Posted on 12/18/2024 8:34:26 AM PST by EnderWiggin1970
An ethnic rebel group has recaptured its former headquarters close to Thailand’s borders, almost three decades after it was driven out by the Myanmar military. In a statement yesterday, Padoh Saw Taw Nee, the spokesperson for the Karen National Union (KNU), said that its troops seized the village of Manerplaw late on Monday after days of fighting.
“Our legendary Manerplaw headquarters has reached its 30th anniversary, and we view this as a Christmas gift since it aligns with the festive season,” Padoh Saw Taw Nee said, as per Narinjara News. “For clarity, the whole Manerplaw region is now free from junta control. This has been confirmed, and it brings us immense happiness.”
According to the Narinjara News report, the assault by the Karen National Liberation Army, the KNU’s armed wing, “led to the fatalities of the majority of junta troops based at the camp” and the capture of substantial weaponry and munitions, including 120mm and 81mm artillery.
Manerplaw, a village on the Thai border in Kayin (Karen) State, was established in 1975 as the proposed capital of “Kawthoolei,” the independent Karen state that the KNU has been fighting to establish since 1948. However, a split between Christian and Buddhist factions of the group in 1994 created an opening for the Myanmar military, which teamed up with a breakaway Buddhist faction – the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) – and captured the village in January 1995. The fall of Manerplaw sent thousands of civilians fleeing across the border in Thailand, swelling further the refugee camps that are still dotted along the Thailand-Myanmar border.
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The Karens have been fighting the Burma government since the 1940s iirc.
The way I see it, the central government basically picked up where it left off when Burma fell to the British Empire. In the centuries before that Burma was like a lot of places: A stronger tribe in the river valley (with the advantages in agriculture and trade/commerce that provided) lorded it over the hill and jungle tribes around them, raiding them for slaves and plunder.
Most places have outgrown that sort of thing, but in Burma it never really went away. When Adoniram Judson, the first US overseas missionary, went to Burma, many of his early converts happened to be Karen tribesmen. He and other Baptists began giving them instruction in English and a western education, as a faster way to introduce them to Christianity than the laborious work of translating Christian materials.
After a few years the king of Burma provoked a war with the British - not the wisest choice in the 19th century at the height of British imperial glory. Judson was thrown in prison by the Burmese (like any other white person they could find), never mind that the British and Americans were enemies in that era. The British had to get him out of prison after they won because he was pretty much the only person who could write up the formal surrender documents in both languages.
And as the British colonial administration came to Burma they naturally needed natives to aid in the work of administration. Judson's little flock of western-educated Karen Christians were the default choice for that work, and thus gained a disproportionate influence in generations of British governance there. Which the Bamar majority apparently resented, and they made sure to put the Karen in their place the first chance they got after independence.
I’m impressed by your knowledge of Burmese history. Did you live there?
I spent some years as an ops manager for a Christian NGO that supported a number of orphanages in and around Burma, and have a number of contacts with pastors, missionaries, NGO workers and so forth all around the country. The leader of the YMCA in Rangoon, actually a person of some influence (he was the son of a Christian mother and a junta general and married to a prominent actress), had it on his heart to have a film of Judson's life made before he passes. I don't know if anything will come of it, but I was informally a member of a group of people working on the script for a while, which naturally involved a deep dive into Burmese history.
Great news for the Karen people. Winning for the first time since 1948!
All these people who complain about officious ladies who want to talk to the manager fail to realize that the Karens have their own National Liberation Army
If I remember correctly the king who picked the fight was Maha Bandoola. I had occasion to make a visa run to Yangon, from Thailand, almost thirty years ago, and I recall that was the name of one of the major streets. A guy I knew who was living there had a couple of Karen employees. He also had an associate, half Burmese, with a very distinctive last name, possibly Dutch. Some years later while reading a book about the CIA in SE Asia, I came across a reference to a Christian missionary with the same name, active in Burma in the 50s.
I took my kids up to Three Pagodas Pass last time I was in Thailand, and also to the Mon village way up in Kanchanaburi. We couldn’t cross the border, but at quitting time there was a steady flood of factory women walking home across the border into Burma, probably 1,000 of them.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I read that the ethnic Burmese generally supported the Japanese during WW II but the Karens and some of the other hill tribes (Chin, Kachin and Shan) remained loyal to the British and started guerilla warfare against the Japanese.
VARIOUS TRIBES WILL FIGHT UNTIL THE END OF EVERYTHING
As an interesting bit of related trivia, in the 1930's a Christian British officer named Orde Wingate was stationed in Israel (British Palestine at the time). An ardent Zionist, Wingate responded to pre-WWII Arab terrorists and guerrillas attacking the British by arming and training Jewish settlers, forming the Special Night Squads. Early in WWII he went on to help liberate Ethiopia after raising a native army (the Gideon Force), marching in to Addis Ababa and meeeting with the Emperor.
Churchill was impressed with his resourcefulness and successes and supported his next project: organizing the hill tribes of Burma to carry the fight behind the Japanese front lines on the India/Burma frontier. Wingate died in a plane crash in Burma.
Today he is honored in Israel as the father of the Israeli Defense Forces. As most of the downed crew in his plane were Americans, General Wingates' remains were ultimately passed along to the US for burial.
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