THE PROLONGED CONFLICT TRAP IN THE NORTHEAST

MANIPUR continues to be trapped in the dark bottomless abyss it began descending into on May 3, 2023, when a violent conflict broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo group of tribes.

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For inexplicable reasons, the state as well as Union governments seem content leaving this deadly conflict to rage on till passions wear out.

After 17 months, things are much more complex as mistrust and hatred between the warring communities have entrenched deeper, given the mounting casualties and diminishing hopes of those displaced of returning home again.

If the state government was found incapable in the first few weeks of the outbreak, the Union government should have firmly clamped down using what Max Weber called the state's monopoly over the legitimate use of coercive force.

This had seemed would be the case, with military aircraft streaming in day and night into Imphal, rushing in additional central security personnel to bring up the total to approximately 60,000 together with those already deployed.

Nothing of what all awaited with a combine of fear and expectation, however, happened. Instead, the forces were used to merely create a buffer zone to separate the state's central valley from the surrounding hills. Ostensibly, this was meant to keep the two warring sides apart, for by then mutual ethnic cleansing had ensured there were few or no Kukis left in the valley and no Meiteis left in the foothills. In the higher reaches of the hills are the Nagas, who have thankfully remained neutral so far.

The monopoly over legitimate violence that the state abdicated was soon usurped by armed civil militias on either side, assuming the role of community defenders, a responsibility that should have rested solely in the hands of the state. Today, given the proliferation of lethal arms in the hands of the civil population, the state reclaiming this monopoly would be a much bigger task. Disarming now cannot be piecemeal either and will have to be by simultaneous and comprehensive operations on both sides.