India could be more vulnerable in its border region of the Northeast than along its western frontier with Pakistan, which has continuously hogged the limelight.
The Northeast is the most strategic region of India, sharing a 5,484 km-long border with Bhutan, China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The region comprises 7.97 percent of the country’s geographical area and 3.78 percent of its population. It is connected with the Indian mainland through a narrow sliver of territory that is 22 km wide, called the Chicken’s Neck, comprising only 2 percent of its entire border.
The threats in the Northeast stem from both internal and external factors. Except for Bhutan, the policies unleashed by and the conditions in the other three neighboring countries are extremely unfavorable to the region.
China in the East
China claims 90,000 sq km in the Northeast, including the whole of Arunachal Pradesh. There are frequent reports of incursions by the Chinese army into the region. Some political representatives allege that chunks of territory in Arunachal have been occupied by China, which the Indian army denies.
China had actively supported separatist rebel groups from India’s Northeast in the late sixties and seventies. Several batches belonging to three outfits from Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram were trained and equipped with weapons. Chinese support to the rebels came to a halt in the early eighties, but its association with rebel leaders continues. Senior functionaries of at least two outfits – the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) and the People’s Liberation Army (of Manipur) – have reportedly been staying in China for the past several years. This could not have happened without the knowledge of the Chinese government. Incidentally, these two organizations are also among the outfits that have continued to spurn negotiations with the Indian government.
Of greater concern to India than the above-mentioned issues has been China’s decision to construct the world’s largest dam on the Yarlung Zangbo river that originates in Tibet and flows through Arunachal Pradesh before merging with the Brahmaputra river in Assam. Observers are apprehensive that the project would adversely impact the ecology of the downstream region, including the possibility of decreased water flow in the river. There is increasing concern in India that the dam could be used as a “water bomb” in the event of India-China hostilities.
Spring Revolution in Myanmar
The ongoing Spring Revolution in Myanmar, which aims at toppling the military regime, has triggered an influx of refugees to India’s Northeast, similar to the situation that unraveled after the 1988 uprising in the country. Close to 60,000 refugees have been sheltered in the states of Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland.
Over the past four years, refugees have been apprehended with drugs and weapons. There are several instances as well of conflict with local residents. The Manipur government had detained and deported refugees who had crossed into the border state.
A section of Indian government officials claims that there has been a surge in drug trafficking after the war began four years ago in Myanmar. The reason is the dire economic situation in Myanmar that has led to unemployment and a humanitarian crisis in some regions. Trafficking of narcotics to India and Bangladesh (heroin and synthetic drugs) has emerged as a livelihood option for a sizeable chunk of people in the country and groups of refugees. That the contraband is flowing into India in large quantities can be gauged from the periodic seizures across different states.
On the other hand, essential commodities are being smuggled out in large quantities from India to Myanmar since most of the supply routes from the mainland of the country remain blocked.
A large stretch of the 1,643 km India-Myanmar border zone has been destabilized following the military coup. The Myanmar military no longer exercises control over the border, but has proxy outfits engaged in combat against resistance groups. Encounters erupt frequently, with groups from Manipur and Nagaland also getting drawn into the gun battles.
Besides, separatist groups from India’s Northeast continue to have their camps and training facilities in northern Sagaing Region. In the southern zone contiguous to Manipur, some outfits have been effectively roped in by the junta against the resistance groups. However, the increasing arrests of members of these separatist groups in the Indian state indicate that they may no longer be safe in Myanmar.
Anti-India Regime in Bangladesh
The fall of the pro-India Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh in August 2024 has resulted in an unfavorable situation for India. Early last month, Chief Interim Advisor Muhammad Yunus stoked a controversy when he said that India’s Northeast could be an “extension of the Chinese economy” while referring to the landlocked border region. Days later, Major General (retired) A.L.M. Fazlur Rahman, chairperson of the National Independent Commission of Inquiry probing the 2009 Bangladesh Rifles massacre, stated that Bangladesh should occupy India’s Northeast if India attacks Pakistan.
These statements are a stark reflection of the mindset among a section of the Bangladesh regime towards India. The outlook has been immensely shaped by the atrocities committed by the previous Awami League-led government and the fact that India continues to shelter Hasina.
In a shift from decades of troubled relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh under the Yunus government is cozying up to Pakistan. Direct trade has started, and military contacts and cooperation on security matters have been revived. There are also reports that Bangladesh plans to revive the Lalmonirhat airbase, located barely 20 kms from the Indian border near Chicken’s Neck, with Chinese and Pakistani help.
Pakistan has actively supported separatist outfits from India’s Northeast since the late 1950s. Between 1991-2004, Pakistan’s ISI had trained batches of rebels belonging to different groups and equipped them with weapons. An augmented presence of Pakistan and China in Bangladesh could undermine India’s security.
That there are Pakistan-backed sleeper cells in India’s Northeast and elsewhere in the country has long been evident. In December last year, India’s National Investigation Agency arrested four people from Assam’s Goalpara district over suspected links with Pakistan-based terrorist organization, the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Implementation of ISI’s anti-India agenda could be rendered easier in the current ambience prevailing in Bangladesh when anti-India sentiments are high and radical Islamist outfits are gaining ground.
Internal Dangers in Northeast
In addition to threats emanating from across borders with India’s neighbors, is the domestic situation in the Northeast. Although insurgency-related incidents have fallen sharply in the region over the past decade, the region’s topography, socio-economic conditions, diversity of cultures and languages, competition over local resources, environmental degradation and illegal immigration have resulted in a fragile security scenario.
Assam, considered the heart of and gateway to the Northeast, tops the list among the region’s eight states in terms of internal dangers. The state is the most crisis-prone in the entire country, with recurring floods and erosion gobbling large chunks of land annually. Added to these is the rampant destruction of forests and wetlands that the government does not seem bothered to check. The Northeast is part of the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot and among 36 such danger zones in the world.
The presence of illegal immigrants in the central and western districts of the state has triggered clashes with local communities at regular intervals. An exercise called the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was executed to identify immigrants, but it ended in a colossal failure and a scam. So far, the government has not evinced any desire to rectify the anomalies in the Register where millions of immigrants have allegedly registered as citizens through fraudulent means, as may be gleaned from the affidavits submitted by the NRC Secretariat to the Supreme Court.
The population of Bangladesh-origin immigrants is expected to soar in Assam in the coming decades, and local communities could become a minority in their own homeland. This is a guaranteed recipe for greater strife in the future in a state with scarce resources and rampant unemployment.
Next to Assam in terms of vulnerability is Manipur, where ethnic riots between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities have rocked the border state since the middle of 2023. Violence has certainly receded over the past few months, but not the ethnic divide between the warring communities. The government has been trying to normalize the situation without any results so far. The fencing of the India-Myanmar border has commenced with a focus on Manipur to stall cross-border criminal activities and movement of insurgents.
Over 30 insurgent groups from Manipur and Nagaland are engaged in talks with the government for a negotiated settlement. Several demands of these outfits have been rejected by the government. Consequently, the talks have become an annual ritual aimed only at extending the ceasefire agreements. These outfits are flush with weapons; there have been several instances of functionaries of these organizations flouting the ceasefire ground rules to engage in criminal activities. Most recently, in Manipur, there were allegations that rebel groups were engaged in stirring communal strife.
While the dangers from the western border are overt and limited in scope, those in the Northeast are multilayered and covert, ranging from the political and social to the environmental, and with cross-border linkages that the government has been unable to comprehend and tackle effectively. As some observers feel, the ‘tyranny of distance’ between New Delhi, coupled with the low representation of the region in Parliament, is to blame for the existing state of affairs.