(Staff article from The EFSAS on 24 July 2020.)
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| Chinese rifles in the hands of AA insurgents. |
While preliminary investigations have
suggested that the weapons may have been destined for insurgent groups in
Myanmar, the development has nonetheless raised antennae within security
circles in New Delhi. It has also reignited the serious questions that had
existed for long about the scope and depth of China’s support to terrorist
groups in the region in pursuit of its policy of what a Thailand-based
organization termed “diplo-terrorism”.
A joint task force of the Thai military and police carried out a raid on a house in Mae Tao in Mae Sot district, which in recent years has emerged as a hotbed of insurgents of all ideological persuasions and a preferred staging area for the transportation of arms and ammunition, and uncovered a large cache of Chinese-made weapons.
It
comprised AK47 assault rifles, machine guns, anti-tank mines, grenades and
ammunition, the total value of which was reported by The Irrawaddy to be close
to $1 million. Two Thai nationals were arrested from the house, and another six
people, all Myanmar nationals with four being ethnic Karen and two ethnic
Rakhine, from the Mae La refugee camp located about 65 kilometers from Mae Sot.
The
Irrawaddy quoted a source from an ethnic armed organization based on the border
as saying about the consignment: “They are not the weapons currently used by
the AA (Arakan Army). The weapons manufactured by the Wa (United Wa State Army)
and the KIA (Kachin Independence Army) are not up to much. They can’t fire on
automatic.
The
seized weapons are original and Chinese-made”. Shedding light on the eventual
destination of the consignment, the source added, “Usually weapons are smuggled
to Indian rebels based on the border with Myanmar and the AA as they pay good
prices”.
Indian insurgents from the country’s north eastern states who have been sheltering for years in Myanmar, as well as the AA that has its roots in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, both present security challenges for India. In addition to being threats to national security, they are also irritants that impact India’s Act East Policy.
As has
been contended in the EFSAS Study Paper titled ‘From Look East to Act East:
India’s Changing Posture in the Indo-Pacific and the Containment of China’, the
Act East Policy represents “an ambitious reformulation of India’s security
policy abroad”, which, “if successful, can enhance India’s economic and
political role in the regional security architecture”.
The
Indian suspicion, not without basis, is that impeding the progress of India’s
Act East projects has assumed weight in China’s strategic thinking. The influx
of Chinese weapons is, accordingly, in tune with such thinking.
Reflecting
the seriousness with which the Indian government has viewed the development,
India’s Ambassador to Thailand Suchitra Durai on 20 July held a meeting with
Unsit Sampuntharat, the governor of the Tak province of Thailand in which Mae
Sot is located. The Thai delegation at the meeting included the police chief
and immigration officials. Indian security agencies have also reached out to
their counterparts in Myanmar and Thailand to ascertain more details about the
consignment.
Some
prominent insurgent organizations of India’s north eastern states, especially
those from Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram, have been chronicled to have
historically benefitted from Chinese largesse and weapons. Several of these
organizations are presently pursuing peace processes with the Indian
government.
Others,
including breakaway factions such as the United Liberation Front of Asom
(Independent) whose leader Paresh Baruah is known to shelter in Ruili in the
Yunnan province of China where he reportedly maintains regular contact with
Chinese intelligence agencies, remain active. There are apprehensions amongst
Indian security experts that the confiscation of a large quantity of illegal
Chinese weapons in Mae Tao could represent the start of yet another attempt to
rekindle the fagging insurgency in India’s north east.
The
AA, meanwhile, as brought out in the EFSAS Commentary of 29-05-2020, has
emerged as a massive thorn in the flesh of the Myanmar government. However, it
is not the Myanmar government alone that is worried about the AA. As underlined
in the aforementioned commentary, the AA has also targeted Indian interests in
Myanmar, especially the Kaladan project that is a key component of India’s Look
East Policy.
The
project has, consequently, slowed down and is now giving the impression of
running through treacle. The AA is further reported to have developed links
with north east Indian insurgent groups. As a result, even if the weapons in
question were primarily meant for the AA, they would have ramifications for
India’s security as well.
The seized cache in Mae Sot was not the
only consignment of Chinese weapons that made its way into the region in recent
months. Former BBC correspondent for the region Subir Bhaumick in an article on
22 April had revealed that in the third week of February a large batch of 500 assault
rifles, 30 Universal Machine Guns, 70,000 rounds of ammunition, a huge stock of
grenades, and significantly, a few F-6 Chinese Manpads that are capable of
shooting down helicopters, drones and combat aircraft, had been brought in by
sea and offloaded at Monakhali beach near the coastal junction of Myanmar and
Bangladesh.
Saying that the weapons were meant for the AA, Bhaumick added that “definite evidence has surfaced that the consignment had a trouble-free landing at the Monakhali beach near Whaikyang (Wyakuang in Burmese) on February 21 night”, and that it had “reached the Arakan Army camp at Sandak(Mro) near Thanchi on March.
After
carrying the huge consignment to Sandak(Mro), the AA has smuggled the arms into
Rakhine using the Parva corridor in South Mizoram here the local Khumi
villagers are friendly to the insurgents”. The same route had earlier been used
to transport Chinese weapons meant for Indian insurgent groups such as the
National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Issac-Muivah).
Bhaumick
pointed out that the AA was known to have strong links with China ever since
its formation in the Kachin state of Myanmar in 2009. A spokesman of AA, Khaine
Tukkha, recently alluded to these linkage when he said, “China recognizes us
while India does not”.
Regarding
the origin of the consignment, Bhaumick quoted a top Bangkok-based expert on
Asia’s arms trafficking as having told him that the China North Industries
Corporation (NORINCO), a Chinese State-owned ordnance company, had been
supplying munitions to non-State actors like the AA and the north east Indian
insurgent outfits through fronts such as the Chinese firm TCL.
The
expert added that in early February, even as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging
in China, TCL had loaded the weapons consignment onto a ship at Heibei, a small
fishing port in south China. A TCL manager named Lin alias Yuthna was a key
player in the process. Bhaumick, however, conceded that it was not clear
“whether the AA had paid TCL or whether the Chinese intelligence would have organized
covert payment”.
Anders
Corr, a former civilian worker for the United States (US) military
intelligence, in a study titled ‘China’s diplo-terrorism in Myanmar’ that
appeared in the Bangkok-based LiCAS.news, asserted that China was supplying
funds and sophisticated weaponry to the AA, a terrorist organization, in a bid
to expand its diplomatic influence in Myanmar.
Corr
called out Chinese President Xi Jinping’s statement of January this year, when
Jinping reportedly said that “We categorically deny allegations of supplying
arms to ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar”, by drawing attention to the
consignment that was dispatched to the AA just a month later in February.
Corr
also reminded that after an AA attack on four Myanmar police stations in 2019
in which 20 police personnel were killed, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu
Kang had refused to denounce the AA and had said rather blandly that “China
supports all parties in Myanmar to promote reconciliation and peace talks, and
strongly opposes any form of violent attacks”.
Relying
on military and diplomatic sources, Corr averred that approximately 95 percent
of the AA’s funding came from China, and that Chinese support included not just
finances, but also uniforms, weapons, ammunition and other war like stores such
as shoulder fired FN-6 surface-to-air missiles. He also drew attention to the
fact that China had simultaneously been selling arms to the Myanmar military,
and since 2013 the latter had imported $720 million worth of weaponry from
China.
The
Myanmar military was using harsh and high-handed methods to subdue the AA and
other ethnic militant groups, including air power, artillery shelling, burning
down huts, destroying food reserves and denying medical services and internet
access to entire villages. Corr underlined that such indiscriminate Chinese
actions meant that China had made itself complicit at both ends, whether it be
through the AA adopting terrorist means in pursuit of its goals within Myanmar,
or the Myanmar military clamping down on ethnic groups in total disregard of
their human rights.
Corr opined that “An object lesson in diplo-terrorism is the leverage over Myanmar and India that China gained by arming the Arakan Army, operating in the corridor from northeast India over Myanmar’s Chin and Rakhine states to the Indian Ocean. The evidence of China using violence by ethnic militias in Myanmar against its competitors demonstrates the violent side of its Belt & Road development project, which not only ensnares recipients in debt traps, but seeks to bar competitors through violent means deployed by criminal sub-State actors.
Sadly,
China’s conception of its role in the world seems to be guided by exactly the
zero-sum conflict over territory and influence that it accuses others of fomenting.
It does not limit itself to soft power. Rather, Beijing associates with the
lowest-level forms of terrorist and gangland violence in order to attain its
diplomatic objectives”.
Guwahati-based
senior journalist and author Rajeev Bhattacharyya pointed out in an article on
1 July that “Unlike Pakistan’s brazen support to rebel groups from Jammu &
Kashmir, China’s assistance to the separatist outfits in the Northeast has been
covert and selective, and has gone through many phases over the past five decades.
It has
been one of the many factors that sustained insurgency in the frontier region
for several decades. The consequence of the armed insurrection has been
large-scale violence and disturbance in the frontier region, and massive loss
of lives and depletion of resources by the government in combating the armed
groups”.
Bhattacharyya
added, “Sometime in the mid-1990s, the State-owned China North Industries
Corporation (NORINCO) embarked upon modernization, and the disposal of obsolete
weapons. In 2013, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
published a paper titled ‘China’s Exports of Small Arms and Light Weapons’
detailing the reasons that fuelled the proliferation of Chinese small arms in
the world”.
Strategic analyst Wasbir Hussain had
earlier written in 2015 that “China, in fact, holds the key to the availability
of weapons and ammunition among the terror groups in northeast India that is
actually keeping insurgency alive in this far-eastern frontier”. Even before
that, in 2002, US Senator Larry Pressler had told Indian media representatives
in Kolkata during a visit that China was the world’s major source of small arms
proliferation that was “fuelling conflicts from Morocco to Malaysia”.
While the unsavoury character of the Chinese State and its many acts of violation of the international order are increasingly making the news in the context of China’s contribution to the COVID-19 outbreak and its aggressive posturing all over the world, it is high time that State sponsorship of terrorism by China is acknowledged, exposed and accorded the serious corrective attention that it eminently deserves.
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| AA was dressed, armed, well-equipped and trained by China. |