{"id":960528,"date":"2026-08-30T02:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefrontiermanipur.com\/?p=25194"},"modified":"2026-08-30T02:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:37:52","slug":"strategic-challenges-in-indias-northeast-the-manipur-crisis-and-pathways-to-sustainable-security-and-peace-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/2026\/08\/30\/strategic-challenges-in-indias-northeast-the-manipur-crisis-and-pathways-to-sustainable-security-and-peace-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategic Challenges in India\u2019s Northeast: The Manipur Crisis and Pathways to Sustainable Security and Peace PART 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Brojen Thangjam <\/strong><\/p>\n

The continuing crisis in Manipur illustrates how the strategic challenges confronting India\u2019s Northeast are changing in character. The region is simultaneously an international frontier, a conflict-affected political space and an increasingly important gateway for India\u2019s connectivity and engagement with Southeast Asia. The violence that began in May 2023 exposed not only the persistence of armed insecurity but also a deeper crisis of political authority, institutional trust and inter-community relations.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Changing Strategic Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than three years after the outbreak of violence in May 2023, Manipur remains deeply fractured. Although the intensity of direct violence has fluctuated, the conditions created by the conflict remain unresolved. Large-scale displacement, armed community defence, the circulation of weapons, territorial separation, a vulnerable international frontier and a severe loss of trust in state institutions and between communities have altered the security and political environment.<\/p>\n

The significance of Manipur extends beyond the immediate crisis. The state lies at the intersection of India’s internal political order and its strategic engagement with Southeast Asia. It is simultaneously a conflict-affected society, an international frontier, and a critical link in India’s wider connectivity ambitions. The challenge, therefore, is not only how to restore security within Manipur, but how to govern a strategically important frontier while addressing the political and social conditions that have made security itself increasingly contested.<\/p>\n

The central argument of this essay is that the strategic challenges in the region are continually evolving as conditions change. The established security framework, in which insurgency and counterinsurgency have been important elements, remains relevant where armed threats persist, but it is no longer sufficient on its own to explain an environment in which ethnic conflict, community-based security, frontier instability, transnational networks and competing political claims increasingly intersect. The conflict has now acquired a powerful horizontal dimension, with communities themselves becoming principal actors in both violence and security. As confidence in common institutions has weakened, communities have increasingly turned towards their own systems of protection, producing a fragmentation of security even while the State retains substantial coercive capacity.<\/p>\n

This transformation requires a corresponding change in how sustainable security and peace are understood. The objective cannot simply be the suppression of violence or a return to the conditions that existed before May 2023. It requires restoring legitimate and effective public authority, rebuilding institutional trust, and creating political space for competing aspirations to be pursued without recourse to violence. At the same time, it requires recognising that sustainable peace cannot be secured through state action alone. Political actors and communities must also reconsider the pursuit of maximalist demands through coercion, armed mobilisation and exclusion, while peace processes must find ways of addressing deeply rooted differences without reproducing the conditions for renewed conflict. These are complex political questions that cannot be resolved within the scope of this essay. Its concern is more limited: to examine how these unresolved political and social contradictions have found violent expression, and what this means for the pursuit of sustainable security and peace. In this sense, sustainable security is best understood as a condition in which physical protection, legitimate institutions, political accommodation and relationships between communities reinforce rather than undermine one another.<\/p>\n

The essay develops this argument in four parts. Part I locates Manipur within the changing strategic geography of India’s Northeast, examining the region’s transformation from a security-sensitive frontier into a strategic space shaped by security, connectivity, migration, trade and India’s engagement with Southeast Asia. Part II turns to the Manipur crisis itself and examines the transformation from a predominantly vertical conflict between the State and insurgent organisations towards a deeply horizontal conflict between communities and the resulting crisis of political mediation and public authority. Part III asks what sustainable security and peace should mean in these circumstances, drawing on the concepts of conflict transformation, positive peace, sustaining peace and comparative evidence on the prevention and resolution of internal conflict.<\/p>\n

Part IV then moves from diagnosis towards pathways for change. It examines five interconnected transitions: from security management towards political settlement; from counterinsurgency towards frontier governance; from community-based protection towards public security; from armed and ceasefire arrangements towards political transformation; and from separation and coexistence towards a shared political community. The final discussion considers a further condition underlying these transitions, namely the need to combine accommodation between communities with greater accountability and participation within them.<\/p>\n

The essay concludes by returning to the larger question of what kind of political and security order might allow Manipur’s different communities to share a future without requiring the erasure of their distinct identities. The purpose is not to offer a single formula for resolving the crisis, but to examine the changes in institutions, relationships and forms of authority that would be necessary to move from managed instability towards sustainable peace and shared security.<\/p>\n

Part I<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Locating the Northeast: From Frontier to Strategic Space<\/strong><\/p>\n

India’s Northeast occupies a paradoxical position. It is at once a frontier to be secured and a gateway to be opened; a region of internal security concern and an important avenue for India’s engagement with Southeast Asia. The same geography that has historically made the Northeast appear distant, vulnerable, and difficult to govern has also made it increasingly important to India’s strategic future. To understand this paradox, it is necessary first to locate the Northeast not simply on the map, but within India’s political and strategic imagination.<\/p>\n

The Northeast is often spoken of as though it were a self-evident geographical and political entity. Yet, as Sanjib Baruah demonstrates in In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast<\/em>, the contemporary idea of \u201cNortheast India\u201d is itself historically constructed (Baruah, 2020). The region, as it is known today, emerged through a series of postcolonial efforts to reorganise and govern a fragmented frontier as part of the national space, shaped by administrative restructuring, political accommodation and security concerns.<\/p>\n

The colonial administration had already distinguished the northeastern frontier through special administrative arrangements. After independence, these arrangements evolved alongside the reorganisation of the region and the expansion of state and security institutions. The 1962 war with China reinforced the strategic and security significance of the frontier, while the creation of Nagaland in 1963 marked an early effort to combine political accommodation with the management of insurgency. Manipur and Tripura followed a different trajectory as former princely states that merged with the Indian Union in 1949, retained their distinct administrative identities through the early post-independence period, and became full-fledged states in 1972. Subsequent reorganisations transformed much of the former colonial frontier of Assam into a group of states and Union Territories within the Indian Union.<\/p>\n

An enduring tension emerged from this history. The Northeast was being politically integrated through statehood, autonomy and constitutional arrangements, while simultaneously being governed through a security framework that treated the region as an exceptional space. Political accommodation and security governance therefore developed alongside one another rather than one replacing the other. The result was not a transition from a security-centred approach to political integration, but the coexistence of both, often producing tensions between the imperatives of national security and those of democratic accommodation.<\/p>\n

This history also cautions against viewing the Northeast simply as a naturally unstable periphery, where geography, ethnicity, underdevelopment and international borders automatically produce conflict. Such a view risks making instability appear intrinsic to the region, rather than directing attention to the political arrangements, institutional choices and forms of governance through which conflict is produced and managed. Yet the security character of the Northeast has not disappeared. Its international borders, ethnic and social linkages across them, history of insurgency, patterns of migration and proximity to an increasingly unstable neighbourhood continue to make it strategically sensitive. At the same time, its strategic significance has expanded beyond the traditional concerns of internal security. The Northeast is increasingly viewed not only as a frontier requiring security and political management, but also as a space through which India seeks connectivity, trade and engagement with its eastern neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The evolution from the Look East to the Act East Policy reflects this changing conception of the Northeast. Connectivity initiatives such as the India\u2013Myanmar\u2013Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project illustrate this shift. The same geographical characteristics that once contributed to perceptions of the Northeast as distant and vulnerable, especially its location, international borders and cross-border social linkages now also give it strategic value as a gateway to Southeast Asia. The Northeast is therefore no longer viewed only as a frontier to be secured, but increasingly as a strategic space through which India can pursue connectivity, trade and engagement with its eastern neighbourhood (Saisin, Somboonboorana, Chaisingkananont, & Laishram, 2025).<\/p>\n

These objectives, however, do not always sit comfortably together. The borders have to be secured even as legitimate movement, trade and people-to-people interaction are encouraged. Cross-border social and ethnic linkages have to be managed even as the state seeks to consolidate territorial and political authority. Connectivity has to be expanded while also managing the vulnerabilities that greater connectivity can create, including the movement of illicit networks, trafficking, arms and other forms of transnational insecurity. The strategic challenge, therefore, is not simply to connect the Northeast more closely to India and its eastern neighbourhood, but to do so in ways that strengthen security, economic opportunity and political stability rather than creating new vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

The idea of the Northeast as a strategic space, however, should not be mistaken for the idea of a homogeneous region. The eight states differ markedly in their histories, political institutions, ethnic composition, cultures and relationships with the Indian state. Yet national security and development policy increasingly engages the Northeast through common regional institutions and frameworks. The Ministry of Home Affairs has a dedicated North East Division dealing with security, insurgency, political negotiations and border-related issues, while the deployment of the Assam Rifles under its dual-control system, together with the legal and institutional arrangements governing it, gives the region a distinctive security character. Alongside this security architecture, the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and the North Eastern Council (NEC) provide an institutional framework through which the Northeast is also conceived and administered as a distinct, interconnected governance space for development, coordination and regional planning. The result is a strategic space that is administratively and strategically connected, but politically and culturally far from uniform.<\/p>\n

The Northeast should therefore be understood as more than a conventional border region. It is a historically constructed and differentiated strategic space in which geography, territorial security, political authority, ethnic and social identities, migration, connectivity, trade and transnational activity intersect. Its significance lies not in being a single or homogeneous political space, but in the way these different dimensions are brought together through the ways the Indian state and the wider national imagination have sought to govern, secure, integrate and connect the region. The Northeast is thus simultaneously a frontier to be secured, a political space to be governed, a region of diverse communities and competing aspirations, and a gateway through which India seeks greater connectivity and engagement with its eastern neighbourhood. It is in this broader sense that the term \u201cstrategic\u201d is used in this essay.<\/p>\n

From Strategic Space to Strategic Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n

A strategic challenge is not necessarily a military threat. It arises when developments within a particular space affect the state’s ability to pursue important political objectives, when the ways available to pursue those objectives prove inadequate or contested, or when the means available to the state are insufficient or poorly aligned with its ends. A strategic challenge can therefore emerge not only from threats to particular objectives, but also from tensions between ends, ways and means that make those objectives difficult to reconcile or achieve.<\/p>\n

Strategy, in its broader sense, concerns the relationship between ends, ways and means<\/strong>. Lykke (1989) provided a useful formulation: ends<\/em> are the objectives to be achieved; ways<\/em> are the courses of action through which they are pursued; and means<\/em> are the resources and capabilities available to pursue them. A strategic challenge can therefore arise when objectives are difficult to reconcile, available courses of action are constrained or produce unintended consequences, or the resources and capabilities available are inadequate to achieve the desired ends. In complex situations, these difficulties can interact, creating tensions or gaps between what the state seeks to achieve, how it seeks to achieve it, and what it has available to do so.<\/p>\n

The Northeast illustrates why these relationships matter. India’s objectives in the region extend across several domains: maintaining territorial integrity and internal security, securing its international borders, accommodating political and ethnic diversity, strengthening connectivity and trade, and advancing engagement with its eastern neighbourhood. These objectives are reflected across the Government’s security, border-management and Act East frameworks. The Ministry of Home Affairs, for example, combines security and political management of the Northeast with border-related responsibilities, while the Act East framework places connectivity and engagement with Southeast Asia at the centre of India’s eastern strategy (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2026; Ministry of External Affairs, 2015).<\/p>\n

These objectives are not necessarily contradictory, but they do not always point to the same courses of action. Stronger border control may affect established patterns of cross-border movement and social and economic linkages. Connectivity can create economic and strategic opportunities while also creating new vulnerabilities. Political accommodation may reduce conflict in one context while generating new political expectations in another. Security measures may contain immediate violence but, if prolonged or applied unevenly, may also affect perceptions of legitimacy. The strategic challenge, therefore, is not simply that the Northeast contains many problems. It is that the state must pursue several important objectives simultaneously, often through ways and means that advance one objective while constraining or complicating another.<\/p>\n

This is why insurgency, ethnic conflict, migration, narcotics trafficking, border insecurity or economic underdevelopment cannot be viewed entirely in isolation. Their significance becomes strategic when they interact with one another and with India’s wider political and security objectives. The implications of any one development may therefore extend beyond the immediate problem or locality in which it occurs, affecting the state’s ability to pursue other objectives or limiting the policy choices available to it.<\/p>\n

A conflict that appears local may therefore have implications for border security; instability along the frontier may affect connectivity and relations with neighbouring countries; and developments within the region may constrain India’s strategic choices or influence wider national objectives. It is this interaction among ends, ways, means, actors and levels that can turn developments within a strategic space into strategic challenges. The ends\u2013ways\u2013means relationship provides the organising strategic framework here, while actors and levels help explain how challenges emerge and propagate across the region.<\/p>\n

Three Overlapping Strategic Dimensions<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the Northeast, this interaction can be understood through three overlapping strategic dimensions.<\/p>\n

The first is the national-strategic dimension<\/strong>.<\/strong> At this level, the Northeast is connected to India’s larger objectives of national security, border management, connectivity, Act East and relations with neighbouring states. Its location places it within the wider strategic environment in which India manages its relations and competition with China, while instability in Myanmar adds uncertainty along the eastern frontier. At the same time, the region is expected to support India’s engagement with Southeast Asia through connectivity, trade and people-to-people links. India’s Act East Policy places ASEAN at its core and treats connectivity in its broadest sense – physical, economic, political and people-to-people – as a central objective (Ministry of External Affairs, 2023). The challenge at this level is therefore one of frontier governance, especially securing the border while allowing legitimate movement, interaction and connectivity to continue. <\/strong>Bertil Lintner’s analysis of the India\u2013Myanmar frontier illustrates how these interests intersect. He identifies India’s eastward engagement, the need to deny insurgent groups cross-border sanctuaries, access to energy resources and the management of China’s influence in Myanmar as interconnected Indian interests (Lintner, 2016). The Northeast is therefore both a security frontier and part of the wider strategic field through which India seeks to protect its interests and expand its engagement eastward.<\/p>\n

The second is the frontier-regional dimension<\/strong>. Here, the international boundary is not simply a line to be guarded, but a space where security, migration, ethnic linkages, trade, connectivity and transnational activity intersect. The India\u2013Myanmar frontier illustrates this complexity particularly well. Instability in Myanmar can affect population movements, insurgent networks and cross-border flows of arms, narcotics and other illicit activity, while disrupting established social and economic linkages. At the same time, legitimate movement, trade and connectivity create economic and strategic opportunities but can also introduce new vulnerabilities. India’s border-management arrangements reflect this dual requirement: cooperation with Myanmar includes measures relating to arms smuggling, drug trafficking, transnational crime and immigration, alongside broader efforts to maintain peace and security in border areas (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2015, 2019). The challenge at this level is therefore one of frontier governance especially <\/strong>securing the border while allowing legitimate movement, interaction and connectivity to continue.<\/p>\n

The third is the sub-state political-security dimension.<\/strong> This is where national and frontier pressures meet the political realities of individual states and communities. The challenge is not simply whether the state possesses sufficient coercive capacity, but whether it can maintain legitimate political authority and provide credible security in societies whose identities, interests and political aspirations may differ sharply. Internal conflict can acquire wider strategic significance when it weakens state capacity, disrupts connectivity, complicates border management, or creates space for external actors and transnational networks. The experience of the Northeast demonstrates how conflict within individual states can therefore extend beyond the immediate security problem to affect wider internal-security and frontier objectives. India’s own approach reflects this interconnection, combining security measures with political negotiations, autonomy arrangements, rehabilitation and efforts to address the demands of ethnic groups (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2026).<\/p>\n

These dimensions are not hierarchical compartments. They overlap and influence one another: a local conflict can acquire frontier implications; frontier instability can acquire national-strategic significance; and national strategic priorities can shape the way the state responds to local political conflict. The strategic challenge lies precisely in managing these interactions rather than addressing each dimension in isolation. This way of looking at the Northeast is consistent with the broader insight of Barry Buzan and Ole W\u00e6ver’s Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), which draws attention to the interconnectedness of security dynamics within and across regional spaces (Buzan & W\u00e6ver, 2003). For the purposes of this essay, however, RSCT is not applied as a formal theoretical framework. Its relevance here is simply as a conceptual reference for recognising that security developments at one level can affect, and be affected by, dynamics at other levels. The three dimensions developed above are therefore used as an analytical lens for locating Manipur within the larger strategic environment of the Northeast.<\/p>\n

Manipur at the Strategic Intersection<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is against this background that the particular significance of Manipur becomes clearer. Its location on the India\u2013Myanmar frontier, with Moreh as a major land gateway into Myanmar, gives it a distinctive place in India’s eastern strategy and in the India\u2013Myanmar\u2013Thailand Trilateral Highway linking the Northeast with mainland Southeast Asia. The earlier Look East Policy and subsequently the Act East Policy gave this geography a new strategic meaning, positioning Manipur not only as a security frontier but also as a potential gateway for trade, connectivity and wider engagement with Southeast Asia. At the same time, the same frontier generates significant vulnerabilities: cross-border ethnic and familial linkages, insurgent networks, illicit flows and the effects of instability in Myanmar can complicate border management and expose Manipur to transnational security risks. Recent research on Manipur’s border security similarly highlights the simultaneous expansion of connectivity and persistence of insurgency, irregular migration and transnational crime (Saisin et al., 2025).<\/p>\n

These external and regional pressures intersect with Manipur’s internal political and security environment. Conflict and weakened political authority within the state can disrupt connectivity, complicate management of the frontier and diminish confidence in the institutions responsible for security and governance, thereby affecting interests that extend beyond Manipur itself. The significance of Manipur therefore lies in the convergence of the three dimensions identified above: developments within the state can affect the management of the frontier, which in turn can have consequences for India’s wider security, connectivity and strategic engagement with its eastern neighbourhood. It is this convergence that makes Manipur a particularly revealing case through which to examine the changing strategic challenge in the Northeast.<\/p>\n

To understand how these vulnerabilities have taken shape, it is necessary to examine the security architecture within which Manipur evolved\u2014how the frontier was governed, how security institutions acquired their role, and how political accommodation and security management developed alongside one another.<\/p>\n

(Brojen Thangjam<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0recently retired from service with the United Nations. He can be reached at\u00a0brojen2303@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/strong>)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Strategic Challenges in India\u2019s Northeast: The Manipur Crisis and Pathways to Sustainable Security and Peace PART 1<\/a> first appeared on The Frontier Manipur<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Read more \/ Original news source: https:\/\/thefrontiermanipur.com\/strategic-challenges-in-indias-northeast-the-manipur-crisis-and-pathways-to-sustainable-security-and-peace-part-1\/<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Brojen Thangjam The continuing crisis in Manipur illustrates how the strategic challenges confronting India\u2019s Northeast are changing in character. The region is simultaneously an international frontier, a conflict-affected political space and an increasingly important gateway for India\u2019s connectivity and engagement with Southeast Asia. The violence that began in May 2023 exposed not only the [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Strategic Challenges in India\u2019s Northeast: The Manipur Crisis and Pathways to Sustainable Security and Peace PART 1<\/a> first appeared on The Frontier Manipur<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20364,4],"tags":[20537,117,8842,928,20375,20369,20538,20370,34,319,15447,199,6221,20539],"class_list":["post-960528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frontiermanipur","category-news","tag-armed-violence","tag-army","tag-articles","tag-conflict","tag-exclusive","tag-frontiermanipur","tag-isurgency","tag-lead-stories","tag-manipur","tag-manipur-news","tag-news","tag-peace","tag-police","tag-secuirty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960528"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960636,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960528\/revisions\/960636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}