What peace in Bangladesh, Myanmar means for security in India's Northeast

In just three years, escalating civil conflict in India’s eastern neighbours Myanmar and Bangladesh has significantly weakened the dynamics for peace and stability in the Northeast. India shares long borders with both countries — over 1,600 km with Myanmar and 4,096 km with Bangladesh, the world’s fifth-longest land border. These boundaries run along key Northeastern states, several of which have been fighting fierce insurgency movements against the Indian state for decades. Since 2021, Myanmar has been in the throes of a civil war following a military coup in response to the landslide electoral victory of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. Since then, the junta’s soldiers are unsuccessfully fighting multiple battles with insurgent groups, local warlords, and their militias and pro-democracy forces such as the Arakan Army, Chinland Defence Forces, and Karenni Nationalities Defence Force. Today, the military exercises direct control only in and around Yangon and Naypyidaw, the capital city, in central Myanmar, and patches in the northwest and southeast of the country.

The kaleidoscope of groups challenging the junta operate, among other things, flourishing underground markets in precious stones, guns, and drugs to finance their resistance, activities that are popular with rebel groups in India too. In the past, the Myanmarese military and India enjoyed a close alliance in intelligence sharing and joint operations against militants. These connections have weakened even as refugees streaming into Bangladesh and India are creating new challenges. Earlier this year, the government decided to fence the Indo-Myanmar border and scrap the Indo-Myanmar Free Movement Regime, which allowed people living in the borderlands, such as Naga, Chin, and Kuki-Zo, to venture up to 16 km into each other’s territory. Predictably, these moves have raised protests in Nagaland and Mizoram, two of the four states that border Myanmar. Civil society in Mizoram has welcomed large numbers of refugees from Myanmar, including Rohingya Muslims that the Centre had wanted to repatriate. In Bangladesh, the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has also cost India a staunch ally in its battle against Islamic militants and drug runners. India’s relationship with the emerging political forces of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been fractious in the past; the return of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence-sponsored Jamaat-e-Islami, banned from contesting elections for a decade, must be viewed with concern, especially given that the country shares borders with West Bengal and Assam, where communal tensions have flared in recent years. Bangladesh also shares semi-open borders with Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura.

Taken together with the escalation in Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu, the deteriorating security architecture in Myanmar and Bangladesh will test the Indian government in new and complex ways. Although the government has signed eight peace agreements with groups across the Northeast between 2014 and 2023, and selectively lifted the writ of the unpopular Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the region remains a security challenge. For example, tensions with Naga militants have flared as have those with the United Liberation Front of Asom. More recently, the explosion of ethnic conflict in Manipur last year between the Meitei majority and the Kuki tribal communities, with spillovers to Mizoram and Nagaland, which have Kuki populations, is unlikely to de-escalate as long as outstanding issues remain unresolved.