India’s Exposed Eastern Flank

The deep-rooted turmoil due to drugs, land rights, and historical divisions has unleashed chaos in Manipur

 MAJOR GENERAL ATANU K. PATTANAIK (RETD)

ANIPUR IS ON THE boil. As the long simmering MeiteiKuki - Naga ethnic discontent ignited on May 3, 2023 in Churachandpur, the country’s attention was once again diverted to the Northeast. Over the past two months, more than 60 people, including women, have been killed and hundreds injured while some 1,700 houses have been burned down. About 35,000 people were shifted to camps set up by the Assam Rifles and the Army during the violence. Truce brokered by the state government as well the centre have unfortunately been found to be fragile. Sporadic violence, shootings and torching of public and private property including those belonging to ministers often interrupt the uneasy calm. Political parties have jumped in to further muddy the waters and frenzied blame-game is order of the day.

But flareups in the Northeast are nothing new. Dating back to the colonial times, the politics of identity and self-determination have led to internal and external security challenges there. In late fifties, the Nagas led a well-oiled insurgency to gain independence under the umbrella of NSCN, undeniably sponsored by the old colonial powers through camps and operatives in

Myanmar and in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), ably aided by the Pakistan ISI. Then followed insurgencies by the Mizos, the Bodos and the ULFA as well as numerous breakaway groups that used the porous Myanmar borders and their ungoverned provinces combating separatist insurgencies of their own. China has exploited the situation to the hilt by giving sanctuary to fugitives (ULFA chief Paresh Barua is in Yunnan) and facilitating arms supply, some of which ultimately land up with Maoist insurgents in the hinterland.

But without drowning out the current Manipur turmoil in a plethora of historical fault lines and obfuscate what triggered the crisis, let me focus on two immediate sparks that lit up the fire - drugs and land rights.

Drug Menace in the State

Manipur has had a drug problem for decades, thanks to an ancient trade route that connects it to Southeast Asia and therefore to the infamous Golden Triangle. In geographical terms, this is a tri-junction where the Mekong River, at a confluence point, splits the landmasses of three nations—Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. As China gained independence, internal power struggle began between Mao Zedong’s communist Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT soon retreated and two divisions of their army ended up taking refuge in Myanmar’s northern Shan State in 1950.

As the KMT troops in Myanmar assisted by the US waited for an opportunity to regain China, they turned to streamlining poppy cultivation and refining practices already prevalent. Myanmar ultimately complained to the UN, and growing realisation that China could not be retaken led the US to pressure Taiwan to evacuate the KMT from Myanmar. The infrastructures for drugs they left behind were taken over by local warlords. Thus, was born the notorious Golden Triangle.

Manipur became a natural and major transit route for the Golden Triangle drugs. In a state of just about 3 million people, over 30,000 are confirmed drug addicts and most are afflicted with the related HIV/ AIDS too. In the last few years, Manipur became a source and not just a route of