Why an Agreement Was Clinched With ULFA (Pro-talks) When Earlier Attempts Failed

Its emergence in the early 1980s was a new chapter in the history of insurgency in Assam.

Assam’s brush with insurgency began in the the mid-fifties when the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI) led by cultural icon Bishnu Prasad Rabha indulged in sporadic acts of violence for a brief span before fizzling out because of a government crackdown. There were other groups a decade later such as the Lachit Sena whose sole objective was to check the domination of outsiders in the state.

The ULFA’s (United Liberation Front of Asom) emergence in the early 1980s was a new chapter in the history of insurgency in Assam as it was much bigger and better organised than the previous outfits. By 1987, it had already despatched a group of 87 functionaries to Myanmar’s Kachin and subsequently more batches for training and procurement of weapons. By the mid 1990s, the outfit had blazed a trail to Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, and Bhutan and eventually to more countries resulting in a network that was second only to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in South Asia.

From the early 1990s to the present times, efforts were made as many as four times for a negotiated settlement between the ULFA and the government. The efforts failed in the previous occasions owing to a combination of many factors. Every time, different circumstances had kickstarted the exercise only to be derailed after some time.

The First Peace Initiative (1992)

The ULFA was banned when Operation Bajrang was launched against the outfit on 27 November 1990. The operation succeeded only in dismantling the camps that had sprung up across the state but failed in its objective to check the growth and sustenance of the outfit. The operation was suspended four-and-a-half-months later ahead of the state assembly polls. Another exercise against the ULFA codenamed Operation Rhino was started on 15 September 1991 which soon began to yield results. Several functionaries were apprehended, compelling some of them led by chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, to examine the possibility of an accord.

A six-member delegation led by General Secretary Anup Chetia met Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and top officials of the government to discuss the modalities of the agreement. But they came up with the precondition that the process could be formally initiated only after the approval of the outfit’s general council.

However, the districts of Dibrugarh, Darrang, and Nalbari struck a defiant chord at the ‘pratinidhi sabha’ convened near Tezpur in 1992 by the pro-talk leaders. Functionaries from these districts were in favour of continuing the armed campaign. Anup surmised that a clearer picture would emerge from the general council, which he decided to summon at the outskirts of Nagaon. However, the meeting hardly made any difference to the existing mood as Chief of Staff Paresh Baruah, who was in Bangladesh, refused to attend and most of the functionaries from the armed wing endorsed his uncompromising posture.

With no sign of the deadlock being resolved, the meeting was disbanded on the second day without ratification of the peace process with the government. Anup and Rajkhowa convinced the government to allow them more time to evolve a consensus among the ULFA functionaries, which would also necessitate a meeting with Paresh. Anup and Rajkhowa slipped out quietly to the border town of Dhubri, where Baruah had also crossed over from Bangladesh to meet them.

Two days later, the triumvirate arrived at a unanimous decision to reject the offer of talks. They resolved to convene an executive council in Bangladesh at the earliest, to hammer out a strategy to offset the government policy and to strengthen the outfit for a renewed campaign.

The Second Peace Initiate (2005-07)

The second attempt that began in 2005 was lengthier and more elaborate than the first as it also involved the constitution of a group called the People’s Consultative Group (PCG) comprising eminent members from civil society. The process kickstarted in 2005 after a green signal was received from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) by noted Assamese litterateur Professor Indira Goswami, who had assumed a lead role in the exercise.

There were three rounds of talks in 2005-06 that also led to a brief 40-day ceasefire between the government and the ULFA. However, the efforts collapsed again with the government and the outfit resuming operations against each other after the end of the ceasefire. The process dragged on so long because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was genuinely concerned about ending the conflict in Assam. And it was certainly at his insistence that National Security Adviser M K Narayanan dispatched a letter to the ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, indicating the government’s willingness to discuss all ‘core issues’ in an unprecedented development that had never happened with any rebel outfit in the country.

The odds were heavily stacked against the prime minister, both within the government and his party. The security establishment was convinced that Chief of Staff Paresh Baruah would never participate in or allow Chairman Rajkhowa to get engaged in negotiations with the government. It was certain that Paresh was firmly in grip of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and that an end to the conflict in Assam was not in the agency’s interest. The Home Ministry also demanded that the ULFA must declare the names of the representatives who would sit for talks before five detenus were released from jail.

The ministry’s concerns were due to the rising graph of the ULFA’s offensives in the first half of 2006, which was more intense than in the corresponding period a year ago. According to an estimate, the ULFA triggered more than 50 explosions and carried out 15 attacks on armed forces between September 2005 and June 2006, resulting in the death of 41 civilians and six security force personnel, and causing injuries to 170. During the same period, security forces were engaged in 20 encounters with the ULFA, in which 21 cadres were killed and 48 apprehended. Clearly, there was a colossal deficit of trust between the two sides, which the three rounds of talks between the government and the PCG were unable to bridge.

The ministry’s doubts over Paresh’s intentions may not have been entirely misplaced. His objective seemed to have been to extract political mileage from the exercise. In 2011, he told this correspondent at the camp in Myanmar’s Taga that the goal of the peace process was to gauge the extent to which the Indian government was willing to discuss Assam’s sovereignty. In all likelihood, he would not have sat for negotiations with the government's delegates even if it were to be held at a foreign venue, which the ministry seemed to have understood.

The Home Ministry’s hesitant approach towards the peace process found support among a section of the army, police, and even Congress politicians who were determined to maintain the status quo in Assam. The situation might have taken a different turn if Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had consistently supported the exercise, but his attitude underwent a change after the Congress was re-elected in the assembly polls.

The Third Peace Initiative (2008)

On 24 June 2008, two companies of the ULFA’s dreaded Myanmar-based 28 Battalion declared a unilateral ceasefire with the government. Briefing the media at Sadiya two days later, the senior functionaries led by Mrinal Hazarika said they were forced to examine the chances of an agreement with the government owing to the leadership’s refusal to pay heed to the issues they had been raising for the past several years and its silence on the threat to the Assamese communities from illegal Bangladeshi migrants. They urged the leaders in Dhaka to follow suit in their footsteps.

In Dhaka, Paresh Baruah alleged that the ceasefire move was part of a conspiracy hatched to fuel doubts among the ULFA leadership about its lower-level leaders. His opposition notwithstanding, the government inked the ceasefire agreement as there were immense benefits to be reaped from doing so, especially in counter-insurgency operations.

The ceasefire group was lodged at three designated camps and functionaries received a monthly stipend of Rs 3,000 each from the Home Ministry. They were allowed to retain most of their weapons since there was fear of retaliation by the ULFA functionaries in Myanmar. However, the government was unwilling to negotiate with the group without the engagement of a few central leaders. The group refrained from contacting the leaders in Dhaka and chose to wait for their return in the future for the resumption of talks with the government.

Until then, there was no option for the group but to settle down in the designated camps and abide by the ground rules of the ceasefire. It was a period of stalemate, but the cadres never expressed regret regarding their decision to relinquish the campaign for Assam’s independence. They were convinced that the ceasefire had saved the lives of their fellow cadres, who would have been surely killed sooner or later by the security forces.

In 2010, the entire rank and file of the twin companies of 28 Battalion offered overwhelming support to the fourth peace process that began under the leadership of Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa after he was repatriated to India from Bangladesh along with other senior functionaries.

The Fourth Peace Initiative

Over the past decade, the group led by Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa had given up hope of clinching an agreement. Months of hectic negotiations were followed by long periods of stalemates during which interlocutors were changed three times.

Some senior functionaries have claimed that the agreement that was signed this week has incorporated about 70 per cent of the ‘charter of demands’ that was submitted by the group to the government. Many clauses have been added that were earlier not included in the charter.

The most important factor, however, that clinched the agreement is the 2024 general election. Although the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) looks confident, it still needs to trumpet its successes in the Northeast which is something new and goes beyond the usual development rhetoric. With the persistent stalemate in the peace process with the NSCN(IM) [in Nagaland] and hardly any scope of agreements with the myriad Kuki-Zo overground rebel outfits in Manipur, there was no better option than to do this with the pro-talks faction of the ULFA. The BJP had nothing to lose but everything to gain from this agreement.

According to some senior functionaries of the group, the pro-active role of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was crucial in clearing the hurdles in front of the accord. In October, for the first time, the state government had deputed a police chief (G P Singh) to attend the talks in New Delhi who had vigorously supported the outfit’s demand for a mechanism to check the further encroachment of the political space by migrants. Sarma’s rapport with Home Minister Amit Shah and his justification for an early agreement is also believed to have played a role in expediting the process.

There were high hopes for some time, especially after the BJP returned to power in the state in 2021, that the chief of the anti-talks faction Paresh Baruah would also agree to participate in the talks. Baruah had declared a unilateral ceasefire with the government within weeks of the assembly polls in Assam two years ago. A security agency had reportedly sent an emissary to meet Baruah at a foreign destination to gauge his mood and if he was actually serious for a negotiated settlement. However, Baruah stuck to his earlier stance – that the focus of the talks would have to be on Assam’s sovereignty – which the government was reluctant to accept.

A leader of the faction who was also a key part of the negotiation believes that the Centre’s decision for the agreement was motivated partly by its willingness to improve the overall security scenario in the Northeast. The outcome of the election in Bangladesh scheduled for next month is unpredictable. If the BNP (Bangladesh National Party) returns to power, the possibility of separatist outfits from the Northeast becoming active in the country cannot be ruled out. The situation in Myanmar is no different and it is still early to predict the result of the Spring Revolution against the military junta. This means that the separatist camps in the country will remain untouched for some more time despite New Delhi’s repeated pleas to Naypyidaw.

(Rajeev Bhattacharyya is a senior journalist in Assam and author of ULFA: The Mirage of Dawn. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)