Offers Of Help From Pakistan, Bangla Islamists Led To Naga Rebel Chief’s Imprudent But Hollow Threat To Resume Insurgency

Offers of help and encouragement from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (SIS) and Islamists in Bangladesh emboldened Thuingaleng Muivah, the 90-year-old chief of the dominant faction of the Naga insurgent outfit — the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) — to issue threats to resume insurgency (read this). 

Muivah issued the threat last week after two rounds of peace talks between the NSCN leadership and the Government of India (GoI) failed. The two sides have been holding talks since a ceasefire agreement in August 1977 ended the over two-decade-old Naga insurgency which started in the mid-1950s.

The peace talks — over 600 rounds of talks have been held over the last 47 years — are stuck over the NSCN’s insistence on a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas. The GoI has made it clear repeatedly that the two demands cannot be conceded under any circumstance. 

Muivah and the NSCN leadership have quite expectedly been frustrated over the talks remaining inconclusive because of the GoI’s refusal to concede the two core demands of the NSCN. 

Pakistan’s ISI and Bangladesh’s Islamists, both of whom harbour deep-seated antagonism towards India, have discovered here an opportunity to hurt India. 

According to the top sources in India’s central intelligence agencies, the Muhammad Yunus administration has allowed Pakistan to dramatically increase its influence in Bangladesh. 

After the overthrow of the India-friendly Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh, an interim government led by Yunus — widely perceived to be a stooge of the US ‘deep state’ and its Democratic Party establishment (read this) — was put in power. 

Yunus has allowed Bangladesh’s Islamist radicals, who stayed dormant under Hasina's rule, to resurrect themselves and target the country’s religious minorities, especially the Hindus. 

The Yunus administration has also released many operatives belonging to Bangladesh’s terror outfits, like the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, (JMB) from jail. Islamists, like former Hiz-ul-Tahrir member Mahfuz Alam, have found prominent posts in the new administration. 

Furthermore, the Yunus administration has displayed a distinct tilt towards Pakistan. Top functionaries in the interim government have spoken in favour of close ties with Pakistan, and Yunus himself has been making pro-Pakistan noises. 

Pakistan had a free run in Bangladesh during military rule in that country and also when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was in power there from 1991 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2006. 

The NSCN, as well as other militant groups of North East India, had been provided safe havens in Bangladesh during those periods. Not only that, they were also provided training in arms and guerilla warfare and given sophisticated arms and ammunition by the ISI in active connivance with powerful sections in Bangladesh’s security, intelligence, bureaucratic, and political establishments. 

After Hasina came to power, first for five years between 1996 and 2001 and then from 2009 till August this year, she launched a crackdown on the insurgent outfits of North East India sheltered in her country and drove away the rebels, even arresting some rebel leaders and handing them over to India. 

Hasina also launched a drive against her country’s Islamists and disempowered them. She banished the ISI and neutralised Pakistan’s influence in Bangladesh. 

After she was overthrown in early August, the new administration headed by Yunus reversed her policies. 

It is in these changed circumstances that Pakistan, and Bangladesh’s radical Islamists as well as anti-India elements in its interim government, have spied an opportunity to create trouble in India’s North East. 

It must be mentioned here that many in Bangladesh had openly spoken about stirring trouble in the North East with the objective of slicing away the region from the rest of the country.

“Making North East India, especially Assam, which has undergone a huge demographic change with Bengali Muslims (all illegal infiltrators or descendants of illegal infiltrators) now forming 40 per cent of the state’s population, a part of Islamic Bangladesh has been a long-cherished dream of that country’s Islamists.

"That this dream is an unattainable one is another matter, but that hasn’t stopped many in our neighbouring country from pursuing this utopian objective. The regime change in Bangladesh has once again rekindled this fond dream,” a senior officer of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) told Swarajya.

It is in pursuance of this dream that feelers were reportedly sent to Muivah sometime early last month. The feelers were sent by the ISI via Bangladesh’s Islamists, who have successfully infiltrated Nagaland. 

Some parts of Nagaland adjoining Assam, like the Dimapur region, have undergone a vast demographic change. Bengali Muslims of Bangladeshi origin have settled down in huge numbers over the last three decades in the Dimapur region. 

Many Bengali-speaking Muslims have married women of the local Sumi tribe in Nagaland, and a new community dubbed ‘Sumias’ (Sumis and Mias, as Bangladeshi Muslims are referred to in Assam) has been formed. 

Bengali-speaking Muslims and Sumias form a major chunk of the population of the Dimapur region, which is Nagaland’s trade and agricultural hub.

The NSCN is alleged to have been complicit in the infiltration of ‘Mias’ into the state and have provided them protection. These Mias and Sumias act as ‘collection agents’ (from local businesses) and spies of the NSCN.

Bangladesh’s radical Islamist groups, including its Islamic terror groups, have infiltrated the Mias and Sumias of Nagaland and have formed sleeper cells within these two communities. And it is through these sleeper cells that the ISI reportedly reached out to Muivah with offers of safe haven, training, arms, and large sums of cash for his outfit. 

Muivah, who is old and ailing, knows that this is the end of the road for him. He knows that he cannot deliver on his promise of a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas, and without that, he will have no legacy to leave behind. 

That is why a desperate Muivah has quite foolishly accepted the offer by the ISI and powerful elements in Bangladesh to resume insurgency. Very little, though, is expected to come out of it. 

Also Read: 

Explained: Why Naga Rebel Chief’s Threat To Resume Armed Insurgency Is An Empty One 

A New Pakistan-Bangladesh Nexus, Spurred By China, Could Spell Trouble For India

India Must Draw Clear Red Lines For The New Regime In Bangladesh