Myanmar seeks maps of NE insurgent camps

Taking a step towards closer security cooperation, Yangon has told New Delhi to provide satellite imagery of anti-India insurgent camps based across the border in Myanmar, so that military operations can start.

Updated on: Oct 16, 2011, 01:16:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Taking a step towards closer security cooperation, Yangon has told New Delhi to provide satellite imagery of anti-India insurgent camps based across the border in Myanmar, so that military operations can start.

India has assured visiting Myanmar delegation led by President U Thein Sein that it has no truck with Kachin Independent Army (KIA) anti-Burma rebels, and has kept options open to supply arms and gunboats to Yangon.

Government sources said the Indian side led by national security advisor Shiv Shanker Menon raised concerns about presence of Northeast insurgent camps in Taga area across the Tirap-Changlang sector of Arunachal Pradesh, and the area across the border with Manipur.

While Taga has NSCN(K), PLA and ULFA rebel camps spread over 20-30 kilometres, PLA and UNLF rebels are based across the north and south of Moreh border in Manipur.

India has also proposed upgradation of army-to-army contacts on the border and wants corps commanders of both sides to meet twice a year.

Currently, post commanders meet once a month and sector or division commanders meet four times a year with ministry of home affairs (MHA) officials meeting their Myanmar counterparts once in six months.

Although Myanmar security officials led by Lt General Hla Htay Win tried to convince their Indian counterparts that action was being taken against anti-India rebels, New Delhi wanted the action to be evident on the ground, particularly across the Tirap-Changlang sector.

In this context, the Myanmar generals asked New Delhi to provide satellite imagery of existing camps across the border, with the assurance that action would be taken against them on the basis of specific inputs.

The visiting delegation claimed that New Delhi had dropped food supplies to KIA rebels through helicopters, and said KIA insurgents were based in Tirap-Changlang area. This was denied by the Indian side.

New Delhi is also learnt to have raised the issue of Chinese companies getting contract to build the Stillwell Road connecting Myitkina in Myanmar to Arunachal Pradesh border.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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