In Manipur, lack of operations in Kuki-dominated hill areas raises concern

On the night of June 13, security forces in Manipur recovered a huge cache of firearms in a coordinated operation across five districts. The recovered weapons included 65 INSAS rifles, six AK-series rifles, 151 SLRs, and 12 light machine guns. This is one of the biggest hauls in the state since violence broke out between the Meiti and the Kuki community in May 2023. A senior police officer who did not want to be named told Open that some of the arms recovered in the operation had been looted from police armouries during the ethnic conflict, while some of them seem to have been procured by Meiti insurgent groups through their channels. With this haul, most of the looted weapons have been recovered. “It is also because the Meiti groups are cooperating with us,” the officer said.

But there is worry about lack of such operations in the hill districts occupied by Kukis. Since the conflict began, the Kuki insurgents have used superior technology like drones and rockets to attack Meiti settlements – last year, one of the rockets fired from the Thanjing hill in the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district landed eight kms away in Moirang, killing an elderly man and injuring a few others. The absence of operations also means that the lucrative drug trade in these territories continues unabated. “No operation is happening; when we speak to other forces for cooperation, they cite the suspension of operations with Kuki groups as a ruse to stay passive,” said the police officer.

Churachandpur shares a long boundary with Myanmar and is thus a thriving centre for the opium trade. Very little of the Manipur-Myanmar border is fenced, making it a preferred route for illegal drugs from what is called the Golden Triangle: the region between Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. Manipur government figures reveal that between 2017 and 2021, more than 14,000 acres of illicit poppy, cultivated mostly in the hill regions, were destroyed. According to the Coalition against Drugs & Alcohol (CADA), an NGO in Manipur, poppy cultivation in Manipur has increased signifi­cantly with the patronage of drug smugglers based in Myanmar. The modus operandi is simple: poppy is sent to Myanmar from Manipur where it is turned into derivatives, including brown sugar that is in high demand.

Over years, many in the Kuki community have become used to easy money. It is convenient to grow poppy, and it is not even labour intensive. The government’s efforts to turn them towards farming of turmeric and ginger have been ignored by those who find the poppy farming lucrative and easy. “The Kukis have cross-border kinship and for those who grow poppy, this kinship also means connections in Myanmar,” said the officer.

That this trade is going unabated and that the Kukis still have access to sophisticated weapons is not going well with the Meiti community. “Forget an independent Manipur that the Meiti insurgent groups had been asking for, today they (Meitis) are literally trapped in four districts,” a police officer based in Imphal said.

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