Graham Lees
World Politics Review | BANGKOK
Ethnic clashes that have led to 11 deaths in Moreh, an Indian town on the border with Burma, have barely raised a blip on the global news meter but have brought much trade between the two countries to a standstill. Moreh is a fly-blown place in a remote corner of India’s troubled and underdeveloped northeast region and remains largely under lock and key guard by units of the Assam Rifles regiment. And yet Moreh is regarded by the central government in faraway New Delhi as the gateway to Southeast Asia in its “Look East” economic growth policy.
The ethnic unrest at the end of May is a repeat of similar violence one year ago when the only official trade crossing along the 1,100-kilometer border between India and Burma was closed for a month. For arms and rebels, however, this is a very porous border, dividing as it does several tribal communities, not least the Naga, whose aim is to be neither Indian nor Burmese. More than 30,000 automatic rifles have been seized in the last five years by Indian army units on border security patrols, sources say.
Some illegal weapons movement from Burma into India is very likely Indian small arms that were officially supplied to the Burmese military as sweeteners to improve New Delhi’s relations with Burma, a senior Indian army officer suggested a few weeks ago. Some of the supplies are turning up in an unofficial arms market in Tamu, the Burmese town opposite Moreh, Maj. Gen. B. K. Chengapa of the Assam Rifles said in local Indian newspaper reports.
That’s a rare hint of Indian criticism of what goes on in Burma, where New Delhi not only seeks to buy large quantities of natural gas to fuel its northeast states’ development but also wants to use as a conduit for land trade links into the rest of Southeast Asia. Stymied by poor relations with Bangladesh, New Delhi is seeking to develop road, rail and waterway routes into and through Burma for its northeast region.
Even while Moreh has been under curfew, senior Indian officials were busy promoting its status as a gateway. “Moreh is the most strategic international trading point in the region,” the chief minister of Manipur State, Ibobi Singh, told the state capital Imphal’s Sangai Express while admitting that the Burmese border area is a hotbed of disaffection.
Singh’s hopeful view eastward was shared by Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, on a rare visit to northeast India in June to discuss the region’s promised development. “Geography is opportunity and the very geographical location of the northeast makes it the doorway to Southeast and East Asia and vice versa -- a doorway for these economies into India,” the minister said in Shillong, capital of Meghalaya State.
It’s a view that might not be shared by a large percentage of the estimated 35 million inhabitants of the seven landlocked Indian states surrounded by four international borders, and connected to the rest of India by a narrow corridor less than 15 miles wide between Nepal and the top of Bangladesh, known as the Chicken’s Neck.
Assam is the only state among the seven -- including Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh -- with some degree of economic development. Much of the region was part of a greater Assam until the 1960s and early 1970s, when ethnic unrest forced New Delhi to carve out six new states to give some degree of autonomy to various ethnic groups. Armed groups of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland have been waging an independence war with India since the 1950s and operate out of jungle bases inside northwest Burma.
Much of the 1 million population of Arunachal Pradesh, part of which is claimed by China, are of Tibetan or Burmese origin. The entire northeast region was absorbed into British Imperial India in the early 19th century as the British began to confront Burmese empire builders who were encroaching westwards. But there has been little economic development since that time, aside from Assam’s famous teas.
Now New Delhi’s Look East policy hopes to bring beneficial change -- if Burma will oblige. India has been seeking to buy large quantities of Burma’s offshore gas and to pipe it into the northeast to improve energy infrastructure. Two Indian state oil firms, the Gas Authority of India Ltd. and the Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC), are involved in developing Burma’s largest gas find to date, the Shwe field.
New Delhi is also planning to invest $100 million in modernizing the old British colonial era port of Sittwe on the west Burmese coast at the mouth of the River Kaladan, which flows from Mizoram State. The Indian government envisages also using the river as a trade route to the sea. But China has loomed large as an obstacle to these ambitions.
“India thought it would be first choice when the Burmese sought buyers for the six trillion cubic feet of gas in the Shwe field,” said Bangkok energy commodities analyst Sar Watana. “Two Indian companies are in the foreign consortium developing that field and New Delhi has been making a lot of friendly gestures to the military regime. But then China came into the picture with a bid to buy all the Shwe gas.
“It’s hard to see New Delhi paying to develop Sittwe port if it only benefits the Chinese.” Indian media and opposition politicians have accused New Delhi of dithering over pressing its case for the Burmese gas -- a slowness which seems to afflict much of India’s northeast.
But New Delhi might now be waking up to the realization that it cannot rely solely on the goodwill of the self-centered Burmese regime, which many Rangoon watchers see as having opted to cozy up to China in return for Beijing’s diplomatic protection in the U.N. Security Council. Instead, New Delhi seems to be formulating a three-pronged approach to its Look East ambitions: continue seeking rapprochement with Burma, redouble efforts to develop the northeast, and engage with its other regional neighbor, China.
New Delhi and Beijing have agreed to redevelop the disused Stillwell Road, named after World War II U.S. Gen. Joseph Stillwell, who ordered its construction. The two Indian energy companies, which have seemingly failed to secure Burma’s gas, are to explore for hydrocarbons in the northeast state.
The ONGC has been directed by New Delhi to invest about $2.4 billion on exploration in Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Assam. (ONGC disclosed it is negotiating to invite Canada’s Canoro Resources to invest in exploring for gas in Nagaland.) Some industry analysts see this as a snub to the Burmese regime for reneging on a memorandum of understanding with New Delhi over its offshore gas seemingly in favor of China.
The Stillwell Road linked Assam with China via the northwest tip of Burma to supply weapons to the Chinese after the Japanese occupied of most of Burma in 1942. The road fell into disuse when China closed up after the 1949 communist takeover, but New Delhi and Beijing are now keen to redevelop it as a commerce route.
Most observers agree that with China’s desire to develop its isolated southwest Yunnan Province -- and its influence over the Burmese generals -- a revived Stillwell Road holds better prospects for India’s Look East policy than New Delhi’s other idea of redeveloping a railroad through Burma.
Trains haven’t run eastwards out of Burma since the end of the Japanese occupation in the mid 1940s. Using captured Allied soldiers and local civilians as forced labor, the Japanese carved a vital supply railroad through mountainous jungle to link Rangoon with Bangkok. But perhaps in memory of the many captured Allied troops who died in its construction, it was bombed into oblivion by resurgent U.S. and British forces. Successive isolationist Burmese regimes have shown little inclination to revive it -- apart from nodding vaguely at New Delhi’s proposals.
