Another blow for Burma’s ethnic diversity at the hands of the generals

Peacerunning, August 10, 2010

Adopting a tough stand, the Burmese military junta yesterday ordered the removal of the Karen national flag from the gates and military camps of ceasefire groups in Karen State.

“The order to remove Karen flags was released at 9:30 am yesterday.  All the flags were removed by 3 pm, a DKBA soldier told KIC.

According to DKBA sources, the order came from Col. Khin Maung Htay of MOC 12, who is directly appointed by Nay Pyi Daw to solve border issues.

A Kawkareik local on condition of anonymity said that the removal of Karen flags was done in Myawaddy, Kawkareik, and Pa-an in Karen state. The DKBA and other ceasefire groups were ordered to remove Karen flags, he added.

“When I saw the Karen flag being removed, I felt a pang in my heart that a thing of heritage is being done away with,” a DKBA soldier from 999 gate said in a pained voice.

Among Karen ceasefire groups, are the DKBA, Karen Peace Council (KPC), Hong Thayaw special region, Phayar Gone ceasefire group, and Thantaung special region.

The removal of Karen flags is a temporary act because high ranking junta officials will come to their area, a soldier from KPC told KIC.

“The idea is to keep the flag away from the pole temporarily because senior junta officials will come. Representatives of MAS (Military Affairs Security) checked every gate at midday yesterday. Some gates are yet to remove the flags. Our gate (KPC gate), Kyauk Phyar gate has removed the flag,” the KPC soldier added.

“Our leader Saw Ba Oo Gyi had said Karen can create the future of Karen. We will raise the Karen flag wherever we are based,” a commander from the brigade of Col. Saw Lar Pwe, who rejected transformation to the junta’s Border Guard Force (BGF) said.

Since August 3, the Burmese Army has told ceasefire groups that if they go downtown, they should not wear uniforms and not carry weapons, which can be carried only in army camps.

Myawaddy locals said the Burmese Army will transform DKBA 999 brigade into BGF in Myawaddy town on August 16.

Major Saw Mauk Thon, a commander of DKBA Kalo Htoo Baw strategic command, accepted transformation to BGF on August 2. He has been helping DKBA soldiers sign the agreement in his office in Myawaddy.

“Soldiers came to Maj Mauk Thon’s house, which is also the office of the strategic command for three days. DKBA vehicles carrying solders also came to his house and signed the agreement with Maj Mauk Thon at his gate,” a woman eyewitness said.

According to ceasefire groups and locals, Lt. Gen. Khin Zaw, commander of the costal division, and Brig. Thet Naing, commander of north east military command, are already in Myawaddy.

Even though Col. Than Naing Win, commander of MOC 19, is responsible for the area of Thaung Yin River, which demarcates Thailand and Burma, Col. Khin Maung Htay, commander of MOC 12, took over the duty on July 30.

KIC news

DVB

Elliott Prasse-freeman

July 26, 2010

The first two parts of this article suggested that an alternative politics could be fashioned in Burma by focusing on socioeconomic idioms. But it remained vague on exactly what this alternative politics would look and feel like in practice. Part three turns to an example from Burma’s own recent past, exploring in more detail the actions of the 88 Generation Student (88GS) group, arguing that it operates as a model of this kind of alternative politics that can coax ordinary Burmese to become re-engaged with the political realm. Its remarkable Open Heart Campaign portrayed the values and desires of average Burmese people – providing a set of key data points that reflected the daily realities to which any future political projects must be accountable and resonant.

Part two suggested a model for change: alternative politics impels civil society demands, and the state reforms, at which point the cycle begins again or settles into a new equilibrium. And here is the big question: what keeps the cycle going, what allows it to stop?

The problem with focusing only on socio-economic indicators is that political voice itself is not a goal, only a way of getting some improved material outcome. The risk then is that new equlibria will be found once the material outcome improves marginally, and then silence will descend again. Or worse: episodic flare-ups will emerge and then dissipate when palliatives are delivered from the government. A good example are the small 2009 protests in Mon state over an absence of electricity during school exam time. The protests were successful in attaining their short term goals (electricity), an impressive feat in itself. But a year later, according to informal reports, electricity is again absent, and so are the protests. In other words, there was a point where people could not take it anymore and they demanded change. They got what they asked for, and so they stopped. When the same conditions emerged again, for whatever reason it was not enough this time to motivate collective action.

How to escape this trap? Politics must tap into the normative groundings – a community’s collective values – to insist that citizens go beyond bargains with the state. As collective values (of justice, fairness, decency, the proper relationship between society and state) are put into politics, they become the interests themselves: instead of just militating for socioeconomic benefits, the politics transforms the socioeconomic claims into the basis for the values. So it is not simply “We need electricity.” It is “We need electricity… because we are a member of this country and the role of the government is to provide it!”

Here is where politics can be truly transformative: the project of evincing these values may create the values themselves. Or, rather, a commitment to the values can crystallize through the process of asking constituents to reflect on their situations. There is thus a pedagogy to politics: by asking people what they value, the political subject can come to value the values even more, and be willing to then go the next step and demand them.

The 88GS did just that. Led by former political prisoners, many of whom were released in 2005 after the ousting of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, the group of about 40 core member began to engage the citizenry with small campaigns that slowly worked to build both a political consciousness and habituate defiant actions. Its respective and progressing Signature, White, Prayer, and Open Heart campaigns of 2006-07 began to demonstrate how a movement can be built through coaxing involvement of ordinary people, sustaining that involvement, and increasingly motivating them to act.

Knowing that it was too much to request that people immediately take explicit risks, 88GS members consciously worked to gradually build from small actions that were both non-threatening and anonymous. As interviewees in the 88GS put it, the group built upon the confidence and momentum in the successes of early conservative activities, eventually introducing bolder campaigns which would compel citizens to ‘show their face’:

“First we tried the Signature Campaign, to get the [political] prisoners released. And people could do it because there was no risk to them: there was no document with their personal information, just their signature. Next was the White Campaign, which allowed people to be involved with little risk – they could tell the authorities, ‘We are just wearing a shirt [it happens to be white].’ But people were still afraid, because they were in public. But when they did not get arrested, this built their confidence.”

The strategy of plausible deniability emerges: those ‘participating’ in these activities could always feign ignorance if accosted by authorities. The colour of a shirt, the act of praying; these are not explicitly political actions, and could be painted as coincidences. In Burma, where law is utilized as a tool of oppression, these kinds of political actions demonstrated a sophisticated politico-legal shrewdness on the part of the actors.

In so doing, rather than giving the authorities the pretence to destroy the nascent movement at the outset, the 88GS devised ways to gradually build momentum by remaining legal. Moreover, by making its actions explicitly non-political, the 88GS utilized symbolic repertoires to deliver messages to the broader public: both ‘everyone knew’ what they were ‘really’ doing, and yet no one was sure. The ambiguity in this space is a strategy outlined in Part Two in regards to the civil society realm, here turned to politics.

Evidence of the efficacy of this approach was born out by the responses: the 88GS claimed 200,000 signatures, and incited the formation of other independent groups. But it was the Open Heart Campaign (OH) that constituted a truly noteworthy political action, both in regards to its socioeconomic focus, and regarding the type of engagement requested of people.

The OH encouraged people to write letters to Than Shwe to ‘share their hearts’ – to let the leading general know how difficult living conditions were, how the government could help, and how the state often chose to exacerbate the hardships. The fact that 2689 letters made it to the 88GS (many more are assumed confiscated by authorities) shows a willingness to engage in politics when the political idioms are grounded in everyday life. “They wanted to speak out [locally], but they could not. The people knew they might get in trouble, but because they knew they had done nothing wrong [they felt that writing the letters was worth the risk]. This was an opportunity.” There is significant political nuance here: not able to speak up locally (as there was no tradition of raising demands), people saw OH as a less confrontational politics that could reach the central state and cascade back down to their own realities.

The OH did not have an opportunity to be taken further than this. Some 88GS members with whom I spoke actually lamented the 2007 fuel de-subsidization, given it came just when they were starting to build something. The irony was that the 88GS had created the very political consciousness that precipitated the protests, actions that in turn eventually undermined the 88GS. Though consistently excluded from breathless Western media accounts of the Saffron Revolution, evidence shows that it was 88GS members who led the first ‘walking protests’ after the desubsidization (even these first protests were brilliant politics: they took the quotidian act of walking to work and made it a political commentary on a callous regime’s neglect of people’s livelihoods). However, if the 88GS had devised a way to communicate the messages more broadly (to people across the entire country), and strategically (through civil society organizations), we can see here the potential creation of a political consciousness operating both about local issues, but also transcending the local – allowing Burmese to see their struggles as shared.

But the lessons of the 88GS do not stop here. Rather, the letters themselves constitute a window into state-society relations that usually remain opaque.  First, certain state-society relations that other socio-legal systems would declare abusive, are in Burma seen as natural (and even legitimate) under the correct circumstances. Take forced labour, which is mentioned directly in 95 of the letters. While unequivocally a crime under international law, if one reads each letter, it becomes clear that Burmese do not always share this understanding. It is typically not forced labour in itself to which the letter-writers are objecting: only 24 percent of the letters mentioned forced labour as abusive, objectionable, or illegitimate by definition. 71 percent of the letters, on the other hand, expressed forced labour as just one symptom of a larger socio-economic problem, while the remaining 5 percent made both arguments simultaneously.  Case 10 outlines this succinctly:

“I run a shop. When the shop is usually opened, the customers come. However, now, I am forced to labour, so I cannot always open my shop. I also was forced to give the money for that. These hinder my works. The present situation is bad for the poor. There is no job for the one who want to work.”

Forced labour here is embedded in a larger struggle to manage socioeconomic realities. Strikingly, the act was only mentioned explicitly as a human rights violation in a single letter; moreover, many subjects seem to present forced labour as better than nothing, provided the state does its part by supplying resources, ending wasteful schemes (like the planting of jatropha), and respecting people’s dignity.

This example illuminates how an un-contextualized political agenda (based on external norms of law or human rights, for instance) may fail to connect with Burmese people. A campaign to end forced labour might mean an end to social services like critical infrastructure. As such, most peasants would oppose it, ignore it, and/or might feel they are being manipulated by it. This may be why many average citizens have rejected the ‘traditional politics’ based on human rights, procedural democracy, and rule of law. They do not reflect the precarious life led by many at the margins, they do not tap into collective values and daily concerns.

Yet these letters on forced labour are also not simply socioeconomic demands. They are linked with a broader sense of justice – there are certain things that the state should not do, certain things it should do that it currently is not doing.  Political messages that understand this nuance can compel recursive, dynamic cycles of challenge that build on one another, slowly compelling the state to do more, even as what people can expect from the state expands. But much depends on the initial set of demands. We can learn a great deal from the 88GS in this regard, and a great deal about Burmese people by reading their own words in the OH Campaign.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

DVB

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

DVB

Elliott Prasse-freeman

July 26, 2010

Part one demonstrated how in Burma peripheral state agents engage in fragile bargains with local societies, resulting in space at the margins for civil society activity. Juxtaposed with this somewhat optimistic reading, we also saw how these bargains only hold because ordinary Burmese have been trained to be silent – and thus civil society space is not capitalized upon to impel political changes. This is largely a result of despotic power deployed by the military-state aggressively dominating the political realm, foreclosing on political organizing and preventing mass political consciousness from developing.

But can the upcoming elections alter the existing stasis? They can be a necessary first step. Social and political evolution may begin in Burma through a cyclical three-part process, each led by what can be referred to as ‘political opposition’, ‘grassroots civil society’, and ‘elite civil society’ leaders. The process involves first structuring an alternative political discourse that breaks from ‘traditional’ politics and which centres around socioeconomic idioms, and from which opposition forces will begin to build a collective political consciousness.

Second, grassroots civil society can also begin to make gentle demands on the state for better governance. It is critical that these demands come from multiple sites, and essential that the state sees them. If these demands emerge from thousands of different places, through multiple different idioms (Buddhist, human security, moral, pragmatic, and so on), the state may not see the gentle demands as out of the ordinary, but rather as symptomatic of systemic problems in Burma. This can undermine the current equilibrium, and force the state to act on them.

Finally, because the demands are gentle, they are unlikely to precipitate a crisis, but rather may produce moments of compromise as the regime seeks a new balance to ensure stability. At this point advocates in civil society at the elite level (Third Force, the UN, etc) who have been articulating technical-administrative policy solutions will become indispensible to the state. New bargains will allow the state to manoeuvre while maintaining stability, and will improve conditions for the grassroots. At this point the cycle either begins again, or stops. The point is that it’s the demands which constitute the mechanism for change, and the demands can begin through these elections.

For instance, the very existence of the election gives some civil society organizations an opportunity to broach politics carefully. Take the example at the top of an NGO holding civic education. When authorities inquired about the content of the sessions, NGO members replied that it was their responsibility to educate the people about the upcoming elections, elections the authorities themselves after all endorse. The NGO also invited authorities to participate and share their thoughts, remaining true to their word of including everyone, and further defusing any suspicion on the part of the state.

We see here how the NGO is not fixated on whether the elections themselves will change things. Instead it has used the process to evolve the programs it can run. The elections are providing cover for the building of political muscles at the grassroots. And while most organizations will likely not have the skills or the wherewithal to be as active as the NGO mentioned here, they will still act as conduits for disseminating information that emerges from specific political campaigns.

Therefore, it is imperative that there is something meaningful to disseminate – political parties must get their messages to the people. The recently announced Election Law banning mass rallies need not cause democrats to abandon the responsibility of campaigning in other ways, of taking advantage of these civil society networks. For instance, in 1990 mass rallies were also constrained, and yet the people learned enough about the NLD’s message to reward it with a majority of votes.

Today, the internet, satellite radio, and an explosion of uncaptured media (see here and here) can be added to the list of information dissemination opportunities. These are not as essential as the classic ‘word-of-mouth’, which will enjoy more freedom than usual given that politics are not officially outlawed during this period around the election. More importantly, because the complexities of power in Burma are not lost on the millions who live there, people will continue to navigate them, knowing when and in what context they can share their opinions about what is occurring.

Word-of-mouth will allow people to learn what those campaigning cannot tell them explicitly. While it will not contain the kind of detail necessary for robust democracy (a citizen will not be able to pore over the specifics of a proposed platform), nor can it act as an assault on the regime’s lies and misdeeds (it won’t draw out the connections between regime policy and the daily miseries, showing where state propaganda stops and reality begins), word-of-mouth can communicate the general tenor of what a given party stands for and what it opposes.

The official messages, on the other hand, can work mutually with the hidden, acting as the concrete description of what opposing parties would do differently if given the opportunity to govern. As I have argued elsewhere, the critical questions thus surround the content of the political information communicated: will opposition parties design platforms, plans, and policies that will resonate with the average Burmese person? Will opposition groups not participating use the space around the election to communicate what they stand for, what they would do differently if they were given governing responsibilities?

These questions, rather than questions about procedural fairness, should dominate the discussion. We know the regime will do everything in its power to tilt the hand towards the status quo. And while energies can be directed at making these tactics known, these injustices should not become an obsession that removes focus from the real issues inside: reaching out to people, evincing their needs and desires, and turning them into political demands of whatever new regime takes power in 2010. Ultimately, the elections are just the first step in a larger process of inciting civil society to get back involved in the political conversation. If the elections are the destination, then they are a dead end. But if they are seen as the point of departure, toward getting average people to put pressure on the state, they may be the first step in a process of change. Part three will explore how this alternative politics would look and feel like in practice.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

DVB

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

DVB

Elliott Prasse-freeman

July 26, 2010

Prevailing current opinion is that Burma’s elections this year will be a charade and the opposition is right to condemn them. Burma, commentators say, is a totalitarian state controlled by a military clique that has ruled the country for nearly half a century. But the myth of totalitarianism should be challenged, as should the assumption that there is no potential for meaningful social change to exist around the election process. Because while the conditions for politics in Burma are hardly ideal, a legitimate opportunity for reconnecting with average people – and opposing the military’s march toward pseudo-normalcy – exists in this year’s elections.

The debate requires an accurate understanding of how power in the country functions, particularly in regards to how it operates to constrain and/or animate politics. So to examine power, let us begin with a story in two parts:

The first is that society is so suffused with fear of the state that Burmese will only whisper about politics, even when they are walking along a noisy city street. The sheer number of journalistic accounts telling of this narrative is remarkable (Google the words ‘Burma’ and ‘whisper’ together), and demonstrates its durable and diffuse reality in Burma, not to mention the media’s ongoing obsession with it.

But the second part of the story complicates the first: if people are afraid to speak of politics, one might expect lots of men with guns on those streets. Yet, the thugs refuse to materialize. How can these two phenomena exist simultaneously? The common explanation is that Burmese people live under the constant watch of the state, and over time have internalized the panopticon: there isn’t the need for men with guns at every corner because people discipline their neighbours by silencing themselves.

This story is largely true: oppositional politics – which have primarily involved militating for “human rights”, parliamentary political processes, and legal reforms – is viewed by people as irredeemably dangerous in Burma, to be avoided. If politics is like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to remain strong, the Burmese collective political muscles have degenerated over the years.

Juxtapose this first story with another: that of the NGO currently holding sessions on ‘civic education’ with local community associations, discussing both procedural and normative issues around democracy. “What is the right form of government?” “What do other Constitutions around the world look like? How does ours compare?” “What is the role of an engaged citizenry?” The NGO is able to hold forums around these kinds of questions. And while this NGO may be somewhat exceptional – in that it has etched out an ability over time and with painstaking effort to hold sensitive activities – it is not Myanmar Egress. By which it is not that controversial organization that sometimes appears the exception that proves the rule. Rather, this NGO is more like the others: just one of a rampantly growing Burmese civil society sector. Estimates have 240,000 organizations delivering social services, running spiritual groups, assembling cultural and recreation events, and providing community-based forums for discussions about socioeconomic development. While all of these groups (Egress included) have to navigate the state in one way or another – which entails, inter alia, never encroaching into the terrain of the political – many are effectively independent from state domination. This story is also true.

How can both stories then exist side-by-side? How can the state evince seemingly totalitarian tendencies in certain spheres, but abandon so much space in others? A simple answer is that events in Burma have been consistently misinterpreted by external critics. They assume that militarised Burma is a nightmarish reflection of the ‘modern state’, a hegemonic collection of institutions and structures that centralises and bureaucratises everything to control and discipline all aspects of political subjects’ lives.

Burma, however, lacks the population management tools needed to reach into every corner of its nation and control its citizens. To illustrate: there are no biometric identity cards, no security cameras on every street corner; there is neither a robust social security system, nor a sophisticated taxation apparatus. Indeed, when cyclone Nargis occurred in 2008, communication was so poor that the military had to get its marching orders by interpreting the newspapers! The Burmese state is a different animal altogether.

Does this mean the state is not as bad as it is sometimes portrayed? On the contrary, in many ways it can be even more brutal and despotic in the absence of these other structures. The key is that Burma’s military-state deploys resources selectively to create its regime of control, and the generals prefer control on the cheap. Indeed, realizing totalitarian control would necessitate sacrificing resources currently expended on priorities for maintaining political stability: namely, buttressing military and police apparatuses such that they can quash any perceived threat, and directing resources toward military families and business-sector clients.

In Burma, power radiates out of centres and dissipates over geographical and institutional space, operating through peripheral officials who dominate political activity, attempt to monopolize violence, extract resources (through small-scale resource plundering), and maintain social order through intermediaries (communities themselves). In fact, the military-state likely sees totalitarian control as actually risky, as it leaves civilians with few avenues for escape from the state: patronage networks, maintained through bribes and personal relationships, would be restricted, likewise would the black market that keeps resources flowing to places of demand. Whether consciously or not, the military-state has avoided power relationships that spur collective resistance.

In this way, it is helpful to utilize political scientist Michael Mann’s typology: the state deploys high despotic power (the ability to crush what it can see) but low infrastructural power (an absence of institutions that would allow it to see everything). Where it is strongest, the state attains significant control at reduced cost: despotic power, while focused around political expression, leeches into the social realm as well. When people are significantly dominated politically – and when almost any act can always be interpreted as a political one – silence comes to deafen much of the population (punctuated by moments of collective eruptions at the indignity and oppression of it all – 1988, 1996, 2007 – before silence descends again). This results in a simple avoidance of political topics; coded speech when there is speech about politics at all; a lack of trust in general of those outside of the family; and an absence of ‘social capital’. In this regard the state gets something for nothing.

Civil society space

At the same time though, because power is not total, there are spaces at peripheries – both institutional and geographic – for civil society to grow and function relatively autonomously. Power dissipates concentrically, both through the three institutional branches of the state (military, Peace and Development Council [police], administration), and away from the geographical centres of power (Rangoon, Naypyidaw, major cities). Therefore, a local commander in a distant Chin state village (geographical), or a low-level official in the marginally powerful Ministry of Social Welfare in Rangoon (institutional) may both be distant from the centres of military-state power.

As a result, these agents retain a certain autonomy to recreate their own systems of control. Many choose to be as despotic (in the case of commanders or police) or as uncooperative and/or scrutinizing (in the case of state administration) as the central state. This is especially true in ethnic areas where “security threats” are privileged by police or military on the ground – often agents there are even more abusive than the standard centralized state. However, many agents cannot afford to replicate the central state’s will. This is because they are constrained from both above and below: superiors from above demand a subdued populace, while the agent must manage patron/client relationships, as well as ensure that conditions don’t completely deteriorate for the people below.

Many state agents thus must propose a bargain: they reach out to civil society for assistance. This is somewhat risky: civil society has some inherent political content – indeed, people getting together to talk about how to address social problems tends to lead to conversations about the nature of those problems, which is inherently political. But in the end the state agent feels the bargain is worth the risk. Civil society political content is likely too meagre itself to spark rebellion, given the way that power pre-empts the formation of broader political consciousness; given the way that collective forms of political resistance have been put down by the despotic power of the state in the past. And so the state agents allow civil society participation; not only that, they often prevent centralized-state penetration of civil society activities: they lie to their higher-ups, or more accurately, engage in the brilliant strategy of plausible deniability when interacting with civil society: ‘Just don’t tell me what you’re doing!’

Local state agents therefore simultaneously deploy two contradictory desires: they want to ensure civil society does not act politically, yet they also refuse to know what civil society is actually doing! This results in tense and symbiotic bargains which remain stable only provided civil society is both apolitical and will always remain so. In other words: the state vets an organization, ensures it is only delivering services, and then is compelled by the limits of a system of despotic power and its own need for plausible deniability to become partially blind to civil society’s future activities. And herein lies the opportunity.

Let us imagine if civil society organizations began bending the rules. Not breaking them (holding mass rallies), but simply bending them (beginning to facilitate covertly political discussions: talking about politics through other idioms). Given that these pockets of space do exist in Burma for discussion and perhaps even politics, imagine if there was a mechanism for imbuing that civil society with political consciousness and get it to begin disrupting the current ossified bargains.

Part two will explore how this might play out. The argument will not be for rebellion, but rather that the expected elections may be a first moment in a slow process of repeated negotiations with, and demands of, the state. These demands, emerging necessarily from a number of different realms of civil society, may lead to a potentially radical transformation of power and society in Burma.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

DVB

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

If the report fails to load, go here

The Democratic Voice of Burma has been accumulating information about a nuclear program in Burma for years, but recently they have come across a source with truly extraordinary information.  He worked in special factories making prototype components for missile and nuclear programs.  Like the Israeli technician, Mordecai Vanunu, he has brought hundreds of color photographs of the activities inside these factories.  DVB has asked us to organize this information and analyze what it means.  The goal of this report is to report our findings to DVB in support of their documentary film on Al Jazeera.  We are also providing a great deal of raw data for the nonproliferation community to assess.

Burma is one of the world’s most repressive regimes.  It is ruled by a junta of generals who have been in power for decades.  These generals seem to have no political philosophy, such as socialism or fascism, only pure simple greed.  To remain in power they depend on a brutal secret police and suspension of most human rights.  With the passage of time they seek more ways to hang onto power as their wealth grows ever larger and the dissatisfaction of the population threatens to oust them.

There are many signs that Burma looks to maintain power by having military power that would make foreign intervention very painful for an aggressor.  The power may not be necessarily aimed at aggression by Burma on its neighbors; rather it is a defensive power that signals its neighbors to leave them alone.  The model for this is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK, commonly known as North Korea.  North Korea is too poor to threaten anyone except its immediate neighbors but its possession of nuclear weapons inhibits any outside intervention in its repressive regime.

There are many reports of a nuclear program in Burma.(3)  Most of them have been sketchy and in some cases technically incredible.  Now the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) has assembled a huge new body of information that confirms many sources that Burma is investigating nuclear technology.  The majority of the new information comes from one source, which is always a concern for credibility.  This source is an educated man, a former Burmese Army Major, Sai Thein Win (STW), who understands what he knows and separates his information into what he knows well and what is hearsay.  He has a good sense of the organization of Burma’s special military programs and is much more of an expert on their missile projects than he is on nuclear matters.  His information on nuclear program organization is impressive and it correlates well with information from other published and unpublished sources.  But the most important thing he has brought forth is hundreds of color photographs taken inside critical facilities in Burma.  Photographs could be faked, but there are so many and they are so consistent with other information and within themselves that they lead to a high degree of confidence that Burma is pursuing nuclear technology.  Our analysis leads to only one conclusion: this technology is only for nuclear weapons and not civilian use or nuclear power.

Background and Organization of a Program

There is very little doubt that Burma has a nuclear program.  It is headed by Dr. Ko Ko Oo who has attended meetings abroad and openly asserts his interest in nuclear matters.  This program has a small connection to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.  The ties to IAEA are in mostly in civil matters such as the use of isotopes in medicine and agriculture, but there are also training courses for Burmese scientists in nuclear technology.  Burma does not have any declared nuclear facilities and it claims to have little or no nuclear material.(4) This situation means that the IAEA does not conduct any inspections in Burma because both sides have agreed there is nothing to inspect.  The situation with IAEA will be explained in more detail later in this paper.

Currently Burma’s nuclear effort is managed by the Directorate of Defence Services Science and Technology Research Center (DDSSTRC).  This organization is located in May Myo, also called Pyin Oo Lwin at the Defense Services Technological Academy (DSTA).  It is a large complex for the education of military officers and for research.  It is primarily a headquarters site and probably does not conduct experimental research, at least with nuclear materials or explosives.

Figure 1.  Defense Services Technological Academy at Pyin Oo Lwin

The scientific side of the nuclear program is run by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), headed by Minister U Thang.  Beneath Thang is the Director General of MOST, Dr. Ko Ko Oo.  Dr. Ko Ko Oo is the most public face of MOST and its nuclear activities.  An example is an invitation to a June 2010 training course sponsored by IAEA where Dr. Ko Ko Oo is the addressee to choose participants from Burma.(5)  It is vital to note that Dr. Ko Ko Oo has also served as director of the Department of Technical and Vocational Education (DTVE), which is a front for military procurement activities.  It will become clear later in this report that DTVE has been purchasing equipment for the nuclear and missile programs.  There is also a Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in Burma.  The DTVE and DAE at one point shared an address, phone number and fax number according to an excellent and detailed report by Andrea Stricker of ISIS.(6)  In 2002 Dr. Ko Ko Oo gave his email address at DAE in his personal data at a conference.(7)

The DDSSTRC is responsible for a program, which according to sources, is charged with building a nuclear reactor, enriching uranium, and building a nuclear weapon.  It is clear that this is a very difficult task for Burma to successfully accomplish.  Much of what STW is providing suggests Burma has little chance of succeeding in its quest, but that does not change the fact that even trying to build a bomb is a serious violation of its international agreements.  It would also seem that the very act of trying to build nuclear weapons is a sign of desperation and fear, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed.

Thabeikkyin

Our assessment of multiple sources is that Burma is really developing nuclear technology, that it has built specialized equipment and facilities, and it has issued orders to a cadre to build a program.  The cadre in charge is known as the Number 1 Science and Technology Regiment at Thabeikkyin.(8)  It is colloquially referred to as the “Nuclear Battalion” and we will adopt that term as well.   Major General Sein Win and Lt.-Col. Win Ko have signed a document directing a special factory to produce a part for the No. (1) Scientific and Technology Regiment.

This document is important and will surface again when we look at equipment that is needed for the Nuclear Battalion.  There are many reported activities at Thabeikkyin.  Previous reports have associated it with mining or ore concentration.  This latest source goes further and describes it as a site where “dangerous” ore is brought and stored.  He also believes that the site is involved in trying to produce “yellowcake” but he is not sure what this material is or if they have been successful.

In Google Earth imagery we can see a small ore concentration plant and ore reserve about 7 miles east of the Irrawaddy at Thabeikkyin.  This is very close to the point he describes.  A group of buildings with one thickener and a tailings pond are visible.  There is a pile of ore nearby.  This could be a uranium ore concentration plant, consistent with multiple source reports of uranium mining in this general area.  The mine itself has not been found.

Figure 2.  A small ore concentration plant is visible at the location of Thabeikkyin given by the latest source.

STW visited Thabeikkyin on two occasions, in 2006 and 2007 and reported on the following points.  The first and most important is that the mission is to build a nuclear reactor and to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb.  There is considerable research work at the site devoted to this end.  It is not clear that either the reactor or enrichment plant would actually be built, possibly only designed here.

He did not visit the ore plant but he did visit laboratories in small buildings for a demonstration to General Mg Aye.  He saw two demonstrations of technology.  The first was a powerful laser, reportedly a carbon-monoxide (CO) laser that was used to burn a hole in a stick.  The beam was a small red spot.  One of his colleagues later confided to him that CO laser beams are invisible so the spot was not from that laser, but maybe a guide or pointing laser.  The audience of military offices was very impressed.

The top general in the country, Than Shwe attended a second demonstration on a subsequent visit:  a “control rod drive.”  This consisted of a microprocessor moving a control element up and down in a laboratory.  This sounds like an extremely simple task and not very impressive but again the military officers were pleased.  Sai, without prompting gave a technically credible explanation of how a control rod affects the criticality of a reactor by absorbing neutrons.  Otherwise we would not be so sure that the demonstration he saw had any nuclear application.

STW told us that Dr. Ni Lar Tin was the scientist who explained to the group how a control rod works.  A Dr. Daw(9) Nilar Tin is active and visible in the DAE and MOST.(10)

STW can give the names of a few researchers at Thabeikkyin.  Details of the technology are in a later section of this analysis.

The Factories

The Nuclear Battalion controls two important factories.  These factories are dedicated to making prototypes and special components for the missile and nuclear programs.

Number (1) Science and Technological Material Production Workshop will be abbreviated as “Factory 1” in this report.  It is located east of Pyin Oo Lwin (also known as Maymyo.)  It was purposely built for the military research programs.  Factory 1 has been more closely associated with the nuclear program than the missile program but has worked for both. It is also known by the name Naung Laing.

Figure 3.  Factory 1 is east of Pyin Oo Lwin

Factory 1 has been the subject of internet discussion in such forums as the Arms Control Wonk, where it was the subject of intense speculation as a reactor.(11)  DVB has many pictures of Factory 2 under construction that can be correlated to satellite imagery, as well as the exterior of Factory 1 after completion.  It is a certainty that this is a machine tool factory and not a reactor.(12)

Number (2) Science and Technological Material Production Workshop, “Factory 2,” is located near Myaing in the western part of Burma.  This factory is supposedly almost identical to Factory 1 but it is more tied to the Burmese missile program.  That program is allegedly planning to make prototype parts for SCUD liquid fueled missiles.  Burma has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with DPRK on producing SCUDs so it is not unreasonable to consider there is a link between Factory 2 and the DPRK MOU.

Figure 4.  Factory 2 near Myaing

Figure 5.  Factory 2 under construction in a photo provided by STW

The western world and DVB know a great deal about the equipment and capability inside these two buildings.  A great deal of the equipment in the buildings is large scale, precision, Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine tools.  These tools are largely of German and Swiss origin, along with some measuring equipment from Japan.

Figure 6.  Layout of Machine Tools in Factory 1 from a visitors’ orientation display

The companies which sold this equipment to Burma presumed it was being sold for educational or civilian purposes.  The customer for the purchase was the DTVE.  There was no derogatory information about DTVE at the time so the sale was allowed.  Nevertheless, the companies did not sell the latest and best 4 and 5 axis machine tools.  Instead they removed some of these capabilities.  To verify the end-use of the equipment, the German government sent an expert in machine tools along with diplomatic representatives to the factories.  The expert examined the tools and made a number of observations, most of which were incompatible with the claim that the factories were just university training centers:

• • The factories are far from any universities or students
• • There were no females working or studying
• • The equipment was extremely large for normal machinist training
• • No military personnel were observed(13)

There are multiple correlations between satellite imagery, end-user verification, and photos of equipment being installed by German technicians, and even photos of the expert and the diplomat during end-user verification inspections.  STW served one and one half years as an army major and deputy director in Factory 2 and then a few months in Factory 1 in the same capacity.

Figure 7.  Shipping crate for machine tool delivered to Factory 1 in the name of DTVE

He indicated that many of the German tools were unusable due to damage and poor maintenance.  Photos of equipment show rust, rat droppings and damaged hydraulic and electrical lines.

Figure 8.  Electrical discharge machine tool display for VIP visit

Training in Russia

STW has an interesting background, according to his interviews with us and with the DVB.  He received an engineering degree from the DSTA.  He joined the military and later was chosen to go to Moscow for additional training in missile technology in 2001.  He was in the first group of students going to Russia, a fact which has been widely reported in other sources.  Sai describes how he had to appear to be a civilian for this Russian training, and so he was given a false graduation certificate from Yangon University to show to the Russians.  He still has both Burmese certificates as well as a Russian certificate from the N. E. Bauman Institute, Moscow State Technical University (MSTU).  This is a respected Russian university where he studied many aspects of missile technology.  Upon return to Burma he was assigned to the Headquarters of DDSSTRC for a year.   He then was assigned to Factory 2, while it was under construction and worked primarily on missiles.  An example is that he programmed the CNC machines to make a prototype impeller designed at DDSSTRC; however, the impeller quality was unacceptable due to the limitations of the machine tool.

Figure 9.  The missile impeller as manufactured at Factory 2

Sai was part of a group which received missile training.  Another group, where he also had friends, was sent to Russia at the same time, circa 2001, for training in nuclear technology.  Many were trained at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute known by its Russian acronym, MIFI.  This university specializes in the nuclear side of technology, such as mathematics, physics, computer codes and theory.  At one time it was the primary training school for the Soviet nuclear weapons experts.  Other Burmese students went to the Mendeleev Moscow Chemical Engineering Institute.  This university trained the Burmese in chemical technologies related to activities such as the production of uranium compounds to be used in the nuclear fuel cycle.

After all of the students returned from Russia, STW lost direct contact with them, but he knew that the mechanical engineers with nuclear training went to Factory 1 and the ones with more specific nuclear training went to the Nuclear Battalion at Thabeikkyin.  There are still Burmese military students in Russia today.

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

All of the new information brought out in photographs pertains to chemical processing.  There are no pictures of nuclear bombs or reactors and only a tiny bit allegedly on Laser Isotope Separation (LIS).  The information is all related to the chemical side of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The technologies of interest are the following.

Step		Activity
1		Uranium Mining
2		Uranium Ore Concentration
3		Yellowcake Production
4		Uranium Oxides Production
5		Uranium Tetrafluoride Production (UF4)
6		Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6)
7		Enrichment
	Gas Centrifuges	Or	Molecular Laser Isotope Separation
8		Reduction of UF6 to UF4
9		Bomb reduction of UF4 with magnesium to uranium metal

Equipment Built at Factory 1 for the Nuclear Battalion

(Step numbers refer to the fuel cycle diagram above.)

Bomb Reactor (Step 9)

The bomb reactor is easy to recognize from its properties and from the fact that STW supplied a letter from the Nuclear Battalion to Factory 1 requesting a “bomb reactor.”  The bomb reactor was to be used by the “special substance production research department.”  This group is located at Technological workshop (5), whose location we do not know.

“Bomb Reactor” is an unfortunate pair of words in the nuclear context.  The object is not a “nuclear bomb” and it is not a “nuclear reactor.”  It is simply a very strong vessel to contain a violent chemical reaction.  Hence it is a bomb in its strength and shape, and a reactor for containing the reaction of UF4 and magnesium (or calcium) metal inside.  The term bomb reactor is synonymous with “bomb reduction vessel” or even “reduction vessel.”  This terminology is much less emotive.

Figure 10.  Original letter from the Nuclear Battalion directing Factory 1 to build a “Bomb Reactor”

Secret

[Stamp of No (1) Science and Technology Regiment

Ministry of Defence]

No (1) Science and Technology Regiment

Thabeikkyin

Letter no. 1003/99/research/ Oo 3

Date, 2010 February 4

To

Army Science and Technological Research Department

Subject: Requesting the continuation of supply for materials needed for research

1. 1. Request No (1) Science and Technological material production workshop to make Bomb Reactor needed for research material for the use of special substance production research department at technological workshop (5).
2. 2. Send and report the formation/prototype data of Bomb Reactor needed to be made, as in Appendix (A)

Lt-Col Win Ko

• - (Please) carry it out.
• - Calculate necessity

(Signed)

Chief of HQs (On behalf of)

(Signature)

Secret

Figure 11.  Translation of the Letter

Figure 12.  Sketch for building the bomb reactor

One thing that will jump out at the experienced reader is that there are no tolerances or materials listed on this sketch.  The source himself noted that the drawings from the Nuclear Battalion were very unprofessional.  This factors into our assessment that the Burmese nuclear program is quite primitive.

Figure 13.  Two bomb reactors, one used and one new

The finished bomb reactors are pictured side by side in this image from Factory 1.  One of the reactors has obviously been subjected to great heat and is discolored and paint has burned off as it would be if it had been used to reduce metal.  The other is new.  There is an image of the two vessels in a packing crate being received from the Nuclear Battalion, so for some reason an unused vessel is being returned with an older one.  STW did not see these vessels, only the photo, so he was not aware of any health and safety precautions. There are no safety precautions such as contamination control in any image of the factories that we have seen.

There is no information about ceramic crucibles, boosters, igniters or such things.  The factory simply built the items and shipped them elsewhere for use.  A rough estimate of the amount of metal that could be produced in this reactor is about 20 – 25 kg.  That would be criticality safe and could be used for natural or enriched metal.

Bomb reduction is done in other industries besides nuclear but it is relatively rare.  The technology was widely developed during the Manhattan project to make uranium metal for reactor fuel and for weapons in ton quantities.  A bomb reactor built by a special factory, subordinate to the Army Nuclear Battalion is a very good indicator of a nuclear program in the context of many other things.

Inert Atmosphere Glove Box (Step 9)

STW described the construction of a simple vacuum glove box produced at Factory 1.  The box was used to mix two materials together when one of them was highly susceptible to oxidation.  He describes evacuating the box and backfilling it with inert argon for the mixing to take place.  Our interpretation for this glove box is that it is used for mixing UF4 with magnesium metal for the bomb reduction to uranium metal.

Figure 14.  Inert Atmosphere glove box.  Vacuum pump is behind the man on the right.

Vacuum glove boxes are not an everyday item in industry.  This one is quite crude but STW’s description of it being used to mix readily oxidizing chemicals is certainly credible.  He also noted it would be cheaper to buy a glove box like this than it would be to make it.  Possibly this was because the project was classified.

Inconel Tube Fluoride Bed Reactor (Step 6)

Factory 1 put a lot of effort into building a “fluoride bed reactor”.  It is shown in the next figures.  STW did not know the materials that were used, but the photo was found on a CD in a file marked “Inconel.”

Inconel © is a nickel based alloy used in nuclear industry applications where fluorine or hydrogen fluoride (HF) is used in the process.  Fluorine is highly corrosive and destroys steels at high temperatures, such as in furnaces.  Inconel is also used in a variety of other applications ranging from the natural gas industry, to turbine blades and even Formula One racing car exhausts.  So the use of Inconel is not a unique signature of nuclear fuel cycle use.

The terminology used by this source, “fluoride bed reactor” does offer more clues.  It would seem that fluorine is involved and fluorine is a component of the nuclear fuel cycle and a very corrosive one.  UF6 can be produced by placing UF4 powder in a fluidized bed reactor and agitating it in a high temperature section by a stream of fluorine gas.  It is likely that the assembly shown in the figure is the entire fluidized bed reactor.  The can at the bottom collects solids that are not fluorinated and are not wanted in the product.  The size of this reactor suggests a prototype or pilot plant size.

Figure 15.  The “fluoride bed reactor” assembly. Note the Trumabend V-130 machine on the right and the Trumatic L 3030 laser cutting machine in the background and compare to Figure 6, the shop layout of Factory 1.

Figure 16.  Internal components of the “Fluoride Bed Reactor”

Figure 17.  Presumed Inconel tube with the section surrounded by the furnace in the previous figures

Tube Furnaces (Step 5)

STW had only seen drawings of these tubes but he believed that they were for the carbon monoxide (CO) laser at Thabeikkyin.  That is certainly a possibility but they appear more likely to be tube furnaces for the fluorination of solid uranium oxide powder to solid UF4powder.  They are certainly tubes that have been heated and there are metal “boats” for holding powder to be reacted.  Two have been subjected to heat and one appears to be new.  This would be step 5 in the fuel cycle diagram above.

Figure 18.  Two used tube furnaces and one new one

Nitrogen Tank with steel Collectors (Step 6)

An interesting item fabricated in Factory 1 is a “Steel Collectors and Nitrogen Container” (their terminology).  From its design it looks like an attempt to build a cold trap to catch UF6 gas on high surface area plates with very cold liquid nitrogen as the refrigerant.

Figure 19.  Possible cold trap assembly for collecting UF6 gas

Other equipment

Other items include a large mixer “Water Reduced Tank”, an “Automatic Autoclave Sterilizer”, and a “Burning Chamber”.  These are not particularly unique or part of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The burning chamber is shown in the next figure, only because it illustrates the crude workmanship of the items seen.

Figure 20.  This object, described only as a burning chamber is rather crude

Figure 21.  “Water Reduced Tank” which appears to be a simple mixer

Reports of a Nuclear Reactor

The open source literature is filled with reports of a nuclear reactor in Burma.  We are tempted to believe that this could be layman’s confusion over a nuclear program in general, because uninformed sources can be very loose with terminology.  One thing is clear, that many people have heard of a Russian plan to sell a reactor to Burma around 2001.  It is very clear that the reactor was never sold and it seems unlikely that Russia would do so today.  Russia’s ROSATOM did announce intent to sell a reactor to Burma in 2007, but this deal has not been consummated owing to financial and practical legal issues.(14)  An absolute condition for Russia to sell a 10 MW research reactor would be that Burma sign the “Additional Protocol” with IAEA.(15)  The Additional Protocol is a voluntary addendum to an existing safeguards agreement such as the standard INFCIRC type 153 agreement in force with Burma today.  The Additional Protocol provides the IAEA with greater rights to ask for details of existing declared facilities (there are none in Burma so far) and greater rights to probe into undeclared activities of the type we are alleging.  100 countries in the world have agreed to an Additional Protocol.(16)  Unfortunately, some critical ones, such as Syria, have not.  With the many open source claims that Burma has a covert nuclear program, this might not be the time they would agree to sign.  The Russians should not even consider selling a reactor to a state with weak and obsolete IAEA agreements.

In addition, a 10 MW nuclear reactor is a very small reactor, suited mainly for producing medical isotopes, conducting nuclear physics experiments, and training engineers and technicians in nuclear technology that could eventually be used to build a larger reactor.  A 10 MW reactor is a very poor source of plutonium and is of little interest in most countries inspected by the IAEA today.  It would be inspected and monitored on a routine basis and misuse would be difficult.

Therefore, reports that a reactor has been sold and that Burma is building a 10 MW reactor on its own seem far fetched and pointless.

What is of far greater concern is the possible tie to the DPRK.  Some sources, albeit not well-vetted, allege that DPRK technicians are helping to build a reactor in Burma.  This immediately brings to mind the 2007 bombing of a facility in Syria that allegedly was a DPRK designed plutonium production reactor.  This highlights the fact that DPRK is willing to build at least one reactor outside its own territory. Thus, any rumored activity in Burma should be taken seriously.  So far no sources have given adequate coordinates to locate a suspected nuclear reactor in Burma but this is a high priority item for more information.

Report of Laser Isotope Separation

The DVB source provided a great deal of information on a Laser Isotope Separation (LIS) program at the Nuclear Battalion.  From the outset we will readily agree with critics that a laser isotope separation program is far beyond the capabilities of Burma with its poor technical resources.  Nevertheless STW has a lot of details about the program, and if Burma chooses to spend its resources in this way it is heartening to those who wish them to fail.

Laser isotope separation has been a huge research program in many countries, such as the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, South Africa, Australia and probably others.  None of these advanced industrial countries has succeeded in making significant amounts of enriched uranium at anything close to a competitive price.

There are two common approaches to Laser Isotope Separation.  This is an overly detailed topic for this paper and will be summarized.  STW had been clearly told that he was to make some precision nozzles for a supersonic carbon monoxide (CO) laser that would be used in the LIS process.  Carbon dioxide (CO2) and CO lasers are normally associated with the Molecular Laser Isotope Separation (MLIS) process.  This process uses UF6 as the chemical working substance, the same as centrifuge enrichment.  STW was asked to machine many prototype nozzles for the lasers, in batches of ten or so.  He remembers them because they were difficult to make and required electrical discharge machining, one of his special skills.  A sketch of a nozzle is seen in the next figure.  Note again that the sketch is not a proper engineering drawing, lacking tolerances other information.

Figure 22.  Sketch of a proposed nozzle made at Factory 1 allegedly for a supersonic CO laser

It is our view that the LIS process is far beyond the technical capabilities that we have seen elsewhere in Burma.  This technology proved too complex and expensive for several industrialized states.  It is common, however, in the developing world for scientists educated in universities in industrialized countries, to return home and sell high technology programs to government bureaucrats.  The explanation here is probably simply that some academics have foisted this project off on the government so they can do research and publish, knowing that they will not succeed in the programmatic aim.

Report of Gas Centrifuge Program

STW heard reports of a gas centrifuge program.  One of his colleagues who studied nuclear technology at MIFI in Moscow said that the Nuclear Battalion was working on centrifuges, and if a plant was built it would be near Taunggyi.  The prototypes were being made of plastic as far as he knew.  No further information was available on this topic.

As an aside, when STW was discussing his military training in the 1990s, he mentioned fiber composites.  He was aware of a military program to manufacture rocket bodies from some type of fiber.  His military instructor had told the students that the process was not reliable because the tubes “vibrated too much”.  He had no more information on this topic and he did not tie it to enrichment himself, only as an answer to what kind of materials might be used.

International Agreements

IAEA

Burma became a State Party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992.  It acquired rights and obligations under this Treaty.  The agreement is known as Information Circular 477 (INFCIRC/477).(17)  In particular, Burma signed a Small Quantities Protocol with the IAEA in 1995.  This stipulates that Burma has no nuclear facilities and only small quantities of nuclear materials.

Important nuclear facilities are defined by the IAEA as:(18)

A. Power reactors

B. Research Reactors and Critical Assemblies

C. Conversion Plants

D. Fuel Fabrication Plants

E.  Reprocessing Plants

F. Enrichment (isotope separation plants)

Nuclear materials are defined essentially as plutonium and uranium, including enriched uranium, uranium-233, and uranium source materials.(19)  The precise definitions are complex and are left to the interested reader.

Small quantities are defined as less than:

(a) One kilogram in total of special fissionable material, which may

consist of one of more of the following:

(i) Plutonium;

(ii) Uranium with an enrichment of 0.2 (20%) and above, taken

account of by multiplying its weight by its enrichment; and

(iii) Uranium with an enrichment below 0.2 (20%) and above

that of natural uranium, taken account of by multiplying its weight

by five times the square of its enrichment;

(b) Ten metric tons in total of natural uranium and depleted uranium

with an enrichment abo

Shan Herald

Hseng Khio Fah/Emily Hobbs

July 16, 2010

A senior officer from Shan State Army (SSA) ‘North’ responded to criticism from National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) and United Wa State Army (UWSA), as well as people within the Shan State Army, of its decision to join the junta run Border Guard Force (BGF), according to sources on the Sino-Burma border.

Two of the three brigades, #3 and #7, which make up the SSA-N, consented to be controlled by the Burmese military in April this year. The remaining Brigade No.1 continues to resist pressure from brigades #3 and #7, as well as the Burmese military, to join the BGF.

The SSA N official representing brigades #3 and # 7 claimed that the groups had no choice but to join, explaining that his decision to do so was made in the best interests of the people of Shan state and would offer more stability for the region.

But Sai Leun, the leader of NDAA better known as Mongla group, commented that the SSA-N was; “acting only in its interest and not for the interests of the people”, adding that the group’s name is supposed to represent the whole Shan State and not just the territory in the north which will be most affected by the developments.

Those in the lower ranks of the SSA have indicated they share Sai Leun’s sentiments by defecting to join the steadfastly resistant First Brigade and the anti-Naypyitaw Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, which remain the principal armed opposition movement against Burma’s military rulers.

Unlike its neighboring groups – the UWSA and the NDAA – the SSA-N territory has no borders with any other countries and will therefore form a militia called the Home Guard Force (HGF) instead of becoming part of the BGF.

Groups who agree to transform themselves into BGF must accept Burmese military officials who will occupy most of the key positions in running the force, such as administration, personnel and material support departments.

But the SSA-N’s position as an HGF means that it is not necessary for Burmese military officials to take over the running of the force. The SSA official cited this fact – that there would be no Burmese intervention – as the basis for its decision, saying that it was only because of this that the group had agreed to transform.

However, in contradiction to that statement, unconfirmed reports last week suggested that the Burmese army was requesting brigades #3 and #7 move to Mao Valley along the Ruili valley (Shweli valley) on the Sino-Burma border and become forces of the Border Guard. Such a move would likely mean that Burmese officials would assume the running of the brigades, thus undermining the senior official’s defense of the group’s decision. The purpose of the move to Mao Valley remains unclear. It is possible that the Burmese army intends to maneuver the SSA-N into a position whereby they can safeguard the region during the election process against the SSA-South’s Force 701 active along the Sino-Burma border.

In an effort to reassure China there is stability in the region and ensure their continued support, the Burmese army has also told resisting groups that it will not engage in any further discussion about refusal to join the BGF until after the election, although defection of the members of brigades # 3 and #7 to the First Brigade and to the SSA-South is likely to heighten tension and put further pressure on the Burmese Army’s efforts to meet the required quotas to form three Home Guard battalions, set at between 900 – 1000 troops.

In the event that the Burmese army acts on its threats to attack dissenting groups, having brigades #3 and #7 in Mao Valley could provide a useful sacrificial front line defense against retaliatory attacks from the SSA-South and members of their own former sister groups in the First Brigade as they continue to gain strength in numbers.

Since late April the senior officers of the SSA-N have been keeping a low profile. The decision to speak now comes after months of mounting criticism from other resisting groups after brigades 3 and 7 reneged on the agreement made between all ceasefire groups on 16 April to form a Command, Control and Communications Centre for their joint defense against the junta’s BGF program.

The senior official’s statement does little to explain the reasons for the about-face and will likely be found to be unsatisfactory by those who continue to adhere to the April agreement.

The 3rd and 7th Brigades are commanded by Major General Loimao and Gaifa respectively and the 1st by Maj-Gen Pang Fa. He is reportedly close to the UWSA.

Shan Herald

ENDS

Junta forced to back down in face of overwhelming alliance of ethnic armies

Mizzima

Dan Pedersen

May 9, 2010

An ethnic opposition leader says Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, has had to rethink its offensive against a northern alliance of ethnic armies.

After weeks of bristling at the borders of Kachin, Wa and Shan states, SPDC troops have withdrawn to barracks at Lashio, said Lahu Democratic Front chairman Aik Long.

He said SPDC troops, as they pulled out on May 4, shouted abuse at ethnic army sentries watching them go, saying they would return after the elections to “destroy them”.

Mr Long said five units of SPDC troops, numbering 16,500 men, had withdrawn from forward positions in northern Burma that had them pitched against the Wa, and harassing the cities of Mong La and Pang Sang.

Mr Long was in Pang Sang when the SPDC marched on the city.

“They couldn’t take the city, or Mong La, and have withdrawn to Lashio,” he said.

“But they said they would be back after the elections to fight harder and destroy us.”

Mr Long is a former general-secretary of the National Democratic Front, an ethnic alliance currently headed by Karen National Union vice president David Thackrabaw.

He said SPDC troops engaged the United Wa State Army on April 28 and fought until May 3 “with many hundreds dead”, but withdrew on May 4, returning to their Lashio base.

“They went home,” he said, laughing.

Mr Long said at Mong La, the SPDC had encountered a force of 60,000 ethnic soldiers, headed by the Wa, but including Shan, Lahu and Akha ethnic fighters.

In Pang Sang he said the SPDC had once again withdrawn, encountering an opposing force of about 40,000 soldiers, made up of Wa and Lahu fighters and smaller ethnic groups.

He acknowledged the numbers of ethnic fighters he referred to were significantly greater than numbers previously quoted in news reports – the Wa is generally quoted as having 30,000 men under arms – but he said there had been a rush of civilians looking to join the opposition alliance as fighters.

“Civilian rule is the only way forwards for the country now, and civilians are joining the ethnic armies to ensure this happens.

“There will only be more people joining [the army] as the situation intensifies,” said Mr Long.

The withdrawal by the SPDC must be considered a win for the new northern ethnic alliance that has formed in Burma, consisting of the Wa, Shan, Akha, Lahu and Lisu peoples.

Mr Long said there were also many smaller ethnic minorities that had melded into the alliance.

He said the SPDC would be smarting from its recent failed engagement, having realised it would have to return in greater numbers to exert any control over the major northern cities.

He said the fuel bill for the offensive also would have been costly – transporting more than 16,000 soldiers anywhere requires a lot of diesel.

Mr Long said security was incredibly tight in the north, with the UWSA having taken control of mobile telephony throughout the state.

All caller IDs on all mobile calls are blocked and Wa intelligence are listening 24 hours a day for signs of traitors or to identify SPDC intelligence officers, he said.

At the suggestion the UWSA generally maintained a high level of security because of illicit businesses it was involved, including the drug trade, Mr Long was hardly apologetic.

“It’s a small land, but big money [can be had].

“At the moment the SPDC is brutal and we need an army to protect ourselves – an army needs weapons, ammunition and wages,” he said, in defence of the Wa’s drug trade.

“What we really want is peace,” he said.

“This election the SPDC is proposing is a fake election, it’s not fair and square,” said Mr Long.

“If the SPDC really wants peace then the only way forwards is to first release all of the political prisoners – our leaders.

“But Than Shwe is bent on having a small, centralised area running the whole country and that is wrong,” he said.

ENDS

Mizzima

Dan Pedersen

May 9, 2010

More than 2,000 Democratic Karen Buddhist Army soldiers are said to have defected to the Karen National Union, after military field reports early this week had hundreds of the defectors fighting Burmese Army units as they made their towards the Thai border.

DKBA and KNU representative met on Friday morning to discuss this burgeoning alliance of foot soldiers. Present was Lahu Democratic Front chairman Aik Long Kham Mwe, who said more would join the more than 2,000 DKBA soldiers who had defected to the KNU in recent weeks.

But Chit Thu, the hard-line commander of the DKBA’s Brigade 999, who has made peace with the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and become very rich in the process, still had a hard core of troops around him, Mr Long said. He said Brigade 999 was the militia’s only unit still attacking the KNU.

But for the DKBA rank and file, Chit Thu’s recent three-day public unveiling of his 10-bedroom villa that resembles a Las Vegas hotel might have represented the end of the road for many of them, Mr Long suggested.

There is little doubt Chit Thu is much better off financially than when he fought with the KNU. While his fleet of luxury vehicles grows, DKBA troops live in rudimentary bamboo shelters and eat bamboo shoots with chillies, rice and fish paste. Most of them do not own a single vehicle.

“For years the SPDC has had the Karen killing each other, now it looks like things might swing around,” Mr Long said. “Both the DKBA and KNU were at the meeting I attended this morning (Friday) and they all have the same idea now – to separate from the SPDC.”

“The KNU wants all Karen united, they don’t want to see the SPDC using the DKBA as human shields by pushing them into the front line by themselves,” he said. “Now is the time we must unite,” he said.

Brigade 999 reaps tax revenue from border crossings near Mae Sot, which it shares with KNU/KNLA Peace Council commander Tay Lay Mya, the youngest son of the late KNU powerbroker General Bo Mya.

Revenue from the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge across the Moei River is said to contribute about one billion baht a month to the Thai GDP. Bangkok has already approved a second bridge to be built to join Kokko on the Thai side and Shwe Kokko on the Burmese side and it is only a matter of time before construction begins.

The Tak chamber of commerce has for years lobbied to have such a link and new four-lane highways lead to the sleepy farming outpost of Kokko, cutting their way through the middle of Mae Sot. It is no wonder some locals no longer refer to Kokko by its original Thai name. Some just call it “Chit Thu”.

ENDS

Kokko bridge

Wangpha casino & resort, Shwe Kokko

Flood of people expected as Burma’s military junta prepares for elections this year

Mizzima

Dan Pedersen

May 5, 2010

The Thai Army has established “protection” areas close to the Burmese border near Mae Sot, anticipating a flood of refugees as Burma’s ruling military junta prepares for elections this year.

As many as 10,000 Burmese are soon expected to be driven across the Thai border by troops of the State Peace and Development Council.

As the ethnic minority armies reject the junta’s demands they declare themselves Border Guard Forces, thereby transforming into government-led militias, the fighting and the fleeing begins.

Already Mon State residents are clustering on the Burmese side of the border, having made it across Karen State to the Thai border.

For the time they are holed up in an internally-displaced persons camp known as Halockhani.

The Thai Army has been monitoring a major military build-up on the Burmese side and has interpreted it as a massing of troops for a major offensive.

So convinced are the Thais of the coming offensive that two areas have been selected to shelter people displaced by the fighting, one to Mae Sot’s north, the other to the south.

The area in the south, Walay, near Phop Phra, is opposite a former KNLA base, Wah Lay Kee (see article), lost to the DKBA last year.

The other is at Kokko (see article and video), the district slated for a new bridge across the Moei River between Burma and Thailand.

Walay backs onto the KNLA’s Sixth Brigade region, Kokko is opposite KNLA Seventh Brigade.

This time, the Thai Army has made it clear there will be no permanent structures established to shelter people and those fleeing fighting will be expected to return home.

Lessons have been learned from last year’s DKBA offensive to Mae Sot’s north, when thousands of people landed on the Thai side in nebulous clusters spread across hundreds of kilometers.

As many as 6,000 people landed in Thailand in a short period of time and several significant KNLA base camps were lost to the DKBA.

At that time – in June, July and August – Thai authorities initially agreed with NGOs operating out of Mae Sot that an entirely new camp might have to be built because of the huge numbers of people fleeing fighting.

But while a few potential sites were surveyed, a new camp was never allowed, because of security threats posed by either DKBA or SPDC troops.

The new rules put in place by the Thais will certainly eliminate any attraction to the temporary camps.

No water tanks or new toilets will be allowed.

And people fleeing fighting more than 100 kilometres from the border will not be allowed to cross into Thailand.

Access to the two refuge zones will be extremely limited, with Thai soldiers having the final say about who may cross the border for temporary security.

Anyone thought to have links to the KNU or the DKBA will not be allowed to cross.

And no new arrivals will be permitted access to the existing refugee camps in Thailand.

ENDS

SPDC units in hot pursuit of defectors heading to Thai border

Mizzima

Daniel Pedersen

May 3, 2010

Hundreds of Democratic Karen Buddhist Army troops are reported to have broken their alliance with the Burma Army. Military field reports have the DKBA soldiers heading for the Thai border, with State Peace and Development Council units in hot pursuit.

There have been significant engagements between the two armies as the DKBA soldiers move east.

Karen National Liberation Army sources last night said the DKBA soldiers were “coming back, but not the commanders, of course”.

Karen National Union vice president David Takapaw said he had heard that many DKBA soldiers were unhappy with recent demands made by the SPDC and that some had begun to defect.

A split within the Karen National Union, between Buddhists and Christians, created the DKBA in 1994. It rapidly proved a destructive split.

In early 1995 the KNU stronghold of Mannerplaw, near the confluence of the Salween and Moei rivers, had fallen, with Burma Army troops guided into the natural fortress by KNU defectors flying the new DKBA flag. At the time the ruling military junta promised the DKBA leaders they would rule Karen State as they wished.

But in 2010 the DKBA does not so much manage Karen State as terrorise the countryside and milk urban areas of cash with standover tactics, while its leaders get rich on cross-border tax.

A photograph in last week’s edition of Mae Sot’s weekly tabloid Pan Din Maere, or Motherland, featured DKBA Batallion 999 leader Chit Thu posing with his family in front of his new home.

Even the local Mae Sot paper was invited to his Myawaddy house-warming party.

The house is a monument to new-found riches as only the nouveau-riche can manage. It is ostentatious and simply lighting the place for his three-day extravaganza would have cost a fortune.

Chit Thu has been one of the handful of individuals who have benefited from the DKBA’s creation. His Brigade 999 has a fearsome reputation and money to burn.

Until the SPDC started pressing his army for reform as a local militia, Chit Thu was riding high.

The question is to what extent the DKBA will be damaged by such a mutiny by its foot soldiers.A few hundred soldiers is many, but not much of an indent on overall DKBA numbers.

A warlord is nothing without the loyalty of his men. Chit Thu must now be questioning some of his men’s loyalty.

With SPDC troops hunting DKBA defectors as they make their way towards KNLA territory, the prospect of the whole of the DKBA peacefully transforming into a Border Guard Force looks marginal.

The DKBA still insists it supports KNU founder Saw Ba U Gyi’s four guiding principles of the “Karen revolution”.

They are:

1. For us surrender is out of the question
2. The Karen, we shall retain our arms
3. The recognition of Karen State must be complete
4. The Karen, we shall decide our own destiny

This, on face value, would have the DKBA opposed vehemently to the SPDC’s rule. But the split that festered in 1994 to become one of the most-damaging blows the KNU has ever felt is these days all about business.

The DKBA now manages border trade with the SPDC, as the KNU once did with the Thais. The KNU logged its border strongholds and oversaw tin, zinc and gold mining.

Now, all manner of goods, both legal and otherwise, cross back and forth, and the DKBA takes a cut on virtually every transaction.

Its leaders are becoming very rich.

But its foot soldiers, ever in danger from KNU landmines and ambushes, see a distinct separation from the lives they lead in the field and those of their leaders, whom the local media follow like celebrities.

Deadlines for the DKBA to transform into a Border Guard Force have come and gone, and as each one passes the SPDC ups the pressure a notch.

The junta’s BGF programme is essentially a system of creating local militias commanded by SPDC officers.

According to its programme of transformation, the DKBA would disarm, change uniforms and then be re-armed. As a BGF, the force would answer directly to the Burma Army. Soldiers would receive a wage, equivalent to 1,200 baht a month. Dropped would be the original DKBA shoulder patch, and most likely the name.

Such a move would take the DKBA further than ever away from its roots and its claims of being driven by Ba U Gyi’s principles.

ENDS

‘Stop the killing’

Letter a desperate plea for action

Karen National Union

March 5, 2010

While we, the Karen National Union (KNU), welcome UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s expression of concern regarding new attacks on the Karen people, we do not believe that this alone is an adequate response to the current crisis. We would like to remind the Secretary General that these attacks have been taking place for more than 60 years, and that numerous requests and expressions of concern, and even resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly, and a Presidential Statement from the United Nations Security Council, have failed to halt these attacks and persuade the SPDC military dictatorship to enter into genuine dialogue.

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