Drone footage signifies orchestrated attacks
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: June 13, 2023 -

CONSIDERING the tense situation gripping the state for over a month and involvement of armed persons in targeting villages of the rival communities, it seems that the civilians taking up arms to defend their own villages is a reasonable choice.

In the first 2-3 days of the ethnic violence, perpetrators on both sides, mainly civilians, torched houses, vehicles and other structures including places of worship.

However, as the clashes continued, involvement of armed persons came to the fore and the casualty figures rose sharply thereby forcing the civilian population of both communities to take out their licensed firearms for good.

Re-gardless of claims about presence of elements armed with sophisticated weapons among the attackers, shots were mainly fired from shotguns/ scatterguns in the initial days as both parties took extreme care to ensure that the clashes are seen as continuation of the communal riot and not an armed conflict.

However, as the violence showed no signs of ceasing and nature of injuries suffered by security personnel as well as civil-ians pointed to use of automatic weapons, the government acknowledged gravity of situation and started deploying security forces in sensitive areas.

Despite deployment of security forces and conduct of area domination patrolling, torching of villages and firing incidents continued even-tually resulting in evacuation of women, children and elderly to safer locations as the abled bodied holed in at their villages to face the attackers as could be comprehended from armed villagers still maintaining vigil round the clock on rotational basis amid the government authorities claiming that the situation has been stabilising.

Allegations are also rife from both parties with the Meeteis accusing personnel of a particular para-military organisation of aiding the Kuki militants and the Kukis claiming that state forces are hand-in-glove with Meetei groups.

While the latter's charges are yet to be corroborated with hard evidence with exception of quoting eyewit-ness accounts, the recovery of a drone operated by badge-wearing volunteers of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum has confirmed involvement of trained militants in the on-going violence contrary to insistence by Kuki civil societies that the gunfights are due to retaliatory firing by members of village defence guards.

In-spite of the tendency to issue prompt statements of clarifications as and when clashes occur, there are ample evidences that the violent incidents are irrelevant to defending one's turf but more to do with taking the fight to each other's territory.

Therefore, in view of new bunkers built in the vulnerable areas and footages from the recovered drone, which show men armed with AK series and sniper rifles, validating public's apprehension that automatic arm wielding militants are on the prowl to cause collateral damage, it is time that the government authorities give up the notion that the confidence-building measures will bear fruit through the public consultative process only.

While reaching out to the ag-grieved parties will definitely help in easing the tension, it is equally important for the security establishment to concede either violation of the suspension of operation agreement by cadres of Kuki outfits or involvement of mercenaries from any of the neighbouring countries and to acknowledge that expression of threat to the national security is not manufactured narrative of a particular community.