Manipur continues to be trapped in the dark bottomless abyss it began descending into on May 3, 2023, when a violent conflict broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo group of tribes. For inexplicable reasons, the state as well as Union governments seem content leaving this deadly conflict to rage on till passions wear out. After 17 months, things are much more complex as mistrust and hatred between the warring communities have entrenched deeper, given the mounting casualties and diminishing hopes of those displaced of returning home again.
If the state government was found incapable in the first few weeks of the outbreak, the Union government should have firmly clamped down using what Max Weber called the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of coercive force. This had seemed would be the case, with military aircraft streaming in day and night into Imphal, rushing in additional central security personnel to bring up the total to approximately 60,000 together with those already deployed.
Nothing of what all awaited with a combine of fear and expectation, however, happened. Instead, the forces were used to merely create a buffer zone to separate the state’s central valley from the surrounding hills. Ostensibly, this was meant to keep the two warring sides apart, for by then mutual ethnic cleansing had ensured there were few or no Kukis left in the valley and no Meiteis left in the foothills. In the higher reaches of the hills are the Nagas, who have thankfully remained neutral so far.
The monopoly over legitimate violence that the state abdicated was soon usurped by armed civil militias on either side, assuming the role of community defenders, a responsibility that should have rested solely in the hands of the state. Today, given the proliferation of lethal arms in the hands of the civil population, the state reclaiming this monopoly would be a much bigger task. Disarming now cannot be piecemeal either and will have to be by simultaneous and comprehensive operations on both sides.
The legitimacy of the initial strategy of creating a buffer zone to contain the violence cannot be disputed. However, since this was not accompanied by parallel strategies to de-escalate and defuse the crisis, the exercise has only amounted to a matter of delaying the unfolding excruciating tragedy.
There were speculations that this strategy was meant to draw Meitei insurgents into the valley from their hideouts in Myanmar in a big way and then corner them to enter into peace talks with the government. This again was seen as aimed to happen before the 2024 parliamentary elections so the BJP could reap an extra electoral bonus.
Meitei insurgents and a faction of Assam’s United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent are the only ones still to come to the negotiating table. Naga militants have not disarmed, but have been in peace parleys with the government for close to three decades now.
A total of 25 Kuki militant groups under two conglomerations, though they have never fought the Indian state, are also in what is known as a Suspension of Operation (SoO) agreement. The SoO was first with the security forces alone, beginning 2005. The agreement was upgraded to involve the Union and state governments to become a tripartite peace talks from 2008 onwards. Many saw in this a move to circumvent and counterbalance the Naga and Meitei insurgents, thus creating mutual suspicions from the start.
Even if it is true that the conflict was deliberately allowed to prolong as a bait for Meitei insurgents, the strategy is now proving to be only partially successful. Even if it were to meet with complete success, the question is, can this justify the unforgivable tolls in terms of public misery and bitter mutual hatred between the two ethnic groups, leaving scars that will not heal easily?
Social media is also coming to be weaponised to make things worse. Fake news and propaganda campaigns posing as information are now flooding public spaces. The result has been less about lies coming to be seen as truths but more about making people not believe anything they see or hear anymore, quite in the spirit of a familiar quote often attributed to Hannah Arendt. The outcome is a perpetual state of uncertainty, anxiety and fear—a volatile mix easy to inflame.
The officialdom is not helping either. The unified command constituted at the start of the violence to ensure smooth coordination of operations among the different security establishments seems to be in complete disarray . Rather than a consensual voice on operations and intelligence, each have now increasingly come to project their own versions of the grave situation, as was witnessed in the case of the recent shocking drone warfare and the sensational intelligence report of infiltration by 900 trained Kuki fighters into Manipur from Myanmar, which ultimately could not be substantiated.
Meanwhile, even as fatigue sets in and a larger section of the people on both sides have begun longing for normalcy, it has also become clear there are vested interests who want the conflict pot to continue boiling. Periodic explosions of skirmishes in different pockets and fake alerts of dangers have become a familiar tool in this shadow warfare.
Like all social problems, there cannot be a standalone theory to summarise any conflict, for there obviously are many different factors contributing to it. However, Paul Collier’s 2003 report for the World Bank on conflict dynamics, provocatively titled Breaking the Conflict Trap: War is Market, may shed some valuable light on Manipur’s current situation.
The initial days of the clashes would understandably have been fired primarily by explosions of emotions. About 17 months into the crisis, the conflict’s fuel is beginning to resemble Collier’s description of conflict as a benefit maximiser, driven by expectations of rewards ahead.
There would also be many who benefit directly from an emerging “military industrial complex” that Noam Chomsky characterised, therefore wanting the feud to drag on. Breaking the conflict trap now would have to also be through an unambiguous message that there are no rewards to be had from this conflict. The best way forward is towards reconciliation.
(Views are personal)
Pradip Phanjoubam | Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics