They may not be getting any direct support from China’s security agencies, but PLA, PREPAK and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) do have informal representatives in Ruili and other border towns in western Yunnan. Moreover, India’s security authorities are well aware of the presence those rebels still have in China. While India may be reluctant to return to the pre-2019 era of mutual suspicion, analysts say it will be difficult for India to ignore the new alliances recently forged between the northeastern rebels and the Tatmadaw. It remains to be seen what consequences the Manipur ambush will have on future India and Myanmar relations. The others came from China, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Significantly, India was also among eight countries that sent a representative - its military attaché - to attend the Myanmar Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyitaw on March 27. Immediately after the coup, India’s army chief, Manoj Mukund Naravane, stated that a “series of operations” together with the Tatmadaw “has witnessed growing cooperation and synergy between the soldiers on ground with reasonable operational dividends.” Rawat then stated that India needs to closely monitor the emerging situation in Myanmar where China, he said, is making further inroads after international sanctions were re-imposed on the country after the February 1 coup: “The BRI of China is bound to get further impetus with the sanctions on Myanmar.” India’s chief of defense staff General Bipin Rawat stated that publicly at a July 24 military webinar on “Opportunities and Challenges in North East India.”
Russia is among them but its motivations are largely commercial as Myanmar is a major buyer of Russian-made military equipment.Ĭhina has vital geostrategic interests in Myanmar facilitated by its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and India’s reluctance to condemn the coup stems largely from its concern Beijing will leverage the crisis to consolidate its regional ambitions. Since the coup, Myanmar is again isolated and has few foreign allies. Much to New Delhi’s chagrin, Myanmar authorities often denied the existence of such camps. Myanmar’s inability or unwillingness to uproot those rebel sanctuaries has been a persistent thorn in the side of the two neighbor’s bilateral relations, contributing to mutual distrust and suspicion over the years.Ī map depicting where northeast India meets Myanmar. Those Naga groups also benefited from a supply of arms from China until Beijing’s policy of supporting them changed in the 1980s. Naga rebels from the Indian side have had bases in Myanmar’s Naga Hills since the Indian army drove them across the border in the 1970s. Those groups, too, have long enjoyed sanctuaries on the Myanmar side of the border. The MNPF is a small group of ethnic Naga militants which operates separately from the main National Socialist Council of Nagaland (or Nagalim) followed by the various initials of their respective leaders.
All of the Meitei rebel outfits seem to combine a leftist agenda with demands for Manipuri independence from India.
The PLA carried out a number of attacks in the Imphal valley, the Meitei-inhabited heartland of Manipur, before splitting up into different factions and the remnants retreated across the Myanmar border.īesides the RPF/PLA, there are several other Meitei rebel groups, among them the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK), the United National Liberation Front, and the Kangleipak Communist Party. Its founders were originally trained by the Chinese in a military camp near Tibet’s capital Lhasa. The PLA, the armed wing of the Revolutionary People’s Front (RPF), has been active among the Meiteis since the 1970s. The Tatmadaw’s use of such proxy armies is bound to intensify, local sources say, as its manpower becomes increasingly stretched as even usually calm central regions of the country have become battlefields since the coup.
#MYANMAR MILITARY PRO#
In quid pro quo return, they have apparently been allowed to maintain safe havens on the Myanmar side of the border.Īn obscure outfit known as the Zomi Revolutionary Army, presumably an ethnic Chin or Mizo outfit, attacked a camp set up by anti-coup forces in Tedim, Chin State, in late September.
#MYANMAR MILITARY PDF#
Rebels from Manipur’s majority Meitei population are known to have attacked PDF units in the Tamu area of the Sagaing Region, opposite Moreh in India’s Manipur. Now, it seems that the Tatmadaw is not only again tolerating the presence of the rebel groups in Myanmar’s border areas, but is also using them to fight anti-military People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) resistance groups that have spread across the country since the coup. Indian troops on patrol in Manipur in northeastern India in a file photo.