JOURNAL: Exporting Disruption to India

To find the latest in system disruption and open source warfare, let's jet to the rural state of Assam in the northeast corner of India. Assam is a net oil exporter. It produces over 50% of India's domestically produced oil (it was also one of the first places in the world where oil was found). Despite this oil wealth, Assam's 26 million citizens have fared poorly economically and unemployment runs high. Ongoing neglect by the central government has spurred a widespread movement for independence. However, like Iraq, a diverse set of over two dozen guerrilla groups (ULFA, NDFB, BLT, UPDS, DHD, KLO, HPCD, etc.) have formed along the state's numerous social fault lines.

Last weekend, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) turned to systems disruption in its war with India. System disruption has been proven to be a more effective means of coercing nation-states than body-count centric terrorism. The development of this increasingly popular method of warfare has been catalyzed by the war in Iraq. In a single day, ULFA disrupted a broad range of strategic and tactical targets (an impressive operation):

• Two Oil India oil pipelines (huge fires and the subsequent repairs have shut down operation of the 1,150 km pipeline system used to carry oil to the refinery in Bahir),
• a gas pipeline (which fed a power plant),
• power installations (2 transformers that caused a blackout),
• and railway tracks (used to carry oil to the rest of India).

ULFA now has the opportunity to create a community of groups that will wrest control of the state from India. With this attack, it has decisively demonstrated to the other groups in Assam that large scale disruption is not only possible, but effective. This makes these attacks a plausible premise for cooperative open source warfare. Additional attacks will prompt a harsh government crackdown (a common enemy) and provide the requisite economic distress (which drives people towards primary loyalties and into the arms of guerrilla gangs) necessary to fuel the war. If our experience with Columbia and Iraq serve as a guide, this may become the next major failure of nation-state control. All the elements are there.