Politics
114: BURMA’S ETHNIC CONFLICT:
S.H.A.N. - Wednesday, 16 September 2009 10:39 : By Sai WansaiBeginning of Burmese junta’s total annihilation phase on ethnic resistance?
It seems the Burmese junta has been painting quite a rosy picture or overly confident, regarding its demand of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) converting itself into Border Guard Force (BGF) and become part of the Burma army, under its Commander-in-chief.
An article of Khaing Myo Nyilar Aung, which recently appeared in the New Light of Myanmar reported that the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), an ethnic cease-fire group with the government, is co-ordinating with the government on a transitional process of formation into a frontier force, also known as BGF, under the command of the central government before 2010 general election,
On Monday, 14 September, Kachin News Group (KNG) said that the KIO will maintain the cease-fire agreement with the junta for as long as possible but will not accept transforming KIA to the junta-proposed BGF. The KIO might agree to transform the KIA to a Kachin Regional Guard Force (KRGF) or Kachin State Security Force, which would be solely made up of Kachin troopers.
The Irrawaddy news magazine wrote, on August 31, that the BGF is designed to have more control of ethnic armed groups by the Burma army and put all ethnic armies under the command of its commander-in-chief, currently Senior General Than Shwe, head of the military junta.
Accordingly, a BGF battalion would have 326 soldiers including 18 officers and three commanders with the rank of major. Among the three commanders, two would be from ethnic armed groups and one from the Burma army who would take care daily administrative task.
Apart from occupying key positions such as general staff officer and quartermaster by the Burma army, twenty-seven other ranking non-commissioned officers would also be positioned as company sergeant majors, sergeants, clerks, nurses and so on.
All BGF troopers would be allowed to mobilise only within their own territories and be paid as regular Burma army soldiers.
The KIO counter proposal of transforming its fighting force into an autonomous KRGF with only Kachin soldiers after 2010 elections and KIO becoming part of Kachin State government are similar to what the Shan State Army (SSA) North and New Mon State Party (NMSP) have made known to the junta.
So far, the junta is still insisting upon its demand and set a deadline for KIO to toe the line by the end of October.
According to Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), until 2005, there were 17 armed groups that had concluded cease-fire agreements with Rangoon: Nine in Shan State, two in Kachin State, four in Kayah (Karenni) State, one in Mon State and another one in Karen State. But four of them: Palaung State Liberation Army (PSLA) and Shan State National Army (SSNA), Shan State Nationalities People Liberation Organisation (SNPLO), Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) were terminated. The cease-fire termination with KNPP came after 3 months, when the Burma Army pushed into the KNPP’s territory.
In a recent SHAN report, some analysts say the Burma Army’s objective is to stir up the flame of conflict between the Kokang factions and take advantage of it to seize the territory. “It wouldn’t be unlike the Mongkoe incident (which took place in 2000),” remembered a Chinese businessman of Shan descent.
On 24 October 2000, a faction of the Mongkoe Defence Army (MDA), a breakaway group from Kokang, had mutinied. A month later, the mutineers were executed, the MDA leader Mong Sala put in jail and the territory occupied by the Burma Army.
On April 10, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reported that the junta was said to have drawn a secret guideline on how to handle former Communist Party of Burma (CPB) fighting forces. In it, while the ethnic armed groups, who are former CPB members, will be tolerated and allowed to stay armed for a period of time, the strategy of “containment, restriction and annihilation” is to be gradually implemented.
Given such track record of attacking and occupying MDA and Kokang, forcing PSLA, SNPLO and part of SSNA to surrender between 2005 and 2008, one could only conclude that the days of cease-fire armies are numbered, so far as the Burmese junta is concerned. And it is only a matter of time, before the last phase of annihilation is to be fully launched.
If the time frame of subduing the cease-fire armies is to be before 2010 nation-wide elections, as time and again repeated by the junta, it hardly has enough time to pick them one by one. And as such, a combination of coaxing, threatening, tricking and sheer force will be used on all cease-fire groups in a more urgent and forceful manner than it usually does.
The junta’s priority has always been to hold on to power continuously and to achieve this it needs to oppress and control the mass and democratic opposition groups, coupled with subduing the non-Burman ethnic cease-fire and non-cease-fire armies.
On Tuesday, the junta’s official media pointed out that under the 2008 new state constitution, which prescribes that all the armed forces in the union shall be under the command of the Defence Services, the government has initiated a program for ethnic armed groups in the country, which have cease fired and “returned to the legal fold,” to be formed into frontier forces under the control of the Commander-in-chief of the Defence Services to pave way for the upcoming election.
In the meantime, SHAN latest report, also on Tuesday, writes: “We used to think whatever happened, China’s our friend,” said a middle-aged officer from one of the cease-fire groups located on the Sino-Burma frontier.
Kachin, Kokang, Wa and Mongla have always believed that they, together with Shans, would be collectively treated as a buffer, as North Korea is, to successive Burmese governments’ efforts to establish détente with the west especially the United States.
That was until Kokang, the ethnic Chinese dominant territory of Burma, was not only invaded but resoundly beaten last month by the Burma Army that prompted only a few complaints from Beijing.
Many of those questioned by SHAN admitted they “can’t help but feel that we have been let down by the provincial government, if not the central government.”
As it is, the Chinese might have opted for a bigger economic pie and energy needs by going along with the Burmese junta, which has more to offer in form of gas extraction and building 1,000-kilometre oil and gas pipelines from Arakan state to China’s Yunnan province, than with its proxies along the border. Perhaps, in the eyes of the Chinese, its proxies might have outlived their usefulness. After all, its ethnically related proxy, like Kokang, is even expendable, if the stakes are high and alternative option would serve the nation’s economic growth and energy security better.
It should also be noted that the Chinese one-party autocracy is slowly passing its leadership from functionaries trained in engineering to those educated in softer sciences like law, reported Melinda Liu, in her piece “Right Brain”, in Newsweek, September 8, 2009. And as such, the present Chinese leadership is a far cry from Cold War days of aiding communist movements the world over as historical duty. The Chinese are now through and through market-oriented and see things only within the context of market advantage and disadvantage, more than anything else.
Flushed with billions of dollars from gas exploitation, the junta’s assumption that it could now have its way without much hurdles and resistance from the oppressed mass, democratic elements and the ethnic armed groups might be a correct assessment.
As all can see, the junta is becoming increasingly confident. It is now speculating that the population is completely cowed and only interested in daily struggle for survival and the Chinese backing for the former CPB members along the border is waning, diminishing or eroding rapidly. Given such advantages, at least from junta’s point of view, it would be stupid not to strike, while the iron is red.
If this kind of assessment happens to be the case, the junta’s onslaught is coming sooner than later, both within its spheres of influence - through self-drawn constitutional advantage, designed to install military supremacy role and foreseeable rigged election to enslave the population – and along the border, including other contested areas by unleashing its “final solution” annihilation war on ethnic population, to silence their call for rights of self-determination, equality and democracy, once and for all.
At the end of the day, as to whether the people of Burma, democratic opposition groups and ethnic resistance forces would capitulate without a fight or deliver a hefty resistance, like the one that occurred two years ago, is anybody’s guess.