Even geographically distant conflicts pose risks to international stability and US security. Escalating humanitarian and annual costs, economic losses of several trillion dollars from global violence, including the highest level of human displacement — now more than 108 million people around the world, from Asia and Africa to Europe and America. Like the wars from Colombia to Libya to Burma Darfurthe unrest in Manipur opened up opportunities for transnational organized crime to grow.
The unrest in northeast India risks spreading across the border, as the region is surrounded by Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and China. One concern for India is that increased violence in Manipur or neighboring states could overstretch Indian forces currently focused on securing the disputed India-China border in the northeast.
Three drivers of violence are evident in both Manipur and Darfur, the western region of Sudan. In both regions, where access to land was a source of conflict between ethnic communities, government authorities sought changes in the local patterns by which communities managed land and managed these conflicts. Second, both conflicts escalated after official actions led to increased influence by poorly governed ethnic militias. Third, authorities have either supported (in Sudan) or tolerated (in India) the rise of hate speech and misinformation against ethnic communities. Certainly, the presence of these drivers of violence in the two conflicts does not mean that the official actions of the Sudanese and Indian authorities were equivalent. As described below, it is not. However, it is worth noting the parallels in these disparate conflicts to see more clearly the steps by which the Indian and international communities can prevent further escalation of violence in Manipur.
Violence in Northeast India
Manipur is among eight northeastern states that have been wracked by insurgencies and other conflicts since the transition from British colonial rule annexed them to India in the 1940s. More than 40 percent of the region's residents live below the border poverty of India. Governance is highly securitized, with a strong presence of troops that exert greater forces over the population than in most of India. The Northeast is also one of the many biodiversity hotspots around the world, where violent conflict intersects with the destruction of the environment and the homelands of indigenous peoples.
Manipur, a forested mountain state slightly smaller than New Jersey or Djibouti, has suffered communal or pro-independence clashes for decades among its 39 ethnic groups. Violence escalated in May between ethnic Meiteis, a small majority of Manipur's 3.3 million people, and ethnic Kukis, about a quarter of the population. The Meiteis and some Kukis live in the central valley of Manipur, while most Kukis live in the hills of Manipur – a geographical division dating back to British colonial rule. The Kuki population has swelled, particularly since 2021, with refugees from the war in Burma.
Fighting erupted in May after Manipur authorities either made or sought changes to rival groups' access to land. The state government kicked out Koukis and others he said had encroached on government lands. A court then ordered the state to consider the Meitei groups' requests for affirmative action (“scheduled race”) benefits to the Meiteides, which would allow them to buy land and settle in hilly areas. Kukis said this step would further weaken their own economic and political position as a minority group. Nearly five months of violence burned thousands of homes and uprooted more than 70,000 residents. The conflict risks spreading to include the Kuki and Meitei communities in neighboring Indian states, Burma and Bangladesh.
Since the 1990s, Indian security forces and the warring ethnic militias of northeast India have committed en masse human rights violations and have escaped accountability. Ethnic communities in the northeast accuse various government security forces of colluding with or supporting rival ethnic militant groups. This year these charges escalated. A group aligned with Kuki, the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum, accuses the Manipur state police of only protecting Meiteis. A Meitei group, the The Coordinating Committee for the Integrity of Manipur, charges a force controlled by the Indian military, the paramilitary Assam Rifles, which supports Kuki militant groups.
Ethnic Kuki militias have created virtual fiefdoms in mountainous and border areas, extracting taxes from residents and income from poppy cultivation and illegal drug trafficking. Militia control in these remote areas has been increasing for 15 years since the central government and Manipur authorities signed an effective truce with them. The Indian army has constructed what is essentially an armed border with fences and checkpoints between the Meitei-dominated main valley of Manipur, which remains under state rule, and the mostly Kuki-inhabited areas in the mountains.
Darfur Conflict: Parallels with Manipur
Darfur, a region of savannas and the desert, has long seen conflict between nomadic, mainly Arab pastoralists, and non-Arab farming communities. Until the 1990s, traditional practices settled such disputes by tribal conferences and mediation. But then Sudan's central government, dominated by ethnic Arab military men, replaced the traditional land governance system by handing over control of the fertile lands around Jebel Marra to Arab tribes. In response, non-Arab ethnic groups, especially the FurMasalit and Zagawa, rebelled.
Sudan's army was thin. He was already fighting a civil war with what would become South Sudan. Unable to defeat the Darfur rebels, the government turned to an Arab ethnic militia, the Janjaweed, to do what scholar Alex de Waal has called “Counterinsurgency on the cheap”. This outsourcing of security to a mismanaged force sparked a bloodbath that kill one is appreciated 200,000 civilians and uprooted 2 million within two years. The International Criminal Court accused Sudan's ruler, General Omar Bashir, and others for genocide.
In Darfur, scholars years ago documented The involvement of Sudanese government forces in racist hostile speech and sexual assault against the non-Arab ethnic population. Last month, 19 UN experts on conflict, human rights and law lamented an “apparently slow and inadequate response by the Government of India, including law enforcement, to curb physical and sexual violence and hate speech in Manipur.” The UN experts welcomed the actions of Indian human rights defenders and the Supreme Court of India to promote accountability for such crimes.
In both Darfur and Manipur, official actions have changed or threatened existing patterns of people's access to land, strengthened mismanaged militias, and promoted or tolerated hate speech. Together, these developments turned relatively ephemeral conflicts over resources, notably land and water, into visceral hostilities between ethnic or religious identities. In these conflicts as in others, this change has bred extremism, dehumanized adversaries, and hindered peacemaking.
The violence widened — and worsened
The Darfur conflict helped create the conditions for the new civil war in Sudan. Over the years, the Janjaweed militias were forced to take power in the Sudanese capital, gaining new status from Bashir as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a rival to the army. This rivalry exploded into a national war on April 15. Overall, the violence in Sudan has uprooted more than 8 million of the country's 45 million people and left almost 25 million they need humanitarian aid. Experts convened by USIP warn that violence in Sudan may spread further into the Red Sea region.
In any armed conflict, mismanaged forces—such as Darfur's Janjaweed-turned-RSF or northeast India's ethnic militias—enhance the risks of atrocities and corrupt financing that expand violence and impede peace efforts. In Sudan's renewed war, journalists and human rights researchers I have documented the most serious atrocities in Darfur: burnt villages, summary executions, including of children, and mass burials of civilians. Similarly in Manipur, militants and civilian mobs burned homes and crops, killed civilian non-combatants and committed rape and other sexual crimes against women and girls, human rights monitors reported. 'Hate and inflammatory speech' fuels these crimes, 19 UN human rights rapporteurs and other experts He wrote last month.
The empowerment of ill-governed forces, including militias, fuels violence—in Sudan, northeast India, and other conflicts—when those forces begin to smuggle almost any commodity that can be smuggled for profit: heroin, methamphetamines, fentanyl, or other drugs. arms? enslaved people; or diamonds, gold, timber or other resources. The Manipur conflict expands the patchwork of violent, poorly governed regions – in Laos, Thailand, Burma and now northeast India – that make up one of the world's busiest heroin-trafficking areas and synthetic drugs.
Generating better responses
The Indian and international communities should focus their attention on the violence that is still very dark in Manipur and Northeast India before it spreads like it did in Sudan. The vital steps are as follows:
- All sides must increase attention and resources to our responsibility to prevent the atrocities that have already begun and to address the unmet basic needs of conflict survivors.
- India must prioritize, and the international community must support, a comprehensive peace process for Manipur and Northeast India. Vital elements include government-sponsored peace talks that expressly include women and indigenous representatives from the region, who have long promoted movements for social change. A truth and reconciliation commission and an eventual war crimes tribunal will be necessary for long-term justice, peace and healing.
- India and international governments should work with Bangladesh – and, when Myanmar's domestic development allows, with Burmese authorities and communities – to resolve problems in those countries closely linked to those of northeast India. . This commitment should include South Asian governments and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Consolidation of peace in Manipur is essential for peace and stability not only for India but also for the nearby regions of India's neighbours.
