additionals to Chris's article (r)

[yu148683@xxxxxxxx]

On 16 Apr 1998 brelief@xxxxxxx wrote:


If someone want to make an in-depth study in refugee problem,
in combination with the (Chris's) curent onet, I would like to
suggest to check the following aritcle.

"FEEDING REFUGEES OR WAR?, THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN AID"

by  Ben Barbar

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- JULY/AUG 1997 ISSUE

Ben Barbar, State Department correspondent for "The Washington Times"
He also writes in London Observer, USA Today and Christian Science
Monitar. In 1991, he has directed a study for Refugee Policy Group in the
UN which has planned to repatriate over 300,000 Cambodian refugees.
You can also retrieve "Foreign Affairs" back issues via Yahoo.com.

Related issue- If someone is also interested in the religion based ethnic
wars worldwide, he should not miss a Harvard luminary, i.e, Samuel
Huntington's " Clash of Civilizations", which also was in  "Foreign
Affairs", Summer, 1993 issue.

myintshwe

> Date: 16 Apr 1998 05:18:30
> From: brelief@xxxxxxx
> Reply-To: "Conference reg.burma" <burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Recipients of burmanet-l <burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Old Flames, from Burma Issues, March 1998
> 
> Burma Issues
> March 1998
> 
> The Border
> 
> Old Flames
> 
> Around 1 a.m. on March 11, Hway Ka Loke (a.k.a. Wangka) refugee camp in
> western Thailand was attacked using light and heavy weapons, then set
> ablaze. According to estimates, as much as 90% of the camp, which houses
> 9,000 Karen and other Burmese refugees, was destroyed by fire. Roughly 1,500
> homes, the majority of personal belongings, and most public buildings such
> as schools and clinics were consumed by fire. At least 30 people were
> injured, several seriously, threatening to raise the death toll above the
> three confirmed fatalities. Within 24 hours, two other major refugee camps
> in the same province were under alert, anticipating attacks from across the
> border.
> 
> This event was in fact a better organized repeat of a similar incursion on
> January 27, 1997, over one year ago. Like last year, a well-armed contingent
> of the Democratic Kayin/Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) entered the camp
> unimpeded. Splitting into three groups, they took advantage of the confusion
> created by mortar fire to set the camp alight.  There are many reports of
> random shooting at the fleeing population. This year's attack differs
> significantly in that people were targeted, not just the physical structures
> of the camp itself.
> 
> The attack on Hway Ka Loke marks a further deterioration of the political
> situation on both sides of the border, particularly in Karen-held territory
> north of Three Pagodas Pass. It seems to be rooted in a tense and serious
> power struggle between the DKBA and the Karen National Union (KNU), locked
> in a struggle to establish greater power vis-a-vis the Burma Army. Clearly,
> the DKBA is responsible for this attack. The origins of the current
> conflict, however, seem to have less to do with refugee issues as such than
> military events across the border in the regions commonly called (KNU) 7th
> and northern 6th brigades, where the KNU and DKBA are vying for control of
> the civilian population.
> 
> In the last three years, the DKBA has grown from a SLORC-sponsored puppet
> militia to a large, if poorly organized and ill-disciplined, collection of
> nationalist Karen field commanders operating throughout the northern Karen
> border areas. Under the symbolic and political leadership of U Thuzana, the
> Myaing Kyi Ngu Sayadaw (meaning abbot of Myaing Kyi Ngu), the DKBA claims
> its identity as a representative of the Karen Buddhist majority which failed
> to share a voice in the KNU.  The DKBA headquarters at Myaing Kyi Ngu has
> become both a political and military center and a religious colony, styled
> loosely after the famous Pa-an forest monastery at Thammanya, whose abbot is
> one of the most revered monks in Burma.
> 
> The growth of the DKBA has presented a particularly acute dilemma to the
> KNU, which has faced a serious decline in economic, political and symbolic
> power in the last several years. Fighting its traditional enemy, the Burma
> Army, had always strengthened the KNU's symbolic position regardless of its
> results. Putting up a fight was good enough to reinforce the belief that
> Karen people were struggling for something better. To many Karens, the KNU,
> despite its faults, still represents Karen people resisting oppression by
> their traditional enemy. They identify it as a struggle to establish
> "Kawthoolei", a Karen homeland which would fulfill the mythological destiny
> of the Karen people, who describe themselves as forsaken, misunderstood and
> perpetually vulnerable to subjugation by alien races. An essential part of
> the Karen resistance to this oppression is a conviction that the Karen
> people are in fact united against a common enemy, either the Burma Army or
> the Burman people, depending on who one asks. The idea of a Karen enemy,
> embodied in the DKBA, destroys both the belief in a united nationality as
> well as the familiarity of fighting a traditional enemy.
> 
> But for many Karens, the DKBA offered a Karen alternative to the KNU. For
> some, the DKBA redressed the exploitation of Karen by their own people,
> challenging a flawed KNU military-administrative machine. This sense was
> heightened when the SLORC granted the DKBA at least limited autonomy in
> Karen-populated territories in eastern Burma, making a nominal reality the
> Karen homeland which figures so heavily in nationalist propaganda.
> Regardless of the Burmese military's role in starting up the DKBA, by 1998
> it had become a nationalist Karen movement in its own right, relatively
> well-armed under the auspices of a watchful Burma Army, relying on an
> extensive network throughout the border regions.
> 
> For the last year, the KNU has been taking increasingly desperate measures
> to fight off the DKBA's influence in the Karen state. The landmine problem
> has been increasing throughout the contested border regions along the Dawna
> mountain rage. Mines, an under-gunned KNU's weapon of choice for holding
> territory, have been the cause of so many civilian and military casualties
> that for the first time in the last five years people are expressing fear of
> returning to their villages because of them. With the DKBA, KNU, and Burma
> Army all mining roads and fields and then eventually withdrawing from the
> area, the civilian population is the only sure target. In addition to
> extensive mining, the KNU has been using very unpopular hit-and-run tactics
> against the DKBA, including on February 19, an attack on a village Buddhist
> festival at Ker Gho, a DKBA-held area, in which civilian revelers as well as
> DKBA soldiers were killed. According to local sources, KNU units near Myaing
> Kyi Ngu have been kidnapping villagers to extort money, a common practice in
> Burmese insurgent movements, but one which has created immense animosity
> among people in the area.
> 
> The rise of the DKBA's influence throughout Karen State and the heightened
> tensions in the civil war zones have intensified rivalries with the KNU. The
> Thai refugee camps are still seen as safe havens for KNU supporters; and
> indeed they do provide food security, education and shelter for people
> regardless of political affiliation. Nevertheless, they have always served
> as logistics, recruitment and economic centers for the KNU. The DKBA,
> wishing to even the playing field, plans to destroy all the camps and force
> the people back to Burma in order to destroy the KNU's popular support and
> force it to abandon its own counter-insurgency programs in DKBA-contested areas.
> 
> This analysis raises the question of the Burma Army's involvement in the
> refugee camp attack. The general consensus is that regardless of who else
> may have been in cooperation, this was a DKBA operation. Of course, the
> arming and transport of DKBA soldiers past the garrison and trade town of
> Myawaddy necessitated Burma Army cooperation. Refugee camp residents,
> clinging to the belief that only the traditional enemy, not other Karen,
> would be capable of such brutality, cite several clues to a Burmese
> conspiracy, such as that some of the attackers spoke in Burmese, not Karen.
> Nevertheless, the DKBA has its own agenda in relation to the KNU, its own
> arms and a strong feeling of independence.
> 
> Reliable first-hand reports from DKBA headquarters at Myaing Kyi Ngu further
> indicate that not only was Wednesday's attack a DKBA plan, but that it is
> the first in a series of attacks to be expected this season. As early as the
> first week of March, people in Myaing Kyi Ngu were aware of the DKBA's
> intentions to attack Hway Ka Loke. On March 11 and 12, truckloads of
> well-armed DKBA soldiers were spotted heading north of the road to Bae Klaw
> (a.k.a. Mae La) refugee camp, on their way to begin an operation against the
> camp, under command of Maung Chit Thoo. Beginning on March 12, Bae Klaw camp
> and the surrounding hillsides have been subject to mortar shelling as KNU,
> DKBA, and Thai military forces all jockey for advantage.
> 
> This background serves to provide some frame of reference for Wednesday's
> events, but it also suggests what the future holds for the refugees.
> Clearly, there will be no security for them in Thailand, no matter what
> demands are made, and whether or not the U.N. attempts to intervene. The
> Thai military is neither prepared nor is disposed to provide long-term
> security for anyone, Thai or Karen, along this border. Indeed, these
> large-scale attacks merely serve as reminders of the overall collapse of
> security in the border districts, where armed bandits terrorize not only
> refugee camps but Thai villages and highways as well. Unless Thai and
> international policies towards Burmese refugees change, the refugees will
> face two clearly troubling options: living in increasing insecurity along
> the border or going back to Burma.
> 
> This ultimatum is a hitter reality for many people. Some have lived in Thai
> refugee camps for over a decade, cut off from Burma, addicted to
> humanitarian aid and waiting on some kind of useful leadership. The
> universal response from refugees up and down the border to questions about
> the future is that they simply don't know. They wish for protection and aid
> from the U.N. or the Thai government, yet neither has the will nor the power
> to intervene meaningfully at this late stage of the crisis. Those refugees
> who support the KNU hold a similar wish for external salvation: aid from the
> U.N., arms from America, succor and unconditional support from the outside.
> The prospect of returning to Burma is, perhaps ironically, the only option
> with a glimmer of hope at all. For many, the struggle for peace and human
> dignity was knocked off course as soon as they began to see themselves as
> refugees and define their problems as such. The long-held refrain that the
> refugees would go back to Burma once peace and democracy reigned was not
> hope at all, but the antithesis of hope, a resignation that to build a
> better future was out of one's hands. Attacks on the refugees provide
> another powerful jolt - a shocking realization for the people about how
> off-course they have wandered, from people struggling for dignity within
> their own country to unwanted exiles divorced from it.
> 
> In the final analysis, the peace and justice they yearn for can only be
> achieved from within Burma, by their own effort and responsibility. But
> going back to Burma in itself is not the answer, for it is a dangerous and
> insecure process. If people will return, they must do so with the support
> and observation of a world community that understands that their struggle
> continues to be on the other side of the border. Building peace inside Burma
> is a daunting task, but one more hopeful and worthy of support than the road
> which brought them here.
> 
> By Chris Cusano
> http://www2.gol.com/users/brelief/Index.htm
>