Guest contributor

Shalini Perumal

While diplomacy in Naypyidaw rang with promises of regional stability, airstrikes in western Myanmar told a vastly different story. 

On May 4, 2026, Burma’s newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, General Ye Win Oo, hosted a high-profile Indian military delegation led by Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi in the capital. 

As they gathered to discuss maritime and naval security in the Bay of Bengal, state media soon revealed an additional, far more controversial objective: a comprehensive, multi-service commitment to “enhance border security” and “clear the 1,020-mile (1,643 km) long Burma-India border of terrorists.”

Yet, as military leaders shake hands over maps in air-conditioned boardrooms, the Burma military’s push to reclaim lost territory along that very frontier has unleashed a massive human catastrophe. 

Throughout May, the junta in Naypyidaw has escalated a scorched-earth counteroffensive across Chin State and Sagaing Region, deliberately weaponising air power and heavy artillery to strike ethnic resistance networks. 

The fallout has been immediate and devastating. Tens of thousands of ethnic Chin civilians, fleeing what local monitoring groups describe as the illegal deployment of cluster munitions and indiscriminate carpet-bombing, have been forced to seek sanctuary on Indian soil, pushing communities in Mizoram State to their absolute limits.

Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi’s four-day official visit to Naypyidaw, spanning May 2-5, was framed by New Delhi as a routine execution of its long-standing “Neighbourhood First” and “Act East”  policies. 

Accompanied by the Indian Ambassador to Myanmar, Abhay Thakur, and top defense attachés, the Indian Navy Chief held wide-ranging bilateral discussions not only with General Ye Win Oo but also with the junta’s Defense Minister, General U Htun Aung, and the Chief of the General Staff (Army, Navy, and Air Force), Lieutenant General Ko Ko Oo.

According to Indian Navy spokespersons, these talks focused heavily on expanding operational-level linkages, hydrographic surveys, capacity building, and institutional training programs through frameworks like the India-Myanmar Naval Exercise (IMNEX) and the Indo-Myanmar Coordinated Patrol (IMCOR). 

To cement these ties, two Indian naval vessels docked at Yangon’s Thilawa Port on May 4 for a heavily publicised goodwill mission, bringing more than 500 Indian naval personnel to the country

The cooperation, however, went far deeper than maritime diplomacy. Almost simultaneously, New Delhi launched the ninth U.N. Peacekeeping Officer Course for Myanmar servicemen in Naypyidaw, a two-week program running until May 22, presided over by Deputy Commander-in-Chief General Kyaw Swa Lin. 

Thirty officers from the junta’s army, navy, and air force were enrolled to study peacekeeping ethics, civilian protection, and convoy security.

To many international observers and human rights advocates, the optics of this multi-layered military engagement are staggering. New Delhi is actively training and equipping a military apparatus whose operational core is currently engaged in the systematic bombardment of its own people. 

For the junta, this high-level engagement provides a lifeline of international legitimacy, reassuring its demoralised officer corps that its democratic neighbor to the west remains a willing institutional partner.

While diplomatic communiqués use sanitised language like “border management” and “combating transnational elements,” the reality on the ground in western Myanmar is a brutal war of attrition. 

For over a year, the junta had suffered humiliating losses across Chin State. Powerful coalitions of ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), primarily the Chin Brotherhood and the Chinland Defense Force (CDF), alongside the Arakan Army (AA), had systematically driven regime forces out of rural outposts and major administrative centers. 

By early 2025, the resistance dominated most rural areas, leaving the junta confined to isolated, heavily fortified urban enclaves like the state capital, Hakha.

The tide, however, began to shift in late April. Following a grueling, village-by-village six-month campaign that began in October and involved more than 100 major clashes, the junta achieved a massive breakthrough. 

On April 25, utilizing coordinated military columns, Y-12 and Y-8 transport aircraft for continuous supply drops, and unrelenting fighter jet cover, the junta recaptured Falam. 

Perched high in the northern Chin Hills, Falam is the second-most important city in the state, housing critical administrative infrastructure and Chin State’s only operational airport at Surbung.

The fall of Falam has served as the springboard for a southern and western offensive. Military defectors and local resistance analysts warn that the junta’s ultimate goal is twofold: to march directly on the state capital of Hakha, and to lock down Rihkawdar, a premier cross-border commerce hub sitting directly on the Indian border.

Having regained the logistical advantage of the Falam airfield, the Myanmar Air Force has systematically escalated its campaign of aerial terror against resistance-held towns and civilian infrastructure. 

The town of Mindat, located in southern Chin State, has borne the brunt of this fury. On May 11-12, junta warplanes conducted an unprecedented series of airstrikes, bombing Mindat and its surrounding villages at least 11 times.

According to reports from the newly-established Chin People’s Army (CPA), multiple aircraft attacked simultaneously from different vectors, leaving residents with no choice but to huddle in makeshift dirt bunkers for hours on end. 

The strikes killed four people—including held prisoners of war—and completely demolished 15 private residences and 10 government buildings.

Further south in Kanpetlet Township, back-to-back airstrikes on April 29-30 targeted the Kyin Dway Bridge, a vital lifeline for civilian trade and food supplies. 

The strikes killed 11 unarmed civilians who were actively working to repair the bridge infrastructure, obliterating their machinery and transport vehicles.

The brutality of the May offensive has been documented extensively by local monitoring networks. Women for Justice (WJ), an advocacy and research group documenting human rights violations in Chin State and the Sagaing Region, published a report on May 19. 

The organization revealed that the junta has progressively integrated internationally banned cluster munitions into its air campaigns. 

These weapons, designed to scatter bomblets over vast areas, have caused disproportionately high civilian casualties, leaving unexploded ordnance littered across agricultural fields and creating a pervasive environment of terror and panic among rural communities.

WJ’s data notes that in April alone, junta airstrikes killed 16 civilians and injured 27 others across Chin and Sagaing, while destroying nearly 190 structures, including churches and monasteries. 

By mid-May, the intensified ground and air operations had forced an estimated 40,000 people to abandon their ancestral villages, scattering them into the dense jungles abutting the Indian border without access to basic food, clean water, or medical supplies.

To sustain this offensive, the junta has executed a precise logistical buildup through neighboring Magway Region, effectively attempting to squeeze Chin resistance forces from the rear. 

In late April, a 200-strong regime column successfully occupied Kangyi, a strategic village in Magwe’s Saw Township. Kangyi sits at a geographic junction where the highway branches off directly toward the embattled town of Mindat, located just 20 kilometers away.

Furthermore, the military has heavily reinforced its positions at Ordnance Factory No. 24, known in Burmese as KaPaSa, in Pauk Township and Factory No. 22 in Seikphyu Township, utilizing these domestic arms production facilities to channel fresh munitions, mortar shells, and artillery directly to the frontline columns. 

Salai Yaw Man, a spokesperson for the CPA, warned that daily bombings across Saw, Kyaukhtu, and Tilin townships indicate that the military is aggressively trying to permanently secure the Magway-Chin border corridor to launch an even larger, full-scale southern assault.

Simultaneously, the junta is employing a calculated “divide and rule” strategy in northern Chin by aligning with proxy forces. 

Resistance sources and political analysts indicate that the military has coordinated its actions along the Tedim-Kale trade corridor with the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA), an ethnic Zomi nationalist group. 

Around 600 ZRA troops have reportedly been deployed toward Tonzang in northern Chin State to help the military reassert control over official trade routes with India, establish armed checkpoints, and isolate resistance positions.

In response to this shifting alliance, the Chinland Defense Force-Tonzang has declared a total travel ban along the road connecting Tonzang and Tedim, effectively freezing all commercial movement along this vital international corridor.

The junta’s military campaign in Chin cannot be viewed in isolation; it is deeply intertwined with its existential struggle in neighboring Rakhine State. 

In Rakhine, the powerful Arakan Army (AA) has decisively defeated regime forces, seizing control of 14 out of 17 townships and pushing the military’s Western Command to the brink of collapse.

By launching a ferocious counteroffensive in Chin, the junta is attempting to implement a deliberate starvation strategy. The state serves as the primary overland conduit for goods, fuel, and medical supplies moving from India down into Rakhine. 

By locking down the Tedim-Kale route, capturing Falam, and pushing toward the border hub of Rihkawdar, the military hopes to enforce a total blockade on the AA-controlled territories.

This strategy has already had a catastrophic economic impact on civilians in Rakhine, where the prices of basic commodities, rice, and medicine have skyrocketed to five times their pre-war averages, triggering severe regional shortages.

As the fighting edges closer to the international boundary, the 1,020-mile frontier is rapidly morphing into a complex gray zone characterized by clandestine operations and cross-border security incidents that contradict India’s public stance of non-interference.

The changing nature of the conflict is heavily defined by drone warfare. While the junta possesses conventional air superiority through its Russian- and Chinese-built fighter jets, ethnic resistance forces have effectively weaponized commercial and custom-built drones to drop improvised explosive devices on military outposts, shifting the battlefield dynamics. 

This technological escalation has drawn unexpected foreign actors to the borderlands.

On March 13, Indian security forces in Mizoram State arrested six Ukrainian nationals and one American citizen who had illegally entered the country’s northeastern frontier. 

Subsequent investigations revealed that these Western nationals had crossed back and forth over the porous border into Myanmar to provide specialized technical training to unnamed anti-junta armed resistance groups, focusing specifically on drone assembly, electronic counter-measures, and aerial coordination.

Furthermore, the violence has physically spilled over the line on multiple occasions. On February 1, residents of Pansaung Township, located within Sagaing Region’s Naga Self-Administered Zone, reported that a precision drone strike executed directly from the Indian side of the border destroyed a civilian home. 

Though no casualties were reported, the incident indicated long-held suspicions that Indian security forces, increasingly anxious about the presence of anti-India separatist groups like the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) operating out of lawless pockets of Sagaing, are conducting covert, cross-border counter-insurgency operations.

These cross-border actions demonstrate that despite New Delhi’s desire to treat the Myanmar crisis as an internal issue, the geographic realities of the frontier make complete isolation impossible.

The most immediate and politically sensitive consequence of India’s military alignment with Naypyidaw is the unfolding refugee crisis inside its own borders. 

As the junta’s ground columns pressed closer to the border town of Rihkawdar, the civilian population succumbed to panic. In the first weeks of May alone, over 800 residents from the immediate border area crossed the shallow rivers separating the two nations, fleeing into the Champhai district of Mizoram. 

Most of these refugees have converged on the Indian border town of Zokhawthar, while others have been absorbed by small community networks in border villages like Vaphai and Saikhumphai. Survivors arriving in India describe scenes of sheer terror.                    

This fresh wave of displacement has placed immense strain on Mizoram. The ethnic Mizo population shares deep historical and cultural ties with the Chin people—collectively belonging to the larger Zo ethnic umbrella. 

Because of these kinship ties, the local population and the Mizoram state government have historically defied federal directives from New Delhi that ordered the sealing of the border and the deportation of undocumented arrivals.

Instead, local civil society organizations, such as the Young Mizo Association (YMA), have stepped forward to build temporary bamboo shelters, organize community kitchens, and provide emergency medical triage. 

However, the scale of the May offensive is threatening to overwhelm these grassroots safety nets. The thousands of new arrivals are entering a region already hosting tens of thousands of displaced persons from previous waves of fighting, sparking acute shortages of basic foodstuffs, life-saving medicines, shelter, and clothing.

New Delhi’s continued engagement with the junta reveals a strategic paradox at the heart of India’s foreign policy toward Myanmar. On one hand, India’s defense establishment views cooperation with Naypyidaw as an absolute geopolitical necessity. 

From their perspective, maintaining a functional relationship with General Ye Win Oo is the only viable way to safeguard multi-million-dollar infrastructure investments—such as the stalled Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Highway—while simultaneously preventing Myanmar from falling entirely into the strategic orbit of Beijing.

On the other hand, by providing material, institutional, and diplomatic support to a regime that relies almost exclusively on airstrikes and scorched-earth tactics to murder its people and maintain its grip on power, India is actively fueling the instability on its own borders. 

The joint pledge made in Naypyidaw to “clear the border of terrorists” ignores the reality that the “terrorists” the junta refers to are often the governing civil administrations supported by the local population along the frontier.

By prioritizing state-to-state military diplomacy over the protection of border populations, New Delhi risks creating a permanently volatile, hostile frontier. 

As long as Indian defense policy continues to validate the junta’s campaigns, the human toll will continue to rise, and the villages of Mizoram will remain the reluctant, overburdened sanctuaries for a civilian population caught in the crossfire of a brutal border war.

Shalini Perumal is a creative international development professional who has worked previously in Mae Sot, Thailand at Mae Tao Clinic, consulted for Finnish Refugee Council Myanmar, and served as a Writer/Researcher at Insight Myanmar Podcast. She is currently a freelance journalist working on a novel.

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