What Bodos' latest attack in Kokrajhar means

Two to four Bodo militants travelling in an auto-rickshaw opened fire and killed 13 people and left 14 others wounded in the busy Friday market of Kokrajhar in Assam on August 5. Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the police are jointly carrying out search operations to apprehend the other militants, who threw a grenade and set fire to shops before fleeing the scene.

Army jawans present on the spot shot dead one of the militants armed with an AK-47 rifle. Mobile phone recovered from the dead militant showed probably he belonged to the hard line faction - the National Democratic Front of Bodoland-Songbijit (NDFB-S), though the organization quickly disowned the attack.  

Songbijit Ingti Kathar, the military chief of the NDFB, broke away to form the NDFB-S faction in 2012 as he was against holding peace talks with the government mooted by the NDFB leadership. He has expressed his determination to carry on the armed struggle for the creation of independent Bodoland in an interview in 2013.

In all likelihood, Songbijit is sending a strong message with the latest attack in Kokrajhar that he might be down but not out, as the group had been on a low profile since 2015. However, NDFB-S should not be ignored as it is known to have connections across the border with the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) faction and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) holed up in Myanmar. The other two factions - NDFB (Ranjan Daimary) and NDFB (Pro-talks) are observing ceasefire pending peace talks with the government.

The NDFB is one of the three proscribed insurgent groups in Assam; it had carried out sporadic attacks in the region along the north bank of Brahmaputra for the creation of an independent Bodoland. During its peak period of militancy between 1992 and 2001, the NDFB violence had resulted in the death of over 172 security forces and over 1200 civilians, while NDFB lost 370 cadres.

The Songbijit faction is only one carrying out insurgency now.

Doubts have been expressed about the involvement of NDFB-S because the attack was carried out brazenly in the style of jihadi militants.  Moreover, NDFB-S in the past had targeted only Muslims and Adivasis whereas those killed in Kokrajhar attack included six Bodos. But that would under estimating the possibility of Songbijit changing his tactics.

The NDFB-S is capable of vicious killings; it has been responsible for killing  about 100 people in a series of attacks carried out in the same region in May and December 2014. In the May 2014 attacks alone it had killed 32 Muslims who had been its main target.  

It is easy to attribute the latest attack to intelligence failure. But that would be ignoring the complex environment prevailing in Assam as a result of over five decades of insurgency. The state has seen the rise of nearly 60 militant groups in this period; out of this seven are active at present. Thirteen groups are either observing ceasefire or involved in peace talks, while 36 other outfits have become inactive.

Kokrajhar is in the heartland of Bodo tribals who number around a million. The headquarters of the Bodo Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), an autonomous administrative unit of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), created under the sixth schedule of the constitution, is located there. It was created in December 2003 after the state and central governments signed the Bodoland Accord with the biggest Bodo insurgent group -the Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) in February 2003.  

The BTAD covers the districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri with a population of over three million people. It was created to fulfill the aspirations of Bodo tribals in habiting the neglected region to preserve their land rights and linguistic, socio-cultural and ethnic identity as well as to economically develop the region.

However, the creation of BTC did not satisfy the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and Bodo Peoples Action Council (BPAC) which had led a violent struggle for the creation of an independent Bodoland from March 1987 onwards. However, the creation of the BTC politically divided the Bodo community. The NDBF was a product of these divisions within the community.

The problems of the region are far from over although the BTAD's chief administrator Hagrama Mohilary was the head of the BLT militant group in the past. It had not been able to bring about the expected development in the region. The infrastructure development has not kept pace with the requirement of the difficult terrain crisscrossed by tributaries flowing into Brahmaputra.

The region has also been backlash against Bodo domination from other minority communities, particularly Muslims and Adivasis inhabiting the region. Muslims and Adivasis had raised their own militant groups to fight the Bodo militants; now they are observing ceasefire. This has enabled militant groups like the NDFB-S to survive and carryout sporadic violent activities.

It will be facetious to ignore the lingering insurgency problem in Assam. Unfortunately, despite all the lip service, the Northeast continues to be neglected and languishes on the periphery of the national mainstream. But things are changing now as many leaders with militancy background have joined mainstream politics in Assam. For instance, Naba Kumar Sarania, the independent MP elected from Kokrajhar, was a dreaded leader of the ULFA.

Unfortunately, we seem to forget that insurgency in the Northeast is a challenge not only to the state and central governments, but also the people of India as it is a vanguard to strategic security and remains our tenuous land link to Southeast Asia.