China Hand Suspected In NSCN(K) Attacks on Indian Forces

Indian intelligence suspects a ‘Chinese push’ behind the formation of the UNLFWSEA to keep Delhi under pressure.

* NSCN(K) walked out of ceasefire arrangement with the Centre in April
* Nine Northeast insurgent outfits, including NSCN(K), form United National Liberation Front of West South East Asia (UNLFWSEA)
* Spurt in hostilities among Mynamarese rebel groups, some of whom have been receiving China’s support, and army
* Indian intelligence suspects China’s backing to UNLFWSEA
* Centre wants to isolate Khaplang and may sign a truce pact with a breakaway group
* NSCN(K)’s depredations aimed at proving government in Delhi wrong
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Two back-to-back developments in the insurgency-affected India-Myanmar frontier have raised the hackles in New Delhi, especially after recent attacks on Indian security forces in Nagaland.

The latest ambush on Saturday (May 3) left eight Assam Rifles personnel dead in Nagaland’s Mon district bordering Myanmar. Guerillas of the NSCN’s Khaplang faction were involved in the attack and also three lesser armed actions in April.

SS Khaplang, a Burmese Naga who heads an ever-shrinking faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), walked out of a cease-fire with the Indian government in April, days before the truce was up for renewal.

Before one would have a chance to write him off as ‘sufficiently isolated in Myanmar,” nine rebel outfits from northeast India, including Khaplang’s, announced the formation of an united platform – United National Liberation Front of West South East Asia (UNLFWSEA).

The front includes the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB)’s Songbijit faction that was responsible for the massacre of non-Bodos in western Assam a few months ago.

Three other groups in Manipur’s underground platform CorCom – PREPAK, KYKL and KCP – have joined the front. It is not yet clear who the two other groups in the UNLFWSEA are – but one new group in Mizoram, United Democratic Liberation Front, headed by one Rajesh Chorki, has claimed joining the platform.

The Myanmar Angle

The end of the Khaplang-Delhi truce and the formation of the UNLFWSEA come in the backdrop of the huge spurt in hostilities in northern Myanmar, where Kachin and Kokang rebels have been bleeding the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) for the last three months. Myanmar intelligence sources say the Kokang rebel group MNDAA has received support from China which is uneasy with the Thein Sein government’s emerging bonhomie with the West.

So even as the Myanmar government has been trying to work out a national cease-fire with various ethnic minority rebel armies , the China-backed United Wa State Army (UWSA) has called for a national convention of these groups in its headquarters near the border with China.

The UWSA, which emerged from the now-defunct Communist Party of Burma (CPB), is the strongest of Myanmar’s many ethnic rebel armies. Myanmar intelligence suspects China is backing the formation of a new ethnic rebel front to keep the Thei Sein government under pressure lest it moves too close to the West, specially the US.

A Chinese Game?

Similarly, Indian intelligence suspects a ‘discreet Chinese push’ behind the formation of the UNLFWSEA to keep Delhi under pressure – lest it moves too close to Washington. They have reports that ULFA military wing chief Paresh Barua has been repeatedly rebuffed by Beijing while seeking support.

Chinese officials reportedly told him the fractious separatists in Northeast do not stand a chance against the Indian forces on their own. That would explain Barua’s efforts since 2011 to forge an united front. But that was held up for three years because Khaplang had a cease-fire with India.

All the anti-Indian rebels groups now part of UNLFWSEA are based in Myanmar’s Sagaing division in the Naga Self-Administered Zone controlled by Khaplang’s fighters. Khaplang’s truce with the Thein Sein government in 2012 allows his fighters to move with weapons.

Truce Breaks Down

Delhi had been pushing Khaplang for three years from sheltering other northeastern groups – and when that did not work, hints were dropped that the ceasefire with Khaplang would not be renewed.

That is when Khaplang pulled the plug and decided to allow Barua and the Manipuri rebel chieftains form the UNLFWSEA in his area. Before he did that, he expelled two of his top lieutenants, Wangting and Thikhak , for ‘anti-Naga and pro-Indian activities’. They have formed a new faction and Delhi may sign a truce with them – like it did with the Khitovi-Khole faction that had earlier broken away from Khaplang.

Delhi’s security managers may try isolating the Burmese Naga chieftain from India’s Naga areas to lessen complications for its own Naga peace process. But it is precisely to fight that isolation and prove Delhi wrong that Khaplang has promoted the united front and started a spate of attacks on the Indian-Myanmar border, through which India is trying to develop connectivity with south-east Asia as part of its ‘Act East’ policy. And he may well have blessings from the dragon up north.

Subir Bhaumik, a veteran BBC correspondent, is author of two highly acclaimed books on Northeast India - “Insurgent Crossfire” and “Troubled Periphery”.