Militants have struck again in Assam after a lull. On Friday, >14 people were killed and over 20 injured in firing by three gunmen in a rural weekly market in Kokrajhar district . All indications are that the I.K. Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, or NDFB(S), is behind the attack. Known hitherto for targeting mostly Muslims and Adivasis in the Bodo areas, including in the December 2014 attacks on Santhals in which 76 people were killed, the group took to indiscriminate firing on a crowd this time, which meant the casualties included six Bodos. The killings are being seen as the group’s attempt to retaliate in the face of a sustained crackdown by security forces since 2014, as also to open a new front and divert attention from an ongoing operation against it along the Assam-Bhutan border. This it attempted to do with a three-man team ostensibly operating independently of each other and reportedly covering their faces to give it the semblance of a jihadist attack in an area which has witnessed numerous arrests of people suspected of links with the terrorist outfit Jamat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh. But one of the trio engaged and felled by the Army has been identified as being an NDFB(S) commander.
The objective is apparently two-fold. Carrying out an attack in the run-up to Independence Day has been a time-tested method employed by insurgent groups to signal that they aren’t a spent force. More insidious is the attempt to shift the blame on to jihadist elements which, had it not been called out swiftly, could have vitiated the atmosphere in the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts where wounds of the recent past are yet to fully heal — notably the Bodo-Muslim violence of July 2012, that claimed 77 lives. The May 2014 killings of 32 Muslims were, in fact, alleged to have been the handiwork of the NDFB(S). The challenge for the BJP-led government of Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, as also the Bodoland Territorial Council controlled by its ally Hagrama Mohilary, is to remain alert to such potential attempts to deepen the schism. At another level, the attack also proves that the project of securing peace in Assam — and the Northeast at large — is still a work in progress. Groups such as the NDFB(S), the anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom, and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) remain outliers even as others have arrived or are in the process of arriving at an amicable understanding with the Central government. Having chosen to deal with these holdouts with force, there must be no let-up on the part of the Indian state.
