Even the ghosts had begun to rebel in those months of horror, it was said. Tossed into the cemetery in Tamwe—a northeastern suburb of Yangon—denied a dignified cremation and Buddhist rites, the souls of young pro-democracy protestors massacred by the army roamed the area, demonstrating whenever bodies of junta supporters were brought through the gates. For a time, the ghosts ruled, together with the people who had overthrown the one-party state of the Burma Socialist Programme Party. Then, the army unleashed a second round of massacres, annihilating the protestors and the ghosts.
This month, the military junta ruling Myanmar began preparations for fresh elections that are to be held by December. It has ended a long-running state of Emergency and has shipped in Indian-manufactured electronic voting machines.
Little imagination is needed, though, to know what kind of government those voting machines will produce. The National League for Democracy (NLD), and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi—whose landslide win in 2020 led to the coup the next year—has been barred from competing. A new proportional representation system has been implemented to ensure no one party commands a clear majority.
For India, the elections pose a complex challenge. The collapse of the junta’s authority in the face of an increasingly successful campaign by ethnic rebels has left space for insurgents from India’s Northeast to expand their presence and infrastructure. For its part, China is exercising its deep influence with insurgents in northern Myanmar to ensure it has a chokehold over the new government.
To retain influence in Myanmar, India will have to maintain ties with both the new regime and ethnic insurgents, which hold territory along its borders—no small ask.
The ghosts of 1988
For decades now, Indian policy on Myanmar has continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the democratic uprising of 1988. Following the massacres, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government threw its weight behind Aung San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement. Elections in 1990 saw the NLD register a sweeping victory, but the Generals refused to recognise the results and continued to hold on to power. The military, scholar Donald Seekins noted, entrenched itself by making deals with ethnic warlords and criminal cartels.
The military consolidation was to have serious consequences for India. The regime of General Than Shwe, who took power in 1992, allowed ethnic-Meitei insurgent groups from Manipur to embed themselves across the border in the town of Tamu. Factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) also found refuge in Sagaing, together with the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).
Soon after it took power in 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s government sought to rebuild ties with the Generals. The results, however, were slow to come. In April-May 1995, the Indian Army launched operations against some 200 insurgents from ULFA, the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur, and the All Tripura Tiger Force.
Things had improved enough in India-Myanmar ties, Rumel Dahiya has recorded in his first-person account of the operations, for the Myanmar Army to use force against the insurgent column on some occasions. Four times, though, Indian troops poised to cross the border were forced back by their counterparts. The grant of an award to Aung San Suu Kyi ended what little cooperation there was. To make things worse, Dahiya records, Indian troops were ill-prepared for jungle warfare and suffered from cerebral malaria.
Efforts to restore ties with the junta continued after the operations, with India handing over gun-runners linked to insurgent organisations with ties to its own military. The Myanmar military reciprocated by tamping down operations by Northeast insurgent groups, although their operations never ended. Last month, Indian forces were reported to have used drones to target camps run by the ULFA and the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur in Sagaing.
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A Chinese chequered board
Even more consequential than insurgent bases, though, is the influence that China will exercise over the new government in Yangon. Ethnic armies closely linked to China—key among them, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in the Kokang region—control large swathes of territory in northern Shan state. Together with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, the Kachin Independence Organisation, and the Shan State Progress Party, insurgents control all but a small part of the critical trade highway from Mandalay through Lashio into Muse.
From the 2021 coup on, China had made its displeasure known to the Generals, seeing their course of action as destabilising and a threat to its investments and interests. Thus, Beijing made the decision not to block the first-ever United Nations Security Council resolution on Myanmar to pass in December 2023. General Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, was not invited to Beijing that year.
The irritation with General Min’s regime soon grew, as it enmeshed itself with cyber-scam operators on China’s borders. Thus, in 2023, the People’s Liberation Army decided to teach the Generals a lesson, unleashing the so-called Three Brotherhood Alliance insurgent groups against the government. The region’s largest town and economic hub, Lashio, fell to the Alliance last year.
Fearing rapid regime collapse—rather than its real objective, a weakened client state—Beijing stepped in to cool temperatures. Lashio was returned to government control, but only in return for the insurgent MNDAA ceding a firm grip of territories in northern Shan. Led by special envoy for Myanmar Deng Xijun, China is now in the process of negotiating similar deals with other insurgents perched on the Mandalay-Lashio-Muse highway.
The eventual objective is to resume work on China’s expansive China-Myanmar Economic Corridor project, which appears to connect southwestern China to the Indian Ocean via a network of roads and high-speed railways. That will need to pass through the central Dry Zone, as well as war-torn Rakhine State—a good deal of dealmaking still lies ahead.
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Election endgame
The worst-case scenario looming for India is that it finds itself without influence both among the Generals and the proxy parties that will prop up the regime after the elections, as well as insurgents along its borders. Even though China, unlike Pakistan, has seen no strategic interest in sustaining a significant insurgency targeting India, that could change. Chinese intelligence officers have visited camps at Myanmar’s Taga, and the country has urged all groups in the Northeast to unite, journalist Rajeev Bhattacharya has reported.
As Athena Awn Naw argues, China seeks to create a new order, held up by three pillars—ethnic insurgents, civil society, and the military—but all held in check by their dependence on Beijing. The Chinese government is also committing growing levels of military force to protect its interests, using private military contractors drawn from its army.
Where does this leave India? The country has few cards in play. The long-delayed Kaladan transport project, meant to speed connectivity between the Northeast and the port of Sittwe, is scheduled to be completed by 2027. Almost all of the Rakhine province is militarily contested, with the Arakan Army (AA) insurgent group holding the entire province bar the towns of Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung. The prospects for the project are, therefore, uncertain.
There are things, though, that India ought to be doing. Famine is becoming a depressing feature of life in Rakhine, and local residents are unable to purchase abundant stocks of fish and food because of an ongoing military blockade. Large numbers of local residents are even reported to have been forced into sex work, serving the men of the beleaguered army garrison in Sittwe. French, Swiss, and even Turkish NGOs are supporting communities in the region—but India is invisible.
India also needs to deepen its relationship with the AA, experts like Tin Shine Aung have been arguing. Mizoram politicians have met with the group, but the Government of India needs to assert itself more in the debates over Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The AA supports the rehabilitation of Rohingya in Bangladesh, but not their return to their homeland—a cause of bitter division between the insurgents and Bangladesh.
For decades now, India’s policy on Myanmar has been to deal with its Generals and maintain a distance from the country’s insurgent groups and political struggles. That policy could lead to New Delhi being dealt out of the game—another defeat in the region, which will have long, profound consequences.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)