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Thailand is biggest arms source for N-E rebels

Burma has been turned into the biggest conduit for rebels in north-east India who go as far as Thailand to buy sophisticated weapons, according to a recent report compiled by the Union home ministry.

The report said the Burmese government's preoccupation with the uprising by various ethnic groups in that country and its relative lack of authority over areas contiguous with India's border have been major contributory factors to the rise of insurgency in the area.

The Naga Hills in Burma's Chin state, adjoining Manipur and Mizoram, are used by Indian insurgents to transport arms into the North-East with the active assistance of Burmese rebel groups like the Chin National Front Army and the Arrakan Revolutionary Front, it added.

"Thailand has a flourishing clandestine arms bazaar located in the Three Pagodas Pass area opposite Burma's Karen state and along the Ranong coast adjoining Tenasserim division along the country's coastline," the report says. Both areas are controlled by ethnic rebels.

Arms of every description, including assault rifles of the Avtomata Kalashnikova series, rocket-launchers, communication equipment and night-vision aids are freely available with the end of the war in Cambodia and the cessation of other regional conflicts in south-east Asia.

According to senior police and administration officials in Aizawl, the problem for India starts when these arms are transhipped from southern Thailand and Burma to Bangladesh in fishing vessels operated by Burmese rebels.

Officials say 'Operation Leech' mounted by the Indian Navy off the Andaman coast last year was by far the biggest proof of such shipments.

Once these arms land at Bangladeshi ports, they are provided to extremist groups operating in Assam, Tripura and Manipur through north and west Mizoram where police vigil is less intense than in other north-eastern states.

Weapons seized from insurgents in the North-East are more sophisticated than previously believed and include Chinese assault rifles, American disposable rocket launchers, M-16 and M-22 folding carbines, and powerful radio transmitter sets, the report reveals.

While unfolding the genesis of the North-Eastern insurgents' relations with Burma, the report says that as far back as the late Sixties, Burma's ethnic rebel groups were providing training and sanctuary to the Indian extremists, including the Mizo National Front, which was banned then.

UNI

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