This dyad belongs to the conflict India: Bodoland
Summary of conflict India: Bodoland
The Bodoland conflict concerns the territorial status of the area north of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, situated in northeast India. Separatist demands have been fuelled by demographic changes and a sense of economic, political and cultural marginalisation among local tribal groups. The conflict emerged in 1989, when ABSU (All Bodo Student Union) launched an insurgency. ABSU later signed a peace agreement with the government, but the conflict was restarted by NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland) in 1993. Fighting between the NDFB and the Government of India persisted for over a decade until the two sides signed a ceasefire in 2004. Fighting broke out again in 2009, 2010 and 2013 between Indian Security forces and two different factions of the NDFB.
During negotiations between NDFB and India, Ranjan Daimary who was a commander of the group, carried out several bombings in Assam. This resulted in Ranjan Daimary and troops loyal to him being ousted from the group and the formation of the anti-talk faction NDFB-RD. NDFB-RD splintered again, as I. K. Songbijit formed NDFB-S. In 2015, several groups in the northeast of India and northwest of Myanmar's formed an umbrella group, the UNLFW, with NDFB-S being a founding member. In subsequent years, various groups joined the UNLFW, which, as of 2018, consisted of at least 10 groups: KCP, KLO, KYKL, GNLA, NDFB-S, NSCN-K, PDCK, PREPAK, ULFA (I) and UNLF.
The incompatibilities over India's Assam, Bodoland, Garoland, Manipur and Nagaland were subsumed under the West South East Asia incompatibility. As a result, the conflicts over the the individual territories comprising the West South East Asia territory became inactive in the years in which the main groups fighting over the territory, and consequently contributing to the battle-relate deaths threshold for inclusion in the UCDP data, joined the UNLFW. For example, when the groups fighting over the Manipur incompatibility joined the UNLFW, this conflict became inactive, and the fighting has since then been recorded under the conflict over West South East Asia.
Background to the Bodo insurgency
Several of the insurgencies in northeast India have emerged from the issue of illegal immigration. Nationalist movements have been mobilised by linking demographic change with a sense of economic, political and cultural marginalisation among the tribal groups. The Bodo insurgency should also be understood in such terms. The Bodos were once in majority on the northern riverbank of the Brahmaputra in Assam, but immigration during the last century has reduced them to a minority outnumbered by Muslim immigrants, Bengali Hindus and ethnic Assamese. This demographic development has coincided with and reinforced economic problems such as land-alienation, poverty, and unemployment among the Bodos. In a more narrow perspective the Bodo movement can be seen as a reaction to Assamese nationalism, contesting the ethnic Assameses claim for self-determination within a separate state. "Divide Assam fifty-fifty" became a well-known slogan for the Bodo cause in the late 1980s.
The incompatibility concerns the territorial status of the area north of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, situated in northeast India. The call for a "Bodo homeland" in this territory has been voiced by several groups, and demands have ranged from carving out a separate self-governing state from Assamese territory but remaining within the Indian Union, to the demand for an independent, sovereign state. In either case the Bodos have contested the political and economic rights of foreign settlers and accused the ethnic Assamese of illegal occupation of Bodo territory. As a consequence of this, the conflict behaviour has to a large extent been characterised by communal conflict and one-sided violence in attempts to locally alter the demographic balance.
The conflict first became active in 1989, when an insurgency waged by ABSU (All Bodo Student Union) escalated to the level of an intrastate armed conflict. Later, NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland) became the main rebel group fighting the government.
Phases of conflict: ABSU, NDFB and NDFB – RD
ABSU (All Bodo Student Union), established in 1979, launched its campaign for a separate state of Bodoland in March 1987. The insurgency soon gathered momentum, and by March 1989 violent agitation in the form of general strikes, bombings, attacks on security personnel and communal violence had killed approximately 300 persons, 35 of which were security personnel. The state government called in the army, declaring that violence would be met by violence in order to maintain the unity of the state. At the same time it expressed willingness to accommodate the groups socioeconomic demands if a solution was sought by non-violent means. After three years and substantial compromises from both sides, a bipartite agreement was concluded between the Assamese government and a Bodo delegation on 20 February 1993, formally ending the conflict between them.
The Bodo Accord provided for the establishment of the Bodo Autonomous Council (BAC), granting limited regional autonomy within Bodo inhabited territory. Eagerness to show political results on the government side left the accord with several flaws that became major obstacles for its implementation. The most problematic was the lack of clarity about the demarcated area of jurisdiction of the BAC. Disagreement over this issue was aggravated by the fact that the Bodo areas were non-contiguous and that the Bodos in fact claimed territories where they represented less than 10 percent of the total population. Hence Bodo militants received an incentive to instigate communal violence to alter the demographic balance in the areas they to which laid claim.
The political compromises among the Bodo leadership and its abandonment of the separatist claim, however, provoked more extremist elements in the movement. This contributed to the growth of NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland) into a 500-cadre strong rebel movement. The NDFB, initially established as BdSF (Bodo Security Force) in 1986, was active also in the early phase of the insurgency, allegedly cooperating with ABSU. However, it did not become identifiable as a separate warring party until 1992. The NDFB rejected all attempts to find a negotiated solution to the conflict, and pursued a strategy of deliberately attacking civilians or political targets, and not primarily military forces. Since the military's counter-operations in Assam have been preoccupied with combating ULFA (the United Liberation Front of Assam), the NDFB was able to retain its control over parts of the territory.
A government call for a ceasefire in 2004 was greeted by the NDFB. The ceasefire call came after a major offensive by the armed forces of Bhutan in late 2003 to expel foreign insurgents, among them the NDFB which lost some of its important rebel hideouts. Following a marked escalation of violence, said by analysts to be a conscious strategy employed by the NDFB to strengthen its bargaining power, the rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire and negotiations were initiated in late 2004. After a reported six months of negotiations, on 25 May 2005 the Indian government and NDFB signed a one-year ceasefire pact. The pact required the rebels to disarm and relocate to specially-appointed camps run by the police for protection from other militant groups that opposed a ceasefire. The accord also required militants to end guerrilla attacks and soldiers to respect the ceasefire.
Although no substantive progress was made regarding the incompatibility in continued talks, the pact between the government and the NDFB succeeded in reducing violence so that the conflict was inactive for several years. However, a prominent faction of the group remained opposed to the peace process, and in 2009 armed conflict re-emerged. The resurgence of fighting came after Ranjan Daimary, one of the top NDFB leadership, was ousted from the main faction of the group in 2008 as a result of his alleged involvement in a bombing campaign against civilian targets in October that year. This new phase of conflict thus saw fighting between the government forces and the NDFB – RD (National Democratic Front of Bodoland – Ranjan Daimary faction). During 2011, the Union Government decided to extend the ceasefire with NDFB-PTF. Also the NDFB-ATF, which was the same group as NDFB-RD, declared a unilateral indefinite ceasefire with effect from August.
The peace process with NDFB-RD led to the emergence of a new NDFB faction in 2012 opposed to negotiations, the NDFB (S), led by I K Songbijit. This group was active in conflict aginast the government in 2013 and 2014.
