It is the isi’s other front. The seven northeastern states and the north Bengal corridor leading to these states have been increasingly targeted by the Pakistani agency for carrying out subversive activities and fuelling discontent. Confessions by two recently arrested field officers of the isi along with two top activists of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (hum) in Guwahati sheds considerable light on the plans that the isi has drawn up for creating trouble in the Northeast.
According to Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the isi has identified his state and its neighbours as potential areas where it can recruit disaffected Muslim youth, train them in various subversive and terrorist activities and supply the existing militant groups with arms and equipment. The isi aim is to foment trouble in the Northeast in general and Assam in particular, Mahanta told a press conference in Guwahati last week, after the arrest. Among those picked up: Mohammed Shafi Ullah Husseini and Mohammed Javed Wakhar, assistant field officers of the isi, and two activists of hum, Maulana Hafeez Mohammed Akram Mallick from Kupwara in Kashmir and Qari Salim Ahmed from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The last named was the leader of the group and has been on the most-wanted list of Indian security agencies.