ‘Core
Group’ on security in the line of Unified
Command structure in December 2008 to deal with
insurgency problems, with the Chief Minister heading
the group.
(Updated till August 19, 2009)
|
)
