Christians gird for war in Myanmar

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By Tim Patterson THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LAIZA, Myanmar

"My generation thinks there will be a war," says a 22-year-old cadet in the Kachin Independence Army, one of several armed groups that struggle for political autonomy on the frontiers of Myanmar.

His AK-47 slung loosely over his shoulder, the cadet qualifies his prediction, perhaps in deference to the officers who listen as he speaks.

"We don´t know what the leadership will decide," he says. "We will follow their orders."

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, encompasses the homelands of several distinct ethnic groups that resent the totalitarian rule of ethnic Burmese, who form a majority in this impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Burmese dominate the powerful armed forces, which prop up the military junta that governs Myanmar, widely recognized as one of world's most corrupt and repressive governments.

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is the military wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), among the largest and most powerful of the armed groups that challenge the junta´s rule.

Founded in the early 1960s, the KIO represents ethnic Kachins, themselves a loose coalition of predominantly Christian tribes whose historic territory encompasses the Himalayan foothills of northernmost Myanmar, bordered by southern Tibet, far-eastern India and the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

For more than 30 years, the KIA has waged a guerrilla campaign against the military from its jungle bases along the Chinese border. Other armed groups were active in the region during this period, including the Communist Party and various warlords, many of whom financed their armies through opium smuggling, intensive logging and mining for gold, rubies and jade.

In 1994 the KIO leadership signed a cease-fire with the military, an agreement many Kachins saw as a betrayal of their aspirations for political autonomy.