Nearly two years have passed since violence began in the picturesque state of Manipur. Yet, no solution to end the state of “civil war” between the hills and plains of this strategically located border state has been found.

The number of those who have died or have lost their limbs, or faced rape and torture or been driven out of their home and hearth, have by now possibly crossed into tens of thousands.

The rest of India wakes up to the plight of this state once in a while, when Manipur makes it to the headlines with fresh massacres unearthed once again. An average Indian probably knows of or understands the results of the latest cricket match or state elections far better than why there is a conflict going on in Manipur.

This “benign neglect” of the conflict by the national media, the majority of Indians, the mainstream political parties and the government of the day has made this “little war” a festering sore which has the potential to one day become an ugly tumour afflicting the rest of the nation.

The riots which began after protests against an attempt to give the majority Meiteis, a scheduled tribe status in May last year, soon became a raging ethnic conflict, where the accumulated grievances of both tribals from the hills and plains dwelling, largely Vaishnavite, Meiteis turned Manipur into literally a “war zone”.

The army with great difficulties, created buffer zones between areas dominated by the two warring communities and brought a semblance of peace to the state. However in recent times, with both communities sensing that some kind of an arrangement may be wrought giving a degree of autonomy to districts on either side of the divide, attempts have been made to expand their respective areas of influence.

The net result of those pushes into each other’s lands has been yet another round of sordid deaths and burnings. To control the situation, more troops and central police forces have been sent to tiny Manipur than any other Northeastern state in recent history. On Saturday reacting to yet another round of violence, it has been decided to rush some 9,000 more men from central forces to help contain the fires that refuse to die down.

What has made the situation more complicated is that the army and its para-military arm — the Assam Rifles — which have long years of experience and understanding of the north east, have been pushed to the background and replaced at many places with central police forces or state police commandos. While the first lot of inductees have little or no understanding of the state, the latter have too many biases to combat, to be able to do any real unbiased peace keeping duties.

To make matters worse, the legislators who were earlier backing Manipur’s footballer-turned chief minister N Biren Singh, seem to have become his bitter critics after many of them lost their own homes to mob fury.

The “war” is no longer just a Meitei versus tribals conflict. It has becoming a conflict where a “war weary” people are asking their leaders to do something which will lead them out of the deadly quagmire they currently exist in.

In a sense, it has become an indictment of the failed attempts to either bring peace or “sort out” the conflict as has been tried through various deployments and actions undertaken by the powers that be. It is no wonder that many Meitei legislators who were earlier targeting their Kuki-Zo colleagues, have now banded together seeking a change of government.

However, all these moves and counter-moves ignores the fundamental problem — there is as yet no real attempt at reconciling the two communities or to even stop the “war” going on, in a fair and unbiased manner.

Possibly for starters, New Delhi needs to accept that the state government has been more than unsuccessful in discharging its duties and has consequently lost the confidence of most parties involved in the conflict.

If that simple fact is accepted, the next step, placing the state under President’s rule with an unbiased, yet sensitive, Governor at the helm should follow. All this has to be done while stressing that Manipur will not be broken up on ethnic lines as otherwise the new Governor would face yet another round of re-energised violence.

The central government also needs to underline that a solution to Manipur’s ethnic differences has to be and will be found found within Manipur with guarantees that both communities can live in peace even after the army has gone back to its barracks.

At the same time, the messaging from New Delhi needs also stress that the Governor’s rule will be temporary in nature and that the Manipur legislature is merely being suspended not dissolved. A dissolution will give the move fewer backers among political parties whose support will be essential to the eventual process of reconciliation.

Ultimately for the two sides to bring about reconciliation, some form of truth and reconciliation commission will have to be established and some form of autonomy will have to be given to districts with tribal majority. While doing so, districts which have mixed Meitei-Zo or Zo-Naga populations will have to be treated as mixed but autonomous districts with safeguards for the minority community or else the wounds which are being sought to be healed, will simply worsen.

One has to understand that in the Northeast, tribal loyalties supersede state loyalties and even religious affiliations. Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and even parts of Assam and Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, have significant tribes and communities who identify with the larger Zo community, while the Chin people of Myanmar are considered their kindred. The area where these communities live form a wide arc across the borders of three nations.

If the conflict is ignored or allowed to simmer it may well become the focal point of grievances of the larger Zo community and the repercussions of such accumulated angst may not be confined to just the national borders but have far reaching regional implications besides giving interested players from the outside world a handle with which to enter or interfere in a sensitive region of India.

If on the other hand, New Delhi is able to bring a lasting peace, within a reasonable time frame, which sees Manipur progress the way Mizoram has, India will become a beacon of hope for the region and an example that Myanmar, Bangladesh and tribal combatants from those nations would look up to and perhaps emulate in settling their own differences.

The writer is former head of PTI’s eastern region network