Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss 
The death toll from the new war in the Kachin State, which re-ignited on 9 June 2011, increases day-by-day.
The past week has seen the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) claiming success in its engagements with Burmese government forces, with a report of 30 Burmese troops killed. Of course it remains difficult to get a full tally of combat losses on either side.
However, if the KIA claims over the past three months are to believed then hundreds of Burmese troops have been killed and wounded. And the KIA, for its part, has announced only a very modest number of its own losses. Naturally it is almost impossible to independently verify specific claims about the progress of the new war. But the indications are that the Burmese government forces have found the early phase of renewed conflict very difficult to manage.
Over the next month it will stop raining in northern Burma. That may change the dynamic of the conflict in important ways. It also means we need to consider one of the classic phrases of Burmese military history: “dry season offensive”.
For broader context, these earlier New Mandala posts describe the preamble to and then the commencement of the new Kachin war.
That was the first I’d seen of your brief opinion piece, N.F., Kachin state: The war between China and India.
The article leaves me wondering what you have to say about Thai policy on Northern Burma (official policy, unofficial, or military improvisation) –given that there’s a newly elected government in office and so on.
While China and India are the most immediate foreign powers, they are also the least susceptible to change in their policy toward Burma. Kachin State could easily be the next South Ossetia; but, rightly or wrongly, there is no equivalent to Russian intervention in the equation. In that article, when you speak of an (unlikely) rapid end to the civil war through the intervention of Burma’s northern neighbors (China, India, or both) I could only imagine that it would resemble the independence/annexation of Ossetia; it is hard to imagine better, and easy to imagine worse, in such a scenario.
I am amused to note that the spell-checker does not yet recognize “Ossetia” as a correct spelling (it does seem to know “Kosovo”); I’m guessing that the South Ossets receive official recognition from the digital lexicon some time before the Kachin do.
0
0
Nic
China, India as well as the reincarnated Tahksin_by_proxy, newly elected Thai government, all will want the present government to succeed.
For one obvious reason of benefiting from the useless careless unduly anointed pariah status by the west on Myanmar.
This Kachin vs Bamar is but another microcosm of Myanmar’s historically validated eventual Bamar dominance.
Compared to Karen/Bamar this conflict must be even more miniscule in significance.
Assumption of KIA represent all Kachin just as KNU represent all Karen will surly maintain status quo.
The only reason this internal conflict is barely news worthy is to again detract attention from the real victims, the citizenry among which are the Kachin and Karen brothers, to endure this present continuing useless careless acts, by the west, that has created this ongoing quagmire,
As for the posters that will use this as another example of unreasonable brutality of present government, and fantasize on possible changes from the ominous bloodshed to follow during the coming dry season, shame on you all.
0
0
Thanks Eisel,
While the Thais have a range of (sometimes contradictory) policies for managing issues in Mon, Karen, Karenni and Shan States I don’t have the impression they spend much time on Kachin issues.
As ever, proximity tends to determine priority. My best guess is that the Thai authorities are paying very little attention to the new war in Kachin State and are, somewhat justifiably, much more exercised by moves along the border closer to home.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
0
0
N.F.,
The Thais are capable of an amazing range of emotions toward Burma, but never indifference. I remember reading a detailed article about the changes in Thai rice-trading policy along the Burmese frontier; any other mud-and-blood issue, examined in specific, shows that some segment of the Thai bureaucratic class is obsessively watching Burma (and wondering about everything from miniscule changes in rice production to opium, armaments and refugees crossing the borders).
One of the problems with Thailand’s short-term system of government (i.e., cyclical military dictatorship, with many period of fast-falling parliaments in-between) is that a relatively constant class of bureaucrats deal with managerial issues (within a given remit) without much reference to long-term planning or vision. This may be a period of a new vision arising, or of an old vision being taken up by a new government (I don’t pretend to know).
As I’ve written about in the past, the Thais do have an over-riding vision of their border with Cambodia; but I sincerely don’t know how the Thai bureaucratic classes “make sense” out of their border with Burma in the 21st century. The espoused unity with the “Tai Yai” (called Tai Nyai where I come from) that was the subject of so much propaganda in the 20th century seems to have disappeared in the 21st; but what exactly has replaced it, I can’t imagine.
There’s an aging generation of Thais who were taught to (literally) regard Shan State and Sipsonpanna as their ancient homeland, and to imagine the immediate future as a mission to reconquer this homeland (I’ve met Thai tourists in person who were visiting Sipsongpanna with this in mind; and I’ve seen the old Thai maps that simply label Shan State “Original Thai Homeland”). With that myth in mind, and the more palpable history of the conquest (and counter-conquest) of Chiang Mai behind them, what do they see when they’re looking ahead?
In my prior article I wrote that, “…the dream that Burma would stabilize itself was apparently more appealing than the annexation of war-torn pieces of the whole.” This begs the question of how believable that dream now is from the perspective of the Thai political classes –and I would include the Thai military commanders as one of those classes. The military, like the experts in rice farming, will be unable to delude themselves overmuch as to how bad the situation within Burma now is.
The day-to-day reality in every part of Thailand that I’ve seen is that the Burmese (illegal migrants) are the lowest rung of the laboring classes: they work the hardest jobs for the lowest wages, and live in the most fear of injury, with the least recourse to medical care, assistance from the police, and so on. If you have your eyes open in Thailand, and if you have any interest in the plight of the poor, it would be hard to go through a week without noticing a Burmese migrant laborer in one job or another (laying bricks, planting rubber trees, etc. etc.).
Although I’ve seen the pure racism (and “caste consciousness”) of the Thais exercised by this phenomenon, I again find it difficult to imagine how this percolates through any vision of future relations between Thailand and Burma –or between Thailand and component (rebel) provinces of Burma.
This is a strange dimension to the Thai-Burmese relationship: almost anyone who owns anything in Thailand has employed Burmese (at least in construction, clearing the land, etc.). They are simultaneously the most familiar of the exploited and yet also a distant and feared “enemy kingdom” (as per Damrong’s simply titled history textbook, “Thai Fight Burma”, and the movies that have given flesh to it for the present generation, as radio dramas did once before).
These dynamics, to my mind, are starkly different from Yunnan (although, as I’ve written before, I think that Yunnan is much more important to the current equation than some other commentators have recognized, simply in terms of how rebel armies feed themselves in a context of scarcity).
0
0
India and more importantly China will prove to be the principal players in the conflict in the north and east of the country. Unlike in 1967-68, China’s economic ties with its ‘cousin’ neighbor have become too strong to retaliate any infringement on the border, the Kokang Incident being a case in point despite the Kokang being Han Chinese unlike the Kachin or Wa. Stability is now an overarching concern to China. Hence the recent arbitration between the Burmese govt and the Wa.
As for the Thais, they do bear the brunt of instability in Burma, and I for one am thankful for handling the situation in a more or less humane fashion. Given the historical record of Burmese aggression and invasions, I’m afraid they never had the luxury of being indifferent let alone complacent about their northern neighbor. There’s bound to be some duarble animosity, and now having gained the upper hand there is also bound to be some vindictive behavior quite aside from the employer-employee relationship with its inherent exploitative system underpinned by the illegal status of many immigrants.
In a twisted irony of history, Thailand is on the receiving end of a real Burmese invasion that will stay with its strong cultural and co-religionist influence, not to mention the food. Not an enviable situation they find themselves in.
0
0
““…the dream that Burma would stabilize itself was apparently more appealing than the annexation of war-torn pieces of the whole.”
The answer to the first part concerning stabilization will never happen as long as one of the the main cause “the west useless careless and ALL other intervention remain against the citizenry well being”.
Surely there must be ONE useful example of “west intervention” that make one good example in all Asia>
As for the second part of being a bold devil’s advocate of Annexation! Read the ” History of Myanmar vs Thais” now a “Special” requirement in ALL the school in Myanmar as part of the mandated curriculum by this regime.
Will anyone here care to guess what is mentioned in that 7x5x1/4 inch booklet?
Honoring the KISS principle, Mr Mazard can stop wondering about Thais intent.
Describing the treatment of the most vulnerable Burmese by the Thais yet failed to mention that the multiple joint ventures of Thai military and this present regime since Thahksin government in terms of “Palm Oil” and “Rubber Plantations”, just these 2 elements alone, among many others # in the hundreds! Just like China indeed.
The future is already here: A future of Domination, Economically, without any risk. As long as Myanmar remain labeled as a “Pariah” state.
Any past 75 years of historical evidence of ANY Asian country ever able to ANNEX another country’s territory?
The problem of Myanmar is:
“Unworthy even to be called Myanmar, the name rightly given by this regime” being able to outwit every useless careless obstacles thrown.
Resulting in a citizenry that has nothing to hope for but desperation for short term existence.
Solve the real problem first by stopping this useless careless ideas such as Annexation.
0
0