Two back-to-back developments in the insurgency-affected India-Myanmar frontier have raised the hackles in New Delhi, especially after recent attacks on Indian security forces in Nagaland.

The latest ambush on Saturday (May 3) left eight Assam Rifles personnel dead in Nagaland’s Mon district bordering Myanmar. Guerillas of the NSCN’s Khaplang faction were involved in the attack and also three lesser armed actions in April.

SS Khaplang, a Burmese Naga who heads an ever-shrinking faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), walked out of a cease-fire with the Indian government in April, days before the truce was up for renewal.

Before one would have a chance to write him off as ‘sufficiently isolated in Myanmar,” nine rebel outfits from northeast India, including Khaplang’s, announced the formation of an united platform – United National Liberation Front of West South East Asia (UNLFWSEA).

The front includes the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB)’s Songbijit faction that was responsible for the massacre of non-Bodos in western Assam a few months ago.

Three other groups in Manipur’s underground platform CorCom – PREPAK, KYKL and KCP – have joined the front. It is not yet clear who the two other groups in the UNLFWSEA are – but one new group in Mizoram, United Democratic Liberation Front, headed by one Rajesh Chorki, has claimed joining the platform.

The Myanmar Angle