NEIGHBOURHOOD: China May Foment Trouble in the North-East

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Myanmar and Thailand Police conducted joint operations on 23 June 2020 in the country’s Tak Province bordering Myanmar and seized a large consignment of Chinese weapons. Among the 33 weapons seized by the police were M16, M79, M5.5 and AK47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and machine guns from a house in Mae Sot District on the Thai side. Six people were arrested in connection with the case. Those arrested revealed that the Chinese weapons were being transported to the Arakan Army operating in Rakhine state adjoining Bangladesh.

Deputy spokesman of Thailand Police Col Kissana Phattanacharoen said, the seized weapons were intended to create havoc and the discovery comes amid intelligence reports about suspicious activities being planned by a certain group of people.

Indian security agencies have expressed concern over Chinese weapons being provided to the terror groups active in Myanmar. They claimed the the Arakan Army (AA) and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), active in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, and India’s northeast insurgents were mainly procuring weapons sourced from China by local gun runners.

An attack on the Assam Rifles patrol on 29 July, near Sadiktampak village along Indo-Myanmar border in Chandel district of Manipur, was carried out by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur, the United Liberation Front of Assam (Independent) and a lesser known Manipur Naga People’s Front (MNPF), a splinter group of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Issac-Muivah). 3 Assam Rifles personnel were killed. All these groups are based in Myanmar.

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Chinese Pipeline

In November 2019, a huge cache of Chinese weapons was seized in Shan state by the Burmese Army including surface-to-air missiles. Among the weapons seized were 39 M-22 assault rifles, 29 medium machine guns, 69 M-21 assault rifles, nine M-16 assault rifles, 21-RPG and one FN-6-man portable air defence system which is the shoulder-fired surface to air missile. During the investigation, it was revealed that all the weapons were to be delivered to terror groups and were smuggled through China.

The Chinese made weapons are also available for the insurgent groups of North-Eastern states. As per Indian intelligence report, ULFA Chief Paresh Barua is currently residing in China and actively involved in supplying Chinese made weapons to various groups.

In 2004, ten truckloads of arms and ammunition smuggled from China were seized by the Bangladesh Army. In another incident in 2010 when north-east militant Anthony Shimray, who had returned from Nepal, was apprehended by Indian security agencies. During the interrogation, Shimray disclosed that he was tasked to send a large consignment of AK 47s, M16 rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers among other arms and ammunition from China to India.

These weapons were to be sent from China’s Beihei through an agent from Bangkok to Bangladesh’s Cax Bazaar. From there, the weapons were to be made available to militant groups of northeast.

Indian and Myanmar’s insurgent groups mostly purchase arms from Norinco, a Chinese government-owned armed factory in Yunnan. Some corrupt officials of the Norinco reportedly have also set up an illegal arms manufacturing facility at Myanmar-China border to produce “fakes” of their original products.

Joint Indo-Myanmar Operations

In 2019, Indian and Myanmar Armies had carried out a joint coordinated operation in their respective borders against Arakan Army and other rebel groups under the code name ‘Operation Sunrise’ to secure the Kaladan Project. The Arakan Army has set up several camps in areas across Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district, posing a threat to the Kaladan Project. This project is being viewed as India’s gateway to Southeast Asia.

Since the launch of the operation last year, several bases of the militants dotted along the 1,640-km-long India-Myanmar border were destroyed by the armed forces of the two countries.

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Kaladan Project

India entered into a framework agreement with Myanmar in April 2008, to facilitate the implementation of the project. On completion, the project will help connect Mizoram with the Sittwe Port in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. On the Indian side, work is on to extend the Aizawl-Saiha National Highway by 90 km to the international border at Zorinpui.

Pakistan’s Mischief

Pakistan’s ISI was reportedly trying to recruit Rohingya jihadis for terror activities in Bangladesh and the eastern part of India. There is a strong link available between Let and terror group Aqamul Mujahideen, which is a breakaway group from the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami Arakan (HUJI-A), headed by Abdus Qadoos Burmi, a Pakistani national of Rohingya origin has called jihad in Myanmar. Abdus Qadoos Burmi has shared stages with LeT chief Hafiz Saeed.

As per some reports, Beijing had also been taking help from Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI against India. China and Pakistan had jointly set up an operational hub against India in Bangladesh capital city Dhaka with the aim of contacting militant groups of northeast states.

Comments

Since Galwan clash, it has been a concern for India that China could wage a proxy war in northeast. There are all possibilities that China will like to take advantage of the presence of so many anti-India groups in its backyard.

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China-Myanmar Border Pact No Guarantee of Peace

Mere drawing of the boundary does not bring an end to the centuries-old influence of neighbouring areas. The Burmese project for a stable nation-state may have resolved a boundary row with China, but it failed to end insecurity.

China shares with Myanmar a boundary stretching 1,358 miles in length. Like India, Myanmar’s point of reference on the boundary issue was the imperial claims, conventions, agreements and records. China has refused to abide by the imperial conventions or claims on the ground that they are one-sided interpretations of the boundary.

The circumstances in which the Sino-Myanmar boundary settlement took place were marked by high political fluidity prevailing in Myanmar. After gaining independence in 1948, Northern Myanmar became the area where the Chinese nationalist troops, called Kuomintang exiles, established bases as they retreated after facing defeat at the hands of the advancing communists. As the communists established power in mainland China, they forced the then governing political elite in Burma to drive away the Kuomintang exiles to Taiwan and other neighbouring countries.

Like India, China signed an agreement for five principles of peaceful existence, famously known as the Panchsheel agreement, with the Myanmar Prime Minister U Nu in 1954. However, the context in which the agreement was signed was heavily skewed against Myanmar as the Chinese troops were already inside Myanmar and they laid claim over parts of Northern Myanmar. This was coupled with the massive inflow of population from China to Myanmar as this changed the demography of many of the Myanmar cities.

After several rounds of negotiations between the two sides in the backdrop of a fierce power struggle taking place in Myanmar, both the countries agreed on a boundary in October 1960. It seemed pragmatism had prevailed. There was a territorial swap based on geography and administrative ease. No doubt, the agreement between the two countries has largely held but the situation that followed in Northern Myanmar in the last six decades is nothing short of a civil war.

The three highland regions, namely, Kachin, Wa and Shan, inhabited by the country’s ethnic and religious minorities with political and economic grievances, are insurgency-hit parts of Myanmar with a strong trans-border influence from China. Chinese state institutions, including the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the regional government of China’s neighbouring Yunnan province, maintain equities with all the stakeholders, including the insurgent groups, across the border in a calibrated and sophisticated manner. The insurgencies are seen as a threat to national security and unity by the Burmese ethnic majority, living in the plains of Irrawaddy delta, thus becoming the raison d’être for military domination in the power structure.

Wa state, which has trans-border civilian, economic and alleged military ties with China, is de facto autonomous and a modus vivendi exists between the Tatmadaw, the local name of Myanmar military, and the United Wa State Army since 1989.

In Kachin, China maintains its relationship with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an insurgent group active in the region, as well as Tatmadaw. The region has jade mines, which is often the site of mass casualties as locals work as miners in inhospitable and unsafe conditions. On July 2, a landslide at a mine in Hpakant town in Kachin state claimed 172 lives. China is the biggest market for jade as it is considered an auspicious stone by the wealthy Chinese. The value of illegal trade of jade is several times more than the legal trade, creating a corrupt ecosystem of the senior officials of Tatmadaw, KIA commanders and the Chinese market.