Arakan insurgents are on the cusp of seizing power in West Myanmar. India faces tough choices

Soldiers salute Arakan Army chief Major General Twan Mrat Naing in Myanmar ahead of the ninth anniversary, in April 2018 | Photo: @nyotwanawng | Twitter

The stench of gunpowder and rotting blood hung over the city as the ageing tyrant celebrated his honeymoon at his elegant estate on Yangon’s Inya Lake. Then 77 years old, General Ne Win had been told by his astrologers that his wedding to an Arakanese beauty less than a third his age was a necessary yadaya chay, a magical ritual which would ward off threats to his rule. To help the occult succeed, the General’s soldiers hunted down the student protesters who had challenged his rule. Even as the massacres proceeded, the General played scrabble with his friends, laughing and joking.

For two generations since the savage crushing of the Four Eights rebellion in 1988, democratic movements and ethnic insurgents have battled Myanmar’s military without success. The magic of General Ne Win’s sorcerers proved powerful, long outlasting his death in 2002 at the age of 91.

This week, though, the insurgent Arakan Army destroyed military positions in the town of Taungup, the latest blow in a campaign that besieged bases around the capital, Sittwe, the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, and the Myanmar military’s Western Command in Ann. The Arakan Army is now estimated to control eight-tenths of the province of Rakhine, raising speculation the region could be the first to be liberated from the control of the junta.

Less clear, though, is what comes next—and that confronts India with tough choices. Fearing the impacts the disintegration of Myanmar could have on security in the Northeast, India has long resisted formal diplomatic engagement with insurgent groups in that country.  That policy, though, is no longer sustainable.

Arkan’s secessionist impulse

Following independence in 1948, historian Jacques Leider has written that Arakan’s communities found themselves marginalised in a state dominated by ethnic-Bamar chauvinism. Tens of thousands of impoverished Arakanese migrated to Yangon or left to work in Kachin state’s jade mines. Even as the region acquired growing strategic significance in the new millennium—with China building pipelines carrying natural gas and oil to Yunnan and investing in sprawling Special Economic Zones—the people remained poor. Fishing was crippled by the arrival of Chinese trawlers in the region’s waters.

Tensions between Arakan’s religious groups had long enabled the state to contain conflicts. Following the occupation of Myanmar by Britain in 1824, international studies expert Aye Chan records that tens of thousands of peasants were brought in from the Chittagong region and granted leases to till land until then held by local tribes.

Few ethnic Burman, moreover, were given the opportunity to serve as administrators or soldiers, historian Harrison Akins has written, and one colonial administrator decried efforts to recruit them as a “gross waste of money”.

Later, during the Second World War, the region’s Muslims—mainly, though not all, known as the Rohingya—sided with British forces, seeing them as protectors against Arakane Buddhists and the Burman. Local Buddhists, though, sided with nationalist Bogyoke Aung San and his Japanese allies. The two communities’ rival colonial-backed militia engaged in savage violence through the war, assassinating suspected collaborators and burning down entire villages.

From the moment of independence, though, the two communities were united in resisting Yangon. In 1949, historian Bertil Lintner recorded that Arakanese insurgents—ranging from Islamists to communists—contested the region’s accession to the new nation. The Buddhist-monk-turned-Communist-leader Sien Da, known to his followers as ‘the King of Arakan’, fought the military for years. Tha Gyaw, nicknamed ‘Bombauk’ or Bomb-thrower, led another Communist insurgent group.

Local Muslims, meanwhile, supported the Islamist-leaning Mujahid movement led by Husayn Kawal, which hoped to join Pakistan. The Mujahid would continue to fight the Myanmar military until 1954 when their uprising was finally crushed.

The Four Eights protests of 1988 saw both Muslims and Buddhists united against General Ne Win. That August, a range of historical leaders—among them, the Communists Sien Da, Tha Gyaw and Kyaw Zan Rhee,  as well as one-time pro-Japanese militia leader Bogri Kra Hla Aung. “The yellow banner of Buddhism fluttered along with Islam’s green flag with the crescent moon,” Lintner writes.

The rise of the Arakan Army

Founded early in the century, the Arakan Army emerged from groups of migrant workers living in Kachin Independence Army-held territories. The group received some patronage from the KIA, which saw it as an ally against the military, but slowly began to raise its funds through drug trafficking and extortion. Locating its headquarters in the town of Laiza, on the border with China, the Arakan Army soon developed ties not just with the KIA but with other powerful ethnic insurgents as well like Kokang’s Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army from northern Shan State, and the United Wa State Army.

Late in 2013, the Arakan Army—then several thousand strong—sought to join a nationwide ceasefire negotiation with ethnic insurgents initiated by military-linked President Thein Sein. However, the Arakan Army, along with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance and the Ta’ang Army, was excluded from the dialogue.

This led the Arakan Army to open hostilities against the military, beginning in 2015. That year, the group overran army positions in Kauktaw and Palewa, seizing large caches of weapons and ammunition before retreating into the jungle.

Faced with this demonstration of power and pressure from China, Myanmar authorities, including the Arakan Army, widened the negotiation process. The talks went nowhere, and the government made clear it was not willing to cede significant autonomy to ethnic groups.

The difficult choices India now faces aren’t new. From the outset, New Delhi knew it needed Myanmar’s help to contain secessionist insurgencies in the Northeast. Even General Ne Win’s coup in 1962—which led to harsh measures against peoples of Indian origin, including the confiscation of their properties and targeted persecution—led to little pushback. The coup came on the cusp of the 1962 war with China, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru simply could not risk an escalation of insurgent violence in the Northeast.

Like many other regional powers, India has seen the Tatmadaw as the only force that can ensure a functioning political system. For all practical purposes, though, the Arakan Army is beginning to emerge as the de facto ruler of Rakhine and its governing authority. For India to exercise influence east of its borders, it will have to do business with the insurgents.

To secure its interests—key among them the $484-million Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project, which seeks to link Kolkata with Sittwe—India thus even provided military support to the Tatmadaw in the face of attacks from the Arakan Army. The army’s rise will clearly make it impossible to sustain a policy of only dealing with the Tatmadaw.

For its part, China—which has been sitting on the fence through much of the insurgent-junta conflict—appears to have thrown its weight behind the Generals. General Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Kunming earlier this month, a public demonstration of support. China has also land border routes to areas under the control of the Kachin Independence Army, restricting access to food and fuel.

In 1988, as the Four Eight protesters were massacred, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government threw its weight behind the democracy movement in Myanmar. Four years later, though, it was forced to reverse course, fearing the Generals’ drift toward China. Today, India has to make the same choice again—but the price of calling the bet wrong could be even higher.

Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)