Recent statements by Bangladeshi leaders about the need for a humanitarian corridor to resolve the Rohingya Muslim crisis in Rakhine have created a lot of noise in the already chaotic Myanmar media space. The proposal for the corridor was initially made by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who visited Dhaka in March 2025, and was immediately picked up by Bangladeshi Foreign Advisor Tuhid Hossain and National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman.
Building on the UN recommendations, Bangladesh has reached out to the Arakan Army (AA), one of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) that has taken control of most of Rakhine State. At a press conference on May 6, Khalilur Rahman demanded that the AA include Rohingya representatives in the Rakhine government and called Muslim rights a red line for Dhaka. The protests of the official Myanmar government, for whom the AA is a terrorist organization, were defiantly ignored by Rahman. Later, due to friction between the interim government of Mohamed Yunus and the command of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, Rahman had to remove the idea of the canal from the agenda. But the aftertaste remained, and there is little doubt that talk of Bangladeshi interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs will sooner or later resume.
At the end of May, the Bangladeshi ambassador left Myanmar. Yunus denied that the ambassador was expelled at Myanmar’s request, but the fact of the recall indicates that there are serious contradictions between Naypyitaw and Dhaka over the issues of the Rohingya, the AA, and the status of Rakhine.
Of course, Bangladesh has voiced initiatives to help Muslim refugees from the neighboring country before, at the height of the fighting between the Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) and the Islamist Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in the 2010s. It is indeed hard for Dhaka to remain indifferent: views on the Rohingya’s ethno-history vary widely, but in Myanmar the “Rohingya” are generally considered to be descendants of Bengali immigrants who settled in British-annexed Rakhine beginning in 1824. According to retired British diplomat Derek Tonkin, who is not exactly a Buddhist nationalist sympathizer, 60% of Rakhine’s Muslims may be descendants of British-era arrivals, 30% may be illegal migrants from the post-independence era, and only 10% have ancestors who lived in Rakhine before the British annexation in 1824.
The enthusiasm with which Bangladesh greeted the banal proposal for a humanitarian channel speaks of serious changes. Not only has Bangladesh’s Myanmar policy changed, but Bangladesh itself has changed. The overthrow of the left-nationalist government of Sheikh Hasina in July-August 2024 completed the historical cycle of the nation born during the Liberation War of 1971 with the direct support of India. The world-famous economist Mohamed Yusuf, who took over the country after the “July Revolution,” gave the new regime a reformist and technocratic image acceptable to the West. However, under the thin veil of liberal reformism, one cannot hide the revenge of those forces in the struggle against which Bangladesh won its independence more than half a century ago.
It is telling that the hype around the humanitarian corridor in Rakhine has been perceived through the prism of the US-China rivalry. Without denying the presence of this aspect, it is much more logical to fit the Rakhine crisis into the landscape of a large-scale confrontation in South Asia involving India, Pakistan, and China. Operation Sindoor, which was New Delhi’s response to the Pahalgram attack, highlighted the arrangement of the geopolitical chess pieces. How might tensions between Bangladesh and Myanmar impact India’s options against the Islamabad-Beijing axis in the context of the Trump administration’s unreliable behavior?
Bharat has a solid expert community, but analytical studies of the civil war in Myanmar by Indian experts often suffer from superficiality and excessive trust in the sources of the Myanmar radical opposition. Given the above, it makes sense to soberly assess the factor of Bangladesh’s turn to India’s enemies in inextricable connection with the intensification of threats to Myanmar’s sovereignty.
I. The Resurrection of “East Pakistan” as a Geopolitical Black Swan
The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime (which keen observers might find similarities with the National League for Democracy government of another powerful woman, Aung San Suu Kyi) has led to a fundamental revision of Bangladeshi identity. The Awami League, which embodied the tradition of Bengali nationalism, is now banned. The tectonic shifts in the self-awareness of Muslim Bengalis are shocking: what were considered symbols of the nation under the fallen government (monuments and memorial sites of Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father) are now being trampled into the mud by the crowd. Of course, one should refrain from idealizing Hasina’s rule. Her measures aimed at strengthening the position of the Mukti Bahini guerrilla veterans have naturally turned a significant part of the population against her. The ease with which Hasina has given up power suggests that the secular and civic model of the “imagined community” that has been built in Bangladesh since 1971 has failed—and most likely failed completely.
What has replaced the cults of Mukti Bahini and Mujibur Rahman? This is primarily a revision of the divorce from Pakistan in the early 1970s. Bengali nationalism, which took shape on the basis of the Bengali language, local customs, and Sufism (with a general equidistance from all religions), is being challenged by a broader pan-Islamic identity that appeals to a common destiny with Islamabad and is based on radical Islamic movements (Deobandi, above all). There has always been a smoldering “cold civil war” in the country between the victors and the vanquished of 1971. Between those who cherish the memory of the approximately 300,000 Bengali women raped by pro-Pakistan militias and those who allegedly participated in these acts of violence.
Traumatized by the death of relatives during the coup against her father in 1975, Hasina could not resist political revenge after returning to power in 2009. Several leaders of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) were prosecuted for crimes against humanity during the war of independence. For example, a court found that JeI’s MP Delwar Hossain Sayeedi had taken part in massacres and rapes while in a pro-Pakistan militia.
As in the Shah’s Iran in 1979, the collapse of secular nationalism was ensured by the joint action of an alliance of disparate forces, ranging from democratic students to preachers of “pure Islam” and their flocks. The historical experience of the same Iran shows that the next cycle of revolution will blow away the thin Westernized layer and bring to power populist forces, which in Bangladesh are synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism. For now, the transitional government is headed by Mohamed Yunus, a compromise figure demonstrating the good intentions of the new authorities. Nevertheless, a struggle for power is inevitable: on the one hand, Yunus is pressed by Islamist groups, including Jamaat-e-Islami; on the other, by the high command of the army, dissatisfied with the fact that the interim cabinet neglects the sovereignty of Bangladesh in favor of foreign actors. The influential Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), nominally secular but fiercely pro-Pakistan, is keen to ally with the Islamists, as it did in the 1990s and 2000s when the BNP-JeI coalition government gradually turned Bangladesh into a “new Afghanistan.”
The relationship between Pakistan and Bangladesh’s new rulers resembles a light version of post-Assad Syria’s vassalage to neo-Ottoman Turkey. The Baathist model of Syrian identity, based on secularism and left-wing nationalism (reminiscent of the Awami League model), collapsed with Assad’s flight from Damascus; symbols of the fallen regime, such as monuments to Hafez al-Assad, were demonstratively vandalized, and a new identity began to be built on the foundations of Sunni dominance and gratitude to its northern neighbor for helping to expel the Assadites. At the same time, the new Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa masterfully presented the victory of Islamism to a Western liberal audience as a “woke jihad” and has now achieved the lifting of EU and US sanctions.
Bangladesh’s miraculous reconciliation with its old green (Islamic) brother is complicated by the fact that this brother has a red (communist) comrade. Bangladesh’s geopolitical location makes it an ideal staging area for the China-Pakistan axis. As a PLA general put it in 2009, “Pakistan is China’s Israel”; if Bangladesh were to return to Pakistan’s orbit, it would automatically become a protectorate of China. Mohammed Yunus did not miss the chance to remind about the country’s key role in access to the Bay of Bengal during his visit to Beijing.
Based on the experience of Operation Sindur, the importance of the Siliguri Corridor, which connects the northeastern states of India with the rest of the territory, is growing. At its narrowest point, the corridor is only 21 kilometers (13 miles) apart from Nepal, another country with a Chinese-oriented government. Cutting this channel threatens to isolate the “seven sisters” (the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, and Tripura). Recently, Indian analysts have been concerned about reports of the restoration of the Lalmonirhat airbase in Bangladesh, allegedly for subsequent lease to the PLA. The airbase will allow the Chinese-Pakistani alliance to monitor the activities of Indian troops in the border areas. The value of such an acquisition is somewhat reduced by the fact that Lalmonirhat is vulnerable to India’s ATAGS artillery systems and 155 mm Bofors howitzers, which are capable of delivering pinpoint strikes at a distance of 30-40 km. However, even the modernization of the Bangladeshi army with Chinese help poses a threat to India given Yunus’s latest demarches.
II. Rise of Radical Islamism in Bangladesh: A Challenge Not Just for India
The proposal for a humanitarian channel in Rakhine was linked by most analysts to US plans to provide assistance to the “anti-junta resistance,” in particular, the AA. At the very least, this is a strange assumption: the US is reluctant to counter China even in areas of traditionally strong American military and political presence (Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan), and a sudden burst of attention to Myanmar is the last thing one would expect from the US administration given the current dynamics. Australian researcher Andrew Selth rightly questions the “US proxy war” theory. At the very least, one could expect CIA activity in the areas of the Karen insurgency on the Thai-Myanmar border; State Administration Council (SAC) sources claimed that the Americans regularly supply weapons to the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA) during the annual Cobra Gold exercises. The Rakhine separatists are working too closely with Chinese interests (the Belt and Road project), and it is unlikely that they will change their old Chinese partner for an unreliable and unpredictable American patron.
The pathetic attacks of American liberals (and some conservative “hawks”) against the “bloody junta” give grounds to suspect the US intelligence services, still in the hands of the Deep State, of anti-Myanmar and anti-Indian conspiracies. But with regard to the Rakhine problem, excessive enthusiasm in searching for traces of “Western imperialists” is fraught with false conclusions. Myanmar (and India) have more familiar enemies that are not at all overseas.
The idea of a “Rohingya-majority state”—not a humanitarian channel!—was proposed on April 27, 2025, by Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, at a meeting with a delegation of the Chinese Communist Party in Dhaka. Later, Jamaat-e-Islami was forced to make a remark that it was only proposing to create a security zone. However, who floated the idea and the circumstances under which it was floated cannot be ignored.
Fears of an Islamic intervention to wrest Rakhine from Myanmar are not new. The Rakhine mujahideen enjoyed Pakistani support from 1948 to 1961. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli intelligence (Myanmar has consistently maintained friendly relations with Israel) reported Libyan and Iranian connections in Rakhine. The military government of Myanmar was deeply impressed by the statements of Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Sultan during his visit to Bangladesh about the need to repeat Operation Desert Storm to “liberate fellow believers.” Finally, the collective campaign of the Muslim Ummah in support of the Rakhine Muslims, including calls to form an expeditionary force on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), has strengthened the Myanmar military government’s belief that the threat is real. Experience has shown, however, that by exaggerating the Islamist threat, the Tatmadaw underestimated the potential of the “Buddhist” insurgents of the AA, which became the main beneficiary of the Buddhist-Islamic enmity.
Bangladesh’s demographic and geopolitical potential has long made it a tasty morsel for jihadists. Already during the BNP-JeI coalition rule in 2001-2006, the authorities turned a blind eye to the emergence of Al-Qaeda and Taliban affiliates in the country. A popular slogan of those years, which has received a second wind since 2021 and especially after the July revolution: “We would all be Taliban, and Bangladesh would be Afghanistan.”
The Taliban’s row with Pakistan, which has led to clashes on the border, is making some adjustments to the trajectory of Bengali Islamism. The ISI, which once supervised the Taliban, can no longer calmly watch Afghan penetration into Bangladesh. The armed Rohingya groups are faced with a choice: to orient themselves towards Kabul or Islamabad? It can be cautiously assumed that the recent arrest of ARSA leader Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi by the Bangladeshi police is connected with the ISI’s desire to purge Taliban-friendly elements and restructure the Rohingya insurgency network along pro-Pakistan lines.
On December 25, 2024, the Four Brothers Alliance was announced, comprising the jihadist armed groups the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), the Rohingya Islami Mahaz, and the Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA). While they had recently been attacking each other, they are now ready to join forces to fight for the common cause of creating an Islamic state. This was bad news for the AA, which, after a series of stunning victories over the Tatmadaw, began expanding into the Irrawaddy and Magwe regions. As the Islamist insurgency grows, Rakhine separatists will face the threat of losing their rear areas in Northern Rakhine. The Four Brothers Alliance is said to be a creation of the ISI, which has no concrete evidence but fits in with the logic of events.
It is clear that the ongoing fighting between the AA and the Tatmadaw is working to strengthen the jihadists. Arakan Army leader Tun Myat Naing’s ambition to restore the Arakan Kingdom to its 18th-century borders is clashing with the Myanmar military’s desire to destroy his terrorist organization. There is no sign of compromise in this war between Buddhists. The Muslim-populated Maungdaw district could well slip away from the AA, whose manpower seems to be running out. The recruitment problems are confirmed by Tun Myat Naing’s announced mass conscription, including in southern Rakhine, where the Buddhist population is disloyal to the AA.
All indications are that post-revolutionary Bangladesh cannot be peaceful and needs to expand, both because of overpopulation and because of the rise of Islamist ideology. The specter of a “Greater Bangladesh” has long been at the center of Indian debates on national security. The influx of Bangladeshi migrants into Assam and West Bengal is creating tensions, and if left unchecked, the ethno-religious face of these regions of Bharat could change beyond recognition. However, Rakhine risks becoming the first trophy of the architects of “Greater Bangladesh.” The motives of the jihadists’ eternal war against the infidels could be supplemented by Bengali irredentism.
For the international community, the “liberation of Rakhine” could be presented as a humanitarian operation to save Muslims from genocide. Foreign public opinion is more likely to side with Nobel laureate Yunus than with the Myanmar military government or, even more so, with the drug army of Tun Myat Naing. The most difficult mission will be to reconcile Dhaka’s expansionist plans with the interests of Beijing, which has critical infrastructure in the port of Kyaukphyu. But here too, Yunus has something to offer: if China was previously torn between supporting the Myanmar military and the AA, now Bangladesh can become a more reliable and respectable partner. Perhaps Sittwe and Kyaukphyu as part of a “Greater Bangladesh” looks like the most fantastic but also the most suitable answer to Chinese concerns.
III. Dhaka Commands, Arakan Army Obeys: Bangladesh’s Models of Dialogue with Rakhine Insurgents
The Bangladesh-AA dialogue may develop according to different scenarios. Previously, the AA maneuvered between China and India, preferring China. Under Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh neglected the irredentist and pan-Islamic factors of spreading influence to the border areas of Myanmar. Probably, the memory of the pro-Pakistan position of the Rakhine mujahideen during the struggle for independence in the 1960s-70s played a role. Today, the interim government of Yunus is criticized by members of the Awami League and some army officials for losing sovereignty, but Bangladesh moved to an active and sometimes aggressive foreign policy precisely after the July Revolution. As a result, the AA, euphoric from its victories over the Tatmadaw, found a demanding neighbor on its doorstep. To Tun Myat Naing’s chagrin, the neighbor has more leverage than even China, which, unlike Bangladesh, does not border Rakhine.
At this stage, Dhaka is intent on forcing the AA to respect Muslim rights and representation in exchange for de facto recognition of the separatist regime. Tun Myat Naing is embarrassed and forced to curry favor with Muslims, which seems disingenuous given the reports of anti-Muslim massacres by AA militants. Bleeding in the fight for Magwe and under the raids of the Myanmar air force, the AA is becoming increasingly powerless against the Islamist-Bengali invasion.
Moreover, the voluntary separation of a Muslim state from AA-controlled territory would cause enormous reputational damage to the Rakhine separatists and their support group among the National Unity Government/People Defense Force (NUG/PDF), who are increasingly viewed by Myanmar public opinion as disenfranchised servants of the EAOs. The links between the AA (and its proxies) and Bangladesh will give Naypyidaw the opportunity to use the patriotic card of “fighting against foreign invaders and their puppets.”
Another possible scenario is pumping the Four Brothers Alliance with weapons and volunteers for the ultimate goal of forming a self-proclaimed state in northern Rakhine. If religious strife worsens sharply, Bangladesh, with the support of the OIC, could begin direct intervention to oust the AA. In any case, all the cards are in Dhaka’s hands, which is not trying to pay attention to the protests from Naypyidaw.
IV. Stillborn Alliance: On India’s Temptation to Engage with the Arakan Army
The chaos in Rakhine, as well as in the Chin, Kachin, and Sagaing states that directly border India, raises the question: who should India back in the civil war in Myanmar? While India currently officially engages with only one side, the military government in Naypyidaw, some Indian experts suggest making moves to reach out to ethnic groups, primarily the AA. Strategic affairs analyst Jyoti Prasad Das suggests taking a closer look at China’s interactions with its puppet, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), and building a similar scheme between India and the AA. The analyst argues that “the Arakan Army’s control over Rakhine trade routes could facilitate India’s economic ambitions in Southeast Asia,” adding that “India must follow China’s dual-track approach in Myanmar to secure its strategic interests in Rakhine state.”
The Indian analyst does not take into account that following the “dual-track approach” regarding Myanmar is a privilege available only to China, which has the most powerful levers of pressure both on the government in Naypyitaw and on the ethnic insurgents. Despite the objective indignation at the duplicity of Chinese red imperialism and the difficult memory of the bloody struggle against the Beijing-backed Burmese Communist Party (BCP), the military is forced to tolerate the behavior of the “big brother.” India’s attempt to copy this strategy will lead to a loss of trust among the Myanmar military, with whom their Indian colleagues have built cooperation for many years. But having lost the Tatmadaw as a partner, India will not acquire counterparties among the anarchic and unpredictable ethnic armies. The economy, logistics, political-dynastic ties, and arms market of the Kachin, Rakhine, and other rebels are very much tied to the “Wa state” and therefore to China. Trying to play China on its own turf is too late and too expensive for India; the easier way would be to support its old partner, the Tatmadaw, especially since, contrary to opposition propaganda, the military still represents a formidable force. The main thing is to know how to use the right words and signals when communicating with this force.
As for the Arakan Army, it is difficult to imagine how India could lure it over to its side. Historically, the AA has been a close ally of the Kachin Independence Organisation/Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA); the first AA units trained at bases in Kachin State in the early 2010s. Both EAOs strategically rely on the corridor through the ethnic Bamar regions of Magwe and Sagaing, which allows the flow of ammunition and recruits between the KIA and AA. The Kachin insurgents, while not a Chinese proxy like the UWSA or the Han Chinese MNDAA, have close ties with China in their most important sector: rare earth mining and export. Licensing Chinese companies to mine rare earths in KIA-controlled territory is the backbone of the insurgents’ economy, even as it causes irreparable harm to the environment. It is doubtful that the KIA leadership would want to change its established pattern of interaction with China. If KIA is firmly in China’s orbit, AA has no incentive to challenge China. The emergence of a Beijing-oriented regime in Bangladesh leaves AA with even less choice.
Moreover, the AA has already confirmed to act at the behest of China against Indian interests. The AA’s capture of the city of Paletwa (outside the ethnographic Rakhine territory in Chin State) disrupted the launch of the Indian-Myanmar Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMTTP), which was supposed to connect the Northeast with the Bay of Bengal. At the same time, Tun Myat Naing has always emphasized guarantees for the Chinese project, the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which runs from Yunnan to the port of Kyaukphyu. It is not yet clear whether the AA will be able to capture Sittwe and Kyaukphyu, the last strongholds of the Tatmadaw in Rakhine, but if the insurgents succeed, China (along with Bangladesh) will most likely legitimize the AA under the condition of guarantees for Chinese business.
The Indian intelligence service’s ill-advised support for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka in the 1980s eventually led to conflict with a rebellious protégé. The Rakhine separatists, with their long-standing prejudice against India, are likely to prove an even more ungrateful partner. The anti-India sentiment is linked to memories of Operation Leech in 1998, when Indian security forces neutralized the top brass of the National United Party of Arakan (NUPA), which was involved in arms and drug smuggling. Rakhine (along with Karen) rebels were invited to the Andaman Islands and arrested or killed there. The AA’s cooperation with China and Bangladesh may be seen as revenge against India for Operation Leech.
Finally, the issue of Indo-Myanmar cooperation has a moral dimension. On August 25, Muslim terrorists from ARSA entered the village of Kha Maung Seik in the Maungdaw district of northern Rakhine and carried out a brutal massacre of Hindu villagers. After torture, 53 Hindus were killed and about a hundred went missing, and several dozen Hindu women were forcibly converted to Islam and sold into sexual slavery. Following this incident, the Tatmadaw set about eliminating the terrorists and pacifying the Islamist support group among the Rakhine population, which subsequently brought accusations of “genocide” on Myanmar. After the end of the active phase of hostilities, the Myanmar authorities erected a memorial in Kha Maung Seik to the victims of the massacre. India should remember the horrific atrocities committed by Islamists against Hindus in Rakhine. It is also worth remembering the immediate response of the Myanmar military to take swift and comprehensive retaliation against the terrorists. In those days when the Tatmadaw was sacrificing soldiers’ lives and its reputation to avenge the lives of Hindus, where was the Arakan Army?
V. Brothers in Dharma: Myanmar in the Context of India’s Culture Wars
India-Myanmar ties go back centuries and are rooted in the Dharmic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The epic Yama Zatdaw, the Myanmar version of the Ramayana, speaks to the Myanmar heart more than all the Western short-lived concepts. In the 20th century, the Burmese and Indians shared a common enemy: British imperialism. So in World War II, both Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army and Aung San’s Burma Independence Army fought on the side of Japan against the old enemy. Indian military supplies played a crucial role in repelling the Karen and communist insurgents in 1949. In the 1960s, General Ne Win refused communist China’s demand that he establish training camps for Maoist anti-Indian rebels in the border areas.
Relations between India and Myanmar began to deteriorate sharply after the 1988 riots. The ideological affinity between the Indian National Congress and the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a friend of Rajiv Gandhi, was to blame. Weakened by the rebellion, Myanmar faced the threat of foreign intervention: US warships invaded its territorial waters, and PLA divisions moved up to the borders of Shan State. Congress found nothing better to do than accuse the military of violating human rights. Largely because of this hostility from India, Myanmar found itself in the Chinese sphere of influence in the 1990s, as the CCP diplomacy became less ideological and more Machiavellian.
The rethinking of India’s Myanmar policy began in the late 1990s. Economic benefits began to outweigh Congress-fueled prejudices. The Look East strategy was marked by the launch of the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and Kaladan Road projects. After 2014 and the BJP’s rise to power, the new approach to Myanmar finally prevailed.
The arsenal of ideological warfare used against India is remarkably similar to that used against Myanmar. Both nations are accused by their enemies of Islamophobia, religiously tinged xenophobia, and patriarchal suppression of women and minorities. The liberal holy war against “Hindu/Buddhist fascism” is directed from the walls of Western universities, which are joining the campaign not only because of their hatred of hierarchical traditional societies but also because they are directly working off the money of Islamic oil monarchies.
The Islamist-leftist alliance has been equally biased in its coverage of the Ayodhya dispute and manifestations of Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar. In 2013, Time ran a cover story titled “The Face of Buddhist Terror,” featuring a photo of monk Ashin Wirathu, the spokesman for the 969 movement. In Myanmar, the publication of this issue was perceived as sacrilege and an insult to religion and national dignity. Aggressive attacks from pro-Rohingya activists are not uncommon. Myanmar dissident Maung Zarni, now based in the UK, recently admitted in a Burmese-language post on Meta that he views the devastating earthquake in Myanmar as just retribution for the “genocide against Muslims.” Maung Zarni recently held a seminar in Islamabad where he likened “the ideological underpinnings of the Rohingya genocide to Hindutva in India.”
VI. Wild Frontier: Communal Riots vs. Interstate Cooperation
The most important element of the relations between the two nations is the arrangement of the 1,000-mile India-Myanmar border. The security of seven northeastern Indian states directly depends on the situation in Myanmar. The difficulties experienced by the Tatmadaw in the border areas are used by NUG propagandists in an attempt to legitimize themselves in the eyes of New Delhi.
The issue is indeed complex. The Tibeto-Burman tribes in both nations are divided by administrative boundaries drawn under the British Raj, which has given rise to communal violence, such as the clashes between the Hindu Meiteis and Christian Kuki-Zos in Manipur since 2023, which have been used to discredit the BJP’s rule. The Indian Army and the Assam Rifles are locked in a low-intensity war with local insurgent groups. Since the early 1990s, when the Congress showed open hostility to Myanmar to the point of engaging in US-backed “humanitarian intervention,” the Myanmar military responded in kind, turning a blind eye to the infiltration of anti-India Meitei and Assamese insurgents into Sagaing and Chin. Since the early 2000s, cooperation between India and Myanmar has expanded, with the Tatmadaw targeting Naga insurgents in Sagaing.
Despite its apparent minor importance compared to the problems of Kashmir and a “greater Bangladesh,” the India-Myanmar border problem is vital in two respects. First, there is China’s long-term strategy of using insurgents to destabilize vulnerable regions of India. Second, there is the Deep State’s possible use of tribal militias—both Myanmar-based and Indian-based—to create a “Christian state” with access to the Bay of Bengal. Shortly before her overthrow, Sheikh Hasina spoke of a conversation with a Western diplomat who suggested such a plan.
The unreliability of tribal groups and the complexity of the ethnic mosaic of the “seven sisters” force a choice in favor of interstate and intermilitary cooperation between India and Myanmar. New Delhi will show weakness if it follows the lead of the Meitei community, which demands to expand the borders of Manipur by annexing Myanmar’s Kabaw Valley. It would be dangerous to support Chinland groups, which are creating a potential pro-US foothold in the Indian rear.
Already, Indian security forces are engaged in clashes with the “Myanmar resistance.” In May, the Assam Rifles neutralized 10 PDF terrorists, causing a storm of indignation. NUG media wrote about a “monstrous mistake” committed by India. However, India’s real task could be not the situational but the targeted extermination of terrorists, without regard for the hysterical appeals of the Myanmar exiles.
VII. Conclusion
Operation Sindoor demonstrated both India’s strength and weakness vis-à-vis the Pakistan-China axis. The round ended in a draw, and the sides went their separate ways to prepare for a new phase of confrontation. It cannot be said that the situation looks good for India in the long run. In recent years, New Delhi has certainly lost ground in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, but Bangladesh’s pivot to Islamabad and Beijing is especially painful. Trump’s betrayal leaves India without a powerful ally, alone against a cruel and wily enemy. To gain the upper hand, India must make unconventional moves, use the inexhaustible resources of the ancient Hindu civilization, and strike where it is least expected.
Having lost Bangladesh, India still has a chance to gain Myanmar. Buddhist neighbor faces similar challenges, particularly the threat of a “Greater Bangladesh.” The new pro-Pakistan regime in Dhaka is too cautious to immediately commit suicidal aggression against India, but it may first test its strength in Myanmar, weakened by civil war. Demography is destiny, and the overpopulation of Bangladesh, coupled with the rise of Islamist ideology, makes a clash almost inevitable. If we reject the false stereotypes imposed by the Deep State media and Western NGOs, the most convenient partner for India is not a disparate gang of “revolutionaries” or armies of drug dealers, but the force that has led Myanmar since 1962. Despite enormous pressure, the SAC is likely to retain power for the near future. Bharat’s duty to the Dharmic civilization is to save Myanmar from the aggression of globalism, communist China, and radical Islam.
