India if not vastly isolated, it seems stranded from all directions with less friendly neighbors or dissenters. In order to remain in the game, the need of the hour for New Delhi is to shed .its unwavering commitment to the generals whose grip is anyway loosening, or at least balance it by opening direct channels of communication with the Peoples’ Defense Forces and Three Brotherhood Alliance, thereby planting one foot in the pro-democracy camp. Like China, India should play both sides in its national interest. Its high time India reviews its ties with the armed forces and resets its relations with Myanmar.?
- Myanmar’s Military Crisis threatens India’s National Security. Pressure of refugees, potential for cross-border violence and threat to key projects are top challenges.
- China’s?response?has received considerable international attention, as has the?friction?within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to forge a resolution to the conflict.?
- Fighting between the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) and various groups, including Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and People is Defense Forces (PDFs), persists across much of the country.
- More than 660,000 people are estimated to have been newly displaced since the escalation of armed conflict on 27 October, with some people displaced several times and others already starting to return home. Total current displacement now stands at 2.6 million people nationwide.
- The volatile context is generating significant protection risks including increased civilian casualties, arbitrary arrests, exploitation, forced recruitment and forced labor.
- Food, safe shelter, non-food items and hygiene kits, basic health services and protection support remain priorities with shortages of essential supplies being reported in many areas due to commercial and humanitarian transport blockages.
- Despite insecurity, access, and telecommunication challenges, provision of essential humanitarian assistance to affected people continues where possible using a variety of flexible approaches. Humanitarian partners have now reached more than 80 per cent of those displaced in northern Shan.
- The UN and partners continue to seek to access a greater proportion of affected people. An inter-agency mission was completed earlier in December and another is approved for the delivery of assistance to IDPs in southern Shan.
- Despite surging needs, the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan is just 29 per cent funded days before the end of the year. An urgent injection of funds is desperately needed to sustain the response into the new year.
1??????.Worthy audience Myanmar, located in the western corner of mainland?Southeast Asia. A conflict triggered by the military takeover in 2021?has resulted in recurring, protracted and new displacement, and complicated the search for solutions. Thousand fled the country and 1.95 million people are currently displaced within Myanmar. Neighboring India has many stakes in Myanmar for obvious reasons. Clashes intensified in Myanmar recently. Myanmar's insurgent groups are pushing away government soldiers from key military points including some near the Indian border. Myanmar's military junta has lost control over several parts of the country.? Insurgents are dominating key areas near the country's borders with India, China and Thailand.? The military junta is paying for the terrible repression of the people since it seized power three years back.? India maintains a relationship with the junta because its security interests are involved.? Myanmar’s military junta is losing control over several parts of the country including areas close to the border states of India.
- As Myanmar's military junta comes under terrible pressure, as per Jaishankar Indian FM & Ajit Doval (James Bond of India) are petrified that China is trying to use the opportunity to grow its influence. India needs to watch the Chinese moves very carefully.
- The current intensification of clashes have significantly undermined India’s economic and security interests in Southeast Asia. The multi-dimensional civil war in Myanmar has made progress on India’s economic and logistics projects in the country, which are central to India’s Act East policy, all but impossible.
- Fighting between Myanmar’s military and the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), which formed to defend communities against the military’s onslaught, has brought intense conflict to the western and northwestern parts of Myanmar, which border India. The PDFs in northwestern Myanmar, working in tandem with Myanmar’s ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and using guerrilla-style tactics against military forces trained for conventional warfare, have captured significant territory from Myanmar’s military.
- Situation has thwarted the military’s effort to consolidate power and weakened its capacity to support India’s counterinsurgency efforts against Indian EAOs that operate from Myanmar. As it has lost ground in India’s borderlands, Myanmar’s army has instead?sought assistance from Indian EAOs. These groups, which New Delhi sees as a major national security threat, have collaborated with the military junta to attack pro-democratic PDFs and EAOs in the border areas of Myanmar and India.
- Although the Myanmar military’s actions have fundamentally undermined India’s interests, New Delhi continues to maintain close ties with the junta an institution universally reviled in Myanmar, and which has once again turned Myanmar into a global pariah.
- What was expected that India had to distance from the military junta, provide humanitarian assistance to Myanmar refugees, and engage the deposed National Unity Government (NUG) in Myanmar, it would not only strengthen the democracy movement in Myanmar in a way that could help conclude the civil war, but it would generate enormous goodwill from the Myanmar public that would benefit India’s long-term interests in the country.
2. Worthy audience ,in order to remain in the game, New Delhi needs to shed its unwavering commitment to the generals or at least balance it by opening direct channels of communication with the pro-democracy forces. Though very risky yet it? would be ?na?ve to not to believe that ?New Delhi could start by engaging publicly with the?NUG, CDM and PDFs, as well as Myanmar EAOs active in India’s borderlands. Working with pro-democracy forces presents India with an opportunity to have a stronger future role in Myanmar, especially vis-à-vis China, which has?dramatically increased support for the military junta?since March.
- If India continues to respond by providing military assistance and support to the Myanmar army as a means of trying to limit China’s influence, it risks losing any goodwill it might have with the Myanmar public. More importantly, such a strategy is likely to play to China’s advantage in terms of further legitimizing the military regime
- India could respond to the growing humanitarian challenges on its northeastern borders by supporting the state governments and civil society groups that bear the cost of hosting refugees from Myanmar. It will be critical that international humanitarian aid agencies have access to these communities to provide direct support.
- The insecurity caused by the coup and the advent of the rainy season will affect local communities’ ability to mobilize and provide humanitarian aid and relief, only worsening the already dire conditions.
- India would benefit from the abovementioned approach, which will help its northeastern states consolidate cross-border ethnic ties, enhance India’s reputation within the ethnic communities that are collaborating with many of the anti-junta forces, strengthen India’s relations with the NUG and lay the foundation for deeper people-to-people relations, protect infrastructure projects linked with its Act East Policy and set the stage for strong democratic and economic initiatives within a more inclusive federal democratic Myanmar.
3.?? Inference . Worthy readers India, which is strangely keeping all its eggs in one basket, has exported $51 million worth of military hardware to Myanmar since the coup, according to the United Nations, underlining India’s current stand in the conflict. New Delhi has also been hosting a plethora of Myanmar officials sanctioned by the United States and the European Union, and rolling out the red carpet for them. Unprecedented level of co-operation between Indian and Myanmar military has naturally not gone down well with the NUG which expects New Delhi to be at least neutral, if not support pro-democracy forces, especially when the junta’s hold is weakening?:-
- For obvious reasons, nobody expects India to take a leaf out of the European Parliament’s book, which has recognized the NUG as the legitimate government of Myanmar! Most other countries have condemned the coup and demanded the restoration of democracy. New Delhi therefore needs quick policy modifications; essentially break the ice with the NUG and the PDF affiliated to it; if it wants to be able to exercise influence on the new Myanmar in the making. Otherwise, only China’s writ will run there.
- It’s high time India reviews its ties with the armed forces, known as Tatmadaw, and resets its relations with Myanmar where the ground is slipping from under the junta’s feet. The regime’s vulnerability has forced de facto ruler General Min Aung Hlaing to turn to China because of the close links Beijing has quietly forged with rebel forces while officially backing the junta. India, in contrast, has been ‘principled’. It has so far shunned pro-democracy forces, armed ethnic groups and the NUG-in-exile, and fully backed the junta since February 2021.But the net result of our single mindedness is that while we have been sidelined, Beijing is center stage today thanks to its policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.
- In order to remain in the game, the need of the hour for New Delhi is to shed its unwavering commitment to the generals whose grip is anyway loosening, or at least balance it by opening direct channels of communication with the Peoples’ Defense Forces and Three Brotherhood Alliance, thereby planting one foot in the pro-democracy camp.
- China, India should play both sides in its national interest. The NUG-in-exile, in any case, has great expectations from us which we have not lived up to. We should not miss the golden opportunity to redeem ourselves now for their sake as well as ours.
