It is the isi's other front. The seven northeastern states and the north Bengal corridor leading to these states have been increasingly targeted by the Pakistani agency for carrying out subversive activities and fuelling discontent. Confessions by two recently arrested field officers of the isi along with two top activists of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (hum) in Guwahati sheds considerable light on the plans that the isi has drawn up for creating trouble in the Northeast.
According to Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the isi has identified his state and its neighbours as potential areas where it can recruit disaffected Muslim youth, train them in various subversive and terrorist activities and supply the existing militant groups with arms and equipment. The isi aim is to foment trouble in the Northeast in general and Assam in particular, Mahanta told a press conference in Guwahati last week, after the arrest. Among those picked up: Mohammed Shafi Ullah Husseini and Mohammed Javed Wakhar, assistant field officers of the isi, and two activists of hum, Maulana Hafeez Mohammed Akram Mallick from Kupwara in Kashmir and Qari Salim Ahmed from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The last named was the leader of the group and has been on the most-wanted list of Indian security agencies.
Guwahati city SP Bhaskar Mahanta, who led the operation in nabbing the four-member team from the heart of the city, said the isi operatives had flown to Dhaka from Islamabad and then crossed over into Assam through the porous Karimganj border. They were to receive a consignment of explosives due to arrive in Guwahati around the first week of August, Mahanta told Outlook. Part of these explosives, the four arrested men told the police, were meant for blasting the crucial Leh-Manali highway. This road is the only alternative to the Srinagar-Leh highway in Jammu and Kashmir, vital for maintaining the army's supply lines. Following the arrest and the confessions, 31 activists of the hum have been arrested from various parts of Assam. Of these arrested activists, 18 have been trained in Pakistan for periods ranging from five months to one year, the police said.
Although these are first arrests of actual isi operatives in the Northeast, the agency has been actively involved in the region for at least 10 years. It established contact with the United Liberation Front of Asom in the early '90s and helped the outfit in securing bases in Bangladesh. Simultaneously, other militant outfits in the region were also provided with logistical support and a steady flow of arms. Intelligence agencies and the army feel that the isi has a long-term plan to create trouble in the Northeast by using disgruntled Muslim youths based in Assam. The army has in fact warned of a growing band of Muslim fundamentalist organisations in the Northeast which are used by the isi. According to an intelligence official, the isi's modus operandi is simple: on the one hand, it would use the militant groups to carry out a series of blasts and foment communal feelings in the Northeast and on the other, pump in counterfeit money in the region to destabilise its already fragile economy. Already, at least seven blasts have taken place along railway tracks in the Northeast in the past two months, leading to severe disruption of traffic and major damage. The recent decision of the army to move out an entire Corps (approximately 40,000 troops) out of the Northeast to Kashmir has created a major void in the security grid of the region. The isi is out to take advantage of the situation.
Going by the increased violence in the past fortnight, the isi has succeeded in stepping up its activities significantly.
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