InfoAnda - Insight: India's Wild East unprepared for new Myanmar |

Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case
Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They

Taiwan denies boycotting Australian film festival
Thursday, August 6, 2009

AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e

Merkel's support dips, regional ally resigns International
Thursday, September 3, 2009

By Sarah Marsh and Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German

Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who

Asian markets mixed after Wall Street rally
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an

Chelsea Clinton to wed long-time boyfriend | 1 December 2009
Gangs are the heart of violent crime in Salvador, Central America | 4 September 2009
Myanmar culture evolves despite junta's tight grip | | 27 October 2010

South Korea says North must seize diplomatic chance | International | | 22 September 2009

Forum Views () Forum Replies ()

Read more with google mobile : Insight: India's Wild East unprepared for new Myanmar |

Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Home Business Business Home Economy Technology Media Small Business Legal Deals Earnings Summits Business Video The Freeland File Markets Markets Home U.S. Markets European Markets Asian Markets Global Market Data Indices M&A Stocks Bonds Currencies Commodities Futures Funds peHUB World World Home U.S. Brazil China Euro Zone Japan Mexico Russia India Insight World Video Reuters Investigates Decoder Politics Politics Home Election 2012 Issues 2012 Candidates 2012 Tales from the Trail Political Punchlines Supreme Court Politics Video Tech Technology Home MediaFile Science Tech Video Tech Tonic Opinion Opinion Home Chrystia Freeland John Lloyd Felix Salmon Jack Shafer David Rohde Bernd Debusmann Nader Mousavizadeh Lucy P. Marcus David Cay Johnston Bethany McLean Edward Hadas Hugo Dixon Ian Bremmer Mohamed El-Erian Lawrence Summers Susan Glasser The Great Debate Steven Brill Jack & Suzy Welch Breakingviews Equities Credit Private Equity M&A Macro & Markets Politics Breakingviews Video Money Money Home Tax Break Global Investing MuniLand Unstructured Finance Linda Stern Mark Miller John Wasik James Saft Analyst Research Alerts Watchlist Portfolio Stock Screener Fund Screener Personal Finance Video Money Clip Investing 201 Life Health Sports Arts Faithworld Business Traveler Entertainment Oddly Enough Lifestyle Video Pictures Pictures Home Reuters Photographers Full Focus Video Reuters TV Reuters News Article Comments (0) Slideshow Full Focus Editor's choice Our best photos from the last 24 hours. Full Article Images of January Best photos of the year 2011 Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read Five dead in shooting at spa in Atlanta suburb 21 Feb 2012 White House seeks to deflect blame over rising gas prices 21 Feb 2012 CIA to software vendors: A revolution is coming 21 Feb 2012 UN watchdog says nuclear talks with Iran failed 2:53am EST Afghans vent fury over Koran burning, U.S. apologizes | 21 Feb 2012 Discussed 175 REFILE-Al Gore takes aim at ”unsustainable” capitalism 168 Santorum says Obama agenda not ”based on Bible” 147 Romney’s struggles fuel talk of brokered convention Watched Orange battle in Northern Italy Tue, Feb 21 2012 Strauss-Kahn held by police in French prostitution probe Tue, Feb 21 2012 Carnival revelers swarm Ipanema Beach Mon, Feb 20 2012 Insight: India's Wild East unprepared for new Myanmar Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Special Report: Myanmar declares war on opium Tue, Feb 21 2012 Olympus exec in India found dead in apparent suicide Tue, Feb 21 2012 Exclusive: China, India plan Iran oil cuts of 10 percent or more Tue, Feb 21 2012 Thais find possible bomb link in Thai, India attacks Wed, Feb 15 2012 Insight: As Myanmar opens, China alliance starts to fray Mon, Feb 13 2012 Analysis & Opinion NO FLIES ON US Parents to get top marks for voting in UP Related Topics World » Special Reports » 1 of 15. A refugee from Myanmar surfs the Internet as his wife and their son look on, inside their house at Churachandpur village, south of the northeastern Indian city of Imphal, January 24, 2012. A flurry of high-level official visits shows both countries are keen to get the chemistry right, but at the border area, where smuggling dominates trade, India appears ill prepared for Myanmar's historic opening. Picture taken January 24, 2012. To match Insight MYANMAR-INDIA/ Credit: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri By Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Frank Jack Daniel MOREH, India | Tue Feb 21, 2012 9:44pm EST MOREH, India (Reuters) - As dusk falls on a lonely police station in the eastern tip of India, a young policeman nervously keeps an eye on the Arakan hills above him, dotted with poppy fields. Just 22 bumpy miles from the capital of India's restive Manipur state, he and his colleagues are outnumbered by gunmen from a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, one of half a dozen insurgent groups operating near India's border with Myanmar. Last year, six policemen were killed a few miles away in an ambush authorities blamed on them. Small groups of men with machetes on their belts can be seen in the winter twilight, openly climbing steep paths through the poppy fields, where valuable seed heads will later be harvested and taken to Myanmar for processing into heroin. "There are many poppy fields in the hills here," the policeman said in a hushed voice, refusing to give his name to Reuters for fear of reprisals from the men he said were armed rebels patrolling the fields above his office. Growers will either sell the seed heads to agents or openly in the local market, he said. Opium and insurgency can make for a profitable if exotic business model, but it is not what India had in mind when it launched its "Look East" policy 20 years ago to link its markets to those of booming Southeast Asia. Now as resource-rich Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation under military rule, India should be a natural partner, with ties stretching back to 3rd Century BC Buddhist emperor Ashoka and, more recently, a shared experience of British colonialism and World War Two. BRIDGE TO SOUTHEAST ASIA "Myanmar is India's only bridge to Southeast Asia," Myo Myint, Myanmar's deputy foreign minister, told Reuters last week at a meeting of Southeast Asian diplomats in New Delhi to look at ways to speed up road, rail and telecoms connections with India. "India needs to come forward with assistance." Myanmar sits at Asia's crossroads, sharing a western border with India, and a northern one with China. Thailand is its neighbor to the east and the Malacca Strait is on its southern flank. The country of nearly 60 million people has emerged from a half-century of military rule and is courting the West while trying to wean itself from dependency on China for trade and investment. But despite a recent flurry of high-level visits between the two countries, India appears ill-placed on the ground to exploit Myanmar's opening. Reuters journalists on a recent trip to the Myanmar-India border in Manipur found a region where rebel groups deeply influence politics and business. Opium poppies are grown openly. Cross-border gun-running remains big business. Manipur and the three other Indian states sharing the 1,640- km (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar were supposed to be India's "Gateway to the East." Instead, the area has become India's Wild East. Legal trade on the border has dwindled in the last five years to just 0.15 percent of total commerce between Myanmar and India. Checkpoints by security forces and rebel group supporters make the 120 km (75 mile) journey along rutted Highway 102 through the hills from Manipur's capital Imphal to Moreh on the border a painstakingly slow -- and expensive, too, from the "taxes" they impose on traffic. NO CRIME HERE The sleepy border town of Moreh had dreams of being a major international trading centre, a key station on the ambitious Trans-Asia Railway that will enable containers from East and Southeast Asia to travel overland across India to Europe. But work on the $900 million, 125 km (77 mile) stretch of the railway is already two years behind schedule and has only progressed a short distance. Costs are soaring. At first glance, Moreh seems to be a quiet bazaar of traditional wooden stilt houses, frontier hotels and stores where Myanmarese Buddhist monks and tribespeople in traditional dress and sandal-paste painted faces mingle with traders from across India. The town of 15,000 people has one bank. "There is no crime here," acting police chief Akbar Hussein said, chewing on a lump of betel nut at his outdoor desk. "There was only one case registered this month, and that was a road accident." Opened in 1995 to great fanfare, the Moreh crossing was supposed to be a major trading post by now. Only some small-scale merchants conduct legal trade. Much of that is on a barter system, exchanging flour and soy products for betel, a mild stimulant popular in India. Despite the police chief's boast, Moreh is a major smuggling centre where outlaws move around freely. Heroin from the Golden Triangle, guns and gem stones go westward; raw opium, tiger bones and rhino horn move east. "Since 1995, nothing substantial has taken place. The border area is like a 17th-century tribal village," said N. Mohindro, an expert on trade in the state. "It's all about drugs and guns. People can make money so easily." Some of this business is in the hands of Indian insurgents who run their operations from the Myanmar side of the border. Several of Myanmar's own rebel groups are also based in the area. A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 released by Wikileaks described local politicians either in league with the rebels or supporting them for financial reasons. Local residents say security forces are also deeply involved in trafficking but a senior officer of the police intelligence branch in Imphal denies that. "The dense forest cover in this open border region is a nightmare for us," the officer said," the officer said of an unfenced 63 mile stretch running from Moreh, adding that "the easy availability of weapons inside Myanmar has worsened the situation." IMAGINARY ROAD It wasn't always this way. Until the early 1990s, Myanmarese flocked across the border to buy Indian-made consumer goods. But as China's workshops cranked up and offered cheaper, more durable products, the market shifted to the other side of the fence. Now, traders from Manipur's capital Imphal endure the serpentine journey along bumpy Highway 102 and its checkpoint shakedowns to visit the Namphalong bazaar on the Myanmar side of the Moreh border gate. Their pick-up trucks are piled high with Chinese mattresses, refrigerators and TVs to sell back in India, returning along the same road that brought Japanese troops in World War Two through then Burma in an attempt to invade India. The trip from the border to Imphal carrying such contraband can involve payoffs along the way amounting to several hundred dollars. Highway 102 was supposed to be part of a road network linking up with Mandalay, Myanmar's main city in the North, and on into Thailand. But the only notable improvement on the Indian side is a short patch running through the Manipur chief minister's home town. "People had plans to open eateries, motels and shops along the Asian highway. Now, the trans-national road is imaginary. It does not exist here," said Lunminthang Haokip, a senior state government official for Moreh's Chandel district. "The Look East policy is no more than power-point presentations in Delhi." The complaint is voiced often here by residents in Manipur who have suffered decades of rights abuses under draconian emergency powers including "shoot-to-kill" orders aimed at curtailing the insurgencies. Residents say New Delhi acts like a colonial power, with much of its mistrust of the region stemming from its relative proximity to China. "The overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and police officers contributed to the impression that Imphal was under military occupation," the U.S. embassy cable said. "The Indian civil servants were also clearly frustrated with their inability to stem the growing violence and anarchy in the state, feeling their efforts to effectively control the insurgencies was hamstrung by local politicians either in league with or at least through corruption, helping to finance the insurgents." India, which fought a border war in 1962 with China, has watched with mounting concern as Beijing steadily increases its influence around the rim of the Indian Ocean. "You can't leave the whole region under an iron curtain just because they look Chinese," said rights activist Babloo Loitongbam, in a restaurant left dark by one of the chronic power cuts in Imphal. "You have to constantly prove you are not anti-national. Ten years ago India's foreign minister proposed reopening a World War Two highway to the north of Manipur called the Stilwell Road, which connects India's far eastern region, known as the Northeast, with Myanmar and China. Worried that the road risked strengthening China's influence and the flow of militants and arms to the region, India dragged its feet and Myanmar turned to China's Yunnan Construction Engineering Group instead. India also missed out on the natural gas from two fields in Myanmar it has a stake in, when the government chose to pipe it to China. During long years of self-imposed isolation, Myanmar's only major economic partner was China. India realised in the 1990s that Chinese investment in Myanmar's military and infrastructure was giving Beijing a strategic advantage in a nation that borders five countries, straddles busy Bay of Bengal shipping lanes and has large oil and gas reserves. New Delhi quietly dropped its backing for the opposition party of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who went to school and university in India. Ties have strengthened since then, with President Thein Sein just the latest of Myanmar's leaders to call on New Delhi on a visit to India last year. Rajiv Bhatia, who was India's ambassador to Myanmar until 2005. says India is still more concerned with its South Asian neighbours, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, and could miss the moment. "In pure geopolitical terms, Myanmar is hugely important to India. We are now getting a historic opportunity to recover our relationship," he said. "But it is still not a priority for our politicians." (Editing by John Chalmers and Bill Tarrant) World Special Reports Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above. Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Back to top Reuters.com Business Markets World Politics Technology Opinion Money Pictures Videos Site Index Legal Bankruptcy Law California Legal New York Legal Securities Law Support & Contact Support Corrections Advertise With Us Connect with Reuters Twitter Facebook LinkedIn RSS Podcast Newsletters Mobile About Privacy Policy Terms of Use Copyright Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance Our next generation legal research platform Our global tax workstation Thomsonreuters.com About Thomson Reuters Investor Relations Careers Contact Us Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

Other News on Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Venezuela's Chavez to have another operation |
Putin woos police with wage promises ahead of poll |
Exclusive: Algeria to allow foreign NGOs to monitor vote |
Dell revenue slightly above Wall Street view |
Alcatel boss yearns for his rivals' margins |
SBA Communications buys tower sites for $1 billion |
Chris Brown earns musical redemption from Rihanna |
The Help: Bold, black and bidding for Oscar glory |
Descendants, Midnight in Paris win Writers Guild Awards |
Rules, schmules! Oscar hopefuls work around new guidelines |
U.S. Embassy in Kabul on lockdown amid protests |
UN watchdog says nuclear talks with Iran failed |
Australian foreign minister quits in leadership crisis |
U.S. signals possibility of arming Syrian rebels |
Gunshots, explosions heard in Nigeria's Kano |
Tibetans mark new year under shadow of immolations |
Two wounded as riot, fire hits jail on Indonesia's Bali |
China frets as choice for Hong Kong leader strays off script |
Venezuela's Chavez needs another operation |
Insight: India's Wild East unprepared for new Myanmar |
Chinese firm seeks halt of iPad sales in Shanghai |
Apple shareholders to meet as stock at record high |
Cloud computing report slams Brazil, India, China |
Kim Dotcom wins bail in fight against U.S. extradition |
CIA to software vendors: A revolution is coming |
Alibaba.com shares surge on parent plans to privatize |
Olympus says India exec likely had no ties to scandal |
GPS attacks risk maritime disaster, trading chaos |
Jackson concert promoters out of Joe Jackson lawsuit |
Comcast to take on Netflix with Web video service |
Adele adds to awards haul at triumphant BRITs |
Film studio sues to prevent more Godfather books |
Prosecutors want Michael Jackson doctor kept in jail |
U.S., French journalists killed in Syria |
Libya court orders civil trial for Gaddafi loyalists |
Ethiopian troops seize key Somali rebel bastion |
Chavez surgery unsettles Venezuela ahead of election |
Pakistan vows to support not lead Afghan peace drive |
Merkel blunder a harbinger of change in Germany? |
Mubarak's trial leaves Egypt with open wounds |
Four more bodies found on Italian cruise liner |
Rise in identity fraud tied to smartphone use |
Dell shares fall on weak sales forecast |
Microsoft files E.U. complaint over Motorola Mobility |
Nokia to unveil cheaper Windows smartphone: sources |
Has the battery run out on India's $35 tablet computer? |
Top Olympus lender denies board ambush, but may fill chair |
Dodging motorcycle crashes makes a star of movie insurer |
A Minute With: Uggie, scene-stealing star of The Artist |
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

USD EUR - 1 year graph	VPN on MacOSX	BlogMeter 1.01