The apparent willingness of the Indian Army to the use the Kukis as surrogate forces to oppose the Nagas might be rooted in a series of military and intelligence embarrassments, at the hands of the NSCN, over the past two years. Some of these incidents include the 29 June 1993 NSCN ambush of the 15th Assam Regiment, which resulted in the deaths of 22 Indian soldiers, and the 16 November 1993 capture of 150 soldiers at the Indian military post at New Beisumpui. Despite a damaging attack on the NSCN headquarters in the Kohima district of Nagaland, in September 1993, the NSCN appears capable of continuing regular attacks on Indian army units.

Indian press and government statements have also suggested that the NSCN considers the town of Moreh crucial to its operations because of the town's historical importance as a trading center on the Burma-India frontier. The reports also suggest that the NSCN uses Moreh as a center for regional drug-trafficking, attempting to paint NSCN as little more than a druglord-terrorist operation. NSCN-Muivah has emphatically condemned drug-trafficking in its area, and has reportedly taken its own measures against Naga and non-Naga drug traders in the region.

Recently released reports compiled by the Zeliangrong Youth Front (ZYF) [Imphal Zone] document that from April through November 1993, over eighty Naga villages were burned or otherwise destroyed by Kuki violence, either actively or tacitly approved by the Indian armed forces in the region. These reports are corroborated by documentation of the Naga Student Federation (NSF) that catalogues scores of instances between May 1992 and October 1993, including some of the over 1000 killings and 50,000 displacements that have occurred in the past two years. The army and the Indian press appear quick to blame much of the violence on the NSCN-Muivah, even to the point of accusing them of massacring innocent Kuki civilians.

The ZYF and NSF reports are useful in clarifying the types of violence taking place, and the responses by both the Indian and resistance forces in the area, concluding that the NSCN almost exclusively targets Indian military or police objectives. NSCN maintains that there is no documented case of innocent civilians being killed or mistreated by its forces. It attributes most of the recent Kuki-Naga violence to the spontaneous reaction of Naga communities in defending themselves from attacks that they believe are at least tacitly supported by the Indian government. The various Naga organizations maintain that the conflicting representations of the clashes could be resolved by allowing independent, international human rights investigators into the region.

Exacerbating the violence have been calls by the KNO for an autonomous Kukiland, a Kuki-controlled state within the Indian union to be formed in large part from traditional Naga territory. In reaction, the NSF slogan "Not one inch of Nagaland to non-Nagas," reflects a widely held Naga opposition to Kuki claims. The tensions resulting from the competing assertions led to one of the most widely-publicized killings in recent times, in September 1993.

The Indian media broadly reported an attack on the Kuki community of Zoupi (Joupi) on 14 September 1993, in which forty Kukis were reportedly killed. The Indian press reports did not link the killings to any previous incidents, and strongly suggested that the NSCN was responsible for the attack. The killings were reported internationally, and even some human rights activists began to condemn the NSCN as the culprits. A subsequent report by the Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) stated that the Zoupi incident was provoked by killings in the Naga village of Tingpui Laimanai Kabui by combined units of the Indian security forces and the KNA, on 5 September 1993, and by the Kuki burning of two Naga communities (Tapon Kabui and Tingpui Laimanai), on 10 September. The NPMHR also reported that the retaliation was not conducted by the NSCN, as was widely circulated by the Indian press, but by the Naga Lim Guard, a community-based Naga militia.

The future for Nagaland appears to portend more violence. The Indian government continues to pour troops into the area, while the NSCN extends its areas of operation. Indian sources report the creation of a united front between the NSCN, the Bodo Security Force (BSF), and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the latter two groups operating in the Indian state of Assam. This new alliance apparently extends the front the NSCN has already established with indigenous resistance groups such as the Hmar People's Convention (HPC) in Mizoram, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), and the Meghalaya United Liberation Army (MULA), in the Indian state of Meghalaya. In short, the entire northeast of India continues to be the locus of a general revolt against state control.

On the international diplomatic front, the Naga movement for self-determination has been carried to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and to the UN Commission on Human Rights, by NSCN General Secretary Th. Muivah and Chairman Isak Chishi Swu. In 1993, the NSCN also joined the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization (UNPO), a coalition of some thirty indigenous nation-
peoples who are engaged in various levels of self-determination struggles. These two developments spell a new era in the Naga resistance, reflecting an attempt by the NSCN to ensure greater international understanding and education about Indian policy in Nagaland, and about the aspirations of the Nagas for their political future.

For more information:

Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights
Naga Club Building
Kohima 797001
Nagaland, INDIA

National Socialist Council of Nagaland
GPO Box 1731
Bangkok 10501
THAILAND

Fourth World Bulletin • April 1994

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