Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), time bombs and grenades were used withlethal willfulness to carry out close to twenty explosions between June 8 and10, 2006, in Northeast India’s most populous state, Assam, leaving sixcivilians dead and more than 70 wounded, several of them security forcepersonnel. The targets: Guwahati, the principal city and centre of power (sixdead in four separate attacks in this city), the police and the paramilitary,and, of course, railway tracks and the wide web of crude oil and natural gaspipelines that runs through the eastern oil producing districts of Dibrugarh andTinsukia. The result: general panic, disruption in oil and gas operations,including crude supply to the Digboi Refinery, the world’s oldest refinery(set up in 1889), a narrow miss for the Rajdhani Express train from Delhi, andmixed reactions among watchers of Assam’s fragile peace process.