E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Terror on the rise in Tripura
It was a bloody Independence Day in Tripura this year with the outlawed All Tripura Tigers Force (ATTF) attacking two villages in West Tripura District, killing 30 people and injuring several others. In both villages, Borolunga and Daspara, each about 50 km from Agartala, the attacks were launched on the night of August 14 with sophisticated firearms and the victims were all Bengalis. While attacks by militant and terrorist groups in the North-East and Jammu & Kashmir on Independence Day and Republic Days are not new, the one in Tripura marks a fresh upping of the ante. Pakistan's respon-ding to the Indian Prime Minister's peace initiative is also a factor behind the ISI's concentrating its efforts to motivate as many Indian insurgent groups of the North-East as possible, from Bangladesh, where its presence has increased exponentially ever since the Bangladesh National Party came to power. The ISI has been supporting anti-India activities by pushing more Bangladeshi migrants into the region, influencing ethnic Muslims towards fundamentalism and directing the North-East insurgent groups to keep the cauldron of terrorism boiling.
These Hatfield and McCoy outfits are all over India's North Eastern states. There are plenty of economic and social reasons, but the story of support and sanctuary given to these groups by the ISI and it's Bangladeshi counterpart seem credible. I'm not sure how credible the claim of pushing Bangladeshi migrants accross the border is, but it is true that millions of Bangladeshi illegals have crossed the border and have drastically affected the demographic makeup of what are fairly underpopulated states. The local Christian tribals have had armed outfits for decades, and in the last few years some Muslim seperatist outfits have also emerged in the region.
In the late 1980s, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) was raised as the Tripura National Liberation Front and was considered a small group armed with tribal weapons like bows and arrows and a few firearms, the most modern of them being the century-old Lee-Enfield .303 bolt-action rifles, still held by State police forces. Along with the slight change in the nomenclature of this group, came a far deadlier change in its weaponry, aims and modus operendi. NLFT was not the only dissenting group in Tripura. The All Tripura Tigers Force (ATTF), raised just after the TLNF/NLFT, with support from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to counter it, too, progressed at the same pace. The NLFT is reportedly aligned with the Indigenous National Party of Tripura (INPT) and the Congress.
Yes, but are they allied to the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea?
It was only after the ISI's entry into the North-East, facilitated by the ULFA leaders, in 1990-91, that the NLFT started getting consignments of AK-47 rifles and other offensive material from Bangladesh. The activities of the NLFT and the ATTF fall mainly in the categories of extortion, kidnappings, political killings and tax-collection. Tea-garden owners run the risk of being kidnapped for huge ransoms. And then, of course, there are political killings - the NLFT against the CPI(M) and others as well as the ATTF against the Congress and the INPT.
The usual activities in the Armed Struggle®
The para-military and other forces deployed in Tripura are the Assam Rifles (the oldest of para-military forces), the BSF, the CRPF and the State police. From January to July 2003, the statistics of innocent civilians, Security Forces and extremists/ terrorists killed, injured, kidnapped or arrested, as the case may be, are as follows: 102 civilians, 17 security personnel and 19 extremists killed; 37 civilians, 19 security personnel and one extremist injured; 111 persons kidnapped and 180 militants arrested by the SFs. Neutralising these militants is not easy, primarily because of the availability of hideouts in Bangladesh.
These little ethnic conflicts, Naxalite insurgencies, and Kashmiri insurgency may have local causes, but supporting them is a good way of tieing down tens of thousands of Indian soldiers and paramilitaries at very little cost to the ISI. An associate of Qazi Hussein Ahmed once explained the logic behind it too. It also makes me wonder how much influence the ISI is exerting over the reactivated Taliban.
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-10-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19456