Author	Kristoffel Lieten
Publication	Searching for Peace in Central and South Asia
Year	2002

Summary

In Nagaland, separatist violence commenced in 1952. Since then, conflicts have proliferated in all Northeastern states in India, especially since the late 1970s. Every state in the region is currently affected by insurgent violence. Only Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Mizoram lately have remained by and large peaceful, although some activities of the Naga and the Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) in these areas have given recent cause for concern. While there have been several government initiatives, multi-track diplomacy and NGO peace activities are at an incipient stage. Governmental policies in this remote corner of India do not encourage international interventions-directly or indirectly-in any conflict-resolution process. The conflict is considered as a purely internal conflict in which no international organization should become involved. The government itself alternates between political pacification and development interventions on the one hand and military cleansing of the areas on the other hand.

India's Northeast comprises seven states: Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. The region is characterized by a pronounced ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity. In addition to the nontribal population, which is dominant in Assam and Tripura, the region has more than 160 Scheduled Tribes (abbreviated as ST: the original inhabitants that have been recognized as such in a separate schedule of the government of India).
Northeastern India contains many natural resources (e.g., oil, wood, and hydropower potential). These resources are being exploited as national resources for the benefit of the entire country, but local sentiment has often referred to these activities as internal colonialism. It is also the case that many recent immigrants, or "nontribal" Indians, have been employed to run these industries and have been given good positions in the formal economy, for example in state-run factories and institutions. It would be incorrect to state that the region is an impoverished and exploited corner of the country. The aggregate data suggest the opposite picture: with the exception of Tripura and Assam, all the states have a per capita income around, or substantially above, the national average. Literacy levels, with the exception of the remote state of Arunachal, also tend to be substantially higher than in the rest of India.
The northeastern region is connected with the rest of India through a narrow corridor, the "chicken's neck." At its narrowest, around Siliguri in North Bengal, separating Nepal and Bangladesh, it has an approximate width of 21 kilometers on the western side. Practically the entire boundary of the region is an international border: China to the north, Bangladesh to the southwest, Bhutan to the northwest, and Myanmar to the east.
The cultural diversity in northeastern India, with its various ethnic and linguistic groups, was made more complex as a result of the British policy of "importing" large numbers of administrators, tea plantation workers, and cultivators from other parts of India during colonial rule, which started with the submission of Assam in 1826. The prospect of integration with the local community was systematically undermined by the British policy of segregating the tribal populations into so-called nonregulated or excluded areas that were administered differently. Laws that prevailed in the rest of British India were thought to be unsuitable to the stage of development of the populations of the hill areas of the northeast. Also from the point of view of political expediency, given the emergence of the nationalist movement in the rest of British India, spatial integration with the rest of the subcontinent was deferred.
The "Inner Line" system prohibited access to these areas to all "outsiders," except those who obtained special permission from the government. It created a frontier within a frontier, accentuating the political and cultural schism between the tribal areas and the plains. The missionaries also added to the confusion by converting the hill tribals to Christianity. The conversion to various forms of Christianity is a good illustration of the simultaneous working of segregation (from the rest of India) and subordination within the system of colonialism. Many tribal clans, while rejecting the "alien cultural invasion" of mainstream Indians, thus more readily came to accept a modernizing influence from the West. This has contributed to the cultural cleavage in the region.
After independence, such isolationist policies persisted, partly because of the chicken's neck, which made the area marginal to the rest of India. The cumulative impact of these policies was a deepening of fissures between tribal and nontribal populations. Many areas were also excluded from the process of modernization that affected the rest of the country. Such exclusion was by and large unsustainable in a modernizing world to which the tribal elite (at least) was also attracted. Inevitably, with the progressive and natural erosion of the artificial barriers, the local populations were brought into increasing friction with migrant populations that were economically better adapted to the institutions and business opportunities of the modern world.
For much of the British period, economy and politics were largely dictated by the interests prevailing in Bengal. The partition of the colonial empire, cutting away East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), was particularly disastrous for the Northeast. The separation crippled crucial economic linkages between Calcutta and the northeastern regions. Inland water, road, and railway communications were abruptly terminated. Partition also brought with it waves of migration that disrupted, and continue to disturb, existing demographic equations. The enmity between India and Pakistan, and following the 1962 war with China, between India and China, sealed many of the previously porous borders and made the entire region into a tense security zone. In recent years, illegal migration of Bangladeshi (Muslim) nationals into India, which has a Hindu-chauvinist government, and the use of Bangladeshi and Bhutanese territory by insurgents operating in India's Northeast have added to the complex political imbroglio.
Whereas the two previous factors, the ethnic cauldron and the spatial isolation and marginalization, have been at the roots of the emerging conflict, political opportunism leading to an arrangement between various power elites and insurgents has fuelled the conflict in every affected state. The proliferation of armed groups based on various tribal and ethnic identities can also be explained as the result of the demonstration effect of the success of other such groups in the past. The advantages are not necessarily measured in terms of increase in political autonomy for the state and the ethnic group but, increasingly, in terms of the financial gains through criminal operations that are undertaken by a number of militant groups, particularly in Tripura, Nagaland, and Mizoram.
In the meantime, the succession of insurgencies and movements seeking autonomy or independence or the assertion of an identity distinct from the rest of India has created a mental divide, with the rest of India now thinking of the areas beyond Assam as a remote, perpetually troubled corner.
The mobilization along tribal lines has become a basic feature in electoral politics and in the separatist and terrorist movements across the northeastern region. The conflicts in the various areas, as we shall see, alternate between intertribal conflicts, conflicts between tribes and nontribes, and between tribal groups and the (Indian) government.
There are a large number of NGOs in the northeastern states, although most of them are either dormant, or of dubious intent and affiliation. Manipur, for instance, has the largest number of NGOs registered with various ministries (333, as against 233 in Assam, which is by far the largest state in the region). This is certainly not an index of the developmental activities in the state, and the central government cut off all funding to NGOs in Manipur in December 2000, pending thorough checks on utilization, because of allegations of large-scale siphoning of funds to insurgents and to terrorist organizations. Most NGOs operate on government funding.

Assam
The insurgency in Assam began in 1979 with the Assamese middle-class movement against the immigrants from Bangladesh. After a period of escalating violence in its early days and an erosion of popular support in recent years, around four districts in the state are presently seriously afflicted by terrorist activities. Large numbers of cadres have surrendered, but as various groups operating from the underground have acquired a criminal character, disengaged from any consistent ideological objectives, acts of terror continue to inflict casualties. This is also the case with the second movement, which emerged in the late 1980s, namely the movement of the Bodo tribes against the Assamese majority. Many splinter groups have emerged and then disappeared after having been active for some time.

Nagaland
Violence in Nagaland appears to be decreasing, but the peace process that was initiated in 1997 has dragged on inconclusively. A peace deal on the cessation of violence between the government of India with one group of the Naga rebels has come to naught because of opposition in the neighboring state of Manipur and the intense factionalism between the various Naga tribes.
The Nagas comprise nearly seventeen major tribes, among which are the Ao, Angami, Konyak, Tankhul, and Rengma. Each tribe and subtribe speaks a different language, belonging to the Tibeto-Burmese group of languages. Historically, different Naga tribes have lived in isolation for centuries, with only marginal contact with the people of the Brahmaputra Valley (part of present-day Assam) during the rule of the Ahom kings. The British, too, in their initial years of rule in Assam, successfully prevented the national movement from reaching the hills by keeping the Naga segregated. This policy was followed in all the princely states of British India and encouraged a sense of local independence separate from the unified India that the leaders of the nationalist movement were fighting for. In 1945, the colonial administration formed the Naga Hills District Council, which one year later became a political organization: the Naga Nationalist Council (NNC). A resolution seeking autonomy within Assam was adopted in a meeting at Wokha in June 1946. However, the subsequent rift among the Angamis and the Aos within the NNC led the Angamis to demand independence, while the Aos were largely in favor of autonomy within the Indian union.
The NCC, representing a minority of the Naga tribes, in 1947 signed a Nine-Points Agreement with the colonial administration, and on 14 August 1947, during the last days of the colonial administration, the legendary Angami Zapu Phizo declared the independence of Nagalim. The government of India, which came into existence three days later, swiftly moved to bring the Naga territories within the framework of the republic of India. By 1950, Phizo had assumed the presidency of the NNC and publicly resolved to establish Nagalim, the sovereign Naga state. In a plebiscite, which the chiefs of the traditional village councils of the NCC organized in some of the Naga areas in 1951, 99.9 percent were said to have supported independence for Nagalim. The government of India ignored the referendum and, moreover, suspected the Naga leadership of being manipulated by foreigners intent on breaking up the Indian union. Since then, both sides have been on collision course.

Manipur
Most of Manipur is hilly area; the only exception is the narrow Imphal Valley. The Hindu Meitei, who comprise more than 50 percent of the population, and the Muslim Meitei-Pangals live in the valley. The hills are exclusively reserved for the tribals—mainly Naga and Kuki. Under the land tenure system of the state, the hill tribes are allowed to settle in the valley, but the Meitei and Meitei-Pangal are not allowed to buy land or settle in the hills. In addition, the tribals can avail of some benefits under various reservations schemes in government employment and educational institutions.
After the colonial power left India, Manipur became an independent kingdom, with its own constitution and, in 1948, an elected parliament with the maharaja (the king) as the constitutional head. Various secular and also communist organizations played a role in this transfer of power. Soon thereafter, without eliciting the opinion of his parliament, the maharaja in 1949 signed the Manipur Merger Agreement with New Delhi. The circumstances under which he did so (or was coerced to do so) are still a matter of controversy. The insurgency in Manipur started in 1964. The primary conflict involved the fight for statehood. In the course of time, secondary conflicts have arisen out of tensions between various ethnic and tribal subgroups, often as a result of changes in patterns of land tenure and distribution. The number of insurgent groups in the state has been fluctuating; as many as eighteen are reported to be currently active.
In the assembly elections, the Indian National Congress Party usually had been the strongest party, with the Communist Party of India and the (socialist) Manipur People's Party as strong contenders. Politics in the state in the past had been characterized by its secular and composite character, not necessarily dominated by the majority Meiteis. Its first chief minister was a Muslim and two other chief ministers had a tribal background. In the last decade of
the century, however, corrupt power politics in connivance with many of the thirty-five-odd underground militant outfits has transformed the structure of power in the state.

Tripura
Tripura has a 865-kilometer-long border with Bangladesh and insurgents and terrorists are using it to push arms into the state. Tripura, like Manipur, is one of the Indian states with a history of revolutionary peasant movements, and for much of the last quarter of the twentieth century had a communist state government. Insurgent groups have seriously disrupted attempts at land reforms and other progressive interventions. Particularly in Tripura, the dividing line between political insurgents and plain terrorists is blurred and many of the groups have transformed kidnapping into an industry.
Tripura is the only state in India's Northeast that has been transformed, in recent history, from a predominantly tribal to a predominantly nontribal state. In the early twentieth century, the tribal population, divided over nineteen tribes, accounted for close to 53 percent of the population. This equation remained relatively stable until the 1940s, when communal clashes in British-ruled East Bengal (now Bangladesh) followed by the partition provoked a steady migration of refugees into the princedom of Tripura and decreased the tribal population further to 37 percent. In 1991, the share in the population had come down to 31 percent.

The "Peaceful" Northeastern States

Meghalaya
After many years of peace, violence in Meghalaya has perceptibly increased over the past few years, with seventy-five persons killed between 1998 and 2000, as against twenty-two persons between 1992 and 1997. Intertribal rivalry and the common acrimony against the "outsiders" has led to the growth of a number of militant organizations constituted along exclusionary tribal identities. These include both organizations that represent the dominant tribal groupings in the state—such as the Khasi—and the smaller or minority groupings, such as the Naga and Gharo. While the violence of these organizations is directed against other ethnic groups, or is related to the increasing criminal and extortion activities that dominate their agenda, most of the militant groups operate under the camouflage of a variety of sectarian demands, including protection of the indigenous people against encroachment by outsiders and the creation of separate homelands along tribal lines.

Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh was long projected as an island of peace in the turbulent Northeast, and this is an impression that still persists, despite trends toward an overflow of the conflicts from its neighbors. In 2000, a total of thirty-four persons were killed in the state, including three security personnel, seven civilians, and twenty-four insurgents, as against three civilians and three insurgents in 1999. The overflow of violence from neighboring Nagaland affects the Naga-dominated Tirap and Changlang districts in particular. Insurgent groups such as the ULFA, NSCN-K, NSCN-IM, and Bodo militants are reportedly using sparsely populated Arunachal Pradesh territory to locate their hideouts and sporadic clashes between these groups have occurred. Extortion, which is one of the main sources of funding for the NSCN-IM, is widespread in the two districts, among others aimed at the staff of Oil India Limited, the oil-exploration agency. At least one indigenous insurgent group has begun to surface in the state: the East India Liberation Front, formed in 2001. Its purpose is to protect the Arunachali identity from the influx of outside settlers.

Mizoram
Mizoram has been relatively violence-free. During the year 2000, a total of four civilians, one militant, and seven security forces were killed in militancy-related violence. In 1999, two civilians and five security forces personnel lost their lives.
Peace had been restored to Mizoram in 1986 when a settlement was reached with Laldenga, the leader of the militant Mizo National Front. With that agreement Mizoram became a full-fledged state after an insurgency that had continued for twenty years. Since then, the state has remained, by and large, peaceful, although minority tribes such as the Bru (Reang), Hmar, and Lakher also allege neglect and discrimination and have started demanding concessions. The Bru Liberation Force has recently spearheaded much of the violence. The Bru leadership claims that they are oppressed by the majority Mizo, which is educationally and economically far better off. The Bru leadership is demanding a separate autonomous district council. Agitation around this demand sparked fierce ethnic violence between the Reang and the Mizo in October 1997, resulting in an exodus of the Reang to the adjoining North Tripura district. The Mizoram government is overtly against the district council and has made the surrender of the Bru militants a precondition for refugee repatriation. There are 30,000 Reang refugees now sheltered in Tripura.

Conflict Dynamics

Assam
Insurgency in Assam emerged in July 1979 primarily out of a single issue: the illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Middle-class students in the All Assam Students Union (AASU) took the initiative. They were soon joined by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) under the leadership of Paresh Baruah, for whom the secession from India was the main objective . The ULFA operated in close coordination with the AASU until the agitation ended in August 1985. After the Assam Accord, which was signed with the union government in New Delhi and which agreed on the identification of illegal migrants, AASU leaders formed the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and rode to victory in the state assembly elections. The ULFA refused to submit to the new government and continued with its terrorist acts of arson and killings. When the AGP government was not in a position to maintain law and order, the state was brought under direct control of the union government (Presidents Rule) in November 1990. The Indian army, in between elections, conducted a series of military operations. The newly elected Indian National Congress government then suspended army operations and announced an amnesty for the militants. Within one year, some 4,000 ULFA militants surrendered to the authorities. Counterinsurgency operations forced the ULFA to go into exile in Bhutan and Bangladesh. The conflict in the 1980s and 1980s accordingly was on a smaller scale, and the solution was sought more in political conflict management than in large-scale military operations.
The second conflict in Assam emerged when the Bodos, a major tribe to the north of the Brahmaputra River, initiated a second insurgency on the issue of the dispossession of their tribal land by Bengali and Assamese settlers. They also disputed the neglect of the Bodo language and culture. Toward the latter half of the 1980s, the leadership of the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU) started demanding a separate state within India and initiated a guerrilla war. The "Bodo Accord" with the Indian government in February 1993 paved the way for the establishment of the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC). However, since Bodo villages are not contiguous, the demarcation of the jurisdiction of the BAC remained a problem, and as of 2002 the BAC is still to be demarcated properly. In the meantime, one Bodo section had repudiated the accord, and their organization, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), has continued its ethnic attacks. In an attempt to clean their prospective autonomous area from non-Bodo elements, large-scale attacks were carried out against other ethnic groups, displacing tens of thousands of people in distress migration.
The attacks on non-Bodos, not only on Bengali and Assamese settlers, provoked the emergence of other militant organizations along tribal, religious, and cultural fissures. The Mising, the Tiwa, and the Rabha have started agitations for an autonomous council and the government in 2002 was considering granting them. The Santhals and other non-Bodo communities have also begun to arm themselves and fight back. The Dimasi tribe have established militant wings around demands for an independent tribal homeland. This has, in turn, resulted in significant displacement of the Bodo population from areas where they are a minority. The Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (one among a number of Muslim militant groups in the state) has raised the demand for a separate state comprising the five border districts in Assam, which have a Muslim majority.

Nagaland
The NCC under the leadership of A. Z. Phizo in 1956 proclaimed the establishment of a government with its own constitution and a Naga army. Following the induction of the armed forces in the state in April 1956, a war of liberation was declared. In the bloody confrontation between insurgents and the Indian army 1,400 Naga and 160 soldiers of the army were killed. Phizo managed to flee to London, where the Naga cause attracted international sympathy. Divisions began to emerge within the Naga movement with the formation of the Naga People's Convention, which favored Indian statehood as an alternative to independence. The Delhi Agreement between this section of the Naga leadership and the government of India led to the formation of the state of Nagaland on 1 December 1963, which was by far the smallest state in India with only 350,000 inhabitants. The NCC rejected the agreement as a ploy to divide the Naga people. A peace mission by the government of India, which suspended the anti-insurgency operations, however, did not succeed in mollifying the leadership and the mission was dissolved in 1967. The NNC was progressively marginalized: moderate politicians opted for participation in the parliamentary system and counterinsurgency operations brought the situation under relative control, forcing the militants to the negotiating table. Under the Shillong Accord, signed between the central government of India and the representatives of the federal government of Nagaland on 11 November 1975 at the initiative of the Naga Peace Council and after the defeat of the depleted NCC forces, the Naga leadership accepted the Indian constitution and agreed to come overground and surrender their weapons. Phizo in London and the Chinese-influenced group led by Muivah in Burma repudiated the accord. This group formed a new underground organization, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). In the 1980s, Nagaland was at peace and when insurgency reemerged, all factions of the NSCN (and the NCC led by Adino, Phizo's daughter) were banned in 1991.
Divisions among the Naga tribes resulted in the split of the NSCN in 1988. The Konyak tribes formed the NSCN-K (Khaplang) under the leadership of Khole Konyak and S. S. Khaplang. The Tankhul faction, the NSCN-IM (Isak-Muivah), was led by Isak Swu and T. Muivah. The NCSN-IM claims to have nearly 3,000 armed cadres, fighting in parts of Nagaland and in districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur; the NSCN-K is reported to have a strength of about 2,000 activists. There have been a number of clashes between the militants of both formations, the worst of which occurred in April 1988, when NSCN-K activists attacked the headquarters of the IM faction and killed over a hundred cadres. In August 1999, activists belonging to the IM faction killed Dally Mungro, general secretary of the Khaplang faction, in Kohima district. In the first three months of 2000, Tuensang district witnessed as many as ten fierce factional fights between the two groups and as many as seventy militants of both factions were reported to have been killed in clashes in the Mon district in the first week of May 2000. The internecine rivalry appears to have declined thereafter, but the internal fight for the control over the Naga cause continues to pose a serious threat to security and stability in Nagaland.
On the other hand, allegations of excesses by the security forces have also been noted. These include instances of custodial torture, molestation, and rape. Even though investigations have been made and the guilty were punished in many such cases, the generally slow nature of civil procedures remains a matter of intense discontent among the victims and their communities. These excesses and the failing judicial process help to sustain some sympathy for the armed underground factions.

Manipur
After the king of Manipur in 1949 had signed the agreement with the authorities in New Delhi, the local political leadership refused to accept the accession to India and rose in revolt. After many years of political turmoil and violence, Manipur was granted independent statehood (separate from Assam) only in 1972. The much smaller Nagaland had been granted statehood almost ten years earlier.
The beginnings of insurgency can be formally traced to the foundation of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) on 24 November 1964, under the leadership of Samarendra Singh. In September 1978, radicalism went one step ahead with the emergence of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), an organization with a leftist ideology and allegedly trained in guerilla warfare in China. The PLA maintains that it wants to organize a revolutionary front covering the entire Northeast and uniting all ethnic groups, including the Meiteis, Nagas, and Kukis. Both these organizations as well as the PREPAK (People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak) are coordinating their activities in a common platform, the Manipur People's Liberation Front.
The period around 1980 witnessed an escalation in insurgent activities. The entire Imphal Valley was declared a disturbed area and various underground organizations were banned. A series of successful operations in the early 1980s reestablished peaceful conditions, but the insurgency reemerged toward the end of the 1980s.
The ethnic conflict with the Nagas has compounded the problem in the 1990s. Some of the tribes living in Manipur are Naga. Influential Naga leaders such as Muivah hail from this area, and so do many of his Tankhul tribesmen. A bitter struggle to control drug trafficking and contraband smuggling through the border town of Moreh resulted in a bloodbath between the Kukis and the Nagas when clashes erupted in 1992. Nearly a thousand people were killed and there was enormous destruction of property. After mass movements of populations between ethnically cleansed Kuki and Naga areas, peace returned to the border town.
Several organizations in the Indian Northeast have constituted a common platform called the United Liberation Front of Seven Sisters to oppose the demand for a "Greater Nagaland" (Nagalim). When the union government, on 14 June 2001, despite earlier warnings by the Manipur assembly, decided to extend the cease-fire with the Naga rebels led by Muivah to all Naga-dominated areas in the Northeast, violence erupted in Manipur: the state assembly building was burnt and thirteen protestors were killed on 18 June 2001. Civil-society organizations in Manipur were united in a mass movement against the decision and ultimately, the new cease-fire arrangements were revoked and restricted to Nagaland only. The Manipuri protestors see in the extension of a cease-fire to its own territories the portent of the future inclusion of some of its own territories in Nagalim. The Naga leaders who had signed the cease-fire did this in the understanding that the Indian army would no longer operate in the areas where they had established (or wanted to establish) control. An area much bigger than Nagaland itself lies outside Nagaland. NSCN-IM leaders have indeed argued that the impoverished Naga population in Manipur (and in other areas) is being exploited by the Meiti elite and that the Naga territory should extend to all the ancestral lands of the Naga. A cease-fire, apparently a positive departure, thus has generated a new conflict, because to the Manipuri it indicates that the Naga army could henceforth control parts of its own territory.
These events indicate that the latent tension between the various groups could at any time be converted into an overt conflict and several other tribes during the 1990s have actually established their own rebel groups. An estimated one thousand lives were lost in 1997–1998 in violent clashes between Kukis and the Paites, two groups who speak virtually the same language and share many customs and traditions. In addition, Meitei insurgents have also begun to agitate against mayang (outsiders) settled in Manipur. The People's Republican Army was set up in the early 1990s to target the Pangals (Manipuri Muslims), who constitute over 7 percent of the population and who are considered mayang. As a reaction, the Pangals set up their own militant groups.
Politics in Manipur appears to have shifted further in the direction of militant-backed extortion racket. A nexus has developed between the politicians who, in exchange for protection, election funds, and vote banks, commit themselves to let the underground organization control the public distribution system and corner the lucrative public-work contracts. In an interesting comment on the state assembly elections of February 2002, the magazine Frontline (29 March 2002) commented: "Politics in Manipur has less to do with ideology and agenda than with wars between private armies. It is turf war in a vast no man's land. In the hills, virtually each tribe has an underground outfit that offers protection to its politicians and extorts money from them."

Tripura
Bengali migrants into Tripura have predominantly been cultivators practicing relatively advanced patterns of agriculture, compared to the jhum (shifting cultivation) of the indigenous people, and the tribes progressively lost control of their traditional lands. Their cause was taken up by Communist Party of India (CPI) and later by the Communist Party of India–Marxist (CPI–M). Leftist politics has always been strong in the state and several governments have been controlled by the CPI–M, which has a big following among tribals in their struggle for land. The Left Front governments were instrumental in creating the Tripura Tribal Areas where tribal culture and economic rights are protected from nontribal domination.
The strong showing of the CPI–M in elections coincided with the emergence of the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS) in June 1967, based on a brand of virulent ethnic politics. The TUJS raised the demand of autonomous district councils for tribals, the introduction of the local language (Kok Borok) as the medium of instruction for tribal students, and the restoration of alienated tribal lands. A Bengali communal organization, Amar Bangla (We Are Bengalis) came into being to counter the TUJS campaign. After the Tribal Areas Autonomous District Act of 1979 was passed by the CPI–M government, May 1979 and June 1980 saw two waves of vicious ethnic rioting. The rioting was instigated by the TNV (Tripura National Volunteers, established in 1978), with Amar Bangla activists retaliating. An estimated 1,800 people lost their lives and thousands of dwellings were burnt before the situation was brought under control after the army intervened in June 1980. This phase of the insurgency ended in August 1988, when Hrangkhawal, the TNV leader, signed a tripartite peace accord with the Union Home Ministry and the new Tripura government shortly after the defeat of the Left Front government. The Congress-TUJS coalition government had taken over after elections that were widely regarded as having been rigged. The apparent return to normalcy was short-lived. The next elections of 1993 and 1998, as well as the 2002 by-election to the national parliament, were again won by the CPI–M and the violent campaign reemerged.
There has been a substantial proliferation of terrorist factions in the state in the closing years of the twentieth century. Over thirty militant organizations are reported to be operating at various levels, and on a variety of "ideological" platforms, but most of them are just irregular criminal gangs, or are dormant. The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), with a strong Christian fundamentalist orientation, and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), a radical group controlled by leaders from the Debbarma tribe, are responsible for most militant activities. A critical development within the militant movement was the vertical split in the NLFT in September 2000 as a result of tribal rivalries between the Halams and the Debbarmas, and the emerging conflict between the Christians and the Hindus that led to a further breakup of the organization in 2001.
The spate of attacks on the tribal leaders belonging to the CPI–M in 2000 and 2001 were again clear signals that the NLFT continued with its terrorist campaign in order to dislodge the communists as entrenched protagonists of the tribal cause. The attacks were also seen as a desperate attempt, after the splits, to keep the control over its rank and file intact. It was also part of an attempt to eliminate the Left Front politically. In the run-up to the 2002 by-
election, NLFT militants killed sixteen nontribal people in a crowded marketplace in Khowai as a warning against voting for the leftist candidate.
Abduction by these organizations has evolved into a well-organized criminal operation. A total of 555 incidents of abduction, including 481 by the NLFT and 41 by the ATTF, were reported in the state during the year 2000.
In Tripura, the civil population has been the main victim of terrorist activities (see Figure 7.8.8.1). Tribal radicals specifically target the nontribal population, whom they call "settler refugees." The level of violence is also heightened by the emergence of militant Bengali organization Amar Bangla.

Official Conflict Management

Assam
peace talks. The prime minister agreed to call a cease-fire in counterterrorism operations, provided the ULFA abstained from violence. The ULFA team returned to Assam after the government officially released Baruah. Baruah, however, immediately went underground. Thereafter, both the federal and the state governments have made various attempts to break the deadlock, but ULFA has placed three preconditions on a possible dialogue with New Delhi: talks outside India; talks under the supervision of the UN; and talks to be centered around their central demand of sovereignty. The initiative floundered and counterterrorism operations have continued at the same intensity.
In the meantime, AASU has continued with its agitation against Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. It has started agitations for the withdrawal of the Illegal Migrants Act. Since the act came into force in the mid-1980s, less than 10,000 people have been identified as illegal and only 1,434 could be deported. AASU wants a repeal of the legislation and the introduction of more radical measures. It is supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but because a majority if the national parliament disagrees with the Hindu chauvinist stand on migrants, the stalemate continues.
In its peace initiatives with the Bodo groups in Assam, however, the government has made more headway. The BJP, the Hindu party dominating the union government in New Delhi, ruling fought the 1999 state assembly elections in alliance with the ABSU (and hence with the BLT) and the BLT has been engaged in a peace process on advantageous terms with the government of India since 1999. A cease-fire agreement was followed by tripartite talks between the BLT, the government of Assam, and the BJP-led union government in New Delhi. The discussion includes the extent of the BAC area. Since the victory of the Congress Party in the May 2001 assembly elections, the new state government and the BLT have again been engaged in violent clashes.
Assamese and Bodo nationalists have accused the government of India of internal colonization and exploitation. Yet the government has been forthcoming in developing various development initiatives to create a context conducive to peace. Various packages have been announced but the development and relief programs have been poorly implemented. Actual disbursement has been far short of the promises and funds have often disappeared in the pockets of corrupt middlemen. State government agencies, in their endeavor to implement development packages in the disturbed areas, are more often than not constrained by a corrupt and conniving administration. The development and rehabilitation schemes may even have given rise to the activities of strongly organized criminal groups of former militants in the state who, in collusion with bureaucrats and politicians, have taken hold of the state distribution systems.

Nagaland
After church organizations had succeeded in convincing the Naga rebels to lay down arms, the government of India in 1973, after protracted negotiations, succeeded in clinching a deal with a breakaway faction of the rebels. Arms were surrendered and the constitution of India was accepted as the basis for further talks. This implied that at least one section of the Naga rebels rejected the idea of an independent Nagalim. The government of India subsequently made several efforts to involve more Naga rebels and the Shillong Accord (1975) between the government and the Naga leadership was the result of this process. For two decades thereafter, Nagaland did not witness any serious peace initiative.
A process of dialogue with the hard-liners commenced only in the mid-1990s. In June 1995, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao met both Isak and Muivah in Paris and later offered to hold unconditional talks with the Naga insurgent groups. In its response at the end of July 1996, the NSCN-IM set three preconditions for talks: a focus on sovereignty, to be held in a third country, and through a third-party mediator. Following these meetings, a cease-fire agreement was signed on 25 July 1997, during the period of the Janata government of I. K. Gujral. The agreement was restricted to the area within the state of Nagaland. Rao's successors, including the present government of Prime Minister Vajpayee, have had various meetings in foreign capitals and have extended the cease-fire agreement several times.
Ultimately, the government of India, in an agreement signed in Bangkok in June 2001, agreed to extend the area of cease-fire "without territorial limits," i.e., to all the Naga-dominated areas in the Northeast. The NSCN-IM leadership had insisted on normalization in all ancestral territories where Nagas live under a non-Naga administration. Widespread protests by other groups in those areas, particularly in Manipur where the assembly building was torched, made the federal government revoke its decision and restrict the cease-fire to Nagaland only. In practice, however, the cease-fire has been extended and the Naga leadership regards this as an recognition of its claims over parts of Manipur as well. In the 2002 state assembly elections in Manipur, the NSCN-IM entered the fray and gave protection to the Naga candidates in the hills of Manipur who had been made to sign a declaration of support to the Naga cause.
The government's parallel peace process with the NSCN-K resulted in a two months' cease-fire commencing in November 1998. In April 2000 the NSCN-K announced a formal cease-fire with the central government, and the security forces responded with a unilateral suspension of military operations. Although the cease-fire has yet to be formalized, violent incidents in the recent period have clearly been on the decline.

Manipur
After insurgency emerged in a big way with the establishment of the PLA in 1978, the government declared the valley a disturbed area. Virtually the entire frontline leadership of the PLA was killed in counterinsurgency operations. The military measures successfully contained the insurgency until the latter half of the 1980s but, in the absence of a political solution, could not prevent the emergence of new outfits and violent conflicts between tribal groups in the early 1990s. Efforts to bring a negotiated peace to the region have been minimal. UNLF has put forward three conditions for talks with the center: the agenda should include sovereignty, India must first demilitarize the region, and a third country should monitor the talks.
Whereas in the 1980s, the security forces were the main instrument of dealing with the insurgence, recently there have been some efforts by successive state governments of Manipur to move toward a process of dialogue. The People's Front government headed by the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party offered a unilateral cease-fire to Manipur's seventeen separatist outfits, commencing 1 March 2001. Subsequently, a contact group was announced to liaise with insurgent groups in the state. The latter, however, rejected the cease-fire offer. A positive development was that an accord between the Kuki and Paite communities was signed in October 1998, soon after the violent clashes between both communities.

Tripura
Official measures for conflict management have concentrated on a legal framework to defend the rights of the tribals and on persuasion to lay down arms. In 1979, the Left Front state government passed the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council Act to help the tribal population to maintain their culture and protect their land rights. The impact on insurgency and the polarization of communities has, however, been negligible because extremist forces on both sides—the tribals and the Bengali settler community—around that time started their violent campaigns.
In the mid-1980s, Bijoy Hrangkhawal, the TNV leader, made it clear that unless the communists were out of power and were replaced by the Congress Party violence would continue. He intensified his offensive in the weeks preceding the elections to the state assembly, leading to the defeat of the Left Front, and the installation of a Congress-TUJS coalition government in 1988. The election victory of the Congress Party, the government party in New Delhi, meant a deal could be worked out. In June, the entire militant leadership was brought to Delhi for a peaceful settlement, which was signed on 10 August 1988, ending one chapter in the history of militancy in the state.
After the Left Front returned to power in 1993, the ATTF negotiated a bipartite settlement with the government, leading to the surrender of the bulk of its cadres, but the activities of other militant groups, particularly the NLFT and a section of the ATTF, have been on the increase. In the second half of the 1990s, the situation worsened and the communist-dominated government decided to request the federal government to promulgate the Disturbed Areas Act of 1988. By 1999, around half of the police districts had been declared disturbed areas under this act. Although a considerable number of militants have surrendered (more than 5,000 in the second half of the 1990s), it has had very limited impact on the scale of violence. Regarding the alleged existence of training camps in Bangladesh—the state government has handed over to the Union government maps with over concrete details on fifty-one hideouts and camps across the border—the government in New Delhi is still to pursue the issue with the government of Bangladesh.

Multi Track Diplomacy

Assam
The state government during the 1990s followed a two-pronged strategy: to defeat the insurgents militarily and simultaneously to create a support basis among civil-society organizations. It urged influential groups such as the All Assam Students' Union, the Asom Sahitya Sabha, and the Bodo Sahitya Sabha (both literary associations) to take initiatives to construe a climate of dialogue and prepare grounds for talks. The organizations by and large rejected the initiative, declaring that it was the government's responsibility to make peace. This case illustrates that NGO initiatives to resolve the conflict in Assam are limited. Yet, voluntary organizations together with the smaller political parties have taken some initiatives in mobilizing public opinion against indiscriminate killings and terrorist attacks. The cold-blooded killing of Hindi-speaking people in different parts of the state in the year 2000 brought thousands of ordinary people and several voluntary organizations right across the state into the streets.
While various organizations work in the field of development and welfare of different sections of the society, specific focus on conflict management and resolution has been absent. For example, the Tribal Welfare Society acts mainly on issues such as internal displacement, environmental degradation, and welfare and relief projects, targeting activities for the indigenous population. They have not worked on reconciliation and conflict resolution, however.
Some women's organizations have been active on specific issues of human-rights violations, but they have not sustained their efforts. More consistent has been the Bodo Women's Justice Forum, founded in 1993, which has organized various meetings around the issues of peace and human rights. Its weakness as a peacebuilder is its alignment with the political aims of Bodo independence.

Nagaland
The Baptist Church in Nagaland has been involved in the peace process since the beginning of the conflict, starting with the Peace Mission in 1963, which succeeded in securing a cease-fire and the temporary suspension of the armed conflict. In July 1997, the Baptist Church again was successful when it organized the Atlanta peace meeting at the end of which the NSCN leadership accepted initiatives to start a dialogue with the government of India.
The Naga People's Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), an important human-rights organization in the state, has been leading the movement to highlight human-rights abuses by the security forces. Starting from the days of Operation Bluebird, during which some cases of human-rights violation were reported (involving Assam Rifles' personnel in and around Oinam village in Manipur's Senapati district in 1987), the NPMHR has been continuously drawing attention to such incidents. It has also initiated a People to People Dialogue by taking representatives of a number of Naga organizations to New Delhi and to other states in order to foster better understanding and respect between the Indian and Naga civil society. However, since they explicitly support the insurgents' cause and consider Nagaland as separate country, little service has been done to the broader cause of human rights and conflict resolution. The organization has a one-sided interest in human-rights violations and does not publicize or question the terrorist campaigns that some of the Naga groups resort to.
Lately, women's groups have also been involved in peace initiatives. Of particular importance is the Naga Mothers Association (NMA). The NMA has been active against alcoholism and drug abuse to which many of the unemployed youth have fallen victim. In recent years, the NMA has been closely associated with political issues. The NMA also collaborates with the leadership of the NSCN factions and other Naga organizations for a reduction in violence. It has organized various rallies and appeals to stop the "bloodbath." The campaign "Shed No More Blood" served as a channel of communication for various Naga groups and spread the message that peaceful conditions are the prerequisite for human development. The NMA coordinates with different churches in Nagaland to give momentum to the ongoing peace process between the union government and the NSCN-IM. It has also participated in meetings and conferences with the Naga Students' Federation (NSF), the Naga Hohos, and the NPMHR.
The Naga Hoho, the apex council of the Naga tribes, also has been active in efforts to bring about unity among the various militant factions and to find an acceptable solution. After the IM group joined the peace process, the Hoho, along with other organizations such as the NPMHR and the NSF, met the leaders of the Khaplang faction in Northern Myanmar and urged them to engage in mainstream politics. Later, in January 1999, the Naga Hoho president met the NSCN-IM leadership in Bangkok to discuss proposals for unity among the NSCN factions. After the incidents at the assembly in Manipur in June 2001, the Naga Hoho has undertaken a peace mission to Assam and to other places in order to convince Assamese and Meitheis that the cease-fire extension was no threat to their interests. The coordination committee of the Hoho has been active in trying to unite the various Naga tribes and to confront the government of India as a unified force rather than as opposing factions.
Activities of international NGOs and funding agencies have been primarily confined to the realm of monitoring human-rights issues and creating awareness abroad in support of the Naga struggle for independence. The Naga Vigil Human Rights Group, a UK-based NGO, founded in 1989 proposes to document the ongoing human-rights violations and make research material available to individuals and other NGOs. It has offices in the UK, Australia, Nepal, India, and Japan. It channels humanitarian aid such as medical goods to various relief projects such as the Rainbow Relief Project in eastern Nagaland. The Naga International Support Center (NISC), an Amsterdam-based NGO founded in May 2001, supports the Naga cause and seeks to generate a "free flow of information." The NISC and another Dutch NGO—the Netherlands Center for Indigenous Peoples—provide information and organize activities in support of the Naga movement.

Manipur
The village councils and traditional tribal leadership from time to time have spoken out against violence, both by militants and by the state. These voices are, however, fragmented and their intervention is occasional and incident-
specific.
There are also several civil-rights activists and women's groups in the state. The Nupi (Women's) Movement, has organized many demonstrations for peace and for the protection of human rights. The Manipur Chanura Leishem Marup is another leading women's organization, which has organized a series of human-rights workshops for women in Manipur since 1997. The activities of the organization primarily focus on empowering educated young women with the basic knowledge of human rights and on the protection of their communities against a range of evils such as drug abuse and alcoholism. The concerns have naturally tended to focus narrowly on civil liberties and the violation of rights, but at least some of these groups, for example, the Meira Paibies, tend to have ambivalent relationships with the militants and function as front organizations, coordinating actions and protests with militant demands and activities. Without taking a critical stand on the violence perpetrated by the insurgents, despite their commendable work against social ills, they have forfeited any potential role as mediators between the state and the community. This is also the case with the Naga Women's Movement, Manipur (NWUM), a powerful movement supportive of the wider Nagalim.
The threat of wider Nagalim, extending into Manipur, has reunited Meitei, Kuki, and Muslim civil-society organizations. The United Committee, Manipur (UCM), was formed to protest against the cease-fire extension with the Naga leadership. The massive demonstration on 18 June 2001 forced the government to reconsider the agreement.
Human Rights Alert (HRA) is an Imphal-based NGO consisting of human-rights activists, journalists, lawyers, academicians, and community workers. It works to highlight human-rights abuses by security forces. HRA coordinates its activities with Amnesty International, London; the International Service for Human Rights, Geneva; and the International Human Rights Internship Program, Washington, D.C. The Civil Liberties and Human Rights Organization (CLAHRO), founded in 1983, consists mainly of lawyers. It takes up cases involving human-rights violations in the law courts. The Committee on Human Rights, which consists of representatives of eighteen organizations, organizes rallies for the repeal of various acts governing the insurgency-affected states and it also has an important role in documenting incidents of human-rights violations.
As with other NGOs in the region, it is important to understand that many of these organizations closely coordinate their activities with extremist groups, and reflect deep ethnic biases in their projection of alleged human-rights abuses. The union government is reported to be contemplating suspension of all funds to NGOs based in Manipur, as several NGOs act in collusion with the underground organizations. The National Human Rights Commission has, however, maintained a relatively balanced perspective on human-rights violations throughout the country.

Tripura
Peace initiatives have been taken by various organizations, but most of them are linked to political parties, particularly the CPI–M. Nonparty formations have been less active. One manifest exception is the peace movement initiated by the Jamatiya Hoda, the supreme council of the Jamatiya tribe, the third largest tribal group in Tripura. At their conference in December 2000, tribal leaders resolved not to pay any kind of "tax" to the militant groups and to support the government in its fight against insurgency. In addition to the Jamatiyas, the Reangs and Uchais are the other communities that have joined the larger antiterrorism campaign. Many of these are supporters of the leftist parties and their mass organizations, and they have been in the forefront of the struggle for peace and ethnic integration.
There is hardly any NGO movement in the state. The NGOs that exist operate as welfare and development organizations and have not made any attempt to initiate conflict-resolution activities. More powerful and enduring has been the work of the organizations linked to the Communist Party, mainly the Students Federation and the All-India Democratic Youth Federation. They have organized public opinion across ethnic lines.

Prospects

Although it appears that there has been a steady erosion of the popular base of many insurgent movements in the region, civil society initiatives have, at best, been sporadic and passive. A number of cease-fire agreements between militant groups and the government are already in place, and further negotiations are on to solve the other conflict. Unfortunately, where a multiplicity of insurgent organizations are operating, negotiations with some of the groups involved has tended to lead to escalation of violence by others.
Negotiations are usually in the form of secretive deals between Indian bureaucrats and leaders of one or the other insurgent organizations. Although some of the groups still insist on the intermediary role of a foreign party, the possibilities of any direct foreign intervention toward resolution is extremely limited since the government of India is absolutely opposed to all external involvement in internal conflicts. The fact that various conflict negotiations are taking place can be regarded as a positive sign for the future.
On the other hand, there are multiple reasons for the conflicts. The demographic destabilization as a result of immigration, both within the country and from Bangladesh, is often mentioned as the basic cause of the unrest. Migration, however, is not a new phenomenon and has not affected all the areas. Even in the areas where there has been considerable incoming migration, people of different ethnic origins have lived together peacefully until recently. The multiethnicity of the entire Northeast, which could be approached positively as a sign of integration and adjustment by many insurgent groups, has been attacked from a narrow ethnic position of identity politics. This attitude will make it difficult to reach a multicultural and multiethnic accommodation.
Other reasons are therefore at least as important as a cause for continuing conflicts. Such other reasons as middle-class unemployment, the feeling of neglect and marginalization within the Indian union, the criminalization
of politics, the contraband trading networks (particularly of drugs), etc., can be addressed in a more civilized manner than is presently done in an attempt to fall back on ethnic identity. Ethnic cleansing apparently involves a shortcut
to political expediency. The most significant obstacle to peace in the region apparently is the crisis of governance, with high levels of corruption and, despite a substantial investment of public resources, a dismal quality of government services. The problem is compounded by the lucrative criminal economy of terrorism that has now become entrenched in the region, the neighboring countries, or international organizations in tackling the problem jointly.

Recommendations

The solution to the various problems is political. Alienation, the result of a long-term process, needs to be assuaged by interventions at various levels. In order to scale down violence and ultimately establish peace, both sides in each conflict will have to accommodate some of the bottom-line positions of the other side. In exchange for regional autonomy, rather than separate statehood, which the government of India is not in a position to accept, the ethnic movements cannot escape accepting some basic principles of peaceful cohabitation.

Good Governance
The leakage of resources for development plans and infrastructure has been endemic. The increasing development expenditure and activities, absolutely essential as they are, have to concur with an overhaul of the government machinery so that unemployment can be taken on as the major battle against the root cause of the insurgency.
The restoration and strengthening of institutions of local self-governance could be looked at as an instrument of local development and local civil-society building, but care should be taken that the traditional tribal councils, who will be useful in monoethnic communities, do not divide multiethnic communities along tribal identities. Political mainstream parties who have done some commendable work in the past in terms of development and community building, as in Assam, Manipur, and Tripura, should be taken in as partners in a transparent local administration based on a popular vote.
The disruption of the lucrative regime of collusion between insurgents and various overground organizations, including government departments and political parties, should be taken on as a high-priority task. This should be a battle against criminal organizations and networks, clearly delinking it from the political intervention, which should be based on dialogue and persuasion, from both sides. The counterterrorism policy should first and foremost concentrate on elimination of the criminal circuit, particularly the drugs network, which keeps entire communities in its grip, either as victims or as profiteers.
The protection of tribal land and the positive discrimination (reservation) in education and in the civil service has helped to advance the position of tribal families and should be continued. The restoration of alienated lands to tribal populations has been a long-standing demand and should be looked at as land reform remains an important demand of poor and landless peasantry. Given the scale of alienation in certain areas and given the long-term entrenchment of the nontribal populations on those lands, it is not clear how practicable such efforts can be, and whether they will result in an abatement or escalation of violence. In Tripura, where land reforms were taken in hand, violence has actually followed in the wake of such restitution of land to the tribal population.

Border Management
Containment and regulation of migration have also been mentioned as a necessary step, and some movements have taken this as their only program. There have been several proposals, including the issue of identity cards and work permits, but their efficacy in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants into India and legal migrants between the states is questionable. Fencing off the border, as is currently being done, may help, but the enormous length of the border (98 percent of its borders are international borders) complicates this solution.
This situation could also be approached positively. If India were to make SAARC (the official South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) into an effective structure, legal channels of trade would help to make the trans-border operations more transparent between the countries involved (India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan) and reduce the involvement of terrorist groups in illegal cross-border trade. Borders can remain intact without hindrance to the movement of people.

National Integration
Peace campaigns involving all sections of civil society (traditional tribal structures, political parties, mass organizations, and some NGOs) as well as government organizations and business chambers will be difficult to organize, but will provide a sure and public sign that the majority of the people in the Northeast are on the side of peace, harmony, and stability.
For this to happen, transparency in the operations of the security forces (the army, the police, and the border security forces), which on various occasions have transgressed their legitimate role and have been accused of human-rights abuses, should be introduced. This would be one way of reclaiming trust in the Indian state.
An improved political say in national or regional affairs would help to assuage the feelings of alienation. The collective strength of the northeastern states in the federal Lok Sabha (Lower House) is 24 in a 543-member House, and this number cannot possibly be increased dramatically since it is based on the share in the population.
Helpful as a significant step would be the devolution of economic and financial affairs, which over the decades have increasingly become centralized. This step would add more residuary powers to the state governments. In the meantime, the accusations of "internal colonialism" should be addressed through independent studies. It will be helpful to know whether, and to what extent, the Indian state acts as a stepmother in its treatment of the states in the Northeast. That would constitute a sound basis for a further discussion on the degree of discrimination.
The government of India, rather than restrict the access to the area, would do well to organize the exchange of students and civil-society organizations for tours and study and to stimulate radio and TV to contribute to the dissemination of cultures and viewpoints across the regions of the subcontinent.

Service Information

NEWSLETTERS AND PERIODICALS:	Eastern Panorama, news magazine of the Northeast, also online: www.eastpanorama.com; Faultlines, Institute for Conflict Management; Grassroots Options, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. E-mail: rbtshillong@yahoo.com; NE Newsletter, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. also online: www.mha.nic.in; Northeast Sun, Sun Publications, New Delhi, India.
REPORTS:	All Bodo Students' Union, Why Separate State of Bodoland (Demand and Justifications), Kokrajhar, 1999. Government of the Peoples Republic of Nagalim: Nagas in Revolution, by Rh. Raising, Oking, Oking Publicity and Information Service. The Legal Status of Naga National Armed Resistance: Right to Self-Determination Under International Law & Why and How the Nagas Are Not Terrorists, Oking, Oking Publicity and Information Service, 2001. International Centre for Peace Initiatives, Assam Today: Can the Fires Be Put Out? edited by Karan Sawhny, New Delhi, 1998. Other Media Communications, Naga Resistance and the Peace Process: A Dossier, New Delhi, 2001. South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Peace Process in Nagaland and Chittagong Hill Tracts, by Jehan Perera, Kathmandu, SAFHR paper series No. 5, 1999.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:	Frontier Travails: North East-The Politics of a Mess, by Subir Ghosh. New Delhi, Macmillan India, 2001. India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, by Sanjib Baruah. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999. India's North East Resurgent: Ethnicity, Insurgency, Governance, Development, by B. G. Verghese. New Delhi, Konark Publishers, 1997. Insurgents Crossfire: Northeast India, by Subir Bhaumik. Lancer Publishers, New Delhi, 1996. Northeast India: The Ethnic Explosion, by Nirmal Nibedon. New Delhi, Lancers Publishers, 1981. Politics of Identity and Nation Building in Northeast India, edited by N. C. Dutta. New Delhi, South Asian Press, 1997. Strangers in the Mist, by Sanjoy Hazarika. Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1995. Rites of Passage: Border Crossings, Imagined Homelands, by Sanjoy Hazarika. New Delhi, Penguin Books, 2000. Uncivil Wars: Pathology of Terrorism in India, by Ved Marwah. New Delhi, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. The Periphery Strikes Back, by Udayoon Mishra. Simla, IIAS, 2000.
SELECTED INTERNET SITES:	http://mha.nic.in (Official web site of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India; contains overview of conflicts in each state, annual reports of the MHA, and a weekly Northeast Newsletter); http://nerdatabank.nic.in (Provides economic data of the Northeastern states); www.angelfire.com/mo/Nagaland (Website of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah, poorly maintained, occasional updates); www.assam.org (Web site of the Guwahati-based Northeast Daily Newspaper, updated daily); www.assamlive.com (Provides news and articles on Assam and neighboring states, updated daily); www.assampolice.com (Official web site of the Assam state police, updated daily); www.axom.faithweb.com (Compiles media reports on the Northeast and updated frequently); www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7434 (Web site of the publicity department of the ULFA, poorly maintained and rather disorganized); www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/1533 (Web site of the Manipur People's Liberation Front, occasional updates); www.geocities.com/rpf_manipur (Web site of the Revolutionary People's Front [RPF] of Manipur, exhaustive material and well maintained); www.kuknalim.net (Web site for Naga news, issues, and views); www.northeastvigil.com (Compiles media reports on the entire Northeast and updated on a fortnightly basis); www.satp.org (South Asia Terrorism Portal, web site of the Institute for Conflict Management, focuses on conflict and resolution in South Asia, with separate coverage for each of the major terrorism-affected states in India's Northeast);
RESOURCE CONTACTS:	Mukul Hazarika, Assam Watch, e-mail: assam.watch@virgin.net; Sanjoy Hazarika, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, e-mail: sanjoyha@rediffmail.com; Sushil Huidrom, Security Civil Liberties & Human Rights Organisation (CLAHRO), e-mail: sushilluidrom@Rediffmail.com; Babloo Loitongbam, Human Rights Alert, Manipur, e-mail: hralert@dte.vsnl.net.in; Luingam Luithui, Naga Peoples Movement for Peace, e-mail: luithui@hotmail.com; Frans Welman, Naga International Support Center, e-mail: f.welman@chello.nl;
ORGANIZATIONS:	All-India Democratic Youth Federation, Shillong, Meghalaya. Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development—Northeast (AVARD NE), Guwahati, Assam Arunachal Vikas Parishad, Contact: Sri Dwarikacharya P.O. Box 128, Itanagar 791111 Arunachal Pradesh, India, Tel: +91-360-3463. Bodo Women's Justice Forum: Contact: Anjali Daimari, c/o CPI(ML) office, R.G. Baruah Road, Sagarika Path, Guwahati 781 02, Assam Tel: +91-361-561933, E-mail: neso@satyam.net.in. Borok People's Human Rights Organization: Contact: Hebal Koloy, Agartala, Tripura, E-mail: bphrotwipra@rediff.com. Committee for Human Rights, Manipur: Contact: C. C. Surjeet, E-mail: chongthamcha@yahoo.com. Humanity Protection Forum: West Tripura District, Tripura, Impulse NGO Network, Contact: Hasinah Kharbhih. Lower Lachumiere Near Horse Shoe Building, Temple Road, Shillong-793001, Meghalaya, Tel: +91-364-500587, Fax: +91-364-229939, E-mail: ingon@rediffmail.com. Janajati Vikas Samiti: Contact: Ramesh Babu, Room No. 101, Majestic Apartments, Circular Road, Dimapur-797112, Nagaland. Krishak Adhikar Sangram Committee: Sibsagar, Assam. Meghalaya People's Human Rights Council: Contact: Bino (DDG) Dympep, E-mail: mphrc@rediff.com. Nagaland Gandhi Ashram: Chuchengimlang Village, Mokokchung District, Nagaland. Naga International Support Center (NISC): Tollenstraat 60, 1054 RW Amsterdam, Netherlands, E-mail: f.welman@chello.com. Naga Mothers' Association: Kohima, Nagaland, Tel: +91-370-223319/ 240886, E-mail: nagamothers@yahoo.com. Nagaland Peace Centre: 'D Block, Kohima-797001, Nagaland, Tel: +91-370-21392, Ramakrishna Mission, West Tripura District, Tripura, Tel: +91-381-230333/230222. Ramakrishna Sevashram: New Bongaigaon, Bongaigaon district, Guwahati, Assam, Shanti Sadhana Ashram, Basistha, Guwahati 781028, Assam, Tel: +91-361-563 873/565 887. Students Federation of India: Agartala, Tripura, The Other Media, K-14, 1st floor, Green Park Extension, New Delhi 110 016, India, Tel: +91 -11-6163830/6196640, Fax: +91-11-6198042, E-mail: admin@del3.vsnl.net.in. Tanyi Jagriti Foundation: P.O. Box No. 237, Neharlagun-791110, Arunachal Pradesh, Tel: +91-360-23234. Thongjao Women's Development Association: Thoubal District, Manipur, Tripura Adamjati Sevak Sangh, Contact: Chitta Ranjan Dev Anukul Bhawan, No. 3, Joynagar 2nd Lane, Agartala, Pin-799001, South & West Tripura Districts, Tripura, Tel: +91-381-223988. Zogam Institute of Community Resources and Development: Imphal East District, Manipur. Zomi Mothers Association: Churachandpur District, Manipur. Data on the following organizations can be found in the Directory section: Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research; Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal People; Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies; International Centre for Peace Initiatives; North East Network; Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights; Tribal Welfare Society.

About the author

Kristoffel Lieten (born in Belgium, 1946) is an associate professor at the Amsterdam School of Social Sciences of the University of Amsterdam. Since his studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in the early 1970s, he has done extensive research on political and social developments in South Asia. He has worked as the South Asia correspondent of the Dutch and Belgium radio and has become a regular media commentator. He has cofounded the Dutch National India Committee and has written several books on various aspects of politics, history, and rural development in India.