Various insurgent groups operating in the North Eastern States are understood to be procuring arms and sophisticated weapons from Sino-Myanmar border towns and South-East Asia.
The international borders in the North east is extremely porous and allows cross border infiltration and smuggling of arms. Dimapur in Nagaland is a hub for smuggled sophisticated arms from across the border, especially Myanmar. Mizoram is another major conduit for smuggled arms.
Small arms, are simply purchased off the shelf from illegal arms factories in Bihar and distributed to the militant groups.
Around 50 insurgent groups are operating in Manipur. The insurgent groups especially from Manipur have camps along the India-Myanmar border in Myanmar, while ULFA has small hideouts along Myanmar-China and Myanmar-Thailand border areas in Myanmar. The North east militants also visit neighbouring countries like Nepal.
Extortion is a big industry in North East. Various insurgent groups have given it the shape of an meticulously organised activity. It is one of the major sources of funds for the militants. Large numbers of persons who surrender are not even militants.
The Mongoloid tribes inhabiting North Eastern India have close ethno-cultural ties with the tribes in China, Tibet and Burma. Intelligence agencies of China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal never miss an opportunity to provide material and moral support to facilitate insurgency in the north east region.
The Chinese support to insurgents in the north east started way back in the 60s-70s when the Nagas National Council (NSCN) leader Issac Muivah and a band of 300 men reached Yunan province in January 1967 after an arduous three month journey through Arunachal Pradesh. Apart from moral and material support China promised them training in guerilla warfare and subversion.
The Chinese have been assuring New Delhi that they have stopped all aid to the insurgents in the north east.
The activities of such underground insurgent groups are under close vigil of the intelligence agencies.
The Central Government is now planning to deploy additional Central security forces for carrying out intensive counter insurgency operations and providing security for vulnerable installations and projects, besides effective guarding of international borders by the border security forces.
In addition to this financial assistance will be provided to local police forces and intelligence agencies under the Police Modernization scheme. The overall idea is to streamline the sharing of intelligence among them.
Apart from all this the government is considering setting up additional Forces as part of India Reserve Battalions.
This was stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju in a written reply to a question by Parvez Hashmi, MP, Rajya Sabha.
