Official data about the existence and strength of underground armed groups, that the government has clung on to for a year, says that there are 109 such outfits.
Consultations with several officials and analysts during a recent tour in the central and eastern Tarai led to the conclusion that the Home Ministry´s claim about the number of underground armed groups was false. According to Bijaya Mishra, a researcher on the armed movement in the Tarai, armed groups having a real impact at present do not exceed even a dozen. [break]
The Home Ministry had settled on the startling number of armed groups before kicking off with its high-sounding Special Security Plan (SSP) in October 2009. Analysts based in the Tarai, who were also consulted by the government on the armed movement while drafting the SSP, said the government misinterpreted the input from different sources.
“The number was never so big,” said Mishra.
The official data was produced at a time when violence in the Tarai was undergoing a weird competition among different armed groups taking responsibility for a particular incident, including even those who merely sought publicity to shore up their terror profile.
“The government assembled so-called press statements issued under a variety of names and reached the tally of 109," said a superintendent of police (SP) based in an eastern Tarai district, requesting anonymity for lack of authority to publicly speak against government policy.
There are two schools of thought among analysts judging the existence and strength of armed groups in the Tarai. According to Mishra, around a dozen outfits are worthy of being called armed groups, going by their cadre and weapons caliber. A few other analysts, who insist on including other names that appear on and off, put the number at 30.
Formation, activism and disappearance
The most plausible way to quantify is track down the history of the armed movement, which spans less than a decade. Jay Krishna Goit formed the Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (JTMM) in August, 2004 after rebelling against the UCPN (Maoist) while the Maoist insurgency was still going on.
JTMM remained quite effective for two years before it split over a financial dispute and Nageshwar Paswan (Jwala Singh), who was said to have a military bent, formed a parallel group. Jwala´s group has since had a rampant presence and contributed to breaking up Goit´s relatively principled front several times.
Wracked by splits and a constant tendency to use his ´Janatantrik´ brand, Goit renamed his organization Akhil Tarai Mukti Morcha a few months ago. Goit´s quest for a virgin identity was recently obstructed after his close aide Bilashi Ray Yadav parted company and formed a parallel group.
Udaya Kant Mishra´s Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (Bisfot Singh Group) and the Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (Prithivi Samuha) were formed following splits from Goit three years ago.
Meanwhile, Prahlad Giri, a former popular UML leader of the central Tarai, opted to go underground and form the Samyukta Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (Pawan Group), which has been triggering terror incidents in its main bases like Birgunj.
Apart from those falling under the Goit pedigree, there are many other groups that have been going continuously through a sequence of formation, activism and disappearance.
Ram Lochan Thakur´s Tarai Mukti Morcha, Madhesi Silent Killers, Madhesi Virus Killers, Tarai Samyukta Janatantrik Party, Tarai Cobra, Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (Rajan Mukti), Madhesi Mukti Tigers, Tarai Army, Liberation Tigers of Tarai Elam (LTTE), Madhesi Rastra Party (Krantikari) and Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha are the ones that came to light through several crimes they committed or when their leaders were arrested or killed in encounters.
Beleaguered peace deal
The government is bent on drawing out the almost dead peace deal with five armed groups partly because it is a strategic matter and also because it is unaware of maneuvers among the groups, analysts said.
Peace talks between the government and the five different armed outfits started in November-December 2008, and much else has happened since.
The talks panels of Rajan Mukti and Pawan Samuha became isolated after their respective leaderships declared the truce terminated and backtracked. Madhesi Virus Killers lately merged into the CPN (Maoist) led by Matrika Yadav and the Madhesi Mukti Tigers into Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (Jwala Singh).
LTTE lost its rank and file and the talks panel became isolated as the long-drawn-out truce could not benefit this outfit which is relatively strong militarily. And every talks panel reshaped itself into a group of its own to maintain its stature for the dialogue.
Govt doesn´t want to say peace deal is dead
“The government does not want to say the peace deal is over,” an analyst said. “It is also true to some extent that the government is not very aware of developments within the armed groups that negotiated the peace deal."
The government, in a move to penetrate the armed groups, recently brought in one Akhil Tarai Mukti Morcha led by Bibek Chaudhary, who split from the Samyukta Janatantrik Mukti Morcha (Pawan Group), to surrender with its arms and ammunition. The Pawan Group responded to this promptly and said the incident was orchestrated by the government to ´weaken the armed movement´.
A mass surrender by more than two dozen activists of the Tarai Army in Rautahat district a few months ago was also looked at from a conspiracy theory angle.
The peace talks remained beneficial for the armed groups only in terms of the withdrawal of cases lodged against a score of their leaders and cadre, while the government was only focused on penetrating the groups, analysts said. Sources said that the alienated talks panel members also took advantage of the deal to make the government release criminals.
The government, meanwhile, has taken action against members of talk panels who were sacked by their respective groups for taking a stance in favor of continuing the deal, allegedly for involvement in criminal activities.
Ramshovit Yadav of Rajan Mukti Group and Amrendra Goit of Virus Killers are now being prosecuted on murder and kidnapping charges. Kautilya Sharma, coordinator of the talks team formed by Rajan Mutkti Group, was briefly detained six months ago.
Surendra Goit, a central member of Koutilya Sharma´s newly formed Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha, was arrested a few days ago in Saptari on criminal charges.
“The peace deal was followed by a continuous exodus of leaders and cadre to other armed groups,” analysts said. “As they do not have any political ideology to follow, they cannot tolerate the truce.”
Jyoti Jha, a Maoist leader of Saptari district who mediated talks between the government and armed groups, said that these groups were preparing to revert to violence, casting aside the peace deal. “We mediators feel insecure as the talks did not move in the right direction,” he said.
(Ajit Tiwari from Biratnagar, Mithilesh Yadav from Siraha, Suresh Yadav from Janakpur and Upendra Lamichhane from Birgunj contributed to this report)
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