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Tension seems to be building in Myanmar’s border areas, as the end-of-year deadline set by the Tatmadaw for ceasefire armies to convert to a Border Guard Force expired.
With rumours of troop movements by the military, as well as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in northern Shan state, some are suggesting that the uneasy peace will soon be shattered, as it was in nearby Kokang recently. See this report for details.
Any conflict would pose an interesting dilemma for Chinese authorities. The border between the Wa Special Region 2 and China has tended to be more open to Wa travelers, as well as business people, than has the Special Region with the rest of the Shan state. Indeed there has been a significant level of cooperation between Chinese authorities in Menglian, and the UWSA based in Panghsang on the other side of the river, as evidenced by the recent construction of a new port and customs buildings (see below).
The old bridge that connected the two towns was decommissioned two years ago and has now been demolished.
The new bridge, which lies behind the port building, rivals any along the China-Burma border and seems to be a tribute to the level of cooperation enjoyed between the two authorities. Indeed, according to some Chinese officials, UWSA members (Wa-bang in Chinese) are among their closest friends and are generally great guys. While in Thailand the Wa have a fearsome reputation as drug smugglers, the Chinese seem to have no such problem with them.
However, if it comes to choosing sides, Beijing must be reluctant to be seen to support anything that looks much like a separatist force in the region, for similar reasons that it avoided weighing in to the condemnation of the 2007 crackdown in Rangoon.
The forest are gone and the jungle is cleared.
Remote areas are no longer so remote as many newly-built roads, rail tracks, and bridges encroach previously inaccessible places by the border, and small villages before are now large towns.
Scarcely populated areas are fast becoming densely populated as many people from lowland, highland, or across the porous border have been constantly moving into the newly-cleared land.
These all spell the death knell for the Wa insurgency. No jungle means no rebellions and Wa have no excuses left for keeping their ragtag army anymore to guard their shrinking poppy fields and internationally-condemned Ya-Ba factories.
They have stopped fighting alongside the Burmese Communists and their Chinese masters since late eighties by knowing that their survival has depended upon the ceasefire agreement with the army.
Wa are just an insignificant hill-tribe quickly becoming an annoying thorn in the feet of Burmese army and without any significant Chinese support they will be crushed out of existence quickly.
Soon, they will be stepping in Burmese army uniforms under Burmese commands and into Burmese payrolls as many of their Kachin and Shan and Karen comrades have already been doing as newly-formed Burmese Border Guard Forces.
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Thanks Hla Oo for reminding me why I support those insignificant hill-tribes.
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“Hla Oo”:
I am not a military strategist, but i think its not that easy. Wa state indeed has very little jungle left, but roads are some of the worst i have ever seen. Connectivity and infrastructure from other areas of Burma is extremely bad, and during the rain season almost impossible. At the same time China is just a little jump over the river away, even Chinese overland bus routes go through Wa state. Ethnic Chinese are well represented at the upper levels of the Wa leadership, most of the economy is connected to China and not to Burma, you see Chinese workers at road projects and construction sites. There are still former Red Guards that have remained in Wa state in many positions.
I can’t see the Wa just folding in to Burma’s demands.
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Eventually they will, dear Mr Nostitz.
Apart from fleeing en-mass into neighboring China they clearly have only two choices. Either folding into Burmese demands or fight.
Fighting without a jungle cover against much stronger and better organized enemy already encircling them is almost like digging their own graves. Even more powerful Kokang Shans have to flee into China rather than fight back against the army.
Wa have voluntarily sold their collective soul to the devil and now what they are doing is trying to tear up the contract after willfully enjoying more than twenty years of peace and prosperity under the protection of Burmese army, the devils incarnate!
By the way, traditionally Burmese army do not need good roads to fight. They don’t use trucks and helicopters large scale like Thai soldiers do. They walk everywhere and that is the sole reason they have to use a large number of forced-labors or involuntary-porters.
I supposed that practice keeps their soldiers fit and healthy, ha ha.
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Whilst it’s true that the Wa (their leaders at least as with many other ceasefire groups) have voluntarily sold their collective soul to the devil, and you may say the same happened after the New Year Day invasion of 1968 led by Naw Seng, I’m with Nick here.
I reckon the junta is very likely about to bite off more than they can chew, and I suspect they are having second thoughts. The Wa are not Thai, and I’m not sure where Hla Oo got the idea that the Kokang Shans (Shans whereas the Wa are Chinese?) are more powerful. Perhaps it’s the historic Ka Kwe Yay connection with Ne Win’s Tatmadaw before.
Hla Oo ‘s optimism and attitude to the ethnic insurgencies say more about the durability of his Tatmadaw indoctrination and sympathies than the reality on the ground. His personal experience of fighting against the Wa, and yes, some Chinese ‘contingent’ with the CPB, has naturally coloured his views. He probably believed most of what his officers told him just as the troops believed the students they gunned down in the streets of Yangon were communists.
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“Wa are Chinese?”
Moe Aung, Wa are not Chinese at all. They are brown-skinned people like we Burmese. That was what I saw thirty years ago. I don’t know about them now after the Chinese influx from China as Nick Nostitz has said.
I even once met a Wa girl on the border who looked exactly like one of my dear cousins back from the delta. You could easily pick out a dark-skinned Wa from among fair-skinned Shans or Kachins.
Their animist practices are quite similar to our Nat traditions too. I’ve even been told they are a lost tribe of old Burmans and I seriously agree with that.
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The fact that the SPDC has repeatedly reset the deadline for agreement with the Border Guard Force transformation (first Oct. 31, then Dec. 31, and now open-ended) suggests that it does not see a Tatmadaw military victory as a simple or (under current conditions) desirable outcome. Although, with Than Shwe’s visit to Sri Lanka last year, a scenario along the lines of the final May 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers must seem awfully attractive.
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“Hla Oo”:
I can only say what i have seen during my brief visit there a few years ago (which has impressed me in many ways). I found that the peace agreement was very much to the advantage of Wa State. I was told that Burmese needed to ask for official permission before entering Wa State, that their state was run almost like an independent country, only nominally part of Burma. I saw no presence of Tatmadaw, only Wa soldiers.
The ethnic Wa themselves indeed are dark skinned, and often lived in dire poverty, the whole state was inhabited by a multitude of ethnic minorities. The leadership was mostly ethnic Chinese, but there were Shan as well, and whoever else.
An old ethnic Shan district commander there told me many stories of his wild life of fighting. While he was fighting for the Communists he said that during the 70’s they had huge difficulties to persuade the Wa tribes to stop their ritual head hunts at harvest time.
I am in no way any sort of specialist or expert in Burmese or Wa affairs though.
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Hla Oo,
“Kokang Shans (Shans whereas the Wa are Chinese?)”
Notice the question mark and the parenthesis? It’s beacause you seem to think the Kokang Chinese are Shan, and you’ve stated more than once fighting against the Chinese which I’m guessing you mean the Wa led by their Chinese warlords and the CPB including a handful of Chinese volunteers, but ‘misleadingly’ giving the impression it was an invading Chinese army. Strangely Ne Win overlooked to mention such a crucial fact to either the country or the international community at the time or at any other time since, whereas everyone knew about the earlier KMT presence in Burma.
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Handful of Chinese volunteers?
Then more than 200,000 strong Burmese army and the supporting militia were pushed back to the west of Salween and kept there hapless for more than a decade by a small group of head-hunting Wa led by merely a handful of Chinese volunteers? Funny, ha ha ha!
You must be kidding, Moe Aung, aren’t you? Even the Shan Herald News mentioned the thousands of Chinese volunteers now retired but still spoiling for the fight.
http://tiny.cc/CPBvets
Maybe you get your information from that book of Bertil Lintner, Moe Aung. You could not imagine the scale and horror of that conflict unless you were there in the thick of brutal fighting. For your information, bastard Ne Win and his BSPP government didn’t say a thing to the country about that long war, not officially.
One of my classmates became a major in the army after DSA and his battalion was overrun by a large Chinese unit near Kun-Lone and he was taken prisoner and kept in a special prison built for the captured Burmese officers on Chinese side of the border.
He said to me later that he was still madly firing his .30 carbine at the attacking human waves when he was roughly lifted out of his foxhole by many Chinese hands. They badly wanted to capture an officer alive.
He was released two years later as part of the regular prisoner exchange between the army and Chinese as the army also regularly captured Chinese officers too.
But the Chinese had used truth serum on him too many times and he’d gone mad as the result of both physical and psychological torture in Chinese hands.
He used to visit me in Rangoon in late seventies and shockingly I discovered that he was still mildly mad. Army had kept him in an inactive position for a while but finally discharged him. He killed himself in 1981 by shooting through his mouth.
I have so many sad stories to tell of that conflict, I am busting from inside. I’ve even met a former Chinese Political Commissar from PLA South-Western Army now an exile in Australia and running a Chinese massage parlor here in Sydney, and he is gradually telling me his personal experiences of that conflict.
Maybe I should write a book so that ignorant people like you can be enlightened?
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The Taliban are going to be in real trouble when all that jungle they’re hiding in gets cut down.
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“Hla Oo”:
I do think you really should write a book about your experiences. Your unique view would and could add much to the usually sickeningly one-sided and polemic Burma debate. For me, your posts here have been most enlightening and educating.
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Thanks Nick,
That’s the best thing someone has ever said to me about my writings. Especially from someone of such caliber like the famous photo-journalist and street-smart writer Mr. Nick Nostitz.
I know you have already published a couple of books through White Lotus. I think, I have read the first one about Patpong a while back.
I was educated in Bangkok and used to work there for almost five years in the late-eighties and again for a couple of years in mid-nineties for an Australian company.
I once used to write about Burma for Economic Intelligence there just after 8-8-88 uprising in Burma.
Right now, I don’t think I can afford sufficient time or necessary resources to write a well-researched and relevant book on Burma. But I’ll be real glad if you can give me a rough guidance as an already published author.
Thanking you in advance!
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Nick ,
That makes two of us.
Hla Oo,
Yes, do write another book on your own experience of that particular conflict, no holds barred. I’d love to learn more from all sides. One sided version of a story does nobody any good. Hope to even see a film documentary if there exists any footage of it in due course. There’s far too much untold or hidden history of our country. Good luck.
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“Hla Oo”:
Thank you very much as well. 🙂
I don’t know though what kind of caliber i am, really, i may be sort of famous, but i am right now about a week away of sending a humiliating begging email to friends, colleagues and relatives because i am more or less destitute.
Anyhow, my advise would be not to write another well researched book on Burma. There are so many of them already. As much as i can learn from your huge knowledge on Burma’s history, etc. what has most impressed me from your writings are the snippets of your personal history you have given us. You childhood, your youth as a Tatmadaw soldier – the incredibly emotional posts relating to your own personal past. Bring in some of your objective knowledge where it suits, but keep it to a minimum, and stay with your personal story. A dry, researched historical analysis can always come in a later book.
Your comment: “I have so many sad stories to tell of that conflict, I am busting from inside.” says it all. This is the sentence with which your book should begin, and the sentence that should guide you throughout the writing process – please bust, don’t “analyze” and “research”. Those are exactly the stories that i want to know about. You have lived a history, been part of a history that people of the outside world don’t know anything about, but should/must know about. Most of your peers who have survived are not in a position to communicate their experiences. You may be the only one who can. History is not just analysis, statistics or dry facts – it is suffering, joy, fear, sadness, anger, regret – all emotions possible. This makes history alive and understandable for us who have not been part of it. Make readers scared, horrify them, and let them take part of the joys you must have experienced as well. Just don’t tell them what they should think – if you write honestly about your emotions, they will be able to think for themselves, come to a greater understanding by being able to relate to you.
Make this book as personal as you can, explore the depths of your emotions, as far as you possibly can, and let us take part, as you have done in your posts. I believe that doing so must be unbelievably difficult, you will have to relive things that you want to forget.
Especially in this Burma debate, for most outsiders the Tatmadaw soldiers are a strange entity, some dehumanized robots working for the evil ones, and we forget that they are humans as anybody else. It’s just the dice who have thrown them on this or the other side of the conflict. Being a German i can relate in many ways. Dry historical analysis is important, it is the frame work. But what made my own history alive was the tales and personal experiences from my parents, my aunts and uncles, their haunting stories as soldiers and refugees.
In case of Burma, we know almost nothing at all, even though so much is written, debated, said. Everybody has opinions, but very little wisdom. A book from your angle could not just contribute enormously to the knowledge base and debate, but to a possible future reconciliation.
Practically, i am sure that White Lotus would love to publish such a book, or any other Thai based publishing house. But i think that this is material for a big international publishing house. Try it there first, if they don’t want it, you can always approach White Lotus and similar specialized publishing houses. The best way to do that is to approach a reputable literary agent. Their business is to find the most suitable publishing house, and then to deal out the best possible contract.
But first comes the process of writing. Unless you have at least a concept, know that you actually can write such a book (there is always the possibility that you just can’t do it right now, need more time before touching such a disturbing subject matter, etc), you should just concentrate on the writing, and not on a publisher. You may also decide that it is just too painful, and a easier vehicle to say what you have to say may be a novel (but a novel must have a very clear and strong literary style to convince, and not just the raw emotions flowing). If it is good and strong enough you will anyhow find a publisher.
Just see how it goes. You may find once you made the first step and begin, that it just flows. Or it may be a tedious work that haunts you day and night, that you have to leave aside for weeks at a time, before you can continue. Just take your time, don’t put yourself under any pressure. It will take as much time as necessary, not more, not less.
I just believe, judging from the bits i have read here on new mandala, that you have something to tell that nobody has told before.
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Nick,
“Just don’t tell them what they should think…. Make this book as personal as you can…. for most outsiders the Tatmadaw soldiers are a strange entity, some dehumanized robots working for the evil ones, and we forget that they are humans as anybody else…. A book from your angle could not just contribute enormously to the knowledge base and debate, but to a possible future reconciliation.”
Couldn’t agree more. Hla Oo has a veritable mine of first hand experience as a Tatmadaw vet and when he puts pen to paper it makes him a unique story teller. And I wish him good luck and a long healthy life what with his liver etc. , all the more urgent to leave something of great value to posterity.
I do however have some misgivings about the veracity of his tales at times and whether he really has no axe to grind, if the following post a while back, another ‘first hand account’ as a guest contributor, is anything to go by.
http://www.newmandala.org/2008/07/23/1974-u-thant-uprising-a-first-hand-account/#comment-510224
He sure wouldn’t want to go down as someone peddling half-truths with an agenda. To expect a Burmese story teller to be objective is rather a big ask at the best of times. Burmese are fond of ripping yarns and the oral tradition ensures that embellishments and spin in a certain direction with a ‘moral’ of sorts cannot be ruled out.
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Kokangs speak Yunnanese and became native Myanmar citizens after a border agreement. Jimmy Yang was their last ‘Zawbwar’. Kokang militia was once a part of ‘Kar Kwe Yay’. They later fought for CPB but their economic interest always is superior to political interest. Sadly Maj Than Dine who knew a lot was deceased decades ago.
Lwelas (wa) are historically a tribe of Shan State. There are northern and southern tribes. The skin may be brown due to sun exposure but they all have epicanthic folds. They had been loyal fighters of the CPB. Their interest in autonomy equals their economic interest. However much of the land UWSA is claiming were Shanland.
Due to the weak civilisation, both groups depend heavily on the advice of ex-university students who joined the CPB.
The concept of ‘Border Forces’ is merely reinventing the ‘Ka Kwe Yay’. On the other hand, it allows the ex-insurgents to bear arms. Because PRC had abandoned both groups, UWSA would finally become Border Force. They will become counterpart SPDCs in Shan State so that Democracy will be very far from the ordinary Shans, Kokangs and Wa’s.
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Dear Nick,
Thank you very much for the advice and your interest in my personal experiences. Once I read a short story about a very young German SS soldier conscripted from Eastern Europe who was captured by the Russians and jailed for almost five years after WW2 and later he spent many years hopelessly searching his lost parents all over Europe.
I almost cried at the end when he died from his old battle wounds at his mother’s place he just discovered, and after knowing that his father had just died a few days back looking for his lost son all over Europe too.
In year 2000 I was injured in a work-related accident and couldn’t work for almost two years. During that period I was sent to a psychologist after I violently yelled at my doctor a couple of times, and they later discovered that I had a serious PTSD related problems. It had been bottling up inside for too long.
To relieve that I had to write down my past and after a long 6 years I had an extremely strange and violent story of my early years as a young cadet in an army regiment and later as a boy soldier for almost two years by the Chinese border.
I print it as a fictional book form through a vanity press and sold it or give it away to the friends and relatives. Too much violence and I didn’t dare to make it out as a true story.
I could send a copy to you if you are interested to read my story. About 400 pages thick in a small font though, I have to warn you. My email address is [email protected] and if you email me any snail-mail address to reach you in Bangkok I will mail the book to you direct, pronto.
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“Hla Oo”:
Thank you very much. I mailed you my address already. Please send the book to a reputable literary agent. I think this is something that should be read by a wider audience.
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IMO ethnicities overlap in areas where there are geographic migrations of people over time. Its actually truer for hill people organized into tribes – as a case in point most tribes of Northeast India are of Tibeto-Burman origins in varying degrees to the extent where this area is culturally closer to its eastern neighbors than mainland India. That said the range of intermingling may be very localized and its very interesting to read about the Chinese and Wa here.
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Northeast India with its Naga, Ahom and Mizo peoples, and also the Chakma in the Chittagong Hill Tract of Bangladesh, are closer to people in the East. The Naga and Chin (Mizo) minorities also live in Burma. Their physical difference from the peoples of India is striking, not just the culture. Some were converted to Christianity whilst others to Buddhism, still by and large mixed with animism.
Burma has in the past invaded and annexed these lands. Clearly a natural land empire of the olden days, despite its failure to hold on to these western regions, faced considerable difficulties in becoming a modern union of myriad races and tribes within races, especially after falling prey in its turn to a century of colonial rule. If the minorities that straddle Burma and either India or China aspire to become independent states, the problem will take on another intractable dimension unless and until the metropolitan state disintegrates as with the USSR. The issue becomes even more complex as the giant neighbours enter the equation.
If any future Burmese leadership that succeeds the junta, by peaceful means or no, is able to rise up to the challenge of creating a federation of the willing, unlike the present unhappy situation, we can hope for a happy ending to this protracted tale of communal strife and disunion.
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Dear Sangos,
If I correctly remember, you once said that you were a typical Assamese in one of your posts. Is it possible to describe a bit about your racial mix? I am just curious.
I have met only one Assamese in my life and he was a Muslim Indian and his parents moved from the East-Pakistan, now Bangladesh, to Assam. First thing he said to me once he found out I was a Burmese was that he had many friends back in Assam who looked exactly like me.
Then he asked me if I knew Mingi-mahathi. I didn’t understand his question first and so he explained to me that Mingi-mahathi was a brutal Burmese general from the old days of Burmese rule and he was so cruel and feared the Assamese mothers still use him as a bogey man if their children misbehave.
Only then I recalled one of our famous generals just before the First Anglo-Burmese War. His name was Mingyi-Maha-Thiha-Thura and he was then the governor of Assam and Manipur.
I have read many old stories about the Burmese exploits and also their brutalities in Assam in our folk tales and novels, and it will be quite fascinating to hear about the old stories from the Assamese point of view. Do you have any?
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Hla Oo, sangos,
I second that. We must be able to see how others see us, warts and all.
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Hla Oo/Moe Aung
…”Is it possible to describe a bit about your racial mix?” …Am an Assamese of Brahmin origin, which is the priestly class all over India. My forefathers about 20 generations ago migrated to Assam from Central India. Assamese are a mix of people- Hindus like the rest of India, Muslim like the one you met & good numbers of people of smaller ethnic groups like the Bodos, Ahoms(the rulers) etc of Tibeto-Burman and Tai origins.
The Assamese word for Burmese is “Maan” & when the Burmese invaded Assam; it was supposedly so brutal that we have a term called “Maanor Din” in our vocabulary(sparingly used though now), which means the Days of the Burmese. If you have similar folk narratives, that would be very interesting to compare.
Well historically many Assamese fled into the surrounding Naga hills and even today some Naga people look very plains Assamese. Legend has it that some even took refuge in the Hukwang valley never to be seen again. Unfortunately very little is known about the positive aspects of Burmese rule in Assam
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sangos,
Thanks, and my apologies for what it’s worth. I’ve seen a Wiki article on “Maanor Din”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_invasion_of_Assam
I guess the closest similar period in our history is probably the Japanese Occupation of 1942-45. The Mongol invasion that sacked Bagan in the 13th century is too distant in the mist of times. The later Chinese invasions in the 18th century were all repulsed at the border, and one version of history has it that the Burmese generals, to avoid the wrath of their king for having negotiated a peace with the Chinese of their own bat, invaded Assam and Manipur. Thailand of course bore the brunt of Burmese militarist expansion and brutality in the 16th and 18th centuries.
The Burmese do need to lay their own imperial ghost to rest nearly as badly as the British who haven’t quite managed either so far. It should be easier for us since we can only boast three intermittent land empires, not a maritime one on a global scale like the British, and besides we’ve been on the receiving end ourselves. The nationalist mindset unfortunately is quite similar, and does nothing to improve the situation of the minorities or help national reconciliation. We have a long way to go yet, and the military dictatorship must go for a start.
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Fortunately in India, we have been able to reconcile the Northeastern states through the democratic process. If Burma gets its act together IMO it will prosper because of the tremendous economic posibilities. See the posts under “Stilwell Road”
I am especially excited about Northern Burma sitting between the two world giants India and China. Apart from the Kachin people right from Assam to Yunnan, how is the situation placed?
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sangos,
The Kachin are the main player in the region, and it’s crucial to get them on board if we are to make any significant progress in development or trilateral trade and commerce. The ‘Asian Highway’ is what the junta will rely on, and it’s likely to concentrate its efforts on securing and policing it rather than on seeking genuine national reconciliation with the KIO/KIA that must include fiscal and revenue policy issues, not just the BGF (Border Guard Force) issue currently causing considerable tension. The current time-honoured strategy of co-opting or buying off a handful of corrupt ethnic leaders will not give us lasting and encompassing benefits though such divide and rule policies may prolong the state of inequity for some time.
There are some Chinese as well as a lot of Shan and Palaung in the region apart from the Burman. You know the Naga straddle the border with India and some Kachin also live in India (Singpho) just as in China (Jingpo). Historians believe that the Kachin were latecomers who ruthlessly pushed the Shan, Ahom and Naga out of the headwaters of the Irrawaddy. You ignore them at your peril.
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Moe Aung
In that case, this whole India-Burma-China & Asian highways are on shaky ground, especially in North Burma. Unless the people of Burma/Kachins genuinely benefit, the Junta might have a tough job managing these highways IMO. That may be the very reason we still don’t have the roads or the $60 billion(and growing) annual trade between India and China would have well been flowing through Burma.
India is developing at a blistering pace, that said being a large country the economic fate of the North-eastern states hinge on how Burma emerges especially politically. I read about the Chinese pushing hard there and if they have built highways up to Hukwang valley they must be in a real hurry. Btw was not too surprised to check into a Chinese hotel in Tamu bordering Manipur, on a visit last year.
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Ethnic Burmese population is almost exploding in Burma, much more than the population growth of ethnic Kachins in last two decades. That population pressure and also the army-backed relocation of lowland Burmese into the highland areas like the Hu-gaung Valley are dramatically changing the racial mix of Kachin land.
If the past trend of over 20 years of development since the ceasefire with KIA continues at the current breakneck speed the Army will eventually sideline the Kachins, cooperate with China, and open the Pan Asian Highway as their promise to India just last year.
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Hla Oo,
If Burmanisation is the other part of a two pronged strategy, you do have a lot of precedent such as China in Tibet, Indonesia in East Timor, Bangladesh in the Chittagong Hill Tract etc. in an attempt at settling in these lands and marginalising the natives, very successfully in the past in the Americas and Australia.
Only one small problem. We are now in the 21st century, and it can turn into an intractable Middle East scenario. Burmese settlers however are not likely to behave in the way the Americans in the Old West did or the Isreali settlers do, armed to the teeth with no qualms about culling the natives. They’d just leave it to the army, and if it gets too hot in the kitchen they’d get out of there. It doesn’t quite suit the Buddhist mentality.
There has to be a better way than that. The minorities have already cottoned on to it and started accusing the regime of Burmanisation of their homelands. It does not bode well for fiture peace and harmony, never mind progress and development.
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I call it the highlander-lowlander divide like the Assamese/Naga, Burmese/Kachins, Chinese/Tibetan, Vietnamese/Hmong etc. In India we have been able to contain these tensions to a good bit by granting overall autonomy to all individual groups. IMO this is the natural direction of affairs to get best results.
The Chinese model has been the other extreme of complete domination of minorities like in Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang etc. The degree of success has been varied. I am especially interested in the Chinese – Wa relationship.
It is inevitable that in this Asian 21st century, all these groups of people will have to hammer out their problems ASAP. Nobody wants to be left out from getting a better life that these exciting times bring and time is running out!
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sangos,
“Nobody wants to be left out from getting a better life that these exciting times bring and time is running out!”
Exactly my sentiments and everyone else’s I’m sure. The world unfortunately is still riddled with class and racial divides (religion is a bit of a red herring). The second is fraught with emotive black and white POV and its consequences, but the first appeals to man’s baser instincts of greed and selfishness hence a far more arduous struggle even if the second has been resolved peacefully and satisfactorily.
If the story of mankind had been one of technological advances employed as a neutral good benefiting all across the board and not as some alien power harnessed in the service of a few to turn a fat profit at the expense of the many, you needn’t have aired this sentiment at all.
The first half of the 20th century alone saw enough technological progress to feed, shelter, clothe, look after the health of, educate and entertain the lot of us. The intellectual and creativity potential of the entire human race in these circumstances would have been even more unbelievable than what we see today.
BTW here are some recent developments in your neck of the woods as well as in the land of the Kachin:
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17740
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17738
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Hla Oo,
I’m sure you’re aware that the ethnic demographics of Burma are a very contentious issue, with the ethnic groups claiming that they are consistantly undercounted or miscounted. Care to cite a source for your population claims?
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Aiontay,
Sorry, I have to rephrase it. What I mean is that the ethnic Burmese number in Kachin State is growing much faster than the native Kachins because of the massive relocation and also the natural growth.
Unless one has access to the guarded figures from the People Manpower and Settlement Department(Pa-La-Na in Burmese) of the Interior Ministry one do not have a clue of what the population demographic is in the states and divisions of Burma.
These government sponsored resettlement villages (a.k.a. Pa-La-Na villages) are now all over the Kachin land especially along the Ledo Road.
One crucial thing I observed while I was there was that the Burmese families are much bigger than average Kachin families for some unexplained reason.
Spread of Buddhism also is the evidence of the changing racial mix. Thirty years ago one could easily count the number of pagodas in Myitkyina. Now it appears every second hilltop in Southern Kachin state has a whitewashed one.
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Hla Oo thanks for clarifying. However, I wouldn’t confuse more pagodas with a spread of Buddhism, unless you consider the Burmese military a bunch of good Buddhists.
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Thanks for the interesting points! Pa-La-Na villages seem like the strategy of the Junta to secure the Ledo road. How resentful are the Kachin to this? Has this spilled over into violent incidents? I understand most of them are christian/animists like the related Singpho/Lisu in India.
I am puzzled by the Junta’s attitude of cat and mouse with Indian insurgents, especially the ULFA as I read from Moe Aung’s news links above. The ULFA are Assamese with zero ethnic base in Burma unlike the Nagas. So what are the reasons of allowing them to camp in Burma – ace card against India?
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Dear Sangos,
Since the beginning, Kachins, naturally, were more than resentful to this Burmese intrusion. Land then was plenty so they traditionally used the slash-and-burn style but the newcomers were developing many permanent fields and so quickly reducing the availability of land for their nomadic style agriculture.
Also the army was preparing for serious conflicts since the KIA was very active in the area. Every Pa-La-Na village had a unit of people-militia (Pyi-Thu-Sit) armed with .303 rifles for their defense. The villagers were mostly Burmese but many among them were Kachin ex-soldiers from the army and most village chiefs were retired Kachin or Burmese NCOs. Eventually the armed-clashes became regular occurrence.
I was in the army then and we were land-mined and ambushed so frequently on the bloody Ledo road our sergeants didn’t even let us ride on our trucks. We just walked every-bloody-where we went. One most serious incident I witnessed and still remember was the KIA’s raid on one Pa-La-Na village deep in the jungle south-west of Myitkyina.
It was Pa-La-Na 8 or 9 or 11, I can’t recall the village number now. All these villages had no name, just numbers in serial. Burmese Army definitely has no imaginations.
Most these villages were by the main Ledo road, but that one was at least 20 miles away from the road and occupied only by Kachin army vets and probably they thought their KIA brothers would leave them alone in peace. That was not the case and one night a KIA regular unit raided the village, captured the 20 odd strong militia, tortured and executed them all.
Our platoon was in the vicinity and when we arrived we had a short firefight and we wounded and captured one of them but the rest got away. We found the bodies of all militiamen including the 62 years old ex-sergeant-major village chief on the nearby rice-field. Their hands were tied behind on their kneels and their necks were hacked off from behind. We dug a long ditch and buried them in the mass grave.
One of our sergeants then bayoneted the wounded prisoner and dumped his body into the mass grave too. Then was my last days on the Ledo road since our battalion was later moved to Htaw Gaw hills near the Chinese border.
Pretty violent stuff, hope you are not put off by this!
I don’t know much about the insurgents from India though. Actually none at all apart from what I read in the papers and on the net.
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Looks like the regime has been following to an extent the Israeli model and using ex-army personnel as settlers. King Anawrahta in the 11th century set up a string of garrison towns in the north called kimmyo (lit. sentinel towns) along the frontiers for the defence of his realm against the Kachin, Chin, Ahom and Shan as well as the Chinese. This however is an attempt at subjugating a minority people within the union supposedly founded on the spirit of the 1947 Panglong Agreement to which the Kachin were signatories, happy to trade racial harmony for their own personal wealth.
The military regime’s colonialist strategy of Burmanisation will only succeed in sowing the seeds of further communal strife and may well lead to the Palestine scenario. I doubt it if the Kachin are just going to cave in. A guerilla war of attrition and low intensity conflict will continue which will flare up from time to time for generations to come, a scenario hardly conducive to development and progress.
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History is keep on repeating as we primitive humans have only limited options.
Do you still remember the brutal 100 year war of attrition between the Burmese Kingdom of Upper Burma and the Mon kingdom of lower Burma, and where are the Mons now? Even their great Shwe Dagon pagoda is now the Burmese icon!(I am a Burmese, but I am really a half-Mon like many people from the Irrawaddy Delta.)
But these long wars of attrition could sometime produce twisted results many years later.
Can you still recall Hitler’s Third Reich? Roman Army built many sentinel towns to subjugate the Germanic tribes. Thousands of years later a German dictator claimed his empire, after the Bismark’s Second Reich, was the presumed successor of the Roman Empire (the First Reich).
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Was wowed by Hla Oo’s account! Straight out of a hollywood “tropic thunder” set; only this is for real (much like in the movie itself). To be honest I feel all this talk about “Asian century” in this part of the world seems like misplaced enthusiasm. Do you in your opinion feel the Chinese can buldoze through all this strife in Upper Burma. For them as the Chinese saying goes “if you want to get rich, build roads”. Indians are very reluctant to open up through Kachin land. No wonder!
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Empires rise and fall. We of all people believe in the Buddhist law of impermanence.
I did learn at school about the Forty Year Mon Burmese War, when the Burmese kings at Ava were actually Shan. The battle for supremacy did continue, and it’s almost 250 years ago that the Burman finally defeated the Mon suddenly reversing the tide going in the other direction. The United Kingdom has existed a similar period of time since the Act of Union with Scotland.
And that’s just it. The battle for supremacy among contending races and tribes in a given region belongs to ancient histroy. The Third Reich, only seven decades ago and meant to be a Thousand Year Reich, was thankfully very short-lived. And although I’m not a betting man, my money is on the Fourth Burmese Empire never seeing the light of day.
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There are news reports of the United Wa Army/other groups providing logistic help to Assamese insurgents located in Yingjiang and Ruili. Am not sure how these weapons will be shipped to India, but is such arms shopping/shipping routine in those areas? Looks like even some PLA irregulars are involved in some sort of grey arms marketing as well.
I was under the impression the Wa/other ethnic groups’ armies were under ceasefire with Burma. Or is it just an uneasy truce?
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China’s fear is that Myanmar’s junta, having conducted the country’s first (stage-managed) elections in 20 years on November 7th, might be ready to break longstanding ceasefires and bring the UWSA and other militias to heel.
I think this is quite an interesting article: http://www.economist.com/node/17583022?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/goodfences
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[…] China and the Wa. Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]
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The comments and opinions are amazing to read. I am now reading the comment now in 2017 when the second 21st Century Panglong peace conference is going on in Myanmar. I am really wondering what are your opinions now concerned with that conference.
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