Pro Thein Sein think tank blames KIO for conflict

A Chinese K-8 jet fighter from Burma military attacked KIA's stronghold on Bum Re Bum mountain near Laiza HQ on Dec. 30, 2012.  Photo: Kachin News Group

A Chinese K-8 jet fighter from Burma military attacked KIA's stronghold on Bum Re Bum mountain near Laiza HQ on Dec. 30, 2012.  Photo: Kachin News Group

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels based think tank, last week described the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) as bearing responsibility for the ongoing and increasingly bloody Kachin conflict.

A January 10 blog posting on the ICG website penned by the group's South East Asia Project Director Jim Della-Giacoma claims “The KIO is not blameless. It has not reciprocated the President’s announcement of a unilateral ceasefire and has continued offensive actions against military and strategic targets.”

Like much of what the ICG has written about the Kachin conflict Della-Giacoma's assessment is quite misleading. Although President Thein Sein has twice since the conflict began publicly ordered the military to halt its offensive against the KIO, the army has failed to halt its attacks on KIO positions.  Leaving observers to conclude that either Thein Sein wasn't serious about bringing about a halt to the fighting or he has no control over the military. How exactly the KIO could reciprocate a non-existent unilateral cease-fire is something that Della-Giacoma fails to explain.

Della-Giacoma's blog posting avoids making any direct criticism of Thein Sein, hardly surprising given that last October his organization announced that the ex-general who ranked fourth in Than Shwe's military regime would be receiving the ICG's Pursuit of Peace award. An ICG press release sent out last year announcing the award claimed that since coming to office Thein Sein “has made vast strides in ending the decades-long conflict affecting Myanmar”. An assessment that completely ignores the fact that the Burmese army unilaterally ended a 17 year ceasefire with the KIO in June 2011, some three months after “reformist” Thein Sein became president.

The ICG which receives regular annual funding from Chevron, a US oil firm that has extensive business interests in Burma, has since the Kachin conflict began repeatedly downplayed the responsibility of Burma's government while at the same time heaping the blame on the KIO.

Writing in the New York Times last March, ICG President Louise Arbour claimed that under Thein Sein's leadership Burma's government “has abandoned policies of confrontation with the country’s ethnic minorities for a new peace initiative that has seen 11 cease-fire agreements signed with armed groups, leaving out only the resistant Kachin.”

Apart from the fact that Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court Judge, declined to name the KIO and thus implied that the entire Kachin people are insurgents, there is a great deal wrong with description of the situation in Burma. The recently signed ceasefires with eleven groups may seem significant but Arbour fails to mention that several of these ceasefires are with extremely small groups like the Chin National Front, the Pa-O National Liberation Organization and New Mon State Party (NMSP) who were in informal ceasefires with the army prior to last year's cease-fire signing ceremonies.

While ceasefires signed with both Karen National Union (KNU) and the Shan State Army South (SSA South) are indeed a significant changes to large sections of eastern Burma, it is hard to imagine the army would have continued to fight both of these groups along the Thai-Burma border while carrying a full scale attack on the KIO in the north. In spite of the ICG's repeated attempts to portray Thein Sein as a man of peace, including awarding him the farcical peace prize, his term as president has seen some heaviest fighting to hit Burma in decades, another fact that both Arbour and Della-Giacoma ignore.

Della-Giacoma in his blog posting also claims that the way the way KIO handled the most recent round of peace talks with the government had undermined the positron of Thein Sein's chief negotiator Aung Min. “At peace talks on 30 October, the Myanmar military sent senior commanders to participate, but the Kachin sent only lower-level representatives, meaning that military discussions on separation of forces could not be held. It was interpreted as a snub by the military and left government negotiator U Aung Min undermined as he had worked hard to convince the army to send a very senior army commander to attend the talks in China only for him to be stood up”, writes to Dell-Giacoma.

Dell-Giacoma's musing on the KIO's alleged undermining of Aung Min ignores several key facts. Most notably in the weeks leading up to the October peace talks the KIO's chief spokesperson La Nan repeatedly told journalists that the KIO no longer had any trust in Aung Min who the KIO said had been dishonest in his earlier promises that there would be no more army offensives against KIO positions. The KIO's repeated public criticism of Aung Min didn't stop him from making self-serving announcements about further peace talks between the two sides, comments clearly aimed at pleasing foreign diplomats and international donors.

“He [Aung Min] knew we would not come, but he kept telling the media about the offer so that everyone would wonder why we rejected it,” KIO spokesperson Kumhtat Lah Nan told the Irrawaddy magazine in mid-September referring to Aung Min's public pronouncement that the KIO had been invited to Naypidaw for talks. Given Lah Nan's comments in advance of the talks it is hardly surprising that the KIO didn't send their top officials to meet Aung Min and the unnamed senior military official that Dell-Giacoma refers to. Dell-Giacoma's summary of the talks also ignores the fact that these talks took place as Burma's army was making very obvious efforts at preparing for an eventual siege of Laiza, the KIO's de facto capital, clearly contradicting Aung Min's promise that the army would halt such provocations.

According to Dell-Giacoma's blog posting the ICG is currently working on a forthcoming report that will go “into greater details on the dynamics sustaining this conflict”. One wonders how objective the ICG's upcoming Kachin report will be given that the organization will be hosting Thein Sein at a gala dinner in April where he will receive his peace prize.

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