The question of human rights abuse by state forces in the name of counter insurgency operations has to be defined roughly into two categories.

In the first category must fall the wilful acts which are in total disregard of human rights or even the rights guaranteed by the country's own laws, such as illegal detention and torture during interrogation, extra-judicial execution and the disappearance of victims picked up by the security forces.

In short, these are human rights violations that result out of a definite policy and a contemplated method, and to that extent have the sanction of the state, even if covertly.

The other category of rights violation is no less heinous, but are less the result of any overt and covert agenda, but ones that result out of a historical and inherent alienation of those fighting insurgency and the masses among which the insurgents operate.

The first category of abuses needs no elaboration, as it is a very common form of abuse witnessed all over the world. The stories of midnight knocks and the disappearance of ordinary men and women after these have been told numerous times. Stories of inhuman torture in custody, extra-judicial execution in what are often explained as killed during attempted escape bids, are still a reality in Manipur. The end result is terrifying, not just in terms of dimension of violence involved but of the impact these forms of violence have on the minds of the general public.

A sense of insecurity has become all understanding of the nation by the defenders pervading. Nobody feels secure even within the four walls of their homes. The abuse here is of metaphysical nature. It may very well be that, somebody has never been physically abused or his house raided. Still the fear that this can happen, and there is nothing that he or she can do about the fact, results in a constant and nagging torture in the mind.

This kind of abuse does not have any particular target. It is more like a net thrown upon all the people facing the phenomenon of insurrection and state action against the phenomenon. It is as if the few cases of physical abuse are only meant as a trigger to a more general intimidation of the spirit. A trigger to a chain reaction targeted at leaving a constant drone of fear and insecurity in the minds of the general public. It is a low-level neurosis that is being infused into the public constantly . As to what health problems, apart from the mental anxiety it poses or will pose, should be an interesting study. One thing is certain, although there can never be legal proofs available, it is a constant abuse of the general public's peace of mind.

The second pattern of human rights abuse is overt, but the driving force behind it is much more deep rooted than just the physical abuse. These abuses are made during brutal, savage and extremely racial retaliation by counter insurgency forces from outside the region when they are ambushed or attacked. At such moments, the behaviour of the government forces, more often than not, had been to treat indiscriminately all locals as insurgents. At such moments, the so-called defenders of the onenation theory trample upon their own theories and their instincts take over. The instinct that the locals and their own selves are different, in racial as well as nationality terms.

Such abuses prove that the intuitive understanding of the nation by the defenders of the nation and their textbook understanding of the same, are wide apart. What the geography textbooks in their schools and colleges have informed them, are suddenly exposed as totally different from what they understand of the nation by their instinct.

Although the theory says that the nation is one, a Us and Them syndrome manifests itself when tested. There can be no doubt that the forces behind the insurrections too nurture this Us and Them feelings, but in their case it can hardly be called a syndrome as their whole ideology is based on the belief that there is this Us and Them. They have never denied the Us and Them divide.

For them, there has never had been one nation. They have always claimed they were a different nation, from the nation of Them. For those opposed to the one common nation theory, it is conscious act. It is when those fighting against such assertions begin to abandon their own theories at times of actual physical confrontations, that the hypocrisy becomes stark.

Perhaps indeed, this is a proof that insurgency results because of certain inherent inadequacy of the nationalism of the nation in which insurgency occurs. That the nationalism of these nations are merely grand over-arching themes. But, unfortunately the themes had not been the result of organic evolution, but artificially imposed, often resulting in the steamrolling of historical forces and streams that run parallel to it, or even counter to its own current. Perhaps insurgency is the proof of the inability of nations to reconcile and absorb all these different nationalistic streams into an organic whole.