Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 8, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/168053/India's-Swat-Valley.html
In Assam, the state has surrendered
With seven dead, the April 6 bombings in four
different cities in Assam have brought the terror toll in the State to 107
in the past five months. Beginning with the October 30, 2008, explosions in
Guwahati and two other locations - collectively killing 91 people - terror
has inaugurated a destructive phase in the largest State in the North-East.
A pernicious partnership between the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami
and the United Liberation Front of Asom has announced itself. Intelligence
sources believe underlying the alliance is the realisation that there is no
real strategic contradiction between the two groups. HuJI claims lower Assam
as territory where the Mughals had made some inroads, and as a 'Muslim region'
that should be united with Bangladesh; ULFA sees upper Assam as an 'Ahomiya
homeland' that should be an independent country, free of India. The message
for New Delhi is clear. On January 1, Guwahati saw bombings hours before Home
Minister P Chidambaram reached for a visit. On March 31, there were explosions
preceding Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee's visit. And now the most recent
attacks came on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's arrival. A comatose
State Government - led, like the Central administration, by a confused and
compromised Congress - has been entirely unable to check the terror onslaught.
Indeed, it has allowed the cross-border networks to repeatedly embarrass and
humiliate the Indian state. Mr Tarun Gogoi's Government in Dispur is only
marginally more in control of things than the supposedly mainstream Government
that claims to be in charge of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Like
in another context in 1962, the Congress has left Assam and the Assamese to
their fate, singularly incapable of ensuring security. The ruling party is
trapped by Muslim political managers, many of whom deliver the votes of illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants. The demographic character of Assam has been transformed;
in a few years the State will cease to be the bastion of Indic culture, of
the worship of the Devi of Kamakhaya, of the traditions of the great monk-philosopher
Shankardeva. A whole history is being betrayed.
When it comes to ULFA, the Congress has at
various points propped it up, given it legitimacy by talking to it through
busybody intermediaries who have no idea about ground conditions in Assam
and about the conversion of an Assamese 'nationalist' radical group into an
accomplice of global jihad. The determined efforts of the NDA Government had
ULFA on the ropes. By promising 'peace talks', the Congress-led UPA Government
gave its ringleaders breathing space. This is exactly what the party did with
the Maoists in Andhra Pradesh, before better sense prevailed and Chief Minister
YS Rajasekhara Reddy unleashed the elite Greyhound force to decapitate the
red militia. In Assam, alas, there was no iron fist behind the velvet glove.
The result is a regularity of terrorist attacks unmatched anywhere outside
Pakistan.
While the UPA leadership claims credit for
its diplomatic action against Islamabad post-26/11, it conveniently ignores
the five-year refusal to contest domestic sources of mass terror and lack
of attention to India's eastern front. Assam is paying the price for this
callous disregard. In the coming Lok Sabha election, the State will be voting
for its future. The BJP-AGP alliance is Assam's last remaining bulwark against
terror. It must be strengthened.
