Post-AFSPA Scenario

ADNI Bureau *

In the groundswell against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was lost an example of what will happen if the law is revoked. Manipur, one of the seven States of the North-east that has been afflicted by insurgency for decades repealed the law in seven districts of Greater Imphal some years ago.

Nonetheless, in Jammu and Kashmir, the campaign against AFSPA is led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah himself after a series of extremely unpleasant instances of atrocities surfaced in quick succession in various parts of the State including that of the murder of two women in Sopian and the killing of three youngsters in a fake encounter in Rajouri. Mr Abdullah is clearly caught between the devil of such atrocities and the deep sea of foreign-instigated terrorism of the jihadi variety.

By all accounts the Armed Forces – the Army, Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF and the local police have together managed to curb terrorism in the State to the point that in many areas the Army which operates under the AFSPA had "thinned out" and were redeployed. The role of the gunweilding terrorists was taken over by stone-throwing young men, women and children where too several cases of killings occurred and lent fuel to fire.

Both the State and Central Governments have begun to rethink the strategy to handle such local violence with the use of new tools like chillie spray to increase the discomfort level of the agitators and to mark out the ringleaders.

Meanwhile in Manipur the hunger-strike by Irom Sharmila Chanu against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is continuing and in the ten years she has been force-fed she has become the long case of hunger-strike anywhere in the world.

In Manipur where the AFSPA was revoked in seven districts of Greater Imphal as an experimental measure local residents complain of a threefold increase in bombings, kidnapping for ransom, extortion and gunfights among members of the different militant groups, largely ethnically opposed to each other. In this relapse into disorder the people are seriously mulling the reimposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to bring to an end what has become a cottage industry of terror and lawlessness.

There is a certain starkness in the contrast between areas where the AFSPA has been revoked and those that are still under its jurisdiction. In the latter, largely coinciding with the hill areas of Manipur (among other "differences" within the Manipuri society there is the distinction between the "hill tribes" and those occupying the undulating foothills) the security forces have maintained a greater semblance of peace and stability through such mechanisms as bilateral ceasefires and Suspension of Operations (SoO) arrangements. But the deep ethnic divides tend to surface occasionally resulting in shootouts.

Nonetheless such incidents are lesser in numbers and intensity than those in the seven designated districts of Greater Manipur from where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act has been removed.

By and large it is a matter of governance and the State Government should have set in place a law and order system supervised by personnel trained in counter-insurgency operations and maintenance of law and order. This is because wherever the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is not in force the responsibility for the maintenance of law and order is that of the police and armed cadres that have the protection of the of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in the execution of their duties.

Methodologies have been laid down for riot control and other disturbances and there are parameters to judge the use of force and the type of equipment required to handle the situation. A Magistrate on the spot decides the calibration of force required to be used from lathi-charge to teargas, water cannon to firing.

In the final resort to gunfire to control the totally out of control (as in communal riots) the norm that is strictly required to be followed is that no one should be shot above the belt. Shooting at the chest and head is considered to be an act of unnecessary use of force.

However, these norms can only apply to rioters not armed with weapons and here the distinction begins to get blurred if the rioters are using catapults to deliver either metal or stone pellets that can be lethal. In a low intensity conflict or proxy war situation where the relative innocuousness of stone throwing degenerates into arson and destruction of public property, security forces have to resort to firing to prevent destruction.

To ensure dispersion of the mob new methods like the use of chillie grenades are being evolved but these will take time to become available at troublespots though the endemic ones can be selected for first deployment so as to reduce the lethality of police action.

In the case of operations conducted by Armed Forces it is generally sought to be glossed over that their deployment has been necessitated because of foreign instigation of insurgencies.

In the North-east China has consistently played dirty with India and even today in spite of frequent denials it is involved in arming, training and moral support to terrorist groups like the United Liberation Front of Asom.

Simultaneously, under the direct instigation of Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani when he was Director-General of the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence the Islamic fundamentalist Sunni terrorists were granted havens and sanctuaries by former Prime Minister Begum Khalida Zia for fomenting Islamist terrorism using Bangladesh as a launchpad. There is, thus, a division of labour between Pakistan and China is fomenting insurgencies against India.

No self-respecting nation can allow itself to be fragmented by deceitful means and India is well within its rights even within the UN Charter to defend its territorial integrity as was brought out by Indian Attorney General to the UN Human Rights Commission that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was a necessary measure to prevent secession in the North-eastern region and the use of such measures on a war footing (because it is war by other means being conducted by inimical neighbours).

He also pointed out, very cogently that there is nothing in international law that allows secessionism especially foreign inspired and the use of terror tactics.