The suspension of army operations is a major step by the government of India in Assam. It conveys to the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) that New Delhi is serious about the business of peaceful negotiations. The offer comes at a time when the ULFA was targeting both common people as well as security personnel. It was only on Friday evening that five Assam Police commandos were killed near Digboi in Upper Assam.

But any optimism must be tempered by lessons from history. This is not the first time in the 26 years since the ULFA unleashed insurgency in Assam that a peace offer has been made by withdrawing the army. Hiteswar Saikia did it once, way back on January 14, 1992 by suspending Operation Rhino after he managed to take a group of five senior ULFA leaders led by general secretary Anup Chetia and the then central publicity secretary Siddhartha Phukan to then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. But that initiative did not yield the desired results: while Anup Chetia soon slipped out to Bangladesh, Phukan led a number of boys to surrender, only to create a new group of hooligans who are still known as SULFA (‘S’ stands for ‘surrendered’).

Much water has flowed down the mighty Brahmaputra, the river Bhupen Hazarika described as one that flows shamelessly and mutely while the people suffer. Though there is no official count, over 6,000 people may have lost their lives in Assam since the emergence of the ULFA in 1979, of whom about 3,000 would be innocent civilians who had nothing to do either with the ULFA’s struggle for a ‘sovereign’ Assam or the government’s carrot-and-stick policy, which has wasted several valuable years due to political considerations. The ‘secret killings’ allegedly carried out, Punjab style, by targeting family members of top ULFA leaders too failed. They only pushed dozens of families into disaster and traumatised hundreds of others. Several hundred young boys, who would have otherwise made wonderful officers in the Indian Army, have died untimely deaths for the sake of an armed struggle that has led Assam nowhere.

... contd.