Myanmar Troops Gain on Rebels as Villagers Flee

by Thomas Fuller, The New York Times, August 20, 2009

For the first time in at least a decade, Myanmar’s central government controls most of its own border with Thailand. By the standards of most countries this might not be considered a major accomplishment. But Myanmar has been fighting ethnic Karen rebels along the mountainous border for nearly as long as it has existed as an independent country.

The Myanmar military and a local proxy militia undertook an assault in June that led to the capture of seven military camps run by the Karen National Union, a rebel group that once so dominated parts of the 1,100-mile Thailand-Myanmar border that it collected customs duties at its own checkpoints.

The June offensive surprised the Karen forces partly because it took place during the muddy monsoon season, usually a time of a climate-induced truce. Hundreds of rebels fled into the jungles infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

The Karen have led one of the most resilient insurgencies in Asia. They once proposed to their British colonial overlords that they create an independent “Karenistan.” But they now appear understaffed, under-equipped and divided, according to Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based expert on ethnic groups in Myanmar, formerly called Burma. “They have lost most of their military strength,” he said.

The main losers of the most recent fighting, however, were not combatants but villagers, many of them children, forced to flee their homes in the remote and impoverished Karen hills. The Karen Human Rights Group, an organization that monitors the conflict, counted 4,862 villagers who crossed to the Thai side of the border, where already crowded refugee camps hold more than 120,000 people.

After six decades of independence from Britain, much of that time marked by civil war, Myanmar is still a long way from controlling all of its borders. Karen militants still occupy some camps along the Salween River, north of the border with Thailand. The Kachin and Wa ethnic groups, among others, have their own significant armies on the border with China. They have resisted a proposal that they become border guards controlled by the central government.

But the victories along the Thai border in June brought the military a step closer to its goal of national consolidation before parliamentary elections next year, an event that the military says will usher in the first civilian government in almost five decades.

“If you look back 20 years, every year the Karen have lost more and more territory,” said Win Min, an expert on Myanmar at Payap University in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. Mr. Win Min doubts, however, that the government will be able to eliminate all Karen resistance.

The June offensive may have been partly inspired by the success of the Sri Lankan government in using force to rout Tamil Tiger rebels in May, crippling or perhaps ending that long-running insurgency. Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, visited Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, in June. Both governments have been criticized by human rights groups and Western nations for the treatment of civilians during the offensives.

Unlike the Tamil rebels, however, the Karen today remain a fighting force, albeit dispersed and demoralized, according to Mr. Win Min.

Naw Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National Union, says the group has at least 4,000 men under arms, most of them hiding in remote locations. The number is impossible to verify.

“Our soldiers are still deep inside,” Ms. Sein said in an interview on the Thai side of the border. “We still have our strength from the people.”

The area’s isolation remains an advantage for the Karen rebels, allowing them to carry out guerrilla attacks on the military and to lay land mines on footpaths. There are few roads in the Karen hills. Many villages lack electricity and telephone service, and families still sometimes keep elephants for transportation and to haul logs, according to Paw Paw, a midwife who lives in the Butho district, a six-hour walk from the Thai border. She periodically treks across the border to stock up on medical supplies.

Karen villagers remain sympathetic to and supportive of insurgents, she said, and terrified of government troops, notorious for pressing villagers into serving as porters and guides through heavily mined areas.

Dr. Cynthia Maung, who runs a clinic on the Thai side of the border, says that many young Karen have fled to Thailand for fear of being recruited, leaving the old behind. “The community structure is being destroyed,” she said.

The Karen are largely Christian and were favored by British colonialists for top posts in the government. This and other factors are the seeds of conflict with the majority Burman, most of whom are Buddhist and today hold the reins of power in Myanmar’s military junta.

The conflict between the Karen National Union and the central government dates from 1949, a year after independence from Britain. The latest round of fighting started June 2, when the Burmese military attacked with mortars and large-caliber weapons, according to Col. Bothien Thientha, 48, of the Karen National Liberation Army, the military wing of the National Union.

The Myanmar government’s local ally, the Democratic Kayin Buddhist Army, led the charge toward his camp at Mae Salid, across the river from the Thai town of the same name. Colonel Thientha tried to launch a rocket-propelled grenade but it backfired, injuring his shoulder and blowing off four fingers of his left hand. He and 90 other soldiers abandoned their camp.

The colonel’s injury highlights a major problem for the Karen rebels: a dwindling stock of weapons, which are aging.

Colonel Thientha says his unit’s members keep their weapons wrapped in plastic bags hidden in the jungle. “We don’t have enough, but we use them in moderation,” he said.

The timing of the offensive was particularly bad for the children of the Lay Klo Yaw elementary and middle school. Financed by an American missionary family, the school was inaugurated on June 1. The next day, when mortar shells began exploding in the distance, 125 schoolchildren fled across the Moei River to Thailand carrying their blankets, sleeping mats and books.

Ehganyaw, a teacher from the school who uses only one name, now watches with binoculars as soldiers of the pro-government Buddhist militia slowly take apart the spoils of war across the river: plank by plank, the school and church are being disassembled.

“They’ve taken all the wood,” Mr. Ehganyaw exclaimed as he peered across the river with a journalist’s telephoto lens. “The church is gone!”