Friends on WhatsApp, adversaries next door: Across Manipur’s ‘Kargil’ divide

Senapati/Kangpokpi , From the courtyard of his home in Taphou Kuki, village chief Lenkhomang Chongloi can see the houses of his Naga neighbours. A CRPF contingent is stationed at his residence, and he points to marks on a wall that he says were left by bullets.

Friends on WhatsApp, adversaries next door: Across Manipur’s ‘Kargil’ divide"It is like Kargil, like India and Pakistan," he says, describing the hostility between the neighbouring settlements, a comparison that might have passed for dry humour in less troubled times.

But in heavily militarised Manipur, where more than three years of ethnic conflict have hardened divisions and turned neighbours into adversaries, the language of war has become part of everyday conversation. As it has been since 2023 when schisms between people in the northeastern state drew divides across entire villages and districts, first Kuki-Meitei and now Kuki-Naga.

A short distance away from Taphou Kuki is Taphou Liangmai - the very names marking territory inhabited by members of the Liangmai Naga tribe. Sitting in his home, Api Pamai looks across to Chongloi's dwelling. Chongloi's son was his classmate and it was a place he visited often.

Security barricades now mark the separation between the settlements, about 65 km from the state capital Imphal. Beyond them, houses, farms and slopes lie close together across undulating green hills and valleys. To an unfamiliar eye, it is difficult to tell where one village ends and another begins.

Here, on the boundary between the Kangpokpi-Senapati districts, a hostage crisis in May and June marked a defining escalation in the renewed Naga-Kuki confrontation, adding another violent front to Manipur's ethnic conflict.

While Senapati is predominantly inhabitated by the Nagas, Kangpokpi is predominantly Kuki-Zo, but it has several pockets of Naga villages as well. The violence has killed more than 300 people and displaced around 60,000 since May 2023.

The state government put the death toll at 306 as of August 31 this year; further killings have followed. On May 13 this year, three Kuki-Zo church leaders were killed in an ambush in Kangpokpi district. Naga and Kuki villagers were subsequently abducted in Kangpokpi and neighbouring Senapati, with Naga representatives terming the seizure of Kuki villagers a retaliation.

Although several captives were released two days later, six Naga men remained missing, while Naga groups continued to hold 14 Kuki men, demanding the missing men's release. Kuki groups denied holding them. On June 9, the 14 Kuki men were freed after nearly a month in captivity.

The following day, the bodies of the six missing Naga men were recovered. The sharply different outcomes remain central to how the two sides explain what has happened since. "We abducted their people from Senapati after they abducted our people," says Benwang Bo, general secretary of the Liangmai Naga Council.

"We took good care of their people and eventually released them, but they killed six of our men." On the Kuki side, Chongloi recalls 25 villagers being intercepted in Senapati after news came of the church leaders' killings.

"After we informed the police, they were nearly brought back to the village. But they were intercepted again and taken back to Senapati despite the presence of police." For roughly two years after May 2023, Nagas largely remained outside the principal Meitei-Kuki confrontation.

But older Naga-Kuki disputes over land, settlement and political aspirations, which had taken a bloody turn in the 1990s, remained unresolved. The February 7 assault on a Tangkhul Naga man at Litan in Ukhrul district, followed by arson and clashes, brought those tensions back into violent confrontation.

And in May, the crisis exploded. Minthang, a village volunteer in Taphou Kuki, recalls having friends on the Naga side. Now, residents speak of defending their settlement and acknowledge possessing firearms, including automatic weapons.

They describe an earlier generation of Kukis as "helpless" during the 1990s violence and insist they are better prepared this time. Across the divide, Ahzapou MK, describes surviving an August 27 ambush along the Imphal-Tamenglong Road, commonly called IT Road, in Kangpokpi district that killed four Naga men.

He says he fled into the forest and hid for hours.