If military-run Myanmar is such a leper, why are two regional powers tripping over each other to make nice? New Delhi: Ruled with ruthless efficiency by a brutal military junta, Myanmar is supposed to be a pariah state, long the target of U.S. and European Union sanctions, including a strict arms embargo.

And yet in December, the junta’s third-highest-ranking member, General Thura Shwe Mann, asked the government of India to supply Myanmar with a range of military gear.

The following month, India’s foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, visited Myanmar and told junta vice-chairman General Maung Aye the request would receive a “favourable response.” According to media sources, the shopping list includes field guns, helicopters, submarines, mortars, submarine-detecting sonar equipment, surveillance aircraft, and spare parts for MiG fighter planes.

In fact, the Indian army’s vice-chief, Lieutenant-General S. Pattabhiraman, says New Delhi has already supplied a host of military hardware, including field guns and howitzers.

And last year the Indian navy gave Myanmar two BN-2 “Defender” Islander maritime surveillance aircraft, deck-based air-defence guns and surveillance equipment.

And anti-government groups in Myanmar accuse India of shipping weaponry since in 2003, saying they have watched 139 truckloads enter the country through the northeast Indian border town of Moreh, and more has arrrived by sea.

Given what the international community thinks of the regime in Rangoon, why would India do this?

Pro-democracy forces in Myanmar fear the junta will use the equipment to suppress opposition and slow any progress toward free and open elections. They say the government has its sights set on political activists and ethnic minorities.

That may be a consquence of the shipments but it is certainly not what is prompting them. Rather than isolate Rangoon, New Delhi has taken the opposite tack - it hopes Myanmar’s rulers will crack down on insurgents, especially those operating in the northeast Indian states of Manipur and oil- and tea-rich Assam.

As well as encouraging foreign forces to attack its own citizens, India is courting Myanmar in an attempt to counter China’s expanding influence in the region.

The Indian rebels are vulnerable to attack because they operate from jungle bases on the Myanmar side of the border. About a dozen secessionist bands use this technique, and in January, one group, the United Liberation Front of Assam or ULFA, killed 70 migrant labourers from Bihar in its campaign to drive outsiders from Assam. Also, 24 Indian soldiers were killed last month in ambushes by the United National Liberation Front in Manipur.

“Our crackdown on the groups was never successful in the past - every time, the guerillas fled across the border,” Foreign Minister Mukherjee said upon his return from Myanmar.

So last month India sent another high-level delegation to ask the generals to dismantle the rebel camps. A week later, army troops attacked Naga tribal rebels, killing 14 members of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland and destroying a key base. For more than 50 years, NSCN factions have been demanding to have a separate homeland carved out of Naga-dominated areas in India and Myanmar.

Even so, there are doubts that India’s hired-gun strategy will work in the long run.

“In 1995, Myanmar took part in India’s Operation Golden Bird, promising to flush out the Indian insurgents from Myanmar’s territory. But most of the insurgents still roam freely in western Myanmar. Some of them are sometimes arrested by the Myanmese authorities, only to be released a few days later,” says Soe Minn, a Delhi-based Myanmese journalist.

“Last month the Burmese soldiers attacked only the Naga guerillas because NSCN poses a threat even to Myanmar. They have never launched any serious offensive against ULFA or UNLF.”

As well, in remote parts of Myanmar, many army commanders enjoy free rein, and have been accused of receiving regular cuts from the Indian insurgents who moonlight as smugglers.

Neneo Haokip, a former member of Manipur’s Kuki National Army, says that “the insurgents who fund themselves by smuggling arms and narcotics are in fact sheltered by corrupt military officers, and these rogue army commanders would never want the anti-India rebels to be driven away.

“The guerillas use arms and ammunitions borrowed or supplied by Myanmese troops and sometimes those guerillas are used in attacks on the Myanmese democracy activists in Indian border towns, as they did last year.”

He was referring to a January, 2006, incident in which two Myanmese pro-democracy activists were abducted by Burmese commandos from the Indian border town of Moreh, with the help of Indian UNLF rebels based in Myanmar.

“There are hundreds of instances of intimacy between anti-India insurgents and Burmese military officers,” he added. “We strongly believe the Indian arms and ammunitions are going to be used to crush ethnic minorities, like the Karens, and pro-democracy activists.”

The Myanmese journalist says that his country’s troops also would never drive out the guerillas because they’re needed to keep track of activities by Myanmese pro-democracy activists living in India.

In 1988, after the military crackdown on Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, India became a vocal supporter of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But that support ended in 1993, when New Delhi performed a U-turn and began to mend fences with the generals.

And it’s not Rangoon’s only outside friend. “China,” says New Delhi-based security analyst Rahul Bedi, “is modernizing at least six naval bases in Myanmar. The Indian navy fears this could support Chinese submarine operations in the region as part of Beijing’s ’string of pearls’ strategy of clinching regional defence and security agreements to secure its mounting fuel requirements and enhance its military profile in the Indian Ocean.” India faces an uphill task in trying to neutralize China’s influence.

“For more than two decades, China has helped Myanmar develop its military infrastructure. It recently bailed Myanmar out of trouble by vetoing a Washington-backed UN resolution against the military regime,” says Indian analyst Shyamal Sarkar. “Friendship with a permanent member of the Security Council is far more valuable for the junta than that with India.”

Pro-democracy activists say it’s simply in the junta’s interests to move on the rebels or to distance itself from China.

“With Myanmar forcing India and China into a cold war and both neighbours striving hard to keep the military regime pleased,” says Tint Swe of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, “hopes of democratization of Myanmar are getting grimmer.”

Umarah Jamali is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.