RCSS Policy Studies 17 : Chapter 3

Coping with Disorder - Strategies to End Internal Wars in South Asia - by  P Sahadevan

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3]  [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] 

War for Peace

Every internal war is a purposive military programme, requiring huge investment in terms of men and materials that the combatants willy-nilly make to gain a victory. Each party holds the other responsible for the imposition of war, so it merely responds militarily in order to protect its interests. In this way, each adversary defends its war-waging decision and lays emphasis on restoration of peace threatened by the other’s unduly hardened ethnic demands or refusal to redress the opponent’s legitimate grievances. War is, therefore, seen as a tool to softening one party’s stand on its own demands, or to making another to give up its tough posture towards accommodation of the rival party’s ethnic interests. In either way, peace is considered as the highly desired goal of the parties, which they seek to achieve according to their own terms and conditions and through negative means of violence to end the war. It means that in their frame of mind and strategy, “war” itself is the most appropriate means of managing or ending “war”. This is a strategic choice that the top leaders make on the basis of certain “capability-related assumptions” and “interest-oriented compulsions”. Waging a war needs not only mobilization of sufficient military strength, but also a strong leadership that exudes sufficient confidence in its force to defeat the adversary. Since it is the leader who runs the war machinery and determines the strategy, the interpretation of objective conditions and ground situations as a critical input to strategic decision making is done by himself, with the help of a core group of people drawn from the political and strategic fields. 

Generally, the leaders who have chosen the war-for-peace strategy tend to overestimate their group’s strength, and underplay the adversary’s real capability. This itself is the primary condition for the execution of the strategy; the assumption is that while real power is tested only in the battlefield, one party’s unrelenting determination to use force and rhetorical projection of its power out of miscalculated courage or real strength can demoralize its opponent. It is, thus, quite normal that a weak adversary often boasts of itself as being strong until the limitations of its power is exposed on the battlefield. As such, the built-in structures of resistance that the parties develop to political negotiations are broken only when the war process itself fails to make any headway. Such parties often make no unified assessment of the relative costs and benefits of war: all that they assume is that the potential benefits will likely to be more than the costs. Second, a seemingly cohesive party is well-inclined towards adoption of the war-for-peace strategy, because it often mistakenly considers the faction-ridden opponent as being weak and which can be subdued militarily. While this is the normal tendency of the political incumbents, the same consideration does not figure in the insurgents’ decision to embark on the strategy. Instead, they courageously confront the cohesive forces of political incumbents with the aim of frustrating their very strategy of war-for-peace, as required for their own success that ensures their survival. Third, each party’s commitment to its respective cause creates a structure of pressure to deny the demands or invalidate the interests of the other, thereby increasing its confidence in and commitment to the war process. An uncompromising attitude breeds intolerance that the adversaries demonstrate in waging war and accepting honourable peace through negotiations. 

What is at stake in every war is the critical interest of the adversaries; here the promotion of personal interests of warring leaders is linked to the protection of the general interests of their group members. Leaders often develop deep personal commitment to the cause, and demonstrate their determination to obtain a military victory either out of their devotion to ethnic ideology, or owing to political exigencies. The first reason explains the “development” of stringent attitudes and preferences of the key leaders in adopting the war-for-peace strategy; the second reason clarifies the “compulsions” out of which they chose the same strategy, even if they know its futility. It is true that an internal war is more likely to become a partisan political issue than an interstate war because of the differential status of actors. As discussed in Chapter 1, both the combatants in an internal war belong to the same body politic, and, therefore, the war process influences the political process and the electoral fortunes of leaders. If various opposition political formations use the issue of war and peace for electoral gains, the political incumbents themselves may join the bandwagon. 
Thus, political leaders strive to produce a military victory to counter their critics and bolster domestic opinion in favour of the unpopular government. Negotiated peace is, therefore, “less desirable than an outright victory”, even if the “immediate cost” of attaining it “outweighs the cost of a negotiated settlement”. “When victory is uncertain, leaders may reason that pushing for an uncertain victory on the battlefield is preferable to the certainty of de facto defeat at the bargaining table” (King 1997: 30–32). Like the political incumbents, insurgent leaders faced with factional struggles may also prefer to take a tough militant posture and insist upon a military victory so that they can retain their power and position in the organization free of challenges of dissidents. In any way, if one adversary openly declares its intention of securing a military victory for peace by foreclosing the option for political negotiations, it is inevitable for the other to follow suit even if the probability of success in the war is low.
 
Although the war-for-peace strategy basically insists upon a military victory, i.e. ending a war without reaching any settlement on the contentious issues, adversaries may scale down their objectives to include the following if the war fails to proceed along desired lines. War may be a military means of one adversary to exert pressure on another to accept negotiations to end the war; or, it can be used for weakening the intransigent adversary so that a solution can be imposed or dictated by the political incumbents or insurgents, whoever proves powerful ultimately. In some cases, the political incumbents use the war to eliminate or totally weaken the insurgents, so that they can negotiate with the moderate leaders to end the war. What determines the changing objective of the war is the war process itself, in that losses and gains of the adversaries are critical factors. 

In South Asia, the political incumbents and some of the insurgent leaders have pursued war as the most important peace strategy, at least in the initial phase. Nowhere else is it so loudly proclaimed openly (except in Sri Lanka); no one else in that country has pursued it with as much determination as President Chandrika Kumaratunga. This does not mean that other leaders of Sri Lanka and other countries in the region have shown little interest in the strategy. Many of them have tactically maintained secrecy of their battle-line strategy for ending war, with a view to thwarting any unwanted external pressure and involvement in favour of one adversary. But Kumaratunga did not face any such constraints in proclaiming it in public that the “only goal” in the war was “peace”, and, therefore, the “battle for peace is waged only against the enemies of peace” (Devolution Proposals 1995: 4–5). In so doing, she felt strongly self-assured by the international opinion that supported her war efforts and castigated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for breaking political negotiations.
 
This is what President J. R. Jayewardene, the prime architect of the war-for-peace strategy, and his successor President R. Premadasa could not gather during the first two phases of the Eelam war (1983–94). Thus, mounting international pressure had often impeded the strategic advancement of the army in its operations against the militants. India was demonstrably (specially in Operation Liberation in 1987) an important external controller of the war process in the first phase, as it developed crucial stakes in the total success and defeat of the militants. But, ironically, it turned to pursue the war strategy against the LTTE during 1987–90 as required by its commitment under the Indo-Lanka Agreement of 1987. Its total withdrawal from the war structure following the policy debacle it suffered by the end of the 1980s has changed the dynamics of the war itself. Since then, the army enjoys a modicum of strategic space for the conduct of unhindered operations, free from international pulls and pressures, so necessary for achieving peace in its war against the LTTE. 

If the government in Colombo under three presidents has assiduously executed the war-for-peace strategy, it does not mean that all of them held the same considerations, calculations and compulsions. The changing strategic situation on the war front has changed the objectives of the war strategy itself; it also means a change in the government’s perception of its adversary, the militants. In 1983, when the Jayewardene administration launched military operations, it erroneously viewed the deeply splintered militant groups as inconsequential forces that could be subdued through sustained military pressure. At times, the President tried to justify state violence in the face of mounting insurgency by characterizing the ethnic conflict as a “military problem” that needed a “military solution” (Times of India, 27 January 1986). He often made the world believe that he was in control of the situation in the north-east, and, therefore, confident of finding a solution of his choice with the help of the army. Indeed, the firepower and strength of the army that his government set to increase gradually had reinforced his political decision for a military solution. 
Underestimation of the militants’ strength was a convenient strategic ploy on the part of the government leaders, who owed some of the military setbacks their adversary’s forces suffered to the superior military power of their forces. But when the militants often hit back at the security forces in the same manner, the frailty of the government’s power in the war was exposed. In committing his government to break the military viability of the insurgents and bringing them to their knees, Jayewardene demonstrated his deep dedication to the Sinhalese Buddhists’ cause on which there was hardly any room and willingness for any compromise. Draconian laws like the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Emergency Regulations provided cushions to the army in its task of accomplishing the government’s military agenda of eliminating the militants and capturing territories from their control. The creation of a new Ministry of National Security in 1984 under the ministership of Lalith Athulathmudali and setting up of a Security Council which met every Monday under Jayewardene’s chairmanship marked a significant step towards improving the operational coordination and efficiency of the security forces. In all seriousness, it was an all-out war; it was a “fight to the finish”, the said President (Swamy 1994: 234). But this unlimited objective that the war ambitiously stipulated could not be totally achieved. 

Indiscriminate use of terror tactics by the security forces helped the government to wrest control of some parts of territories in the north-east (India prevented the fall of Jaffna); it also led to the killing of hundreds of militants and civilians. But this itself did not constitute a strategic victory for the government. The militants continued to put up stiff resistance to the army’s forward march, which influenced the Jayewardene government to rethink and alter the very objective of the war-for-peace strategy. Whereas the battlefield gains always reinforced the government’s resolve to end the war after eliminating the militants physically (including the leadership), the reverses and losses suffered by the security forces made it alter its goal in favour of their mere “weakening”. The aim was to force them to negotiate with the government. Thus, the determination for a total victory with which the government started the war in 1983 melted away by the time the entire process consumed a good four years; its objective in 1987 was merely to bring the militants, specially the LTTE, to the negotiating table. “If the LTTE wants peace, it must show the white flag and come for talks. If not, we shall fight them. Either they will win or we will win”, said an angry President Jayewardene (Swamy 1994: 235). 

The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF)–LTTE war (1987–90), which formed an interregnum of the Eelam war (in that the military tasks of the Sri Lankan Army or SLA were straightaway transferred to the Indian Army), was truly war-for-peace, sanctioned by the Indo-Lanka Agreement (1987). As the nomenclature of the IPKF itself suggests, it was supposed to be a “peacekeeping force” to implement India’s commitment under the bilateral agreement to restore peace and normalcy in the island.1 If the sole objective of the agreement was to end the war after the former’s total implementation, the military obligations and functions of the IPKF were compulsorily large enough to encompass in their purview the indefinite use of force against all those who opposed the agreement until they accepted it. In short, the inevitable war that the IPKF waged was to make the LTTE adhere to the agreement as a prerequisite condition for peace in the country. It was, therefore, not a fight to the finish, but an attempt to weaken the LTTE (after capturing territory from their control), to the extent that it would be forced to seek peace under the agreement. 
All the operations of the IPKF had clearly underscored this objective (Muni 1993: 124–64; Sardeshpande 1992);2 physical elimination of the group was neither intended for complex political reasons, nor possible for the Indian forces in view of the strategic power limitations they faced on the battlefield. Though numerically stronger than the LTTE, the IPKF could not establish its total superiority over the aggressive Tigers’ force, which found its strength in its protracted use of unmatchable guerrilla tactics in a friendly terrain, its ideology of national liberation, and its deep commitment to the cause of Eelam. Yet there was a gross miscalculation on India’s part of the relative power of its own army vis-à-vis the Tigers, and the real power and deadliness of the latter until the war process itself proved disastrous for the Indian forces. Thus, if the IPKF had inflicted 3,500 casualties (about 1,500 dead and 2,000 wounded) on the LTTE by its operations for which India spent around Rs. 299.12 crore (US$180 million–1 crore being equal to 10 million and 1 million being equal to 10 lakh), the Indian forces themselves suffered 3,700 casualties (1,200 dead and 2,500 injured; Muni 1993: 153–54). Curiously, at the end, the LTTE still firmly stood against the agreement, thereby proving the futility of the entire IPKF operations. It means that the war-for-peace strategy of the IPKF did not work at all, and India’s declared objective of achieving peace was not even remotely advanced. 

Yet, at the end of the IPKF–LTTE war, political negotiations were held between the Sri Lankan government and the Tiger leadership (Chapter 4), the original adversaries in the Eelam war. It was not the direct outcome of the war-for-peace strategy pursued so assiduously by the IPKF, but due to political and military expediency of the original adversaries who had a common vested interest in sending the Indian forces out of the island. How sincere and serious the parties were about reaching a negotiated settlement was therefore anybody’s guess. But it was just a matter of time that both the SLA and LTTE would resume the war. It ultimately broke out in June 1990, and in pursuing the war strategy, the Premadasa government was driven by its strong desire for peace that the IPKF failed to achieve after weakening the Tigers. Now, the politico-military establishment had an unfounded confidence in tackling the LTTE: considering it as a wounded force that would not withstand any sustained military pressure, the hardliners in the government declared their determination to eliminate the Tigers. Ranjan Wijeratne was one such person who wielded enormous power and influence over the military and ran the war machinery in his capacity as Deputy Minister of Defence until he was assassinated by the LTTE in March 1991. Taking a hard-line position, he declared in Parliament that there was “no half way house” with him and that he would go “all out for the LTTE” and “annihilate them” (Weerakoon 1992: 71). 

But what the army ultimately managed to win was territories from the Tigers, and not their total annihilation, as the warmongers would have liked. Frequent bombings of civilian targets and economic blockade of Jaffna peninsula as a part of Colombo’s pressure-exerting tactics had hardened the Tigers’ resolve to fight, rather than move towards negotiations with the government. Even the territorial victory in many cases was temporary, because the army did not have sufficient manpower to hold on to recaptured areas against a determined Tiger attack. Thus, the battlefield fortunes were shifting constantly to the favour of both the combatants, thereby reducing the government’s war strategy to a shambles. This even led to revision of the hard-line position that the government took earlier on the objective of the war itself. Amidst the army’s victory in the battle of Elephant Pass in 1991, and, at the same time, its failure to contain the Tigers militarily within the stipulated period, i.e. June 1991 (Frontline 2–15 March 1991: 57), Premadasa spoke of reconciliation: “In war, no one wins, all are losers. It is in peace that all are victors. It is through consultation that we can find solutions to human problems” (Frontline 17–30 August 1991: 41). Such a candid admission of his government’s weakness had prompted LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran to characterize the Tigers as an undefeatable force. Rejecting the government’s war-for-peace strategy, he said in an interview to the BBC that it should “learn a lesson” that it would “never resolve the Tamil issue by opting for a military solution” (Frontline 28 September–11 October 1991: 38). 

This was a hard reminder to the warmongers of the bitter battlefield realities: the aim was to deter them from pursuing the war strategy. But for the government, discontinuation of the war in the absence of an alternative political path for peace would have amounted to giving credence to the Tigers’ assertions on their victory, and accepting the failure of its war-for-peace strategy. War was, therefore, seen as a necessary evil for the government, specially when it nurtured a hope that its forces would achieve military subjugation of the LTTE, an equally weak adversary in the war. In a situation where both adversaries were pinning their hopes on a military victory and reluctant to compromise on their position, there could not be any prospect for a purposeful peace process. It means that the stalemate that continued in the war did not have any impact on the attitude and strategies of the parties. Waging the war was as much of a futile exercise as talking peace, but in the government’s overall consideration, the former process seemed to be more promising for victory than the latter, and, therefore, its preference was quite clear. 

This, however, did not find a favourable endorsement of the new government of Kumaratunga in 1994. Having been voted to power on the plank of ethnic peace in the country, and realizing the fact that the army could not achieve any forward momentum in the war process,3 she needed to give a fresh chance for political negotiations with the LTTE. A break with the previous regime’s war strategy was, therefore, made out of a conscious political decision, which seemed to have found support in the army largely because of war-weariness among the soldiers. But the failure of the peace talks in 1994–95 made the resumption of war inevitable. Thus, the fourth phase of the Eelam war began with all intensity in April 1995, which, in the opinion of the government, is truly fought for peace: the declared objective has been to force the LTTE to accept the devolution proposals of 1995. Waging war to implement a peace package is a novel method, but its inordinately high cost unavoidably raises the question of endurance. Nevertheless, it seems to be the best bet as far the government is concerned. On the method of accomplishing the task–whether to defeat the Tigers militarily or weaken them sufficiently to enlist their strong commitment to political negotiations–the government’s changing position is conditioned by the battlefield outcomes. 

At the start of the war in April 1995, the government was sceptical about its capability, and refrained from fixing any ambitious strategic targets for the army. At the same time, it did not want to be misconstrued as being too weak to contain the Tigers. In order to keep the morale of the forces up and inject a sense of purpose into her war strategy, the President boasted that the security forces were strong enough to defeat the LTTE, but declined to pursue the deadly course due to the fear of heavy loss of civilian lives.4 Thus, in view of battlefield limitations, the task of the army was limited to weakening the Tigers militarily: the idea was to force them to accept the peace package that would turn them into democrats.5 But with intensification of the war and changing battlefield fortunes in favour of the security forces that renewed the government’s confidence vis-à-vis the LTTE, the operational task of the army got expanded. Following the army’s success in Operation Riviresa (Sunshine), which led to the capture of Jaffna in December 1995, from a position of strength the President offered to talk to the Tigers if they accepted her devolution proposals and agreed to a substantial surrender of arms. She threatened them with military annihilation if they failed to respond positively and decided to continue the fight. “We don’t want to eliminate anybody but if they do not fall in line…if they continue to fight us, we will destroy them…we have the capability”, she said (Frontline 29 December 1995: 18). 

Such a temptation to defeat the Tigers and recapture territory was borne out of a series of victories that the army achieved in 1995–96. This reinforced the President’s resolve to pursue the war strategy until it reached a logical end, for which she set 1997 as the deadline. The war managers on whom she seemed to have relied heavily for information often presented a picture of “all well” of the army, even though the battlefield situation looked different. Encouraged by some victories, hardliners in the government have strongly argued for an all-out war against the LTTE; the most vocal advocate of this strategy is Deputy Minister for Defence Anuruddha Ratwatte, who has singularly designed and executed the war-for-peace strategy. A thoroughly military-minded man who himself had a stint in the army, Ratwatte’s unrelenting position in pursuit of a quick military victory against the Tigers has cemented the war objectives of the government itself to some extent. It is in this spirit that he set unrealistic deadlines to defeat the Tigers. According to him, 50 per cent of their defeat was achieved with the capture of Jaffna, and for the rest he gave time until 1996 which the President extended to 1997 (Frontline 4 October 1996: 5, 15). 

Ambitious as they certainly look, all the deadlines went awry in 1996. Even the government’s optimism built upon its overconfidence about defeating the LTTE soon became misplaced when the army suffered heavy casualties in pre-dawn counter-attacks by the Tigers. What, for the first time, shattered the myth, created by Operation Riviresa-I, of the army being an invincible force, was its worst military debacle in Mullaitivu in July 1996 where the LTTE overran the entire army garrison after killing about 800 soldiers and capturing US$30 million worth of military hardware. This incident, coupled with the accelerated activities of the Tigers to destroy economic bases of the state (the most bitter one was their attack on the Central Bank in Colombo on 31 January 1996) made the government rethink about the fundamental objective of its war. The President herself made a quick revision of the original plan when she said that her government was not aiming at the military elimination of the Tigers (Frontline 4 October 1996: 5); it means that the use of military pressure was to merely bring the LTTE around to the negotiating table. This new-found realization borne out of her government’s assessment of the military experience has continued to influence its war objectives in subsequent years.6 The war cry from the top is so muted that what is presented now to the LTTE is a military plea for a political dialogue. “We are willing to talk because I do not like to settle this [problem] by war. We are not a military…government. We’d much prefer to settle this politically”, said President Kumaratunga in an interview in early 1999 (Frontline 1 January 1999: 9). 

Prolonged use of war-for-peace has cost the country dearly: its mounting economic and human costs, without a proportionately substantive success has made the government do some hard introspection. The President said that she never wanted this war, and it was the LTTE that forced her government to participate in its war (The Hindu, 18 October 1999). She was willing to stop the operations and hold talks with the Tiger leadership “without any precondition”–a matter on which she earlier appeared to be tough.7 The Tiger leadership has been appraised of the government’s desire through various informal sources, but it remains as intransigent as ever.8 The LTTE’s unwillingness to commit itself seriously to political negotiations leaves the government with no option except continuing the same non-workable strategy. Thus, war-for-peace does not appear at the moment to be a well-chosen strategy by the government: rather, it is a choice that has been thrust upon it by the LTTE. 

This has been done by the Tiger leadership’s total faith in war as an instrument of peace, which is linked to the establishment of Eelam. This exemplifies a situation where even if a long-time jingoist government likes to be pacifist not out of its sincere natural desire, but due to compulsions of its bitter battlefield experience, it is forced to pursue militarism by another jingoist (the LTTE). The underlining assumption here is that when one adversary believes in jingoism, another cannot talk peace. Why is the LTTE so committed to war in pursuit of peace (of its variety) in spite of several battlefield reverses that it suffered? As the foregoing analysis reveals, the gains in the war have not been enduring and total for one party, and the changing fortunes create hope and despair alternatively in the minds of the protagonists as a peculiar result of the war process. It is this factor that determines the Tigers’ preference for war as a strategy of peace. A total victory for one means defeat of another: it denotes the end of war itself, and the restoration of peace according to the terms and conditions of the victor. But in Sri Lanka, both the parties are both winners and losers. Their positions change constantly–a winner becomes a loser and vice versa. This phenomenon is attributable to the structure of the war itself that entails two weak adversaries: one is not powerful enough to register a decisive victory over another, and, at the same time, it is not weak enough to suffer a defeat. The LTTE has understood this pattern of power relations, and in a clever way cashed upon its adversary’s weakness to gain strength. In other words, if the military strength of the LTTE is of any significance to consider it a force to be reckoned with, it is because of its adversary’s apparent weakness in securing a victory in the war. The Tigers see this itself as demonstration of their strength, even though they have not won the war but only a few battles. It is this strategic thinking that has made their leadership to act tough on the issue of war and peace. 

The LTTE’s intransigence stems from its overconfidence in tackling its adversary militarily and pushing the war to its desired conclusion. Prabhakaran said in 1990 that the “strength” and “weakness” of his group was its “overconfidence”: it was because of this that “our boys carried out some amazingly brave attacks” (Time 9 April 1990: 32). The power of their adversary has never mattered to them; they look upon it as weak when compared to their supreme power of sacrifice. They have strong determination and will to fight regardless of its outcome. In the context of the IPKF–LTTE war, Prabhakaran revealed that “when I was deciding to fight, the thought of winning or losing didn’t bother me. What you have to assess is whether you have the will to fight. People cannot give up their cause, their rights, for fear of defeat” (ibid.). Although the LTTE’s war with the IPKF became bitter and costly, the capability that it demonstrated to deny a victory to their adversary has further bolstered their confidence and reinforced their resolve to fight. The thinking of the Tiger leadership in the aftermath of the IPKF–LTTE war was that if it could frustrate the world’s third-largest army (Indian), it was not a big deal to tackle one of the world’s weakest armies (Sri Lankan). The LTTE’s experience with the SLA in the past has given rise to its optimism. As early as in the mid-1980s when it launched several successful attacks, Prabhakaran exuded confidence that the “Sinhala forces can be defeated and freedom be won”. They cannot “crush the will and determination of the Tigers” who have “a great moral power, a supreme sense of sacrifice”, the “courage” and the “confidence to fight and win our freedom”, he declared (Sunday 11–17 March 1984: 23–25). 
This has been repeated every now and then and shared among the cadres who religiously believe what their leadership has dished out to them. Of course, the tone and tenor of the Tiger leadership’s argument about its success changes when the battlefield situation turns against the Tigers’ interest. But since the army could not achieve a total and sustainable strategic tilt in its favour, certain reverses suffered by the Tigers in the war have never affected their confidence and determination. Instead, they have felt a vast improvement in their fighting capabilities with every passing battle. In 1991, Prabhakaran remarked that his guerrilla force had transformed itself into a conventional type of military structure. This, according to him, clearly indicates a “massive development militarily” and a “significant turning point in the history of our struggle” (Frontline 28 September–11 October 1991: 38). 

It is altogether a different matter that in the past the LTTE’s attempts to fight as a conventional force were total failures. If the army’s victory at Elephant Pass in 1991 and its loss in the recent battle in the Wanni region in 1999 are any indication, it is that the LTTE does best as a guerrilla force by sniping at and harassing the enemy, and is invariably a loser in any conventional battle. The LTTE understands its limitations and capabilities, reflecting in its decision to revert to guerrilla warfare whenever its conventional military tactics fail. Its recent success in Operation Oyatha Alaigal has boosted its morale tremendously. Prabhakaran considers the LTTE a “formidable force” capable of liberating the Eelam (Times of India, 28 November 1999). For him, the military victories are “a turning point” in the history of the liberation war that has now “expanded and developed into a higher stage as the people’s war for liberation”. They have not only “amazed our enemy but also astonished several countries that have been actively helping Sri Lanka’s war efforts”. He further said that with the success of “Unceasing Waves”, the government’s “military project” for peace “crumbled like a house of sand on the seashore”. The “spectacular victories” had “turned the balance of military power in our favor”, and the “massive efforts” of the government over the preceding five years to “weaken the LTTE and achieve military hegemony was shattered by us in a matter of a few days” (The Hindu, 28 November 1999). 

Although these intermittent victories are temporary, they have hardened the LTTE’s resolve. If its irrevocable military commitment stems from its unrelenting dedication to the cause of Eelam, its battlefield victories have further cemented its determination and “unceasing yearning for national liberation” (LTTE 1984: 16). The LTTE started with a conviction in the goal of a Tamil Eelam and sought to achieve it at any cost: the experience is that its words match its deeds well. In an open letter to Lalith Athulathmudali who made relentless war efforts in the mid-1980s, the LTTE said: “we will carry forward our freedom struggle in the face of any obstacles until we reach our cherished goal, i.e., an independent socialist state of Tamil Eelam. We are committed to the goal of freedom and are prepared to die for this noble cause. We will certainly win our liberation struggle…” (ibid.: 18). The vision of a separate state is conveyed to the LTTE cadres who are made to think that they must not stop until it is achieved. 

At the same time, Prabhakaran’s intermittent talk, often under military pressure, about accepting a viable alternative to the original goal is a tactical move: the LTTE has demonstrably no genuine interest in compromise. He himself admitted that the Tigers have “crossed the stage of being able to visualize a solution within the framework of a united Sri Lanka”; they have “come to a point of no return with regard to the Eelam ideal” (India Today 30 June 1986: 133). This is because, in the opinion of the LTTE chief, a separate state alone will offer a “permanent solution” to the problem of the Tamil people (The Hindu, 8 August 1987). Curiously, the military setbacks suffered by the Tigers in a number of operations have not changed their fundamental faith in the secessionist goal; it has not also reduced in any way their interest in the war in pursuit of the kind of peace they have desired. 
It is clear that war as an instrument of peace, so defined by the LTTE and the government alike, has proved itself futile. Yet, both adversaries relentlessly pursue it as the dominant strategy either out of one party’s (the Tigers) strong commitment to its goal coupled with its confidence in ensuring its survival, or for want of an alternative political strategy (for the government) that will work to protect Sinhalese Buddhist interests. 

Wars in Pakistan had well-articulated objectives that remained unchanged throughout their life span. All the combatants unequivocally demonstrated their desire and commitment to war as the sole strategy of achieving their goals. In no other war was this made as apparent as in the East Pakistan war, in which the intent and purpose of sustained use of large-scale violence was to end the war itself in favour of one party. The reason why both the government and the Awami League (AL) had a similar interest in the war had much to do with the very process of war formation. Unlike in Sri Lanka, the East Pakistan war resulted from the failure of protracted political negotiations (Sisson and Rose 1990: 91–133); it means that war as an instrument of peace was the only option that was left unexercised by the combatants. It was also seen as the last resort for both the parties, and given their intransigent positions, they were convinced that political negotiations would have no relevance to achieving their goal. In other words, the situation reached a point that in pursuing the war, a negotiated political settlement was not visualized as a worthy option both by the government and the AL leadership. 

Resorting to war with the hope of victory meant that the parties were prepared to go to extremes in adopting violent, coercive tactics. It was the leaders who had chosen such a step out of confidence and commitment to their goal. Until India stepped in militarily to support the liberation movement, the Yahya Khan regime was hopeful of defeating the Mukti Bahini. It did not understand the dynamics of the situation in East Pakistan, the growing determination of the people for independence, the broad-based popular support that the AL had built up in the province, the pivotal position that charismatic Sheikh Mujib held in the lives of the people, his tremendous ability to swiftly mobilize the entire spectrum of people for a full-fledged liberation movement, and the strength of the Mukti Bahini in countering the military onslaught of the Pakistan Army. In short, what the AL called the “people’s liberation movement” was considered by Yahya Khan as a simple “law and order” problem created by “some power hungry and unpatriotic people” or “anti-Pakistan and secessionist elements” (Bangladesh Documents 1974: 277). On its part, in launching such a massive movement against a powerful West Pakistan–dominated military government, the AL basically relied upon the people’s power and the support of India. But if the ensuing developments proved the government’s calculations wrong, the AL’s experience was atrocious. It was India’s crucial direct military support first, and participation finally, that worked as a shield to protect the Bahinis from the army’s sustained and all-round military onslaught. 

It was natural that both parties assumed themselves to be strong as a precondition to initiate the fight for their cause to which they declared their unbroken commitment. Each party strove hard to succeed against the other by all means, because what was at stake in the war was one’s critical interest that clashed with the other’s. If preservation of the territorial integrity of Pakistan was the ultimate uncompromising goal of the Yahya Khan regime, the AL reached a point of no return on its demand for Bangladesh by the time the war started. In his broadcast to the nation on 6 March 1971, the President said: “No matter what happens, as long as I am in command of the Pakistan Armed Forces and Head of the State, I will ensure complete and absolute integrity of Pakistan. Let there be no doubt or mistrust on this point…” (Bangladesh Documents 1974: 216). Nothing else could have better revealed the martial law government’s strong commitment to the unity of Pakistan than this statement, which virtually endorsed and justified the army operations. Equally strident in its tone was the AL leadership, whose statements emphasized “supreme sacrifice” to win freedom. “No power on earth can suppress the people when they are prepared to shed blood…. If necessary we shall give the last drop of our blood to see that our posterity lived happily as a free citizen in a free country” (ibid.: 252–53), said Sheikh Mujib. For him, the justification was that the movement advocated the “right cause”, and, therefore, its victory was certain (ibid.: 257). 

Desperation for an outright victory made the war brutal. Both the army and the Mukti Bahini were involved in intense exchange of violence that engulfed the entire East Pakistan. As a part of its strategy, the army unleashed a reign of terror, and, thus, created what Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971: 50) himself called a “nightmare of fascism”. Such ruthless military tactics were not unexpected, given the authoritarian nature of the regime that conducted the war with a strong determination to preserve the territorial integrity of Pakistan. It was more a war against the unarmed civilian population than the Bahinis themselves; the former was targeted the most out of a strategic calculation that a systematic annihilation of the East Pakistanis would incapacitate their rebel forces, leading to their total surrender to the Pakistani military. Gen. Tikka Khan, the martial law administrator in East Pakistan, made it clear that the military regime was “not interested in people” but in “land” to signify Pakistan’s territorial integrity (Bhatnagar 1971: 124). This was to be effected, according to some senior military officers, by cleansing East Pakistan “once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing of two million people and ruling the province as a colony for 30 years” (International Commission of Jurists, 1972). 

Clear instructions were issued accordingly to the army which, by its various operations nicknamed as “slum clearance” and “kill and burn missions”, ultimately earned the notorious distinction of being the most brutal force (Mascarenhas 1971; Garg 1984; Bhuiyan 1982). Although the Bahinis put up an armed resistance that kept the army’s mission of capturing territories under check, they could not protect the people from its systematic reprisals. The mounting human loss, however, paved the way for serious military challenges to the government’s war strategy. The Bahinis bolstered their military strength with India’s crucial support that worked to frustrate the Pakistani forces and achieve a spectacular military victory for the East Bengalis. Thus, an internal war ended through an international war, and the dominant party that proposed the war strategy itself had to receive a shattering military blow. 

Yet, the Pakistan government did not feel deterred from pursuing the same strategy against the Baluch militants during 1973–77; its renewed confidence in bringing them into abject submission stemmed from the army’s superior firepower supported by Iran vis-à-vis the ill-prepared Baluch People’s Liberation Front (BPLF) and the Baluch Student Organisation (BSO). The outcome of the Bangladesh war itself set tremendous pressure on the ruling elite for an outright victory: having presided over the country’s disintegration two years earlier, they did not want to tolerate any further challenges from any quarter to the territorial integrity of Pakistan.9 At the same time, the Baluch militants appeared equally committed to achieving their goal, for which they planned prolonged guerrilla warfare with the active military support of Afghanistan. As the war progressed and the military apparatus of the insurgents crumbled, their strategy of wearing out the army through sustained harassment did not work. In the end, their hopes of victory became totally misplaced, and the war served as an instrument of the government to end it in its favour.10 

This was expected given the government’s confidence and determination to defeat the militants, who remained unrealistic about their victory. That a major part of the war was completed in 1974 itself,11 and only sporadic exchange of violence continued until 1977, showed how the militants overestimated their strength against a highly determined and powerful adversary.12 If the killing of militants, as in case of other wars, did not itself constitute so much the army’s victory, it was their fleeing to the mountains and neighbouring Afghanistan under heavy military pressure that brought maximum strategic benefits to the army. As such, winning territory was not the major operational task of the army. The economic hardship that the people of Marri–Mengal areas faced due to the total economic blockade imposed by the government also worked against the war strategy of the insurgents. Most important, negotiations with the militants were not on the government agenda even though Prime Minister Bhutto referred to talks with the moderate National Awami Party (NAP) leaders to settle the war. On the one hand, he offered amnesty to the detainees who were not implicated for serious criminal offences, and on the other, continued to arrest moderate leaders and militant cadres in a bid to end all forms of both political and military resistance to the government’s Baluchistan policy. 

An indication of the government’s insistence upon a military victory was its announcement made from a position of strength that the militants would have two options: either to lay down arms within the stipulated time, viz., 15 December (first extended from 15 May, and later from October) and avail the amnesty offer, or face the might of the military. Prime Minister Bhutto declared that if hostilities did not cease, the government would be justified in employing all possible measures, and that it could “blow the mountain to bits” for the sake of a victory (Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1975: 27016). He claimed that over 5,000 militants surrendered or got captured by the end of the second amnesty, and hoped to get the rest around by the end of 1974 (ibid.). While continuing with military pressure, the government secretly used the political channels of Governor Mir Ahmad Yar Khan to pacify the militants to give up violence. In return, they were assured of licenced arms for their self-protection (POT, Pakistan Series, 4 February 1976: 82). Faced with severe hardships in the mountains and growing disenchantment with their military mission, many reportedly gave up arms or preferred to cross over to Afghanistan.13 It was said that by 1977, most of the insurgents returned to the plains after availing general amnesty and rehabilitation assistance offered by the government of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. A significant military event in the annals of Baluch history thus ended disastrously, making the war a totally lost cause. 
In the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) war, the Bangladesh Army tried to emulate the experience of the Pakistan Army, but changed its goal when its operations did not yield the expected result. Until the mid-1980s, the government nurtured a hope of gradually eliminating the insurgents so as to end the war in its favour. Accordingly, the army’s principal operational task was to capture territories by pushing the militants to the corner; some of the military officers openly declared that they wanted “the soil and not the people” of the CHT (Anti Slavery Society 1984: 61). If they were initially confident of accomplishing this military task, it was because of their false assessment of the army’s strength to subdue the Shanti Bahini. It is true that the latter was not a match to the former militarily, but the terrain in which they operated provided immense strategic scope for manoeuvrability. The government paid little attention to this vital fact, of which the rebel forces were conscious. While engaging the army in a number of combat operations, they understood their limitations in setting high military targets and goals. As such, they did not seek a total military victory, but sought to use their limited military strength to exert pressure on the government to end the war in favour of a negotiated political settlement. 

Power disparity and the differing goals of the combatants conditioned the varied intensity of their exchange of violence. But the war tactics of both adversaries were the same, in the sense that they targeted both the actual combatants and non-combatants. If the insurgents used terror campaigns against the Bengali settlers to pressurize the government to give up its war strategy, the army unleashed an orgy of violence against the tribal population to distance themselves from the militants. In this military enterprise, a notorious legal framework that the government specially formulated had backed the army.14 Since territorial consideration was significant in its war strategy, the army exercised its control over the civil administration through the CHT Development Board, whose chairman was the General Officer Commanding of the Chittagong Division. The idea was to have an all-pervading presence of the military in the CHT, a strategy that was linked to its counter-insurgency operations, so that the influence of the insurgents was not allowed to spread or become deeper among the tribal population. 

By virtue of its possession of both civil and military power, the army was now better placed to take physical control of the hills through its village cluster programme and restrictions on the movement of people in certain areas. Drawn from the British experience in Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s, the army set up cluster villages since 1988 for various ethnic groups in the CHT. Although the declared aim was to protect the civilian population from attacks of the militants, the real objective was to cut off their supply lines and thus strengthen the army’s counter-insurgency operations. It was reported that many such villages were located in areas where the Shanti Bahini had the largest concentration of support, and in most cases the tribal people were coerced to move into villages–commonly referred to as “concentration camps” (The CHT Commission 1991: 53–54). All these civil-military measures did not ultimately help the war to proceed along expected lines: the defeat of highly motivated insurgents was hard to come about, and the army’s realization of its difficulties on this count reflected in the government’s emphasis on political negotiations. As a mark of this shift that had taken place in its strategy and derecognizing its earlier approach to use the war as an instrument of ending itself, the government reduced the number of security forces by closing down some of the military camps (Ali 1996: 52). 

In Punjab, war as an instrument of peace had a peculiar goal which was unalterable, even if it was unattainable for the combatants. While the Indian government showed strong determination to suppress militancy and negotiate a settlement only with the moderate Sikh leadership, the militants appeared equally relentless in pursuit of a total military victory. Each warring party had, therefore, pushed the other to rely solely on the war to make peace. In the government’s view, the militants were incorrigible and unreasonable, whose insistence upon their secessionist goal had foreclosed the option for a negotiated political settlement and thus justified its war efforts. “No settlement is possible if one group continues to insist that all its demands…should be accepted in toto…. In any settlement there has to be give and take, and above all, a commitment to the basic concept that the country’s interests always come above the interests of a state or group”, said the White Paper on the Punjab Agitation, 1994. In other words, what the government implied was that it would have engaged the militants politically and not militarily if they had shown serious commitment to negotiations, which meant their willingness to compromise on their fundamental goals. For the militants, at the same time, the government appeared equally intransigent vis-à-vis their demands and its talk about political settlement was to undermine their core ethnic interests defined in secessionist terms. War, therefore, became their chosen strategy: its purpose was to impose a solution that the government sought to thwart by the same means. Thus, if their commitment to ethnic goals determined their interest in the war as an inevitable defensive-offensive strategy, their confidence in defeating each other formed an equally critical factor. In the process, the superior strength of the security forces did not erode the confidence of the militants, who relied both upon external and internal sources of support for their victory against the Indian state. 

Since the Khalistan war was essentially a zero-sum game as each party strove to defeat the other, the widespread use of ruthless military tactics became ‘justified’. The brutal behaviour of the combatants testified to the fact that they cared little about established political norms: instead, what they followed were the actual rules of war. The Indian government’s resolve to achieve a total suppression of militancy had both short- and long-term objectives. If ending the war in its favour was its immediate goal, destroying the ground that bred militants would mean preventing the war in future. While directing the government’s war efforts and machinery, Minister of State for Home P. Chidambaram said that the “elimination of foreign-trained terrorists will never breed terrorists [since] they have no mass support” (India Today 15 June 1988: 88). It is with this assumption that the security forces executed their war strategy in a phased manner. In the first phase, the militant hideouts were attacked and wiped out; this was considered an essential first step to what some of the top military brass called “root[ing] out terrorism” (India Today 30 June 1984: 25). Various military operations (like Operations Bluestar and Black Thunder) to wipe militants out of their hideouts ended in their total elimination. They lost not only their sanctuary in the Golden Temple and many other gurdwaras, but also a number of leaders including Bhindranwale. 

In the second phase, involving mostly police and paramilitary operations, the principal strategy was to hit hard at the militants so that they were immobilized or eliminated. The loss of some of their prime bastions had automatically drawn them into combat with the security forces, a situation that the latter much desired to execute their strategy. In response to the militants killing of a policeman or government official or one of their kin, Punjab police chief Julio Ribeiro introduced the “bullet for bullet” strategy, under which the police, in retaliation, played the same brutal game against the millitants and their families as soon as possible–maybe even the same day. Allegedly, arrested militants were summarily executed and then incidents of encounter fabricated subsequently. A significant part of this strategy, implemented mostly during K. P. S. Gill’s tenure as Director General of Police, was the system of “bounty hunting”, in which the police instituted a scheme of cash rewards (Rs. 10 to 30 lakh) to those who helped them in tracking down and eventually eliminating individuals or gangs of militants. Known as “Cats” because they exist stealthily, the police vigilantes hired for bounty killings included several renegade militants and even petty criminals. The pattern of recruitment had been that a captured militant was assured that he would not be killed in fake encounters but let off or just sent to jail if he agreed to be a Cat. If this notorious system helped the police in undercover operations against militants, it also resulted in large-scale excesses demonstrated in their policy of “bringing them back dead rather than alive” (Joshi 1993: 15). 

The Akali leadership initially disapproved of the strategy,15 but later realized the futility of finding a political solution without suppressing militancy.16 However, the militant Sikh nationalists remained totally opposed to the government’s suppressive tactics because of their desire to arrest the decline of Sikh power.17 Nevertheless, the government did not stop its offensive until the militants were completely crippled. It kept up its military pressure on the militants so that their retaliatory strikes (often at the security forces) failed to change the ground situation in their favour. Furthermore, the terror that they unleashed against the civilian population from both sides of the ethnic divide became counterproductive. They paralysed the police and state administration for quite some time and killed many security personnel and civilians, but, in the process, paid with their lives. Yet they could not deny an outright victory to their formidable adversary, let alone inflicting a decisive defeat on it. 

In the Naga war, neither the security forces nor the militants are victors; it also means that neither has been vanquished. It is this outcome that makes the Naga war distinct from the war in Punjab: the Nagas have denied what the Khalistanis had conceded to the Indian government. It does not mean that they are strong enough to defeat the security forces having superior firepower; nor do the latter enjoy a total strategic advantage to impose a solution at their free will on the former. Thus, both the adversaries are strong as well as weak in their own ways. Yet, what determined their strong interest in the war-for-peace strategy has been their confidence in tackling each other militarily, and the commitment to their goals. Erosion of confidence in the wake of each other’s military pressure and their failure to achieve the desired result even after the protracted use of war has often led to revision of the basic objectives of their war strategy. 

This is quite clear in the first phase of the war (1955–64) itself. Realizing the futility of engaging the government politically, the Naga National Council (NNC) initially showed its total faith in war tactics, as, to the Nagas, independence was not negotiable. It was convinced that given the nature of its demand and the formidable force (the Indian government) that they had to deal with, there was no easy way out to win freedom. The spirit of freedom was demonstrated in 1956 when the NNC established a federal government and promulgated a constitution, whose preamble said that “Nagaland is a people’s sovereign republic”. Through its intense guerrilla warfare, the Naga Army showed its absolute determination to defeat the Indian security forces. The Indian government responded with an equally militant posture, demonstrating its total resolve to fight the militants until they gave up their secessionist demand. Nehru took a firm stand that Phizo’s demand for independence was unreasonable and futile, and that his government would deal firmly with the “hostile elements”. “This is an unpleasant but necessary task”, he added (Ministry of External Affairs 1962: 13).18 

As a part of its counter-insurgency tactics to bring the militants to heel, the army “grouped” villages under their control, the aim being to cut off supplies to the insurgents. By 1960, the Naga Army began to crack up under mounting pressure from the security forces. The NNC realized the futility of military engagement with the army, and in order to prevent a total defeat at the hands of the Indian government, Phizo offered to revise his group’s war objectives and discuss a cease-fire with the government, which the latter turned down (Chapter 4).19 While sustaining its military pressure on the Naga Army, the government engaged the moderate leaders in negotiations and accepted some of their demands. But this double-track approach did not yield any result. Contrary to the government’s expectation, the militants could neither be isolated from the mainstream Naga society nor be defeated by the security forces. 

Nehru realized the constraints of his government’s war strategy and hence changed its objective. Defeating the militants was not the operational task of the army any more, but their weakening, so required for a negotiated settlement. Although he did not survive to implement the new approach, his successors Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi continued the peace process initiated by him for a cease-fire agreement leading to negotiations with the Federal Naga leaders since August 1964. The fact that the cease-fire continued for about eight years even after the breakdown of peace talks indicated the limitations of the war strategy which both the combatants had acknowledged. The resumption of hostilities in 1972 was inevitable, since the long lull in the Hills became symptomatic of a deadlock that the parties wanted to break. Despite the territorial consolidation achieved by the security forces in the Hills and their newly gained military confidence after the Bangladesh war, the government did not seek a military solution. Instead, the war was essentially used for exerting pressure on the militants to negotiate: that it worked to yield a definite result was evident from the Shillong Accord (1975) which five NNC representatives signed with the Indian government (Chapter 4). 

For the ‘loyalists’ who later formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the accord was “the most ignominious sell-out in history” by “downright, reactionary traitors” (NSCN manifesto of 1980, quoted in Verghese 1996: 97). It meant that the opportunity to win freedom through a sustained armed struggle was lost because, in the words of Th. Muivah, the NNC renegades had overestimated the adversary’s strength and underestimated theirs’ (http://www.angelfire.com/mo.Nagaland.num). The setback suffered by the movement in the past was therefore self-made; it explained the absence of correct tactics and strategy. Insisting on national remorse, he declared that India could no longer “crush us” in spite of its “military pride in its mighty might” (ibid.). Thus, what the NSCN proposed in the early 1980s was a total war, and its objective was nothing less than an outright victory. The government responded with equal militant fervour and strove to defeat the NSCN. Once again, the war raged in most parts of the Hills, and continued without any success for either of the parties. The no-win situation made the militants sit pretty, for it vindicated their earlier assessment of the adversary’s capability. They felt themselves to be in a position of strength, so that Muivah declined to respond favourably to peace offered by the government in 1993. Instead, he was determined to push his group’s strategic advantage. When the war dragged on for about 17 years, the government gave up its earlier preference for a total military victory in favour of substantive weakening of the militants so that they would be pressurized to negotiate.20 This is what happened in 1997 when the government and the NSCN (I-M) declared a cease-fire and then held talks to end the war. 
The high degree of resistance that the Nagas put up to the government’s war strategy was missing in the Mizo war. It became evident in Operation Jericho that the Mizo National Army (MNA) lacked military strength to defeat the Indian security forces. Yet, they demonstrated their resolve to engage the army in war, not so much out of their absolute commitment to win their secessionist goal, but due to their confidence that sustained external-patron military support would help them to create pressure on their adversary, eventually leading to their success in the war. That it became a sheer miscalculation on the part of Laldenga was proved by the developments ensuing since 1966. Within a fortnight of the outbreak of the war, he sent out feelers to the government indicating his willingness to negotiate (Bhaumik 1996: 155). It may have been a strategic ploy or the genuine desire of the MNF leader, arising out of the military pressure mounted by the army, but the fact was that the militants did acknowledge the superior firepower of the security forces and started rethinking about their basic war objective of defeating the adversary. Despite their initial difficulties, the forward momentum that the security forces gathered in their operations to control the Mizo territory made the government set a high war objective of defeating the MNA. Thus, in the beginning, the government did not feel compelled to negotiate a settlement with the weak Mizo National Front (MNF), and, therefore, turned down Laldenga’s overtures for peace. 

As a part of its war tactics, the Indira Gandhi government acceded to the army’s plan to regroup villages (along the lines of its experience in Nagaland) so that the militants were denied the crucial support of the people. The evacuation operation was started in different phases in 1967 and by the end of 1970, about 466 villages with 236,162 persons (82 per cent of the total population of Mizoram) were herded into grouped villages under military security (Verghese 1996: 142). If the policy of resource-denial hit hard at the operational mobility and tactics of the MNA, it subjected the civilians to harsh treatment. It added to the strategic advantage of the Indian Army’s counter-insurgency tactics, which reduced the MNA merely to a guerrilla force that occasionally harassed, but did not even try to defeat the security forces. It appeared that they were continuing with their intermittent strikes at the army in order to buy peace with honour and dignity. They did not want to be treated as a hunted force, but one that desired a settlement through political negotiations. Thus, they sought to justify their use of violence until they were engaged in political parleys. On its part, knowing the military weakness of the militants in the face of its formidable firepower to push them to the corner, the army continued with the tactics of defeating them outright. Apart from certain unilateral political moves to assuage the feelings of the Mizos, the government was not moved by the MNF’s gestures for peace conveyed through church leaders who demanded the halting of military operations in favour of negotiations. For long, it insisted that the militants should discontinue their “treasonable activities” as a precondition to talk peace (the Home Minister’s statement in Parliament on 23 August 1974, quoted in Bhaumik 1996: 175). 

By the mid-1970s, it became clear that the MNA was fighting for survival and in need of a respite. In a calculated move to avoid defeat, Laldenga proposed in writing for negotiations within the framework of the Indian Constitution to reach “an ultimate settlement of the political problem” (Bhaumik 1996: 177). It marked a significant shift in the policy of the MNF because, by accepting the Indian Constitution, it not only gave up its secessionist goal but also desired a political solution. This change of heart at the leadership level did not find wider endorsement of the cadres, who were still hopeful of achieving freedom with active Chinese and Pakistani support. As such, the MNF chief could not implement the 1976 peace agreement, specially the provision relating to the surrender of arms, which led to resumption of army operations until mounting military pressure once again made him seek peace. 

In 1980, the MNF ordered a cease-fire and repudiated violence, but struck a hard bargain with the government on the issue of full statehood and constitutional safeguards to Mizoram. Unlike as in 1976, he made the surrender of arms conditional to the acceptance of these demands. In the wake of the breakdown of peace talks in 1982, the security forces had once again mounted a fresh military crackdown on the MNA. It was essentially to soften the stand of the MNF towards a political settlement, for which the government kept its doors open for negotiations (Indira Gandhi’s statement, Times of India, 3 February 1982). The relentless military pressure worked to change the tactics of Laldenga, who, considering it a “political war” and not a “military war” (Bhaumik 1996: 187), declared a unilateral cease-fire in 1984. Two years down the line, a peace accord was signed that brought an end to the war (Chapter 4). If the Indian government was successful in using the war strategy to reach a political settlement, the MNA denied an outright military victory to its adversary by voluntarily opting for political negotiations without, at the same time, giving up violence, in order to extract concessions. The war thus ended as a positive-sum game. 

The same situation could not evolve in Assam, where both the Indian government and United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), given their determination to defeat each other, pursue the war as a zero-sum game. Despite its admission of weakness vis-à-vis the security forces with superior firepower, ULFA is resolutely committed to its secessionist goal–Swadhin Asom (Independent Assam). It relates the restoration of peace in the state to the grant of independence to Assam.21 The war is thus waged in pursuit of peace, since negotiations on their demand are unacceptable to the government, whose resolve to fight the secessionist forces stems from their very goal-rigidity. In other words, one party’s preference for war as an instrument of peace has compelled another to follow suit. If the secessionist goal is non-negotiable for ULFA, India’s territorial integrity is non-negotiable as far as the government is concerned. The government’s war strategy has been to defeat or neutralize the militants to the extent that they would be forced to abjure violence and accept the Indian Constitution, either as a result of political negotiations, or of military coercion. Its desire to exercise both options was demonstrated on a number of occasions. The failure of military coercion to subdue the militants has increased the government’s interest in political negotiations, but it inevitably reverted to the former strategy when they refused to respond positively.22 

Thus, in the government’s larger war plan, military victory is given priority. This is tried in a number of ways. Besides targeting the militants to wear them out psychologically and physically, the security forces have destroyed their camps and forced them to come out of their hideouts in the dense forest to surrender. They have virtually sealed India’s international borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh so as to disrupt the militants’ supply lines, and arrested some of their leaders while crossing over to India. Sustained military pressure has also kept many of the top leaders in exile, thereby creating a vacuum of leadership on the ground. All these military measures have demoralized the cadres sufficiently, particularly in the middle and lower levels of the organization. Yet the war has not led to a logical end as the militants, by making use of tremendous local support and terrain to their strategic advantage, enjoy limited strength to hit at the government forces and save themselves from an outright defeat. Now, they continue to employ violent tactics not primarily to register a quick military victory against the government forces, but to deny them an outright victory. It does not mean that they have lost faith in their strength and given up their secessionist goal. Instead, they plan a prolonged engagement with the security forces until the government concedes their demand. In this context, the leaders keep the cadres’ fighting spirit alive even when they are cornered and on the run due to the security forces. As a morale-boosting exercise, they periodically unleash violence against politicians, bureaucrats and police officials. 

It is evident from the foregoing analysis that every combatant has tried and tested the war strategy to end the given war in its favour. Understandably, it is inevitably the first and foremost strategy that any party in a war, more so in secessionist wars, would like to try if it is either rigidly committed to its goal, or convinced that political negotiations would not redress its legitimate grievances. In both cases, the consideration is that military coercion holds greater utility value than political dialogue, and an outright victory of a sort is always preferable and self-satisfying to a compromise settlement. All the combatants–political incumbents and militants alike–in wars in South Asia have held high hopes of total victory and worked towards that end by systematically executing the war strategy. Some of their hopes turned to despair after prolonged use of military coercion, hence, they resorted to other strategies including political negotiations with the moderate or militant leaders (Chapter 4). Only a few managed to break the military resistance, and thus secured a decisive victory against the weaker adversary so that the war ended unilaterally. 

It must be noted that war is a costly weapon of a weak party in pursuit of safeguarding its critical interests. It means that the militants are invariably the initiators of war because, in their scheme of things and experience, it is war alone that makes the political incumbents either accept serious political negotiations for settlement or their core demands under sustained military pressure. If both the combatants seek a negotiated settlement after a prolonged exchange of violence, then their bargaining strength is determined by their overall battlefield performance. Since the war process results in most cases from the failure of the political process, the weaker of the adversaries, viz., the militants, do not have any option other than resorting to violent coercive tactics if they are so committed to their goal. For them, always restricting themselves to the parameters of political agitation even after its proven futility would mean accepting the unilateral imposition of a settlement that would hardly advance their fundamental goals. In other words, the logic they advance is that fighting a war with the uncertainty of either losing or winning is preferable to surrendering without any resistance to the hegemonic rule or dictates of the political incumbents. This is clearly evident in almost all the wars in South Asia. In the end, some militant groups have survived well to work out a compromise settlement with their respective adversary, and only a few have seen their total decimation. It may be hypothesized that war alone cannot bring about an end to every war, even if a huge disparity in strength exists between the combatants, and wherever it happens, coercion needs to be supplemented by other strategies. Winning patrons is one of them. 

Winning Patrons
We have stated earlier that the initiation and sustenance of war entail active support of trusted external patrons who, in extreme cases, can drastically tilt the strategic balance to secure a victory for their client. Weaker combatants–militants in most cases–are the ones who constantly engage in mobilizing external patron support as a direct or indirect input to their war-waging capabilities. If this forms a critical component of every adversary’s war strategy, cessation or denial of external intervention in favour of each other is also an equally important condition for achieving an outright victory or for reaching a negotiated settlement. This aspect of internal war strategy is either underemphasized or ignored in many theoretical constructs on ending wars. The point here is that while mobilizing external patron support, each adversary attempts at weaning away the other’s patrons, not so much to its own side, but against the interests of its adversary. The underlying assumption is that ending the adversary’s patron intervention may not constitute a direct input into the capability of another, but certainly an indirect support to build up its strength vis-à-vis its adversary. Patrons are won in the following ways. 

• Governments use bilateral or multilateral diplomatic channels to stop neighbouring countries’ support to militants. Conversely, militant groups use kin-states or international human rights organizations or multilateral human rights forums to exert pressure on foreign governments to cease their support to regimes in war. 
• Governments engage friendly third parties (countries or individuals) to influence a patron country to stop its support to militants. It means that government C may use country or individual B to stop the intervention of country A in the war of government C. 

• Retaliatory intervention or its threat is a complex option that a government in war exercises by extending its support to an adversary of a third country which is the patron of the former government’s dissidents. It means that country A extends its support to group B against country C, which plays a patron role to group D in its war against country A. 
Efforts to win patrons have coexisted with war strategies of combatants in all the wars in South Asia. In most cases, however, it has been the political incumbents who successfully or unsuccessfully used this strategy with a view to securing a military victory, or coercing militants to reach a negotiated settlement. In no other war was this as highly successful to the advantage of the security forces as in the Baluch war. The targeted patron was Afghanistan, which played a critical role in the war by patronizing the BPLF out of its frustrated ambition to create a Pakhtunistan, in which Baluchistan formed an integral part (Wirsing 1981; Ziring 1978). It extended only limited politico-military and material support, mostly in the form of sanctuaries and arms to the militants and hosted about 170,000 refugees, yet it formed the most critical component of their power and strength since they did not have other trusted patrons. It was stated that since 1975, the BPLF leadership received a monthly subvention of $32 per person from the Afghan government, totalling about $875,000 per year in the mid-1980s (Harrison 1981: 81). The government also tried to mobilize international opinion. In 1974, President Mohammad Daoud Khan urged the UN Secretary General to set up a fact-finding mission to investigate the situation in Baluchistan, and appealed to the Islamic world to impress upon Pakistan to stop its “repressive measures” against the Baluch people (Asian Recorder 15–21 October 1974: 12243). That such limited Afghan support formed a critical base for the militants’ war-waging and war sustenance capability was evident from their eventual experience at the hands of the Pakistan Army in the late 1970s. It was found that they totally lost their deterring capability, and gradually collapsed under the intense military pressure of the army when Afghan support dwindled as a result of Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts. 
Pakistan used both bilateral diplomatic channels and third countries’ good offices to win Afghanistan away from the Baluch movement. While constantly accusing Afghanistan of interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs, Prime Minister Bhutto offered a non-aggression pact with that country (Asian Recorder 24–30 September 1974: 12213). The assumption was that such an institutional arrangement would enlist Afghanistan’s permanent commitment to Pakistan’s territorial integrity by not only ceasing its support to the Baluch armed struggle, but also freezing its irredentist claim over Pakistani territory. When the Afghan government chose not to reciprocate and still continued to champion the cause of the Baluch, the Pakistani leadership issued a veiled threat of counteraction.23 That it did not work was expected. Subsequently, Bhutto relied heavily on diplomatic steps to bring about a rapprochement with the Afghan government with the tactical support of the former Soviet Union and Iran. During his visit to Moscow in October 1974, Bhutto convinced the Soviet leadership to work for the normalization of relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Accordingly, when President Podgorny visited Kabul in December 1975, he urged the Afghan leadership to seek a peaceful settlement of their political differences with Pakistan.24 
More than the Soviets, Iran was keen to help the Pakistani government to mend fences with Afghanistan. Being a country with high stakes in the war,25 Iran shared the concerns of Pakistan and identified totally with its military responses to put down the insurgency. During Bhutto’s visit to Iran in May 1973, both countries declared their intentions to cooperate with each other for the maintenance of national independence and territorial integrity (Asian Recorder 2–8 July 1973: 11473). Implicit was their determination to face the challenges of a pan-Baluch movement together astride the borders of both countries, and prevent outside interference in their internal affairs, either from Afghanistan in Pakistan, or Iraq in Iran. Iran achieved its first diplomatic success when it managed to get President Daoud to visit Teheran in April 1975. While the visit provided an important opportunity for the Afghan President to ventilate his country’s age-old grievances against Pakistan, Iran made use of it to convey its deep interest in restoring friendly relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan by enlisting the latter’s commitment to bilateral dialogue to settle contentious political issues. In other words, Iran wanted to get Afghanistan around to commit itself to cease its cross-border politico-military activities in Pakistan in support of Baluch and Pakhtun groups, and accept its territorial integrity as inviolable. The Shah of Iran not only accomplished this important task at the end of his political parleys with the visiting President,26 but also made the offer of his good offices acceptable to Afghanistan in restoring its friendly ties with Pakistan. If the Shah had softened the Afghan President’s hardened attitude towards Pakistan through his skilful diplomatic manoeuvring, Iran’s economic aid ($2 billion) worked as an important incentive.27 

What followed in quick succession was Prime Minister Bhutto’s visit to Kabul in June 1976 at the invitation of President Daoud, and the latter’s visit to Islamabad in August 1976. Contentious bilateral issues were kept aside and a diplomatic thaw was achieved, largely at the cost of Baluch interests.28 Afghanistan changed its Baluchistan policy, its first indication being that during Bhutto’s visit, the Daoud regime placed the Baluch and Pakhtun leaders who had taken refuge in Afghanistan under surveillance. Some of them even left the country for London. While consciously underplaying the contentious bilateral issues in their talks, both leaders laid emphasis on the principles of peaceful coexistence (Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 23 July 1976: 27851). In the growing atmosphere of friendship, bilateral interaction became regular. Presidents Zia-ul-Haq and Daoud had exchanged visits in 1978, marking a leap forward in relations between their countries. By now, the Baluch and Pakhtun issues lost their relevance as a powerful foreign-policy tool of Afghanistan, and the government willy-nilly conducted itself to sacrificing the interests of these frontier groups in the process of improving its relations with Pakistan. 

It was stated in March 1978 that the Shah of Iran was on the verge of brokering a deal between Pakistan and Afghanistan that would have frozen the boundary dispute and secured the latter’s assurance for the forcible return of refugees to Pakistan (Phadnis 1984: 203). Pakistan was highly gratified with its diplomatic achievements, and wanted to consolidate its friendship with Afghanistan to the mutual benefit of both countries.29 Thus, the focus shifted to developing economic and cultural cooperation, for which exchanges of various delegations were planned. Also, Pakistan sought to ensure the continuity of its friendship with Afghanistan, regardless of the change of government after the so-called April 1978 revolution. As such, President Zia visited Kabul in September 1978 and held talks with President Mohammed Tarakki. Faced with serious internal challenges to its own survival, the Tarakki regime could not adopt a proactive role on the Baluch question, even though it sympathized with the people. It merely continued the Daoud government’s policy to the strategic advantage of Pakistan. Let down by their patron and unable to find an alternate source of external support in the wake of sustained Pakistani military pressure, the Baluch militants gave up their armed resistance to end the war in their adversary’s favour. 
It is, thus, evident that Iran held the key for winning Afghanistan to Pakistan’s strategic advantage in the Baluch war. The Afghan leadership simply surrendered to the Shah’s skilful diplomatic pressure and economic incentives, thereby compromising on the country’s time-tested and longstanding policy towards the frontier people of Pakistan. In this context, the economic component of Iran’s diplomacy was important in encouraging Afghanistan to fall in line with the Pakistani demands. Iran’s offer of an aid package to Afghanistan in 1975 had lots of significance to Pakistan–Afghanistan relations in the context of the Baluch war. That the economic considerations worked well to mould the Afghan government’s decision to forge friendly ties with Pakistan were evident from Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin’s statement in 1978. He said that the level of economic aid that his country received would determine its relations with others: “If any country gives us some support for development we will have more friendship and stronger and deeper relations with it” (Asian Recorder 23–29 July 1978: 14417). Even countries like Saudi Arabia pressurized Afghanistan to give up its anti-Pakistan policy and stop its intervention in Baluchistan. A feeling grew among the Afghan leaders that the Baluch militants were so weak that any support to them would not bring about a success vis-à-vis the powerful Pakistan military. Patronizing a weak client was highly undesirable, specially when its defeat was imminent. 
The same success story has been repeated in the Eelam war, with the difference that its overall impact on ending the war is rather insignificant. India has been the most targeted patron whom the Sri Lankan government wanted to win away from the Tamil militants in the process of achieving their total subjugation. India assumed such critical importance in Sri Lanka’s war strategy because it demonstrably determined the strength and weakness, success and failure of the militants. Since 1983, several militant groups depended upon India’s politico-military support for their survival against the government’s military onslaught. India’s support varied from mobilization of international opinion in favour of the Tamil cause and extension of military support in the form of training and supply of arms to the militants (Silva 1991; Muni 1993). At the height of the war in June 1987, it resorted to direct military action by sending its air force to paradrop food and medicine over the Jaffna Peninsula. Apparently, New Delhi’s aim was to pressurize the Sri Lankan government to stop the onward movement of its army to capture Jaffna and save the militants from a humiliating defeat at the hands of their formidable adversary. This incident, and India’s overall pressure tactics during its mediation, developed a strong feeling among Sri Lanka’s ruling elite that the Indian government would never accept the Tamil militants’ defeat as long as it continued with its patron role in the war. Thus, the Sri Lankan government’s diplomatic efforts largely focused on winning India not really directly to its side in the war, but to stop its patron support to the militants
 
Since India’s security concerns (arising mainly out of Sri Lanka’s desire to involve external forces in the ethnic war) formed the principal factor behind its tough policy posture, the island’s leadership sought to address them seriously as a part of the process of resolving the ethnic conflict. The Indo-Lanka Agreement of 1987 provided the context and framework for developing greater understanding between the two countries: it was an altogether different matter that the Sri Lankan government benefited more than the Indian government out of this relationship. Both of them had peculiar strategic objectives to achieve in concluding the agreement: while India wanted to protect its strategic interests in the region, Sri Lanka was keen to achieve its national security free of threat from the former. It means that India would completely cease its support to the militants, which perceivably posed a serious threat to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and deport all those Sri Lankan citizens who were found to have engaged in terrorist activities or advocating secessionism. Sri Lanka extracted these assurances from India, and, in return, accommodated its security concerns.30 This constituted a significant diplomatic victory for Sri Lanka which, in the ultimate analysis, not merely won India away from the militants, but turned it against them. India’s war to disarm the LTTE under the 1987 Agreement was the most significant result of Sri Lanka’s strategy of winning patrons. By making India one of the contracting parties to enforce peace in the island, President Jayewardene carved out a participant role for it. His hidden objective was to use the same patron to neutralize its client (the LTTE) militarily, so that the SLA would ultimately win the war. However, winning the patron has not concomitantly resulted in winning the war. 

Once having withdrawn its support to the militants, India has never tried to replay the same patron role in the war. Successive governments in Delhi have chosen not to get involved in the war in any manner that would either directly help the government in Colombo, or the LTTE. India’s internal opinion has also undergone a drastic change, specially after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi; even the political pressure that the people of Tamil Nadu had exerted earlier on the central government to intervene in the island has waned. There is greater introspection on the gains and losses of India’s patron role in Sri Lanka’s ethnic war during the 1980s, and a growing realization that India should desist from getting involving in any manner in the island’s war. As a significant step, the Indian government banned the LTTE in 1992; the ban is reviewed and extended after every two years. Sri Lanka has definitely benefited immensely from this change in India’s policy, even though it has not been able to defeat the LTTE. 

The ending of India’s patron support has made the LTTE to rely heavily on the Tamil expatriate community in the West for material and moral support. The most active population that has regularly mobilized funds for the Tigers is concentrated in the US, Canada and the UK. The LTTE itself sponsored their activities to become a truly “transnational enterprise” (Kloos 1999). By no means are the host countries patrons of the LTTE, but the expatriates have made full use of the liberal immigration rules for their patron activities abroad. Since their home government in Colombo does not have any direct control over them, it has sought to win their host governments to stop their patron activities. The issue has been a major foreign-policy concern of Sri Lanka, whose entire diplomatic efforts since 1983 have been to stop the Tigers’ foreign activities. Every Sri Lankan leader who visited the US had consistently pressurized the US government to ban the LTTE. Foreign Minster Lakshman Kadirgamar and Constitutional Affairs Minister G. L. Peiris led the diplomatic campaigns in the US and briefed the American officials and policy makers including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on several occasions on every facet of the LTTE. Sri Lanka’s sustained diplomatic pressure yielded a significant result in 1997, when the US administration declared the LTTE as an international terrorist organization under the Anti-Terrorism and the Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Accordingly, it is a crime to provide any tangible support to the organization: its members and representatives are prohibited from entering the US, and its funds in the US are blocked. Sri Lanka was gratified with the US administration’s decision, because it would expectedly end the Tamil expatriates’ material support to the LTTE.31 No doubt, this was a morale-boosting decision for Sri Lanka, which expected that its battlefield strength vis-à-vis the LTTE would increase. But the Tiger leaders have maintained that the US ban would prolong the war (Frontline 31 October 1997: 128). 

Similarly, Sri Lanka has made sustained appeals to the Canadian government to curb the fund-raising activities of the LTTE. Since Canada has the largest concentration of active Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates in the West, the LTTE has established a base in the country for its overseas propaganda and mobilization of funds. The funds collected regularly from Canada have constituted the major chunk of the Tigers’ external source of income, which is mainly used for procurement of arms from the international market. This vital fact is quite relevant to the war-waging capabilities of the LTTE and the SLA: the interest of Sri Lanka has thus been to stop the flow of funds and arms from countries like Canada so that it could effectively deal with the Tigers militarily. Partly under Sri Lanka’s pressure, and partly due to complaints of extortion and coercion, the Canadian government has, of late, demonstrated its disapproval of LTTE–sponsored activities and adopted tough measures to stop it. In the recent past, there have been a number of cases of denial of visas to the LTTE leaders and sympathizers and of permission to hold cultural events to raise funds for the Tigers in Canada. More recently, the LTTE’s chief representative in Canada, Suresh Manickavasagam, was arrested on the ground that he posed threats to the country’s security by his terrorism-related activities and the court ordered his deportation to Sri Lanka (Frontline 17 October 1997: 55–57). Although these small measures have not made any significant impact on the Tigers’ capabilities, Colombo feels that its sustained diplomatic pressure on Canada will eventually work to erode their external support base to its strategic advantage in the war. 

Sri Lanka’s diplomatic efforts were also extended to South Africa where the LTTE has allegedly maintained a base and involved a number of Tamil organizations in its overseas operations–propaganda, fund-raising and procurement of arms. This, for a while, became an irritant in Sri Lanka’s relations with South Africa, with President Kumaratunga herself taking up the issue with President Nelson Mandela during the Commonwealth Summit at Edinburgh in October 1997. Although the South African government responded positively by ordering its forces to raid three LTTE camps (Frontline 18 December 1998: 58), the issue did not end there. Sri Lanka consistently pleaded with South Africa for a total curb on the activities of the LTTE: it went to the extent of almost asking for its proscription. Responding to the South African President’s call at the 53rd meeting of the UN General Assembly in September 1998 for the world community’s role in termination of destructive conflicts, the Sri Lankan president made a general appeal to the world leaders to isolate the LTTE at the global level. She said that “moral and legal sanctions” against terrorists were not enough, and insisted that “laws must be effectively implemented” so that they would renounce violence and join the democratic process. Kumaratunga cautioned the world not to accept the LTTE’s claim to be a “liberation organization”; it was an insult to organizations like the African National Congress and South West African People’s Organizations, she said (ibid.: 60). The LTTE issue also figured prominently in Foreign Minister Kadirgamar’s talks with his South African counterpart Alfred Nzo when he visited the country in 1998. All these diplomatic campaigns brought about very limited success; they affected to some extent the LTTE’s activities in South Africa, but did not totally curb its overseas operations. 

Britain has also been receptive to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic pressure to ban the LTTE’s activities. Making use of the liberal British laws and humanitarian concerns over violence and exodus of refugees, the LTTE set up its International Secretariat in London to coordinate its entire overseas operations. Thus, London became the nerve centre of the LTTE in the 1980s; it was from there that it gradually expanded its activities to Europe and Scandinavia. As the war progressed without any end and the LTTE demonstrated its callousness to human rights, the British government came down heavily on its activities, specially after the enactment of anti-terrorism laws in September 1998. Britain is not any more a safe abode for the Tigers, and realizing various constraints for their operations, they have chosen Paris to locate their International Secretariat, without abandoning Britain for some of their activities. 

Similarly, Sri Lanka’s diplomatic efforts with Australia have also worked to the extent of sensitizing the government about the ruthless character of the LTTE and its utter disregard for a political solution to end the war. Since Australia has a significant concentration of Sri Lankan Tamils who contribute heavily to the Tigers’ war efforts, measures to curb their fund-raising activity will definitely affect their war economy. In 1997, Kadirgamar raised this issue with his Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, and secured his commitment that he would not entertain any Sri Lankan Tamil delegations until they renounced in writing all their support to violence. Even the Australian government refused a visa to Anton Balasingham in 1998. These assurances and actions have made very little impact on the overall activities of the LTTE, but Sri Lanka continues to exert its pressure with the aim of winning Australia’s support in its war against the LTTE. Merely winning the support of these host countries is not enough for Sri Lanka to win the war: total international isolation of the LTTE and a complete prohibition of its overseas activities–meaning total drying up of its overseas support–are crucial for the government’s victory. This is what Sri Lanka’s diplomacy seeks to achieve now. 

In the CHT war, Bangladesh alleged that India provided sanctuary to the Shanti Bahini, and sought to end its patron role. India, on the other hand, refuted such allegations and blamed Dhaka for its support to insurgents in India’s north-east. Such allegations and counter-allegations in the past had created irritants in bilateral relations and transborder insurgency became an issue for bilateral discussions. It can be stated that India did not play the typical patron role in the CHT war, and if at all it extended its support to the militants, it was indirect and limited. The Chakma refugees (about 55,000) settled in India’s north-east were a source of support for the insurgents, who, under military pressure, often crossed the border and mixed with the refugees. It was alleged that India willy-nilly allowed such cross-border movements of insurgents that saved them from defeat. Thus, Bangladesh always insisted on repatriation of refugees so that their direct and India’s indirect support to the insurgents would end. The popular perception in Bangladesh was that India allowed refugees and militants to use its territory as an act of revenge to end Dhaka’s complicity with the insurgents from India’s north-east. When unsuccessful military operations exposed the government’s limitations, its desire to win India’s support grew stronger. It wanted India to tighten its grip on the refugees, encourage them to repatriate to Bangladesh, and strengthen its vigil on the border to stop infiltration of militants from the CHT. The Bangladesh government considered them essential both for winning the war, and for its peaceful ending. 

Successive governments in Dhaka had consistently raised this issue with the Indian government and secured its support. In 1986, General Ershad reached an understanding with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on adopting a common military strategy to contain cross-border movements of militants. This, however, was not carried forward at the field level. During her visit to New Delhi in 1992, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia convinced Prime Minster Narasimha Rao to persuade the Chakma refugees to accept repatriation. As such, the central government sent the Minister of State for External Affairs, Salman Khurshid, to refugee camps in the North-East with a view to persuading the Chakmas to accept repatriation schemes offered by the Bangladesh government. When persuasive tactics failed, the government tried coercive tactics–in vain. It cut down rations to the refugees, but restored them in the wake of a hue and cry in the press. As the bilateral understanding has grown further since the mid-1980s, both the countries made mutual assurances not to provide sanctuary or support to militants from each other’s country. It meant that India would stop all activities of the Shanti Bahinis on its soil and Bangladesh would do the same in case of the North-Eastern insurgent groups. This has been the single most important foreign-policy achievement of the Sheikh Hasina government, which contributed to the conclusion of the CHT peace accord in 1997. Many critics of the accord, mostly belonging to the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP), maintained that the previous governments were unable to work out a peace deal with the rebels because India did not extend its cooperation. They also alleged that the Parabotya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) leadership had New Delhi’s blessings and support to negotiate the 1997 peace accord, and, in return, the AL government promised to accept India’s strategic interests (Rashiduzzaman 1998: 663–67). 

The prominent patrons of insurgents whom India has always sought to win are China, Pakistan and Bangladesh. As stated earlier, the Chinese armed and trained the Naga militants in guerrilla warfare and helped them in forging a nexus with the Karen insurgents; both the groups had shared operational tactics, information, arms and ammunitions. It was alleged that China even offered to induct some People’s Liberation Army (PLA) advisers into NNC combat units in Nagaland. When the MNF lost its CHT sanctuary after the liberation of Bangladesh, China provided them base and training facilities and military hardware for guerrilla campaigns. The level of Chinese support varied greatly: since the Chinese government merely used militants as its foreign-policy tool against India, it lacked commitment to their cause. As such, the issue attained greater bilateral dimension: India considered the Chinese support to militants as part of its proxy war strategy. Since bilateral interactions were frozen for long and contentious issues like the border question dominated the foreign-policy agenda, the Chinese patron role in India’s north-east was always a peripheral issue. 
India was convinced that improvement of its relations with China alone would stop the latter’s support to the North-Eastern militants–this was dependent upon the resolution of their border dispute. But the process of normalization of their relations provided India an opportunity to raise the issue with the Chinese leadership. During his visit to Beijing in 1979, the then External Affairs Minister, A. B. Vajpayee, secured an assurance from the Chinese that they would stop all their support to insurgents from India. They reiterated the same assurance in subsequent years (Sunday Standard, 10 August 1980). Although Beijing did not appear very serious about its assurances and continued to aid and abet insurgency (Hindustan Times, 11 January 1987), there has been a noticeable decline in the level of Chinese involvement in India’s north-east over the years. This is partly due to Beijing’s conscious decision not to complicate its relations with New Delhi, and partly because the North-Eastern insurgents have not served Chinese interests in any significant way. 

Pakistan has been quite consistent in its support to various militant groups in India. It has been the toughest patron to deal with politically, and India’s diplomatic pressure to win it over has never yielded the desired results. Most of the insurgents have received Pakistan’s support at various points in time: the first group to be favoured by it was the NNC. As early as in the 1950s, Phizo was allowed to set up sanctuary in the CHT from where he directed the guerrilla campaign in Nagaland. The MNF also maintained an intelligence network with the Pakistani intelligence agencies and found safe sanctuary in the CHT. For many years (1967–71), MNF leader Laldenga himself took shelter in East Pakistan from where he pressed Islamabad for supply of arms and training. The Punjab militants had also relied on Pakistani support. As the war progressed and the militants suffered reverses at the hands of the government forces, Pakistan’s military support increased manifold. This reflected both in the quality and quantity of weaponry the militants received from Pakistan since 1985 (Joshi 1993). The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, had enjoyed considerable leverage on the militants who took sanctuary in Pakistan, and coordinated the flow of weaponry with the aid and support of the Pakistani border force and army. Noticeably, the ISI operations in India have increased considerably over the years: a number of North-Eastern militants groups–ULFA and National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah), or NSCN (I-M)–have come under its patron-fold. Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan are now being made use of by the ISI for its covert operations in India (Sunday 27 September–3 October 1998: 12–22; Frontline 11 February 1994: 26–28). 

Since Pakistan’s strong determination to support the Indian insurgent groups is a part of its proxy war strategy, the task of winning it (Pakistan) has been rather difficult. The Indian government has tried all political and diplomatic means to stop the Pakistani involvement, but without much success. The issue has even attained a strong bilateral dimension over the years. As early as in the 1960s, New Delhi persistently pressed Islamabad to desist from supporting the Naga and Mizo insurgents. If at all they lost their sanctuary in the CHT, it was because of the disintegration of Pakistan in 1971. When Pakistan’s complicity in Punjab became self-evident, the Indian government launched a diplomatic offensive. In 1988, it gave a 21-page dossier, based on interrogation reports of militants captured by the security forces, to the Pakistani authorities. It detailed various cross-border activities of their government in Punjab. Islamabad promptly rejected New Delhi’s charges and proposed joint border patrolling: it eventually turned out to mean “coordinated” patrolling by the Indian and Pakistani police on their respective sides of the border (Joshi 1993: 3). In 1990, an updated dossier was presented to Pakistan, but it had no effect on its cross-border activities. India, therefore, resorted to fencing of the Punjab border with Pakistan. The government’s main task has now been to stop all forms of Pakistani patron support to the militant groups in India. Since India’s bilateral diplomatic pressure has not yielded much result, it is relentlessly mobilizing international opinion against Pakistan’s covert cross-border activities. Winning Pakistan, therefore, assumes a critical factor in India’s internal war strategy. 
Bangladesh granted sanctuary to various insurgent groups but denied any such patron role in India’s war in the North-East. It was, in a way, a calculated but clandestine measure to deter India’s indirect support to the Shant