Indian militant groups that took refuge in Myanmar and fought in its civil war have been streaming back across the border to Manipur state this year, Indian security officers said, inflaming the bitter 19-month ethnic conflict there with weapons and battle-hardened cadres.
This has led to an increase in violence between Manipur’s dominant and mostly Hindu Meitei community and the mainly Christian Kuki tribes — a conflict that critics say is the biggest law-and-order failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 11-year-old government. Since May 2023, some 260 people have been killed in the fighting and more than 60,000 displaced.
Nine Indian military and police officers, plus several politicians and rebel sources in Myanmar, described a conflict that is spreading to new areas as militants from the rival groups come across the border to Manipur.
