Did the Indian army cross the border into Myanmar last week to take out camps set up by the Naga insurgent group, the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang faction)? The NSCN(K) and home ministry sources claim it did. The army and the Assam Rifles say it did not. The reports have emerged just days before External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj landed in Myanmar on August 22.
If such an operation did take place, it would be the first known cross-border “surgical strike” launched by the army since it stormed into NSCN(K) camps in Myanmar in June last year. The Indian army has reportedly engaged in similar strikes for decades but the Myanmar government is reluctant to make them public. Apart from the diplomatic unease such an incident is bound to cause, it suggests that the Centre repeats its mistakes in dealing with the militant movements of self-determination spread across the North East, talking to a few groups while cracking down on others.
While the government follows a policy of hot pursuit when it comes to the NSCN(K), declaring the group a terrorist organisation, it is trying to reach a peace accord with the NSCN (Isak-Muivah faction), believed to be the largest Naga separatist group at the moment. In the past, the accords that came out of such selective negotiation brought an incomplete peace. By leaving some groups out in the cold, they created new constituencies of discontent. In some cases, by handing over autonomy to the most powerful militant faction, they only institutionalised old systems of violence and domination.
Shortchanged in Shillong
The long-running insurgencies of the North East have constantly mutated over the decades, splitting into different factions and sometimes merging again. The Naga movement for self-determination, which predates Independence, is no different.
Naga nationalism crystallised around the demand for Nagalim, an imagined homeland that sprawled across both sides of the border between present-day India and Myanmar. Until the mid-1970s, the battle for sovereignty was fought under the aegis of the Naga National Council. Over the last four decades, the movement has grown fragmented, riven with conflicts between warring factions.
Each group points to the fractious legacy of the Shillong Accord of 1975, a 16-point agreement signed with a small section of the NNC leadership, which stipulated that all underground groups give up arms and did away with the option of complete sovereignty.
It split the NNC into the Accordist and Non-Accordist factions. In 1980, a section of the younger NNC leadership, led by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah, broke away to form the NSCN. Clan rivalries and power struggles later fragmented the group further, giving rise to the Khaplang and Isak-Muivah factions in 1988, the Unification faction in 2007, the Kitovi-Konyak faction in 2011, and the Reformation faction in 2015.
The Shillong Accord would become the first of the divisive pacts signed between government and insurgent group.
A two-pronged approach
Over the years, the government managed to bring all factions under ceasefire agreements. But each group ran its own rebel government, collected money as “taxes” and retained armies poised to strike, should the ceasefire be broken. The Centre played into the rivalries between the different groups, holding talks only with the Isak-Muivah faction and appearing to ignore the others, giving rise to festering resentments. This uneasy was limbo was broken in 2015, when the NSCN(K), under a ceasefire since 2001, stormed out of the agreement and proceeded to launch sporadic attacks on security forces from across the border.
Since then, the Centre has sharpened its two pronged strategy. It sped up the peace process with NSCN(IM), signing a framework agreement for a final settlement last year and holding frequent meetings. The leadership of the NSCN(U) and NSCN(KK), as well as a large section of the Reformation cadre, have swelled the ranks of the NSCN(IM), strengthening the constituency for talks and making them more representative of Naga interests. But the Khaplang faction remains an outlier, threatening the shape of any peace to come.
Nagaland is not the only place where the Centre’s two-pronged approach to insurgencies have taken a toll on local inhabitants. In Assam, for instance, the United Liberation Front of Asom split up over the question of holding talks with government. The anti-talks faction has continued with its old agenda of abductions and attacks, setting off low intensity blasts on Independence Day, kidnapping the son of a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and releasing a video demanding a ransom.
The Bodo example
The pitfalls of signing a pact with one powerful group have become painfully evident in the continuing tragedies of Bodoland.
The Bodo agitation in Assam grew militarised in the 1980s, with the formation of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which targeted other ethnic groups living in the territory that it staked out for its own. After 1996, the Christian-dominated NDFB had to deal with a rival outfit, the Bodo Liberation Tiger Force, predominantly Hindu and demanding autonomy rather than secession.
In 2003, the Centre signed a peace accord with Liberation Tigers, giving rise to the formation of the Bodoland Autonomous Territorial District. The BLTF shape-shifted into a political party, the Bodoland People’s Front, and has kept a firm grip on the BTAD ever since. It was a flawed pact, critics say, which did not give rise to a genuinely democratic system. The Liberation Tigers were legitimised but not much else changed. The region remains flush with arms and underdeveloped, rife with corruption as funds go into the pockets of the freshly minted political elite.
On the edges of this arrangement, the NDFB still lurks. While two of its factions have come to the talks table, the group led by IK Songjibit bursts into sporadic violence even now In the last few years, attacks on Adivasi and Muslim populations in Bodoland have continued, killing hundreds. Most recently, a shooting in a Bodo marketplace, which killed 14 people, was attributed to the NDFB(S).
As it press on with Naga talks, the Bodo example should be a warning to government. Talking to chosen constituencies and rewarding the most powerful group with autonomy can only be a partial solution. A peace accord with the NSCN(IM) and its allies will only be undermined by the conflict that still bubbles at the border.