This is reference reading to understand deep indian infiltration and involvement with Myanmar militant groups.
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Arakanese rebels freed from Indian jail
By Subir Bhaumik
KOLKATA - Thirteen years after they were detained on charges of gun-running, 34 separatist rebels from Myanmar's Arakan province walked free on Thursday from an Indian jail in Kolkata, bringing down the curtain on a murky episode involving alleged betrayal and abuse by Indian intelligence agents.
The National Unity Party of Arakan (NUPA) rebels were later in the day flown out to Delhi, where they will stay with the small Burmese community until they win asylum in third countries. "They will not be repatriated to Myanmar because they fear execution if sent back," said Indian human-rights activist Sujato Bhadro.
The 34 were among nearly 80 fighters and fishermen who set sail on two ships for the Andaman Islands from Thailand in February
1998. The Indian military had maintained that the Arakanese were arrested soon after the navy and the army launched "Operation Leech" to intercept gunrunners around the islands.
The NUPA rebels allege that when they arrived at the Andamans' Landfall Island they were at first promised sanctuary by then Indian military intelligence official Lieutenant Colonel B J S Grewal.
"Grewal took away six of our leaders, had them shot and put the rest of us in a prison," recalled Thein Oung Gyaw, one of the 34 recently released. "We were detained without trial in [the] Andamans for six years. No charge sheet was filed against us."
The NUPA alleges that their fighters were all framed on the gun-running charges by the Indian military, and at Grewal's behest. Among those killed by Indian troops was Khaing Raza, the NUPA's military wing chief.
Grewal left the Indian army soon after the incident and set up a bicycle parts manufacturing business near Yangon, Myanmar's old capital city. His family remains in a palatial mansion near Mohali in India's Punjab state, from where Grewal hails.
Though the rebels feel they were duped by Grewal, who allegedly fleeced them of nearly US$50,000 to help "get Indian support", Myanmar-watchers here believe it's unlikely that one official would have had the clout to get away with such an elaborate scheme on his own.
They believe the ploy was part of a broader strategy adopted by Delhi to win the confidence of the military junta in Yangon after years of supporting Myanmar's pro-democracy movement. Since then bilateral commercial ties have blossomed, with India securing several lucrative energy deals in Myanmar.
"In the 1980s and early 1990s, Indian intelligence adopted a conscious policy of developing close relations with rebel groups along its borders with [Myanmar],'' said Naba Kumar Singh, who heads the Myanmar studies in Manipur university in Northeast India.
''India's RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] supported the Kachins, the Chins and the Arakanese insurgents to neutralize its own northeastern militants along a long border but also to keep pressure on the [Myanmar] military regime. That changed in 1995," he says.
Once India decided to court the military junta, the Indian military started to crack down on the rebel groups it had once supported. The bases of the Chin National Front (CNF) in northeastern India's Mizoram and Manipur were raided and most of their fighters were forced to flee or were nabbed.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which had received a huge consignment of weapons after its former chief Maran Brangsein visited Delhi twice and the chief of India's external intelligence RAW, were also told they could "no longer depend on Indian support".
The policy shift was controversial among the rank and file, many of whom had developed relations with rebel leaders. The RAW's late deputy chief B B Nandi actually offered to come to the defense of the 34 NUPA rebels in court because he felt they were victims of treachery.
Just before he died in Calcutta, he told this writer that he had opened the first parleys with the NUPA, the KIA and the CNF in an attempt to secure India's eastern borders with Myanmar from the "pernicious effects of insurgency, drug and weapons trade".
''These rebels served India's interest much better than [Myanmar's] military regime," Nandi told this writer.
The policy turning point came after the Indian army sought the help of their Myanmar counterparts to encircle a 200-strong column of three Indian rebel groups in April 1995. The rebels were heading for India's northeastern region after collecting a huge consignment of weapons at Wyakaung beach on the Chittagong-Arakan coast. In joint operations that came to be known as ''Ops Golden Duck'', Myanmar and Indian troops killed 38 and detained 118 rebels.
Ever since, the Indian army has pushed for a closer rapport with the Myanmar military. One former chief of India's eastern army, Lt-General H R S Kalkat, even told the BBC in a formal interview that India's Myanmar policy should be "better left to the army".
"We are soldiers and they are soldiers and our blood is thicker than the bloods of bureaucrats and politicians," he was quoted by the BBC as saying.
It's against that shifting backdrop that the NUPA rebels were killed and detained in 1998. Military officials summoned by a Calcutta court in the case at first refused to testify and later were reluctant to press the case when forced to take the stand.
However, pressure built up on the government to drop the charges once local media reports indicated that they had actually cooperated with Indian military to stop the movement of weapons and rebels from northeast India through the so-called Arakan corridor.
In July 2010, after failing to prove the gun-running charges with any evidence, India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) decided to reach a settlement. The plea bargain reached initially asked the rebels to pay a fine for illegal trespassing into Indian territory but the CBI later agreed to drop all charges.
The federal government has agreed not to extradite the group to Myanmar, as is normally done with foreign nationals against whom legal proceedings are dropped. ''It took us long to reach the settlement because we had to ensure the fighters are not sent back to [Myanmar]," said Soe Myint, a New Delhi-based Myanmar news editor who helped organize their defense.
Subir Bhaumik is chief of news operations at a leading Indian TV channel and a known specialist on Northeast India and Bangladesh. His book Troubled Periphery details Indian intelligence's connections with Burmese rebels until 1995.
Arakanese rebels freed from Indian jail ~ thupui
Bangladesh has to stop acting like victim and done away with demanding tone Myanmar has to take back Rohinga. In principal Myanmar need to take back Rohinga refugees but instead of demanding tone Bangladesh should offer to work with Myanmar and play constructive role in betterment of their life in Myanmar and support Myanmar govt maintain law and order. This way Bangladesh can promote trust and confidence building between two countries and also can solve Rohinga problem in the long term. How Bangladesh can do that? There are many tools available but question is do we have right leadership and mind to do the job?
