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Indian troops poised to
enter Myanmar
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Cooperation between the security forces of India and Myanmar in
countering anti-India rebels based in Myanmar is poised to enter bold new
phase, with the countries discussing joint counter-insurgency operations inside
Myanmar - a move fraught with pitfalls.
The Myanmar military's operations against Indian insurgents in the mountainous
region between the Arakan range and the Irrawady have by all accounts reached a
dead-end. Apparently, the ill-equipped Myanmar army has not been able to
withstand the superior firepower of the insurgents.
According to reports in the India-based Public Affairs Magazine, Myanmar's
military ruler General Than Shwe has requested the Indian government for
emergency military supplies for his beleaguered troops. Than has reportedly
asked for helicopters, helicopter gunships, heavy rockets, navigation equipment
and global positioning system devices.
While India is willing to supply the equipment, it is concerned that Myanmar's
security forces are not trained to use the equipment. India apparently has
communicated this concern to Myanmar and, as a way to overcome the problem,
suggested that the equipment be deployed in joint operations with the Indian
military.
Cooperation between India's and Myanmar's security forces in counter-insurgency
operations has grown dramatically in recent years, especially since late last
year when Than visited Delhi. During that visit he assured Delhi that he would
not allow his country to be used by anti-India militant groups active in
India's restive northeast, which is a cauldron of ethnic and tribal conflicts
and secessionist insurgencies.
About 40 armed insurgent groups with a collective strength of over 15,000 are
fighting Indian security forces here. Inter-group bloodletting is sometimes as
serious as the fighting against the Indian forces. Several of these insurgent
groups, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the National
Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland-Khaplang faction (NSCN-K) , have set up bases and training camps in
neighboring Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
India has been trying to get its neighbors to close down the camps and flush
out the militants from their sanctuaries. In December 2003, under considerable
pressure from India, the Royal Bhutan Army launched military operations against
camps in southern Bhutan along the India-Bhutan border. Some 30 camps belonging
to the ULFA, the NDFB and the Kamtapur Liberation Organization and others were
closed down and about 600 insurgents were killed. While the actual operations
were carried out by Bhutanese forces, India played a quiet role planning the
moves, supplying weaponry, helping transport casualties and so on.
India's requests to Bangladesh to deny anti-India militants sanctuary on its
soil have evoked no cooperation from the Bangladesh government. India is said
to have provided Dhaka with details of the location of 194 training camps, but
the latter has simply denied their existence.
Myanmar's response to India's requests for action on insurgent camps falls
somewhere between that of Bhutan and Bangladesh. It has not denied the
existence of anti-India insurgent groups on its soil. But its relations with
India are not as warm as those between India and Bhutan, so it has been less
willing to accept India's overtures for joint operations.
For decades, insurgent groups like the ULFA, the NSCN-K, the United National
Liberation Front (UNLF), the People's Liberation Army and the People's
Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak have run their operations from bases and
training camps on Myanmar's side of the 1,664-kilometer India-Myanmar border.
For many years, the military junta in Myanmar supported these insurgent groups,
partly because it saw them as useful to pressure India, which was openly
supportive of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy movement. Besides, there have
been accusations in the past that sections in the military have strong
interests in the lucrative arms-narcotics trade in the region, and have thus
been reluctant to act against the insurgent groups as they are vital parts of
the narcotics network.
In the mid-1990s, Delhi, driven by concerns over China's growing influence in
Myanmar, began wooing the generals. This was also prompted by a realization
that it needed their cooperation to fight the insurgencies in its northeast. It
was only after India corrected its tilt towards the pro-democracy movement that
the military junta signaled its willingness to address India's concerns. And
the junta has made it more than obvious that its help in countering insurgents
would depend on the extent to which Delhi moved away from backing the
pro-democracy movement. This was evident in the mid-1990s when India and
Myanmar launched Operation Golden Bird. Troops from the two countries trapped
scores of northeastern insurgents in a pincer movement on the Mizoram border.
About that time India conferred the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Award for
International Understanding on Suu Kyi. An enraged junta struck back quickly.
It called a halt to the operations and even released scores of insurgents it
had rounded up. Since 2000, relations between the two countries have
stabilized, with India extending Myanmar economic carrots in return for
cooperation from the junta in dismantling insurgent bases in Myanmar.
Counter-insurgency cooperation has grown over the years. It has involved
exchange of intelligence on location of insurgents and co-ordination of
operations on either side of the border.
"When India launches operations on its soil, it alerts the Myanmar military,
which then steps up combing operations in the western hill tracts," an
intelligence official based in Imphal told Asia Times Online. "When the Myanmar
army smashed ULFA bases long the Chindwin River late last year, India sealed
the border in that area. Indian troops in turn have hunted down and evicted
hundreds of Myanmar insurgents from Indian territory. Last month, at least 200
rebels of the Chin National Army were flushed out of Mizoram."
Now it seems that India-Myanmar counter-insurgency cooperation could shift from
coordination to joint operations on Myanmar territory.
The shift would come only if the Myanmar military, which has so far resisted
getting into a tighter embrace with India over counter-insurgency operations,
concedes Delhi's reported demand that the equipment India supplies Myanmar be
deployed in joint operations.
There is a question, too, of whether India should go in for joint operations
inside Myanmar. Unpleasant memories of India's deployment of troops in Sri
Lanka (1987-90) continue to cast a long shadow over India's policy towards
involvement in conflicts in its neighborhood. There is concern that deploying
Indian troops in Myanmar to oversee the use of weaponry could escalate into
them doing the fighting, that this could find Indian soldiers fighting not just
ULFA and other Indian insurgents, but slowly their allies among Myanmar's
warring ethnic and tribal groups. There is a danger of India getting drawn more
and more into Myanmar's internal politics and conflicts. India could end up in
a quagmire that it could have well avoided.
But this is not something India can avoid at this juncture, say proponents of
Indian deployment. "This is not an option any longer," argues a retired Indian
army officer, pointing out, "If India wants to quell the insurgency in the
northeast, the bases in the neighboring countries have to be shut down, and if
Myanmar does not have the equipment and the expertise to do that on its own,
then India should step in. Parallels should not be drawn between the situations
in Myanmar and Sri Lanka as the circumstances are in no way comparable. In
Myanmar, India would be deploying its soldiers to eliminate insurgents who are
a direct threat to India's security and territorial integrity," the retired
army officer told Asia Times Online.
Indeed, in Sri Lanka, Indian security forces went in to do Sri Lanka's dirty
work with regard to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In Myanmar, if India
goes in, it will be doing so to assist the Myanmar military to do India's dirty
work, to do what is in India's security interests.
Senior officers in the Indian armed forces say they are confident that they
will not be stepping into a bottomless pit in Myanmar. They say that unlike the
Sri Lankan situation, where intelligence input was lacking and where deployment
was not planned, in Myanmar the entry of Indian forces - should it happen -
would be gradual and well calibrated.
Meanwhile, India is waiting for the junta's invitation.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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