This is the second series of the article. The article presents a historical and archival examination of the territorial and political transformation of Manipur through the lens of the Naga-Kuki conflict of the 1990s and its continuing consequences. It traces the colonial-era settlement of Kuki populations in Naga territories, the administrative regulation of those settlements under the Manipur State Darbar, postcolonial refugee relief and demographic change, the construction of linguistic and ethnic categories, the emergence of Kuki armed organisations, and the outbreak of the 1992–1993 Naga-Kuki War. The article analyses Naga strategic restraint during the war as a measure that preserved political space for the Naga movement’s international diplomatic engagement, and documents the post-war institutionalisation of armed Kuki structures through the Suspension of Operations framework. It further examines the post-2023 Meitei-Kuki conflict and the transformation of Manipur’s conflict landscape into a wider multi-ethnic territorial confrontation. It argues that the territorial question in Manipur cannot be understood independently of the longer history of migration, settlement, administrative recognition, demographic transformation, armed political mobilisation, and institutional recognition. While the Naga political question retains its distinct historical and international trajectory, processes of territorial reorganisation and armed mobilisation increasingly produce consequences for Naga, Meitei, and other indigenous communities. The article concludes by proposing a programme of archival, legal, scholarly, and informational infrastructure to preserve the documentary record and ensure that the history of Naga ancestral territory is not forgotten.
Kuki Armed Mobilisation, 1980s–1991
The armed infrastructure that became central to the 1990s conflict emerged before the conflict itself.
The Kuki National Army (KNA) was founded on 24 February 1988 with the stated goal of creating a separate Kuki administered state in India and Myanmar. The Kuki National Organisation (KNO) functions as the political organisation and the KNA as its armed wing. The first batch of cadres, under the command of Thangkholun Haokip, was trained by the Kachin Independent Army (KIA) in Myanmar (South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Kuki National Army”; GlobalSecurity.org, “Kuki National Front”). The KNA’s objectives include bringing together all Kuki inhabited areas separated by artificial boundaries created in 1935 under one administrative unit called “Zalengam” (Land of freedom). Failing that, the KNA aims at the creation of two Kuki states: “Eastern Zalengam” within Burma and “Western Zalengam” within India (South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Kuki National Army”).
The Kuki National Front (KNF) was established on 18 May 1988 by Nahlum Kipgen, who was trained by the KIA in Myanmar. The KNF was formed primarily to counter the NSCN IM hegemony in the Kuki inhabited areas. Its primary objective is to secure a separate State or Union Territory for the Kuki community and the unification of all scattered Kukis in the new homeland, “Kukiland” (GlobalSecurity.org, “Kuki National Front (KNF)”; South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Kuki National Front”).
Also Read: Naga Kuki War, Territorial Transformation and the Making of Multi Ethnic Conflict P-1
The roots of this secessionist ideology can be traced to the post independence years through figures like Tunkhopum Baite, a Paite tribal leader born in Chin State, Myanmar. Migrating to Manipur in the 1930s, Baite later spearheaded the formation of the Chin Liberation Army (CLA) in 1962, aimed at unifying Chin tribes across India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh into a sovereign entity. His militant campaign, backed by Pakistan, was a declaration of war against India’s territorial integrity. Although Baite was captured and executed in 1967 by the Mizo National Front, the ideology he helped cultivate reemerged through newer militant outfits like the KNA and ZRA (News18 2025).
Postcolonial Patronage and the Armed Security Environment
French scholar Renaud Egreteau has documented that Kuki cadres were “trained and armed by the Burmese KIA and funded by Indian intelligence (in 1989–90, RAW was particularly interested in using the Kukis as a counter insurgency force against the Thangkul Nagas of Isaak Swu and Th. Muivah)” (Egreteau 2006, 23). Egreteau’s account provides evidence of an intersection between Indian intelligence interests, Kuki armed mobilisation, and counter insurgency against the Naga movement during this period.
Scholar Dr. Nelson Vashum provided a detailed chronology that strengthens the argument about premeditation. Vashum documented that in March 1989, the Kuki National Assembly circulated information to all Kuki headmen “to stop payment of land taxes to leaser Naga villages and at the same time not to sell any landed property to the Nagas” (Vashum 2018). At the same time, a memorandum was submitted to Union Home Minister Buta Singh. In the memorandum, “the KNA vowed that Kuki community would subdue the Naga independent movement in 5 (five) years which the government of India failed to achieve in 40 years. In the same memorandum arms and money were sought for urgently.”
Dr. Vashum also recounted that in July 1990, a colonel of the Indian Army revealed to him that “under the initiative of Defence Ministry, a batch of 250 Kuki youngsters were being trained for self defence and the band was named as Kuki Defence Force (KDF).” The trainees “on their own elicited informations under liquor” and “some bluntly came out with intent to fight with NSCN (IM) and Tangkhuls” (Vashum 2018).
The chronology is analytically significant: 1989 land and political mobilisation, 1989 stated objective of defeating the Naga political movement, 1990 alleged organised training, 1992 war.
The 1992–1993 Naga Kuki War
On 4 May 1992, a written ultimatum was delivered to the Naga residents of Moreh, the strategic border town in Manipur. The Kuki Students’ Organisation ordered every Naga to leave within twenty four hours. When the deadline expired, armed cadres moved through the town, forcing Naga residents from their homes and triggering a mass exodus across the Myanmar border (Imphal Times 2024; Northeast Live TV 2024). In the same month, a second ultimatum was issued from the Yang Aishi area, ordering all Nagas to vacate the region (Thinglang Post Publication 1992).
Four months later, on 12 September 1992, the Kuki War Declaration Committee, led by C. Doungel and Holkhomang Haokip, publicly declared war on the Nagas. Simultaneous, coordinated assaults followed across multiple districts. The ultimatums, organised armed mobilisation, formal war declaration and subsequent geographically dispersed attacks are consistent with organised preparation and a deliberate territorial campaign. In the sources examined for this article, there is no comparable documentary evidence of NSCN IM preparation for a conventional confrontation (author’s examination).
The conflict quickly spread across the hill districts. Vashum described the conflict’s onset: “It started like a spark in Chandel district in 1992 and in no time cries for blood reached its zenith. Human right abuses of the worst kinds heard and seen all over the hill districts. Brutalities committed by both sides were beyond fair descriptions. The worst was a bus proceeding to Tamenglong was pushed down a cliff with Naga passengers inside by KDF” (Vashum 2018). Major clashes during 1992–1998 led to the deaths of more than 1,000 people and the displacement of 50,000 to 100,000 people (Haokip 2013).
The Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights documented that the KNF had devised a “premeditated plan to completely annihilate the Liangmai Naga villages under Kangpokpi Subdivision.” On 10 September 1993, thousands of Kuki volunteers descended upon Makui village and reduced it to ruins. The next day, a second assault was launched at five in the morning, with relentless gunfire continuing until evening (Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights, as cited in Imphal Times 2024; Imphal Times 2016).
The conflict also produced serious Kuki civilian casualties. Kuki organisations remember the Joupi killings of September 1993 as a major massacre of Kuki civilians attributed to NSCN IM forces (Haokip 2013). The 1990s conflict became a cycle of violence in which civilians on both sides suffered displacement, killing and destruction. The argument advanced here is that the sequence by which the conflict expanded and the political consequences that followed cannot be adequately understood by treating all violence as a symmetrical and spontaneous ethnic eruption.
The Trap That Failed: Naga Restraint and Strategic Consequences
The decisive strategic question was not simply whether the NSCN IM possessed the capacity to retaliate, but whether retaliation would have transformed a territorial conflict into a broader ethnic war that could damage the Naga political movement internationally.
On 23 January 1993, while the war was still being fought, the NSCN IM was admitted to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) (UNPO 1993). The NSCN IM’s international campaign in the early 1990s led to the group’s recognition as a bona fide member of the UNPO in 1993. In Amsterdam, it established the Naga International Support Centre, intended at making known to the world the Nagas and their struggle.
The chronology is striking. The Naga Kuki War erupted in 1992. NSCN IM entered UNPO in January 1993. Formal dialogue with New Delhi began in 1995, following the Paris meeting between Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and NSCN leaders Isak Chishi Swu and Th. Muivah. The ceasefire was declared in 1997, announced in the Indian Parliament by Prime Minister I.K. Gujral. The Framework Agreement was signed on 3 August 2015, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Government of India 2015).
The NSCN IM has never been proscribed. It is not listed under the United Nations Security Council’s consolidated sanctions regime. Naga restraint during the 1990s must therefore be understood in a larger diplomatic context. A movement that responded to the conflict through comprehensive ethnic warfare would have risked transforming an international political question into an ethnic security conflict. The likely consequences would have included:
1. increased international difficulty in presenting the Naga struggle as a political question;
2. greater opportunity for the Indian state to frame the movement primarily as a security problem; and
3. greater fragmentation of the international diplomatic narrative that the NSCN IM had begun to build through its UNPO membership.
Naga restraint therefore acquired strategic significance far beyond the battlefield.
From War to Institutionalisation and Multi Ethnic Conflict
What followed the war was not a complete dismantling of the armed and territorial structures that had emerged during the conflict.
The “Any Kuki Tribes” category, removed from Manipur’s Scheduled Tribes list in 1956, was restored through the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 2002, which came into force in 2003 (Government of India 2002). The restoration has subsequently become the subject of intense political controversy, with Thadou organisations calling it “politically motivated and non transparent” (NDTV 2026). The Ministry of Tribal Affairs confirms that Thadou is separately recognised as a Scheduled Tribe at Entry 27, while “Any Kuki tribes” is separately recognised at Entry 33 in Manipur (Government of India, Ministry of Tribal Affairs 2025). This legal distinction demonstrates that the present legal classification does not simply erase distinctions between Thadou and the category “Any Kuki tribes.”
The Suspension of Operations (SoO) framework was formalised on 22 August 2008, placing designated cadres in protected camps under agreed ground rules and providing financial support (India Today 2023; ThePrint 2025). In August 2024, the Manipur government reported 25 SoO groups with 2,181 cadres (Government of Manipur 2024). The framework has not functioned as an effective cessation of armed activity. On 6 June 2024, the National Investigation Agency arrested KNF MC member Thongminthang Haokip over alleged contact with the Kuki National Front Burma to aggravate the situation in Manipur (The Hindu 2024; National Investigation Agency 2024). Despite these violations, the SoO was renewed on 4 September 2025 through 3 September 2026 (Times of India 2025; The New Indian Express 2025).
The SoO framework did not eliminate the armed territorial problem. It institutionalised a relationship between the state and designated armed organisations while the broader territorial contest continued. The rise in poppy cultivation, drug smuggling, and the establishment of new settlements in Kuki dominated areas has been linked to the informal signing of the Suspension of Operation with Kuki armed groups in 2005 and its formalisation in 2008 (EastMojo 2023; Ukhrul Times 2023).
The strategic sanctuary in Myanmar has deepened. Today, a PDF Zoland unit operates under the Zomi Federal Union within the Chin Brotherhood Alliance. The Chin National Front runs Camp Victoria, a full training and command facility near the Mizoram border (Burma News International 2024; Myanmar Peace Monitor 2025; The New Humanitarian 2023). These developments demonstrate the persistence of a cross border security environment in which armed actors can obtain training, sanctuary and logistical support. The transition from the 1990s bilateral conflict to the wider Manipur crisis accelerated with the violence that erupted on 3 May 2023. The post 2023 conflict introduced a substantially different configuration in which the earlier Naga Kuki territorial question became interconnected with a rapidly intensifying Meitei Kuki confrontation, Naga Meitei relations, other tribal territorial concerns, armed group competition, administrative disputes, migration and border questions, and competing historical narratives. The transformation of this conflict landscape requires separate examination of the Meitei Kuki conflict and its territorial consequences.
To be concluded
(The views expressed are personal. The author is Independent Researcher on Indo Naga Political Issues)
