Indian Defence Review

Human Trafficking³

Myanmar is a war-torn country that makes it more vulnerable to human trafficking because of constant illegal emigration to neighbouring countries like India, Bangladesh, Laos, China and Thailand. Many women and children are sold and are forced into prostitution; many men are trafficked, and most of them end up being bonded labourers in these countries. Internal trafficking is also a major concern in Myanmar as most of the children are picked up by the national army and then converted into child soldiers. However, this tradition is also followed by the liberation or the rebel armies. There are speculations in the open media that some of the refugees, mainly Rohingyans from the Arkan region, are recruited from the Bangladeshi refugee camps by the central Asian terror groups to work for them at relatively cheaper rates.

Myanmar-China Relations⁴

The bilateral relationship between Myanmar and China is very strong. It would not be wrong to say that China is the strongest ally of Myanmar. The strength of the relationship between both countries dates back to the year 1948, when Myanmar became the first non-communist country to recognise the foundation of People’s Republic of China. The relation was further strengthened by a set of bilateral treaties, out of which the primary one was the Treaty of Non-Aggression and friendship, signed in 1954. This treaty was based on five principles of peaceful coexistence. However, in 1967, the relationship between the two countries deteriorated with anti-China riots followed by the expulsion of the Chinese communities. The situation turned, and relations started to improve around the 1970s under the regime of Deng Xiaoping. Many treaties have been signed between the two countries since then, and the relations have further strengthened.

China has a four-point agenda as far as Myanmar is concerned:

• To get extensive access to the oil and natural gas reserves present in abundance in the country’s Arakan region and construct gas and oil pipeline from Myanmar’s Arakan coast to China’s Yunnan province. The entire stretch is close to 2,380 km. The idea is also to promote other imports, like textiles and steel.
• China has a major strategic interest in Myanmar. It desires to get direct access to the Bay of Bengal and dominate that area strategically. If China gains access to that route, it would gain overwhelming advantages in the Bay of Bengal and the greater Indian Ocean region. This would also add to the strategic advantage China wants from its Strings of Pearl plan.
• China wants to use Myanmar’s position to gain access to Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to promote its trade and strategic influence.
• For China, Myanmar is a vast market far promoting its products, and in order to do so, China has involved itself in a lot of infrastructure development projects, like roads and rail transport.

China is growing rapidly on the industrial front, and the resources it has are limited. To meet its energy requirement, China is looking towards its neighbours. Myanmar’s volatile political situation and its wealth of natural resources automatically attract China. To acquire the resources, China has shown great diplomatic and business skills by maintaining bilateral relations with the Junta government as well as the ethnic rebel groups. It has involved itself in a lot of infrastructure development projects, which in turn serve its interest as the transportation of resources becomes easy and economical. These projects also offer the scope of a new market and further enhance China’s approach to the Bay of Bengal, to gain an advantageous strategic position. Through the Bay of Bengal, China can gain access to the whole of south Asian region making India and the United States uncomfortable. The Bay of Bengal is considered to be the backwater of India, and Chinese presence in this area will be a matter of great concern for India. Although strategic concerns of the United States and India are identical in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal is closer to India’s littoral zone. To counter it, India has also started taking some steps. To start with, it has come up with the look-east policy. Though the policy is motivated by the Americans, it is essential for maintaining a stronghold in the Bay of Bengal. Other than that, India has also started strengthening its naval resources by making new bases around the cost of Vizag and in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India is also purchasing new naval equipment.

The reason Beijing is so proactive in gaining access to Myanmar is that China is presently heavily dependent on Iranian oil, which it transports through the Strait of Hormuz to port Qasem, an oil-and-gas terminal on the Gowadar coast of Pakistan. Port Qasim has been constructed by the Chinese for feeding its southwestern provinces, including the Uighur autonomous region. There was a plan to build a pipeline from the shore of Gowadar to the Chinese central province through Pakistan via the Karakoram Highway, built jointly by Sino-Pak militaries in the mid-60s, but which never came through. Due to the ongoing war on terrorism, the United States presence in the Af-Pak region, is making China nervous, compelling it to look for new options.

Myanmar-India Relations⁵

The relationship between India and Myanmar has traditionally been on and off, but with the changing geopolitical environment and the progression of China as a superpower, it has become a need of the hour for India to maintain a good bilateral relationship with Myanmar in order to check the pivot that China is evidently trying to build in and around the subcontinent.

Both countries enjoyed a cordial relations till 1962, but after 1962, these relations became strained because of the isolation policy adopted by Nu Wen, and its anti-Soviet stance (as India was pro Russia at that time) and refusal to join the Commonwealth added to the cause of a strained relationship with India. Then the final blow came when it withdrew from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1979. In 1988, when the democratic movement started in Myanmar, India accommodated a lot of its refugees in its northeastern states and the Myanmar policy attracted a lot of criticism from the international communities.

In 1993, a paradigm shift was observed in India’s policies in dealing with the military-led government of Myanmar, which resulted in the signing of numerous bilateral agreements between the two governments. Both countries have now started organising joint anti-insurgency operations to combat the menace of insurgency, narcotics and contraband smuggling.

Strategic Importance of Myanmar for India

• Myanmar is located at the tri-junction of east Asia, south Asia and southeast Asia.
• Myanmar is the second largest of India’s neighbours and the largest on the eastern flank.
• Myanmar provides the eastern littoral of the Bay of Bengal. An unfriendly Myanmar hosting a foreign naval presence would pose a threat to Indian security.
• Myanmar has a extensive border with China, which is in the north and contiguous with the Sino-Indian disputed border, which has many implications.
• India has both a land border (1,640 km) and a maritime boundary with Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal. Four Indian states (Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram) border Myanmar (Kachin and Chin states and Sagaing Division).
• China can gain access to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar.
• In terms of the insurgency in the northeastern states of India, some of the insurgent groups have established camps in Myanmar and are operating from the Myanmarese territory.
• There are also the issues of smuggling of arms (by both land and sea), drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and illegal immigration across the border from Myanmar.

The geostrategic position of Myanmar makes it strategically important for India – Myanmar exists at the tri-junction of east, south and southeast Asia, which lies at the approach of India’s access to the ASEAN countries and of China’s access to the Bay of Bengal. The facts that Myanmar is a cushion between both these powerful countries and there is increasing Chinese investment in the region make it even more important for India to take a stance to further strengthen the relationship in order to break the Chinese dominance in the region and to stop China from making a strategic pivot in the subcontinent. India is also worried about the infrastructural development done by China and its attempts to connect Myanmar through roads and railways, which would make it easier for China to move resources and establish a logistical base to put strategic pressure on India.

India and Myanmar have to strengthen the military relations in order to fight the insurgent groups that have existed for almost half a century and resulted in the existence of a strong military in the form of insurgent armies deriving the majority of their revenues from organised crime. Most of the insurgent groups of the northeastern states of India depend largely on Burmese insurgent groups for training and other operational and logistical needs, in exchange for which these insurgent groups participate in the illegal and financially leveraging narcotics trade, which with time has become narco-terrorism. As a result, many Indian insurgent groups, like the ULFA and BODO, have training camps in Myanmar and are operating from there. There is a big problem of illegal immigration and human trafficking, which takes place at the international level. As India lies on Myanmar’s approach to Bangladesh, India becomes a transit point and a lot of Indian insurgent groups get involved in the trade, which enables them to get funds for their activities.

Excerpted from the Article: A Geopolitical Insight into Myanmar with its Global implications