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India to strengthen vigil on border with Myanmar |
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India would soon raise 10 additional paramilitary battalions, comprising 10,000 personnel, to check cross-border movement of separatists and smuggling of weapons along the porous border with Myanmar, officials have said.
“The central Government has decided to raise 15 battalions of which five have already been deployed along the India-Myanmar border,” Lt. Gen. G.K. Duggal, Director General of the paramilitary Assam Rifles, said.
The 1,643-km-long unfenced India- Myanmar border has become a favourite hunting ground for international gunrunners, besides a corridor for separatists operating in India’s northeast to sneak in and out of the region to evade anti-insurgency operations.
“The porous India-Myanmar border has been an entry point for arms and ammunition meant for insurgent outfits of the region,” Duggal said.
The Assam Rifles, the country’s oldest paramilitary force raised in 1835, is entrusted with the responsibility of guarding the country’s border with Myanmar.
Indian and Myanmarese troops have, of late, been engaged in a joint fight against terrorism. “We share a lot of notes with the Myanmar Army to combat trans-border movement of militants,” Duggal said.
At least a dozen separatist groups active in India’s northeast, including the outlawed National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), are said to have well-entrenched bases in parts of Sagaing division along the river Chindwin in northwest Myanmar. Intelligence officials say the mountainous areas along the India-Myanmar border have become a den for arms smugglers.
Militant groups such as the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the NSCN and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) have for long purchased arms from the port town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
Most of the weapons, including AK-47 and AK-56 assault rifles, mortars, 40 mm rocket launchers, pistols, revolvers and grenades, come via Bhutan, Bangladesh, and the Arakans - a mountainous area in Myanmar - from parts of Thailand and Cambodia.
The porous border has become a safe route for drug lords who use the unfenced area to smuggle narcotic drugs from Myanmar into India through Moreh, the last border point in northeastern Manipur state.
“Deployment of adequate forces would also stem the flow of narcotics into the region,” Duggal said.
In November last year, the Myanmarese junta claimed to have arrested some 200 rebels from Manipur besides seizing up to 1,700 assorted weapons, including Chinese assault rifles and rocket launchers.
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