Karen Armed Rebellion in Burma Takes a New Turn: Ex-American Marines as Military Advisors/Trainers: US Watching - Part II

By Daya Gamage – US Bureau Asian Tribune Investigative Report – Part Two

Washington, D.C. June 26 (Asiantribune.com): In this second installment the Asian Tribune exclusively documents here the current twists and turns of the Karen rebellion for independence, self-determination and democracy with active involvement of former American Marines who are well knowledgeable of how to conduct a rebellion. If the impression is that the U.S. officials both in Bangkok and Washington, D.C. are having a passive attitude of this significant development it is a gross understatement.

In the first installment, besides the historical struggle of the Karen rebellion, it was documented the initial rapport established between the ex-US Marines and the Karen rebel leaders. This installment gives further evidence of that emerging rapport and the conducive environment toward making the Karen rebels a formidable force to face the mighty Burmese military junta. Political changes in the United States may contribute toward the emergence of this conducive environment to allow to surface the American interests in a different form.

The Ex-US Marine-KNLA Rapport

Now, back to the developing rapport between ex-US Marines and Karen National Liberation Army.

Colonel Ner Dah, in early forties, is fluent in English obviously helped while been a six year undergraduate student in the early nineties at one of America’s prestigious universities, University of California Berkley. The Asian Tribune learned that Ner Dah has been in contact with the American Embassy in Bangkok and with several US State Department officials.

State Department officials who are engaged in the Burma Desk in Washington, and Foreign Service Officers in the American Embassy in Thailand, obviously get to know the developments within Burma through activists like Colonel Ner Dah that go on to formulate the US policy toward this South East Asian nation and the USG attitude toward the military junta.

While at dinner with him Ner Dah gives a vivid description of the brutality of the Burmese military junta toward the Karen people and the ethnic cleansing to the veteran ex-Marine Jack Slade recorded earlier in this report.

The Colonel said that while the KNU is for autonomy for the Keren ethnic entity, KNLA is for separation from Burma. But what the Asian Tribune understood after conversation with the ex-Marines is that the KNLA objective was to end the military rule in Burma and restore democratic rights to the masses of the people including the restoration of human rights to the Karen people and other ethnic entities.

However, about a third of Burma’s 47 million populations are ethnic minorities, who have a troubled historic relationship with the dominant group, the Burmans. Aug San Suu Kyi is an ethnic Burman (so are the generals of the junta) and her supporters are largely focused on the Burman homeland. Meanwhile, the Chins, Kachins, Karennis, Karens, Shans and other hill tribes have been fighting against the government. The real issue in Burma, should the regime fall, would be less about forging democracy than a compromise between the Burmans and other ethnic groups.

The ex-US Marines who have come in close contact with the KNLA are aware of this scenario.

Colonel Nar Dah becomes the tour guide to Jack Slade the following day visiting Karen villages.

Couple of weeks before the KNLA fighting cadres was in a thick battle with Burmese military in an area controlled by the Karens, and to the amazement of the KNLA the guerrilla strategy they used worked for the junta’s military to retreat abandoning a large catch of sophisticated military hardware. Asian Tribune was told that the KNLA was not surprised to note that all the military hardware the junta soldiers left behind had the Chinese trade mark.

This is how they acquire military hardware. KNLA gets a supply of arms from sources in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. But the rebels are outnumbered and outgunned.

The ex-Marine Jack Slade spent eight days with Colonel Ner Dah and his fighting cadre. The May 3 cyclone has affected 70 villages in the Irravadi Delta. The cyclone hit majority of areas e populated by those the military junta consider as enemies.

Here’s the story going around in MAE SOT in Thailand and in Burma, an amazing story that the Asian Tribune learned:

This is a typical Asian story. The Generals of Burma’s ruling SPDC about two years ago had consulted a prominent and widely respected-recognized astrologer to get a reading of the nation’s horoscope and their own. Asians do strongly believe in the placement of planets and stars, the movement of the stars and their effect on them. The astrologer has convinced the Generals that a severe calamity will visit the Irrawadi Delta region and its surroundings that included the Burmese Capital City Rangoon (Yangon). The military junta immediately took steps to move the Capital to a mountainous region far away from the region the astrologer predicted will be devastated.

Naypyidaw (pronounced nay-pee-DAW) is Burma’s new capital, built in secret by the ruling military junta and was officially unveiled in November 2005. The name denotes ‘royal capital’ in Burmese. From Rangoon (or Yangon) it is a nine hour drive.

The New York Times in a special feature about the capital carried in its June 24 edition says: “Even the most charitable observers of Myanmar’s junta portray its members as out of touch. Now they are literally out of sight: the generals live and work in a guarded zone of Naypyidaw that is off limits to all but senior officers.”

To the amazement of everyone a deadly cyclone hit the very area the astrologer predicted on May 3 this year. The interpretation of some in Burma, and also in Thailand, is that the credibility of the Generals of the military junta went up bringing support from unexpected quarters of the Burmese population.

The New York Times further states: “When the Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta last month with winds up to 155 miles per hour, it killed about 130,000 people and damaged many buildings in Yangon. But the generals and civil servants ensconced in Naypyidaw felt only a zephyr, residents say.”

The KNLA is fully aware of the psychological factor of this outcome in their struggle against the most ruthless military junta in the history of Burma.

And the American voluntary support to help the rebellion of the KNLA arrived in this atmosphere at a time the generals of the military junta who are out of touch with their own people and live and work in guarded zone in the new capital.

It has been established that the air power of the junta was greatly diminished due to the effect of the cyclone. There are absolutely no air attacks on the Karen territory or its combat positions by the junta.

The ex-marines have realized the importance of KNLA fighting cadre equipped with modern sophisticated weapons. Jack Slade was talking about providing them with night-vision goggles that will help them to successfully demobilize the junta’s military. The Burmese military lacks this vital weapon, it was learned.

Asian Tribune did not get the idea of what type of night-vision goggles Jack Slade and Tom Bleming were talking.

The battery-operated AN/PVS-7D night-vision goggles use an infrared light source to amplify existing light.

The goggles can switch from amplifying light to sensing heat for use in smoky conditions.

The range: a human-size target is visible 328 yards away in the moonlight, almost three football fields.

So, this is the Herculean task the American ex-marines and their companions already within Burma who belong to several European nationalities face in equipping the KNLA fighting cadre with sophisticated weaponry to fight the military junta. And, they are aware of China, India, and to some extent Thailand are behind the military junta for numerous reasons.

China – along with India, Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Singapore – has been put in a very uncomfortable diplomatic situation. China and India are invested in port enlargement and energy deals with Burma. Thailand’s democratic government has moved closer to the junta for the sake of logging and other business ventures. Singapore is suspected of acting as a banker for the Burmese generals. The United States, half the world away, is a passive onlooker.

But, according to the knowledge of the Asian Tribune the United States is fully aware of what’s going on in Burma, the militarization effort by ex-US Marines and an impending development of the fight between the KNLA and Burmese military that can take new turn in this six-decade struggle for democracy, rule of law, human rights and autonomy for ethnic minorities to which the successive American administrations gave a lip service support issuing statements from the White House and Congress.

Nevertheless, no United States administration can afford to get directly involved in bringing justice to the Burmese people if Iran-Contra episode is remembered.

Iran-contra affair

The tangled U.S. foreign-policy scandal known as the Iran-contra affair came to light in November 1986 when President Ronald Reagan confirmed reports that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran. He stated that the goal was to improve relations with Iran, not to obtain release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East by terrorists (although he later acknowledged that the arrangement had in fact turned into an arms-for-hostages swap). Outcry against dealings with a hostile Iran was widespread. On Nov. 25, 1986, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese disclosed that some of the arms profits had been diverted to aid the Nicaraguan "contra" rebels who were fighting to oust the legitimate Sandinista regime—at a time when Congress had prohibited such aid. An independent special prosecutor, former federal judge Lawrence E. Walsh, was appointed to probe the activities of persons involved in the arms sale or contra aid or both, including marine Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council (NSC) staff.

Reagan appointed a review board headed by former Republican senator John Tower. The Tower Commission's report in February 1987 criticized the president's passive management style. In a nationally televised address on March 4, Reagan accepted that judgment without serious disagreement.

Select Congressional committees conducted joint televised hearings from May to August 1987. They heard evidence that a few members of the National Security Council (NSC) staff set Iran and Nicaragua policies and carried them out with secret private operatives, that the few officials who knew about these policies lied to Congress and others, and that the Contra rebels received only a small part of the diverted money. Former national security advisor John Poindexter (currently the Deputy Secretary of the US State Department) stated that he personally authorized the diversion of money and withheld that information from the president. William J. Casey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who died in May 1987, was implicated in some testimony, but the extent of his involvement remained unclear. The congressional committees released a report on Nov. 18, 1987, saying that President Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for the events of the Iran-contra affair.

Barrack Obama Advisor Advocates Intervention in Burma

Nevertheless, the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright under President Clinton in an OP-ED piece in The New York Times June 11, 2008 opined “the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situation – to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restores democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.”

One needs to give special attention to Secretary Albright’s pronouncement as she was appointed as one of members of the national security team to Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama on June 18. Should Senator Obama enter the White House on January 20 next year undoubtedly Ms. Albright will be one of the top foreign policy advisors to the new president of the United States.

Advocating her hard-line policy toward Burmese military junta the following policy statement of Secretary Albright may bring some solace to those ex-US Marines who are in an endeavor to militarize the KNLA cadres, and one could visualize how both the Pentagon and the State Department under an Obama administration would act to restore human rights, rule of law and democracy in Burma:

“At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world more humane place?

We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to the voice – and cry – of the Burmese people.”

Conclusion

Colonel Ner Dah is willing to accept expert military assistance to fully equip and modernize all regiments of the KNLA. There had been several attempts in the past toward achieving this goal but had not materialize.

With Thomas Bleming and Jack Slade’s serious involvement in the ‘fight of the Karen rebels’ against the Burmese military junta a pattern seems to be emerging for the veteran ex-US marines and their associates to make the KNLA fighting cadre a formidable force to face the junta.

Asian Tribune understands that serious attempts are being made to get military hardware to the Karen territory. And, the veteran American Marines expect to make it happen this time.

As for the U.S. State Department: Asian Tribune is confident that the Department officers based in Bangkok and in Washington are fully aware of what’s going on and that they are closely watching the developments.

The New York Times wrote in its June 24 edition: “People in Myanmar regularly ask foreign visitors whether the United States has plans to topple the leadership. When British, French and American warships sailed to waters off the Myanmar coast in May to offer assistance to the victims of the cyclone, at least one Western embassy in Yangon received phone calls from exited residents.

The callers said, “You’re coming to save us, aren’t you?” a diplomat remembered.”

Should Senator Obama enter the White House next January taking Secretary Albright with him to occupy a foreign policy or national security position the Burmese military junta may face a somewhat different situation in the battle front with the KNLA. It is expected here in the U.S. that a Obama administration’s guiding principles will be based on liberal far left policies that will take a fresh look at rebellions in the Third World nations that have no connections whatsoever with the US War on Global Terrorism.

- Asian Tribune -