North East - Nagas

All insurgencies aren’t the same. And yet, I tended to bucketize all insurgencies in the North East as pretty much based on the same issues: step-motherly treatment by the Center, resulting in lack of development, in turn fueling demands for either greater autonomy or outright secession.

I was so wrong, as Tim Marshall’s book, Divided, showed me. The Naga insurgency is very different. But first, who are the Nagas?

“The Nagas are a collection of forested hill tribes.”

Like the better-known Kurds who got split across multiple nations (Iraq, Turkey, Syria), the Nagas got split across India and Myanmar (Burma) in 1947-48. They want a united homeland, something that neither India nor Myanmar will agree to. Ergo, the problem spills over into two countries, so much so that:

“(It) has led to the construction of a fence, not by the Indians but by Myanmar, along parts of that section of the border.”

There are approximately 2 million Nagas on either side of the border.

The Myanmar government, which has to deal with multiple insurgencies within, often left the Nagas to themselves:

“(The Nagas used the Myanmar) region to train and equip their militias and conduct frequent cross-border raids.”

In 2015, one such raid resulted in the death of 15 Indian soldiers. India retaliated with a “lightning night-time cross-border operation”, with Indian commandos going several miles into Myanmar, attacking two Naga rebel camps, and killing many of them.

The problem is harder to solve than many other insurgencies, because the Nagas are “a people who regard themselves neither Indian nor Myanmarese but as Naga”.