Understanding Indian’s Strategic State and the Myanmar high intensity civil war
Manipur and Burma had long shared animosity starting with Manipur King Pakhangba in 33 AD1 . Invasions from Burma came after King Bayinuang (1551-81) from 1648-92. King Bhagyachandra the king of Manipur died in 1799.After his death a war of succession broke out and it gave the Burmese a golden opportunity to meddle in the affairs of Manipur.Shanti Das Gosain was a Vaishnavite preceptor who converted king Pamheiba to Vaishnavism in 1717 CE. However, Vaishnavism in Manipur reached its zenith during King Bhagyachandra. Immediately after King Bhagyachandra promoted Vaishnavism, it came into conflict with the local Meitei form of worship and script. Before the advent of Vaishnavism in the 18th century, the local Meitei people of Manipur practised their own religion called ‘Sanamahism’. After Bhagyachandra brought in orthodox Vaishnavism, that caused this traditional religion to disappear due to lack of regal patronage
Things reached a stage when by mid nineteenth century the Kathes constituted a quarter of the population of Ava.The Burmese used to refer the Manipuris as Kathes. Manipur after the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826, at the conclusion of the first Anglo-Burmese war, came under British control. The Burmese rule from 1819 to 1826 in Manipur is still remembered in Manipur as “Chahi Taret Khuntakpa”. The Burmese committed the worst genocide in history by decapitation and using gas chambers of burnt chillies to kill people. The population of Imphal valley that was over four million dropped to thousands. People were carried away to Burma, and the Burmese wanted to annihilate the very basis of Manipuri civilization. Many Manipuris fled to Assam to escape the blood thirsty and inhuman Burmese atrocities. But it was only in 1891 that the kingdom of Manipur lost its independent status and was annexed by the British. With a total land area of 22,327 sq km, the hills cover 90 percent of the area.
Manipuri insurgency from the early 1964 with the formation of Meitei insurgent group UNLF (United National Liberation Front) the Meitei nationslism was on the rise. In the year 1978 PLA(People’s Liberation Army)was formed. With its founding the Imphal valley saw unprecedented violence. Groups with varying leftist ideology were formed alongside PLA included the PREPAK (The People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak) and KCP (Kangleipak Communist Party). All these groups have made Manipur a tinderbox that may implode, given the resistance of the local population to the relentless counter-insurgency operations that have left deep scars in the society. The movement of cross border drugs and militant activities had debilitating effect on the social fabric of the state. The rise of NSCN(IM) the Naga group and the early 1990s Kuki and Naga ethnic strife kept the ethnic pot boiling. Sharing neighbours with Myanmar was not making things easy for Manipur.
Myanmar is no stranger to civil war. From the birth of the then Burma in 1948 ethnic entities have fought protracted war with the Burmese army. The present junta ruled Myanmar, that took power in Feb 2021, plunged the country into Civil war. On one side the EAO (Ethnic Armed Organizations) are fighting the junta by forming a NUG (National Unity Government). Even as the civil war rages the shadow economy of drugs from Northern Myanmar are dwarfing the formal economy. The shadow economy is mostly in the hands of Chinese drug mafia, who taking advantage of the civil war are now setting up drug laboratories close to the Indian border of Manipur and Mizoram. Both the states share nearly a thousand kilometers of border with Myanmar. The hills of Manipur are beginning to witness increasing poppy cultivation. This is the backdrop when two major communities the Meiteis and Kukis of Manipur turned against each other and Manipur erupted in flames.
Myanmar was interminably in terminal ever since it got independence in 1948. At birth the country consisting of Karens, Ravenna, Kachins, Shans, Chins, Mon and Arakanese were up in arms against the majority ethnic Burmese, now Barmars. The Karens took up arms, followed by Kachins and Chins. The Chins living next to the Indian border state of Manipur and Mizoram started an insurgency against the Burmese government after Ne win seized power in 1962, the anti-insurgents operation intensified against the EAOs.
Parallel to the fight against EADs the Burmese military had to fight the drug cartels, mostly of ethnic Chinese origin in the Northern Myanmar’s Shan state. The Kokang region in the Shan state dose to China-Burma border saw the rise of drug cartels, arming their private armies to carry on their opium cultivation. With the arrival of Khun Sa, heroin trade from the Golden Triangle, famous 77,000 sq miles tri-junction of Burma, Thailand and Laos, took a menacing turn.
Tonnes of heroin, made in Labs of Shan State with precursor chemically like pseudoephedrine, smuggled out of China and Thailand, converted the opium poppy into no 4 Heroin, the purest form of heroin in the world. Khun Sa earned millions of dollars by shipping of heroin across the world, and maintaining a huge army.
The most serious threat to China, from Burma came in form of KMT (Chinese Nationalists also known as Kuomintang) forces, who are swon enemy of Chinese PLA Thousands of KMT forces took shelter in the hull of Shan State and started to equip them armies with the narcotics trade. That was 1960s, the Burmese military ruler Ne Win, took on the KMT anti-Chinese forces, to curry Chinese favour from the early 1970s, and in these operation chased the KMT to Thailand. In 1988, Ne Win was ousted in a pro- democracy movement and Aung San Suu kyi swept power. The democrats had an uneasy relationship with the drug trade, where Myanmar government cracked on Chinese cartel of La Hsien Han who replaced Khun Sa.
The displacement of KMT inside Thailand, was replaced by BCP (Burmese Communist Party). A pro-Chinese entity, that fought the Burmese army from middle 1970s. But on 1989, the Communist Party imploded in the Headquarter at Pangshang, in the Shan state. It broke along ethnic lines, with the Wa, who made up majority of the Communist guerillas formed an outfit called UWSA (United Wa State Army). The most curious fact was not the implosion of Communist insurgency that China wanted to do away with, but the presence of a formidable drug baron Wei in the UWSA backers. Now, UWSA is a thirty thousand strong standing army, and the sole binefactor of the Golden Triangle narcotics trade. The military junta that captured power in 2021 had the UWSA, sitting in the fence, whereas other EAOS are taking up arms against the junta.
From May 2021, the EAOs of Myanmar are waging a war of attrition against the military junta, and the NLD (National League for Democracy) under Aung San Suu kyi’s and underground NUG (National Unity Government) are now the sworn enemies of the junta. Among the prominent EAOS, the Chins are organised under Chin National Orgaisations / Chin National Defence Forces (CNO/ CNDE)s. The Chin Land Joint Defence Committee. (CDJDC) consisted to 18 different Chin defence organizations. The NUG military strategy of PDFs was to bring unity among the disparate FAOS, to form a “Federal Army”.
The fight against the military junta by the EAOS are multilayered. They are on a wide array of local militias low called PDFs (Peoples Democratic Forces) that are in the forefront of the fight against the junta. By 2022 there were 300 PDF battalions, with 200 to 500 troops each, working with different EADS and working under the NUG. The PDFS operated under the NUGs Central Command and Coordination Committee (C3C) that is backed up the EAOS. The Indian state of Manipur sharing an 398 km long border with Myanmar is currently in turmoil as the majority Hindu Meitei community and the Kuki tribe residing in the hills are engaged in a bloody fend that rendered over forty thousand homeless and over 100 dead.
When a Meitei village was torched at Torbung on 3rd May 2023, it provided the first spark of the unrest. The same day a hundred odd kilometeres from Torbung, a unity march was underway in Churachandpur, a Kuki majority district. The Kuki Chin group dominated Churachandpur who are Christians took out a rally under the ATSUM (All Tribal Student Union, Manipur along with ITLF (Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum), Manipur could find traction within the Zumi community, that are averse to the idea of granting ST status to the majority Meiteis. The N Biren Singh led BJP government of Manipur continued its “war on drugs” that was mostly poppy cultivation dotting the hills of Manipur, particularly the southern Kuki inhabited districts of Manipur and Senapati in the north. Between 2013 and 2016 GOM (Government of Manipur) could destroy 1889 acres of poppy cultivation in the hills, through its NAB (Narcotics and Affairs of Border) department. (The Frontier Manipur dated 24th May 2023) NAB Department of Manipur reports that between April and June 2019 a total of 963 drug traffickers were arrested in Manipur while destroying 3716 acres of illegal poppy plantation. N Biren Singh formed his first BJP led government in 2017 and his second term started from 21 March 2022. The official toll of the flare up on 3rd May kept rising as fighting continued between the Hindu Meitei living in the Imphal valley and the Christian Kukis that reside in the six hills districts of the total sixteen districts of Manipur. The Meiteis account for 45-49 percent of the state population of 33 lakhs. The Kukis are a million plus population. The Kuki Chin Mizo or the Zomi group straddle both side of the Indo Myanmar border, with Churachandpur as the most populous of the Kuki inhabited district, sharing borders with Mizoram which is also of the same Kuki Chin Mizo ethnicity. The Mizo National Front bade farewell to arms when the MNF (Mizo National Front) bade farewell to arms in 1986. The MNF leader Zoramrhanga is heading the MNF led government in Mizoram currently. The traction the combination of instability in Myanmar, the nexus of Drug cartles and the insurgent groups of Kukis which are joining CNO who are of shared ethnicity and finding sanctuary in Myanmar’s Chin hills, come at a time when it is widely believed that the role of such Kuki groups and the PDFs in the current Manipur Crisis. From the national security point of view the narco terrorist forces could not have a more redoubtable way to demonstrate its capacity to take on the monopoly of State violence in the scale that the state government came to a complete standstill for nearly a month. The arrival of Union Home Minister Sri Amit Shah to Manipur on 29 May, 2023 could bring hopes that security forces will create conditions of de-weaponizing the state and restore order between warring sides. The Manipur High Court single judge bench of Acting Chief Justice MV Muralidharan passed an order on April 19, that directed the Manipur Government to move the Central Government, to confer ST status to the Meitet community. This High Court order alarmed the Kukis who then went against the State Governnent, as it would be a difficult situation for the Kukis, who enjoy ST status, that it would deprive them of their land and jobs. ST status to the Meiteis, the Kukis perceived would impinge on their autonomy demand.
Conclusion:
The unholy nexus between the drug cartels and NEIGs (North East Insurgent Group)s are as old as Nagaland-Manipur insurgency from 1960s when the Naga Army of Phizo went to China for training in 1965. The Manipuris followed the same route to be trained by the Chinese when Biseswar Singh went to China. While the later generation of Naga groups under Muivah and the PREPAK of Manipur alternately did not reach China, but were trained in Northern Myanmar Kachin region The ULFA took the same route in 1980s. The drug cartels of Shan State in Burma, that is in the infamous Golden Triangle of Northern Burma was the meeting ground of the insurgent drug nexus. Intelligence reports suggest that the NEIGs were made to do patrolling and guarding poppy cultivation in Shan State, in lieu of arms training. The KIA or Kachin Independence Army sourced WWII weapons left by US Army in fighting the Japanese in Burma. In 2009 the KIA were also training the Arakan Army of Rakhine province in Northern Myanmar. Most of the NEIG are deep into the South East Asia arms smuggling racket. The arms dealers fix the deal in Bangkok and the arms are offloaded in the Cox Bazar coast in Bangladesh. The Chittagong port was also used in 2004 by NEIGs. The huge volume of drugs that transit through NEI, an estimate that crosses 50,000 crores the role of insurgent groups of NEI becomes even more important for supply side maintenance.
Ethnic Chinese had always dominated the South EastAsian drug market from Golden Triangle. Currently the UWSAor United Wa State Army controls the Shan State meth trade. Wei brothers who are linked to the UWSA are subsequently indicted in a US court for drug trafficking. The role of ethnic Chinese like Khun Sa and Haien Han after him ensured the continuity of Chinese nationals in drug trade. The most dangerous cartel of Sam Gor is run by Tse Chi Lop and his Hongkong associate Lee Choy Chuk. The military coup of 2021 February in Myanmar left Myanmar to descend into chaos. The NUG was made up of KIA. Karen insurgent groups and Chin Defence Forces. The UWSA and Arakan Army are not in the NUG camp. The PDFs aligned with the EAOs are taking active combat roles ahead of the regular EAO formations.
The presence of Chin Defence Forces and the PDFs in the Indian border with Manipur are posing a grave security risk to the already dangerous situation inside Manipur. The presence of some Kuki ceasefire groups in the Chin Defence forces may complicate matters. There are sixteen United People’s Front (UPF) – KNO (Kuki National Orgnaization) groups that are in SOO (Suspension of Operation) from 2008. On March 2023 N Biren Singh mulled to break SOO with KNA, KRA and ZRA for issues of cross border narcotics and anti-national activities: