Both sides now

Richard Humphries visits Burma's Karen State

Kansai Time out, September 2001

A large red billboard stands along the main highway that runs through Pa-an, Karen State's capital. Its message is blunt, even menacing. "Tatmadaw and the People in Eternal Unity: Anyone attempting to Divide Them is Our Enemy."

The Tatmadaw is the Burmese Army and the "eternal unity" possesses all the affection of a forced marriage in which one spouse needlessly brutalized the other. For anyone coming to Karen State from Burma's capital, those signs, often in English, are nothing new. They dot Rangoon (and elsewhere) and are often placed in front of major hotels and embassies. This suggests a talismanic role in warding off the supposed malign intentions of outsiders. At first appearance, though, they seemed oddly out of place in Pa-an.

This lowland settlement is more like an oversized town than urban center and sits astride the Salween River. Somewhat bucolic and very friendly in nature, it benefits from the appearance in the near distance of jagged karst peaks, which break up the flat topography. Daylight allows one, particularly coming from japan where this quality is sorely lacking, to appreciate the use of color in dwellings and on the other buildings, such as with the large green mosque in the town center. In the evenings, the flickering of candlelight and oil lamps in houses, though indicative of poverty, lend an ethereal quality to the place.

Occasional hushed conversations hint at more serious matters. "Things are quiet now in Pa-an," according to one shopkeeper, "but they are not always quiet." And for many locals "quiet" is an operative survival technique. "We can talk here inside. If we were in public, Military Intelligence would be watching and listening. They are everywhere," said one man who cannot be named.

The Burmese Army controls Pa-an and much of Karen State. Bits and pieces are parceled out to the regime's ethnic allies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA). This group, for whom the word "democratic" is stretching matters, splintered off in 1995 from Karen National Liberation Army, an ethnic force that has been fighting Rangoon since 1949.One sees full-armed Tatmadaw and DKBA infantry in and outside Pa-an. The latter can be distinguished by their wearing of yellow headbands. They often speed by in pick-ups while brandishing grenades and assault rifles.

The government has opened very few places in Karen State to visitors. One such town is Hlaing-bwe, some 30 kilometers to the north. Smaller than Pa-an, Hlaing-bwe may be open but openness has its limits. I was permitted only an hour's stay by the clearly surprised and annoyed officials ("You are the first foreigner to come here like this"). And there was also the unwanted but assigned escort of three suspicious military intelligence officers who were never more than a few feet away. Thinking that "tourists" should take tourist photos, they would sometimes order clearly frightened locals to stand and pose. Despite faking snaps, it was not hard to feel guilty - an accessory to their fear.

Upon return to Pa-an, I met two young German tourists, who, unknowingly, had their own minder. This man, claiming to be a student who liked meeting foreigners to practice his English, knew exactly where I had just been and was "in contact" as he put it, with "friends" in military intelligence. For visitors who know the score and avoid trouble, there is little problems. There is also the passport to fall back upon. Locals do not have this option, it must always be remembered, but there is one place in Karen State that offers hope of a way out of the darkness.

The monastery town of Thamanya is some 40 kilometers east of Pa-an. When Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her first period (for five years) of house arrest in 1995, she went to Thamanya. The sayadaw (abbot) is U Vinaya, now about 90 years old. Some Burmese believe he possesses supernatural powers that are all for the good. After a group of us had received his personal blessing, I was asked to approach and shown a framed photo of him with Suu Kyi. U Vinaya is well known for his distinct lack of sympathy towards the military junta.His monastery comprises a hill with a residence at the base and a large complex of structures at the summit. One building is the immense dining hall, where hundreds of monks eat together with the steady stream of visiting pilgrims. The food is vegetarian, tasty and wholesome; the general atmosphere both pious and exhilarating.

The Thamanya Sayadaw has declared the small region around his monastery a "zone of peace." There is to be no violence and no guns. The DKBA has not entered into the spirit of the latter, but the former has held quite well; perhaps because U Vinaya's renown extends throughout Burma and into Thailand. In contrast to the junta's method of road building, which involves forced labor, the Sayadaw requested that people help him pave a road to benefit all. The response was large, enthusiastic and immediate. Local people are angered now, though, because the military collects payments from locals who use the road.

Karen State can also be approached from another direction, but this is by invitation only. It is definitely not recommended for casual travelers to attempt. Journalisits, aid workers and missionaries sometimes make difficult, and occasionally dangerous, forays across the border from Thailand into territory controlled by the Karen national Liberation Army (KNLA) and its political wing, the Karen National Union (KNU). The KNLA is organized along Britishlines into brigades subdivided into battalions. Wallaykee, just across the border from Thailand, is located in the KNLA's 6th Brigade region and guarded by its 201st Battalions. It is very much a jungle setting, set amongst the lush green hills of the Dawna Range that offer visual attractions and, most certainly, vantage points into contested territory.

Since losing many of its fixed bases in 1995 after DKBA split and joined Rangoon, the KNLA has reverted to a more guerrilla-type strategy. Most units are now mobile and bases are usually temporary in nature. All sides in the conflict use landmines to guard supply routes and protect outposts. This has added a profound element of terror and suffering to villagers who risk their lives and limbs daily in the mundane but necessary tasks of farming.

On January 31, 2001, the KNU celebrated its 52nd annual Karen Revolution Day. At Wallaykee there were some surreal elements. The night before, as a band played in front of a small stage facing a field, KNLA soldiers showed off their dancing skills, all the white with M-16s or RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade launchers)slung over their backs. During one break, a visiting Christian missionary gave a speech, that included the improbable statement that, "England has not forgotten you." The ceremony itself was serious, but not without some poignancy, for this is very much a forgotten conflict despite the missionary's assertion. The KNLA has been gradually losing ground since 1949. Over 100,000 Karen languish in dead-end Thai refugee camps, but even more lack that tentative security. These have fled the fighting, the extortions, the Tatmadaw's forced labor requirements, and far worse, but stayed inside Burma's jungles as internally displaced persons always on the run.

When the world's press does take notice, it is often in form of smug bemusement, as with the debacle surrounding another Karen force, the so-called "God's Army," led by two twelve-year-old boys. In Blue Highways, William Least-Heat Moon, saw a very similar tragedy, the Ghost Dance War in America that led to the massacre of Native-Americans at Wounded Kee, much more clearly and sympathetically. These were, "desperate resurrection rituals, the dying rattles of a people whose last defense was delusion, about all that remained to them..."

After a line up of battalion members at Wallaykee, the base commander read out a speech by the KNU was not ready to give up. "In the 52 years, numerous Karen patriots have sacrificed their lives for stability of life, freedom, equality and democracy. The responsibility to realize aspirations of those, who have sacrificed their lives for the cause, rest squarely upon our shoulders. We must faithfully carry on the struggle."

The Karen Hills, such as Wallaykee, are certainly beautiful but no longer pristine. The war against and among people is accompanied by one against nature. Huge areas of natural forest are being logged. Although the KNU is involved in this, by far the lion's share of the logging benefits the junta. Much of the products goes to Thailand. One environmental activist with close contacts in the region observed that as soon as "God's Army" was crushed, Thai provincial and military officials sought to upgrade a logging road into the captured are and to get permission from the junta to remove logs and extract reputed gold deposits.

The day at Wllaykee ended with well-executed traditional dances by young Karen men and women. Somehow, one could only hope for a future that would see more emphasis placed on, the organized patterns of traditional dance than on advancing soldiers or the incessant buzzing of chainsaws that destroy forests.