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India’s troubled North East is not only far from the country’s power center it also has an incredibly fragile border with Burma. Northern Burma is, if anything even more chaotic and insurgency riden than the Indian side. As the region grows in strategic importance and as India’s game of brinkmanship with China over strategic influence grows so has her forgiveness and ‘engagement’ with Burma.

This week India’s external affairs minister S. M. Krishna makes his way to Nyapiytaw, Burma’s strange administrative capital for the strangely accornymed BIMSTEC (Something to do with the Bay of Bengal) meeting, a confession is likely to be of more interest in dialogue between the two uncomfortable ‘friends’.

The confession came from the ULFA who put the record straight and confirmed what many had thought; they have bases in Burma and operate out of the country. Whilst even often belligerent and chaotic Bangladesh has been able to rid their territory of the group and detain a few key members, Burma’s near half a million strong military has been unable to.

India has offered joint training excersises, military aid and many other pleasantries but many question whether it is intentions that are arry or capability.

Burma is said to be trying to play off these two Asian giants. Both India and China are competing for gas and oil concessions and so far it seems that China is winning in terms of strategic influence. They have famously tabled less for gas fields than India and still won bids. Some argue its to do with China’s Security Council Seat which has made repeated western attempts at a resolution against Burma’s generals impossible. Others still maintain that there exists a historical memory that runs deeper.

Burmese political analyst Aung Naing Oo put two compelling historical points to me. The first was the colonial history. Britain annexed Burma in a muddled affair a lot later than most of India and despite this it became incredibly prosperous. The British imported a great deal of labour, many Tamils and Bengalis were brought in as labourers and merchants; this influx Naing Oo explained was partly viewed as a ’second occupation’. It was also run as part of British India, not as a separate entity.

The second of note is India’s prior position. Like a role model democracy India initially was heavily supportive of Burma’s democracy movement. India’s intelligence is said to have supported a number of groups including the student army the All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF) who, after the protests in the early 90s were violently crushed and the election results ignored, moved into the jungle to fight. Meanwhile the democracy leader; Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was bestowed the Jawaharlal Nehru Award, which incidentally was first awarded to another Burmese, U Thant, the first Asian Secretary General of the UN, who also ended up on the wrong side of the ’senior general’.

This early Indian support for the democracy movement apparently still lives vindictively in their memory. The whiff of that western humanism and internationalism still apparently lingers on the Indian breath despite years of ‘looking east’ and counter insurgency against Burmese political dissidents.

Another, perhaps even more sinister motive for choosing China is an apparent racism that exists and can perhaps be viewed in conjunction with the first point about ‘the second occupation’. The ‘Kala’ as Burmese colloquially call Indians or people with a dark complexion have lived in Burma probably almost as long as Lord Buddha has been followed. These communities such as the Rohingya in western Burma are often subject to awful, shameless persecution from the military. The Rohingya ‘crisis’ earlier in the year prompted the consul general in Hong Kong to light heartedly dismiss them to a journalist as ‘ugly as ogres’. These communities are no doubt some part of a divide and rule tactic that the generals skillfully adapted from their colonial predecessors and added a personal touch too. Wherever it came from or whatever the issue, it prompted a racial purge in the 60’s and what little we hear from the Rohingya today it is usually of despair and torment.

It is hard to imagine Indian changing her tack anytime soon. The political imperative for competing with China is too great, this macro issue twinned with energy supplies trumps just about everything. Yet the instability flowing in seems no sign of stopping; UNODC recently highlighted India and western routes out of Burma as a growing venture for Burma’s number one entrepreneurs, drug barons.Whilst the same smuggling routes are reportedly of use to another apparent thorn in India’s side the Maoists. Like alot of things in this area much is adorned with mystery and murk, yet threatens to prompt a very Confucian ‘interesting time’

Joseph Allchin

author can be reached at ja@dvb.no

photo courtesy of Alex Ellgee, the Irrawaddy

Obama has kept his hand on the hilt, finger on the trigger, sticking with his cow boy predecessor and will not change his policy on the issue of banning of land mines.

This puts him well in their with some of ‘his quintessential partners of the 21st century’, with 3 of the regions biggest militaries also boasting the odious weapons in their arsenals. India, Pakistan and Burma all posses and refuse to stop using the weapons that claim the lives of thousands every year in arbitrary agony.

My experience of them comes from only one of those countries; Burma. Fro m whose war I have witnessed entire wards in a hospital full of young men with limbs and eyes missing, their skin pock marked with shrapnel wounds. Most were bellow the age of 20. Some had been fighting with Burma’s government, the guy in the next bed against. But they were of the same ethnic group, the Karen, who inhabit the rugged, beautiful land along Burma’s eastern border with Thailand.

The shocking aspect of land mine victims was not just the injuries I saw that day, which were horrifying, nor the tender age of most of the victims but the sheer dominance of this one weapon in a single ward. I met one person who was there because someone pulled a trigger. The rest had their lives scarred because they put their foot in the wrong place. It’s arbitrary nature means that civilians are just as likely to get blown up as soldiers.

Why big, sophisticated millitaries like the US, or India need landmines amongst their vast arsenals is debatable, but the use of such weaponry also asks questions of it legitimacy in regards to the Geneva convention. In the case of Burma it has been widely suggested that they are used by the military government as part of its ‘four cuts’ policy in the afore mentioned conflict in Eastern Burma. In  effect this is a scorched earth policy, its aim; to prevent the subsistence of guerillas and to punish local populations. What the Geneva conventions would term ‘Total War’.

In terms of India similar practices will no doubt and possibly have been utilised in battling insurgent movements in Kashmir and the Maoists in the ‘Naxal’/tribal areas of eastern India.

-Joseph Allchin

“This is the first time there has been an open trial against any member of any of India’s intelligence agencies” conferred lawyer and activist Nandita Haksar to me as I peered into the murky case of 34 Burmese nationals being tried in Kolkata at the moment.

The 34 are accused of being ‘gun runners’. They were apparently lured to the Andaman Islands by an Indian intelligence officer named colonel Grewal, who it now appears lives and works in Burma, but not for the Indian government, he works for Burma’s notorious, yet seemingly perpetual military government.

The facts of the case are long and rambled. This is no surprise given that the Burmese were first ambushed on Indian soil about 11 years ago. In the course of the 11 years since their arrival by boat on the aptly named ‘Landfall Island’ some 8 of the Burmese have died or ‘disappeared’, one trial lawyer has died in mysterious circumstances, they have faced at least one intelligence instigated riot involving some 300 other inmates attacking them (apparently to prevent an open trial taking place) and they waited 6 years for a charge sheet to even be produced.

At every step of the way India’s legal system has been plagued by India’s intelligence services. They have failed to comply with legal proceedings, none of its members have appeared in court and it has apparently harassed and followed not only trial lawyers but defense witnesses.  It has the blood of at least 6 Burmese democracy activists on its hands and possibly one courageous Indian lawyer.

What Indian intelligence was doing when it invited the Burmese to the Andamans only to double cross them is not known. What is worrying not just for the Burmese groups fighting that country’s oppressive government, but India as well is that the protagonist who invited them was probably acting on the behest of a foreign power, the Burmese military junta. Most informed sources that I have spoken to believe he was taking money from the Burmese. This does not discount the possibility that he was working in some sought of joint capacity or joint project between the two governments. If so it is a worrying indictment of India’s foreign policy, and one that she will surely be viewed in time with the same sort of guilt that support for the likes of Pinochet elicits in London or Washington. India’s relationship with Burma could fill many a blog post. It is a story ripe with Machiavellian conjecture and geo politics, but for the sake of the here and now the world’s largest democracy seems to be displaying about as much morality as a hyena after a bout of haemorrhoids, towards her eastern neighbour.

The disembodying facts that are appearing in court may be bringing a painful magnifying glass to the institution of military intelligence in India but the fact is, is that none will face justice, and stand the diametric opposite of so many great Indians who were also incarcerated in the Andamans and whose efforts gave rise to that great democracy .

-Joseph Allchin