Northeast's Safety Net: Astha Laxmi's Rise to a Newer Dawn

The history of insurgency in India's Northeast was not only mired in its history and culture of vivid tribes but also had political neglect at its core. Starting in 1954, the first insurgency took shape under Angami Zapu Phizo, giving birth to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).

Illustration by The Geostrata

Decades later, from the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) to the Mizo National Front (MNF) and Tripura Tigers, all rose, but most of them fell to only come back to the mainstream. The very recent remnants of the Bodoland movement, along with the ULFA peace agreement of December 2023, promise to build a future conducive for India, which truly not just “Looks East” but also “Acts East”. 

From the time when air raids were common, to the time when national highways, tourism and industries have become the centre stage of development, North-east is India's golden hour of showing that insurgencies can be defeated not just by soldiering but by political tact, empathy and emotions. The current dispensation, both at the state and centre, has made electoral promises to settle the Bodoland issue and also negotiate a peace agreement with ULFA. 

Having delivered on both these issues, a double whammy has been delivered to any leftover insurgency. With extortion for protection money from tea gardens in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh belt being stopped, to oil companies being empowered further, the honey pot for insurgents is all but dry.

Secondly, with colleges, multiple medical institutes and tourism, the youth are not just getting skilled but also getting worthwhile jobs. All this has been further amplified through infrastructure and logistics made possible through Bharatmala and inland waterways projects. 

With development has come decisiveness, of zero tolerance against elements, leading to almost all leftover outfits like the NSCN and the ULFA splitting up into oblivion. What is left is the NSCN-Khaplang faction and the ULFA - Independent, with its leaders all across from Myanmar to Bangladesh. From a time in the 1980s, when did Chittagong Hill Tracts and open borders to Myanmar and Bangladesh were overrun by these outfits backed by jihadi terrorist outfits and the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, today the internal security conundrum of this region is all but forgotten and seems to remain so. 

THE SECURITY SAFETY NET

The recent strikes reported are in the Sagaing region of Myanmar, a long-time sanctuary for insurgent groups from India's Northeast. These camps have served as the main operational bases for the United Liberation Front of Asom–Independent (ULFA-I) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland–Khaplang (NSCN-K), which have battled the Indian state for armed independence for decades.

The July 2025 claims suggested the operation involved dozens of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), requiring coordination, precision, and technology, suggesting leveled up counterinsurgency operations. This happens to be one of the biggest operations post Operation Sunrise conducted in 2015. 

The reported strikes allegedly resulted in the deaths of multiple senior insurgent commanders, including some from ULFA‑I’s top leadership tier. 

In the build-up to the 2026 Assam Assembly polls, the BJP-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seems to be tactically gravitating towards a message of strong, no-nonsense national security. Even without any formal admission of the purported drone attacks, the ruling establishment is deliberately projecting an image of strength and strategic determinism.

The very vagueness of the strikes could, in effect, prove to the NDA's benefit, enabling them to create an aura of action without inviting the diplomatic and legal challenge an overt acknowledgement might trigger. With tacit suggestion, talk of "decisive leadership," and the playing up of unconfirmed rumours, the government is reasserting its law-and-order reputation among voters who value national cohesion, territorial integrity, and domestic tranquillity. 

A GLORIOUS COMING OF AGE

This serves to cement the NDA’s image as a protector of regional peace and a force for long-term stability. In a volatile security climate where the line between internal insurgency and external safe havens is increasingly blurred, the optics of deterrent action carry significant electoral weight. This has also somewhat rationalised that the governments came to identify infiltrators and encroachers of the Government and forest land, which has been reclaimed in record quantities and record time. 

The surgical strikes of 2016 across the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Balakot airstrikes of 2019, following the Pulwama terror attack, are often referenced in public memory and political discourse as critical epochs of India's new security doctrine, which is aggressive, transnational, and unrestrained by the prospect of escalation when triggered. And all of this fits the bill when the presently suspended but ongoing Operation Sindoor is seen. 

While the government has simultaneously played down its involvement in the Myanmar operation, the containing messages do, once again, draw on the same emotional register: strategic retaliation, sovereignty, and regional hegemony. These associations could be viewed as coincidental; however, they are purposely intentional, as part of an easily organised electoral message that relies on continuity and uniformity in leadership and reaction to threats. 

For voters in Assam and throughout the Northeast, the implications are clear: insurgent violence during NDA rule will not be tolerated, and the state will act when national integrity is at risk, even if that action extends outside India's borders in the name of national safety. 

This political capital, which was established on the theme of security and power, may be decisive as the NDA tries to make its mark in the region despite competing regionalist loyalties and revivalist oppositional forces. 

As opposed to the ruling NDA's hewing to strength and surgical precision, opposition parties headed by the Indian National Congress and the United Opposition Forum Assam (UOFA) have reacted with skepticism and strategic restraint. Their overarching argument questions the long-term effectiveness of military interventions in resolving multilayered socio-political conflicts. Focusing on the need for continued dialogue and political reconciliation, opposition leaders have warned against a securitized retrograde reminiscent of Assam's troubled past.

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One of the dominant themes in opposition discourse has been the recalling of the state's past of "secret killings", which was a shadowy period of the late 1990s and early 2000s when extrajudicial killings of ULFA-sympathetic people and their relatives reportedly took place on the pretext of counter-insurgency under remarkable operations like Operation Bajrang and Rhino. In alluding to these incidents, opposition leaders are attempting to access public memory and alert against the dangers of untrammelled militarisation, especially in a state that is still struggling to cope with fragile post-insurgency peace.

Seizing this mood, opposition parties are seeking to forge an inclusive coalition of civil society groups, student bodies, and excluded communities in particular, the rural, tribal, and minority groups. These groups, frequently caught in the disproportionate dynamics of both insurgency and counter-insurgency, are being united for a common purpose: defending democratic freedoms, community safety, and local autonomy.

This new alliance articulates a competing vision of rule, which is one rooted in political discourse, inclusive growth, and constitutional protections, instead of coercive statehood. Such rhetoric may not compute equally well with all clusters of voters, but it provides a vital ideological counterpoint to the governing party's forceful national security narrative.

A PSEPHOLOGICAL WONDER WAITING TO HAPPEN

Among sections of the Assamese voter base, the purported drone attacks, which can be real or imagined, are being presented as a symbolic curtain call for decades of separatist violence. For the followers of the BJP and its partners, the incident is a turning point: an ultimate nail in the coffin of separatist ideologies that long dominated the region.

The government, in this account, is not just fighting militants but protecting the integrity of Assamese society and clearing the ground for peace and economic prosperity. In addition to this, it can also work well for the local leadership, which has taken a no-nonsense attitude towards infiltrators and other law-and-order-spoiling miscreants.

This account links up very nicely with the BJP development program that gives promises of infrastructure, investments, and law and order as bases of Assam's future. To a lot of middle-class and urban citizens, especially those in insurgency-weary constituencies of North Assam, this final act of clean-up is emotionally gratifying and politically convincing. This also prevents the language conflicts and the hyped up “insider-outsider” conflict from reaching the North East, which had earlier led to riots in 2011 and 2016

Nonetheless, this triumphalist logic can have downside risks. Critics caution that a heavy reliance on military posturing and nationalist iconography might estrange communities with memory traces of systemic state violence and exclusion (for example, tribal, indigenous and minority populated districts like Karbi Anglong, Bodoland, and parts of Upper Assam, in which the mixed memory of insurgent and counter-insurgent trauma is still very palpably felt).

If the ruling coalition does not address the reasons for insurgency in the first place, like land rights, political representation, and cultural autonomy, then the coalition risks fanning the flames of tragedy and reawakening residual grief in the communities riddled with unresolved grievances.

It is apparent from the action of opposition parties that they are now attempting to unify these anxieties into a set of electoral discontent that separates the ruling party from the state's complex social relationships. This also brings the union government back on strike, which had been facing the heat for the Manipur sectarian crisis, which was born because of a wrongful high court judgement forgotten in a “matter of fact” manner by most stakeholders. 

The understanding of these stories will likely be influenced by the rural-urban divide, as well as by ethnic and class divisions in Assamese society.

In urbanised centres like Guwahati and Jorhat, the electorate is more exposed to national media and the ideas espoused by discourses on security, the messaging of strength and control is probably likely to be embraced with considerable support. Urban voters may see the alleged drone strikes as evidence of good governance and strong leadership.

In a slant contrast, the communities in tea garden belts, tribal hinterlands, and border areas will likely approach any messaging much more cautiously. For these sets of populations, the possibility of base (sic) surveillance, militarisation, and encroachment on civil liberties loom larger in their lived experience than the vague prospect of attacks emanating from, for instance, an enemy country. Here, the outputs of opposition in the appeals for peace and transparency may have much more to offer than for urban audiences.

The press is important in framing the voters' impressions, particularly in an age where official denials exist side by side with diffused unofficial accounts. Official denials of engagement with the strikes enable the government to maintain a record of success without risking diplomatic or legal repercussions through public acknowledgement. Official denials provide strategic cover: allies can assert victory; critics can call for accountability.

The purported Indian Army drone attacks in Myanmar have rapidly passed beyond the bounds of military business and become more than a military story; they have evolved into a compelling icon at a moment when Assam's political landscape is shifting. With Assembly elections in 2026 drawing closer, the drone strikes have become a prism through which wider anxieties about peace, identity, governance and democratic accountability are being refracted.

For the ruling NDA, the drone strikes contribute to an image of decisive, nationalist leadership, an electoral asset in a state struggling with the aftereffects of insurgency. For the opposition, the drone strikes offer an opportunity to question the ethics, legality and future-thinking of militarised politics, especially in a region as socially and ethnically complex as the Northeast.

The eventual outcome of this narrative fight may not rest on whether the drone strikes happened, but rather on how voters interpret their meaning. In a campaigning season defined by ambiguity, perception may matter more than proof.

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BY KAUSHAL SINGH AND BONSIKA DAS

CENTRE FOR POLITICS AND LAW

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com