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Map of Northern Myanmar and Northeast India

Throughout the long-running separatist insurgencies in Northeast India, dozens of India-based insurgent groups (Indian ethnic armed organisations (IEAOs)) have been involved in the neighboring conflict in Myanmar, both sheltering in Myanmar from the counterinsurgent Assam Rifles and participating in the conflict itself. Outside of several Indian-led operations, including Operation Golden Bird in 1995, Operation Hot Pursuit in 2015, or Operation Sunrise I and II in 2019, areas in which these insurgent groups are active have scarcely experienced fighting. Several sources claim that the majority of IEAOs are allied, or have some level of understanding, with the ruling military junta of Myanmar, who allows them to maintain bases inside mountainous areas of northern Myanmar, typically in return for the IEAOs attacking anti-junta resistance groups.

History

Background

The Insurgency in Northeast India is the name for the collective insurgencies throughout the "seven sister states" making up Northeastern India. Starting shortly after the British withdrawal from India in 1947, the seven states have been subject to usually violent clashes between the Indian Army with the counterinsurgent and paramilitary Assam Rifles against dozens of secessionist groups. Over 200 tribal groups and subgroups live in the Northeast, with several having long-running historic rivalries.

Historically, the Northeastern states were controlled by the Kingdom of Ahom. From the 13th Century until the 19th Century, the states were ruled by the Ahom Dynasty (excluding Manipur, which was controlled by the Manipur Kingdom). This was until several internal rebellions which severely weakened the kingdom and the Burmese invasions of Assam, which lead Ahom to collapse and become occupied by the Konbaung dynasty. Shortly after, the Burmese had to cede the Northeast to the British East India Company after the First Anglo-Burmese War.

In 1947, after the British withdrawal from the India, several ethnic groups in the Northeast quickly revolted, starting when the Naga declared independence, and spreading to include Mizo, Assamese, Boro, Meitei, Tripuri, Zo/Kuki, and several other smaller ethnic groups.

Indian operations in Myanmar (1990s-2010s)

Operation Golden Bird

Operation Golden Bird was a 2 month long India-Myanmar joint military operation from March to May 1995. The goal of the operation was to cut off a weapon smuggling trail used by several Northeastern rebel groups to smuggle weapons into India's Manipur State. Cadres numbering around 170 of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the People's Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA-M), and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) planned to pick up an arms shipment near Cox Bazar, Bangladesh, and transport it to Manipur. After the cadres accidentally crossed the India-Myanmar border in Chin State, they came into conflict with the Chin National Front (CNF), a Chin nationalist organisation. After reportedly clashing with the CNF, the CNF and the National United Party of Arakan (NUPA) began supplying the Indian Army with information about the movements of the cadres. After this, the Assam Rifles and the Myanmar military clashed with the cadres several times while they moved deeper into Burmese territory. Several times, discoordination led to both Myanmar Army and Indian Army troops requesting for the other to withdraw. By the end of April, the rebel column was severely weakened and demoralised.

On 4 May, India announced that the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding was being given to Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy politician Aung San Suu Kyi. In response, the military junta of Myanmar withdrew from the front and released "scores" of detained militants, allowing the besieged rebel column to escape and eventually make it to Manipur. Operation Golden Bird ended 21 May, 1995.

Urls for use

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27000130?read-now=1&seq=2 https://nagalandpost.com/index.php/2022/06/28/myanmar-army-abandons-taga-hqs-of-ne-rebel-groups/ https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/assessing-tatmadaws-intention-and-capabilities https://idsa.in/issuebrief/northeast-poised-for-lasting-peace-pdas-080720 https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/northeast-based-insurgent-groups-forced-to-relocate-by-myanmar-army-action-intel-agencies/story-kMYXwfFmKqwIpET1s2fSXI.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/myanmars-return-indian-rebels-act-friendship-strategic-trade-off.html https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2018/06/14/NSCNK-makes-a-comeback-a-year-after-Khaplang-death-with-UNLFWSEA.html https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/unlfw-the-new-name-for-terror-in-ne/articleshow/47547899.cms https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/myanmar-india-give-better-ties-a-fighting-chance/

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/rebel-fighters-from-india-cooperating-with-myanmar-military-regime.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/six-members-rebel-group-along-myanmar-indian-border-charged-unlawful-association.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/nscn-k-denies-violating-ceasefire.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/indian-troops-seal-off-india-myanmar-border.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/asia/making-militants-indias-paradise-earth.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/asia/politician-family-members-among-11-killed-india-ambush.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/military-denies-staging-joint-operations-india-anti-delhi-rebels.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmars-nagaland-rebels-expel-peace-representatives.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/chin-groups-call-govt-expel-manipuri-armed-groups-myanmar.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/indian-militant-trained-myanmar-rebels-gives-struggle-border-region.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/chronicling-four-decades-of-separatist-activity-by-manipurs-pla-in-myanmar.html https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/indian-rebels-now-brothers-in-arms-with-myanmar-military.html

Notesdshg

• The Mizo insurgency lasted for over 30 bitter years of fighting from bases in Burma and maintaining links with Pakistan.
• Burma has never directly backed the rebels of Northeast and have often attacked bases of Naga rebels in its territory. But its control over its long western frontier with India is not total and it has avoided attacking both the Assamese and the Manipuri rebels for reasons not yet clear.
• Indian intelligence ran hideouts and arms caches in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland. Manipur and Mizoram for the Kachin Independence Army, the Arakan Army and the Chin National Front of Burma. The NNC and NSCN, the MNF and the Manipuri rebel groups maintained camps in Burmese territory and it is primarily to dislodge them from there that India started helping Burmese rebel groups.
• Like the Nagas, the Mizos had to hand over half of the weapons they got from the Chinese to the Kachin Independence Army.
• MPLF of Manipur has more bases in Burma’s Sagaing Division than in Bangladesh,
• But since withdrawing support to the Shanti Bahini in Bangladesh’s CHT region and the Arakanese rebels of Burma, India has refrained from backing rebels in neighbouring countries. Instead it has resorted to building up diplomatic pressure and offered concessions to countries who act against anti Indian rebels.
• However, in recent years, the China factor has amplified India and Myanmar’s intentions to cooperate against the NE insurgencies. China continues to use the NE insurgencies to off-balance India, limit its growth, earn profits through black arms markets, and also widen mistrust between India and Myanmar. Consequently, China has even sheltered insurgent leader Paresh Baruah and is also supplying arms to his organisation, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA-I). Parallelly, China continues to engage and arm Myanmar’s ethnic rebels—Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Arakan Army (AA), and Ta-ang National Liberation Army—to keep the state closer and subordinated to China. These insurgents of Myanmar and North East are further supplied with arms from China’s proxy—The United Wa State Army (UWSA). This supply of arms has empowered several insurgent organisations, including the AA, which now poses a threat to India’s Kaladan Project; which has the potentiality to transform the NE and Myanmar into a key geo-economic location. Consequently, both India and Myanmar have accelerated their cooperation against these insurgent organisations, in recent years.
• And since most of these insurgent groups are located in Indian borderlands, they have also developed close cooperation amongst them. Consequently, several Manipuri rebel organisations in Myanmar had formed a conglomerate called Coordination Committee, which later started working closely with another alliance of Indian insurgents in Myanmar, called the United National Liberation Front of Western South-East Asia (ULFWSA). This alliance includes several organisations such as ULFA, NSCN (K), NDFB etc, and were also responsible for the deadly 2015 ambush against Indian forces.
• This also includes tactics of local and low-level officials collecting a fee for not disturbing the Indian insurgents and their activities within Myanmar.
• Indian officials, meanwhile, accuse the UWSA—“the most effective illegal weapons trader” to Indian insurgent groups—and the Arakan Army (AA) of serving as Chinese proxies and providing weapons and shelter to northeastern rebels. The AA was founded in 2009, reportedly with the assistance of the Kachin Independence Army, the second most powerful ethnic armed group after the UWSA. Some journalists in the region claim that China is the major sponsor of the Arakanese group. Supporting this assertion is the fact that the group regularly attacks Indian-sponsored development projects while sparing Belt and Road Initiative projects connecting western China to the Indian Ocean via a multibillion-dollar China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. Given Burma’s active support to various Indian rebel organizations, absent a significant escalation by Indian special operations forces from periodic cross-border raids into Burma, these rear-area safe havens will continue to fuel Indian guerrilla groups.

AHHH timeline

• 1950s Angami Phizo, the founder of the Naga insurgency opened the Burma front to the insurgency in the 1950s. Phizo’s group established links with Chinese leadership at the same time, and later with Pakistan.
• 1950s Hemi Nagas of Burma made up the bulk of the NSCNs initial fighting Force
• 1950s-1960s Soon after independence, Indian Prime Minister Nehru Jawaharlal sought to make Myanmar a neutralist state so it would not arm the fledgling Naga insurgency. In the late 1960s, Indira Gandhi improved relations with Myanmar’s General Ne Win and encouraged him to crack down on those Naga hiding in northern Myanmar.
• 1950s-1980s The Naga, the Mizo and later the Manipuri rebels received support from Pakistan and China while almost all northeastern rebel groups thrive on support from Bangladesh. The Burmese or the Bhutanese have not backed northeast Indian rebels but have often failed to prevent them from using its territory. On the other hand, India backed several separatist campaigns across the borders of its Northeast. The most powerful rebel army on Burma’s western borders, the Kachin Independence Army, developed close links with northeast Indian separatist groups like the NNC, the NSCN, and the ULFA.
• 1956-1971 Between 1956 and 1971, Pakistan’s ISI backed the NNC, the MNF and the Sengkrak of Tripura. China started aiding the NNC, the MNF and later the PLA of Manipur but discontinued all help after 1980. There are reports of the ULFA and the MPLF receiving substantial quantities of Chinese weapons through Bhutan and Burma, but perhaps these weapons come through Yunnan based mafia groups like the Blackhouse.
• 1958-1971 Between 1958 and 1971, when Pakistan lost its eastern wing, eleven batches of Naga rebels (some numbering two hundred guerrillas or more) reached East Pakistan for training and weapons.
• 1960s India-Myanmar military cooperation dates back to the 1960s when the Tatmadaw attacked Naga and Mizo rebel columns heading to China for training.
• 1960s Tribal divisions within the Naga insurgency surfaced in the 1960s.
• 1962 some misunderstanding was created in the Indo-Myanmarese relations after 1962
• 1963-1964 One of the two largest groups of Naga guerrillas, more than five hundred fighters led by Dusoi Chakesang, took the long route to East Pakistan through the Chin Hills in October 1963 and returned in October 1964.
• 1967 Members of the Naga National Council, traveled over Myanmar’s Naga Hills to Yunnan in January 1967, seeking Chinese backing for their cause
• 1980s By the end of the 1980s, India’s external intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), persuaded the KIA to discontinue support to the northeast Indian rebels in exchange for Indian support for their armed campaign against Rangoon. Some other Burmese rebel groups in the Chin Hills and the Arakans were also supported by Indian intelligence.
• 1980s During the 1980s, India promised to support Myanmar insurgent groups, including the Chin National Front (CNF), Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and Arakanese, in return for their ceasing support for Indian insurgents.
• 1980s But Indian support for the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s upset the Tatmadaw, and they stopped operations against the northeastern rebel groups.
• 1980s-1990s Indian intelligence, especially the redoubtable officer from the Research and Analysis Wing, the deceased B.B. Nandy, established relations with the Kachin rebels to deny passage to China to the rebels, but that was discontinued in the mid-1990s. Since then, India has left it to its army to woo the Tatmadaw in an effort to deny the Sagaing base region to the rebels.
• 1988 After the Myanmar military cracked down on massive pro democracy protests in 1988, New Delhi openly criticized Myanmar. However, this proved a temporary setback as New Delhi warmed to the Myanmar regime in order to counter Chinese influence among the Myanmar generals.
• 1988 NSCN split: NSCN-IM denied a base by Khaplang in Sagaing.
• 1990 Several batches of ULFA militants trained by KIA (later NSCN) by the end of 1990. Due to training's, ULFA got 2,500, and weapons all bought in Myanmar.
• 1990-1992 Since Burma’s army had only limited control over its western frontier, Indian intelligence dealt directly with the powerful Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) which was aiding guerrillas from Northeast India. Denied Chinese support when Beijing turned to improve its relations with the Burmese military junta, the KIO was also compelled to look to India. A senior RAW official who set up India’s links with the KIO says they were given at least two large consignments of weapons between 1990 and 1992 and promised more. For its part, the KIO agreed to deny support, bases, weapons or training to the northeast Indian rebel groups. Indeed, for two years, a team of three RAW agents, equipped with communication equipment, were based in the Kachin “second brigade” headquarters at Pasao, monitoring northeast Indian rebel movements in the area. Burmese intelligence soon found out that the KIO had been receiving weapons from India and wasted no time to block the supply routes.
• 1992-1994 After 1988, Burma received huge consignments of Chinese military hardware. The KIO lost huge areas during the Tatmadaw’s winter offensive of 1992–93. In February 1994, they declared a ceasefire like many Burmese rebel armies had already done. But though the RAW-KIO relations failed to grow after the ceasefire, the KIO kept its promise of not allowing any northeast Indian rebel group to be based in areas it controls. Nor did they supply weapons to the northeast Indian rebels or train them.
• 1993 The roots of initial cooperation between India and Myanmar began in 1993. Intending to extend its influence in South-East Asia, and also deter Myanmar from harbouring the NE insurgents, India began accommodating the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military). On the other hand, to overcome its overdependence on China and appease India, the Tatmadaw started coordinating or acting against the NE insurgents (refer to Table 1 for details), with the help of Indian-supplied arms. This also created an unanticipated incentive for the Tatmadaw, to procrastinate their crackdown against Indian insurgents.
• 1997 After 1997, India discontinued all forms of support to the Burmese rebel armies it had so far helped. And if India denied her territory to the KIO, the CNF or the NUPA, the Burmese started attacking the NSCN bases though except for one occasion, it avoided attacking the ULFA and Manipuri rebel bases.
• 2001 The major hiccup in this emerging relationship was the capture of 192 Manipuri rebels and the seizure of 1,600 units of weaponry by the Tatmadaw during operations around Tamu in November 2001. India did not take kindly to the Burmese refusal to hand over the rebels, that included some of the top guns of the Meitei insurgency, including UNLF chairman Rajkumar Meghen alias Sanayaima.54 But now India has started giving Burma tanks, artillery pieces and an assortment of other heavy weapons after she agreed to attack all northeastern rebel bases in its territory.
• 2001 B.B. Nandy, a Myanmar rights activist based in India, goes so far as to claim that “the tatmadaw . . . don’t attack the powerful Manipuri or Assamese guerrillas who pay off the generals.”52 Indeed, in November 2001, the Myanmar army suspiciously refused to hand over to India 192 Manipuri rebels and 1,600 arms that it had captured.53
• 2002 Providing the Myanmar military with arms to combat insurgents in its territory has been an important component of New Delhi’s Myanmar policy. In 2002, India resumed arms shipments to Myanmar’s tatmadaw, and has provided two squadrons of 36 T-55 tanks, forty 105 mm howitzers, more than 150 heavy mortar launchers, and an unspecified number of machine-guns and ammunition. 45 It has also sold Myanmar helicopters, despite protest from the EU. 46 The arms sales have forged closer relations between the Indian and Myanmar armies.
• 2006-2007 In September 2006, India greeted a visiting Myanmar delegation by submitting a list of 15 Indian insurgent bases operating in Myanmar. 47 In return, after the rainy season, the tatmadaw attacked Naga bases and the infamous ULFA 28 th battalion. The two sides have also discussed building a fence along part of their shared border.48 However, it is not clear how this military cooperation will proceed in the future. After the Myanmar government suppressed Saffron Revolution, for example, New Delhi suspended all arms sales to Myanmar.
• 2012 Most of their bases were close to the NSCN (K) headquarters in Sagaing. The NSCN (K) governs some small Naga regions in Myanmar that are usually undisturbed by the Tatmadaw, following a deal with the government in 2012.
• 2019 But, when the Tatmadaw conducted a series of offensives against the NE insurgents in 2019 including the NSCN (K), the majority of the insurgents moved to other bases that were beyond the Tatmadaw’s priorities and operational capabilities. Several Manipuri rebels moved to other camps and towns located in the South of Sagaing and Chin and Rakhine states, while ULFA-I and NDFB cadres relocated to the North and North East of Sagaing with the help of NSCN-K.
• 2019 After several high level exchanges with the Eastern Command in the last 18 months, the Burmese army, known as the Tatmadaw, struck a huge blow to the bases of the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim in Myanmar’s Sagaing province. It followed up by attacking the bases of the United Liberation Front of Asom and Manipuri rebel groups. The Ulfa has admitted to losing a major of its military wing. Indian army sources say there has been a spate of surrenders from the ranks of the Ulfa and Manipuri rebel groups as a result of the Burmese military operation. In February, Burmese troops stormed the NSCN-K headquarters at Taga. The rebels did not resist because their leaders appear keen to remain within the Burmese peace process. The NSCN-K, divided after Burmese Naga leaders ousted the chairman, Khango Konyak, and forced him to return to Nagaland in India, is a signatory of the nationwide ceasefire arrangement in Myanmar. Although it reneged on its ceasefire with India in 2015, it maintains the ceasefire it signed with Myanmar in 2012. This is understandable as most top leaders of the faction, like its founder, S.S. Khaplang, are Burmese Nagas.
• 2019 [Operation Sunrise] February operation has knocked out the last trans-border regrouping zone of the northeast Indian rebel groups, a blow from which it will not be easy to recover, especially since the governments in both Bhutan and Bangladesh are in no mood to let them return to their old bases in those countries.
• 2019 The Indian army reciprocated Myanmar’s gesture by starting a major counter-insurgency operation against the separatist Arakan Army in south Mizoram, which has killed a number of Burmese soldiers and policemen in Rakhine in recent months and emerged as the most potent rebel group in the disturbed province. Although there has been peace in Mizoram since the Mizo National Front ended its bloody separatist campaign in 1986, its remote southern fringes have been used by the Arakan Army as a base area. Denying this base to the Arakan Army is as important for the Tatmadaw as denying the Northeastern insurgents the Taga base area is for the Indian army. This is the first time the Indian and the Burmese military are working in tandem.
• 2019 The reciprocal military operations in Sagaing and south Mizoram are a landmark in Indian military diplomacy in the East.
• After 2021 Coup However, the ongoing civil strife in Myanmar has raised new opportunities for revival for the NE insurgencies. Having suffered severe logistical and organisational damage from the Tatmadaw, several NE militant organisations are now looking for alternatives to survive and regroup. For long, the NSCN-K had sheltered the Indian groups in return for arms, and funds, which were usually obtained through smuggling and extortion. But the 2019 Tatmadaw offensives have indicated that the NSCN-K shelters are no longer safe, and these organisations would have to shift elsewhere– if they have to survive. This comes at a time when the ethnic rebels of Myanmar are looking for revenues to recruit and support anti-coup protestors, while also funding their increased offensives to maximise power and deter Tatmadaw’s stepped-up offences. Out of these organisations, the KIA has adopted an intense offensive, while the AA has continued to criticise and also attack the army with its allies, despite a temporary ceasefire. And these organisations have had a long history of training, cooperating, accommodating, and selling arms to Indian insurgents. The KIA has had historical relations of training and sheltering several Manipuri and ULFA rebels. Similarly, the AA has been cooperating with Manipuri organisations of UNLF and PREPAK by allowing them to establish camps in Rakhine and Chin states, in return for some logistical support. And, the KIA, Chin organisations, and UWSA of Myanmar are also acting as middle-men and arms suppliers for several NE insurgents. With prevalent cooperation as such, these organisations might soon start supplementing each other’s needs. The NE insurgents might be able to generate revenue for Myanmar organisations, by providing them with funds, extortion money and new arms and drug trafficking routes, in return for being sheltered and letting them carry out operations against India. Thus, intensifying the violence and leaving the Tatmadaw and its material capabilities more preoccupied with the Myanmar insurgents.
• 2022 The Indian Army’s elite 21 Para Special Forces, which is facing investigation in connection with the killings of 14 civilians in Nagaland last month, reportedly gunned down two Manipuri separatist rebels in what is believed to be a “low-intensity surgical strike” in Myanmar. The anti-insurgency operation took place in Senam area in Chin state, according to people familiar with the development. The slain rebels belonged to the proscribed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur, which claims one SF personnel was also killed in the encounter although the Indian Army has not confirmed any casualty yet.

Use this when you can

https://thediplomat.com/2024/05/mapping-territorial-control-in-post-coup-myanmar-flawed-by-design/