Fighters from Myanmar civil war aggravate bitter ethnic conflict in India

Indian militant groups that took refuge in Myanmar and fought in its civil war have been streaming back across the border to Manipur state this year, Indian security officers said, inflaming the bitter 19-month ethnic conflict there with weapons and battle-hardened cadres.

This has led to an increase in violence between Manipur's dominant and mostly Hindu Meitei community and the mainly Christian Kuki tribes - a conflict that critics say is the biggest law-and-order failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 11-year-old government. Since May 2023, some 260 people have been killed in the fighting and more than 60,000 displaced.

Nine Indian military and police officers who spoke to Reuters, plus several politicians and rebel sources in Myanmar, described a conflict that is spreading to new areas as militants from the rival groups come across the border to Manipur.

Fighters are equipped with more sophisticated weapons, including rocket launchers, and 20 people were killed in fighting in November alone. In response, the federal government announced it was deploying 10,000 more soldiers in Manipur, taking the total number of troops to nearly 67,000 in addition to the 30,000-strong police force.

The escalation has been accompanied by an increase in crime – mainly extortion and illegal drugs trade – to fund the weapons and operations of the rival factions, the police and military officers said.

"The insurgents who we had controlled about 10 years ago are gaining relevance again," said Yumnam Joykumar Singh, a former Manipur police chief and the state's deputy chief minister between 2017 and 2020.

"Some of them are coming back from Myanmar, some have already come," said Singh, a Meitei, who led operations against Meitei militants in Manipur as a hardline chief of police between 2007 and 2012.

The federal interior ministry, Manipur Police and the Myanmar junta did not respond to requests for comment.

Manipur is a hilly, forested region of 3.2 million people in India's northeast, bordered by Myanmar. The fighting there was sparked last year by a court order that proposed giving the Meiteis, who live in the prosperous Imphal valley region of the state, the same government benefits as those given to historically disadvantaged Kukis, who live in the more-impoverished hills.

Security forces have manned a buffer zone between the two groups to try to limit the violence.

The state has a history of insurgencies and in recent decades many militants fled across the porous border following military crackdowns.

ON RIVAL SIDES

Security officers said Meitei groups have been fighting on the side of the ruling junta in Myanmar's civil war and an estimated 2,000 of their cadres had been camping in Myanmar's Sagaing region, just across the border from Manipur, as of December.

They have fought anti-junta rebels like the People's Defence Force - Kalay (PDF-K) and the Kuki National Army - Burma in Sagaing, Kachin and Chin areas of northern Myanmar, Indian security officers and tribal leaders said.

The Kukis, meanwhile, have support from the Kachin rebels and have bought weapons from Myanmar's semi-autonomous Wa state, according to three Indian officers, several tribal leaders and a PDF-K source in Myanmar.

Some Meitei groups had operated from camps within Myanmar with the support of the military, but were now scattered along the frontier and going back into Manipur, said Sui Khar, vice chairman of the rebel Chin National Front, an anti-junta rebel outfit that operates in Chin state.

"They closely collaborated with the Burmese army in operations against us," he told Reuters in a telephone call.

The Indian military and police officers said it was difficult to assess the number of militants who have returned to Manipur.

But more than 100 Meitei insurgents, including some intercepted by Indian authorities at the Myanmar border, were arrested in Manipur last year and more than 200 this year, according to a security officer and government data reviewed by Reuters.

About 50 Kuki insurgents were arrested in the same period, the data shows.

"Manipur was a problem, and now you have the Myanmar problem also coming in," Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi said in October. "The battle lines are getting hardened".

In February, India announced plans to fence its 1,600 km (995 mile) border with Myanmar.

EXTORTION, DRUGS

Rival fighters are now equipped with rocket launchers, machine guns, sniper and assault rifles, including foreign-made M16s, M4A1s and AK-47s, according to seizure announcements by the military and the Manipur police.

While many of the weapons being used in Manipur were looted from state armouries in the initial months of the conflict, the more sophisticated weapons were brought in from Myanmar mostly this year, the officers said.

"These are two distinct conflicts, one for freedom from military rule, and another an internal ethnic conflict largely inflicted by one side on another," said Gautam Mukhopadhaya, India's ambassador to Myanmar between 2013 and 2016.

"With raging conflicts going on side by side, it can be assumed that some weapons transfers and trade in arms takes place."

About 1,500 illegally imported arms are estimated to be in Manipur's Meitei-dominated valley area, and about 2,000 in the hills where most Kukis live, the Indian officers said, based on details from arrested insurgents.

These arms are in addition to about 5,000 government weapons that were stolen by Meitei groups, and about 1,000 by Kukis, the officers said.

Authorities have since recovered 3,000 weapons, including around 2,000 of those stolen, Manipur government officials told media in November.

Besides extortion, the security officers said some of the funding for the arms comes from illegal poppy plantations, which the state government has attempted to curb in recent years.

"Poppy farms are in the hills, but processing also happens in the valley, and we have seen that field labour can be from any community, protected by armed men," said Homen Thangjam, a political science professor at the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University.

"Who pays them to grow is a mystery."