By a correspondent Karen State, Burma
BURMA is awash with rumour of a national uprising on August 8.
This is a significant number in a country driven by numerology and astrologists – 8808.
There are flyers being distributed inside Burma in each of the ethnic nationalities’ languages.
The flyers appeal to the foot soldiers of the State and Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to show respect for their families and turn on their overseers.
And the irony that the date matches the beginning of the Olympics, hosted by China, which has been a veritable stone wall at aUnited Nations level when it comes to elevating the dire situation in Burma to Security Council level should not be missed.
The 8808 appeal is a very powerful message for dispossessed Burmese soldiers working in utterly hostile environments.
They are paid poorly and not often, perhaps every couple of months.
Once entry into the Burmese armed forces consolidated a family’s future, ensured education, healthcare and a decent living in a very poor country, one considered by the United Nations as among the world’s Least Developed Countries.
Now it does not.
Once the Burmese soldiers on the frontline of this war knew that back home their families would be cared for.
Now they do not.
And the soldiers don’t want to leave their poorly-secured base camps.
The Democratic Alliance of Burma general secretary Dr Kyaw Nyunt said August 8 was an opportunity for the people of Burma to seek the justice they had been denied for decades.
At a meeting on the Thai-Burma border he urged the soldiers to return to their barracks on August 8 and allow the people to protest.
Myint Thein, a Burmese exile living in the Netherlands and visiting northern Thailand to distribute aid for Cyclone Nargis survivors. said he hoped the national day of action would help the Burmese soldiers find the courage to do what was right.
But the reality is that most SPDC soldiers really don’t want to fight anymore.
The soldiers of the SPDC are demoralised, said Colonel Nerdah of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).
They have been ordered by their generals since the mid-1990s to live off the land.
That means stealing food from desperately poor villagers at gunpoint.
These men do not want to do that – they couldn’t be bothered – if they have enough rice they don’t move.
They stay at their base camp and they live the simple, unappealing lives of a soldier regarded by all those around them as enemies.
And soldiers of the KNLA are always nearby.
It is a simple rule of guerilla warfare that you remain close to opposing forces, watching them, always knowing what they are doing.
Colonel Nerdah said the SPDC soldiers had it no better than the disparate ethnic minorities they are waging war against.
Nerdah is 42 years old and has spent his life fighting the Burmese military.
“Sometimes they will send a battalion of 500 men to attack our base camps, from orders on high,” he said.
The KNLA is always nestled in an area where there are simple, unequivocal geographical entries.
So they blanket those entry points with landmines when they know there is an impending attack and tell local villagers not to walk there.
“They send 500 men and we know that at least three or four will step on mines,” he said at a base camp inside Karen State close to the Thai border.
“That means at least 12 men are needed to carry them away, it slows them down.
“So then we work, we surround them and pick them off.
“They don’t know where we are, so they fire everywhere.
“They waste a lot of ammunition and then have to withdraw,” he said.
Nerdah makes these comments as he is brushing his teeth and oiling an AK RPD resting on a bipod.
The AK RPDs are formidable weapons and have been seized during undisciplined SPDC withdrawals.
Then Nerdah makes inquiries to a KNLA outpost on a shortwave radio also stolen from SPDC troops.
Then he turns to me and says, smiling, “you know the SPDC has it’s Four Cuts camapign,” in reference to a military strategy to restrict the KNLA rebels of recruits, food, information and education.
“We have only a one-cut strategy – one leg, one leg, one leg.”
Colonel Nerdah is sick of this war, he has children he wants to educate and his wife is pregnant again.
The SPDC troops don’t want to move, because they don’t want to die.
If the 8808 campaign can deliver peace to people traumatised by decades of war, everyone will be better off.
Then perhaps they can forget about fighting and live the lives they seek – with their families.
