In Burma, Answers to Ethnic Conflict Elusive | The Irrawaddy Magazine

In Burma, Answers to Ethnic Conflict Elusive | The Irrawaddy Magazine
TODD PITMAN / AP WRITER, February 22, 2013

LAWA YANG, Kachin State — Kneeling beside a line of freshly dug trenches carved like one long, open wound into a lush hillside, the rebel sergeant peered through dusty binoculars at all his troops had lost.

Scattered across the sprawling valley below, a dozen thatched-roof homes stood quiet, abandoned by fleeing villagers as government forces drew near. Towering above: four forested mountain ridges seized by Burma’s army after some of the bloodiest clashes here in decades—so fierce the ethnic Kachin guerrillas who survived said the artillery fire came down like rain.

If the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the last armed insurgent group still at war in Burma, loses just one more mountain ridge, there will be little to stop government forces from taking their stronghold on the Chinese border. They are ill-equipped—some rebels wear helmets made only of hardened plastic and admit running low on ammunition—but they remain defiant.

“We’re very vulnerable because the army now holds the high ground,” rebel Sgt. Brang Shawng said as he scanned the new front line at Lawa Yang, where his unit retreated last month.

But he added: “We will never give up. For us, this is a fight for self-determination, and I’ll keep fighting for it until I die.”

Government soldiers, bolstered for the first time by screeching fighter jets and helicopter gunships that pounded the hills for weeks, advanced late last month to within just a few kilometers of the rebel headquarters town of Laiza, the closest they have ever come.

The region has been relatively calm since, but even so, the dramatic upsurge in fighting underscores how far Burma is from achieving one of the things it needs most—a political settlement to end not just the war with the Kachin, but decades-long conflicts with more than a dozen other rebel armies that have plagued the country for decades and still threaten its future.

Much is at stake for this Southeast Asian nation, which has stunned the world by opening politically and economically over the last two years following five decades of military rule. President Thein Sein’s government rose to power in 2011 following elections that rights groups said were neither free nor fair, but it has since ushered in reforms, freed political prisoners and allowed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters to be elected to Parliament.

Still, Burma has yet to resolve a multitude of conflicts with its ethnic minorities, which make up about 40 percent of the population. Their persistent push for political autonomy has turned vast patchworks of territory along the borders with China and Thailand into rebel fiefdoms rich in jade, timber, gold and opium.

In Kachin State alone, the control of which is split between rebels and the government, resource-hungry China has invested billions of dollars in hydroelectric dams. A Chinese-backed pipeline project is due to begin pumping oil and gas from the Bay of Bengal in May, and more development projects are planned, including highways and railways that would link Indian Ocean seaports with the rest of Southeast Asia. Most of them cross rebel zones.

Thein Sein’s administration has signed truce deals with 18 armed groups—everyone except the Kachin, according to Min Zaw Oo, who heads cease-fire negotiations at the Myanmar Peace Center, a government-appointed body that is coordinating peace talks.

Most of those truces had already been negotiated with the former junta, but the nation’s former military rulers “never accepted the need for a political settlement,” Min Zaw Oo said.

Thein Sein’s administration, by contrast, realizes a cease-fire alone is not sufficient, he said. “This government sees dialogue as key. It is ready to talk. That’s a major policy distinction.”
Min Zaw Oo said he believes Burma has the best chance in 60 years of ending the country’s ethnic conflicts. But he acknowledged that “practically, there are a lot of obstacles in the way.”

Distrust runs deep, and even the truces remain fragile. The army and rebels in eastern Shan State, for example, have clashed at least 44 times since agreeing a cease-fire last year, Min Zaw Oo said.

In Kachin State, there has been speculation the government was trying to strengthen its hand at negotiations by escalating the war to new heights with airstrikes. But rebel Col. Zaw Taung, director of strategic analysis for the KIA, said the skirmishes only pushed the two sides further apart.

“They say they want peace, but they just threw everything they have against us,” he said. “With one hand they’re trying to burn us, with the other, they’re trying douse us with water. They cannot be trusted.”

The army, like the rebels, insists it fought only in self-defense.

On Wednesday, government envoys resumed talks in the Thai city of Chiang Mai with the United Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of 11 ethnic militias, including the Kachin, that banded together last year. Few expected any breakthroughs, and no cease-fire was reached with the Kachin, which have met the government more than a dozen times since war in the north reignited in 2011.

The talks are “only about the framework of future discussions,” said Hkun Okkar, a senior alliance member. “We’re demanding a political dialogue, and the government agrees, but real dialogue hasn’t started.”

Last week, Thein Sein acknowledged that his country’s history of ethnic conflict has been a major barrier to progress, and that achieving stability is crucial as it pursues a democratic future.

His words, though, were delivered on an occasion infused with bitter irony: Union Day, which commemorates the 1947 deal between Suu Kyi’s father, independence hero Gen Aung San, and ethnic leaders to break away from Britain’s colonial arms together.
The so-called Panglong Agreement also granted ethnic minorities autonomy, but it fell apart after the assassination of Aung San.

The Kachin, who are predominantly Christian in a majority Buddhist country, first took up arms in 1961. A 1994 truce with the army lasted 17 years, but during that time, rebel demands for rights and a federalist system were never addressed.

Instead, the junta in 2008 forced through a new constitution. The nation’s minorities say it places enormous power in the hands of the central government and the military, which rights groups say has orchestrated a campaign of discrimination, forced labor and abuse against the Kachin and other groups for decades. The constitution can be amended only with approval of the armed forces, which even now control 25 percent of Parliament.

Tensions rose further in 2009, when the junta tried to persuade ethnic armies to join a new border guard force. Most, including the Kachin, refused.

Two months after Thein Sein took office in 2011, the Kachin truce finally broke down when the army bolstered its presence near a hydropower plant in Dapein that is a joint venture with a Chinese company, and rebels refused to abandon a strategic base nearby.
Since then, more than 100,000 Kachin civilians have been displaced, and the rebels have progressively lost territory, pressed closer and closer against the Chinese border.

Only one major mountain ridge now separates Laiza from Burma’s army, and a grim mood has settled over the town.

At the main cemetery, workers are erecting concrete tombstones for rebels who died in the latest fighting. At least 23 are buried here under mounds of red dirt, though rebel officials declined to say how many were killed altogether.

Every night, a single-file candlelight peace vigil organized by a Catholic priest snakes through Laiza’s darkened and nearly deserted streets. Shops are closed. Displaced people crowd camps perched on a rocky river that marks the border with China.

The rebels, clearly outgunned, say they will not even try to retake lost ground. There is talk of the rebels abandoning Laiza if need be, of shifting their headquarters to a secret location if the army makes a push for the town. Most of their offices on a hillside overlooking town already appear empty, and the rebels’ most senior leadership is no longer here.

“For a guerrilla army, what matters most is not holding ground, but maintaining the support of the people,” Zaw Taung said, speaking at a Laiza hotel the rebels use as an office that is decorated with wall-to-wall maps.

Judging by comments from many Kachin, across many levels of society, they overwhelmingly support the rebels, whom they see as protectors and their legitimate government, perhaps now more than ever.

Asked why the rebels were the only armed group that has yet to sign a truce with the government, Zaw Taung was dismissive.

“We tried that for 17 years. What did it get us?” he asked. “The only thing that will end the war is a political solution. Without that, a truce means nothing. The fighting will go on.”

Ethnic violence Escalates in Burma's Arakan State | asia sentinel

Ethnic violence Escalates in Burma's Arakan State | asia sentinel
26 October 2012

Rohingya, Rakhine minorities clash

Violence against ethnic Rohingya villagers in Burma’s Arakan province is increasingly out of control, according to the National Democratic Party for Human Rights, a Rohingya defender organization which has sent numerous pleas for outside help over the past week.

On Wednesday, a spokesman said the fishing village of Kyaukpyu Town had been attacked by thousands of Buddhist-majority ethnic Rakhine, also known as Arakanese, armed with guns, knives and machetes, alleging the attackers had the backing of the Burmese government.

As many as 50,000 Muslim villagers are now without shelter, the spokesman said, although the region is largely cut off from outside communication, and the figures and the violence cannot be verified independently. Later reports said the mobs had moved to other villages, burning and looting. Rohongyas apparently fought back in the Taungbwe village of Kyauktaw town, killing 15 ethnic Rakhine. Two Rohingya said, the spokesman said.

The organization pleaded for United Nations help to stop the violence, saying marauding gangs attacked villages this week, burning Rohingya houses and killing at least two people. Villagers have gone into hiding from the violence. Native Rakhine have blamed the Rohingyas, with some alleging the violence is being fomented from Islamic militants in Bangladesh. That also cannot be verified.

In Washington, DC, the US government reacted by urging all parties including the Burmese government to take immediate steps to halt the violence. At the same time, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon in New York described the latest outbreak of communal violence in Northern Arakan as deeply troubling.

“The widening mistrust between the communities is being exploited by militant and criminal elements to cause large-scale loss of human lives, material destruction, displaced families as well as fear, humiliation and hatred affecting the people from all walks of life,” a spokesman for Ban said.

“The United States is deeply concerned about reports this week of increasing ethnic and sectarian violence in Burma’s Rakhine [Arakan] State, and urges parties to exercise restraint and immediately halt all attacks,” the US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told reporters at her daily news conference. “We join the international community and call on authorities within the country, including the government, civil and religious leaders, to take immediate action to halt the ongoing violence, to grant full humanitarian access to the affected areas, and to begin a dialogue towards a peaceful resolution, ensuring expeditious and transparent investigations into these and previous incidents,” she said.

The predominantly Muslim Rohingya have lived for decades in the Rakhine corner on the western coast of Burma, a long, relatively narrow region on the Andaman Sea that is blocked off from the rest of the country by the 3,000-meter Arakan Mountains. Population pressures have moved them east from Bangladesh, with tensions rising. However, the campaign against them began to intensify in November 2011 with escalating violence that impelled many of them to attempt to escape, taking boats down the long coast to Thailand where the Thais attempted to push many of them back into the sea.

As Asia Sentinel reported in July, Burmans have temporarily faded into a common “Buddhist Burmese” identity vis-à-vis the Rohingya, with senior opposition leaders from Aung San Suu Kyi’s party including Tin Oo, Nyan Win and Win Tin speaking out against the Rohingya. Well-known celebrities, scholars and well-respected writers agreed. Even Aung San Suu Kyi has remained largely silent on the issue.

Responding to questions, Nuland said the violence has been on the agenda in all of the conversations that the US has had with the Burmese, including last week’s Human Rights dialogue. US officials have made five visits down to northern Arakan State since the outbreak of the violence in June, she noted.

“That, in and of itself, is remarkable if you consider where Burma was a year ago, that they are allowing not only us, but they are allowing other international observers and UN organizations to try to assist them in getting a handle on this. It’s obviously a very difficult problem, and we are working with them on various ways to address it,” she said.

The US in October announced an additional contribution of US$2.73 million for displaced people in Rakhine, of which US$2 million was to be routed through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees with another US$730,000 to go through UNICEF for water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutritional support.

Nuland said the root of the problem can be traced to the extreme poverty and lack of opportunity that plagues both communities in Rakhine state. She refrained from responding to questions about whether the events play a role in the further lifting of sanctions on Burma. “I’m not going to get ahead of where we are, which is to try to work with Burmese authorities on ways to address both the short-term issues and the longer-term issues. As we have said, there are communal issues on both sides; there are issues of poverty on both sides. So these have to be worked out over time. But I’m not going to make any predictions about where this is going to go,” Nuland said.