As Myanmar Thaws, Decades-Old Civil War Festers on
The seasoned guerrilla officer surveys the battlefield from his do-or-die mountaintop defenses: to the front, visible through the haze, a town torched and brutalized by Myanmar government troops. To his rear, the stronghold of the country’s most potent insurgency, one of several ethnic rebellions that erupted more than 60 years ago.
As a hopeful world cheers surprising democratic moves by the military-backed government and weighs the lifting of economic sanctions, the rebels of Kachin state still are fighting for the freedoms that were promised them in 1947, as the country then called Burma was breaking free of the British Empire.
Elsewhere in the country, the government has negotiated fragile cease-fires with rebel groups, leaving Kachin State as home to the last full-blown rebellion. Here, hostilities erupted anew last year and have driven at least 60,000 from their homes in an escalating refugee crisis. Killings, torture and rapes by government troops also persist, as do sporadic clashes, according to human rights groups.
Peace with the ethnic minorities who make up 40 percent of the population is widely seen as crucial if Myanmar is to emerge from iron-fisted rule, underdevelopment, sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Continued violence against minorities also would make it difficult for the U.S. and other Western nations to lift their sanctions against Myanmar.