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POLITICS-BURMA: Ethnic Rebel Groups Defy Junta’s Order

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 23 2010 (IPS) - Burma’s military regime is facing a formidable challenge from ethnic rebel groups that are refusing to kowtow to its order that they join the South-east Asian country’s army as border guard forces.

The junta’s order that the five armed groups in the country’s northern and eastern borders meet an Apr. 28 deadline is a test of how far the oppressive regime can flex its political muscle ahead of a promised general election later this year.

For now, at least, the defiance showed by the ethnic groups – the most powerful of which is the United Wa State Army (UWSA) that has a troop strength of over 20,000 – confirms the limits of the junta’s political powers, say analysts. After all, the latest deadline is the fifth since April last year, when the junta first ordered armed minority groups to transform into a border guard force.

“The failure to get these ceasefire groups to transform reveals the limits of the military,” said Win Min, a Burmese national security expert at Payap University in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. “The military is not as capable as many people think. It reveals political weakness.”

The pressure will mount on the Burmese government if this deadline is ignored, Win Min revealed in an interview. “The new constitution states that the country will have one army under one command, so the presence of armed ethnic groups undermines this provision in the constitution.”

The military-backed charter is due to come into force when the new parliament sits following the regime’s promised 2010 general election. Approved in a fraud-riddled referendum riddled in 2008, the constitution sets out language to absorb the armed ethnic groups as border guard forces under the wing of the powerful Burmese military.

The army in Burma, or Myanmar as it is also called, has an estimated troop strength of 400,000. The total troop strength of the ethnic fighters defying the regime is estimated at close to 45,000.

Besides the UWSA, the other four ethnic rebel groups are the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the National Democratic Alliance Army and the Shan State Army-North.

A meeting this week of all five groups sent another message to the junta that the ethnic minority fighters are not ready for change. The UWSA met with its ethnic allies “to discuss the potential threats they face in the near future,” reported ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs website run by Burmese journalists in exile in Thailand.

“(The ethnic groups) are preparing a united front against any threats to the development and stability of their territories,” ‘The Irrawaddy’ quoted a source as saying in its Apr. 22 edition.

Some of the ethnic minorities are even preparing for a potential military confrontation with Burmese troops over the contentious border guard programme.

“The situation is getting critical. The KIO is ready to fight, but it will not be the first to shoot,” said Naw Din Lahpai, editor of ‘Kachin News’, a publication by Kachin journalists in exile. “They will resist this disarmament plan of the Burmese regime aimed to eliminate all armed ethnic groups.”

The resistance to the regime’s push for the armed minority fighters to give up control of the land they hold in regions close to the Burmese border with China, India and Thailand stems from the “lack of ethnic rights in the constitution,” Naw Din told IPS. “The constitution discriminates against minorities. It doesn’t guarantee minority rights.”

The ethnic alliance standing up to the regime is part of 17 ethnic groups that began signing ceasefire agreements with the military regime since 1989. The peace pacts did not call for the transformation of the ethnic fighters into border guard forces or deliver a form of political autonomy to the ethnic minorities.

The Burmese military has been waging battles with the country’s ethnic separatists since gaining independence from the British in 1948. The military’s mission since then has been to unify the country under the authority of the majority Burman ethnic community.

Burma has some 130 ethnic communities that make up over 40 percent of the country’s 56 million population. The military, which has ruled the country since a 1962 coup, has been linked to a range of gross human rights violations, including the use of rape as a weapon of war, during its military campaigns to flush out ethnic rebels.

The separatist fighters from the Karen, an ethnic minority living close to the Burmese-Thai border, have withstood such onslaughts and turned down peace pacts with the regime. The Karen National Union (KNU) has also rejected the idea of the border guard force ahead of the election, which the rebel movement states will “legalise a dictatorship.”

“We will not support the elections nor have we supported the 2008 constitution since there is nothing hopeful for ethnic minorities,” said Zipporah Sein, the KNU’s general secretary. “It is an effort to maintain military power in Burma.”

“Ethnic people want a federal constitution unlike the current constitution, which is for a very centralised state,” the KNU’s first female leader told IPS during a telephone interview from the Thai-Burma border. “Burma will not have a democracy under the current conditions.”