Former army chief general MM Naravane warned Friday that foreign agencies’ involvement in the Manipur unrest ‘cannot be ruled out,’ citing ‘Chinese aid to various insurgent groups.’
Instability in border states, according to General (retd) Naravane, is terrible for the country’s overall national security.
He was speaking with journalists at the India International Centre on the theme ‘National Security Perspective’ when he was asked about the ongoing unrest in Manipur.
‘I am sure that those who are in the chair and responsible for taking whatever action is due to be taken are doing their best,” General (retd) Naravane said. “The involvement of the foreign agencies, not only I say, cannot be ruled out but I will say they are definitely there, especially Chinese aid to various insurgent groups.’
According to the former chief of army staff, Chinese aid has been assisting these groups for years and will go on to do so in the future.
When asked about the role of drug trafficking in the ongoing unrest in the northeastern state, General (retd) Naravane stated it has been going on for a long time and the number of drugs recovered has only increased over the years.
‘We are just a little remote from the Golden Triangle (the area where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet). Myanmar is always in a state of disarray and military rule. Even at the best of times in Myanmar, the government only had control over the central Myanmar not really on the peripheral bordering state whether with India or with China or with Thailand. So drug trafficking has always been there,’ he said.
He added, ‘There will probably be agencies or other actors in the game who benefit from the violence and who would not want a situation of normalcy to get on because while this instability is there, they stand to benefit.’
‘That might be one of the reasons why we are seeing this continuance of violence in spite of all the efforts, which I am sure have been put in by the state and the central governments to bring it down,’ he said.
General (retd) Naravane was also questioned about the army recruitment scheme Agnipath, restructuring in the Indian defence sector, and the China-India skirmishes in the Galwan valley.
When asked about Agnipath, he stated that only time will tell if it is a good scheme or not.
‘Agnipath was launched after a great deal of deliberations. Many people say that it was launched due to financial and pecuniary reasons. That is also going to have an impact but the fact is that we need a young army,’ he said.
When pressed to explain the reasons for the severe clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan valley in May 2020, he stated he didn’t know. ‘After Galwan, that was the first question we used to ask each other: why did China do this?’
‘Was it a localised action or did it have sanctions or blessings from the higher-ups? When the whole world was grappling with Covid, why did it undertake such a misadventure? I say misadventure because finally it had to go back but we are really not being able to fathom what the reason was. Or was it a combination of many factors including the creation of two union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh,’ General Naravane said.
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