“We are willing to negotiate a ceasefire,
but that’s impossible when the military
keeps bombing our positions”
Gun Maw, KIA general
Not far from here, in the main hospital in Laiza,
where the KIA is based, patients can’t be treated for the
lack of medicines. They are so many that even those
with infectious diseases can’t be separated from the rest.
Here, the adoption of democracy hasn’t seen a change
for the better. “We also thought that over the last year
things would get a lot better, and we are still hoping
that they will, but unfortunately, what we are seeing at
the moment is an increase in fighting, not a decrease,
and people need to be able to get to places where they
can get aid,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs’ Mark Cutts told Al Jazeera
during an interview. He also conceded that access to
help for displaced people was easier with the military
government than it is now. “It’s baffling,” he says.
The KIA can’t afford to stop training new recruits.
Its camps are teeming with teenagers as young as 14
enrolling in military crash courses. Girls and boys
practise with wooden guns before they can handle
the homemade version of the Kalashnikov AK-47 and
be sent to the frontlines. “We have to fight for a future in
freedom,” says Maran, a 16-year-old “coach”. Her trainees
are barely one or two years younger than her – or older,
even – but they obey with diligence. Physical training
and strategy are taught in the morning. After a frugal
lunch, they sleep in bunks during the scorching hours
around noon, and then everything starts again. “It’s
exhausting, but we do it for our families. We have lost
everything to the army,” a young man explains.
Five hundred kilometres southeast in Kayin State,
the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) holds
similar training – but with a big difference: They are
now at peace with the Burmese military. Still, their
leaders expect war again at any time. Zipporah Sein, vice
president of the KNLA’s political arm, explains why:
“The only way to achieve permanent peace is to honour
what Suu Kyi’s father – Aung San, the hero of Burma’s
independence – promised 70 years ago: a federal state
where we all share power equally. Without that, ethnic
minorities will always feel discriminated against by the
Bamar majority, and they will fight for more autonomy
or even independence.”
The 1.3 million Rohingya in Rakhine State, just 150
kilometres to the east, fight for survival. Their tragic
situation has become the darkest stain on Suu Kyi’s
ballot sheet since she became a member of parliament.
“The Lady” has refused to call them Rohingya, and her
party refers to them as Bengalis, although the Muslim
group has lived in the Buddhist-majority country for
generations; Bangladesh has repeatedly refused to take
them in and those that fled to the country are kept in
crammed refugee camps.left Kachin Independence
Army trainees on a break at
their barracksbottom A child who was
hit by shrapnel during an
army offensive in Laiza,
Kachin State, in a wheelchair.
She gets no care apart from
what her family can offer herIMAGES © ZIGOR ALDAMA1988
Social unrest leads to a violent
crackdown by the military.
Thousands die1948
Burma becomes an
independent country
six months after the
assassination of Aung San,
who made it possible1960
Moderate U Nu wins Burma’s
first democratic elections.
Two years later, a coup d’état
ousts him and makes Burma
a military dictatorship1945
Britain recovers Burma from
the Japanese with the help of
Aung San. Some groups fight
with the British in the hope of
an independent federal state→culture