More Die in Burma

A correspondent
Karen State, Burma

A pitched battle that stretched through all of this week, (from June 30 until July 6) between soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta and the Karen National Liberation Army had left scores dead. There has been a significant escalation in fighting between units of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council and soldiers of the KNLA opposite the northern Thailand province of Tak.

ON SUNDAY (June 29) at dusk rebel fighters of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) unloaded guns from the back of a pickup.

The guns were destined for Burma and were leaving Thai territory. They will be used to fight soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta. The guns were run in a two-pickup convoy from south of Mae Sot to north of Mae Sariang.

One of guerilla group’s lieutenants spoke of his army’s desperate bid to stop construction of three major hydropower projects along the wild and untamed Salween River.

“We have to stop construction of these dams, we must stop them,” said one of Colonel Nerdah Mya’s aides, Timu.

Timu is a soldier of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the Karen National Union political bloc formed in 1947 and holding out against the overwhelming military force of Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The SPDC troops number about 500,000, the KNLA about 10,000. The dams will create vast reservoirs that will inundate lands the KNLA calls its own.

Building the dams is a win-win scenario for the SPDC generals. The hydropower that is produced will be sold across the border in Thailand, generating revenue for an incredibly rich elite military class. And territory friendly to the rebels who fight SPDC soldiers will be rendered impassable.

As the Salween bloats lands friendly to the rebels, weeks of walking will be added to journeys traversing thick jungle paths that now take a day or two. The Salween River is home to more than 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare or endangered animals and fish. UNESCO says it “may be the most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem in the world”. It was designated a World Heritage Site in 2003.

Slave labour is being used to build the dams.

Maps from the Thailand Burmese Border Consortium (TBBC) show locations of forced relocation encampments where terrified and displaced villagers have been corralled. They are all clustered around major infrastructure projects the generals oversee as they gather wealth incomprehensible to just about any Burmese citizen. At gunpoint, the population of these camps is forced to labour, working to build dams that will flood their former homes and possibly drown their aspirations of independence.

The TBBC’s Leonard Buckles believes the Salween dams may well be the end for the Karen and their fight. “The political wing is dead,” he said, in the Thai-Burma frontier town of Mae Sot. Mr Buckles believes his organisation’s donors are more likely to support action inside Burma, dealing directly with the generals to try and force political and military reform while still providing humanitarian aid to those who need it most.

Australian Chris Clifford, a field worker for the TBBC, sighs as he speaks of ‘donor fatigue’ and the reduced calorie counts being allotted to displaced people seeking refuge in Thailand. He says funding is gradually being withdrawn from the camps and one day soon there will be nothing to sustain people who have languished in the camps for almost a quarter of a century.

Mr Buckles speaks of exit strategies for donors, tired by the intransigence of the SPDC generals.

Yet some of the refugee camps’ residents were born in limbo, and have known nothing else other than boredom and pregnancy. After delivery of the guns on Sunday night, the Karen soldiers sang sorrowful war songs as we made our way home, safe on Thai territory.

Less than four hours after our arrival in the Thai frontier town of Mae Sot, at about 1am, to the south all hell had broken loose.

A pitched battle that stretched through all of this week, (from June 30 until July 6) between soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta and the Karen National Liberation Army had left scores dead. There has been a significant escalation in fighting between units of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council and soldiers of the KNLA opposite the northern Thailand province of Tak.

A major push by the SPDC to take a long-standing base camp of the KNLA, the headquarters of its Sixth Brigade 201st battalion has been thwarted, for now. The SPDC offensive to take Wah Lay Kee, launched from Thai territory, began at 5am Monday (June 30). That the SPDC soldiers were prepared to intrude on Thai sovereignty is an indication of how determined they were to take the KNLA camp.

And they did.

But by evening (June 30) they had lost it again, and 200 SPDC soldiers had been surrounded by four KNLA units of between 10 and 30 men. The KNLA dug in close in heavy jungle, one group as close as about 20 metres from their enemies. Both sides have taken heavy casualties as a result of landmines. The fighting took place around a peninsula of Thai land that juts into Burma known as Phop Phra. Phop Phra is an eccentricity of border demarcation between these two Southeast Asian nations.

The KNLA on Wednesday (July 2) seized a 50-calibre Browning machine-gun, the type usually mounted on top of armoured vehicles. A 50-calibre Browning can cut buildings to pieces.

Yesterday there were 50 SPDC soldiers dead, including the commander of Light Infantry Battalion 410, Aung May Zaw.

While the SPDC took responsibility for Monday’s initial assault, light units of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a slave militia, eventually backed them. Mae Sot General Hospital, on Thai territory, is today full of casualties from all sides.

Yesterday morning (Friday, July 4), three DKBA soldiers stepped on landmines and two SPDC soldiers were shot, but not killed. All sides in this protracted conflict use landmines extensively. There were dead on both sides just hours after the SPDC launched the offensive against Wah Lay Kee on Monday morning (June 30).

By the next day 16 SPDC soldiers were dead, 13 had fled to Thailand and were in the hands of the Thai military. A KNLA soldier was dead, two wounded and soldiers of the DKBA and KNLA soldiers were lying in beds close to one another at Mae Sot General Hospital, eyeing each other off.

One porter, seized at gunpoint from a nearby village by SPDC troops, had his leg amputated in the same hospital, another innocent victim of the world’s longest-running insurgency. This latest battle, the heaviest of recent months, constitutes a major diplomatic incident.

On Wednesday evening (July 2), senior Thai army officials attempted mediation between the KNLA, SPDC and DKBA, but to no avail.

On Thursday night (July 3) Aung May Zaw, the overseer of a mortar unit essentially rendered useless because KNLA guerillas were so close to the SPDC units, was killed by KNLA snipers using AK RPDs. This does not augur well for mediation.

On Saturday, (July 5) in the afternoon, the KNLA were re-supplied with M-79 grenades and RPGs for their ageing weapons and were preparing to defend their precarious position in their bid for independence that began in 1949.