Introduction:
The Christian Kachins reside in the north of Myanmar sharing borders with India at the tri-junction at Walong, where China’s border also meets. For fifty years the Kachin guerrillas are fighting against the Myanmar army in a war of attrition, with no peace in sight. In the geopolitical chessboard of South East Asia, Kachins a land locked state is sandwiched between two Asian heavyweight nations, India and China, often with shifting alliances. Myitkyina straddles the Ledo road that connects the Indian town of Ledo, in Assam with Kunming the capital of Yunnan province of China.The formation of KIO (Kachin Independence Organization) in 1960 is the brainchild of Zau Seng and Lamung Tu Jai. But the credit for creating the political movement and eventually the Kachin insurgency goes to Kachin war hero Naw Seng, who was in China from 1951. Zau Seng took guidance from Naw Seng in exile.For his services in routing the Japanese by British Gen Slim’s Fourteenth Army the Northern Kachin Levies (NKL) of whose officer Naw Seng was awarded the Burma Gallantry medal twice. Out of the soldiers of NKL the British formed the 1st Kachin Rifles after the war in January 1945.It was a difficult time for the nascent Burmese state after the British left the country in January 4, 1948, with the formation of Karen National Union on April of the previous year and the KNDO (Karen National Defence Organization). The assassination of Aung San who negotiated the transfer of power from Britain to independent Burma on July 19, 1947 even before independence, is bad news for the hill tribes of Burma. U Nu succeeded Aung San as the first PM of Burma. The Karen commander of Burma Army Gen Smith Dun was replaced by Ne Win as Commander in Chief. The removal of the Karen Army Chief and the subsequent riots the predominantly Karen dominated 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Battalions became restive as Burmans began to attack Karen settlements in the delta region of Burma. Two of the battalions revolted, but Ne Win and his loyal 4th Burma Rifles put the revolt down in the suburbs of Rangoon. The revolt also made the other hill tribes uneasy.
On February 16, 1949 Captain Naw Seng of 1st Kachin Rifles took his entire battalion and joined forces with the 1st Karen Rifles. But the combined Karen and Kachin forces were defeated near Meiktila by April 1949. By 1960 as Burmese government under U Nu could stabilize the country, Naw Seng withdrew to the hills north of Hsenwi, in northern Shan state.
Kachin Independence Army (KIA):
Founded on February 5, 1961 the KIA1 was the handiwork of three brothers -Zau Seng, Zau Tu and Zau Dan. The Kachins consist of six groups: Jinghpaw, Lachid, Lhaovo, Lisu, Rawang and Zaiwa. The Jinghpaw dominates the social and cultural life, and the nationalist elements of the Kachin society. The NDA-K was formed in 1989 and it became a BGF (Border Guarding Force) under Zankhung Ting Ying, who engineered the first split of KIO in 1968 to join the BCP (Burma Communist Party). The NDA-K was finally dissolved in 2009, which during its BGF role profited from the cross-border timber trade at Kambaiti and Pangwa, the groups base area. But the fissure withinKIA developed as the second group emerged based in Shan State, the 4th Brigade led by Mahtu Naw in 1990. The ousting of KIA camps near Indian border by Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) in 1992, leading Brang Seng to sue for peace in 1994. The first ceasefire is inked. Tatmadaw formed a militia from the 4th Brigade of KIA that is located in the Shan state and it is better known as Kaungkha militia. With the Rawangs, who are residents of Putao and Nawngmun towards the Arunachal Pradesh border, the Tatmadaw in 2011 formed an EAO (Ethnic Armed Group) known as Rebellion Resistance Force (now known as People’s Militia Force). The group is based in Khaunglanphu, and used as a counter-weight to the KIAin Kachin state. Similar groups of Lisu’s sprang up in Myitkyina that are supporting the Tatmadaw’s offensive against the KIA in 2016 and clearly shows which side the wind is blowing in Kachin state. KIA gave access to Naga and Mizo rebels through its territory in the 1960s.The Naga and Mizo militancy peaked due to the foreign returned insurgents, and ideologically motivated.But the KIO came closer to New Delhi from 1988 and the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) and NSCN-IM (National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac Muivah) was denied sanctuary soon after that rapprochement, that resulted in Indian Army launch Ops Bajrang in Assam in November 1990, subsequently Ops Rhino in September 1991 dismantled the ULFA from their bases close to Myanmar border, in Arunachal Pradesh. KIA is with the Northern Alliance of UWSA (United Wa State Army), MNDAA(Myanmar National Democratic AllianceArmy), TNLA (Ta-ang National Liberation Army), NDAA (National DemocraticAlliance Army) and Arakan Army. Out of this alliance all the EAO are from Shan State, butArakan Army is from Rakhine State, in the South of Myanmar, near India’s Mizoram.All the Shan State EAOs are heavily invested in the drug trade with UWSA is the most important with a large standing army. The KIO had banned opium poppy cultivation in Kachin State in 1984. Increasing political pressure on KIO to accept the BGF proposal was the reason of the breakdown of the 17 years old ceasefire. As KIA came under pressure it supported the formation of new armed groups-the TNLA (Ta-ang National Liberation Army) and Arakan Army equipping and training them in Laiza since 2009. These groups increased conflict in northern Shan State, aligning with like-minded armed groups. Similar pressure tactics was put on MNDAA in Laukkaing, the capital of Kokang, famous for its notorious casinos on the Chinese border, with an attack on August 2009. The MNDAAchief Peng Jia Sheng fled to China.New Conflict Situation in Kachin State
The Tatmadaw broke the ceasefire with KIA in a truce that saw peace from 1994 for seventeen long years. And the current flare up of conflict is part of the recent political developments in Myanmar in February 2021. The centre of the unfolding clash is the Hpakant jade mines, between Tatmadaw and KIA, with other EAOs sprinkling in between. If the Kachin timber and jade is out of bounds of Tatmadaw and its intermediaries like UWSA and AA from Myitkyina, northern Kachin areas and Hpakant, it will sap at the very base of the Myanmar army finance interest.After February 1, 2021, Myanmar military junta coup from March, the KIA stepped up attack on military positions that are aimed at stopping the jade mining in the Kachin state. This area denial attacks by KIA will seriously affect the jade trade that profits both the state and KIA.Just like KIA trained ULFA in 1980 it trained the Bisheswar Singh led PLA (People’s Liberation Army) of Manipur in 1985, as the group surfaced in 1978, as a sessionist organization. The PLA is in the spotlight with the ghastly ambush on an Assam Riles convoy on November 13, 2021 at that took the life of the CO 46AR Col Viplav Tripathi, his wife, son and five other jawans. The incident happened in the Indian state of Manipur’s Churachandpur district at Sekhan village, cheek by jowl to Chin Hills of Myanmar.Indian border with Myanmar is 1643 kms that begins at Walong, in Arunachal Pradesh in the north in tri-junction of India, China and Myanmar’s Kachin state. The border ends at Parva, Lawngtlai district in Mizoram state, at the tri-junction of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.Through this lightly manned border insurgents groups like the Assamese, Manipuri and Naga groups trained by KIA ingress through Kachin, Sagaing, Chin and Rakhine state of Myanmar to India. From the 1960s to late 1980s these groups fought lowintensity warfare with Indian security forces. Ceasefire with NSCN (IM) from 1997 with Government of India, brought peace to Nagaland state sharing international borders with Myanmar.The two decade old Mizoram insurgency of MNF (Mizo National Front) ended in 1986, leaving Manipur state, sharing borders with Sagaing and Chin state of Myanmar, with groups like PLA out of the ceasefire with the Indian government. The beginning of 2014 also saw Arakan Army operating from Chin state from their northern bases close to Chinese border, complicating the drug and insurgent activities in Manipur. The Arakan Army then started to target the Kaladan Multi Modal Project an Indian strategic interests in Rakhine province. Rakhine is incidentally the home turf of Arakan Army. Recently Arakan Army extended their support to the junta like UWSA, SSPP (Shan State Progressive Party) political party of SSA-N (Shan State Army-North).With the KIA and the Kachin insurgency beginning to bare its fangs once again, with the junta government in power, the KIO voiced their opposition to the junta takeover from the civilian democratically elected government that resonated with the Bamar public opinion in the Irrawaddy delta. But that does not change the dynamics of the Kachin conflict. And like the other EAOs of the Northern Alliance it is not any richer with weapon as the UWSA or AA secures from their patrons, that includes Manpads (surface to air missiles) to name a few.Conclusion:
Between the jade mines of Kachin state and the drug economy of the neighbouring Shan state’s Golden Triangle in Myanmar, fuels the protracted insurgency. Both the state and EAOs (Ethnic Armed Organizations) are locked in a vortex of conflict, with the state responding by forming militias to control the EAOs. One such militia is KDA or Kaungkha militia, based in Shan state that is involved in drug trade with supply lines to Manipur state in North East India. The Kaungkha militia is supplying meth or yaba pills to Arakan Army that is swarming the North East India and Bangladesh with tablet methamphetamine. Just like the 1970s and 1980s, Kachin handiwork to shape the future guerrilla armies of North East India, the militias that form the backbone of Tatmadaw and its war with EAOs, the new found official identity gave the militias much needed impunity to indulge in drug trafficking. The cost of Myanmar’s low-intensity war against the Kachins and Shan insurgents, both of which have interest in jade and drugs respectively, presents North East India with a security conundrum, as the latest Churachandpur ambush by PLA shows.The EAOs like UWSA, AA, MNDAA, and NDAA use the ceasefire with the state and forge alliance with government militias like Kaungkha, to keep the informal drug economy running into billions of dollars. And ethnic insurgents fund their standing armies out of the booming meth trade of which Myanmar, is largest producer in the world. And as the yaba pills and heroin are pouring into North East India, the militant groups both across the spectrum, in ceasefire or in conflict mode benefit by the drug trade, like the Shan State groups.
The Kachin and Shan State imbroglio in northern Myanmar presents not just a security threat to India but it is a global threat. The EAOs are hand in glove with mafia organizations like Sam Gor or Chinese triads who are trafficking meth and precursor chemicals to Amsterdam and New Mexico. Militias like Kaungkha, are producing methyl fentanyl, which is many times lethal than heroin, that is eventually finding its way to the US.The no-holds-barred approach by the state as far as these EAOs, BGF and militias are concerned is creating a global threat to democracy.