The modern thinking Indian

Sunday morning, a leisurely waking up and relaxing. After a few minutes to allow the eyes to adjust to a new day, I picked up the Sunday Times of India. And what do I see? On the front page, at the side column, there is a small tidbit that states that the Assam government is ready to start talks with ULFA and that they have struck the right chord.
There are can only be two reasons for such a news:1. Either the Times of India has got the story wrong and there is no such news.2. The Government of Assam (and by extension, the Congress) has gone totally bonkers.
Read this article,

The Assam government has reportedly struck the right chord with Ulfa for chief minister Tarun Gogoi to restart a peace initiative.
Sources said a direct contact has been established between the militant outfit and the political leadership. The Centre is also ready to back Gogoi in the endeavour to bring peace to the state.

This whole business struck me as very strange. Let me just do a brief summary - The ULFA wants Assam to be sovereign, out of India, and presumably under ULFA control. They are based out of neighbouring countries and are supposedly being supported by the ISI, which puts them in the same bracket as the Kashmiri terror organizations. They run their own jungle camps, and have killed a large number of innocent people to further their image. They regularly extort money from businsses, in fact from anyone who has money.
In the past (late 2003), India asked the Bhutanese army to attack their bases in Bhutan, and the ULFA were routed from their bases in Bhutan (and the Bhutanese army also suffered some casualties).
This was a step in the path to crushing the ULFA totally. Subsequently, the Indian army also conducted operations against the ULFA, but were called off due to political reasons. The army was forced to participate in a ceasefire when negotiations with ULFA were going on, even as it was reported that leadership of the ULFA had been cornered.
And what was the net result of the ceasefire? The ULFA used this time to regroup and get itself back into a fighting force. Now the same thing is happening, the ULFA is being pressurized by the army, and so we hear the same tactics about negotiations and cessation of hostilies. Do we never learn? Or, are there more nefarious reasons for the same?
One of the reasons that comes up frequently is that the Congress party needs the ULFA to fend off its political opponents, and that in elections, the ULFA issues diktats to voters to not vote for any other party, instead to vote for the Congres. The ULFA has massacred innocent civilians recently, and there can be no grounds to behave in any lenient way towards them.
They are a bunch of criminals, and if the Congress can get above partisan politics, then the ULFA will be treated just like the criminals and murderers that they are. In addition, the nation needs to retain its credibility if we ask others nations to risk their forces against the support infrastructure of the ULFA.

Labels: India, Security, Separatist, Terrorism