Ramification | A year of Manipur conflict: The role of drug lords and illegal immigrants

The problem of illicit drug trade in the northeast region of India came to light across the nation with the conflict in Manipur in 2023. Today marks an entire year of the conflict that started roughly on May 3, last year. While it is evident that many triggers still remain ambiguous, the one factor that repeatedly stands out is the impact of poppy cultivation and the role of illegal immigrants.

These factors, along with a constant supply of illegal weapons, emerged as some of the most difficult hurdles preventing the state from achieving relative peace. There is a general consensus on the role of these factors as a destabilising force in Manipur (with the potential to impact the entire northeastern region of India). Therefore, the immediate importance of eliminating this unholy nexus of illegal immigration, drug trade, and illegal weapons being floated through the porous borders of the Northeast has come to fore.

Unfortunately, while there is consensus on the response against this nexus, the fact remains that decades of lack of political will, instability, and a tacit avoidance of a crackdown on illegal poppy cultivation on Indian soil have created a monster with tentacles deep within.

Almost five decades ago, drugs began to be trafficked through popular routes in the Northeast, such as Tamu-Moreh-Imphal, Behiang-Tipaimukh-Silchar, and many other such routes through difficult terrains. Subsequently, a huge proliferation of HIV/AIDS was recorded in states like Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland. The majority of the cause was due to intravenous drug use.

To add to the historical foundations of the situation at hand, the present burgeoning conflict in neighbouring Myanmar, which shares 1643 km of porous borders with India, further complicates any effective response. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Myanmar became the world’s largest producer of opium in 2023 after the Taliban government launched a crackdown against poppy cultivation.

This drove a nearly 95 per cent drop in production in Afghanistan, which resulted in a shift of global production to Myanmar. The timing was devilishly ripe, as Myanmar was reeling under the effects of the 2021 coup by the Tatmadaw, which naturally resulted in severe economic instability. While droves of farmers in Myanmar turned to poppy cultivation, ethnic armed organisations carried out drug trafficking.

Money laundered from the proceeds of drug trafficking across the world funded arms smuggling and conflicts. Within Myanmar, the insurgents also needed “fuel to fire” their growing resistance against the Tatmadaw.

For India, destabilising developments in the neighbourhood have always had grave consequences. The infamous Golden Crescent had existed since the 1950s on India’s northwest frontier, located at the crossroads of Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, and Pakistan. The proximity to the Golden Crescent made India vulnerable for decades to the trafficking of drugs and narcotics.

On the other hand, the northeastern frontier of India was one of the transit routes for the Golden Triangle, located in the geographical confluence of northeastern Myanmar, northwestern Thailand, and northern Laos, centred on the meeting point of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. However, since the coup in Myanmar, not only did the area of influence increase for poppy cultivation, but the methods became more sophisticated.

The 2022 UNODC opium survey pointed out the improved and sophisticated farming practices that were being employed and also estimated that approximately 40,100 hectares of land were under poppy cultivation, an increase of 10,000 hectares from 2021. UNODC, in its 2023 survey on poppy cultivation in Myanmar, estimated a 33 per cent increase in cultivation. The yield was also the highest ever in these years, and the price increased by 69 per cent each year while eradication efforts decreased by 70 per cent.

With these conducive conditions, the farmers made more money than they had ever made through poppy cultivation. This upward trend of prices, cultivation, and yield was also noted in Chin state, which borders the Indian state of Mizoram to its west and Manipur to its north. Chin State recorded a 10 per cent increase in cultivation, with a 0 per cent eradication reported in 2023.

Not surprisingly, illegal immigrants from Myanmar in Manipur, displaced due to the conflict in their own homeland, had been accused by the Manipur state government and analysts alike of indulging in poppy cultivation. According to the Governor of Manipur, Anusuiya Uikey, as many as 3,010 acres of poppy cultivation were destroyed in Manipur. She credited the government’s efforts on the ‘War on Drugs’.

Simultaneously, the Manipur conflict also coincided with the identification of these illegal immigrants. Recently, the Chief Minister of Manipur, Biren Singh, released a video stating that 996 new villages had emerged “due to illegal immigration” from Myanmar since 2006, not only causing enmity within communities in the state but also destroying massive forest cover.

The video statement by the Manipur government also pointed out the Myanmar coup for the significant increase in illegal immigration. To this end, the state government had set up a sub-committee led by Minister Letpao Haokip and others to identify illegal immigrants. However, a month after the first phase of the exercise was conducted, the conflict broke out.

Poppy fields in the hills of Manipur are guarded by armed groups with deep connections to Myanmar’s illegal processing units. Ethnic armed organisations, ruffled by the crackdown, manipulated the existing fault lines. Innocent communities in Manipur that had lived side by side peacefully clashed head-on without realising that the strings were not being pulled to their advantage but to use them as buffers to protect illegal interests on Indian soil.

Many unresolved and pending issues were raised, and as the conflict became layered with each point of discontent, the conflict grew in pace and viciousness, finally becoming a question of Kukis vs Meiteis. The manipulation of the situation roused community identity, finally creating a divide that has benefited neither the Kukis nor the Meiteis. If one were to see the entire culmination of events, the only profiteers of the conflict would have been those who don’t even belong to India.

Unfortunately, with ethnic community identity sentiments at an all-time high , emotions left unchecked, rationality has taken a backseat. Many feel a sense of misplaced sympathy with the perpetrators, trying to obfuscate the sheer illegality of poppy cultivation. Some have tried to defend armed groups that protected these plantations and made easy, dirty money to keep their operations running. Few unfamiliar with the dynamics of the state tried to create lazy binaries of a majority vs minority.

Others vehemently tried to forge a false transnational identity in the hope of achieving a larger agenda at the cost of the people of Manipur. But in all of these narratives that were built, what was injudiciously dismissed was the consequences of illegal activities, especially those that involve drugs.

There is a degree of certainty when they say that drugs destroy lives, and you don’t even need to consume them. So those who defended the nexus must rethink who they are really protecting and at what cost, because many aspects of the conflict may still be ambiguous, but what is not is the role of poppy cultivation and illegal immigrants.

Rami Niranjan Desai is an anthropologist and a scholar of the northeast region of India. She is a columnist and author and presently Distinguished Fellow at India Foundation, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.