Friendly tackle

New Delhi, Sept. 11: It will be a different ball game on October 9 when warring Naga militant groups will exchange passes instead of gunfire.

The two factions of the NSCN and the Naga National Council or Federal Government of Nagaland will play a soccer match with Naga civil society groups at Khouchiezie in Kohima.

The Isak-Muivah and Khaplang factions of the NSCN have been fighting since 1988, but have agreed to the match as there is public pressure on them to reconcile their differences and stop fratricidal killings.

Football is not new to Nagaland. The Indian football team had first appeared at the London Olympics in 1948 under the stewardship of Talimeren Ao, a Naga.

Using the Nagas’ favourite sport as peacemaker is the brainchild of civil society groups like the Naga Hoho and the Church.

A civil society team, christened Naga Parliament, played the first match with Naga rebels for “Naga reconciliation trophy” at Chiang Mai, a remote ground in Thailand on August 20. Naga Parliament won the match.

Encouraged, the Nagaland Baptist Churches Council is organising the match in Kohima. “Chiang Mai and Kohima are quite different of course,” concedes Kari Longchar, the peace affairs director of NBCC.

The Nagaland Christian Forum (NFC) which has been pursuing reconciliation between the groups since 2001, has framed rules and chalked out a tentative schedule.

“We will give jerseys and shorts but they will have to get shoes. Anyone playing without shoes may be rejected, I have told them (rebels),” Zhabu Terhuja of the NCF said over phone from Kohima. He has also told the rival team that they need to let the organisers know the details of the players so that commentators can recognise them by their jersey numbers.

“Let us see how it goes. These things are very sensitive but there is hope in everything,” NSCN (I-M) leader Phunthing Shimrang told The Telegraph from Dimapur.