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Trouble on India's
islands
By Ramtanu Maitra
In early February, India charged 34 Arakan separatists from
Myanmar with hiding in the Landfall Islands,
part of the Andaman Islands group (see
end note). These alleged members of the Arakan
Army, the military wing of the National Unity
Party in Myanmar, have been charged with illegal
entry. It is likely, but not certain, that they
will be deported to Myanmar.
But the news of the Arakan rebels is just
the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
growing concern in New Delhi over the security
of the Andaman Islands. Reports are
circulating in the intelligence community that the Andaman
Islands are not only thick with Myanmar rebels. It has
also become an arms depot of the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who operate almost freely
in the Andaman Sea. Information pointing in
this direction came to light after the December 26
tsunami, which took a heavy toll on the
Andamans. Correspondents who flocked in to cover the tsunami
found they also had another story - the
miserable security situation surrounding the Indian
navy's Far Eastern Naval Command, now being
established along with India's "blue water navy".
Deteriorating security
Security
problems in the Andaman Sea are not new, but they
have deteriorated during the past few years, in
tandem with a deterioration in the security
situation in Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and
particularly in the northeastern Indian states of
Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura. While the Indian
army has become rock-solid in the western front,
and has developed the capability of withstanding
any Pakistani adventure in that sector, it has
become highly vulnerable in its eastern sector,
where its enemy is not a national army but a
multitude of secessionist, terrorist and
drug-running militants operating between Southeast
Asia and northeastern India through Bangladesh.
The Andaman Sea is a major conduit for
this traffic, and the 572 large and small islands
that constitute the Andaman and Nicobar group are
a natural transit base. The drugs and arms travel
in all directions. Since the "Sea Tigers" of the
LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers, are the
ones who rule the Andaman Sea: they carry the arms
and drugs for their own use and also to deliver to
rebels in Aceh and all along the east coast of
Africa. It is old news that the Tamil Tigers have
developed a strong network within South Africa.
This is not unknown to New Delhi. A recent
report by a journalist from Port Blair, in the
Andamans, quoted an unnamed official saying that
foreigners from Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
have permanently settled in the islands, using
fake Indian ration cards, while citizens of
Thailand, China, Indonesia and Malaysia have
migrated temporarily to plunder the natural
resources and leave. "Port Blair, Havelock
Islands, Diglipur, Middle Nicobar, Campbell's Bay,
Neil Islands and Rangott are mostly overrun by
foreigners," he said.
An official estimate issued
in 2003 suggests there are 50,000 "foreigners"
in the Andaman Islands, but unofficial
figures are much higher than this. A large
number of them are Bangladeshis, who like millions
of their countrymen have left their densely
populated homeland to settle elsewhere. As
most of them have few technical skills, and the
Andamans have little demand for them in any case,
they turn to smuggling and other unlawful
activities. The presence of the Sea Tigers in the
area with guns, cash and drugs makes the situation
extremely dangerous.
Reports from Port
Blair make it evident that New Delhi gets little
on-the-ground intelligence, and the Indian Coast
Guard is grossly unequipped to deal with the surge
of illegal migrants to the islands. One unnamed
naval officer was quoted saying, "Arms smuggling
is a very profitable business in this region."
Considering the islands' huge strategic
importance, it is amazing how lax New Delhi has
been. These islands sit aside the vital sea lanes
of the Strait of Malacca, through which 300
tankers and merchant ships pass daily, bringing in
oil for the Far East and Southeast Asia.
Intelligence lapses
As the implications of the Andaman Islands
situation sink in, Indian intelligence has inevitably
come under scrutiny. In recent months, its
fallibility has become evident. The inability to
foresee in advance the assassination attempt on
the pro-India political leader and former
Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last August 21 at
a political rally in Dhaka, and the recent "coup"
by Nepalese King Gyanendra dismissing his
government and imposing a virtual absolute
monarchy, are glaring examples of intelligence
failure.
With growing economic and
military power, India will be dependent on smaller
nations in the region increasingly to maintain
regional security. Unless New Delhi does better in
providing security to its own nationals against
rebels, secessionists, drug runners and arms
traffickers, it will not generate much confidence
in the capitals of surrounding nations. In fact,
it would tend to encourage more organized
anti-India outfits, such as the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and
outside-linked Maoists, to exploit these networks
and weaken India's eastern flank.
Indian
intelligence's lackluster performance in dealing
with the LTTE is startling. This formidable enemy,
which gave the Indian army a black eye in the
mid-1980s, has been operating in northeastern India
and in the Andaman Sea for a long time. In 2001,
according to Indian army officials, security
forces launched a wide-ranging operation in the
300-some inhabited islands neighboring Andaman and
Nicobar, and found huge caches of arms. The arms
were said to belong to the LTTE and "other
terrorist groups". The search-and-destroy
operation was carried out by the Indian government
after repeated requests from Colombo.
In addition, LTTE activity in the Andaman
Sea is well known to local observers. The biggest
LTTE maritime disaster was reported in the
now-defunct Asiaweek in 2001. A shipment of
weapons, ammunition and explosives, believed to
have been purchased from Cambodia and worth
several million dollars, left the port of Phuket
in Thailand in early February 2001 aboard the
freighter Comex-Joux 3. As is LTTE standard
procedure, the vessel changed its name at sea to
Horizon. On its journey across the Bay of Bengal
the freighter was tracked by the Indian navy and
Orissa-based spy planes of India's Aviation
Research Center; it was intercepted by Indian
naval vessels off Sri Lanka's east coast.
LTTE arms-running
In 1997,
the Thai navy reported the interception of a
16-meter boat after a chase off the Thai port of
Ranong, and the confiscation of two tons of weapons
and ammunition. Among the weapons intercepted were
two rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, 20 assault
rifles, M-79 grenade launchers and more than
10,000 rounds of ammunition. Four persons were
arrested, reportedly belonging to the Manipur
Revolutionary People's Front. Six crew members
were from the Arakan region of Myanmar. The boat
was heading toward Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.
Until 1995 the LTTE maintained a base at
Twante, an island off the coat of Myanmar, west of
the Andaman islands. Subsequently, Phuket became
the LTTE's main backup base. A Sri Lanka-born
Tamil with a Norwegian passport was arrested by
Thai authorities in 2000 for his links with the
LTTE. At the time of his arrest, the suspect was
allegedly involved in constructing a "submarine"
in a shipyard on the island of Sirae near Phuket
on the Andaman Sea coast.
Steady
buildup
The real threat to the Andaman
Islands is the steady building-up of ports and
conduits that serve the Tamil Tigers and a host of
less-strong militant groups. Over the past decade,
Bangladesh has steadily moved into a state of
lawlessness. A number of extremist groups, under
the cover of the Islamist movement, have become
active in drug trafficking, gun running and
anti-Indian activities.
It is widely
acknowledged that the Pakistani ISI has nurtured a
number of extremist Islamist groups, such as the
Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami, in the port city of
Chittagong, and put a number of secessionist
rebels from India's northeast in touch with this
terrorist network.
As a result, north of
the Andaman Islands, Bangladeshi coastal areas have
become a nest of terrorists involved in the
shipment of drugs and arms. A pattern of arrests
and seizures indicate that arms are brought by the
LTTE from Laos, Cambodia and Thailand into
Chittagong, from where they are transported
northward by land to Bhutan. The route from
Kalikhola in Bhutan to Cox's Bazar passes through
northern Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya, and on into
Chittagong.
Note
India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands comprise more than 500
islands lying 1,000 kilometers east of Sri Lanka
in the Bay of Bengal. Stretching 750 kilometers
from end to end, they reach from near the coast of
Myanmar almost to Sumatra in Indonesia. The Ten
Degree Channel divides the Andamans, which are the
larger and more heavily populated northern
islands, from the 20 or so Nicobar Islands in the
south. On South Andaman, the most heavily
populated island, is Port Blair, which is the
capital and the only large town in the entire
archipelago. Travel to the Nicobar Islands is
forbidden to non-Indians, and they are also not
allowed in some parts of South Andaman Island.
Ramtanu Maitra writes for a
number of international journals and is a regular
contributor to the Washington-based EIR and the
New Delhi-based Indian Defense Review. He also
writes for Aakrosh, India's defense-tied quarterly
journal.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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