NONGDAO, China-Myanmar border - While many foreign observers have enthused
about recent, seemingly liberal developments in Myanmar, it is an entirely
different on-the-ground reality in the country's border areas, where fighting
between the Myanmar Army and ethnic rebels has flared anew.
On June 9, President Thein Sein's government ended a 17-year old ceasefire with
the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a rebel group that refused to surrender its
arms and join a government-commanded Border Guard Force. The KIA has insisted
on its
demands for autonomy in Myanmar's northernmost Kachin State, which the
predominantly Christian Kachins have been fighting for since 1961.
Both sides have made peace overtures, but by late November fierce fighting was
still raging along the Bhamo-Namkham road in the southeastern corner of the
state, around Shwegu to the west and near the state capital of Myitkyina.
Skirmishes were also reported from northern Kachin State as well as the
Kachin-inhabited areas of northeastern Shan State. Hard-pressed in a difficult
terrain and under constant ambushes from Kachin guerrillas, the Myanmar Army
has even used tanks in its assaults in the Momauk area east of Bhamo.
The fighting has forced at least 30,000 people to flee their homes, with
thousands seeking shelter in town churches and along the Chinese border. The
flood of refugees has put Beijing in a dilemma as it does not want to allow the
fleeing Kachin into their territory and be seen as supporting the rebels. On
the other hand, China can ill-afford to antagonize the KIA, which operates over
a large geographical area where Beijing has made substantial investments in
logging, hydroelectric power, and jade and gold mining. The China-backed,
US$3.6 billion Myitsone dam, on which the Myanmar government suspended work on
September 30, lies in the heart of Kachin State and the Chinese have not
abandoned hope of eventually resuming the megaproject.
West of the Yunnanese town of Ruili, Nongdao is one of many Chinese border
areas where people have fled the fighting. The only way to travel to the
temporary camp is by motorcycle, more than an hour on a rutted dirt track
through the forest and border mountains. More than 400 people are now staying
there in temporary huts and under plastic sheets. Some aid comes from local
church groups and sympathetic ethnic Kachin villagers in China. Although they
have not been pushed back across the border, Chinese authorities have made it
clear that they are not welcome to stay long-term.
Judging from refugee accounts, little has changed in the Myanmar Army's
behavior since the heyday of its counterinsurgency campaigns in the 1970s and
1980s. Those who have fled tell the same tales of killings, beatings, plunder
and rape which have been heard for decades from Myanmar's ethnic frontier
areas.
Dashi Kaw, an 87-year-old woman who has to support herself on a wooden staff,
says she had to walk for two days through the jungle to get to the border
because of her fear of government soldiers. Mahka Naw, a 70-year-old Kachin
man, says government soldiers came to his village and slaughtered all his
livestock and ate them without compensating him. He believes that since he fled
his house has been burnt down by Myanmar Army soldiers.
On November 28, Partners Relief and Development, a Christian non-governmental
organization (NGO), released a 57-page report titled "Crimes in Northern
Burma", which details recent atrocities committed by government forces in the
area. According to the report, villagers have been tortured, killed and forced
from their homes while others have been forcibly recruited to carry heavy loads
for the army. The NGO accuses the Myanmar Army of war crimes and supports a
United Nations-led Commission of Inquiry into its alleged crimes.
However, the Myanmar Army has changed in some respects. Prior to the conclusion
of ceasefire agreements with more than a dozen ethnic rebel armies in the late
1980s and early 1990s, the Myanmar Army was a poorly equipped but
battle-hardened light infantry force. Since then, Myanmar has purchased vast
quantities of military hardware primarily from China but also from Russia,
Ukraine, Singapore, North Korea and other countries.
Government soldiers today are much better equipped, have nicer uniforms, and
officers have been given ample business opportunities to ensure their loyalty
to a regime that almost collapsed under a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.
Suppressing the uprising in urban areas and making peace with the ethnic rebels
in the border areas were part of the same policy: to prevent a link-up between
the urban dissidents and the armed insurgents.
Military weakness
That worked for a while, particularly as the ceasefires held up, but now the
policy seems to be backfiring. None of the various ceasefire agreements
addressed the main reasons ethnic rebels had taken up arms in the first place;
rather, they temporarily froze the problems, and now they are coming back to
haunt the new nominally civilian government that has claimed to be working
towards national reconciliation. After almost two decades of ceasefires, now
smarter-looking soldiers have had little or no fighting experience.
Most battalions are also undermanned since budgets have been used to buy
sophisticated weapons' systems instead of supporting the privates. According to
a well-placed source with access to inside information, the Myanmar Army
consisted of 182 battalions before 1988. A full battalion should have been made
up of 777 men, but the usual strength then was between 500-600. Now there are
more than 500 battalions, each with no more than 150-160 men of which on
average 40-50 are officers.
As a result of that inexperience and dilution, the Myanmar Army has taken a
severe beating in Kachin State, suffering heavy casualties and having several
of its men, including officers, captured alive by the guerrillas. The
counter-move has been to use heavy artillery to pound Kachin positions from
afar, a tactic that has inflicted few casualties on the guerrillas but caused
heavy displacement of the civilian population in the battle zones.
Landlocked in northernmost Myanmar, with no supply lines for arms and
ammunition, the Kachin guerrillas may also soon face severe difficulties. In
the past, the KIA benefited from Chinese supplies to the now defunct insurgent
Communist Party of Burma, while some weapons and other equipment were
previously obtained directly from China.
During the 17-year ceasefire spanning 1994 to 2011, the KIA was able to trade
openly with China and most of its non-lethal supplies came from across the
border. However, arms and ammunition are much harder to procure, and Kachin
State is far away from Southeast Asia's arms blackmarkets. Resupplying
ammunition could become difficult as the fighting continues.
China's border war dilemma is obvious, especially in light of recent
deteriorating Sino-Myanmar relations. According to sources in Chinese border
towns, it is unlikely that Beijing would opt to use the Kachins and other
ethnic groups as a lever against the Myanmar government. Instead, Beijing has
been seen as aiming to please the Myanmar government to protect China's massive
and strategic investments in the country.
At the same time, antagonizing the Kachins could have far-reaching consequences
beyond threats to cross-border trade and planned hydroelectric power schemes.
Beijing is now constructing pipelines from Myanmar's southern coast to China's
southwestern province of Yunnan to deliver natural gas from the Bay of Bengal
and oil from the Middle East. The last stretch of those pipelines are scheduled
to pass through Kachin-inhabited areas of northeastern Shan State, which is
currently a theater of war. And the situation could get worse before it gets
better.
China has a strong interest
in restoring stability in its Myanmar border
areas. On Tuesday, representatives of the Myanmar
government and the Kachin Independence
Organization started talks in the Chinese border
town of Ruili - the distrustful
Kachins are not willing to talk to government
authorities in Myanmar - but China will be
wary of becoming directly involved in a conflict
it is clearly trying to avoid.
The war in Kachin State has only added to China's problems
with Myanmar, where it is now stuck uncomfortably in the middle of the central
government and ethnic rebels.
Bertil
Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review
and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar, including the forthcoming
Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia's Most Volatile
Frontier. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
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