Strangers Of The Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India's Northeast by Sanjoy Hazarika

Author:Sanjoy Hazarika
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2000-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

They have introduced a different political culture, if you can call it a culture, which is totally devoid of refinement and respect for moral values . . . . I do not mean to say that all politicians before them were saints and only the AGP politicians are a bunch of rogues. But they frighten me by their arrogance, intolerance, bad manners and disrespect for our age-old values.

By the end of 1990, there were few who disagreed with Borgohain.

Thus, AGP’s slide in popular support came at the same time as ULFA’s. ratings soared. The AGP did not understand that its shortsightedness was preparing its own political grave but also eventually readying the ground for an eventual Congress return to power. In the short-term, though, it appeared that ULFA would profit most and fill the political vacuum.

Not only did-the AGP fail to control itself; it also allowed the law and order situation to deteriorate so widely and rapidly that it was virtually asking to be dismissed by the Centre.

In the interregnum, ULFA was everywhere: it gained an almost invincible halo. Its informants infiltrated the police to the extent that when the state’s Director General of Police watched a video film seized from an ULFA camp in 1990, the policemen on duty outside the room passed on the news to militant activists. ‘They were inside all day, the D-G and at least two other senior police officials,’ said an ULFA functionary, gloating over the knowledge that the underground knew instantly what its opponents were doing.

Meanwhile, the money was flowing in. It was deposited with a range of officials, businessmen and others, apart from direct collections. In one case, money was left with a Deputy Commissioner. When ULFA cadres were courageously challenged by some who wanted to know their identity, they would respond contemptuously and demand that the money be left at a politician’s home or even at an official’s residence.

Yet, within ULFA’s power structure too, there were cracks. Since the central command was spread out, these differences began to show. For one thing, not all the local military commanders turned in their dues. Some scorned threats of punishment and kept substantial amounts for their use and that of the local organization.

There was another problem: many young Assamese were seeing these large sums of money for the first time. It was only a matter of time before temptation overwhelmed the shaky.

That warning had been fired at ULFA leaders when they met Bijoy Hrangkhwal of the Tripura National Volunteer Force (TNVF) which fought against India—but more against the Bengali-dominated Left Front government in his state—for eight years before surrendering arms in 1988. Hrangkhwal told me that the ULFA men had gone to seek contacts and assistance from him.

‘I told them, “You are too soft, you need to be much tougher to last in the jungle, you depend too much on jeeps, motorcycles and good shoes,”‘ he said of that encounter. The response of the boys is not known but Hrangkhwal’s warning struck home when

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