Indo-Myanmar relations and Northeast India: Peace, Security and Development
- Part 2 -

Subir Bhaumik *

*** A lecture delivered by Subir Bhaumik on the occasion of MOSAIC festival in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Dated January 22, 2016

In November 2001, the Burmese army raided four Manipuri rebel bases, rounded up 192 rebels and seized more than 1600 weapons. Surprisingly, the Burmese later released these rebels including UNLF chief Rajkumar Meghen. While the Burmese junta claims that they attacked Khaplang's base area in December 2004 and killed nearly 100 rebel fighters, they are unable to explain why they released the Meitei insurgents in 2001 and are not cracking down on their bases now.

The Naga bases are located in much more difficult terrain than those of the Manipuri groups or the ULFA. It could well be that the Nagas are Burmese nationals whose demand for being a part of Greater Naga state is seen as a threat to Burmese sovereignty by the military junta. The Manipuri and the Assamese rebels do not covet Burmese territory – they are temporary guests and the junta can leverage their presence to bargain with India

As India's relations with Burma improved in the mid-nineties, the Burmese army even participated in a joint operation 'Golden Bird' in April-May 1995. The 57 Indian Mountain Division was blocking a large rebel column of more than 200 NSCN, ULFA and Manipuri fighters who had picked up a huge consignment of weapons south of Cox's Bazar (on the Bangladesh coast) and was moving through the Mizoram-Burma border towards Manipur.

But, as India awarded the Nehru Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese junta pulled out of the joint operation, allowing the trapped rebel column to escape. An upset Indian eastern army commander, Lieutenant General H.R.S. Kalkat remarked later: 'India should leave its Burma policy to the army. We are soldiers, they (Burmese junta) are soldiers and our blood is thicker than the blood of bureaucrats.'

During the BJP's tenure in power, the military-to-military relations between India and Burma improved dramatically. Burmese military chief, General Maung Aye visited India twice, once to meet the regional commanders at Shillong and then to meet his counterpart in Delhi. Indian Army chief, General V.P. Malik visited Rangoon twice in January and July 2000. During Maung Aye's second visit to Delhi, India and Burma signed an agreement for 'increased cooperation to tackle cross -border terrorism and drugs trafficking.' A BBC analyst wrote of this visit: 'While India was successful in getting Burma to make arrangements for conducting joint military operations against the rebel groups in future, Burma managed to strike deals for supply of military gear.

Ever since this agreement, the Burmese troops occasionally claimed attacking Khaplang's bases often without being able to dislodge him from the Tepak mountains. The Indians have obliged Burma by cracking down on Chin and Arakanese rebel bases. In 1998, the Indian military betrayed the National Unity Party of Arakans (NUPA), by drawing a large contingent led by their military wing chief, Khaing Raza, to the Landfall islands in the Andamans. Six NUPA leaders, including Raza, were later shot dead. 34 of these Arakanese guerrillas are still lodged in a prison at Port Blair, charged with gunrunning. The army is so far stonewalling investigations into this controversial 'Operation Leech'.

Operation Leech marked the end of India's limited cultivation of the Burmese rebel groups and pro-democracy coalitions that had climaxed in the covert quid pro quo between Indian intelligence and the Kachin rebels. After the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) became the main source of training and weapons for all northeastern rebel groups, India's external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), cultivated the KIA for six long years, supplying them weapons and even allowing them to carry a limited trade in jade and precious stones using Indian territory. The KIA stopped aiding and abetting the Northeast Indian rebel groups after its chief, Maran Brangsein, met the RAW chief in Delhi twice.

India is now strengthening its military-to-military understanding with Myanmar for tackling her northeastern rebels after having tried to contain them through an understanding with the Burmese ethnic rebel groups like the KIA in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Burma has so far neither agreed to joint operations suggested by India nor obliged her by undertaking a comprehensive Bhutan-style operation along her western borders.

The Thein Sein worked out a ceasefire with Khaplang's NSCN faction in 2012 which has remained in effect despite Khaplang breaking off his ceasefire with India in March 2015, after which he launched attacks on Indian forces and Delhi claims having attacked one of his bases inside Myanmar. Khaplang and ULFA's Paresh Barua have spearheaded the formation of an anti-Indian rebel coalition called ULFSWEA which has four groups -- NSCN-K, ULFA (I) .KLO and NDFB (S).

The Meitei groups, though they cooperate with Khaplang and even stage joint attacks, have not joined the coalition. India is pushing Myanmar to (a) force Khaplang to discontinue his attacks on Indian forces (b) do away with the UNLFSWEA and push out other anti-Indian rebel groups from his area of influence in Sagaing (c) to join the process of development that could be undertaken with Indian funding of the backward tracts of Sagaing (d) to help the area develop to end its remoteness because India does want a major rebel formation hovering over an area through which is trying to develop its multi modal connectivity to Myanmar and the rest of south-east Asia.

India's troubled Northeast sits on the western corner of Burma's infamous Golden Triangle, one of the two largest opium producing regions in the world. The International Narcotics Control Bureau (INCB), in a global report, has said that more than 70% of the amphetamines available worldwide are produced in countries around the Golden Triangle, particularly Burma. The INCB report ranks Burma as second to Afghanistan in opium production, but this position could well change in a year or two.

It says international pressure compelled Burma's military rulers to undertake tough anti-drug measures that led to a 40 to 50% fall in Burma's opium production from the peak of around 2500 tonnes in 1996 to around 1700 tonnes in 2001 after a ten-fold increase in between 1976 and 1996. Between 1985 and 1995, Burma's heroin output rose from 54 tonnes to 166 tonnes. By all indications, this could now rise again after reaching a plateau or a marginal drop in the last seven years.

What is more worrying about the 'Golden Triangle' is the eight-time rise in the production of amphetamines from an estimated 100 million tablets in 1993 to 800 million tablets in 2002. Amphetamines are cheap and popular as performance-enhancing drugs, as much in demand in Calcutta or Delhi as in London or New York. Recent huge seizures of amphetamine tablets in Northeast India clearly indicates that India has more to worry about Burma than just insurgency. Heroin and amphetamines are likely to find their way into Indian cities and border towns on a much larger scale than ever before.

Two important developments have taken place in the 'Golden Triangle' that augurs ill for India: First, traditional drug lords like Khun Sa have been eclipsed by ethnic rebel armies like the United Wa State Army in the Triangle. The Wa formed the bulk of the fighting force of the Burmese Communist Party until they revolted against the Burmese commissars in the late 1980s. The once strong BCP just withered away and its Wa fighters took to drugs. Now, the UWSA monopolises the amphetamine output to the extent that a Time magazine cover described the Wa as the 'speed tribe'.

Second, the Wa monopoly over amphetamines has forced traditional drug lords like Khun Sa to reinforce their control over the heroin output. Khun Sa has tried to establish monopoly on the heroin export routes to Laos and Thailand from the Golden Triangle. Three years ago, he imposed a hefty 60% 'profit tax' on smaller cartels, forcing at least three of them to relocate their drug refineries to the borders with India's Northeast and China's Yunnan province.

These three cartels – headed by Zhang Zhi Ming (former BCP officer), Lo-Hsin Nian and the Wei brothers – have between 14 to 18 refineries in western Burma, mostly in the Sagaing division and the Chin Hills but some as far low down as the Arakans.14

To be continued...

* Subir Bhaumik is a veteran journalist and author on India's northeast. Both his books " Insurgent Crossfire: Northeast India" and "Troubled Periphery: Crisis of India's Northeast" have been well acclaimed. His next book " Agartala Doctrine: Proactive Northeast in Indian foreign policy" is being published by the Oxford University Press. Bhaumik is a former Queen Elizabeth House fellow of Oxford University, a Senior Fellow at East-West Centre (Washington) and an Eurasian fellow at Frankfurt University. He was BBC's bureau chief for East and Northeast India for 17 years and worked for Reuters, PTI and Ananda Bazar Group of Calcutta before that since 1980. Now he works as senior editor for the Dhaka-based bdnews24.com and doubles up as Consulting Editor for Myanmar's Mizzima Newsgroup. He writes Opinion pieces in leading Indian newspapers like Hindu, Telegraph, Times of India and Hindustan Times and also for Al Jazeera and BBC. He is also involved in full time research as Senior Fellow of the Calcutta-based Centre for Studies in International Relations & Development (CSIRD) and has written detailed policy papers for Observer Research Foundation, Calcutta Research Group and Singapore's ISAS