Myanmar’s Chin rebels attack Manipur People’s Liberation Army base

05 February 2022
Myanmar’s Chin rebels attack Manipur People’s Liberation Army base
The capital of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. Photo: AFP

Myanmar's Chin rebels have attacked a base of Manipur's PLA insurgents who killed an Indian Army Colonel in an ambush last November.

The attack on the Manipur People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base near a town on the Manipur-Myanmar border has reportedly led to PLA casualties. The Chin rebels are upset because the Myanmar Army has been using the PLA against them and other resistance groups in that country. But they could also be signaling to Delhi that they can deliver better on Indian security concerns than the Myanmar military junta.

Fighters of the Chin National Army (CNA) attacked a base of Manipur's PLA near the Burmese border town of Tamu. Sources close to CNA say the attack was launched on January 14 night at the PLA base at Senam, about 10km southeast of the border town of Tamu opposite Manipur's Moreh town. The base served as the PLA's 'general headquarters' and housed nearly 100 guerrillas, the sources said.

They said the CNA fighters did not storm the camp or overrun it but directed heavy fire on it and killed at least 10 PLA guerrillas. Though independent verification of the claims of casualties has not yet been possible, the news of the attack has been corroborated by Indian intelligence agencies. The PLA is one of the active insurgent groups in India's North-East, which had claimed responsibility for a brutal attack on a convoy of India's Assam Rifles force in Manipur's southern district of Churachandpur in November last year, in which an Army colonel was killed with his wife and minor child and four troopers.

When the rebels launched such a big attack on an Indian army convoy in 2015 and killed 18 soldiers, Indian parachute commandos launched a 'surgical strike' against a rebel base just inside the Myanmar border. They claimed to kill a few rebels but Myanmar objected to the Indian military intrusion strongly. There has been no such Indian military counter-action after the November attack on the Assam Rifles convoy this time. Foreign Secretary Harshvardhan Shringla strongly took up the issue of the use of Myanmar territory by PLA rebels for launching attacks on Indian forces during his recent visit to that country.

“The attack by Chin fighters on the PLA base at Senam does prove the Manipur rebels are maintaining a big base close to an important border town. This is never possible without the collusion of the Burmese Army," said a senior Indian intelligence official on condition of anonymity. He said the Chin rebels are very upset with the Manipur PLA which has helped the Myanmar army in suppression of ethnic insurgencies and public resistance groups in return for sanctuary inside Myanmar.

The 'Tatmadaw' has killed more than 1,500 civilians within a year to suppress the resistance against last February's military takeover. However, many soldiers have also been killed in clashes with resistance forces. They are now having to fight new ethnic Burmese resistance groups like the People’s Defence

Force (PDF) as well as rebel armies representing ethnic minorities who have come closer to each other to fight the military rule.

"The CNA like other Myanmar resistance groups have also been trying to signal to Delhi that they can deliver better on India's concerns than the Myanmar military junta. Obviously, they seek Indian support not only to fight the Burmese army but also to keep the Arakan Army insurgents out of the Chin Hills which they see as their preserve," the official said.

The Indian Army demolished Arakan Army (AA) bases in Mizoram state last year in a sustained counter-insurgency drive they christened "Operation Sunrise". The Arakan Army, which is fighting for independence in Myanmar's Rakhine province, has attacked contractors working on India's multimodal Kaladan transport project that seeks to give India's landlocked North-East a sea link through road and the Kaladan river.

The Myanmar Army was then at its wits end fighting the Arakan Army but now has signed a ceasefire with them after last February's coup in the country. India backed Myanmar's Kachin, Chin and Arakanese rebel groups in the 1980-the 90s to deny its own northeastern rebels a free run in Myanmar territory, through which these rebels reached out to China in the 1960-70s for weapons and training. But these covert links were discontinued after the BJP came to power in 1998 and Delhi decided to tackle its own insurgents by developing closer military relations with the Burmese army.

Renewal of the Chinese connection by North-East Indian rebel groups is a constant worry for New Delhi given the bitter border faceoff in the Himalayas. Myanmar is also the prime source of drug trafficking into India's North-East.

The Assam Rifles, which guards India's border with Myanmar, has been seizing huge consignments of narcotics in recent years. The seizures were worth Rs 516 crore in 2019, Rs 688 crore in 2020 and Rs 908 crore in 2021. But Assam Rifles chief Lt Gen P C Nair says this could "well be the tip of the iceberg."

"Exponential rise in seizures of narcotics by our force proves we are vigilant but it also proves more drugs are coming from Myanmar," Lt Gen Nair said in an interview.

"We have been successful in apprehending large volumes of narcotics that have been moving into India lately along the India-Myanmar border. We surely have our intelligence in place, however, we could do better with the added use of technology and greater cooperation among various intelligence and security agencies," he said.

Lt Gen Nair said the Indian government has now extended additional police powers to the Assam Rifles to help it fight the drug menace better.

Originally published by: www.news9live