Burma: DKBA Turns on Regime as Elections Staged

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Minority ethnic Karen Buddhist guerrillas continued attacking Burmese troops for a second day on Monday, leaving 10 people injured and prompting 15,000 refugees to flee eastern Burma, hours after the country manipulated an election to buff the junta's image.

Neighboring Thailand put its U.S.-trained army on alert, reinforced armed mobile patrols along the shallow, narrow Moei river separating the two countries, and evacuated Thai villagers from the area of western Thailand near Mae Sot town where some stray shots landed.

Burma's election on Sunday was an attempt by the ruling military to convince the U.S., European Union and other critics that the Southeast Asian nation was evolving toward democracy.

The heavily manipulated polls, however, resulted in international condemnation by President Barack Obama and other leaders, who predicted Burma would continue to be run by a dictatorship atop a parliament where 25 percent of the seats were assigned to the military's candidates.

The junta was expected to announce its expected landslide election victory later this week for the 1,159 seats up for grabs -- mostly contested by the military's other candidates -- in the bicameral parliament and 14 regional assemblies.

Parts of northern and eastern Burma's mountainous regions were not included in the election after the regime considered those zones too violent because ethnic rebels of various tribes -- including Karen, Karenni, Shan, Kachin, Wa and others -- have been fighting for autonomy on and off since Burma became independent from Britain in 1948.

Sunday's sudden fighting continued through Monday, after a frustrated faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) guerrillas briefly seized a police station and post office in the eastern Burmese town of Myawaddy, across the river from Mae Sot.

For several years, the DKBA has been tightly allied with Burma's military regime as a collaborating Karen force being used to attack the Karen National Union (KNU), who are mostly Christian rebels in the mountainous, jungle zone where the tribal group has long dreamed of autonomy or independence.

"DKBA Battalion 902, under Brigade 5, led by Lt. Col. Saw Kyaw Thet, was involved in the clashes and had fired heavy weapons near the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge," reported Mizzima News, staffed by pro-democracy Burmese activists and other reporters in Burma and the region.

"I had to take cover. The rebel forces are in front of this shop. They fired about 10 RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) shells towards the Myawaddy bridge," a shopkeeper in Myawaddy told Mizzima News.

Burma's troops rushed to the town and regained control, pushing the DKBA faction to the outskirts.

The skirmishes in and near Myawaddy wounded least 10 people, the Associated Press said on Monday.

Further south along the border, at the Three Pagodas Pass crossing point, fighting reportedly erupted inside Burma for about an hour.

Burma's military had arranged cease-fire agreements with several ethnic rebel groups during the past few years, but recently demanded those guerrillas be absorbed into a border patrol force under the command of Burma's army.

The DKBA faction apparently refused, turned traitor against the regime, and unleashed the assaults, perhaps hoping their enemies, the KNU, might support them.

If those Karen do not, the DKBA faction may have to suffer banishment in the jungle, hunted to the death by Burma's fearsome, experienced troops.

Rivalries have weakened the Karen during the past several years, while they tried to survive Burmese military assaults, malaria, hunger, and a bleak nomadic existence in the rugged jungle.

"At least 15,000 refugees have crossed from eastern Myanmar into northern Thailand since this morning," Andrej Mahecic, spokesman for the U.N.'s refugee agency, was quoted as saying on Monday.

The terrified villagers joined more than 100,000 Karen and other ethnic evacuees who have been languishing in dilapidated camps in Thailand along the border for years, envious of those resettled in the U.S.

Much of the fighting by the Karen Christians in recent decades has resembled World War One in miniature, with haphazard trenches dug into the jungle, and seemingly endless battles over tiny bits of territory with no clear victory by either side while landmines kill troops, rebels and villagers.

The mostly Christian tribe had attracted a handful of foreign mercenaries, including a Canadian who asked not to be identified, and the late "Jimmy the Belgian".

In 1986, both men displayed photographs to this reporter, showing themselves teaching Karen Christian rebels inside Burma how to arrange jungle ambushes and kill Burmese troops.

Today, Karen civilians on both sides of the border are helped by U.S. and other foreign missionaries, international nongovernmental organizations, medical teams and others.

Thailand has been accused of using the Karen and other guerrillas as a pliant buffer to protect its territory from Burma -- sometimes allowing rebels sanctuary on Thai soil, while other times strangling their activity so the two countries could improve relations.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who took office in December 2008, recently visited Burma which inked a $8.6 billion deal on Nov. 4 with Thailand's biggest construction company, Italian-Thai Development, to construct a valuable deep-water port and industrial park on Burma's strategic Bay of Bengal coast.

Much of Bangkok's electricity is purchased from Burma, making the Karen and other rebels increasingly irrelevant to Thailand's modernization.

Last year, minority ethnic Kokang guerrillas fought Burma's army in the north, along the border with China, threatening Chinese plans to extend oil and gas projects and sending 30,000 frightened northern villagers into China's Yunnan province for safety.

When Burma gained independence from British colonialists in 1948, the Karen, Shan, Wa and other ethnic groups believed they could opt out of the new country and obtain autonomy or independence.

Those hopes were quickly dashed, so the tribes began fighting Burma's army, which seized power in a 1962 coup and continues to insist that the country will remain intact.

Some guerrillas expect Burma's military to collapse from internal bickering or another coup, or perhaps under pressure from a mass civilian uprising.

The ethnic groups have not been able to form a united front on the battlefield, because some compete for resource-rich territory, while others smuggle opium against the wishes of rebels who oppose the addictive narcotic.

The Karen Christians, meanwhile, have sheltered Burmese civilians and Buddhist monks fleeing political crackdowns elsewhere in the country.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. His web page is http://www.asia-correspondent.110mb.com

(Copyright 2010 Richard S Ehrlich)