NEW DELHI: Several groups of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) cadres travelled to Pakistan during the 1990s to receive training with the help of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), according to a new book about the spy agency.

HT FILEAuthor Hein G Kiessling writes that Pakistan’s ISI began supplying weapons to Naga militant groups back in the 1960s.

Links between Pakistan and militant groups in India’s northeastern states date back to the 1960s, when the neighbouring country supplied weapons to Naga militants, author Hein G Kiessling writes in his book Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI Of Pakistan.

Kiessling, a historian who forged contacts with Pakistani military and intelligence officials while living in the country between 1989 and 2002, writes there was a temporary halt to weapons supplies after the 1971 war that led to the birth of Bangladesh.

“In 1990, via the Pakistan embassy in Dhaka, the NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) and ULFA developed contacts with the ISI…In January 1991, with the help of the ISI, several high-ranking ULFA leaders travelled to Pakistan to sign a training agreement for ULFA cadres,” he writes.

In 1991, two six-member ULFA groups arrived in Islamabad for training and a third 10-member group followed in 1993. The ISI procured weapons for the northeastern militant groups from countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, from where they were shipped to Bangladesh before being smuggled into India.

Kiessling writes there are indications that the “ISI is still present and active in northeast India”. In August 1999, Assam Police announced the arrest of two ISI officers and two local agents