Independent Online [South Africa], December 29 2003 at 06:51AM
Asia's forgotten wars slog into new year
New Delhi - As Iraq grabbed world headlines, thousands died in obscurity across Asia
in 2003 as Indonesia and the Philippines battled rebels, communists rampaged
through India and Nepal, and Bhutan launched its first military operation in nearly 140
years.
Dozens of Asian insurgencies, many of them decades-old, seem destined to rage
through 2004 as resolving them remains far from the new year's to-do lists of global
powers.
In India's northeastern hills between Tibet and Myanmar, about 30 rebel groups remain
up in arms for the causes of ethnicities whose names draw blank stares in the capital
New Delhi more than 2 000 kilometres away.
Ceasefires came and went in Aceh on the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and
in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, with troops in both countries vowing by year end
to crush guerrillas.
In Nepal, the army has reported the deaths of around 1 100 Maoist rebels and close
to 300 soldiers or police since peace talks broke down in August.
Similar figures are reported in Aceh, where the military says 1 200 rebels have been
killed since a five-month truce collapsed in May and Indonesia imposed martial law.
It says 300 civilians have also been killed but blames the deaths on the Free Aceh
Movement, which has been fighting for independence since 1976.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, a total of 6 000 people have died since 1999 in
Muslim-Christian battles in two areas: the eastern Maluku islands and Poso in the
South Sulawesi province.
Analysts said such bloodshed goes ignored by the outside world because vital
resources are rarely at stake and the conflicts are seen are purely internal, with no
international dimension save the occasional allegation that rebels are skipping an
unfenced border.
Armed insurgents are active in 14 of India's 28 states. But the foremost issue for New
Delhi policymakers is Kashmir where Muslim rebels are fighting to join India's historic
rival Pakistan.
"The rest (of India's insurgent groups) are just disparate movements seeking to
secede," said Bharat Kharnad, a research professor at the Centre for Policy Research
in New Delhi.
But it is the local nature of the insurrections that makes them so difficult to quell.
Throughout Asia, guerrillas armed with looted or smuggled weapons have exploited
ethnic, religious and caste differences to survive onslaughts by militaries equipped
with the latest hardware.
Kathmandu authorities have little control over vast stretches of Nepal where the
Maoists, claiming to fight on behalf of the poor and ethnically excluded, levy their own
"taxes" and even run their own "people's courts."
In the largely Roman Catholic Philippines, the military has accused the separatist
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) of sheltering extremists at its camps in the south
of the archipelago.
But the quarter-century Muslim separatist conflict showed signs of inching towards
resolution in July when MILF entered a ceasefire.
Despite sporadic clashes under the truce, the 11 900-strong rebel group is slated to
start peace talks with Manila next year.
Philippine military chief General Narciso Abaya said in October that the truce with the
Muslim separatists would free up his forces to be redeployed against communists
fighting their own decades-long insurrection.
But at year end, a spokesman for President Gloria Arroyo said the Philippine
government was seeking to reopen dialogue with the communist guerrillas.
Peace moves also picked up steam in Nagaland, a northeastern Indian state smaller
than Kuwait where at least 25 000 people have died since 1947.
Naga leaders Thuingaleng Muivah and Isak Chishi Swu made their first trip to New
Delhi in 36 years in January 2003 for negotiations with the Indian leadership.
Elsewhere in the northeast, Bhutan in December made good on six years of threats
against Indian separatists holed up in the kingdom, launching the Buddhist kingdom's
first military campaign since a 1865 war with the British. - Sapa-AFP
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