India Courts Myanmar for Heavy Rare Earth Elements - Kachin Rebels Hold the Strategic Ground

Highlights

• India is running a two-track strategy: engaging Myanmar's military government diplomatically while separately pursuing heavy rare earth access through the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
• The KIA controls over 500 rare-earth sites in Kachin State as of 2026, making it the world's top rebel-controlled heavy rare earth upstream asset according to REEx rankings.
• India's real bottleneck is not geology but separation, refining, and magnet-making—all still dominated by China downstream.
• The Kachin Independence Army dates to 1961, predating the 2021 coup by six decades; its control of Pangwa's dysprosium and terbium resources is the product of a generations-long ethnic conflict.
• All Kachin rare earth output currently flows to China for separation, meaning India has no clear path to a complete supply chain without solving the processing gap.