The colonial war against the Kachins is a win-win thing, that is, except for the Kachin people.

BY Maung Zarni


The sustained attack on the KIA serves both the commanders' interests and those of Than Shwe Inc - as well as dev and investment crowds.

The Burmese commanders feel shit and ashamed about not being able to defeat the KIA in a month's time since the ceasefire broke down (because NPT thought it could easily overpower the KIA just like it did with the Kokang which were a Han Chinese drug-related militia which Ne Win helped set up to check the genuine Shan nationalist troops of Shan State Army in the 1960s and 1970s). It's been over a year now and the Kachins are bloody, but not vowed. Their Burma army battalions - extremely low in both number and quality - got wiped out in previous waves before they started to use air force.

The Wa are also said to have quietly supplied the Kachins their more advanced weaponry, something the Thais were concerned about re: the Karen resistance and the possibility of the Wa supplying the KNLA with the weapons. The Karens sued for peace, largely on the regime's terms.

Than Shwe Inc in NPTaw will use the militarily weakened KIA to squeeze surrender out of the Kachins, which is going to sow the seed for future resistance and this time ethnic hatred of the Burmese.

The dev agency and investors want the lucrative areas clear of any armed conflicts. The most outrageous thing is the debt cancellation as the regime commits war crimes against the Kachins. In history - certainly in my book - the Paris Club will be recorded as the financiers of Burma's new killing fields.

So, the Kachin war is all win-win except for the Kachin people. The only thing that seems to going for the Kachin Independence Organization now is that the Kachin people are solidly behind the KIA and its just resistance. The Kachins are prepared to fight on - rather than submit to Naypyidaw's vicious Bama feudal militarism.