Thousands die as Asia's wars slog into new year

Thousands die as Asia's wars slog into new year

Shaun Tandon, Agence France-Presse, 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 kilometers (1,200 miles) away.

Cease-fires 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 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 some 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.

Similar figures are reported in Nepal, where 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.

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 Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

But it is the local nature of the insurrections that makes
them so difficult to quell.

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.

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
cease-fire.

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 Gen. 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 dialog 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.