POLITICS-BURMA: Truce with Ethnic Rebels Gives Junta a Boost

By Larry Jagan Reprint | | Print |

Larry Jagan

BANGKOK, Jan 28 2004 (IPS) - An official ceasefire agreement between Burma’s military leaders and rebels with the Karen National Union (KNU), which may only be weeks away, promises to give Rangoon a key publicity victory.

After all, the KNU is the largest and most significant ethnic group that has been waging a guerrilla war – for 55 years now – against the military government. Rangoon, for its part, has long been anxious to negotiate ceasefire agreements with rebel groups.

The KNU and the Burmese regime are planning to meet again in the next few weeks probably in Pa’an, the capital of northern Karen state, which borders Thailand. A formal peace agreement may be agreed at that meeting.

The turning point in peace negotiations came in mid-January, when the KNU military leader Gen Bo Mya went to Rangoon and agreed in principle to a peace deal with Burmese Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt. ”But there’ll have to be many more meetings before there is a formal arrangement,” said the Karen spokesman David Taw, after returning to Bangkok on Jan. 22.

Until now the Karen rebels have been labelled bandits and terrorists, but Prime Minister Khin Nyunt even hosted a birthday party for Gen Bo Mya in Rangoon.

Resolving the ethnic rebellions has been a crucial part of the military government’s claim to legitimacy. It is also a central part of Khin Nyunt’s plans for ”national reconciliation” – as the regime describes its proposed political reform.

”Peace talks between Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and General Bo Mya clearly show that the Burmese leaders are pushing ahead with their process of national reconciliation,” said Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai after meeting the Karen leader on his return to Bangkok.

”It shows that Khin Nyunt is seriously moving forward with his road map,” he added in an interview.

The Burmese government is keen that all ethnic groups, which have a long history of chafing at Rangoon’s rule, should participate in the National Convention due to be reconvened later this year to draw up a new constitution. This is the first step in the prime minister’s seven-stage road map to democracy.

For the KNU’s part, the ceasefire may well be a recognition of the toll that war has taken. Its headquarters fell nearly a decade ago and it no longer has the same support from the Thai military, which had been keen to see it form a buffer zone with Burma.

More than 120,000 Karen live in camps along the Thai border and some 200,000 are believed to be internally displaced, driven away by what dissidents and human rights activists say are military campaigns by Rangoon’s armed forces.

If the KNU enters into a peace pact, the handful of other ethnic rebel groups still fighting are likely to follow.

The Karenni (the Karenni National Progressive Party or KNPP) and the Chin (Chin National Front or CNF) are already discussing a truce with Rangoon through intermediaries.

More than 20 ethnic rebel groups and factions already have ceasefire agreements with Rangoon. The first were negotiated in 1989, including one with the Wa (United Wa State Party) which has the most powerful military wing with over 20,000 armed troops under its command.

All these peace deals are informal arrangements with no signed agreements.

However, rebels with the Kachin ethnic group, the Kachin Independence Organisation or KIO were an exception and signed a formal ceasefire agreement with the local military commander after they successfully negotiated their truce in 1994.

For years the issue of a possible ceasefire agreement with Burma’s generals has cause division and resentment within the KNU.

There has been intermittent contact between the two sides for the past 10 years. Prior to the latest initiative, the last real talks between the two sides took place in 1996.

But communication channels have remained open between Gen Khin Nyunt as the military intelligence chief and Gen Bo Mya. For instance, the Burmese leader has continued to regularly send a bottle of special Burmese fish sauce only available in Rangoon to the Karen military leader, say Burmese military intelligence officials.

In recent months, Gen Bo Mya has seized the initiative. He sent a personal delegation to Rangoon in mid-December to explore a possible ceasefire. At the time this was not well received within the KNU, especially among t the political wing of the organisation and some senior Karen military commanders.

But in the last few weeks, the Karen have united behind the initiative and agreed a strategy for continued talks with the Burmese regime.

Their priorities are the negotiation of a ceasefire agreement, setting up a process of monitoring infringements of the truce, and deciding how to deal with the ‘internally displaced people’ in Karen state that number more than quarter of a million people, according to aid workers along the Thai-Burma border.

The Burmese government has already informally invited the KNU to participate in the national convention. However, Taw said, ”The KNU will only decide on that after a formal agreement on a ceasefire.”

For Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt, getting the Karen involved in the National Convention would be crucial. All the other ceasefire groups have already pledged their willingness to participate. But most of these groups have privately urged the regime to include the ethnic groups still waging armed struggle, especially the Karen, and declare a nationwide ceasefire.

It would seem that this may have helped motivate Gen Khin Nyunt’s latest overtures to the KNU, though the Thai government has also been urging Rangoon to resolve the remaining conflicts, particularly with the KNU.

But as Khin Nyunt tries to ensure that all the ethnic groups participate in the National Convention, the date of its reconvening may be further delayed.

”It will start some time in 2004,” is what the military intelligence officer in charge of preparations would tell the visiting Karen delegation. That runs counter to previous hints from Burma’s Foreign Minister Win Aung that it should begin its deliberations in the first few months of this year.

”The National Convention will start soon,” said Surakiart, ”now that the Karen are on board”.