Min Aung Hlaing visits India, while the border with Manipur smoulders
Myanmar’s newly elected president strikes deals on rare earths and infrastructure. But while the two governments negotiated in New Delhi, their armed forces exchanged artillery fire on the border, where weapons and fighters can easily cross. In Manipur, three Kuki civilians were killed this morning in yet another ambush, while more and more players are taking part in the violence.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing concluded a five-day visit to India a few days ago, where he received a welcome worthy of his status as head of state.
After seizing power in a coup in February 2021, the former general swapped his military uniform for civilian clothes after he was recently elected president in a sham election held only in army-controlled areas, while fighting continues in border regions.
Violence is also complicating matters in India as well as, particularly in the northeastern state of Manipur, where ethnic tensions have boiled over for more than three years.
For Min Aung Hlaing, the visit, his first foreign trip since taking over the presidency in April, was an attempt to shed his regime’s pariah status and gain recognition and respectability from the "world's largest democracy”.
For Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who welcomed Min, Myanmar is vital to his Act East policy, centred on Southeast Asia, to counter China’s influence and follow in its footsteps.
India in fact recently expressed a desire to source rare earths in Kachin State, a sector already heavily controlled by China, marred recently by dozens of deaths.
The two leaders also stressed the need to reboot several joint infrastructure projects, such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway, as well as the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, connecting the port of Kolkata to the port of Sittwe in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where fighting is fiercest, bypassing Bangladesh.
These initiatives are crucial to reducing the isolation of India's northeast, a small, landlocked corner of the country that should, in the Indian government's view, be opened up to eastern markets.
To this end, New Delhi is betting on a leader who does not control the whole of his country, and unlike China, it has fewer political and financial levers to wield with the Myanmar military and with the ethnic armed groups fighting the regime.
The areas in Rakhine India is targeting are still held by the Arakan Army, which controls the port area of Paletwa, while in Chin State, armed groups guard the corridors along the Indian border.
Perhaps this is also why Myanmar’s military launched a military offensive last month in Chin State, retaking the townships of Tonzang and Falam, to stabilise the border and block the advance of the Arakan Army. For their part, Chin insurgents are using the border as a strategic rearguard.
While the junta has described the recent military operations as a necessary to secure the border, greater fighting is fuelling a new flow of refugees towards the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, further exacerbating the pressure on India’s northeast region.
This is a special concern for Manipur, scene of sectarian violence involving ethnic Kuki-Zo, Meitei, and Naga for more than three years. This morning in fact, an armed attack in Loibol Khullen, a village in Kangpokpi District, resulted in the deaths of three Kuki civilians and the destruction of seven homes.
The victims were identified as Letkhongam Haokip, 34, the village chief; his wife, Tinmary Haokip, 30; and Jangminlal Haokip, also 34. Letkhongam and Tinmary were active members of the local Christian community.
The Kuki Inpi Manipur, a state-level organisation that represents the Kuki-zo communities in the state, blamed the attack on militants from a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim, a group that has been demanding the creation of a Naga state for decades, to be called Nagalim.
The ongoing conflict broke out in April 2023, when the Manipur Court of Appeal recommended extending the status of recognised tribe, which guarantees reserved quotas in public employment and other benefits, to members of the Meitei community, which represents approximately 60 per cent of the total population and dominates the plains and the capital, Imphal.
Although the Supreme Court of India called the recommendation "factually incorrect”, Manipur's other ethnic minorities, particularly the Kuki, who are concentrated in the hills, rose up. The conflict has recently widened, to involve the Nagas, with a spate of ambushes and kidnappings.
Since the violence broke out, some 60,000 people still live in refugee camps, while buffer zones have become veritable internal borders within India. For the Indian government in New Delhi Chin insurgents from Myanmar (who are ethnically related to the Kukis) are operating on Indian territory, fuelling the violence.
In recent years, each group has set village volunteers, armed groups of young men who guard homes and often end up victims of violence.
The end result has been more clashes with the Nagas for control of the hilly areas. In March, for example, the kidnapping of 21 Naga men led to a reprisal, in which two Kuki labourers were killed in Ukhrul, a Naga-majority district.
Many have accused the National Socialist Council of Nagalim in connection with the escalating violence. More recently, the United Naga Council rejected a request for the release of 14 Kuki it was holding hostage, claiming to respect "the prevailing sentiment of the Naga public” and demanding, in exchange, the release of six Naga civilians allegedly held captive by Kuki groups.
In Manipur thousands of rifles and firearms seized from police and paramilitary armouries in the early months of the conflict still remain unaccounted for. And the porous 1,600-kilometre border with Myanmar favours the flow of weapons.
According to sources hostile to Myanmar’s military regime, loads of weapons have been shipped across the border since 2023. The result is a conflict that is no longer the preserve of a few local armed ethnic militias, but involves a growing number of actors, with overlapping territorial claims and identities that are difficult to distinguish from civilians.
During the state visit, Indian authorities raised with Min Aung Hlaing the issue of Myanmar-based rebel groups launching operations in northeast India.
Myanmar’s military is in fact working with at least six armed groups in Manipur and Nagaland, relying on these groups to maintain control of the territory; thus, it is very unlikely that it will act against them, despite pressure from New Delhi.
The paradox of the entire situation became obvious overnight on 31 May, when the armed forces of the two countries exchanged artillery fire for several hours along the Manipur border while the Myanmar delegation was still staying in New Delhi.
A few hours later, Min Aung Hlaing tried to reassure his Indian hosts that Myanmar territory would not be used against India's security interests. According to local media, the shots were fired from Tengnoupal, a district in Manipur, against Min Thar, a village located about a mile from the border.
Back in May 2025, India’s paramilitary Assam Rifles killed ten members of the People's Defence Force (PDF), a pro-democracy Myanmar militia, in a village near the border town of Moreh.
The conflict today has an increasingly fragmented and become unmanageable. Sources in the armed groups admit that control over their fighters has deteriorated.
“Many of our boys have gone rogue,” a source from a Naga armed group told Al Jazeera. "There is no clear command any more. Even we don’t always know who is carrying out these attacks."
The same picture also emerges from sources in the Kuki and Meitei camps.
The most serious impact falls on young people. Aid workers in refugee camps warn that children growing up in this climate of violence are increasingly exposed to the risk of recruitment by armed groups.
In New Delhi, the central government is becoming increasingly vocal. Gopal Krishna Pillai, a former Union Home Secretary who oversaw security operations in India’s northeast, told Al Jazeera that the situation in Manipur reflects a “breakdown of political direction and coordination among the state institutions”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls the central government, has been in power in Manipur in the past few years. After the outbreak of violence in Manipur, New Delhi imposed direct rule in February this year.
But for Pillai, “the government has not decided what to do. It is a mess they have created, and they don’t know how to resolve it”.
After his visit in the Indian capital, Min Aung Hlaing travelled to Mumbai to meet with the business community, leaving the border issues and ethnic violence unresolved.
While India continues to formally support democracy in Myanmar, it is effectively backing the country’s military regime to ensure the stability of its own borders.
Yet, until Myanmar finds a political solution to its civil war, its strongman won’t be able to cash in from the deals inked in New Delhi.
(Nirmala Carvalho contributed to this article)
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