NEWS - 12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's

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Subject: NEWS - 12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's Army, Brothers believed to have divine  powers lead a group of Myanmar fighters

12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's Army, Brothers believed to have divine
 powers lead a group of Myanmar fighters

Thursday, December 16, 1999

  
     BY APICHART WEERAWONG
     THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

        KA MAR PALAW, Myanmar --
     Here at the jungle base of God's Army, no one
     questions the leadership of Luther and Johnny Htoo. 
         No matter that the 12-year-old twins are shorter
     than the M-16 rifles some of their followers carry. The
     fighters who have rallied behind them believe the
     brothers offer divine protection in a children's crusade
     that blends elements of the Old Testament and Lord of
     the Flies. 
         An offshoot of the ethnic Karen guerrilla movement
     that was nearly crushed in a brutal government
     offensive two years ago, God's Army is made up of
     about 100 battled-hardened veteran fighters, former
     university students and children. 
         But the Htoo twins are unlike most of the estimated
     300,000 child combatants in Third World conflicts
     around the world. They rule their unit, which operates
     from Ka Mar Pa Law, a village base in the malarial
     jungle near Myanmar's border with Thailand. 
         They tell their followers when to fight, what to eat,
     how to behave. Their leadership is never challenged. 
         Surrounded by adult aides and a bodyguard of
     rifle-toting children, the twins speak little to outsiders.
     Reporters must first be carefully screened by their
     sympathizers in Thailand and then make a half-day trek
     on foot through mountainous jungle to reach their
     remote camp. 
         Johnny, chubby cheeked and shy, seems the more
     childlike of the two. He readily lays aside his gun to
     bounce a volleyball. 
         Luther, whose moods swing quickly between cocky
     and sullen, has a disturbing 1,000-yard stare. Both
     boys smoke cigarettes constantly. 
         "I have never cried," Luther told an Associated Press
     reporter who recently visited the base. "Why would a
     man cry?" 
         When Luther noticed a gun lying unattended, he
     shouted for its owner. A larger boy came forward.
     Luther ordered him to do 100 jumping exercises as
     punishment. 
         Like most Karens, members of God's Army are
     Christians in a predominantly Buddhist country. The
     twins have a fundamentalist bent and don't allow
     fighting, swearing, drugs or alcohol. 
         The twins' power dates to 1997, when Myanmar all
     but crushed the Karen National Union, the mainstream
     rebel movement that has fought for Karen autonomy for
     half a century. According to refugee accounts,
     government forces killed men in front of their families,
     raped women and torched villages. 
         When the army came to Johnny and Luther's village,
     the story goes, the guerrilla fighters fled, leaving it
     unprotected. The twins rallied some men and directed
     a successful counterattack. 
         Since then, the twins have been deemed to have
     powers from God. 
         The government sees nothing divine about their
     fighting force. 
         An official spokesman for Myanmar's military
     government said the government considers God's Army
     a group created by the Karen National Union to carry
     out terrorist activities against Myanmar, such as the
     Oct. 1 takeover of Myanmar's Embassy in Bangkok.
     The spokesman insisted his name not be used, in line
     with government rules. 
         While many in God's Army are children, others are
     tough Karen National Union veterans or members of
     the dissident student group that carried out the
     embassy takeover in which 38 hostages were seized. 
         Their small following receives arms from the Karen
     National Union, but operates independently. 
         The estimated 4,000 fighters of the Karen National
     Union mostly carry out hit-and-run attacks, and God's
     Army fights the same way. But because of the twins'
     unbeaten record and alleged powers -- their followers
     believe they are immune to gunfire -- it has high morale
     and attracts hard-core guerrilla fighters. 
         "God sent these two leaders to rescue all the
     Karens," said Su Bia, a veteran fighter who has joined
     the ranks of God's Army. He said he lost six siblings in
     the 1997 fighting. 
         "Those who do not listen to the leaders will not be
     protected when they go out on the front line," he said. 
         The twins' parents live in Ka Mar Pa Law, and the
     boys profess love for them, though they seem to have
     little contact with them. 
         "We knew from the day they were born" they would
     be special, their father, Pu Kaw, said. "We had a vision
     that they would be pure, extraordinary people."