Burma: Girding for the battle

When the morning mist has cleared over the rugged mountain ranges of eastern Burma, close to the Thai border, crackling loudspeakers summon the inhabitants of the Thi Baw Bo jungle camp to a communal breakfast. Hundreds of earnest-looking youngmen, and a few women, take their seats at long bamboo-tables to get their daily ration of rice, dal and nga-pi, a Burmese fermented fish paste.

Dressed in city clothes and some wearing spectacles, these young people stand out conspicuously among the Karens and the other hill tribesmen who normally move about in the almost inaccessible. jungle-covered Thai-Burmese border mountains. They are students who have fled the brutal military suppression in the towns of the Burmese lowland. The crackdown followed General Saw Maung's bloody takeover of the Government in Rangoon on September 18 in which over 400 students were gunned down by army-manned machine-gun nests located on the roofs of buildings.

Over the last fortnight, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 students and other pro-democracy activists have quickly taken refuge in the remote mountains. The terrain has for long been the operating grounds for some of Burma's numerous ethnic insurgent armies: the Karen National Liberation Army, the Karenni Army, the Mon National Liberation Army and, in the far north of the country, the Kachin Independence Army. For years, the ethnic insurgents have been lighting very hard for autonomy within a Burmese federation. But until now. they have failed to link up their struggle with the virulent anti-government agitation in the Burmese-dominated central plains.

We don't want to be just jungle fighters. We intend to learn how to conduct urban guerrilla warfare."The mass demonstrations in the towns are over now. There's really no point in getting shot by the Government's army, and we realise that the military elite that runs our, country will not give up voluntarily. Thai is why we are preparing for armed struggle against the junta in Rangoon," says Hla Aung, a 29-year-old post-graduate student of philosophy from the Rangoon Arts and Science University. He now is the general secretary of the All Burma Students' Democratic Front which counts among its members all the 1,800 students at the Thi Baw Bo camp. The front has also maintained contacts with other similar student camps which have sprung up all along the border.

About a hundred of the front's members are young women. One of them is Mee Mee, 19, also from the Rangoon university. "We have to tight." she says. "The junta promises democracy and holding of general elections even as it shoots down hundreds of students and arrests our comrades at Rangoon. We have to arm ourselves and fight back. I'm not afraid to die." Interestingly, none of the students at Thi Baw Bo see any contradiction between their decision to take up arms and the overground opposition leaders' determination to stay and wage a legal struggle in Rangoon.

They see their action as supportive of the movement led by former prime minister U Nu, ex-Brigadier-General Aung Gyi, ex-General Tin U and Aung San Suu Kyi, the famous daughter of independence hero Aung San. All of them have joined forces under the umbrella of the National United Front for Democracy. The front's formation was announced on September 24. "Itisallpart of the same struggle for democracy. It's just the means that differ," says one of the students, adding: "The ethnic rebels are our brothers, too."

Even if the students seem unanimous in their desire to join hands with the ethnic insurgents, it is evident that their style of armed struggle against Saw Maung's military government in Rangoon is going to be of an entirely different nature. Says Hla Aung: "We don't want to form just another rebel army of jungle fighters. Our intention is to learn how to conduct urban guerrilla warfare; to strike at specific targets in the towns such as military installations, petrol depots and. especially, hated army officers who are responsible for ordering the killings of unarmed demonstrators in August and September."

The students at Thi Baw Bo assert that although they have left the urban areas for the jungles, their network of underground contacts in the towns is still largely intact. They also claim to possess Sten guns, .303 Enfield rifles and a few automatic weapons captured from police stations in Rangoon in the aftermath of the coup last month. These, as well as Chinese-made M-36 hand grenades - which can be bought in the black market in Rangoon for as little as 35 Kyats (about Rs 70) - are now being hidden in "safe places" in the capital and elsewhere. If this claim indeed is true, Burma could soon be facing a Punjab-type situation with squads of well-trained and highly dedicated commandos creating havoc and disturbances which the military may be unable to control.

The students at the Thi Baw Bo camp maintain that though they've left the urban areas for the jungles their network of underground contacts in town is intact.

Sceptics, however, point out that although the students certainly do not lack dedication - nor the popular support needed to successfully wage urban guerrilla warfare - they still have to face a battle-hardened Burmese Army. Said one analyst: °Rangoon's well-disciplined troops have been fighting the ethnic insurgents almost incessantly since independence from Britain in 1948. In the towns, it has already shown that it is prepared to open tire even on peaceful demonstrators. It is not going to be a walk-over, even if the Opposition enjoys popular support."

Other sources emphasise that the insurgents who now host the students themselves face shortages of arms and ammunition. Even their training facilities are said to be limited. And no outside power has so far shown an interest in giving anything but humanitarian aid to the students along the border. "Burma's main donor countries, the US, Japan and. West Germany, have suspended their aid until the situation in the country improves to show their disapproval of the present regime. But supplying the resistance with arms and ammunition is an entirely different matter," says one political observer in Bangkok.

Two Muslim rebel groups - the Muslim Liberation Organisation of Burma led by Mustafa Kamal alias Kyaw Hla and the Kawthoolei Muslim Liberation Front headed by Dr Abdul Razak - have appealed for assistance and military aid from the Islamic world on the grounds that over 500 of the students are Muslims of subcontinental origin. But' it still remains to be seen how the outside world is going to respond to these pleas.

Most analysts in South-East Asia seem to agree that a fundamental change in Burma has to come from within the military itself, the country's most powerful institution by far. But till now, it has remained astonishingly cohesive with almost no obvious split in its ranks. That, however, may change in the light of last fortnight's developments. Said one student at Thi Baw Bo: "Earlier, the army had to fight only the ethnic insurgents along the borders. But we are Burmese and many of us have relatives in the armed forces. A situation is soon bound to occur where a field commander is forced to face his own son, nephew, or any another relative. Therefore, we do not think that the present loyalty to the top military leadership can last forever."

But an erosion in the army's ranks does not appear to be an imminent possibility. So the students are up against impossible odds. The vast majority of those at the Thi Baw Bo camp suffer from malaria, dysentery and other diseases which they contracted during their long and hazardous trek from the central plains to the guerrilla-controlled frontier areas. The armed Burmese struggle against Rangoon seems to be very much in its infancy still. 

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