By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Dec 19 2003 (IPS)

Bhutan’s week-long assault on militant camps run in its territory by Indian insurgent groups has far-reaching implications for India and other countries in its sensitive north-eastern region such as Nepal and Bangladesh, say experts.

For more than a decade, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and lesser known militant groups have been waging a war to liberate India’s north-eastern state of Assam.

This was following a crackdown by the Indian army in 1990, when it retreated to the heavily forested foothills in the southern part of the Himalayan kingdom and began launching deadly cross-border raids from camps they established there.

Indian intelligence agencies have cited radio and telephone intercepts in asserting that the top leadership of the ULFA, including its chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, is now holed up safely in Bangladesh.

That country is separated from the Himalayan monarchy by a narrow sliver of Indian territory that is barely 75 kilometres wide at several points.

Rajkhowa has sued Bhutan’s King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk for peace from his hideout somewhere in the northern part of Bangladesh, citing the ”historical bond” between Assam and Bhutan. But the king, who is personally leading the operations, has deemed that no less than an unconditional surrender would do.

Bangladesh has denied the existence on its soil of camps run by the ULFA or other militant groups that are facing the heat in Bhutan, such as the Kamtipur Liberation Organisation (KLO). On Thursday, it announced the sealing of its borders to prevent entry of the fleeing militants.

But what intrigues experts on the region such as Mahendra Lama, professor of South Asian economies at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), are the linkages of the crackdown to Bhutan’s controversial expulsion of peaceable citizens of Nepali origin from its territory and to the Maoist rebellion in Nepal that have, so far, defied a healthy regional approach.

More than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin have been put up in seven camps run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in eastern Nepal. Some 25,000 others have been forced to live in India ever since Thimphu expelled them in the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of a policy of cultural and religious unification.

”Bhutan got a bad name internationally out of the refugee issue which was seen at every forum as negative so that now, after all these years, the kingdom is suddenly negotiating with the refugees,” Lama told IPS in an interview. Lama pointed out that Bhutan never expected the refugee camps to survive or the United States, the European Union and influential Nordic countries to get involved in huge humanitarian issue of its own making.

But what Lama finds truly curious about the Bhutanese refugee crisis is that India, a directly affected party, chose not to speak out about it and preferred to cash in on it by getting Thimphu to flush out the ULFA and similar groups like the Kamtipur Liberation Organisation and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) from 30-odd fortified camps.

”Bhutan’s National Assembly endorsed military action against the militant camps three years ago and the king has been under increasing pressure since then to order a crackdown whether or not the camps served as a bargaining chip against India,” said Lama.

In Lama’s assessment what finally compelled Thimphu to act was the realisation that ”the situation could not go on and that there were more important issues at stake than fear and suspicion of the Indian army”. The Indian army has chosen to play down its role in the crackdown. It insisted that this was limited to flying out in its helicopters personnel of the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) who were wounded in the fierce fighting against the ULFA and setting up traps for militants retreating into Indian territory rather than deeper in the Bhutanese jungles.

The Indian army has also been imparting jungle warfare training to the 6,000-strong RBA, which has thus far acted more as royal bodyguard than anything else, and providing it with essential hardware including mine-detectors and night-vision devices.

At a press briefing on Thursday in the Indian port city of Kolkata, the biggest metropolis in the entire region, Lt Gen J S Verma, chief of the Indian army’s eastern command, said at least 120 militants were known to have been killed in crackdown by Bhutan and six or seven RBA personnel.

Wangchuk may yet deflect some of the internal criticism levelled against him for not acting thus far by leading his troops from the front, as an official statement let it be known Friday.

According to the statement, Wangchuk was ”risking his life” to protect the sovereignty and security of the Druk kingdom by ”leading the troops into the hostile jungles” to flush out anti-India insurgents.

"Despite having led the troops into the hostile jungles, His Majesty the King is in good health and is very well,” the statement said, adding that "some casualties have been faced by some security force personnel, and those seriously injured have been airlifted by the Indian Army.”

The Royal Government’s effort, the statement said, was to ”flush out the Indian militants for bringing stability and security to the region and furthering the friendship and collaboration between India and Bhutan”.

Observers like Praveen Kumar, a researcher on India’s complex north-east at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), a New Delhi-based government think tank, say that the action was rather tardy and glossed over such issues as the cosy relationship and close connections that the ”top brass of the Bhutanese military maintained with the ULFA leadership”.

Kumar said it was more likely that the Druk monarchy was compelled to act in its own interest once it was discovered that bolder elements from the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal had teamed up with the ULFA and the NDFD to float the Bhutan Gorkha Liberation Front (BGLF) with close links to anti-monarchy Maoist rebels.

Bhutan’s change in attitude, according to Kumar, had also to be seen in the context of a new mood towards greater security cooperation among members of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which will hold its summit in Islamabad, in January.

SAARC groups Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Kumar said that although the crackdown had broken the back of ULFA and the other anti-India insurgent groups, it was too early to say that this was the end of militancy in the country’s north-east until Bangladesh chose to follow Bhutan’s example and come out of ‘denial mode’.

Commented the widely-circulated ‘Hindustan Times’ daily in an editorial on Friday: ” What makes Thimphu’s action special is that until now, it was India that stuck its neck out to offer support in forms desired by it smaller neighbours.”

India’s smaller neighbours have so far ”prevaricated or even denied outright” that ”their territories are used as sanctuaries by organisations declared unlawful by India,” the ‘Hindustan Times’ editorial said.

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