Manipur: Kuki-Naga violence reminiscent of 1990s civil war

THe cleanup of 6 Nagas, potential by chin militants, has raised fears nigh the return of the civil war between Manipur’s two Christian communities that marked the 1990s.On May 13, 28 Kukis and 20 Nagas were abducted by militant groups of the two communities in Manipur; on May 15, after a negotiation between community leaders in the presence of government authorities, 14 individuals from each community were set free. The remaining 14 Kukis were released on June 9, but on June 10, security personnel discovered the mutilated bodies of the six remaining Nagas. The six dead include a priest, and their bodies were found near Kharam Vaiphei (a Kuki village) in Kangpokpi district of Manipur.Talking to media persons at the mortuary of Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Science (JNIMS) hospital, Imphal East district on June 11, the chairman (headman) of Konsakhul village (a Naga village in Kangpokpi district) D Adam said that while the Nagas released 14 Kuki civilians after 27 days , they “got mutilated bodies of the remaining six Naga”. He demanded “immediate justice”.The May kidnapping was the culmination of friction that has been growing since February, after a drunken brawl at Litan Sareikhong in Ukhrul district. Following the brawl, at least 50 houses including government structures were reportedly set ablaze. Since then, according to reports at least 20 individuals from both the Naga and Kuki communities have been killed including a truck driver, a resident of West Bengal who was killed during an ambush by suspected armed militants on May 29 at Ukhrul .There is no official consolidated death toll , but the Naga-Kuki violence has eclipsed Kuki-Meitei clashes that have roiled the northeastern state since May 2023, killing over 260 people (however, according to a RTI response, government has already issued 217 families of ex gratia, but the number of death toll of Manipur crisis remains undisclosed) and displacing 58,881 according the same RTI response. That violence resulted in a period of President’s Rule after the dismissal of the government; a new government was sworn in on February 4 a few hours later President’s Rule was revoked.The violence is reminiscent of the 1990s, when Nagas and Kukis clashed over land, especially in Ukhrul, Senapati and Chandel resulting over 1,450 deaths.Dhiren Sadokpam, independent researcher and editor of Frontier Manipur, a regional online news portal, said: “What is happening between the Naga and Kuki communities currently can be looked at from two perspectives. First, the current conflict looks like the continuation of the Naga-Kuki clash in the mid-1990s, given their own processes of consolidating both ethnic boundaries, territorial mapping and political aspirations. Second, my conjecture is built around influential invisible hands who are hell-bent on trifurcating the state of Manipur based on an exclusivist ethnic assemblage. Inter-ethnic violence has been brilliantly engineered towards this end.” Another senior journalist, and editor of Imphal Review of Arts and Politics, Pradip Phanjoubam described the clashes as a land issue betweena “settled population” and “nomadic population”.Most of the Naga population are “settled population” while Kuki are normally “nomadic population”, he added.Two apex Kuki Zo bodies, Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) and Kuki-Zo Council (KZC) have been demanding a “separate administration” in the form of Union territory since the beginning of Meitei-Kuki clashes on May 3, 2023. They believe the ongoing friction with the Nagas only reaffirms “the legitimacy of our demand for a ‘separate administration,” according to KZC.The situtaion is actually more complex than in the 1990s, according to Ajailiu Niumai, a professor of sociology at Hyderebad University: “The causes of the present crisis is multi-dimensional; the earlier crisis was mainly due to land. The present crisis has many factors including illegal influx, with increasing number of new illegal villages, and acquisition of land with the help of Suspension of Operation (SoO). All this causes demographic imbalance and can only be solved with the intervention of the government”.