The Truce Offer Story

The Truce Offer Story

During the last few days newspapers have been full of reports of an offer made by ULFA’s 28 Battalion for a truce with the Asom government that will enable the cadres of its three companies to come over ground. A senior ULFA leader from Dhaka, who has not been named, is reported to have camped in Guwahati for about a week to liaise with the police for the necessary help to get the truce offer accepted by the State government. The ULFA leader has also been in touch with the commanders of the A, B and C companies of the 28 Battalion who were persuaded to write official letters to the police headquarters stating their desire to come over ground and initiate the peace process. All that seems to be known at this stage is that the ULFA leader seeking a truce with the government is a fairly senior leader who was part of the 15-member ULFA group that had been flown out from Dhaka to Islamabad via Karachi to receive further training under the Taliban. It is also reported that the commander of ULFA’s 28 Battalion has not sought the consent of ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah or chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa to make the truce offer to the Asom government. It is also understood that the truce offer of ULFA’s battalion commander was sent to New Delhi by the State government and that the Centre has given its assent to the offer.While there is some understandable euphoria over the truce offer even from a part of the ULFA, there are also certain serious misgivings about how this strange truce will work out, since it does not have the blessings of the ULFA top brass and since there can be no foolproof ways of correctly identifying the cadres really belonging to 28 Battalion. Things would have been much better if the entire outfit had made a truce offer and the government had accepted it. Now there are the expected claims from the ULFA that nothing of the sort has really happened, and that this is just a publicity stunt to fool the ULFA cadres of other battalions as well as the newer recruits of the outfit. As for the government and the Army, nothing could be better than the onset of a process that could whittle away the strength of the ULFA in a matter of months. In the ultimate analysis, however, numerous expected questions are going to haunt everyone who sees the truce offer as some kind of a surrender that brings with it the freedom for the cadres of 28 Battalion to move about freely without fear of being shot down by the security forces. The government has stipulated that the cadres of 28 Battalion would be permitted to move about freely as long as they are unarmed. However, people with experience of earlier surrenders by ULFA cadres realize that the entire business of surrender of weapons could be a mere charade, with 28 Battalion retaining some of the most sophisticated weapons as the SULFA men had done earlier. If this happens we could have on our hands a force deadlier than the ULFA that could take to intimidation and crime as some of the SULFA men did after retaining their weapons. While one such truce could lead to other ULFA battalions also following suit and could eventually lead to the break up of the ULFA, the modalities of the truce offer that 28 Battalion of ULFA has made need to be very carefully and meticulously worked out. We have no earthly reasons to be creating yet another Frankenstein monster. Source: sentinel assam