In strife-torn Manipur, youngsters take up arms to ‘protect’ their villages

Imphal/Churachandpur: Every day in shifts, morning and night, a group of armed youngsters patrol roads around Manipur’s Koutruk village. Their objective: Keep residents safe from the warring factions of Meitei and Kuki, two communities that have been in conflict since last year.

These youngsters, mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, identify themselves as volunteers and say they have taken up the responsibility to keep their own safe as security forces “could not do enough to protect us”.

Kotruk in the Imphal Valley is one of the many villages in the state that is “protected” by groups which go by the names “Village Volunteers”, “Village Volunteer Force”, “Village Defence Force” and “Village Protection Force”.

These groups, officials say, are not associated with any security agency or the armed forces.

Trained in basic combat tactics, the village forces have vowed to keep their areas safe from the ethnic violence that has left many dead, injured and displaced.

Their presence in villages in the valley and Churachandpur in the hills cannot be missed. They are in uniform and can be spotted manning bunkers made of sandbags or patrolling with weapons, including sticks, batons and rifles -- some country-made, and some stolen or smuggled.

Patrolling duties are assigned through a roster system. Each shift is between six and seven hours with small groups of five to six sent out to keep a watch on highways, village roads and narrow pathways that pass through hills and dense forests.

“Clearly our (security) forces could not do enough to protect us. Now, we know that they cannot be trusted with the task of ensuring our safety. So, we had to do it ourself and we decided to take up the task according to our calibre and capacity...we were forced to take matters into our own hands,” a village volunteer told news agency on the condition of anonymity.

Though patrolling is effective, drones allowed teams to keep a vigil on a wider area, he said.

“Earlier, we were operating drones to keep a vigil but now jammers have been installed by the central forces and, so, we cannot assess the situation that way,” the volunteer said.

This news agency visited a camp of these volunteers, most of whom earned their living from farming. There are also those who have left their jobs or studies for the security of their villages.

They showed this reporter the bullet holes on walls of houses and the measures in place to thwart threats.