Former Army chief General MM Naravane on Friday said the involvement of foreign agencies in the Manipur violence cannot be ruled out.
“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 while responding to questions on the Manipur violence while interacting with the media at the India International Centre on the topic ‘National Security Perspective’.
“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,” he further said, adding that the Chinese aid has been helping these groups for years and will continue to do so even now.
On a question about the role of drug trafficking in the ongoing violence in the northeastern state, Naravane said drug smuggling has been there for a very long time and the amount of drug which has been recovered has only increased over 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 central Myanmar not really over the peripheral bordering state whether with India or with China or with Thailand. So drug trafficking has always been there,” Naravane said.
“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,” he said, adding, “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.”
