Birth of UNLFWSEA: Internal Dynamics and Implications for India’s North-East

A distinctive feature of insurgency in India’s North-East and neighbouring Myanmar has been the tendency among rebel groups to form alliances. Cooperation is deemed advantageous in a hostile terrain, against a powerful and better organised enemy. Several coalitions were formed in Myanmar by the separatist insurgent outfits with well-defined objectives which, however, failed to produce any significant impact on the campaign for independence of the region. There were centrifugal forces pulling in different directions, often determined by the resources available with the groups, their long- and short-term goals, and the domestic situation in the areas they hailed from. The new alliance called United National Liberation Front of Western South East Asia (UNLWSEA) has emerged in the backdrop of vastly changed situations in Myanmar and India’s North-East. So it is different from the previous endeavours in much the same way as it suffers from the lacunae that hampered complete unity in the past.