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Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebe



Subject: Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebels

Paris, Friday, October 8, 1999
Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebels
Wired Revolution Helps Guerrillas 

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By Thomas Crampton International Herald Tribune
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BANGKOK - After fleeing into the Burmese jungle on foot as military police
closed in on his home, Sonny Mahinder soon found himself immersed in a world
for which physics classes had not prepared him.
One of the thousands of university students who fled Burma's central cities
following the military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1988, Mr.
Mahinder had no experience in jungle living and didn't even know how to hold
a gun.

But equally important for his and other student associations that had been
decimated after the crackdown was establishing effective communications to
find out who was where and exactly what was going on.

While this took months to accomplish in 1988, Mr. Mahinder and members of
rebel groups with strongholds along the Thai-Burma border say today's
communications technology would have dramatically increased the speed of the
process.

On arriving in the jungle, the students initially relied on communications
networks already set up by long-established insurgent groups along
Thailand's border. Many have been at war with the Rangoon government
virtually nonstop since Burma gained independence in 1948. 

To send a message into a city in central Burma, the rebel groups relayed
messages via radio through a series of strongholds to the nearest friendly
position, from where the final message was often delivered by foot messenger.

Although quite secure, the delivery time for foot messengers varies
tremendously. Runners in low-risk areas can move at high speeds, while the
presence of government troops limits messengers to night travel and forces
them to circumnavigate large military emplacements.

Notes normally change hands several times, especially when they are taken
into cities in central Burma.

Even after the students became more organized with the founding of the All
Burma Students' Democratic Front, it could take up to two months to gather
full information on allied and enemy emplacements.

The slow speed of communications hindered defensive deployments, prevented
coordinated offensives and left soldiers blindly wandering into bloody clashes.

For those outside Burma, news was virtually nonexistent.

Now, however, the falling price of sophisticated radio equipment, the
introduction of inexpensive satellite imagery and the spreading of news via
Internet are making it easier to run jungle-based insurrection.

The communications revolution came to Mr. Mahinder in the form of FM
wavelength walkie-talkies and shortwave radios purchased soon after he
became regiment commander in charge of 200 soldiers.

''The FM communication completely changed our ability to report and get
instructions,'' Mr. Mahinder said. ''Finally our front-line troops could
tell where the government troops were coming from so we could prepare for
their offensive.'' 

Shortwave radios may have a greater range, but handheld walkie-talkies are
the most powerful communications tool for jungle warfare, Mr. Mahinder said.

''Walkie-talkies are easier to jam and easier for the government to
monitor,'' he said. ''But it takes just a few minutes of training to operate
a walkie-talkie, and it fits easily in your pocket.'' Shortwave radios run
off bulky car batteries that must be recharged with a generator and setting
up for a broadcast requires both skill and time.

All insurgent radio broadcasts use code to conceal information.

''We learned very early that there are no secrets in the airwaves,'' Mr.
Mahinder said, adding that the Rangoon government has an elite signals
intelligence unit with sophisticated listening posts that monitor insurgent
broadcasts.

All information regarding troop positions, estimates of enemy movements and
the time and date at which operations will be undertaken are broadcast in
code that can be deciphered only with the help of a paperback code book
carried by each unit.

For added security, the soldiers occasionally use a radio scrambling
technique known as channel-hopping, whereby the radio frequency is changed
at irregular intervals to make it more difficult to monitor an entire
conversation.

Certain information - planned movements, logistics details and the names of
contacts - will only be communicated in writing between commanders and
delivered by hand with a messenger, Mr. Mahinder said.

The ideal addition to their current jungle communications equipment, Mr.
Mahinder said, would be a network of solar-powered FM transmission boosters.
Placed on hilltops inaccessible to government troops, signal boosters would
increase walkie-talkie range up to several hundred miles from the standard
two or three miles, allowing signals to be received in cities within central
Burma.

''I could see sending swarms of people into the cities with
walkie-talkies,'' Mr. Mahinder said. ''The government could trace the site
of each broadcast, but by that time we would already have walked down the
street.'' 

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