New Delhi and Washington are finally waking up to the strange phenomenon taking place in India's troubled northeast. An upper-caste Hindu militant secessionist organization of the northeastern state of Assam - the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) - has reportedly taken up formal membership with the Pakistan-based Muttahida (United) Jihad Council (MJC) after years of dallying with the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Directorate General of Field Intelligence (DGFI) of Bangladesh. The MJC is an umbrella organization of various outfits engaged in militant operations in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Its most prominent member group is the dreaded Hizbul Mujahideen, headed by Syed Salahuddin. Indicating that the government of India is not only aware of the foreign dimension of the terror-bombings in Assam and Nagaland, but it is also willing to take some concrete action, the normally reticent Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee put the blame for these terrorist acts squarely on the ISI of Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, too, has now voiced his concern over "some insurgent groups" taking "shelter" in Bangladesh. The chief ministers of Assam and Tripura have been demanding that Bangladesh be persuaded to take the kind of robust action against the insurgents based on its territory that Bhutan took last year. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has linked the attacks to the ULFA regrouping after being flushed out of Bhutan last year. He said: "The Bhutanese military offensive against ULFA and NDFB [National Democratic Front of Bodoland] inside the kingdom in December last year has not helped us. The rebels appear to have simply relocated their camps."
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