Guwahati Last Friday, 16 senior leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) stood beaming in a gleaming wood-panelled government room, the traditional red-and-white scarf draped around their necks. They formed a single file behind Union home minister Amit Shah and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

The day was significant; it marked the symbolic turning of the page for large chunks of Assam with the signing of a memorandum of settlement between the state and the pro-talks faction of the militant group which was the driver of the state’s violent history for the past 43 years.

The 21-page memorandum holds within it a host of promises from both sides. ULFA has promised to vacate its designated camps, give up arms and disband in a month; the government has promised a special ₹5,000 crore special development package for the state. Yet, buried under the weighty provisions is a paragraph that captures the complexity of insurgent violence in the North-East and hints at how despite the efforts from both sides, closure might be still be some way off.

The paragraph says that the government will give ₹10 lakh as compensation to the families of 31 ULFA cadre who went missing during an operation by the Royal Bhutanese Army in December 2003.

This Operation “All Clear” – the first in Bhutanese history – was aimed at destroying militant camps on its southern borders, urged on by the Indian government. Scores of camps were destroyed, hundreds were killed, and many more people poured back into India. But the 31 who went missing have long been a sticking point in negotiations, with even the pro-talks faction of ULFA, which first began discussions with the Union government in 2011, consistent in the demand that they be traced.

Last week, the government attempted to draw a line under this controversy with the announcement of the compensation. Even as the smaller, more extremist Paresh Baruah faction of ULFA stayed away from the talks, the pact was meant to publicly assuage hurt emotions in a state where illegal immigration continues to be a lightning rod.

The response to the clause about the 31 missing cadres – venerated in Assam – showed, however, that peace was still work-in-progress. Moni Moran, the wife of Prakash Gogoi, a second lieutenant in ULFA who was one of the 31 who went missing, said that the deal “was not what they expected”, and that she still did not believe that her husband was dead. “I was with my husband and 11-month-old daughter when the operation in Bhutan happened. When we left our husbands in Bhutan, they were not hurt. How can we now accept that they have been killed without any proof?” she asked.

The operation

By the early 1990s, repeated offensives by Indian security agencies, including the Assam Police, had driven militant groups across the border including into southern Bhutan. Until December 2003, three armed separatist groups, ULFA, the National Democratic Fund of Bodoland (NDFB), and the Kamtapur Liberation Oganisation, operated from the region’s dense forests. For a decade, Bhutan attempted to negotiate with the groups, but after several rounds of talks failed, it launched a military operation named “All Clear” on December 15, 2003, to clear its land of these camps.

“Today, Bhutan is faced with the most difficult period in its recent history, as its security forces have launched operations to flush out militants from the country,” said a statement by the Bhutanese foreign ministry that day.

The ministry said it was “particularly sensitive” to India’s security concerns and that separatists use their camps to “train their cadre, store arms and ammunition, and to launch surprise attacks” inside India. “ULFA has 13 camps, NDFB 12 camps and the KLO 5 camps,” the ministry said.

It acknowledged that the presence of the camps had led to “misperceptions” that had implications on the “excellent bilateral relations with India which are of the highest important for the Royal Government and the Bhutanese people”.

“After six years of consistent and strenuous efforts to find a peaceful solution, the process of peaceful dialogue had been fully exhausted, and the Royal Government was left with no option but to give the Royal Bhutan Army the responsibility of removing the militants from Bhutan,” the foreign ministry said.

Within days, the Royal Bhutan Army laid siege to the separatist camps, triggering an exodus; many cadre, their wives and children trekked for days making their way back to India. An Indian ministry of home affairs annual report of 2004-05 recorded this flight. “Bhutan has been sensitive to our security concerns as evidenced by recent Royal Bhutanese Army (RBA) operations against Indian insurgents groups camps in Bhutan on December 15, 2003. As result of these operations, about 650 cadres of ULFA, NDFB and KLO have been neutralised. Besides, a large number of arms and ammunition have also been seized. RBA has destroyed the reported 22 camps of the Indian insurgent groups.”

The ones who went missing

By 2004, this operation had inflamed passions across Assam and emerged as a sticking point between ULFA, then unified, and the Union government. The group alleged that 31 cadres had gone “missing” during Operation All Clear, and alleged that they were either captured or held hostage by the Royal Bhutan Army.

A year later, the wives of the missing ULFA militants filed a petition in the Gauhati high court, asking for the whereabouts of the missing men.

“The application was disposed of in 2009 following an affidavit that there was no record of Bhutanese officials handing over the missing persons to Indian authorities following the operation in a neighbouring country,” Bijon Mahajan, the advocate for the petitioners, said.

Two years later, in 2007, five women went on a hunger strike, which was reluctantly withdrawn after a ministerial delegation met them, and the then Tarun Gogoi government told the Assam assembly that the state was making efforts to trace the missing leaders.

In 2011, when the pro-talks Arvind Rajkhowa faction split from the Paresh Baruah-led ULFA (Independent), gave up arms and began negotiations with the Union government, one of the principal demands of its 12-point charter was a “status report on missing ULFA leaders and cadres”.

Twelve years later, it is this Rajhkhowa-led faction, which has close to 700 members as opposed to Baruah’s faction that has around 200, that signed the memorandum of settlement.

The agreement, which HT has seen, acknowledges the missing men. “The Government of India, government of Assam and ULFA have made sincere efforts over the years to trace out the cadres of ULFA who went missing from time to time, but without much success.” It then goes on to announce ₹10 lakh compensation to their families on “compassionate grounds”, and a “permanent source of livelihood” to the wives of eight who were married at the time of their disappearance.

Mixed response

For the families of the 31 men, however, the first import of this pact was that their loved one were dead – something no government had acknowledged in the last two decades, and something no one appears ready to hear.

“We cannot accept that they are dead. As a wife, I have the right to know what exactly happened to my husband. My daughter deserves to know what happened to her father. We expected answers from the deal,” said Malini Engtipee, wife of Tarun Phukan, ULFA organising secretary who went missing.

Rajeev Bhattacharyya, journalist and author of two books on ULFA, said that this likely meant that the actual sequence of events that led to the disappearance of the 31 cadre will never be known. “But what is known is that at least some of them were captured alive and spotted at the polytechnic institute in Bhutan by some other ULFA functionaries within a few days of the start of the operation,” he said.

Senior ULFA members that were signatories to the Friday pact said that they had held several meetings with the family members of the 31 missing cadre to convince them that their kin were no longer alive.

“It has been 20 years since that incident and those 31 are dead. If they had been alive, they would have been traced or surfaced in this duration. But the families of those 31 want us to give proof that their dear ones are dead. But from where will we give proof of that now? That is why the 31 have still been termed as missing in the settlement signed with Centre and Assam government,” said ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia, one of the signatories to the settlement.

But the families of the missing men insist that they still want answers; and if not a confirmation of their existence; then clarity on what happened to them.

Friday’s settlement may have exhausted one such avenue for closure, but Monomati Barman, the wife of Abani Sharma, an ULFA lieutenant who went missing, said that their hopes were now pinned on Baruah, the leader of ULFA (Independent) who is yet to sign a peace deal.

“The deal may have brought cheer for the Assamese people, but our demands remain unfulfilled. We are still hopeful. ULFA leaders who signed this one may not have been successful in getting us the details of our husbands, but we expect that Paresh Baruah will bring us some answers in the future,” Barman said.

The embers that inflamed passions in Assam, it appears, are yet not fully extinguished.