Price of thumping: chest pain - As minister boasts, Suu Kyi conveys to Delhi concerns on surgical strikes

Aung San Suu Kyi with Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday. Pic: Prem Singh

Charu Sudan Kasturi, TT, New Delhi, Oct. 19: Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has cautioned the Narendra Modi government that she would not accept a repeat of New Delhi's chest-thumping violation of her country's territory last year, hours after junior home minister Kiren Rijiju publicly revived memories of that surgical strike. 

Suu Kyi's message, conveyed during negotiations and captured twice in a joint statement issued by the Myanmar leader and Prime Minister Modi today, comes three weeks after India announced surgical strikes - this time inside Pakistani-held territory.

The message from Myanmar is the first, since the September 29 strikes across the Line of Control, from any of India's neighbours other than Pakistan demanding that New Delhi respect the sovereignty of others. The Indian Army had conducted surgical strikes against Naga militants inside Myanmar on June 10, 2015.

"Both sides underlined their mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and reaffirmed their shared commitment to fight insurgent activity and the scourge of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," the joint statement issued by India and Myanmar after two hours of talks between Modi and Suu Kyi said.

The statement iterated Myanmar's concerns: "Both sides expressed their mutual respect for the already demarcated boundary between the two countries."

Before 2016, India-Myanmar joint statements issued after meetings between their leaders had never included commitments by the two sides to respect each other's "sovereignty and territorial integrity".

The first signs of the change came during the August visit of Myanmar's President, Htin Kyaw, when too Myanmar sought such an assurance from India. Htin Kyaw, a Suu Kyi loyalist, is President because the Myanmar Constitution bars the Nobel Peace laureate from holding the post. Suu Kyi holds the post of state counsellor and foreign minister.

The joint statement issued today is the first time India has in two separate sentences committed to respecting the territorial integrity of Myanmar, and comes 16 months after the Modi government's first publicised "surgical strike".

In June 2015, after militants had crossed over from Myanmar into Manipur and ambushed and killed 18 Indian soldiers, the army launched cross-border strikes in which militant camps were struck.

India's director-general of military operations (DGMO) was careful in stating that the strikes had occurred "along the India-Myanmar border". In reality, the strikes had occurred in Myanmarese territory - with that country's knowledge - but with the understanding that the cross-border nature of the operation would remain deniable.

On Wednesday, two hours before Modi greeted Suu Kyi at Hyderabad House here, Rijiju stoked the embers of that sensitive episode again.

During briefings before the Parliament standing committee on external affairs yesterday, some Opposition MPs had asked the foreign secretary if India had conducted surgical strikes before the September 29 operations.

"Short memory?" Rijiju asked on Twitter, providing the hyperlink to an article on the June 10, 2015, cross-border strike, and virtually reaffirming that Indian troops had entered Myanmar. "Or is it a case of 'You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep'. Even MPs are asking, is it first surgical strike?"

Late in the evening, the tweet was deleted.

Unlike Pakistan, Myanmar has for the past few years been supportive of Indian efforts against terrorism. It has helped push some Indian militant groups hiding in its territory back across the border, enabling Indian troops to target them.

When it felt it couldn't push these groups across the border, Myanmar has allowed Indian troops to enter its territory, carry out targeted strikes against militants and return, with the understanding that neither side would go public formally.

No country is comfortable accepting a violation of its sovereignty - and Myanmar, with a strong tradition of military rulers, is particularly sensitive. Myanmar's foreign policy is captured in the country's Constitution by a short paragraph that includes the assertion: "No foreign troops shall be permitted to be deployed in the territory of the Union."

But hours after the strike in 2015, junior information and broadcasting minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore had publicly said Indian forces had entered Myanmar, and raised the prospects of similar surgical strikes in Pakistan.

The then military junta-led government in Myanmar had hit back, furious that its tacit understanding had been so taken for granted by Indian ministers that they chose to publicly advertise their violation of another country's sovereignty.

"We will not allow any foreign military operations in Myanmar territory," Zaw Htay, the then director in the Myanmar President's office, had told The Telegraph in an interview a day after the strike. "And I want to say this to you - every country must respect the other country's sovereignty."

Rathore's comments last year had disturbed the quiet understanding that had allowed Indian troops, in consultation with Myanmar's army, to conduct occasional cross-border strikes.

The foreign office had fought the diplomatic fire from Myanmar at the time, quietly apologising for the chest-thumping that had left the government of that country embarrassed before its own people.

Over the past year, Indian diplomats said, they had managed to assuage Myanmar - and had been helped by the formation of a new government under Suu Kyi that did not bear the baggage of last year's embarrassment.

Rijiju's remarks today, and Myanmar's reaction, suggest those efforts may have been undone.

Suu Kyi's warning reflects the sensitivities of the smaller neighbours that India needs to remain alert to as it tries to build a regional coalition of countries - many of which are victims of terrorism - against Pakistan, senior officials said.

It also highlights the pitfalls of going public with cross-border strikes - something diplomats have often cautioned the government against - because it makes cooperation from the other country, even a friendly one like Myanmar, that much harder in the future.