Complexities on Eastern Borders as China Steps in

[Zarvan]

In the era of Mao Tse-tung, China actively sponsored communist insurgencies beyond its borders, across Southeast Asia, using local communist parties as proxies. Burma, bordering China’s Yunnan Province, suffered grievously, as the Chinese-backed Communist Party of Burma teamed up with ethnic minority groups, to wage war against the Burmese Government. Burmese territory was used by China to also arm and train ethnic insurgents in India’s northeast, by using support from Burmese insurgents, in the strategically located Kachin State—adjacent to Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao, decided to end support for communist insurgencies in China’s neighbourhood. The Burmese communist insurgency was crushed. China also ended its backing for insurgencies in northeastern India.

With the return of Sheikh Hasina to power in Bangladesh, the era when the Khaleda Zia regime provided safe havens, weapons and training to separatist groups from across India’s northeast ended. Leaders from armed groups like ULFA were either handed over to India, or fled to Myanmar, which does not have its forces deployed in strength, on its borders with India. Moreover, large tracts of western Myanmar, bordering India, are not under government control. Despite this, Myanmar and India have cooperated in dealing with cross-border infiltration. But, matters have become more complex, as relations between Myanmar and China have deteriorated in the recent past.

During the past year, tensions along Myanmar’s eastern borders with China in its Shan State have escalated, as ethnic Han Chinese insurgents have waged war against the Myanmar army. The situation is no better in the western Kachin State, which borders India. The Myanmar army has hardly any control over vast tracts of the Kachin State, which are controlled by insurgents of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Much to the annoyance of the Myanmar army, the Chinese have a cosy relationship with the KIA, as they have with ethnic Han Chinese insurgents from the Kokang and WA tribesmen, in the Eastern Shan State. China’s angst at Myanmar flows from the fact that Myanmar’s rulers, who have now mended fences with the western world and Japan, have in recent years, rejected hydroelectric and mining projects that China regarded as important and prestigious.

Ever since they were ousted from Bangladesh, scores of members of Indian separatist groups across the country’s northeast have taken refuge in Kachin State. The separatist KIA that exercises control of this area is waging a war against the Myanmar army, but enjoys a cosy relationship with Chinese authorities in the neighbouring Yunnan Province. Apart from the NSCN(K), the ULFA and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, a number of other separatist groups from Manipur take refuge along the Myanmar-Yunnan border. These groups have now come under the umbrella of an NSCN(K)-led and evidently Chinese-backed grouping, calling itself the “United National Front of West Southeast Asia” (UNWSA). ULFA leader Paresh Barua has emerged as a major participant in arms trade. Like NSCN(K) leader Shangwang Shangyung Khaplang, Barua is known to operate from the Chinese border town of Ruili. Chinese support to northeastern insurgents is, by now, fairly well-established, but rarely spoken about.

It is evident that China’s policies towards India’s northeast are reverting to what prevailed in Maoist times, despite glib talk of building a China-Myanmar-Bangladesh –India transport corridor. India should realise that the Deng era policies of “hide your strength, bide your time” have been discarded. Xi Jinping believes in the unhindered use of Chinese military, diplomatic and economic power to attain national aims. China is going to have no qualms about backing groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the UN and northeastern separatist groups on our eastern borders, while intruding into areas it claims. The Xi Jinping dispensation appears determined to tighten its strategic containment of India. Ignoring these realities would prove costly for us. dadpartha@gmail.com

The writer is a former diplomat
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