It may not have been anyone’s expectation that the Democratic Alliance of Nagaland, back in government again after the last assembly elections, would be able to keep Nagaland perfectly violence-free. Yet it is disappointing, even obscurely ominous, every time violence erupts again among rival factions. The knife-edge quality of normalcy in Nagaland gains enormously from periods of comparative peacefulness, free of gun-battles, abduction or complaints of excessive extortion. It begins to seem almost possible that the talks with the Centre would now continue unhindered, and that peaceable co-existence of groups and tribes in the state would bring a peace formula acceptable to all Nagas that much closer. But such tranquillity is short-lived, even if the violence is less frequent. The recent outburst of conflict between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) with its breakaway faction NSCN (Unification) that began on April 17 and came to head again on April 22 claimed lives of Naga rebels in both groups in a series of confrontations in Dimapur. Rival NSCN groups, including the Khaplang group, have been accusing one another of starting trouble every time there has been a similar conflict since the working out of the truce led jointly by Naga chiefs on December 7 last year. The Forum for Naga Reconciliation and the church have been persuading the underground outfits to abide by the ceasefire. Yet the bloodshed persists, exposing the fragility of the intervals of apparent peace.

The most recent series of clashes is typically tit-for-tat, allegedly involving, apart from direct violence, looting of arms of one side by another. The continuation of peace talks with the Centre gives the people in the state and its many rights organizations, including women’s and students’ groups, the hope for normalcy and a distaste for violence. Yet the layered corruption and lawlessness that envelop the state, beginning at the top from officials of the state government down to the involvement of many groups in illegal trades in arms and narcotics, thrive on violence and conflict. The wisdom of the politicians in government and the leaders of the Naga movement would lie in the constant effort to clear the ground for peace, so that episodes in which a children’s school in session has to be evacuated — as happened this time — are no longer possible.