Jessicah Curtis
On nearly all counts, India-Myanmar bilateral relations are on the upswing, with fast-growing military, trade and investment links. All, that is, but on one count: the unsettling revelations emerging from a case being heard in an Indian court about the infamous 1998 Operation Leech sting. Ever since India’s Ministry of Defense claimed nearly a decade ago to have captured what it referred to as an “international gang of gun smugglers” linked to ethnic-Arakan and Karen rebels who were fighting against neighboring Myanmar’s military government, and subsequently put 34 of the rebels on trial, the follow-up investigation into the charges has led to one embarrassment after another for the Indian defense establishment.
Many of the details of what transpired on India’s Andaman Islands on February 8, 1998, are still unclear. However, court observers say the more credible version of that evening’s events has come in defense of the rebel Karen National Union (KNU) and National Unity Party of Arakan (NUPA).
According to the defendant rebels, they traveled overnight from southern Thailand, where they had procured arms from unknown dealers, to India’s Landfall Island for a scheduled rendezvous with Indian military and intelligence officials. The two insurgent groups were in the process of moving more than US$2 million worth of arms and ammunition on to the island, where they claim Indian intelligence officials had offered them storage facilities.
They also say the same Indian officials had provided them similar clandestine support for years, but for still-unknown reasons that abruptly changed that evening in an intelligence sting operation now famously known as Operation Leech. After mooring on the island, six NUPA leaders were immediately apprehended and led away by Indian officials, while the other accompanying 34 rebels were disarmed, shackled, and held in a different area.
According to their court testimony, some of them soon thereafter heard the sound of gunshots in the distance. The six NUPA leaders, witnesses say, have not been heard from since. The detained rebels have spent the past nine years in legal limbo, and no formal charges were filed by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) until December 2004.
The CBI and Ministry of Defense had reportedly squabbled internally for years over how to proceed with the case, and critics have made suggestions of a state cover-up. By the time the case was finally transferred to a sessions court in Kolkata, several lawyers who had agreed to represent the rebels said they had been harassed by Indian officials and refused access to the defendants. One legal counsel, T Vasandar, died in mysterious circumstances, according to their defense lawyers.
Meanwhile, because of lack of evidence, the CBI was forced to drop one of the initial charges that accused the rebels of attempting to wage war against India. During the proceedings, state prosecutors have reportedly failed to produce significant pieces of evidence requested by the defense, including the ammunition seized that evening, according to Siddharth Aggarwal, the rebels’ lead lawyer. Aggarwal has also complained that the court allowed three military officials allegedly involved in the sting operation to testify via video link without cross-examinations by the defense.
Conflicting claims
According to Aggarwal, his clients’ defense is simple: “They were called to Landfall [Island] by the Indian authorities with the promise that ... they [would] be armed by the Indian Army in their quest for freedom against the military junta” in Myanmar. The prosecution has denied the claims, insisting that the Indian military’s only contact with either rebel group was for the purpose of conducting the sting.
Whether or not the Indian military had deeper ties to the NUPA and KNU is still in dispute. But the allegations raised at the trial have nonetheless been a public relations disaster for New Delhi, crucially at a time when several big business deals with Myanmar’s military junta hang in the balance.
When the rebels were first arrested in 1998, the trial and its revelations would have been less problematic for India. Back then, New Delhi hadn’t yet launched its diplomatic charm offensive toward Myanmar’s generals, and then-defense minister George Fernandes openly supported and even provided sanctuary in his personal compound for exiled Myanmar pro-democracy student groups situated in India.
With India’s “Look East” diplomatic strategy, which includes securing new regional sources of fossil fuels, now in full swing, the trial has highlighted the still-conflicted nature of the two sides’ budding bilateral relationship and the difficulty India is having cutting ties to its past policy of at least tacit support for Myanmar’s pro-democracy and rebel movements.
Beginning in the late 1990s, India slowly moved to change its position and engage Myanmar’s military regime, toward the strategic aim of curbing China’s growing influence in the neighboring country. Indian defense officials were and remain vexed by Yangon’s agreement to allow Beijing to build a listening post at Coco Island in the Indian Ocean.
India’s new policy toward Myanmar has arguably paid economic and strategic dividends for both sides, though at the expense of India’s previous foreign policy that emphasized democracy promotion. Myanmar’s generals have been able to diversify with a competing power their past reliance on China for arms, aid and trade. At the end of last fiscal year, according to official statistics, India-Myanmar trade had reached US$650 million, making India Myanmar’s fourth-largest trading partner after China, Singapore and Thailand.
Military-to-military ties have in particular strengthened. A number of leading Indian defense officials have recently visited Yangon and, in return, junta leaders General Than Shwe and General Maung Aye have been given what the Indian press referred to as “red-carpet welcomes” on their arrival to New Delhi. India’s arming of Myanmar’s military has helped it crack down on other separatist groups fighting against New Delhi that in the past have operated from remote territories along the two countries’ border.
That has meant the sale by India of a wide range of military hardware, including surveillance aircraft, T-55 tanks and 105mm artillery pieces. While that has certainly improved Myanmar’s military capabilities, it has also raised concerns among international rights groups, which claim the arms sales will help Myanmar to fight against the same rebel groups India is accused of in the past clandestinely supporting.
In apparent exchange for the arms deals, India is vigorously lobbying Myanmar to award it the rights to natural-gas blocks in the Shwe fields off Myanmar’s Arakan state. India reportedly sweetened its offer last week by proposing to develop a major new port in Arakan territories that would pave the way for more efficient fuel exports. China is also reportedly competing for the gas rights.
Some political analysts say the revelations emerging from the Operation Leech trial, including Delhi’s alleged past support for rebel groups who operate in the very areas India is now bidding to develop for energy exports, have compromised its negotiating position vis-a-vis Myanmar. The KNU and NUPA have both claimed in court to have received support from Indian intelligence operatives for years before Operation Leech was launched.
Independent researchers working on Myanmar’s western borders told Asia Times Online that Indian intelligence operatives likely spent years cultivating ties with rebel groups fighting Myanmar’s military in the late 1980s and early 1990s and that they had made several offers of logistical support to the Arakan and Chin insurgent groups operating in Myanmar’s remote western border regions.
So far these courtroom claims have not spread much further than the presiding court in Kolkata. “If the trial goes on for too long, the Indian military’s contacts with Burmese rebels will be revealed ... That’s why they killed the six leaders. It was because they knew too much,” said David Htaw, a KNU official monitoring the case.
Brahma Chellaney, a senior Indian military analyst attached to the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, believes that despite the damning nature of the claims, the overall upbeat relationship between India and Myanmar is unlikely to be hurt by the trial. He contends that Myanmar’s military, condemned for its repression in the court of international opinion, is now basking in its association with the world’s largest democracy.
“Despite all this, the relationship between the two countries just keeps improving,” Chellaney said.
