Rangoon isn’t Kathmandu

Since the launch of Operation Goldenbird in 1995 on the tip of Mizoram, the ruling SPDC has made significant efforts not to allow Indian Northeast groups like NSCN (I-M), NSCN (K), ULFA and PLA to establish training camps in Burma. The fact is that at least thrice between 2002 and 2005, the Burmese army suffered serious casualties in hunting down Indian militants in the Sagaing division across Nagaland. By establishing radio links between its Northwest Command and Indian Army’s III Corps at Moreh, the junta routinely warns the other side about militant crossings or arms shipments. Not only has the junta taken action time and again against ULFA camps in the Vijaynagar salient across the Arunachal Pradesh border, it has put a check on arms supply to the Indian insurgents from distant Ranong on the Thailand border via Myanmar. Operation Leech in 1998 in which Arakanese gun-runners were covertly killed by the Indian forces was a direct result of this cooperation.

If internal security was paramount to the Indo-Burmese equation, the growing Chinese influence in Burma, after the latter was shunned by many countries in 1989, has also alarmed South Block. Sharing a 2204 km border with Burma, China is the lifeline of the ruling junta and supplies it with everything from food grains to weapons. Much to New Delhi’s chagrin, the security scenario got more complex when in 2000 Pakistan also supplied weapons worth $ 2.5 million to Burma. Left with no options, India jumped in and supplied 105 light field guns, 5.56 mm rifles, machine guns and four naval surveillance aircraft. It is only because of this deft thinking that New Delhi has an assurance that the Chinese will not get infrastructure projects west of Chindwin river, a tributary of the mighty Irrawaddy and also close to the Indian border. Burma is involved in Mekong-Ganga Cooperation, seen as an alternative to China’s Kunming initiative. It has also agreed to act as a strategic gateway from India to Asean countries.

In 2005 the ruling junta allowed the Indian navy’s surveillance planes to overfly the Coco Islands to satisfy New Delhi’s long-standing apprehension that Burma had allowed China a station on this island to listen in on tests at the Interim Missile Testing Range at Chandipur. And Pakistan’s ham-handed attempt to take over the mazaar of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, in Rangoon was rebuffed by the Burmese government.

Although the EU-US wants India to repeat its Nepal performance in Burma, India knows that the two situations are very different. The fact is that the strategic levers at India’s command in Nepal are missing in Burma. Indo-Nepal trade stands at $ 2 billion with Kathmandu relying totally on New Delhi for fuel supplies and 70 per cent of its exports and 65 per cent of its imports. India may share a 1338 km border with Burma, but bilateral trade is a sluggish $ 569 million, with Burma having direct sea access and strategic lines of infrastructure and communication to Kunming in China.

India could have played the kind of role it did in Nepal if it had utilised all the opportunities offered by Burma. In 1997, Burma agreed to Indian assistance in the upgrade of road communication in the Kachin state, Chin state, upgrade of railway systems, development of port facilities and inland water terminals in the Chindwin and Kaladan rivers. After the Asian meltdown, Burma even offered its proven gas blocks in the Bay of Bengal after Thailand decided to give them up. A decade down the line, the Kaladan multi-modal link is still to be completed, the Tamanthi hydro-electric project is still to take off and even the Vajpayee government’s decision to allow import of 50,000 tonnes of sticky rice for the northeastern states only exists on paper. And the decision to acquire gas blocks for exploration purposes is still being contested between Foreign Secretary Shiv Menon and Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan.

The UPA political leadership, in particular the Congress leaders, may privately be supportive of Aung San Suu Kyi and the monks now on Rangoon’s streets, but overtly it will have to deal with whosoever is in power; such is the security calculus. New Delhi also knows that with the Burmese army controlling every part of society, transfer of power in that country will have to come through negotiations and not through revolution or isolation of the military regime. New Delhi has not forgotten that two years after Suu Kyi was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1993, the Burmese army suddenly withdrew in the midst of Operation Goldenbird and the surrounded militants escaped from the Indian dragnet. It does not want to visit that nightmare again.