Against All Odds

Tripura is carving out a success story in the troubledNortheast, as its police force reorganizes radically to evolve acounter-insurgency strategy that has left entrenched militant groups indisarray. Building on a model of a police-led response to terrorism, which sawthe country’s most dramatic victory over this modern scourge in Punjab in theearly 1990s, Tripura’s police, under the leadership of its chief, G.M.Srivastava, has reversed the trajectory of insurgent violence and, crucially,mobilisation, in his tenure of under two years, despite continued and vigoroussupport provided to the insurgent groups by Bangladesh, and the safe haven eachof these outfits has been provided in that country.

This is more remarkable in view of the fact that Tripura is anarrow wedge, enveloped on three sides by Bangladesh. As much as 856 kilometresof its boundary of 1,018 kilometres (84.08 per cent of the total) lie along theporous international border with Bangladesh, and much of this is located indense forest terrain that is nigh impossible to police within existing resourceconstraints (Tripura shares its remaining state boundary with Assam and Mizoramin India).

The numbers alone tell an extraordinary – thoughnecessarily incomplete – story. The number of extremist incidents fell from380 in 2003 to 210 in 2004. Civilian fatalities were down from 205 to 70 andSecurity Forces (SF) fatalities from 216 to 105. Terrorist fatalities rosemarginally from 61 in 2003 to 63 in 2004. But year 2005 has witnessed a furtherconsolidation of downward trends in violence. The January-July period of 2004saw 31 civilian, 17 SF and 47 terrorist fatalities (total fatalities: 95); thesame period in 2005 had 12 civilian, 6 SF personnel and 12 terrorist fatalities(total fatalities: 30). It is significant – as was the case in Punjab – thata coherent counter-terrorism response results in reduced fatalities in allcategories, including terrorist fatalities.

More crucially, as many as 573 militants have surrendered tothe authorities over the past two years (2003: 251; 2004: 322). 2004 saw thesurrender of 72 cadres of the Montu Koloi and Kamini Debbarma faction of theNational Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), on May 6. 138 cadres of theNLFT’s Nayanbashi subsequently surrendered on December 25, 2004. The combinedresult of the losses inflicted on the insurgent groups as well as their failureto replenish these losses through recruitment, is that the cadre-strength of allgroups is estimated to have declined significantly.

In the early 2000s, Tripura had emerged as the ‘abductioncentre’ of the Northeast, accounting for nearly half of all abductions forransom in the region. A dramatic decline, from 542 abductions in 2000, through177 in 2001, 159 in 2002, 216 in 2003, to 105 in 2004, signals the diminishingsway of the insurgent groups, and their inability to exploit what constitutedthe major source of revenues in the past. Year 2005 promises a continuation ofthis trend, with just 29 abductions between January and April. Police sourcesindicate that militant capacities to secure revenues by extortion have alsodeclined radically, and the NLFT’s collection in 2004 is estimated to havefallen short of targets by about 50 per cent, while the All Tripura Tiger Force(ATTF) collections were even lower, at 60 per cent of targeted revenues. Thefailure to extort monies is among the most significant indices of the success ofcounter-insurgency strategy.

The most dramatic impact of these developments was visible inthe elections for the Tripura Tribal Area Autonomous District Council (TTAADC)held on March 5, 2005. Traditionally, the TTAADC elections have been theplayground of terrorist groups that have terrorized tribal voters, kidnapped andkilled candidates, political workers and their relatives, and undermined thepolling process. During the three months preceding the last TTAADC elections in2000, there were 176 extremist incidents, with 100 persons killed, another 86injured and 172 persons abducted – including 12 relatives of candidatesabducted in the month prior to the elections. This had allowed the militantbacked Indigenous National Party of Tripura to dominate the elections.

This time around, however, TTAADC elections were nearlycompletely peaceful, with just one significant incident, an ambush on troops ofthe Central Reserve Police Force escorting ballot papers after the polls, onMarch 6, 2005 in the Dhalai District, in which one policeman was killed.

These conditions have been secured despite the extraordinarychallenges of counter-insurgency in a state marked by hilly and densely forestedterrain that lends itself perfectly to the terrorist enterprise, and thegenerous provision of logistical support and safe haven by Bangladesh – in acooperative arrangement with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Inearly 2005, intelligence sources indicated that there were at least 47 campshosting militants from Tripura in Bangladesh.

Tripura’s main towns, and the state’s connections withits neighbours, rely almost exclusively on a single tenuous link – NationalHighway (NH) 44 – that snakes its way through dense tropical jungles acrossthe three mountain ranges that cut across the entire length of the state.Keeping this road link open and safe has long been an enormous challenge, withthe militants choosing the most favourable locations for ambush on securityforce transports, as well as on the escorted convoys of private transport onwhich the entire state depended for its supplies and markets. The forestedinterior areas were poorly manned, allowing their domination by the extremists.With all four of the state’s districts sharing borders with Bangladesh,periodic counter-insurgency operations had limited impact, as the militantssimply crossed the international border into safety, to return the moment thetroops had pulled back.

The core of the police strategy of response over the past twoyears is to dominate the most remote areas in the state, and to minimize thereaction time for counter-insurgent operations. As many as 386 camps of policeand security force personnel are now being maintained in the interior areas,providing immediate access to the people in the event of militant movement, andreducing operational and reaction time to a minimum. In addition, 2,600 SpecialPolice Officers (SPOs) in another 105 ‘Special Police Pickets’ (SPPs) havealso been located in the strategic interior. This network of camps and picketsis backed by the existing network of 37 police outposts and 55 police stationsin the 20 police sub-divisions that control the states four districts. Each ofthese police stations, posts and camps has been upgraded in terms of arms,communications, and where possible, vehicles and bullet-proofing, improvingresponse capacities and reducing response time to a minimum, and placing a verysubstantial, dispersed but coordinated force at the command of each District’sSuperintendent of Police.

There has also been a dramatic augmentation of the policeintelligence network. The improved geographical dominance of the forces hasresulted in increasing flows of information from the general public, who havelong borne the brunt of militant excesses, but had been too terrorized to extendcooperation to the police in the past. Significantly, the network of SPPs hasalso generated large volumes of local intelligence and improved the interfacebetween security forces and the general public. These advantages have combinedwith spotter operations, which use surrendered militants to identify activeterrorist cadres and their overground collaborators, as well as a range ofsocial, developmental and psychological operations that have enormously erodedmilitant capacities, and enhanced the presence and legitimacy of state forcesand institutions in the most remote and isolated areas of the state.

Simultaneously, the militant intelligence and support networkhas been systematically dismantled. A wide complex of overground collaboratorshave traditionally supplied intelligence and logistic support to the militants,and this system of collaborators and collusive organisations has been targeted,with 1,863 arrests between 2001 and April 2005. The disruption of these networksof local support has made militant operations in the state increasinglydifficult.

Improved geographical dominance has also cut the lifelines ofmilitant survival in terms of finance. Traditional targets of extortion andabduction particularly included traders, the tea gardens, railway and roadconstruction organisations and workers, in addition to the hapless civilians inthe countryside. Virtually every significant developmental and constructionproject, as well as major commercial organisations and companies, havespecifically been allocated an enhanced security cover, choking off avenues ofextortion.

The cumulative impact of these initiatives and operations hasdrastically affected militant morale. Indeed, in June 2005, with the dramaticimprovement in the law and order situation, the state police discontinued thepractice of providing escorts to vehicles on NH 44.

Nevertheless, the days of militancy in Tripura are not yetover. The Police domination has come at a high price. While civil and terroristfatalities have declined, SF fatalities rose from 39 in 2003 to 48 in 2004,reflecting higher operational activity and wider deployment in highly affectedareas. Further, all the three major insurgent groups, NLFT’s BiswamohanDebbarma and Joshua factions and the Ranjit Debbarma-led ATTF, continue tooperate from their bases in Bangladesh, and there is a strong conviction instrategic circles that militancy cannot be completely ended as long as safehavens continue to exist across the border. On June 28, 2005, the Tripura ChiefMinister Manik Sarkar told the Press Trust of India at New Delhi: "Theterrorist camps operating in Bangladesh should be smashed and terrorists shouldbe handed over to India." Such an eventuality, however, remains remote, giventhe troubled relations with Bangladesh.

Within Tripura too, areas like Ampi, Udaipur, Taidu,Takarjala, Bishalgarh, Srinagar and Jirania in West and South Tripura Districtscontinue to witness militant movements and sporadic activities, if not largescale attacks. On June 15, Tripura police and para-military forces launched asix-day ‘Operation Washout’ to clean up these areas. The outcome of theseoperations is not yet known. However, the ATTF, on its ‘foundation day’ –July 10 – did manage to force villagers in a few remote hamlets in the hillyareas under the Sidhai, Jirania and Takarjala Police Stations to hoist thegroup’s flag and paste posters on trees and houses. On July 9, a group ofNLFT-Biswamohan militants assaulted 14 villagers at Karnakishorepara inGandacherra subdivision for delay in the payment of ‘annual tax’. Thevillagers, mostly tribal shifting cultivators, had reportedly cleared their‘annual tax’ in May instead of the first week of April – the deadline setby the rebels for payment. Earlier, on May 10, NLFT cadres raided two villages,Madanjoypara and Jogendra Karbaripara in Dhalai district and killed fivevillagers belonging to the Chakma tribe – migrants from neighbouringBangladesh.

Despite their marginalisation in the state, the militantshave not entirely lost their operational capacities and spheres of influence.Bangladeshi support remains – and will remain – a critical factor in thepersistence of these movements, albeit at a significantly lower level. The tardypace of border fencing (the process is expected only to be completed in 2007),and the muddle-headedness of the national policy on Bangladesh, have made thetask of the Tripura police the more difficult. Given these enormous obstaclesand limitations, the state’s achievements in counter-insurgency have, indeed,been exemplary.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute forConflict Management. Bibhu Prasad Routray is Research Fellow, Institute forConflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of theSouth Asia Terrorism Portal