THE UNFOLDING GREAT GAME ON EASTERN FRONT

China is fishing in Myanmar's troubled waters by supporting anti-junta armies. India's policy responses, including the planned border fence, should be seen as a reaction to this anxiety

- Pradip Phanjoubam

INDIA'S decision to scrap the Free Movement Regime or FMR across the 1,643-km border with Myanmar as well as to fence it for stricter vigil have been making headlines in the northeast Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram in particular. Earlier, the central government also proposed a 100-km wide belt along the international borders where no environmental clearance would be necessary to take up infrastructural development projects. Let there be no doubt, all of these are interrelated and have the same goal of securing India's border. There are, of course, those who see these policy overtures as overkill, and there are better ways of dealing with this concern.

There is, however, more than meets the eye in the matter. These moves, as several knowledgeable observers have pointed out, have little to do with the demands for them by any of the concerned state including by a section of the population in Manipur, just as protests against it in states such as Mizoram and Nagaland will have equally scant effect in making the central government change its posture. As the chairman of the Politeia Research Foundation, Sanjay Pulipaka, has written, these moves are prompted by India's unease at China's influence penetrating deeper into Myanmar in the wake of the present turmoil the country is engulfed in.

This nagging apprehension became alarming for India after an alliance of three pro-Chinese ethnic armies, together known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance, took control of several major trading towns along the Myanmar-China border on October 27, 2023 in a landmark reversal for the Myanmar junta—a storming now codenamed Operation 1027. This alliance, formed in June 2019, comprises the Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDA), and Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).