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| India-Pakistan | ||
| Operation Clean Up | ||
| 2003-12-23 | ||
| At the crack of dawn, December 15, 2003, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck unleashed his small military machine to expel an excess of 3,000 heavily armed Indian separatist rebels belonging to three different groups - the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) and the Kamatapur Liberation Organization (KLO). These rebels had made the Himalayan kingdom their home for the past 12 years, and from here they launched murderous hit-and-run strikes on security forces, other symbols of Governmental authority, as well as civilians, on Indian soil. After years of vacillation, why did Thimphu decide to act now? The ULFA has been operating in Bhutan ever since the Indian Army launched Operation Bajrang in November 1990. The NDFB joined the ULFA later. It is, in fact, the relatively smaller and rag-tag group, the KLO, and its affiliations and linkages, more than the ULFA or the NDFB, that provide the key to the question as to why Thimphu chose to act now. Security circles in both India and Bhutan had been rattled by news of the launching of the Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) on April 22, 2003, the 133rd birth anniversary of Lenin. Pamphlets widely circulated by this new group in the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal and in areas inside Bhutan itself revealed that the new party’s objective was to "smash the monarchy" and establish a "true and new democracy" in Bhutan. That was enough for the Indian and Bhutanese security establishment to put the ULFA, NDFB and the KLO under intensive surveillance and scrutiny. It didn’t take long for New Delhi and Thimphu to identify the KLO as the group with a far greater nuisance value than perhaps the ULFA or the NDFB. The KLO is active and has pockets of influence in the strategic North areas of West Bengal and could act as a bridge between the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal (the Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist, or CPN-M) and the newly emerging Maoist force in Bhutan. Indian intelligence agencies were also aware of the fact that the KLO had provided sanctuary to fleeing Maoist rebels from Nepal, that the outfit has acted as a link between the Nepalese Maoists and radical left-wing activists in the Indian State of Bihar, and that it had received help from the Maoists in setting up a number of explosives manufacturing units in North Bengal. It was these deepening linkages that forced both New Delhi and Thimphu to agree that it was time to launch a direct assault on the rebels in Bhutan before the situation went out of hand. Maoist groups seem to be growing quite large in India, Nepal, and now Bangladesh, so similar groups emerging in Bhutan was probably just a matter of time. Although the King might have saved his country by acting now, rather than latter.
That leaves two main options for the rebels to look for as an alternative destination: Bangladesh or Nepal. Neither, however, is going to be as easy as it had been in Bhutan. Contacts in Bangladesh will certainly be able to provide the rebels some more safe-houses (top ULFA leaders have been operating from safe houses in Bangladesh for years now), but that will not be enough to maintain a strike force of several hundred, or even several thousand, people. Areas within Nepal that are currently dominated by the Maoists, and where the Government’s presence is weak, may provide a temporary safe haven. However, considering Kathmandu’s friendly ties with New Delhi, this could at best serve as a transit base for the Northeast Indian rebels, and they would eventually be targeted by Nepal’s security forces. There has long been dissatisfaction among the ULFA cadres based in Bhutan on the hardship they have had to suffer, while the top leadership lives in relative security and significant luxury in Bangladesh.
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| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-12-23 10:14:02 AM |