Mapping Internal Wars
Characteristically, all eight internal wars that this study seeks to analyse
are fundamentally ethnic wars in the sense that the battle lines are drawn
along ethnic lines and the goals of combatants are defined in ethnic terms.
First, the warring parties belong to two different ethnic groups with strong
identities based on distinct historical antecedents and heritage, language,
religion and culture. This makes the individual loyalties to the group involved
in ethnic war almost completely rigid and transparent, leading to a clear
demarcation of ethnic boundaries. Coupled with it is the fact that ethnic
wars are marked by asymmetrical relations: the majority/dominant group participates
in war as a “political incumbent” by virtue of its control of institutions
of power and authority, and the minority group bears the name of “insurgents”
or “guerrillas”. It is this asymmetrical power relation of parties that
classify ethnic wars from other armed conflicts (see Mitchell 1991). Thus,
in South Asia, the wars are between: the Sinhalese-dominated government
and the Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka; the Bengali Muslim–controlled government
and the hill tribes of the CHT in Bangladesh; and the Punjabi-dominated
Pakistani government and the Bengalis of the former East Pakistan in one
war, and the Baluch in another. As regards India, it is difficult to make
such a neat categorization because the “ethnic structure of politics” at
the centre is so diffused that there is an absolute “ethnic heterogeneity”
in controlling the federal institutions (Phadnis 1989: 46–47). This, however,
should not deter us from typifying India’s internal wars as “ethnic wars”.
Ethnicity as an underlying factor is manifested not only in the minority
group’s strong ethnic identity as distinct from the heterogeneous group
identity at the centre, but also in its conflict goals which are articulated
purely in ethnic terms.
Second, ethnic wars have a specific spatial concentration. The war zones
are actually ethnic enclaves, in most cases, of minority ethnic groups.
The ethnic territoriality assumes greater dimension and importance in ethnic
wars because the military strategy of each ethnic combatant is to control
land, which is seen as a source of power, survival, and victory. It is essential
for the minority group combatants to continue their control over every part
of the territory where their resource base and constituency support are
concentrated, and deny a victory to the political incumbent’s strategy of
retaking towns and cities from their control. The government forces, at
the same time, fight to run the centre’s writ in the war-torn region and
undermine the adversary’s influence and power base. In South Asia, the spatial
specificity of internal wars is strikingly clear. The war between the Pakistani
government and the East Bengalis was fought in the former East Pakistan
with Dhaka (then Dacca) forming the epicentre of military confrontation;
the Baluch war took place in Baluchistan; the Bangladeshi army and the hill
tribes fought in the CHT; the Eelam war has encompassed the entire north-eastern
province of Sri Lanka with Jaffna peninsula forming the main theatre of
military engagement; and all four wars in India have had their concentration
in different minority group–dominated areas such as Punjab, Nagaland, Mizoram
and Assam. Thus, internal wars have been a highly regionalized military
affair, and their causes are primarily rooted in centre–periphery ethnic
relations.
Third, unlike ideological or revolutionary wars, the goals of ethnic wars
are notable for their exclusivity, focusing narrowly on promotion and protection
of one group’s interests from the invalidating and intimidating behaviour
of another. Fighting a war is fundamentally the decision of the concerned
group in pursuit of its own interests, in that gains and losses are borne
by its members. While co-ethnic groups in the war-torn society may stand
affected by the exchange of violence between the ethnic combatants, their
long-term ethnic interests are not always served by the war. Such exclusionary
goal-setting is markedly evident in interest articulation by all those groups
that have resorted to war in South Asia. As will be seen below, the goals
of the warring minority groups are either to achieve autonomy for their
ethnic region, or its secession from the state dominated by their adversary.
Fourth, as noted in Chapter 1, there is hardly any line of demarcation between
combatants and non-combatants in ethnic wars. The use of violence is often
widespread enough to cause large-scale civilian casualties, and military
strategy and operations do not exclude civilian targets. Attacks on civilians
are sometimes carried out deliberately to exert pressure on their leaders
to give up violence and accept peace. As violence escalates and spreads
to encompass larger ethnic enclaves, leading to steep increase in civilian
casualties, polarization in the society along ethnic lines becomes total
and intraethnic unity gets solidified. This, in turn, intensifies the war.
Each group comes to develop an image of the other being an enemy and is
guided by the feeling of vengeance and fear of destruction. Thus, both groups
indulge in continuous “compensatory retribution” and a “spiral of ever-widening
and self-sustaining aggression and violence” (Rosel 1997: 155). This explains
a serious security dilemma in ethnic war–that is, a situation in which each
group’s defensive steps are construed as a threat to the other which, in
turn, reacts to make the former less secure; the spiral of measures continues
to cause hostility (Posen 1993). Many internal wars in South Asia, as is
evident from the analysis below, have followed this pattern of violence
and incurred a heavy cost in terms of men and materials.
Finally, it is generally the threatened group (the minority/weaker community
in most cases) that initiates ethnic war as the last option to deter the
powerful group (the majority community in most cases) from imposing a permanent
disability on its survival as a distinct social entity. Of course, the majority/powerful
group sets the conditions and compulsions for war initiation. By using the
power of the state, it tries to coerce the minority/weaker group to accept
the structure of unequal ethnic relations, and unleashes violence against
its members while seeking to protect its own security and interests. As
is evident from South Asia, the preparation for ethnic war is a lengthy
process; the most crucial part of it is mobilization of the people for war.
This makes the outbreak of war easily predictable. But its escalation, marked
by intensity of violence and its concomitant effect of destruction, does
not seem to be easily avoidable.
Sources of War
Like interstate wars, internal ethnic wars are serious hostile programmes.
Hostility does not arise in a vacuum or generate itself, but stems from
deep-rooted socio-economic and political grievances which, the group feels,
cannot be redressed by any normal political means. While rational grievances
form necessary conditions, they are not sufficient to motivate ethnic war.
Instead, the impulse for a group action (involving one’s preparedness to
harm oneself in the process of trying to harm another) is generated, in
many cases, from its feeling of fear that the ethnic entrepreneurs sometimes
exaggerate to produce intense emotional heat, hate and anxiety, so necessary
for its hostile behaviour (Kaufman 1997; Lake and Rothchild 1997). Ethnic
fear takes many forms and dimensions, depending upon the nature of the polity
and the power and position of the threatened group vis-à-vis the dominant
group. It may be a singularly or mutually reciprocal fear (of both the majority
and minority groups) of extinction. It means the following: the weaker group’s/minority’s
collective fear of marginalization by a hegemonic state or assimilation
into a dominant culture, and the majority’s collective fear of losing its
ethnic pride, power, and hegemonic status to eventually become a weak or
subordinate group. In this case, every effort of one group to remove the
structure of fear may actually increase the fear of another, and thus the
cycle continues without any rational end. Ethnic fear of extinction does
not always evolve itself in a direct form to become a source of ethnic war.
A long history of denial of legitimacy to, or recognition of, a group’s
identity as relates to its territory and its growing sense of relative deprivation–defined
as a perceived gap between value expectations and value capabilities (Gurr
1970)–may initially appear to be a mere ethnic grievance, but, in the long
run, create a fear of its extinction.
Ethnic groups may also fear for their physical safety and security, specially
when the dominant group’s pressure for assimilation of the minority group
has failed (Lake and Rothchild 1998: 8). And, for some groups, the out-group
domination, as a result of drastic demographic change through sustained
migration or resettlement of other group members, in every sphere of life
in their recognized ethnic territory, threatens their survival and interests.
Fear can be real or perceived, or partly real and partly constructed by
ethnic activists and political entrepreneurs on the basis of limited grievances
of the present and bitter memories of the past. In all situations, possession
of a minimum level of power is required for the threatened group’s attempt
at reducing the growing “uncertainty” over its safety, security and survival
(Midlarsky 1975).
Thus, there is no single theoretical perspective that can provide a complete
explanation of the outbreak of ethnic war. In identifying the sources, the
primordialist approach (Smith 1986; Isaacs 1975; Connor 1994) is relevant
to understand the “non-rational” factors such as ethnic emotions, historical
memories and myths that the ethnic elite invoke to wage war. The instrumentalist
approach (Hechter 1975; Brass 1985; Steinberg 1981; Glazer and Moynihan
1975; Rothchild 1986) underlines the role of the “collective response” of
a group, so motivated by the ethnic entrepreneurs, to its differential treatment
at the hands of another group. The constructivists (Anderson 1983; Young
1993), who emphasize the nature of the social system and ethnic interactions
as the principal determinants of ethnic conflict, fill the gap between the
two perspectives. Given the complex and multiple issues in contention between
groups, an approach that integrates all theoretical perspectives can alone
offer a credible explanation on wars in South Asia.
On a broader comparative level, the prime sources of wars in Sri Lanka,
Pakistan and Bangladesh can be put under a single category of “ethnic hegemony-extinction
mode”. Here, the dominant or majority groups–Sinhalese, Punjabis and Bengalis–have
exhibited their ethnic pride out of insecurity or extreme nationalistic
fervour, and demonstrated their intolerance towards the minority/weaker
groups in the process of consolidating their hegemonic rule and institutionalizing
the majoritarian ideology. When the threatened minority/weaker groups–Sri
Lankan Tamils, Baluch, East Bengalis and CHT tribes–responded with the same
level of nationalistic fervour by asserting their identity and sought to
change the existing pattern of the unequal relationship, a greater tendency
and resolve on the part of the majority/dominant groups developed to strengthen
their position and uphold their ethnic pride. Thus, ethnic intolerance breeds
more intolerance, and ethnic fear grows out of proportion.
This is clearly evident in Sri Lanka, where both the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan
Tamils share the same psychological structures of fear of ethnic annihilation,
resulting in strident ethnic competition marked by offensive-defensive tactics
to ensure their survival. The crux of the argument is that both groups have
been driven to violence by their minority fear complex. One is fearful because
of its actual minority status in a society dominated by an ethnic hegemon,
and another is numerically a majority with a streak of minority psychology,
and a sense of ethnic pride and superiority that stems from their culture
and civilizations. Thus, the Sri Lankan Tamils fear that they, as a distinct
ethnic group with a long history in the island and a rich cultural heritage,
are under constant threat of marginalization and eventual extinction by
the Sinhalese. At the same time, the Sinhalese justify their blatantly discriminatory
policies as defensive measures to ensure their survival from a combined
threat of a larger Tamil population living both in Sri Lanka and India’s
Tamil Nadu. In this way, one group’s defensive measures have become offensive
to another group whose appropriate response has, in turn, further threatened
the former group.
In Sri Lanka, the reinforcement of the majoritarian Sinhalese ideology as
a part of the group’s survival strategy was made in many ways. The first
step was to promote a Sinhalese-Buddhist way of life in the country by providing
constitutional primacy and protection to the language and religion. This
was accomplished through the Sinhala “only” official language legislation
in 1956 (Kearney 1967) and the Constitution of 1972, which touched a raw
nerve among the Sri Lankan Tamils who began to feel alienated and relegated
to a secondary position in the society. Subsequently, such a feeling became
aggravated by the government’s discriminatory educational and employment
policies (Silva 1984: 97–110; Samarasinghe 1984: 173–84) which had a crippling
effect on their economic interests. They saw in the lopsided developmental
policies (Tiruchelvam 1984: 185–95) the Sinhalese ruling elite’s uncanny
agenda of denying economic self-sufficiency to the Tamil provinces, thus
enhancing their dependence on the majority community. Worse, the Sri Lankan
Tamils’ forcible attempt to relate their identity to the north-eastern province
of Sri Lanka evoked strong countermeasures of successive governments to
invalidate their claim for ethnic territoriality. This is meant, in a way,
to validate the Sinhalese identity (constructed on the narratives of Mahavamsa)
which compulsorily seeks to associate itself with the “whole” of Sri Lanka.
In a measure perceived as a grave threat to the survival and stabilization
of the minority identity, the centre misused the land settlement policies
to vitiate the ethnic character of the eastern province by resorting to
a large-scale state-sponsored resettlement of landless Sinhalese under various
colonization schemes (Manogaran 1994: 84–125). The hard-core Tamil nationalists
realized that the root cause of all their problems lay in the “powerlessness”
of the community, and, therefore, they demanded a meaningful power sharing
arrangement under a federal constitution as an effective safeguard structure
against contingent Sinhalese majoritarianism (Oberst 1988: 175–94). Given
the majoritarian thrust and centralizing tendencies of the state and the
desire of the Sinhalese ruling elite to contain the fissiparous tendencies
among the Tamils, the rejection of the federal autonomy scheme was not unexpected.
Cumulatively, all these measures worked to raise the level of ethnic antagonism
in which the Tamils found a strong motivating force for collective political
action first, and military a campaign later to arrest the group’s decline
and demise.
The minority psychology that operates in the Eelam war cannot be found so
clearly in other ethnic wars in South Asia. Instead, as the wars in Pakistan
and Bangladesh reveal, the fearful parties were only those minorities or
weaker ethnic groups which felt threatened by the hegemonic and intolerant
behaviour of dominant groups out of their ethnic pride, prejudice, and majoritarian
ideology. Let us first take the East Pakistani war. Having gained control
of the state power and institutions, the Punjabi ruling elite became emboldened
to exhibit their “ethnic strength” vis-à-vis other groups and sought their
politico-economic and cultural marginalization as required by the hegemonic
Punjabi nationalism. The East Bengalis were targeted first and most by the
Punjabi nationalists who perceived challenges to their hegemonic position
and nationalistic ideology that set the framework for political governance.
As a conscious political measure of cultural marginalization of the East
Pakistanis, Urdu was declared the sole national language of Pakistan in
the early 1950s. This evoked a spontaneous violent movement in East Pakistan,
indicating the sensitivity and outrage of the people who were threatened
with cultural extinction. Although the Punjabi ruling elite was forced to
reverse their language policy in 1956 to accept the parity demand of the
East Bengalis, the problem did not end therewith. The central leadership
made clandestine efforts to Islamise the Bengali language through the induction
of Arabian and Persian words, viewed the Bengali culture with “contempt,
disdain and suspicion”, and denigrated the Bengalis as a “downtrodden” race
(Phadnis 1989: 169). Disenchanted with such a pejorative attitude of the
Punjabi leaders, the Bengalis insisted on regional autonomy in which cultural
rights formed a critical component.
The autonomy demand was also rooted in their economic grievances resulting
from the blatantly discriminatory developmental policies of the government.
East Pakistan was subjected to systematic economic exploitation and deprivation:
it was virtually treated as an “internal colony” of West Pakistan (Jahan
1973: 67–89). The loss of economic power of the Bengalis was hastened by
their dwindling representation in the bureaucracy and military services.
This was a calculated measure to make the community absolutely weak and
vulnerable. Empowering the group to arrest its decline and its extinction,
therefore, assumed high priority in the Awami League’s (AL) political agenda.
The Punjabi ruling elite, on their part, did not allow the rise of ethnicity-based
provincial power centres, nor did they incline towards power sharing with
the East Pakistanis at the centre. When they were to lose power as a result
of the 1970 elections, the Punjabi nationalists became totally intolerant.
All legal and political norms of governance were undermined to create an
authoritarian streak in the Pakistani political system in which the East
Pakistanis had completely lost faith when they were denied the right to
form the national government. The AL leadership decided to break West Pakistan’s
hegemony through a sustained political movement, which later turned into
an internal war for a separate state.
If the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military junta pushed the Bengalis into
war in 1971, it was the Sindhi nationalist-controlled central government
that created the Baluch war in 1973. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appeared as much
authoritarian in his policies towards the Baluch as Yahya Khan was towards
the East Bengalis. The difference was that the latter seemed to have been
driven by the spirit of Punjabi nationalism, while the former sought to
create a strong centre in the process of consolidating his rule. Although
the central government’s political and economic incursions into the province
triggered off the war, the root cause lay in the unfulfilled ethnic aspirations
of the Baluch nationalists for an independent state. After the forcible
annexation of the Kalat confederacy in 1948, which led to a short-lived
uprising, successive West Pakistani ruling elite had perceived Baluch nationalism
as a threat to the state’s suzerainty over the province. The incident that
strengthened the centre’s threat perception was the abortive attempt of
the Khan of Kalat to convene a meeting of the Baluch Sardars in 1958 to
work out plans to consolidate a Baluch state on a linguistic basis. Added
to this was the growing radicalization of the Baluch youth along Marxist-Leninist
lines: they believed in an all-out military struggle for independence. The
centre responded with oppressive measures to weaken the group’s political
and economic position. Discrimination against them in government service
and allocation of developmental funds to the province, the state-aided settlement
of Punjabis in the Baluch areas in order to bring about a demographic change,
and the exploitative attitude of the centre in harnessing natural resources,
all led to a sense of relative deprivation and powerlessness in Baluch society
(Phadnis 1989: 179–81; Wirsing 1981; Harrison 1981: 161–65). The Baluch
youth became restless and lost faith in the moderate leadership, specially
when the Bhutto regime demonstrated its utter intolerance and disregard
to provincial autonomy by dissolving the National Awami Party (NAP)–Jamiat
Ulema-i-Islam (JUI)–controlled government in 1973, proscribing the NAP and
withdrawing powers to the elected leadership. Thus, the militant youth set
the stage to arrest the decline of their community, reflected in their armed
struggle for an independent Baluchistan.
Ethnic fear of extinction also haunted the tribal people of Bangladesh,
whose identity as a separate group was denied legitimacy by hegemonic Bangladeshi
nationalism which was exclusively Bengali Muslim in its construction. This
was a calculated political attempt to “invalidate” their identity in the
larger national context so that the Bangladeshi society would become ethnically
homogeneous. If the success of the national liberation struggle strengthened
the majoritarian tendencies of the Bengali leadership, it was because of
their firm view that none other than the Bengalis sacrificed their lives
for national freedom, and, therefore, undivided power should be totally
concentrated in their hands. Thus, the autonomy demand of the tribal people,
whose role in the liberation movement was at best considered as dubious
and pro-Pakistan, was perceived as a challenge to Bengali nationalism and
a conspiracy to undermine the newly won freedom. As the tribal leaders became
more assertive of their equal share in the polity, the centre resorted to
the policy of alienation and marginalization of the tribal people. This
was best illustrated in the land alienation policy and lopsided development
programmes in the CHT. In total disregard to the CHT Regulation of 1900,
which protected the tribal interests in land alienation, successive governments
have openly encouraged the landless Bengalis to colonize tribal land so
that the predominately tribal character of the area was changed into a Bengali
Muslim one. The Bengali population grew from 10 per cent of the CHT in 1951
to 40 per cent in 1981 (Mohsin 1997: 219), indicating the extent to which
the central government assiduously worked towards changing the ethnic demography
of the hill tracts. Loss of land, which formed the prime source of tribal
power, heightened the tribal people’s fear of extinction. They even found
themselves at the mercy of the Bengali hegemonic state which, as a crude
political measure, neglected their welfare and development (Mohsin 1997:
120–37; Islam 1981: 1216–19) in the process of consolidating its control
over the hill region and stifling their aspirations for autonomy. In preparing
to stop the intrusive, exploitative and discriminatory attitude of the centre,
and to break the hegemonic tendencies of the Bengali state, an armed campaign
became a considered strategy of the tribal leadership. When the state responded
with equal militant fervour, war became an inevitable result.
In India, given ethnic diffusion at the centre, internal wars are not rooted
in power relations between the majority and minority groups. Rather, it
is the ethnically heterogeneous centre that is seen as a source of minority
grievances, and thus the contest is essentially drawn between the powerful
central government and the weaker minority groups. Unlike in other South
Asian countries, the fear of ethnic extinction of groups in India is not
predominantly factored in the war, because ethnic discrimination as a policy
is not entrenched in the political system. At best, it is constructed out
of the centre’s indifferent, intrusive and manipulative behaviour and the
fearing minority group’s sense of powerlessness when its ethnic aspirations
remain unfulfilled. For instance, the mainspring of the Punjab crisis arose
from the assertion of Sikh cultural and religious traditions out of the
community’s age-old cultivated fear of absorption into Hinduism. It stemmed
mainly from two sources. First, the Sikh nationalists perceived that their
community was facing internal decline because of the growing tendency among
the educated Jat Sikhs to dispense with the distinct symbols of their faith
(Ganguly 1993: 93). Second, they perceived an external threat to the Sikh
cultural and religious ethos arising out of the overarching attitude of
the Hindu traditions to treat Sikhism as a “sword arm of Hinduism” (Thomas
1994: 100; Kapur 1987: 1209). Rejuvenation of Sikhism and maintenance of
the distinct Sikh identity, therefore, became an ideological slogan of the
moderate and militant Sikh leaders who spoke of ethnic extinction of their
community since it depended upon the centre for its existence. Thus, political
power to the Sikhs assumed a critical issue in the sub-national discourse,
reflected in the adoption of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution (1973) which
demanded greater autonomy for Punjab. But the central leadership’s ignorance
of the demand led the Akalis to believe that the Union government was hegemonic,
as it exercised tight control over Punjab through constitutional subversion
and manipulation. In addition, the ruling Congress party at the centre made
undue partisan political intervention aimed at increasing its electoral
gains and delegitimizing the claims of Sikh nationalism (Singh 1996). The
cumulative result of the centre’s inept handling of the autonomy aspirations
of the Sikhs was the birth of militant nationalists who strongly articulated
secessionism as the ultimate goal of their community.
The Naga war followed a distinct pattern in the process of its onset. Unlike
the Sikh ethnic war that resulted from the group’s sense of powerlessness
and cultural insecurity, the secessionist goal of the Nagas is rooted in
their historical antecedents. It is a case of a group which seeks to regain
what is termed as its “lost ethnic territory”, thereby re-establishing ethnic
sovereignty and adding a territorial component to strengthen its identity.
The group’s grievance is that it controlled the Naga Hill tracts before
its subjugation by the British colonial rule, and as a corollary, its territory
should have been set free with the ending of colonialism. The Naga nationalists
under Z. A. Phizo alleged that the post-colonial “national territorial formation”
in India has been unjust and arbitrary: it ignored their pre-colonial history.
This, in their interpretation, amounted to continuing the British colonial
policy of subjugating minority ethnic territories. Independence to India,
therefore, did not mean freedom to the border minority group, which related
its freedom to restoration of independence to its own ethnic territory.
But achieving this through a normal political process appeared difficult
for the Naga nationalists who had to confront a powerful Indian state controlled
by ardent advocates of national integration by all means. Prime Minister
Nehru’s popular national image of being a liberal democrat carried little
appeal in the Naga Hills where people, guided by the Naga National Council’s
(NNC) experience with him, found a tinge of authoritarianism in his approach
towards the Naga problem. What lent credence to this feeling was his statement
that “You can never hope to be independent. No state, big or small, in India
will be allowed to remain independent. We will use all our influence and
power to suppress such tendencies” (Maxwell 1973: 8). The tone of his argument
did not leave any scope for the NNC to expect a positive political deal
to promote its ideal. Facing an insurmountable challenge from the Indian
state and its hegemonic leadership, it made tactical retreat when it agreed
for the integration of the Naga Hills into the Indian Union on the condition
that the agreement would be renewed after 10 years. The militant segment
of the NNC nurtured a hope to secede at the end of the mandatory period,
but the Indian government insisted that Nagaland could discuss its relations
with the Indian Union only within the framework of the Indian Constitution.
To legitimize its claim to a separate statehood, the aggrieved NNC held
an unofficial plebiscite in 1951, whose result was deliberately ignored
by the central leadership. This culminated in the use of violence by the
NNC, to which the Indian government responded with military deployment and
operations.
Although the forcible integration of the Lushai Hills into the Indian Union
set the background for the Mizo war, its proximate causes were related to
the border ethnic group’s sense of relative deprivation arising out of the
centre’s inept handling of its identity aspirations. First, the central
government’s ill-conceived decision to include the Lushai Hills in larger
Assam (until 1972 when the Mizo district became a Union Territory) amounted
to denying ethnic territorial identity to the group. The centre was seen
as a collaborator with the hegemonic Assamese nationalists in their efforts
to marginalize the Mizos by imposing their language and neglecting the development
of the Mizo Hills. Second, as a consequence, when a famine broke out in
the Hills in 1959, the Mizo nationalists blamed both the central and state
governments for their indifference and apathy towards their people’s sufferings.
With mounting tribal political discontent and economic frustration, the
fear of extinction gripped the minds of the Mizos who, under the banner
of the Mizo National Front (MNF), related their survival to their liberation
from the central control exercised through the government of Assam. A sovereign
state of Mizoram, therefore, became an articulated goal of the MNF, for
it adopted the strategy of armed campaigns on a sustainable basis since
1966.
A somewhat similar situation is the one under which the war in Assam originated.
Since there is a strong territorial element in the armed contest, the United
Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) has harped on the “glorious past” of the
Assamese (as an independent political entity until 1826) to develop its
ideological premises. The historicity that the ULFA believes and glorifies
questions the very fact of integration of Assam into the Indian Union, and,
in the process, the Indian state stands deeply implicated for what is called
as its “internal colonialism”. Assam is, in its view, an Indian colony because
the structure of capitalism that is imposed on the country has led to colonial
extraction of resources (oil, tea and timber) from the state. It is the
exploitation of Assam that is considered as the fundamental cause for its
underdevelopment (Dasgupta 1990: 165–67). A sense of “powerlessness” has
been cultivated in the minds of the Assamese who attribute the non-implementation
of the Assam Accord (1985) on migration to their weak position vis-à-vis
the powerful centre. The liberation of Assam and restoration of its “lost
independence” (Baruah 1994: 868) has, therefore, become an ideological slogan
of the ULFA, to which the hard-core Assamese nationalists have responded
with militant nationalistic fervour. In so doing, they seek to stop the
centre’s exploitative and manipulative control of their state, recover their
wealth for their own benefits, and empower themselves to arrest their decline
as a community.
Thus, grievance-formation for the onset of ethnic war is a dynamic process
in which each group, differing in ethno-ideological and value structures,
tries to consolidate and promote its identity and material interests from
threat or invalidating behaviour of other groups (see Northrup 1989). Ethnic
war, therefore, is rooted in a situation where one group’s core sense of
“self (identity)-interest” (politico-economic position) is perceivably or
actually threatened by the demands of or denials by another group, thereby
eliciting the former group’s defensive response. For each group, the fulfilment
and acceptance of the other’s “self-interest” amounts to the annihilation
or undermining of its own “self” and eroding its own “interest. Seen from
a standpoint of realist paradigm, “power” assumes a critical variable in
competitive interethnic relations: ethnic war is a form of “struggle for
power” between one group that controls power and institutions (the majority
in most cases), and another that seeks to acquire power (mostly the minority).
What lies in this is each group’s goal of countering the other to capture
or acquire more power and occupy a dominant position. The political incumbent
group seeks power through its centralizing tendencies and intrusive behaviour
(into the cultural and political space provided for the weaker/minority
group). And, at the same time, the latter group insists upon power sharing
as the viable basis for interethnic amity because of its feeling that its
weak position in the structure of power relations is the fundamental cause
for all its problems. It is, in most cases, therefore, a contest involving
the majoritarian and hegemonic ethnic ideology facing threat, perceivably
or really, from the minority/weaker ethno-nationalists’ assertion for equality
of power aimed at ensuring their group’s survival from the threat of the
powerful/majority group.
Mobilization for War: Processes and Levels
As the theory of mobilization suggests (Tilly 1978), ethnic grievances
per se do not trigger off war. Instead, they merely create necessary conditions
for it in the process of redefining the pattern of strategic inter-group
interactions. Waging a war comes at the end of a long-drawn-out process,
and large-scale investment goes into preparing the event. Preparations essentially
begin with mobilization–defined as a process by which a “mere” member becomes
an “active” participant in any collective ethnic venture–within the group
by its ethnic entrepreneurs who play upon such sensitive issues as relative
deprivation, fear of ethnic extinction and loss of ethnic dignity. A successful
process of ethnic mobilization is contingent upon both the objective conditions,
i.e. ethnic grievances about which the contesting group is deeply aware
and concerned, and such structural attributes of the group as strong resource
(including numerical strength) and territorial bases, organizational cohesion
and efficiency, a communication network, and the quality of the leadership
and its commitment (Gurr 1993; Esman 1991). In addition, it is theoretically
argued (Huntington 1968) and empirically tested (Ganguly 1997) that increase
in literacy and media exposure of ethnic groups will result in their greater
mobilization. The logic is that the greater the attainment of literacy and
expansion of educational opportunities, the greater the awareness of the
group members about their grievances which, in turn, strengthens their resolve
to fight. A weak objective condition may hinder the growth of mobilization,
and a weak leadership may find it difficult to “organize and guide the struggle
and activists or cadres who provide ongoing links with the mass of their
ethnic community” (Esman 1991: 55). Any tension and cleavage within the
group may also affect the success of its mobilization, whereas the repressive
tactics of the political incumbents will go, in the long run, to cementing
its determination and augmenting the pool of ethnic activists for its collective
action for a declared commonhood. In some wars, mobilization is a continuous
process in which both the objective and subjective conditions play a dominant
role. A group that continues to mobilize itself even in the worst face of
repression is the most successfully mobilized one.
A general pattern evident in ethnic wars the world over is that mobilization
proceeds either in two independent, or in interrelated ways. Political mobilization
is the first phase under which group members are essentially gathered and
motivated by their moderate leadership to enter as actors into the ethnic
political arena: military mobilization involves selection, recruitment,
and preparation of the youth by the militant leaders for a sustained military
action. Often, the second phase of mobilization comes as a continuum of
the first phase if there is no advancement of the conflict goals of the
group, proving the non-violent agitation-tactics as a failure. It may have
the tactical support or disapproval of the moderate leaders. A successful
political mobilization (but without any consequences) tends to make the
task of military mobilization easy. In some cases, both the mobilization
processes occur simultaneously under two different leaderships, moderate
and militant, and there are still a few other cases in which military mobilization
alone is pursued without first preparing the group for a collective political
action. We argue that political mobilization in the absence of military
mobilization does not itself lead the aggrieved group to war.
It is evident that both the ethnic elite and the masses hold the key for
the success of any mobilization process, which is defined in terms of a
“high” level of “active” participation of group members as reflected in
an upward rise in the sustainable level of violence and a protracted peace
process. But there is an identifiable variation in the form of their involvement
so that the entire pattern of mobilization itself is different. Kaufman
(1997: 170) suggests two broad patterns: elite-led and mass-led. The elite-led
process, according to him, begins with belligerent leaders who encourage
the growth of mass hostility by using the group’s ethnic disabilities imposed
by the most powerful group. It means that the ethnic leaders are the ones
who initiate the process of mobilization and gather the entire strength
of the group for spontaneous action. This is the most widely seen pattern
that is distinguishable from the mass-led one, in which “hostile masses
choose belligerent leaders and engage in actions” (ibid.). Here, the ethnic
group members hold the key for mobilization; its level invariably goes high
because intense mass hostility that arises out of their bitter experience
induces people to participate in greater number. The third pattern that
can be added combines both the elite-led and mass-led patterns. It is partially
elite-led and partially mass-led, in the sense that both the ethnic leaders
and the masses play equally important roles in the entire mobilization process.
Leaders easily mobilize members because the intense hostility in the society
creates an atmosphere that is conducive for the success of their task, and
the latter willingly and actively participate in collective actions because
they want to avert their ethnic extinction and change the existing pattern
of intergroup relations.
Mobilization, in the first instance, is the work of the weaker group members,
and countermobilization by their adversary as a part of the conflict process
cannot be avoided. The latter process involving political incumbents tends
to be more institutionalized in its framework, and is carried out with the
definite aim of neutralizing the effects of the former. Although the level
of the weaker group’s mobilization largely determines the counter-mobilization
process, it is bound to be a success in many cases even if its level remains
low. After all, it is the state that sponsors the entire mobilization process
of the majority/dominant group, and, when threatened politically, it can
resort to violence against any mobilized minority/weaker group. Thus, we
argue that counter-mobilization in many cases is a military programme in
which the state’s response to a conflict-group’s political mobilization
is invariably defined in coercive terms. It provides space, leadership,
and impetus for the aggregation of the dominant ethnie, and undertakes a
function of ethnic articulation by setting goals and strategy for a collective
counteraction. As a demonstrated effect, military mobilization of a politically
conscious subordinate group becomes intensified, thereby adding a competitive
dimension, resulting in war. Competing military mobilization is hard to
control and its spiral can cause mutually destructive effects, more so because
each party is endowed with a minimum level of capability to withstand and
exert pressure on the other. Power potentiality, and not the power-balance,
is the fundamental prerequisite for the outbreak of war without which the
state’s preponderant countermobilization strategies themselves would undercut
its adversary’s mobilization process to deny success.
The interrelatedness of both the political and military mobilization processes
can be seen in a number of wars in South Asia, but the level of mobilization
has not been uniform in every war. Of all the wars, the East Pakistani war
achieved a high level of mobilization owing to intense mass hostility in
the society and the organizational strength and network of the AL under
the strong, unified and charismatic leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Through his fiery and often emotional speeches, he effectively used Bengali
nationalism as a vehicle for collective political actions–non-cooperation
and civil disobedience movements. In this way the mobilization process,
which began at a gradual pace in 1966 when the AL put forth its six-point
demand on autonomy, followed the mixed pattern, partially mass-led and partially
elite-led. Curiously, military mobilization that began systematically only
in March 1971 became an extended process of political mobilization; it was
initiated by the AL leadership itself in the wake of the growing military
build-up and mounting repressive campaigns of the Yahya Khan regime against
the East Pakistanis. The process became very swift and effective as the
Mukti Bahini, which was organized in April 1971, started its defensive operations
against the Pakistan Army in the following months.
The Baluch war marked a different pattern of mobilization in that ethnic
elite singularly led both political and military processes, which proceeded
in two different ways. Given the fact that their problem originated from
the forcible integration of their territory, the Baluch nationalists became
quite active in the 1940s in mobilizing the people’s support for their autonomy
or secessionist movement. The Kalat State National Party (1937–48) took
the early initiative and since 1950, a group of Marxist-Leninists under
the banner of the Baluchistan Peace Committee followed it up. A number of
other groups–such as the People’s Party, All-Pakistan Baluch League, and
the Baluch Student Federation–were also formed to articulate the Baluch
nationalist ideology, but differed in their goals and programmes: some articulated
their desire for national self-determination, and others merely demanded
greater autonomy. Nevertheless, they sensitized the Baluch people ethnically,
who, in turn, provided impetus for the emergence of a more organized political
movement that the NAP had headed in the heyday of Baluch nationalism. As
a testimony to their mobilization, the Baluch rallied behind the NAP to
oppose the “One Unit” scheme and later overwhelmingly voted the party to
power in 1972. In the process, they forged an inter-provincial and inter-ethnic
solidarity (with Pathans and Sindhis) against the Pakistani state. While
the use of state force in 1958 had definitely increased the ranks of the
NAP, Bhutto’s coercive tactics reflecting in the proscription of the NAP
and the arrest of its leaders and the dissolution of the provincial government
in 1973 led to retardation of the mobilization process. This in a way benefited
militant organizations–the Baluch People’s Liberation Front (BPLF) and the
Baluch Student Organisation (BSO)–which attracted the young Baluch and politically
aroused tribesmen. Although the BSO (formed in 1967) seemed to have been
affiliated to the NAP, much of the credit for military mobilization should
go to the BPLF. An organization that espoused the cause of national liberation
through armed struggle, it was the direct outgrowth of the guerrilla movement
launched by Sher Mohammad Marri in 1963. It means that the process of military
mobilization began simultaneously with political mobilization, and while
continuing in two different ways, the latter process impinged upon the former.
Despite strong objective conditions, neither of these processes achieved
the optimum level of mobilization when the war broke out in 1973. Three
reasons can be attributed to this. First, cleavages in the Baluch society
along tribal lines made it difficult to evolve collectively “agreed symbols”
to ignite and sustain an enduring ethno-nationalist movement of the Baluch.
Second, the non-centrist or anti-centrist Baluch leadership was not only
fragmented, but also pursued divergent political objectives and options.
Third, the central leadership was successful in its co-optive, divisive
and coercive strategies to contain the growth of mobilization of the Baluch
(Phadnis 1989: 188–90). Thus, the Baluch waged a war against the Pakistani
state without fully preparing the society and mobilizing its broad-based
and collective support.
As regards the war in the CHT, the process of political mobilization started
way back in the early 1960s (i.e. under the Pakistani rule) when the Hill
Students’ Association made concerted efforts to gather support for tribal
autonomy. A tribal solidarity movement was quickly forged to form the Chittagong
Hill Tracts Welfare Association in 1966, but its activities remained underground
in view of the martial law rule in Pakistan until it was dissolved in 1969.
It was only after the liberation of Bangladesh that a fuller effort to mobilize
the tribal population was undertaken by the United People’s Party of Chittagong
Hill Tracts (Parabotya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity, or PCJSS). Formed
in March 1972 under M. N. Larma’s leadership, the PCJSS immediately added
a military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (Gana Mukti Fouj, or GMF),
in order to resist the repressive campaigns of the Mukti Bahini against
the tribal people for their alleged collaboration with the Pakistan Army
in the liberation war. Subsequently, the GMF rechristened itself as the
Shanti Bahini (Peace Force) to denote its original task of protecting the
hill people. However, its functions became expanded when the Bangladeshi
government rejected the tribal autonomy demand and embarked on a massive
military build-up in the CHT. Thus, both the political and military mobilization
processes largely followed the elite-led pattern, and were conducted simultaneously
at a faster pace at the initiative of the moderate leadership that fully
controlled the military wing. Although the PCJSS achieved a modicum of success
in rallying the educated and politically conscious Chakmas for a collective
military and political action, a total mobilization involving other two
major tribal groups–the Marmas and Tripuris–was marred by inter-tribal cleavages
and factionalism among the Chakmas themselves.
For all the intensity and endurance of the Eelam war, mobilization of the
Sri Lankan Tamils has been a critical factor. This is just another case
of a war entailing a mixed mobilization pattern–partially elite-led and
partially mass-led–in which both the political and military mobilization
processes have taken place separately under two different leaderships. It
is noteworthy that political mobilization took almost 25 years before the
militant leadership was born to conduct a decade-long process of military
mobilization of Tamil youth in the early 1970s. Both processes became a
long-drawn-out event reflected in the war process itself. Playing upon the
Sri Lankan Tamils’ fear of ethnic extinction and rousing nationalistic fervour,
the Federal Party (FP) under the leadership of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam created
a broad-based political movement for autonomy during 1949–72. Several non-violent
movements–satyagraha and civil disobedience–that the FP launched at least
since 1956 brought in to its fold a large number of people who spontaneously
responded to the call for mass support. In this regard, the party’s widespread
grass-roots network in the north-east proved effective in sensitizing and
mobilizing the people. None of the repressive tactics of the government
really deterred the growth of the movement: instead, the strong support
base it created had prompted the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) to
change its goal in favour of a separate state in 1976. This was, in a way,
an indication of the optimum level to which the political mobilization process
reached; it also reflected in the 1977 elections in which the Sri Lankan
Tamils had overwhelmingly voted for the TULF’s demand for Eelam.
We argue that the process of military mobilization became easy and effective
because of the success of political mobilization. A large number of educated
unemployed youth, who earlier got political training with the FP and the
TULF, responded spontaneously to the call for armed struggle by several
militant groups. Of about half-a-dozen major militant groups which embraced
the Eelam goal, the LTTE emerged as the most powerful force by way of systematic
recruitment of cadres (including conscription) and elimination of rival
groups. If the high-handedness of the government in tackling the Tamil youth’s
protest against its educational policies, the failure of the non-violent
tactics of the moderate leadership to protect the Tamils’ interests and
the growing incidents of mass violence against the Tamils provided the background
for greater military mobilization, the higher literacy and unemployment
rate among the youth provided the maximum push and impetus for the success
of the same process.
In Punjab, the principal task of political mobilization for the Khalistan
war was singularly borne by the Akali Dal. Proceeding in a phased manner
since the 1960s, the mobilization of Sikhs followed the elite-led pattern
in that the Akali leadership invoked the ethno-nationalist aspirations of
the community for a collective political action. In so doing, it tried to
incorporate its political objective of re-ingratiating itself with its Sikh
supporters in order to counter the electoral challenges of the Congress
in Punjab. In other words, the orientation and purpose behind the use of
ethnicity and mobilization of people on its lines was to serve the party’s
electoral interests in the state. Although the Anandpur Sahib Resolution
directly held out an appeal to the Sikh nationalists for political support,
the Akali leadership did not make an attempt or initiative for a broad-based
ethno-national movement. However, its political programme had created a
space for the rise of, and mobilization for, the militant movement (Telford
1992: 970). Disenchanted with Akali politics and dissatisfied with the outcome
of the Green Revolution that quickened the process of economic disparity
and dislocation in the state, the educated and unemployed rural Jat Sikh
youth from farming families, which did not benefit much from the economic
transformation, had responded in large number to Sant Bhindranwale’s message
of rejuvenating Sikhism.
Thus, what provided the powerful context for military mobilization was the
discontent of a segment of the rural Sikhs which found religious symbolism
and the appeal of Bhindranwale an attractive unifying force against the
centre (Chima 1994: 861). It shows how effective the mobilization strategy
of Bhindranwale was, who prepared the Sikhs in a short span of time for
a war in the 1980s. But the entire military mobilization process yielded
only a moderate level of success for four reasons. First, it preceded much
of the political mobilization of the Sikhs (which the Akali leadership did
not seriously try in the first place). Second, those Sikh youth who were
attracted to Bhindranwale’s appeal for a Sikh national revival belonged
to the Jat Sikh community of the underdeveloped rural districts. As such,
there was relatively limited support for militancy among the Sikhs in urban
districts of Punjab (Singh 1987: 1276). Third, the Sikh militant formations
were locked in intense competition for power and control, thereby hampering
the unity and strength of the movement. Last, the objective conditions were
not demonstrably strong enough for enlisting the spontaneous participation
of a large number of people in the war.
India’s north-east wars have followed the elite-led mobilization pattern,
and in many cases, the same leadership has conducted both the political
and military mobilization processes. It is also striking that military mobilization
has coincided with the actual war process, and political preparation of
the people for war has not been adequate. In Nagaland, the NNC under Phizo’s
leadership was initially singularly instrumental in preparing the Nagas
more for a collective military than a political action. It hinged more on
Naga nationalism than the group’s actual grievances while preparing for
the war. Its short-lived political programmes–plebiscite in 1951 and non-cooperation
and civil disobedience movement in the early 1950s–did not sufficiently
arouse mass political upheavals in the Hills, yet the Naga youth’s ready
response to the war indicated their preference in the first place for militarism
as an ideology in the society. If the level of participation of people remained
low in the early years of the Naga war, it was perhaps due to their inadequate
political mobilization and lack of exposure to outside influences. As the
literacy rate in the society grew, external influences penetrated Naga society,
institutional decay became widespread and repressive tactics of the army
continued unabated, the support base of the militants became correspondingly
widened. At the same time, factionalism in the NNC along tribal and ideological
lines and competition among various splinter groups for power and control
have had a negative impact on the mobilization process. However, the splinter
groups, when they emerged to contest their parent outfits, engaged themselves
in military mobilization so that they could continue the war. Both the Isaac-Muivah
and Khaplang factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)
have continued to mobilize the Naga youth after the NNC’s acceptance of
the Shillong Accord (1975).
The Mizo war entailed two phases of mobilization: the first phase merely
prepared a political ground for a larger military mobilization of the Mizos
during the second phase. As early as in 1946–47, both the Mizo Union (MU)
and the United Mizo Freedom Organization (UMFO) carried out a spurt of political
activities to create a sense of “Mizo-ness” as the basis for their demand
for autonomy or secession. If their political articulation of a separate
identity received a widespread endorsement of the people, it was because
they used electoral means as a vehicle for mobilizing support. The domination
of the MU in Lushai Hill politics and its challenges from the UMFO, as reflected
in the electoral competition in the 1950s, had helped in heightening political
awareness in the district and politicizing the Mizo ethnicity. Thus, it
was quite natural for the Mizos to react sharply to the centre’s move in
1961 to impose the Assamese language on the hill people and get rallied
under various political formations that demanded the hill district’s separation
from Assam to form an Eastern Hill State. In later years, they responded
overwhelmingly to the mobilization programmes of the Mizo National Front
(MNF) led by Laldenga, who successfully capitalized on the Mizos’ sense
of relative deprivation and ethnic extinction to create a larger support
base for the secessionist movement.
Like other groups, the MNF had also initially used electoral means for mobilization;
its participation in various elections during 1962–63 paved the way for
creating a viable network and consolidating its contact with the people.
In this context, the outbreak of a famine in 1959 and the relief activities
of the Mizo National Famine Front (which was re-christened as the MNF) when
the central and state governments displayed callousness and apathy to the
human suffering lent itself towards creating a support base for the MNF.
As such, in a way, the process of mobilization followed the elite-led pattern.
A powerful speaker and devout Christian, Laldenga used selective tribal
symbols and Christian values for mobilization. It stirred up tribal fervour
and solidarity, leading to crystallization of the “Mizo-ness” of the hill
peoples. These elements blended into a “new political religion” of the MNF,
which attracted the educated and unemployed youth, tribal chiefs, the UMFO
and MU factions, and local service and businessmen who had developed a strong
sense of relative deprivation (Phadnis 1989: 153–55). More important, the
MNF leadership embarked on military mobilization while continuing the process
of political mobilization. While participating in electoral politics in
the early 1960s, the party developed a military wing, the Mizo National
Army (MNA), to wage a war with the Indian Army since March 1966. The tribal
youth that thronged the MNA were indoctrinated into Mizo nationalism; the
lectures and demonstrations to them recalled the brave past of the Mizos.
Military training and underground activities of the MNA enlisted the critical
role of the Mizo ex-servicemen, so that the MNA’s campaigns for a separate
state became a well-publicized event.
The pattern of mobilization in the Assamese war is peculiar in the sense
that political mobilization of the people for the “Assam movement” (1979–85)
provided a fertile base for military mobilization by the ULFA. Political
mobilization began in a sustained manner in 1979, when the All-Assam Students
Union (AASU) launched the “anti-foreigners” movement which continued until
the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. Through its highly effective goal-articulation
and aggregation functions, AASU developed a sense of ethnic unity and expressed
the collective interests of the Assamese people who were perceivably under
threat from the influx of illegal migrants from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh).
The political and identity awareness that the movement created among the
educated middle-class youth (as much against the migrants as the central
government) was systematically channelized towards strengthening Assamese
nationalism. As the group’s identity became consolidated, its ethnic aspirations
grew further. It was in the widening gap between expectation and achievement
that ULFA found its critical support base. Staunch nationalists veered away
from the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), formed in 1985, comprising groups that
participated in the Assam movement, by disapproving of its gradualist methods
of struggle for autonomy in favour of ULFA’s militant movement for independence.
They readily responded to ULFA’s military programme against the forces of
internal colonialism–the central government–because the moderate political
formations had, in their view, failed to stand up against the exploitation
to which the Assamese had been subjected.
This explains why ULFA, which was formed in 1979, lay dormant for many years
until the mid-1980s, has now become an important nationalist force as far
as the middle class Assamese are concerned. The state’s repression has intensified
military mobilization, reflecting in the upward increase in grass-roots
support for ULFA, to the extent that the “state’s expectations are frustrated”
(Gohain 1996: 2066). In other words, as a field report maintains, military
operations have provided strategic advantage to ULFA in extending its spread
and reaching into new areas. “Every unjust arrest, unreasonable harassment,
ham-handed raid, actual or even believed molestation or rape by the security
forces simply means so much expansion of space for the ULFA” (Prabhakara
1992: 47). Wherever the nationalist ideology of ULFA has failed to evoke
sufficient response either in view of the counter-mobilization strategies
of the AGP and the Congress or its extreme chauvinistic ideals, the group
has resorted to a populist strategy of co-option through development programmes
and social welfare measures. And, in extreme cases, whoever defied its call
for support has been coerced. This confirms that the mobilization process
has, by and large, followed the elite-led pattern.
It is evident that the process of mobilization in ethnic wars in South Asia
has achieved varied levels of success. Of all the wars, the East Pakistan
and the Eelam wars became highly mobilized in that both the political and
military processes attained the optimum level as reflected in an upward
rise in the sustainable level of violence and the limited scope for conflict
moderation. If strong objective conditions–the grievances of the group–so
necessary for spontaneous action formed the principal source for a higher
level of mobilization, consensual goal-setting by an efficient (if not necessarily
unified) leadership and its strength to resist all sorts of inter-penetrative
behaviour of the adversary remained the secondary factor. In many wars–Baluch,
Punjab, CHT and India’s north-east wars–the level of mobilization has been
moderate owing to a variety of reasons. They include a lack of unified strategy
for collective appeal, perceptional differences on grievances, dissension
in goal-setting, lack of strength to counter co-optive, divisive and coercive
strategies of the adversary, and inadequate material base for mobilization.
When these problems have become acute and compounded by additional constraints–such
as weak objective conditions, deep horizontal and vertical cleavages in
the group, multiplicity of weak leadership and, above all, highly coercive
state apparatus–the mobilization processes have predictably reached only
a low level. This is what has occurred in most of the wars in India. We
argue that while wars involving highly mobilized groups are difficult to
resolve without drastically restructuring inter-group relations, it is not
easy either to impose a solution on groups which are not fully mobilized.
Also, a mass-led–cum–elite-led mobilization process is bound to become more
successful than merely an elite-led or mass-led one. Although mobilization
itself is a part of the instrumentalist strategy, the ethnic entrepreneurs
who undertake the task in many cases play upon the primordial feeling of
their group members to gain maximum success.
The Nature of Wars
Each war sets a well-defined goal based on the principal of collective
grievances and aspirations of the warring ethnic group. Since it is the
ethnic group leaders who determine the specific goal of a war, they can
even magnify it beyond its relationship to the group’s perceived grievances.
Any arbitrary or dissentient goal-setting tends to create dissension and
cleavage in the group, resulting in multiple-goal formation in the same
war structure. Furthermore, no war can have a static goal and its transformation
marked by escalation or de-escalation may occur when the battle lines become
hard for one or both adversaries, or there is renewed hope for political
reconciliation at the initiative of a third party or of one of the adversaries.
Secession has been the dominant goal of wars in South Asia. Out of eight
wars that this study deals with, only the tribal war in the CHT was fought
for autonomy. Most of India’s secessionist wars–Mizo, Naga and Assamese–have
originated and continued with the same goal, whereas the Sikh war attained
a secessionist dimension in the process of goal-escalation from the failed
autonomy movement of the Akali Dal. This is also true in regard to the Eelam,
East Pakistan and Baluch wars. The difference is that while the militant
leadership set the secessionist goal of the Sikh and Baluch wars, the moderate
Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and the AL declared and campaigned
for the same goal in Sri Lanka and East Pakistan respectively before the
militant formations were born to pursue it further. Thus, in the former
category, the secessionist goal lacked a consensual endorsement and support
of the entire group members and elite: both the Akali Dal in Punjab and
the NAP in Baluchistan remained committed to their autonomy goal even while
the militants were fighting for a separate state. But the consensus on the
Eelam goal was lost when the TULF and some of the militant outfits agreed
to accept a solution within Sri Lanka’s constitutional framework. As regards
the autonomy goal of the CHT war, it was the moderate PCJSS that set the
goal, and its military wing advanced it though armed campaigns.
Warring
Parties and their Military Balance
Any ethnic war process entails two highly motivated and determined parties
or group of parties whose relations and behaviour are explained only in
violent, coercive terms. Although each belligerent may have a large constituency
support and infrastructure behind the war process, it is only those representative
outfits that directly fight the battle that are considered as warring
parties. The political incumbents are mostly represented in wars by their
own ethnic soldiers, and only in rare cases do they send a multi-ethnic
force drawn from various communities including its own adversary’s population
to the battlefield. In many wars, the minority/weaker ethnic participation
is deeply divided and not united even though their principal goal remains
the same: the cleavage occurs along the lines of power or personality
rivalry or ideological or tactical differences either before the onset
or during the course of war.
Strikingly, most of the wars in South Asia have had multiple warring factions
from the minority/weaker ethnic group’s side,1 whereas the incumbents’
forces in every war other than those ones in India have by and large been
drawn from the majority ethnic group itself (Table 2.1). In India, the
military is a multi-ethnic force whose operation-command structure is
ethnically integrated. (This is contrary to the classical “alien troops”
system that the government used in counter-insurgency operations in the
1970s.) It means that minority ethnic-group soldiers participate in the
war, with utmost loyalty to the government, against their own kin group
members–as it happened, for instance, in Punjab. Proliferation of militant
organizations is intense in most of the wars, thereby indicating the weak
cohesion in the minority group. Another line of classification is that
some of the militant groups exist under the overall control of the political
leaders as their military wing. At the same time, many groups have existed
and functioned as independent military entities, with their highly dependent
political wings controlled by the military leadership. These characteristic
features make a definite impact not only on the battlefield behaviour
of parties, but also on the process of ending war.
As regards the relative strength of parties, it may be striking at the
outset that the government forces enjoy far superior firepower than that
of the insurgents, but the difficulty lies in measuring the actual military
imbalance between the two belligerents. Any attempt at assessing the actual
strength of the militants is futile because, while maintaining secrecy,
they tend to exaggerate their power as a strategy to demoralize their
adversary. At the same time, governments often try to down play in public
the strength of militants by characterizing them as a “bunch of terrorists”
or “misguided youth”, and, therefore, the figures provided by them for
public consumption are misleading. Independent journalistic accounts can
give a fair idea about the strength of militants, but it may not be too
helpful in understanding the exact level of military imbalance on the
field.
Nevertheless, it is possible to make a general assessment of the military
situation on the basis of the structural viability of the militants, the
level of their constituency support, the size of their resource base,
the extent of their foreign connections and the nature of the terrain
in which they operate. These factors are crucial for the success of guerrilla
tactics and achieving at least a limited strategic advantage over the
security forces. A highly cohesive militant group with a well-knit and
strong military command and control structure; well-disciplined and thoroughly
committed cadres who are endowed with indomitable spirit of sacrifice;
highly mobilized large-scale support of people; a sophisticated and efficient
military infrastructure including a reliable communication network; a
dependable source of regular military supplies; well-fortified external
sanctuaries; and committed and trustworthy foreign patrons is likely to
be the most deadly and undefeatable one if, above all, it operates in
a peculiar geographical complex (a topographical structure marked by mountains,
hills, lagoons and sea) which is conducive for guerrilla warfare. In such
cases, the use of superior quality of weapons and deployment of large
contingents of soldiers may not be very helpful in drastically tilting
the military balance on the field to its side. Nor, at the same time,
can the militants claim to have secured a decisive strategic dominance
over the security forces.
In many wars in South Asia, the militants have enjoyed the minimum deterrence
necessary for them to withstand the military pressure of (and even harass)
the security forces. They have developed this capability from a variety
of military and non-military sources (mentioned above), even though the
ratio on the deployed force level between the army and militants (see
below) has remained high in every war. The topography of the theatre of
war has significantly increased the deterring capability of rebels in
the Baluch, Eelam, CHT and India’s north-east wars. For the Baluch militants,
the greatest strategic advantage was that they operated from semi-desert
and semi-mountainous terrain contiguous to Afghan territory, wherein they
set up sanctuaries and found patron support. Even at the best of times,
the area was inhospitable for the people in view of the absence of roads
and a communication system. It created a formidable problem of logistics
for the army, which found it hard to stretch the zone of war across the
vast hostile areas and conduct a successful, swift military action for
a quick victory. Even the Shanti Bahini benefited from the rugged terrain
for its guerrilla operations: the contiguity of the CHT to India’s north-east
region enabled it to find sympathetic military support of various insurgent
groups (the Nagas, Mizos and Assamese).
Similarly, the peculiar geographical features–thick jungles, vast coastline
and huge lagoons–of the main theatre of the Eelam war (viz., the northern
province) provide an invaluable strategic advantage to the Tamil militants
who know every single lane and by-lane and every lagoon and hiding place.
While the deep jungles of Vavuniya and Mullaitivu provide them with strategic
cover against the army’s attack, and the peninsular nature of Jaffna restricts
the latter’s mobility and forward march to control territory, the proximity
of the Palk Straits to the northern landmass has been a great help for
the militants to secure patron support from their kin group across the
border. Likewise, the insurgents in India’s north-east have found hilly
terrain conducive to their guerrilla operations: the region’s territorial
contiguity with Myanmar, Bangladesh and China has made their task of mobilizing
patron support and securing sanctuaries easy. In all these cases, the
insurgents have exposed the limitations and strategic constraints of the
well-trained and highly equipped armies of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
and Bangladesh.
External military assistance to the insurgents is a vital source of their
deterrence against the security forces. The Mukti Bahini, for instance,
became a formidable force within a short period to resist the murderous
attack of the Pakistan Army because of India’s direct military support.
Similarly, India’s supply of arms and grant of sanctuary to the Sri Lankan
Tamil militants during 1983–87 had contributed to the increase in their
firepower and deterring capability vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan Army. The
Khalistan militants relied on Pakistan for military assistance, and the
expatriate Sikh community extended political and material support for
their war against the Indian security forces. Almost every militant group
in India’s north-east enjoyed the patron support of either China, Bangladesh
or Pakistan at differring levels. Many groups have made use of India’s
porous borders with Bhutan and Myanmar, where they set up sanctuaries.
As early as in 1986, ULFA received initial training from the Kachin Independence
Army. Coupled with this external patron support has been the inter-group
solidarity and operational network in the north-east region, which brought
a tremendous strategic advantage to the militants by reducing their power
disparity on the battlefield with the security forces.
For groups like the LTTE, the ideology of vengeance and sacrifice, and
the inner group discipline and commitment of cadres to the cause for which
they have taken up arms are not without any significant impact on its
emergence as the deadliest force in South Asia. Many operations have proved
that the Sri Lankan Army’s higher firepower and deployment level does
not really match the LTTE’s power of supreme sacrifice. The importance
of constituency support must also be underlined here. If the Pakistan
Army could not crush the popular uprising in East Pakistan, it was because
of the massive involvement of people who spontaneously provided the support
base for the AL and Mukti Bahini. Likewise, the LTTE has ensured a constant
supply of manpower to sustain its armed campaigns through its tactics
of “strategic targeting” of certain social groups and harnessing the Tamil
national sentiment of the youth to its goal of national liberation. Conscription
of Tamil youth is also pursued as a popular strategy in order to maintain
the required force level for operational purposes.
Types of War
That all internal wars cannot be viewed as one monolithic category is
empirically proven fact. Based on the level of use of violence and duration
of fighting, we classify wars into four categories: limited, total, short
and long. A limited war is one in which:
• the level of use of violence remains low and fighting takes place intermittently;
• there is large-scale use of small arms and limited deployment of heavy
and sophisticated weapons;
• the level of force deployment remains less than 50,000 men;
• battle-related deaths do not exceed an average of 1,000 people per year;
• the number of internally displaced people and refugees remain under
20,000 per year; and
• the scale of damage and destruction of property is limited.
In contrast, a total war entails:
• intense regular fighting;
• heavy deployment of forces (above a level of 50,000 men) and use of
sophisticated weapons (tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, etc.);
• a higher level of battle-related deaths (more than 1,000 people per
year);
• large-scale displacement of people and refugees (above an average of
20,000 per year); and
• extensive damage to property and economic infrastructure.
A war is said to be short if its longevity does not exceed 10 years, whereas
a long internal war is a prolonged military affair of more than 10 years.
Generally, an internal war can be either short and total, or long and
total, or limited and long, or limited and short. In South Asia, many
wars have been limited in their intensity but long in their duration,
but not all total internal wars are short. Wars in India are invariably
limited ones having either long or short duration.
By the far the most violent and short war in the region was the East Pakistan
war. Although the military build-up and crackdown on the East Bengalis
began as early as in March 1971, the direct armed confrontation between
the army and the Mukti Bahini broke out only sometime in April–May and
continued until 3 December when India and Pakistan declared war which
lasted 13 days. Thus, it was the transformation of the war–from internal
to interstate–which led to reduction in the duration of the East Pakistan
war, otherwise it would have continued for long with the definite support
of external patrons. In a short time, the government had deployed about
80,000 troops and provided them with tanks, artillery and air support
against an estimated 50,000-strong Mukti Bahini which possessed small
arms mostly supplied by India.
Despite the huge imbalance of power, the fighting was continuous and intense.
The Bahinis carried out several commando operations in the army-controlled
areas, and the army launched offensives to capture all major towns from
the rebel forces. The Bahinis owed their limited success in some of the
operations to the Indian security forces, which provided strategic covering
fire to many Bengali detachments fighting with their backs to the Indian
border. For instance, in June 1971, Indian artillery shelled the Pakistani
camp in Lathitilla for 20 minutes, making it possible for the Bahinis
to overrun the camp. In August, the Indian Navy sponsored Operation Jackpot
under which it trained around 30 militants to carry out surprise attacks
on the port city of Chittagong and river ports like Mangla and Chandpur
simultaneously. It was even said that on 20 November, plain-clothed Indian
Army personnel penetrated deep into East Pakistan and even engaged Pakistani
tanks much before the declaration of war between the two countries (Bhaumik
1996: 36–38). Thus, the intensification of the externally patronized internal
war made its culmination into an interstate war quite easy. It was more
so because the human cost of the internal war became amazingly high: about
three million people lost their lives and ten million fled to India. Even
the economic destruction that the war caused was tremendous (Ayoob and
Subrahmanyam 1972). The event was unprecedented in the annals of South
Asia, and the terror that the East Pakistanis had experienced has never
struck the region again with the same ferocity to cause so much destruction.
The short but total Baluch war (1973–77) was built upon the military experience
of the Baluch youth who, calling themselves “Pararis” (non-believers in
negotiations), launched armed campaigns in three tribal areas (Mengal,
Marri and Bukti) during 1963–69 (Harrison 1981: 29–33). Violence in the
first phase (in the 1960s) was less intense and more sporadic than the
second phase (in the 1970s), that characteristically became an internal
war. It was a relatively well-organized military event, spearheaded by
a body that called itself the Popular Front for Armed Resistance (PFAR).
The strength of the insurgent force swelled from about 400 Mengals and
500 Marris to an estimated 55,000 men (of whom nearly 11,500 cadres were
organized into hard-core units) at the height of the war in 1974. They
operated in small bands of 30 to 50 men equipped with light weapons (rifles,
machine guns, etc.) and were based in hideouts in the mountains. They
were well-trained and did not face shortage of arms and ammunition (White
Paper on Baluchistan, 1974). The army deployed about 80,000 men who were
equipped with sophisticated weapons of modern warfare, procured under
the emergency military and financial aid worth $200 million from Iran
(Harrison 1981: 36; Wirsing 1981: 11).
The fighting became intense when the security forces resorted to use of
heavy artillery and air power in its combat operations in mountainous
areas against the insurgents who laid road blockades to de-link Baluchistan
from other provinces, attacked some oil exploration centres, conducted
raids on military encampments and ambushed army convoys. Apart from hitting
hard at the militants, the army’s operational task was to either flush
out or force them to surrender by denying avenues of sustenance and closing
their escape routes. Although the government denied having used the air
force in the war, it was alleged that French Mirage and F-86 Sabre jet
fighters and Huey Cobra helicopters undertook systematic aerial attacks
in which 13 members of the Iranian Army Aviation took part (Guardian,
24 January 1975). Heavy loss of life and destruction of property was reported.
It was estimated that at least 5,000 militants and over 3,000 soldiers
were killed in hundreds of armed encounters lasting until 1977 (Harrison
1978: 139). And the government spent about one million rupees for military
operations per day (Baloch 1985: 365).
By South Asia’s standards, the Eelam war is not only long (continuing
since 1983), but also total, in which well-planned military operations
and encounters between the Sri Lankan security forces and the Tamil militants
have been a regular feature. Although the entire north-eastern province
is engulfed in the war, the highest concentration of military activities
and targets has been the Jaffna peninsula. The entire war process has
four distinct phases: the first phase (1983–87) saw highly intense military
confrontations between half-a-dozen insurgent groups and the Sri Lankan
Army (SLA) that led to opening up of multiple war fronts. The LTTE, a
formidable militant force from the beginning, built up its strength on
highly motivated, committed and trained cadres and a wide array of small
arms and sophisticated weapons procured from international markets and
a sympathetic external patron, India. Developing itself into a hardcore
guerrilla force, the LTTE tried to adopt conventional war strategy briefly
in 1987 without any success. The army’s counter-insurgency operations
during this phase were to wrest control of territories from the LTTE and
marginalize the Tigers militarily.
The second phase (1987–90) of the war was solely between the Indian Peace
Keeping Force (IPKF) and the LTTE: the former with a strength of about
70,000 troops supported by heavy tanks and artillery went to the island
to implement the bilateral peace agreement in 1987. It was a bitter and
prolonged counter-insurgency operation for the IPKF against an invisible
enemy–the LTTE–who mixed with civilians to avoid a total defeat and harass
its powerful adversary. The Indian forces managed to chase the Tigers
out of the Jaffna peninsula to the Vavuniya and Mullaitivu jungles and
various hideouts in the east. But they soon regained their territories
once the IPKF withdrew from the island in 1990, leading to the third phase
(1990–94) of the war between the SLA and the LTTE. The army’s success
in capturing territory was limited: the east fell easily into its hands,
but the Tigers, in order to maintain their control over the north, engaged
in a series of set-piece battles initially and resorted to hit-and-run
operations. Following the breakdown of the government–LTTE peace parley
(October 1994–April 1995), the fourth phase of the war began in April
1995, leading to the recapture of Jaffna peninsula by the army in December
1995. Consequently, the Tigers have shifted their headquarters to the
Mullaitivu jungles and spread their sphere of influence in the east. With
territorial victory forming the core objective of both adversaries, the
Eelam war is continuing with all intensity.
It is a total war because the belligerents have not only deployed heavy
weapons but also incurred a heavy cost. A strong contingent of the army
(about one hundred thousand troops) supported by the air force and the
navy is deployed in the north-east against an estimated 5,000–10,000 LTTE
cadres who use weapons which are eminently suitable for low-intensity
warfare. Of course, the Tigers’ arsenal does not match the heavy and sophisticated
weapons of the security forces, yet they have developed sufficient capability
to harass and deny a victory to the army. Most important, the LTTE is
one of the few guerrilla groups in the world to develop the capability
of challenging all three wings of the armed forces. Landmines have proved
effective against the army, missiles have dealt a severe blow to the air
force whose cover to the ground forces has been crucial for operations,
and the Black Sea Tigers have harassed the navy severely. Both the human
and economic costs of the war are mounting with every passing year. A
conservative estimate is that more than 60,000 people have lost their
lives so far, and the country has incurred a loss of about SL Rs. 200
billion (Marga 1998). About 800,000 people are internally displaced, and
more than 200,000 Sri Lankan Tamils have taken refuge in India and other
countries. The running expenditure of the war is estimated at SL Rs. 75
million per day (Wijemanne 1994).
The CHT war in Bangladesh was long but limited in its intensity. Beginning
in February 1976, the Bangladesh Army and the Shanti Bahini continued
their fight until August 1992, when they declared a cease-fire in order
to resume negotiations. The war led to total militarization of the CHT
where, by the late 1980s, the government established about 230 army camps,
100 Bangladesh Rifles (paramilitary force) camps, and 80 police camps
(The CHT Commission 1991: 40). In all, about 35,000 men were deployed
for counter-insurgency operations (Mohsin 1997: 172). It meant that for
every 20 people in the Hills, there was one security person (The CHT Commission
1992: 4). The government spent about US$125 million per annum for maintaining
the security forces in the CHT; the daily military expenditure was estimated
at Taka 1.5 crore, i.e. Taka 15 million (The CHT Commission 1994: 2).
In comparison, the strength of the Shanti Bahini was meagre. Although
its leadership claimed to have mobilized 15,000 cadres, its actual strength
was estimated at 7,000 men armed with light weapons (The CHT Commission
1991: 47).
For operational purposes, the army divided the entire CHT into three zones:
white, green and red. White zones covered areas within 3.2 km of military
headquarters, green zones encompassed areas of Bengali settlement, and
red zones constituted tribal-dominated areas in the interior jungles where
the army conducted counter-insurgency operations. It was said that in
order to avoid civilian casualties, the army did not deploy artillery
or heavy mortars even though it had plenty of targets for their use, and
the air force was never used for aerial bombing but extended logistic
support to the ground troops (Ibrahim 1991: 33). The army’s operational
tactics were: hitting hard at the militants with the aim of tiring them
out, conducting raids on their hideouts, laying ambushes, and unleashing
terror campaigns against the hill people so as to isolate them from the
militants. On several occasions, the Shanti Bahini demonstrated its ability
to carry out jungle warfare by adopting hit-and-run tactics and storming
isolated army camps. Besides, it launched periodic attacks on Bengali
settlers who, in turn, retaliated against the hill tribes with the tactical
support of the army (Ali 1993: 189–90). The exchange of violence and counter-insurgency
operations led to large-scale human rights violations. As many as 60,000
tribal people fled to India, and all those who were left behind in the
CHT lived under constant fear of death and destruction. Although the exact
number of deaths is difficult to ascertain, an official estimate was that
about 1,100 civilians and 236 insurgents were killed in the war during
the period 1979–91 (Shelley 1992: 124, 154). This is much below an unofficial
figure of 20,000, including 2,000 insurgents (Rahman 27 December 1996:
9). It is not clear as to what extent the security forces have suffered
in the war.
Of all the wars in India, the nine-year long Khalistan war (1984–92) was
short but total in every sense, i.e. in the level of force deployment,
intensity of violence and scale of killings. It was perhaps the only war
in India that witnessed large-scale deployment of security forces. There
were about 120,000 army personnel, 53,000 policemen, 28,000 Home Guards,
10,000 special police officers and 70,000 paramilitary personnel in the
state for counter-insurgency duty by the time the war reached its peak
in 1992 (Ramakrishnan 1992: 125). Added to this numerical strength was
the deployment of heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, which definitely
increased the intensity of war. Although the exact strength of militants
who were splintered into more than half-a-dozen major groups was difficult
to ascertain, various estimates put their number between 10,000 (Gill:
123) and 26,000 men (Joshi 1993: 21) at the height of the war. As the
war proceeded and the violence intensified, the quality of weaponry that
the militants used had also improved. Thus, until 1987, they challenged
the Indian security forces with small rifles and sten guns. From 1987
onwards, AK-47 rifles became their major weapon, and since then RPG-7
rocket-propelled grenades, general purpose machine guns, night vision
equipment, anti-tank weapons, landmines and sniper rifles were found in
their hands (Joshi 1993: 3). Apart from their terror campaigns against
civilians, the militants employed several tactics such as planting of
explosives and landmines, attacking the security forces from hideouts
and direct confrontation with the government forces in a somewhat conventional
style of operation.
The security forces worked out well-coordinated strategies in that every
force had a specific role to play in the overall operations against the
militants. Although the army maintained a large presence in Punjab since
1984, it did not spearhead every counter-insurgency operation. Operation
Bluestar (the military assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar where
the militants entrenched themselves to conduct armed campaigns) in June
1984 was the first ever major army offensive that led to the killing of
Bhindranwale and several other militants. According to the White Paper
on the Punjab Agitation (1984) issued by the Indian government, about
4,712 people were killed and 10,000 arrested by the security forces. The
second offensive that came on the heels of the first one was Operation
Wood Rose, launched to take control of the rural areas around the Golden
Temple from the militants. During 1985–90, the army did not directly embark
on any offensive, but extended logistic support to the police and paramilitary
forces in their battle against the militants. For instance, while securing
its installations and maintaining constant vigil on the ground, the army
let the National Security Guards (NSG), an elite anti-terrorist force,
to launch Operation Black Thunder-I in April 1986 and Operation Black
Thunder-II in May 1988 to flush militants out from the Golden Temple complex
(Marwah 1997: 188–201).
In December 1990, the army was again called up to retrieve the state from
terror; it launched Operation Rakshak-I in three border districts of Ferozepur,
Amritsar and Gurdaspur where it carried out patrols, maintained checkpoints,
and extended strategic cover to the police and paramilitary forces in
conducting counter-insurgency operations. But the operation was aborted
because of its unintended result, viz., the militants were pushed out
of the border areas to spread across the state. This led to Operation
Rakshak-II in December 1991 under which the army undertook an all-encompassing
task not only of routing out militancy from the state but also stopping
the transborder activities of militants. Thus, it was deployed both in
rural areas and the border stretching down to the sea in the Rann of Kutch.
Apart from carrying out aggressive patrolling, the army extended manpower
and firepower to the police and paramilitary forces for “cordon-and-search
operations” through a system of Quick Reaction Teams (Joshi 1993: 12–13;
Sawhney 1992). This cooperation was continued until the police, whose
revitalization was done only with the tactical support of the army, made
significant breakthroughs in the systematic weakening and eventual elimination
of groups to end violence. It was indeed a costly war. Apart from the
huge operational costs, destruction of property and disruption of economic
activities in the state, about 18,000 people were killed in various military
operations and terror campaigns of the militants by the end of 1992 (Joshi
1993: 1).
The Naga war is the oldest and longest military event in South Asia. It
is not only India’s, but also South Asia’s first internal war that broke
out in 1955 when the Indian government deployed a joint force of armed
police and Assam Rifles to restore law and order in the Naga Hills. It
was expected that the operations against the Naga Home Guards would last
for a month, and, therefore, the army’s participation was not visualized.
Intensification of armed campaigns in the wake of establishment of a provisional
Naga federal government in March 1956 had, however, changed the government’s
military strategy. Additional reinforcements of forces were sent to the
Hills and the army was put in charge of operations. In all, 2 divisions
of the army and 35 battalions of the Assam Rifles and armed police confronted
about 10,000 militants. The entire Naga Hills resembled a militarized
zone where, it was estimated, there was one security person for every
adult male Naga (Mullik 1971: 313).
Nevertheless, the militants were initially able to withstand and inflict
military pressure so that the inexperienced government forces in jungle
warfare could be subsequently strengthened by the induction of Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and armed police contingents from various
states. A new army divisional headquarters was also set up near Kohima.
The war became intensified when the militants stepped up their insurgent
activities (sniping, raiding, ambushing and kidnapping) and the army launched
several combat operations in the deep jungles, leading to the death of
300 security forces personnel and about 1,500 militants in the first two
years of the war (Ministry of External Affairs 1962: 8). Phizo himself
was forced to take refuge in East Pakistan in 1957, and from there he
left for the UK forever.
As the war proceeded at a low key, both the security forces and militants
gained strategic advantage vis-à-vis each other. Although the former could
not control the entire territory by defeating the insurgents, its new
experience in counter-insurgency operations increased its confidence in
tackling militancy. At the same time, the militants found new patrons–Pakistan
and China–whose critical support (training and arms supply) had enabled
them to improve their firepower since they already enjoyed a strategic
edge over their adversary in skilfully utilizing the terrain for attacks.
Thus, in a number of operations, while inflicting damage on the militants,
the security forces also suffered high casualties. For instance, in August
1960, the Naga Army (NA) claimed to have shot down an Indian Air Force
Dakota plane engaged in dropping arms and ammunition to the Indian troops
at Bor outpost in the Pochury Region.
In 1962, the militants made use of the Indian Army’s war with China to
consolidate their position in the Hills, but in the following year, the
army intensified its military pressure by even bringing the air force
into action in a tactical role, bombing and strafing militant positions
(Maxwell 1973: 14). The no-win situation in the war made both the adversaries
amenable to political initiatives, particularly the government, which
laid as much stress on political settlement of the problem as on military
pressure on the militants to give up their armed campaigns. A cease-fire
agreement was, therefore, worked out in August 1964, resulting in the
suspension of operations until 1967, when the peace talks failed.
It was logical for the government to resume the war once the peace talks
broke down, but a lull in the Hills continued well over nine years as
the central leadership periodically extended the cease-fire until 1972
and the security forces did not launch any major offensive. This does
not mean that there was absolute peace in the Hills: a series of sporadic
violent incidents occurred throughout the extended cease-fire period because
the newly returned Chinese-trained militants demonstrated their skills
in a number of ambushes, heavy-mortar attacks, and minor and major skirmishes.
In a way, they made use of the cease-fire period to consolidate their
military strength with the support of China and Pakistan for an eventual
showdown, but it took some time for the government to realize its flawed
military strategy (Gundevia 1975: 186–210). It, however, demonstrated
its determination to put down insurgent violence when it unilaterally
ended the cease-fire in September 1972, and launched fresh counter-insurgency
operations to mark the second phase of the Naga war in which the security
forces enjoyed superior firepower over the militants. Additional contingents
of armed forces, including five battalions of newly recruited Naga armed
police were inducted in the state to supplement the army, which now positioned
itself strongly against the militants, who lost their sanctuary in East
Pakistan as well as Chinese military support. A number of rapid operations
by the government forces had exerted great pressure on the militants who,
while occasionally carrying out strikes at the enemy, evaded the adversary’s
attacks by way of tactical withdrawal. The loss of resistance of the militants
enabled the security forces to establish dominance over the state, which
in turn helped the government to negotiate peace with the NNC in 1975.
In 1980, the third phase of the Naga war witnessed intense exchange of
violence between the security forces and the Naga Army, the military wing
of the NSCN, which broke away from the NNC over the issue of accepting
the Shillong Accord. Its leaders–Muivah Tangkhul, Isaac Swu and S. S Khaplang–were
ardent Naga nationalists who underwent military training in China, and
the bulk of its cadres were those who returned from China after training
since 1975. Their zeal for the liberation war was, therefore, high; accepting
peace without testing their newly acquired military capabilities under
the direction of the pacifist leaders was unacceptable to them. They had
a lot of optimism in their struggle against the Indian forces and displayed
determination to fight until achieving their goal. Initially, the group
established its bases along the Manipur and Nagaland borders in Myanmar,
and subsequently spread its hold to the Bangladesh border, the whole of
Manipur and Nagaland. It put together about 4,000 cadres and mobilized
3,500–4,000 small weapons (John 1997). Its underground outfit (known as
the Alee Command) has a rotating strength of about 300 men; it operated
beyond Indian frontiers and engaged in training, religious and motivational
activities (Jacob 1997).
In 1988, the NSCN split into the Isaac-Muivah and Khaplang factions following
a bitter struggle for power and dominance along tribal lines. The NSCN
(K) is less powerful than the NSCN (I-M); it has a strength of about 2,500
men and possessed 600–650 weapons (John 1997). Both the groups have militarily
challenged the Indian security forces, whose strength in the state has
increased over the years to about 40,000 men. They have been drawn from
about 8 battalions of the Nagaland Armed Police, 12 battalions of the
Assam Rifles, 12 battalions of the army, 2 battalions of the Border Security
Force (BSF), and 6 battalions of the CRPF. Despite the disparity in strength,
the war dragged on for about 17 years (1980–97) without any decisive outcome.
Both the combatants carried out regular attacks and inflicted casualties
on each other. Numerous joint military operations of the Indian troops
did not deter the NSCN militants from carrying out ambushes, overrunning
military and paramilitary posts and headquarters, and capturing soldiers
and armed policemen. In the early 1990s, there had been a steady rise
in such encounters (from 34 incidents in 1991 to 144 incidents in 1995),
leading to an upswing in casualty figures (Marwah 1997: 279–86). However,
on the whole, the Naga war has, by and large, remained a low-key military
affair as is evident from the fact that it has witnessed a comparatively
low scale of killings. But this does not mean that the people in the Hills
have experienced less human rights abuses by the security forces (Iyer
1994: 674–78; Sangvai 1996: 3103–104).
The 20-year war in Mizoram (1966–86) was another notable military event
in North-East India where the Mizo National Army (MNA, rechristened from
the Mizo National Volunteers [MNV] in 1966) and the government forces
fought many bitter battles. It began in February 1966 when the Chinese-
and Pakistan-trained MNV launched the well-planned Operation Jericho in
the Lushai Hills, under which about one thousand armed men surreptitiously
encircled Aizawl by pinning down the fragile security apparatus. It was
the Assam Rifles men who had to put up a valiant resistance for a week
until the army was rushed to prevent the district from falling into the
hands of the insurgents. Although the timely reinforcement of security
forces foiled the militants’ swift coup in the capital, they made a remarkable
success in their operations in the southern towns of Lungleh and Champai.
Apart from taking control of these towns, they captured around 85 soldiers
and a large quantity of weapons (Bhaumik 1996: 153–54; Prasad 1987: 179–97).
Consequently, the Indian forces swung into large-scale counter-insurgency
actions in which air raids on the militants’ positions provided critical
support for the advancing columns to relieve the southern towns. The intensity
of military action and resistance-capacity of the MNA was evident from
the heavy casualties suffered by both the combatants: the security forces
lost about 200 men while the number of insurgents killed in the operation
was even higher.
As the counter-insurgency operations became intensified and the MNA lost
the gains of Operation Jericho, it embarked on a major drive to equip
and expand its force, from 4 battalions in 1966 to 7 battalions in 1967.
Its total strength was variously estimated at 2,500 to 8,000. It adopted
major “diversionary actions” to “disperse” the security forces, as demonstrated
in Operation Crusade that the MNA launched in Mizo-inhabited areas of
adjoining states in 1967, aimed at developing new areas of support and
supplies to sustain its fledgeling forces. Laldenga expanded the battle
zones to “gain elbow room in order to fight against the harshest counter-insurgency
operation ever unleashed in the history of modern India” (Bhaumik 1996:
160).
Constant sniping and unabated ambushes became a powerful strategy of the
militants to which the security forces did not have an effective deterrent
strategy. While holding on to the territory, the government forces largely
targeted at the militants’ supply routes and hideouts in the border areas.
In these operations, the Burmese forces extended passive support as they
kept a constant watch on the borders, thereby facilitating the cross-border
movements of the militants. As a result of military pressure and gradual
drying of Chinese and Pakistani support, there was a steep decline in
the frequency of the MNA’s attacks on and encounters with the security
forces in the late 1960s. Even some of the well-planned operations, such
as Hmuh Theihlo Ral, that envisaged sabotage in the entire Hills in 1969
flopped disastrously. At some points, the MNA resorted to urban terrorism
by attacking soft targets, but avoided direct encounters with or major
offensives against the security forces. It continued this strategy for
the rest of the period of the war (until 1984), which ultimately turned
out to be a protracted event, but limited in its intensity.
The limited war in Assam (continuing since 1990) is the most recent war
in India, marked by protracted exchange of violence by the Indian security
forces and ULFA militants. It is also truly a war of unequal adversaries:
a large contingent of military and paramilitary forces is deployed against
a tiny group of about 1,200 hardcore militants whose operational area
in the state is rather limited. Since the terrain holds greater strategic
value for the militants’ unabated terror campaigns, the government has
created a three-tier unified command structure to counter the insurgency.
At the first level, there is a strategic group headed by the Chief Secretary
to the Government of Assam, with the chiefs of the military and paramilitary
forces as its members. The second group, headed by the Director General
of Police, includes the commissioners, heads of intelligence agencies
and chiefs of paramilitary forces. The General Officer Commanding 4 Corps
heads the operational group, whose members are drawn from the army and
paramilitary forces. On 20 January 1997, a civil-military “unified command”
was set up for operations. It was originally valid for three months (up
to 21 April) but the government extended its life when the ULFA heightened
its terror campaigns.
There are three phases in the Assam war. The first phase began on 28 November
1990 when the security forces launched Operation Bajrang, which continued
until 20 April 1991. It was the first large-scale military operation against
the ULFA militants in which 8 brigades of the army took part. The army’s
lack of operational familiarity with the terrain necessitated the use
of aviation helicopters to reconnoitre dense forests in eastern Assam
along the Brahmaputra and the strategically important ULFA camps in Lakhipather
forest. It was reported that the army aviation pilots logged nearly 90
hours of flying every day, indicating the crucial role that air power
played in the operation (Sawhney 1992: 75). Although the army killed 15
militants, arrested 2,867 activists and seized 1,208 weapons (Ahmed 1992:
33), the operation was not a great success in neutralizing the militants.
Many hardcore militants escaped to Bangladesh or Myanmar, where they had
already set up a number of camps. The conventional operational strategy
of the army did not take into account the militants’ tactics of operating
from the deep jungles and mixing with people to make them an invisible
enemy. Even the army’s movements could not be kept secret, as the villagers
acted as informers of the militants (Marwah 1995: 306).
Although Operation Bajrang failed to contain militancy, it delivered a
psychological blow to the militants, whose strategic limitations in facing
a sustained military operation got exposed. They developed a fear for
survival, reflected in the heightening terror campaigns, including kidnapping
and killing of state and central government officials. The government
responded with more effective coercive tactics: within five months of
the termination of Operation Bajrang, it launched Operation Rhino on 15
September 1991 that marked the second phase of the war. (In military terms,
it was considered as an extension of the first operation.) The army deployed
15 brigades on 3,000 sq. km on both banks of the Brahmaputra River and
was assisted by the paramilitary, state police and intelligence agencies.
The army formed Quick Reaction Teams (QRTs). Each team consisted of about
20 soldiers who, on receiving precise intelligence information, first
conducted cordon-and-search operations. At the same time, larger operations
aimed at, for instance, capturing or smashing of large militant camps,
arms and ammunition caches and training centres, usually involved larger
columns of troops (more than brigade strength). Since the army was now
familiar with the terrain, not much air support was needed during Operation
Rhino.
The ULFA appeared to be a weak adversary whose capacity to outmanoeuvre
the security forces was extremely limited because the combat lessons of
Operation Bajrang had usefully guided Operation Rhino (Sawhney 1992).
Evidently, the militants suffered a serious strategic setback. Many top
leaders of the group were either killed or arrested along with as many
as 5,000 cadres; over 300 cadres surrendered to the army; about 850 weapons
and 10,000 rounds of ammunition were recovered, and Rs. 64 lakh (10 lakh
being equal to 1 million) was seized from militants’ hideouts (Sawhney
1992: 71; Ahmed 1992: 33; Prabhakara 1992: 45). At the same time, comparatively,
the number of cadres killed and wounded in Operation Rhino was much less
than in Operation Bajrang. But the heat generated by the short and swift
Operation Rhino was so high that the ULFA leadership was forced to declare
an unconditional cease-fire that suspended the operations on 14 January
1992.
For a section of the ULFA leaders, the cease-fire was a tactical move
to buy time to regroup and reduce the momentum of military operation.
Thus, it was inevitable for the army to resume operations in April 1992
in six districts where the local ULFA leaders opposed to the surrender
of arms and negotiations; from the remaining districts, the army was withdrawn
on 3 August 1992. Mutual acts of violence in the form of reprisals by
the security forces and militants continues unabated; the latter intermittently
step up violence to which the former respond with punitive measures. In
all, 1,370 civilians and 220 security personnel were killed during 1986
and 1995; another 225 people were killed in 1996–97 (Ministry of Home
Affairs 1998). The loss suffered by the militants in the last nine years
has been quite substantial: in 1997, 290 ULFA cadres were killed in various
military offensives (Ministry of Home Affairs 1998: 12).
Conclusion
It is clear that the internal wars in South Asia do not fall into a monolithic
category: what distinguishes the differences between them are the levels
of power the adversaries enjoy, and the extent of force they deploy to
wage the war. Power is, therefore, a critical variable that determines
the intensity of a war and differentiates one from another. A long-drawn-out
process of war preparations in many cases has strengthened the internal
war structure of insurgents, reflecting in their ability to withstand
the military pressure of the political incumbents as a prerequisite for
the onset of wars. Chapter 3 analyses to what extent this has helped in
designing war-ending strategies and influenced their execution.
Note
1 The prominent militant groups in the Eelam war in the 1980s were the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization
(TELO), the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), the
Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS), and the Eelam People’s
Revolutionary Liberation
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