Unrest in Myanmar could destabilise India’s Northeast

With motley rebel groups chipping away at the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's military junta is known, India invited an influencer of the military leadership to New Delhi a few months ago. The invitation by a government agency was one of several ongoing efforts to determine India's options in this critically important country in its neighbourhood as Myanmar stands on the edge of a precipice. 

Latest credible intelligence estimates from Myanmar, whose remoteness and wide swathes of inaccessibility make predictions difficult, have said that at least half of its territory has slipped out of the Tatmadaw's grip. As early as November, when India assessed that the situation in Myanmar was deteriorating, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued an advisory to Indian nationals to avoid travel to that country unless it is absolutely necessary. Indians living in Myanmar were told not to undertake inter-state journeys by road and to stay away from regions severely hit by violence.

The influencer who came from Yangon — whose identity must remain anonymous for their security back in their home — was full of praise for India's policies on Myanmar and was unstinting in their paeans for the current state of India-Myanmar friendship.

After one of their public appearances, the president of a highly regarded organisation in New Delhi invited the well-connected visitor from Yangon for a private meeting with a few of those who were at the public event. As alcohol flowed and the atmosphere lightened, the influencer was scathing, off-the-record, about India. Myanmar felt severely let down by New Delhi, the visitor said. Arms supplies to the Tatmadaw had dwindled, and support for the unity and territorial integrity of Myanmar was no longer a priority for India, they alleged.

This columnist independently verified some of these allegations with sources on Raisina Hill, the seat of power in the national capital, and elsewhere in the city from where the levers of action in such matters are pulled. The influencer's accusations can be testified in this space to be largely true.

The importance of Myanmar for India's security cannot be overstated. It can be the cat's paw for destabilising India's Northeast if powers from outside the region gain control of policy-making in Naypyidaw, where the capital was shifted not long ago from the historic city of Yangon by the Tatmadaw. India's Myanmar policy has frequently oscillated between support for pro-democracy forces and the junta. The periodic shifts towards Aung Saan Suu Kyi and her democracy advocates have been more emotive and personality-based than policy-oriented.

Suu Kyi lived her early years in New Delhi, where she went to school and graduated from the University of Delhi. President K R Narayanan's ethnic Burmese wife Usha was Suu Kyi's local guardian in those days. In the early 1990s, as vice president and president he exerted undue influence on shifting the MEA's positions in favour of Suu Kyi, when she had her back to the wall in Myanmar politics. This came at a great cost to India's security as rebels from the country's restive Northeast found a ready haven in Myanmar's border areas, facilitated by its Army, which felt rejected by India's change in policy. Then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao had to overexert to reverse this policy. Nearly a decade later, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government faced the same dilemma. Its Defence Minister George Fernandes was a passionate advocate for democracy in Myanmar and ostracism of the Tatmadaw. Fortunately, Vajpayee's persuasive powers prevailed and that BJP-led government's support for Suu Kyi and her supporters was short-lived.

Foreign and security policies abhor a vacuum, especially in sensitive countries at the crossroads of the ‘Great Game’. In the chronic obsession with China in sections on India's strategic community, it is not, therefore, realised that Russia — not China— has become Myanmar's top arms supplier. This happened after New Delhi scaled down weapons supplies to the junta.

Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of Russia's Security Council, has visited Naypyidaw thrice in the last year and a half; an unusual choice of a country which has seldom been a priority for Russian or Soviet foreign policy.

The fact is that a long-term project of the United States— regime change in Myanmar— is finally working. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) may have its own justification for regime change, part of which, is China's efforts for a foothold in Myanmar. But the Kremlin recognises this as a threat to its Asian interests and has stepped in discreetly. Whether such an action is already too late to save the Tatmadaw will only be known when the rebels try to expand their reach beyond half the country which they have already lost control of.

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.