New Delhi has come up with an Independence Day gambit in Assam . On Sunday,August 13, 2006, central authorities suddenly suspended Army operations againstthe outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) at a time when the insurgentgroup was engaged in a routine stepping up of violence ahead of IndependenceDay. Specifically, the Sunday announcement came hours after ULFA rebels shot andkilled a petty trader in Joypur town, in the eastern district of Dibrugarh,hurled a grenade at the private residence of a senior Assam minister at Digboiin the adjacent Tinsukia district (the minister was present but there was nocasualties), and made an abortive grenade attack on the police in the westerndistrict town of Nalbari. In ten days, beginning August 4, 2006, the ULFA hadlaunched several grenade or bomb attacks, killing a dozen people, including sixsecurity personnel, five of them of the Assam Police, and injured up to 40others.
Assam Chief Secretary S. Kabilan, who also heads the policy-making StrategyGroup of the Unified Command Headquarters of the Army, Police and ParamilitaryForces in the state, was quick to confirm the central government’s decision tosuspend Army operations. "Offensive action against ULFA will remain suspendedfor 10 days in a goodwill gesture by the government," he told this writer lateSunday night. He clarified though that it cannot be called a ceasefire yet.Pressed for the immediate reasons for this go-slow order to the Army, Kabilansaid, "There may have been some positive feelers from the other side." He didnot elaborate, but his comment did indicate that the ULFA on its own or thePeople’s Consultative Group (PCG), the 11-member peace panel appointed by therebel outfit, may have succeeded in convincing New Delhi that such a gesturewould result in the insurgent group reciprocating by putting violence on hold.
There was, however, significant evidence of confusion and a wide diversity ofperceptions within the government. On the morning of August 14, the Assam ChiefMinister, Tarun Gogoi, told this writer, "This is certainly a unilateralceasefire. There can be no other meaning to a suspension of operations by the government."He added, however, that "We cannot lower our vigilance. Day to day policing willgo on," and further, "The ball is now in ULFA’s court, and it must respondpositively and come forward for talks, now that the government has taken thismajor initiative."
The government’s decision to halt Army operations before Independence Day,that too, when the ULFA has called for a boycott of the celebrations and hassought to enforce it through a 17-hour general strike beginning 1 a.m. on August15, is certainly significant. The ULFA would now be under tremendous pressure toreciprocate and enter into the process of direct talks with New Delhi. Over thepast few weeks, civil society organizations in Assam have been vocal in askingthe government to act first and take some major initiatives, like a temporaryceasefire, to break the current impasse over the holding of direct ULFA-NewDelhi talks. At a civil society Round Table last fortnight organized by GauhatiUniversity, the state’s premier institution for higher learning, a resolutionwas adopted urging the government of India to initiate immediate steps like aceasefire, that would ‘have to be reciprocated’ by the ULFA. Anotherresolution called for the release of five top ULFA leaders, all members of thegroup’s highest policy-making body, the central executive committee. ULFA hasbeen seeking their release so that it could discuss the issue of entering intodirect talks with New Delhi and take things forward.
Groups like the PCG itself have been drawing flak, just like several othercomponents of the State’s disjointed civil society, for not condemningviolence by the militants in the same way as they condemn killing of rebels bysecurity forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations. On August 13, 2006,however, the PCG issued a significant press statement where it called upon boththe ULFA and the government to maintain restraint for the sake of peace inAssam, and condemned the killing of innocent people by the two sides. "The actsof violence since the peace process started have hurt the PCG," the statementsaid. This plain and straightforward condemnation of violence and killing ofinnocent people by the PCG, whose members were hand-picked by the ULFA inSeptember 2005, and the group’s decision to meet with India’s NationalSecurity Adviser and Home Secretary in New Delhi by August 16, 2006, doesindicate that the two sides could actually be working overtime to put violenceon hold and start direct talks.
There have, however, been several roadblocks thus far, obstructing a possibleface-to-face meeting between the ULFA and the government of India: