CHIANG MAI - Recent weeks
have seen some of the heaviest fighting in
Myanmar's decades-long civil war with government
forces launching determined attacks against the
Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an ethnic
guerrilla force in the far north of the country.
For the first time ever, the government
has used helicopter gunships and modern,
sophisticated attack aircraft against the ethnic
rebels, an escalation that has earned condemnation from
human-rights groups and
undermined President Thein Sein's credibility as a
national peacemaker.
Most of the fighting
is taking place around the KIA's headquarters at
the border town of Laiza near China. The
government seems determined to crush the Kachin
resistance and gain control over the area now
administered by the rebels.
The ongoing
offensive may cripple the KIA militarily, but it
will likely not defeat the rebel resistance.
Observers fear that the outcome will be intense
ethnic hatred, making it even more difficult to
establish a lasting peace. Many Kachin now feel
that there is no place for them in Myanmar.
"We know that it is wrong to feel that
way, but we can't help it," says a Kachin women in
the state capital Myitkyina. Adding insult to
injury, the airstrikes against the Kachin, the
vast majority of whom are Christian, began in
earnest on Christmas Eve. "This we will never
forget or forgive," said a Kachin community
worker.
The Kachins have become even more
antagonized because of pro-democracy icon Aung San
Suu Kyi's refusal to intervene in the crisis.
Despite several appeals to the former Nobel Peace
Prize laureate to act in a war in her own country,
Suu Kyi has steadfastly refused to take a stand.
On January 6, she told Agence France-Presse that
she would not step in to help end the worsening
conflict without official approval.
"It is
up to the government. This case is being handled
by the government at the moment," Suu Kyi said.
Her statement caused dismay and even anger among
many Kachins. At a recent demonstration by Kachins
in Australia, one protester carried a portrait of
Suu Kyi with tape over her mouth and the text:
"Silence is violence."
It is widely
suspected that the once fiery opposition leader
has reached an informal accommodation with the
government where she is allowed to act as a
mainstream politician via her seat in parliament
but has been barred from criticizing the military
or becoming involved in the ethnic issue, which is
a question of national security and therefore the
responsibility of the military.
The
escalated military campaign has also sent a stark
signal to other ethnic armies which have entered
into ceasefire agreements with the government. In
a statement issued on January 1, the United
Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an umbrella
organization of about a dozen ethnic groups, some
with and some without ceasefire agreements with
the government, saying that they feel threatened
by the offensive against the Kachin and called for
unity among Myanmar's multitude of traditionally
factious ethnic militias.
"If we are not
able to act collectively now we will be destroyed
individually," said a participant at the meeting
that adopted the statement. Nai Han Tha, a
spokesperson for the ethnic alliance, demanded
that the government stop its offensive in Kachin
State: "If the government continues its action,
there could be offensives against the Shan, who
bordered with the Kachin. We will consider the
Kachin's situation and discuss what we will do for
our next step."
If that persuasion proves
futile, other ethnic rebel groups could act to
suspend all talks with the government as long as
the attacks continue in Kachin State, according to
a UNFC spokesperson at a press conference in the
northern Thai city of Chiang Mai on January 10.
Dishonest broker According to
the official version of events - as outlined by
Aung Min, a minister in the President's office, in
an interview with the US National Public Radio on
January 7 - fighting broke out when the KIA
refused to remove some "barbed wire fences" near
Laiza to enable government forces to "move in and
deliver food".
For more than a year, Aung
Min has been in charge of government-initiated
talks with ethnic groups as well as Myanmar
dissidents in exile. Several rounds of new talks
with the Kachin in 2011 and 2012, some involving
foreign interlocutors such as the
Switzerland-based Center for Humanitarian Dialog,
have produced no tangible results.
Instead, Aung Min's fanciful statements
and other government denials about the extent of
the offensive have only added fuel to the Kachin's
fire. The government initially denied using air
force against the Kachins, but Thein Sein
backtracked after widespread international news
coverage of the aerial assaults.
Independent observers point out that
preparations for the offensive began several
months ago, when government forces began to move
heavy weapons including artillery into the area.
In November, villagers in Karen State in eastern
Myanmar were startled when airplanes dropped bombs
and machine-gunned their rice fields and other
plantations.
The Karen National Union
(KNU), the ethnic army in the area, has a
ceasefire agreement with the government, so the
attacks, which did not hurt any locals, came as a
surprise. The government told the villagers the
aircraft were taking part in a "military training
exercise," which in hindsight seems to have been
an armed rehearsal for their offensive in Kachin
State.
Judging from photographs taken in
Kachin State, the aircraft appear to be Hongdu
JL-8 or Karakorum-8, light attack aircraft that
Myanmar acquired from China several years ago. The
helicopter gunships used in recent offensives are
Russian-made Mi-35, the export version of the
Mi-24 Hind that was used extensively in the
Afghanistan war in the 1980s. Myanmar bought its
first Mi-35s in September 2010, when the KIA still
had a ceasefire agreement with the government.
The Kachins say they waited in vain for 17
years - from 1994, when they first made peace with
the government, until hostilities broke out as
government forces entered KIA-held territory in
June 2011 - for political discussions about the
future status of the frontier areas.
Other
weapons used in the current Kachin offensive,
which Myanmar, a neutral country with no external
enemies, has acquired or developed since the first
ceasefire agreements were concluded with various
ethnic and political rebel forces include 60, 81
and 120mm mortars, 105 howitzers, 75mm recoilless
rifles and 84mm Swedish-made Carl Gustaf rocket
launchers.
On November 9, 2011, a Russian
Antonov 124-100 - the world's second-largest
operating cargo plane - landed at Mandalay's
international airport (The long-range aircraft can
cover the distance from Russia to Myanmar without
stopping or refueling). The plane was off-loaded
at night and the cargo was trucked away in a
military convoy.
It is not known exactly
what the plane carried, but well-placed Myanmar
sources suspected at the time the secret cargo
could have included anti-aircraft missiles or
parts for such missiles, or radars for the Myanmar
military's Bureau of Air Defense. Another more
likely explanation is that the plane carried
Mi35/24 Hind helicopter gunships, then already
destined for use against the Kachins and other
ethnic rebels in the border areas.
Whatever cargo the huge plane carried, it
shows that Myanmar's purchases of sophisticated
military equipment from abroad have not ceased
despite Thein Sein's recent charm offensive with
the United States and European countries and that
much of it is meant for use against ethnic
resistance forces.
Incompatible
positions There are two fundamentally
opposed and seemingly incompatible views on how
Myanmar's decades-long ethnic quagmire should be
resolved. The KIA and other ethnic groups want
autonomy within a federal union, while the
government wants to uphold the present 2008
Constitution, which lays the foundations for a
centralized system.
Critics argue that the
ceasefire agreements that the government has
reached with a dozen or so ethnic armies other
than the KIA have merely frozen underlying
problems without providing lasting solutions to
what is essentially a political problem. Those
ceasefires thus remain fragile and could end in
the same way as the now collapsed agreement with
the Kachins. There are at least 50,000 men and
women under arms across the country in various
ethnic armies, according to foreign military
observers.
Earlier there was hope among
ethnic groups when Suu Kyi was released from house
arrest in the old capital Yangon in November 2010.
She then called for a second "Panglong
Conference," a reference to an agreement that her
father, Aung San, who led Myanmar's fight for
freedom from colonial Britain, signed with
representatives of several of Myanmar's many
ethnic minorities at the small market town of
Panglong in Shan State on February 12, 1947. The
agreement paved the way for a federal constitution
that came into effect when Myanmar declared
independence on January 4, 1948.
Aung San
was assassinated by a political rival in July
1947, but his Panglong Agreement was honored in
Myanmar's first constitution. Some ethnic
minorities, notably the Karen, resorted to armed
struggle anyway, and parts of the country were
plunged into civil war. In March 1962, Myanmar's
experiment with parliamentary democracy and
federalism ended abruptly in a military coup. The
new government, led by Gen. Ne Win, adopted a
strictly centralized power structure and the
insurgencies flared anew, especially in the Shan
and Kachin states, which until then had been
relatively peaceful.
When Suu Kyi first
broached a "Second Panglong" she received the
backing of several ethnic leaders and
organizations, but government authorities branded
her a "traitor" for resurrecting the idea of
autonomy for the minorities. She has since gone
quiet on a "Second Panglong" and her silence has
cost her the popular support she once enjoyed in
ethnic areas.
The muted response by the
international community has also been a
disappointment for many Kachins. In an interview
published on January 9 in the Irrawaddy, an
independent website and journal, US ambassador to
Myanmar Derek Mitchell expressed "concern" over
the situation in Kachin State but stopped short of
condemning the attacks. Two years ago, before the
US's engagement with Myanmar, observers say
Washington would have strongly condemned the
escalation.
Myanmar has since distanced
itself from its previous reliance on China. There
are no doubt concerns in Western capitals that any
harsh criticism of the Myanmar military's actions
could push the country's rulers back into the arms
of the Chinese.
On January 9, The Wall
Street Journal quoted a spokesman for the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs in Yangon saying that "there
have been signs of only limited displacement of
people so far in the state." Wunpawng Ninghtoi, a
community-based organization in Kachin State,
however, have documented tens of thousands of
internally displaced persons, most of them in
KIA-controlled areas.
The International
Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think-tank,
announced in late November that it would present
Myanmar President Thein Sein with its top honor at
an annual "In Pursuit of Peace Award Dinner" in
New York in April this year. ICG did not respond
to questions submitted by Asia Times Online
whether the group will go ahead with the award, or
withdraw it because of the government's airstrikes
and bombardment of Kachin rebel positions and
civilian settlements near the Chinese border. In
an open letter to ICG, Kachin community groups and
Southeast Asian human-rights advocates have
condemned the group's decision to honor the
Myanmar president.
The 2008 constitution
devised by the country's previous military leaders
remains the main obstacle to resolving the ethnic
issue. Significant clauses, including those
concerning state structure and ultimate military
control over the decision-making process, cannot
be considered without the approval or more than
75% of all parliamentarians in both the Upper and
Lower Houses.
Any amendments would then
need to be approved through a national referendum.
In practice, this makes any fundamental
constitutional reform impossible without the
explicit consent of the military as 25% of
parliament consists of military officers appointed
directly by the commander-in-chief of the Defense
Services.
Scrapping the 2008 constitution
and drafting a new charter based on a federal
concept is the only viable way ahead to resolving
Myanmar's seemingly endless ethnic problems,
ethnic group representatives argue. But judging
from the government's response to such demands and
the relentless offensive in Kachin State, that is
not likely to happen any time soon. And with Suu
Kyi now seemingly on the side of the military, the
gap between majority Burmans and ethnic minorities
has never been wider.
Bertil Lintner
is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern
Economic Review and author of several books on
Burma/Myanmar, including Burma in Revolt:
Opium and Insurgency Since 1948 (published in
1994, 1999 and 2003), Land of Jade: A Journey
from India through Northern Burma to China, and
The Kachin: Lords of Burma's Northern
Frontier. He is currently a writer with Asia
Pacific Media Services.
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