Tripura's tribal strife

Militants want Bengalis to move out of the state where the tribal people once formed the majority community.

The situation in Tripura is no less alarming. The tribal militants of Tripura, who belong to either the NLFT or the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), have persistently followed a policy of ethnic cleansing. They want Bengalis to move out of the state where the tribal people once formed the majority community. Militant tribal leaders know that they cannot achieve this objective as Bengalis now constitute over 60 per cent of the state's population, who mostly arrived in the state after the partition in 1947.

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However, they continue to terrorise the Bengali people through violence and organised killings.

Many schools in far-flung areas of the state have closed down as teachers stay away for fear of the militants. Vehicular traffic along the Assam-Agartala highway, the lifeline of the state, is under threat of ambushes. Commercial establishments are often forced to pay protection money to escape the militants' bullets. Kidnappings for ransom are a daily occurrence. Worse still, the militants strike with the objective of forcing Bengalis to leave their homes and farms and sowing the seeds of hatred between Bengalis and the tribal people.

The growth of extremism in the highly sensitive state has a long and bitter history. The emergence of the CPI (M) as a major political force had acted as a dampener. The situation has evidently changed yet again, and the manner in which ethnic and parochial sentiments were being whipped up against "outsiders" signifies a return to the vicious situation that prevailed during the 1980s. Some of the tribal groups have aligned themselves with established political parties and this has given the groups a kind of legitimacy that they do not deserve. The IPFT, a front organisation of the NLFT, is one such: it has donned the political garb even when its agenda is to establish its dominance through violence.

Extremists in Tripura enjoy an operational advantage as the state is surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh. They have their hideouts in Bangladesh where they find easy shelter when under pressure from the security forces. The state government has sent to the Union Home ministry a list of militant camps in Bangladesh, with maps and other relevant details, but the matter was yet to be taken up with the Bangladesh government. The NLFT and the ATTF together have as many as 51 hideouts in Bangladesh. The NLFT's Biswamohan group has 32 hideouts, the NLFT's Nayanbasi faction has three and the outlawed ATTF has 16 camps spread across Sylhet, Habigunj and Laulavi Bazar districts and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.

Both the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All Tripura Tiger Force say they want independence for tribal areas of the state, which exist in all of Tripura's four districts.

Both have been been banned by the Centre.

In support of their goal both groups have kidnapped political opponents and launched violent attacks on the Bengali speaking community.

However, it is here that the similarities between the two rebel groups end.

The NLFT is larger and better armed. It says it is fighting not only for the removal of Bengali immigrants from the tribal areas, but also for the tribal areas of the state to become overtly Christian.

The NLFT has warned members of the tribal community that they may be attacked if they do not accept its Christian agenda.

It is estimated that around half of Tripura's 200,000 tribal community are Christian and support the NLFT.

It is unclear where the loyalties of non-Christian tribals lie, partly because it has been alleged that they have been coerced into supporting the NLFT.

Another key difference between the two groups is the decision by the NLFT to take part indirectly in recent elections to the state's tribal council elections, which were boycotted by the ATTF.

The NLFT backed the Indigenous Peoples' Front of Tripura (IPFT) in the vote to the council, which rules over roughly one-third of the state's population.

The IPFT won most of the seats, and immediately announced that one of its main priorities was to redress what it described as the marginalistion of the tribals.

It warned that non-tribal people would be treated as foreigners. Thousands of Bengalis have over the last decade been expelled from areas controlled by the council. Against this background the state's Bengali-speaking community has begun retaliation attacks.