Making Peace Possible

NO. 169 | Octo ber 202

PEACEW

Why Burma’s Peace Efforts Hav

Failed to End Its Internal War

By Bertil Lintner
NO. 169 | October 202

Making Peace Possible

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of

the United States Institute of Peace. An online edition of this and related reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional information on the subject.

© 2020 by the United States Institute of Peace

United States Institute of Peace

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Peaceworks No. 169. First published 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-832-6

PEACE 

PROCESSES

ABOUT THE REPORT

Supported by the Asia Center’s Burma program at the United States Institute of Peace t

provide policymakers and the general public with a better understanding of Burma’s ethnic conflicts, this report examines the country’s experiences of peace efforts and why they

have failed to end its wars, and suggests ways forward to break the present stalemate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bertil Lintner has covered Burma’s civil wars and related issues, such as Burmese politics and the Golden Triangle drug trade, for nearly forty years. Burma correspon

for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 1982 to 2004, he now writes for Asia Times

and is the author of several books about Burma’s civil war and ethnic strife

Cover photo: A soldier from the Myanmar army provides security as ethnic Karens 

attend a ceremony to mark Karen State Day in Hpa-an, Karen State, on November 7, 

2014. (Photo by Khin Maung Win/AP)
USIP.ORG 1

3 Overview 

7 Past Peace Efforts

 7 1950s: Peace Movements

 7 1962: Federal Movement and Cou

 9 1963: Peace Parley

12 1970s: Peace Talk

13 1980: Amnesty and Peace Talk

16 1989–95: Ceasefire Agreement

22 2015: Nationwide Ceasefire Agreemen

24 Conclusions and Recommendations

Content
2 PEACEWO      NO.

Summary

Burma’s ethnic conflicts constitute the world’s longest civil war, having begun

shortly after its independence from Britain in 1948. Following the 2010 general

election, the new government launched what it called a peace process. Ten ethnic groups signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. More than 80 percen

of Burma’s ethnic combatants, however, have not. Further, since the agreement,

Burma has seen in the far north the heaviest fighting in decades, described in

a 2015 issue of Jane’s Defense Weekly as “the largest war in Myanmar [Burma]

since independence.”

More important, this is scarcely the first time the central government has tried 

to bring the conflicts to an end. The main difference this time is that foreign

organizations have become involved in the process, and ethnic leaders and 

government and military officials have been sent to Northern Ireland, South 

Africa, Colombia, and Guatemala to study how those countries have achieved a

semblance of peace.

The way forward, however, is in Burma’s own history of failed attempts to establish peace. The government and military now need to encourage serious discussions about what constitutional changes would satisfy the aspirations of t

country’s many ethnic groups. They also need to end the divisive policy of separating ethnic armed groups into signatories and nonsignatories of the Nationwide

Ceasefire Agreement. Last, all armed stakeholders need to work together at

building an inclusive national identity. For international actors, priority should be 

given to leveraging the many lessons to be learned from the five previous attempts at peacebuilding in Burma. International players also need to look deeply

into China’s history and interests in Burma, which have always been a barrier t

the realization of peace.
USIP.ORG 3

On January 4, 1948, Burma became an independent, federal republic, the Union of

Burma. Three months later, in the first week of April, the first shots in its long-live

civil war were fired as government forces and communist rebels clashed in a village 

near Pegu in the central dry zone. The Communist Party of Burma (CPB) had oper

openly until March 28, when it was raided by the police and the cadres went underground. The communist rebellion encompassed central Burma, units of the regula

army mutinied, and the People’s Volunteer Organization—a militia formed by independence hero Aung San before his 1947 assassination—resorted to armed struggle 

as well. All three of these predominantly Burman groups, believing that the country

was not truly independent but instead ruled by foreign capitalists, wanted to establish 

a socialist people’s republic. 

In January 1949, the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), which had no desire to join the new Union of Burma, took over Insein, immediately north of Rangoon

From there, the insurrection spread to Karen-inhabited areas of the Irrawaddy delta 

region and the eastern hills. At about the same time, smaller groups of Mon and 

Karenni joined the uprising, as did a band of Kachin mutineers from the regular army. 

Led by Naw Seng, a World War II hero, they took over much of northern Burma.

Then president of Myanmar Thein Sein, center, walks on the historic U Bein bridge while assessing environmental changes at Taungthaman Lake

Amarapura, near Mandalay, Myanmar, on September 27, 2015. (Photo by Hkun Lat/AP)

On January 4, 1948, 

Burma became an 

independent, federal 

republic, the Union of 

Burma. Three months 

later, in the first week 

of April, the first shots 

in its long-lived civil 

war were fired.

Overview 
4 PEACEWO      NO.

ABBREVIATIONS

Moreover, thousands of renegade nationalist Chinese

Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers had retreated into Burma’

northeastern Shan State after their defeat in the 

Chinese civil war

The government’s control of the country was so limited

that diplomats widely referred to the government led 

by Prime Minister U Nu as “the Rangoon Government.”

Only one unit of the army, the 4th Burma Rifles, commanded by General Ne Win, remained intact. The government, led by the prime minister and his Anti-Fasci

People’s Freedom League, would most probably have 

collapsed had it not been for arms shipped to the 

country by U Nu’s close friend and Indian counterpart 

Jawaharlal Nehru.

By the early 1950s, much of the fighting had subsided.

Naw Seng and a few hundred of his men had escaped 

to China, the KNDO had lost Insein and other urban

areas, and the CPB was holding out in the Pegu Yom

mountains north of Rangoon and some other areas in

the Irrawaddy delta and upper Burma. Following a UN

resolution in April 1953, Taiwan was forced to repatriate

its KMT soldiers in Burma, many of whom were still i

remote areas near the Chinese border.

In 1955, the CPB’s central committee held a meeting t

reevaluate its experiences of seven years of fighting. 

The party, it concluded, had become divorced from

the people of Burma and therefore should abandon its

armed struggle and become instead a legal opposition 

party like the Communist Party of India. A peace movement emerged led by Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, one o

the founders of nationalist group the Dobama Asiayone 

and considered the grand old man of Burmese nationalism. He served as chairman of the World Peace

Congress (Burma) and set up an eight-person Interna

Peace Committee. The outcome was the growth of 

legal organization, the Burma Workers’ and Peasants’

Party, which had been set up in 1950 and was seen as 

an aboveground front for the CP

These moves, however, led only to a split between

moderates and hard-liners within the CPB—and a hardened stance by the military, now united under Genera

Ne Win, which saw a communist conspiracy behind the 

AA Arakan Army

BSPP Burma Socialist Program Party

CPB Communist Party of Burma 

DKBA Democratic Karen Buddhist Army

FPNCC Federal Political Negotiating and Consultative Committee

KIA Kachin Independence Army 

KIO Kachin Independence Organization 

KKY Ka Kwe Ye (government-recognized home guards)

KMT Kuomintang

KNDO Karen National Defense Organization

KNLA Karen National Liberation Army

KNU Karen National Union

MNDAA Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army

MPC Myanmar Peace Center

NCA Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement

NDF National Democratic Front

NLD National League for Democracy

PNA Pa-O National Army

RCSS Restoration Council of Shan State

SLORC State Law and Order Restoration Council

SSA Shan State Army

SSPP Shan State Progress Party

TNLA Ta’ang National Liberation Army

UWSA United Wa State Army

The place names in this report reflect the names used at the time of the events being discussed.
USIP.ORG 5

peace movement. Allegations that the Burma Workers’

and Peasants’ Party received clandestine support from 

the Soviet and the Chinese embassies in Rangoo

were frequent.3 No peace was achieved, but, if government figures are to be believed, 2,304 communist 

and ethnic rebels surrendered in the late 1950s.4 At 

the same time, the government claimed a total count of 

no more than 6,365 insurgents in the country, a figure 

that seems to be grossly inaccurate given the extent of 

fighting even in the late 1950s.5

This period and each of the following phases of

Burma's seven-decade civil war offer valuable lessons

for future attempts at forging a lasting peace.

Lessons learned no. 1: No real effort was made

to address the grievances of the rebels, only to

rehabilitate them.

On March 2, 1962, the military—led by General Ne 

Win—seized power in Rangoon, abolished the 1947

federal constitution, and banned all political parties. In 

1963, it summoned representatives of all major rebel 

armies to Rangoon, probably hoping that the country’s

many communist and ethnic insurgents would give up 

when faced with the massive force of the new military 

government. Thakin Kodaw Hmaing became involved

this time as well, and received support from Kyaw Zaw, 

a well-respected former military officer who, accused 

of having links with the CPB, had been expelled fro

the army in 1956. Even this attempt to end the civil war

failed, however, because the government offered rehabilitation only if the insurgents surrendered. The rebels

had their own agendas, including political demands 

on the part of the communists, and the ethnic rebels 

advocating a new, more elaborate form of federal 

system than the one that had existed before the 1962 

coup. Moreover, China played an important behindthe-scenes role in 1963: its intention was to lay the

groundwork for a revitalized communist insurgency, not 

to help establish peace.

Lessons learned no. 2: Manipulations by external 

powers had a significant impact on Burma’s internal 

affairs; key armed organizations failed to build internal 

unity; the government failed to respond to aspirations 

of the Federal Movement that ethnic leaders launched 

in the late 1950s and kept active until the 1962 coup.

In 1972, as the CPB—with massive support from Chin

which included the supply of automatic assault rifles 

with ammunition and other military equipment such 

as anti-aircraft machine guns—was establishing large 

base areas in the north and northeast, the Kachin 

Independence Army (KIA) held talks with the northern 

command of the Burmese army. The CPB was fight

fierce battles against not only the Burmese army but

also the KIA. Meanwhile, the government wanted the 

Kachins to join forces with the army in its campaign 

against the communists. In return, the KIA asked the 

army for arms and ammunition. According to Kachin 

sources, the request was turned down and the ceasefire lasted only three and a half months.6 In 1976, the 

KIA decided to join forces with the CPB against th

government rather than the opposite.

Lessons learned no. 3: No real attempt was made to 

work out the nature of a peace deal with the Kachins. 

Likely because of this, the KIA joined forces with the 

CPB rather than the Burmese army.

More than twenty ethnic armed organizations made deals similar to the UWSA’s, but only one, the KIA, 

insisted on a written accord . . . All ceasefire armies were allowed to engage in any kind of business to 

sustain themselves, but no political concessions were offered.
6 PEACEWO      NO.

On May 24, 1980, the government announced a ninety-day amnesty for insurgents and political opponents in 

exile. Official figures cite 2,257 rebels as surrendering, 

including nearly all the noncommunist Burman forces

based on the Thai border, which belonged to a resistance

movement set up by former prime minister U Nu (who 

had been ousted in the 1962 coup).7 Both the CPB a

the KIA entered into peace talks with the government. 

The Kachins were offered rehabilitation only. No political

concessions were made and the talks eventually broke 

down. Talks with the CPB also broke down because t

communists wanted to be recognized as a legal political 

party and to maintain their base area and army.

Lessons learned no. 4: Political concessions were not 

offered or made, only rehabilitation and later business 

opportunities.

The next major peace process began after the 1989

mutiny within the CPB, and again China, which 

then had changed its Burma policy and was no longer

interested in exporting revolution, played an important 

behind-the-scenes role in brokering peace agreements 

between the mutineers and Burma’s military authorities

The Wa, who had come to make up the bulk of the communist fighting force, got what had been denied the 

in 1980: they could have their own army, the United Wa 

State Army (UWSA), and a base area along the Chinese

border. Three other, smaller former CPB forces so

joined in and received the same concessions in exchange for ceasefire agreements. After that, a number of 

ethnic armies that had depended on arms supplies from 

the CPB also entered into ceasefire agreements with th

government. More than twenty ethnic armed organizations made deals similar to the UWSA’s, but only one, the 

KIA, insisted on a written accord, which was signed on 

February 24, 1994. All ceasefire armies were allowed to 

engage in any kind of business to sustain themselves, 

but no political concessions were offered.

Lessons learned no. 5: The military government did 

not engage in any political talks with the former rebels; 

only ceasefires and nearly unlimited business opportunities were offered.

Thus the peace process that began in 2012 and is still

continuing is the sixth time that efforts have been made 

to end the conflict. Not much has changed, though, 

since the 1950s: the government is still offering little 

more than rehabilitation in return for what amounts 

to surrender. Then and now, surrender means giving

up the armed struggle—or retaining their guns and 

becoming some kind of government-recognized militia 

force. Burma’s military leaders have made it clear that

it is their duty to uphold the 2008 constitution, which is 

not federal in character and which gives them extraordinary powers over the country’s seven regions 

(Rangoon/Yangon, Irrawaddy/Ayeyarwady, Tenasseri

Tanintharyi, Pegu/Bago, Magwe, Mandalay, an

Sagaing) and seven ethnic states (Shan, Kachin, Karen, 

Karenni/Kayah, Chin, Arakan/Rakhine, and Mon). Unles

those attitudes change, the prospect for a lasting 

peace this time is no greater than during previous efforts. At the same time, the ethnic organizations, armed 

as well as unarmed, need to make it clear what kind of 

federal system they envisage, not simply present only 

vague notions of “a genuine federal union.”
USIP.ORG 7

Past Peace Effort

1950s: PEACE MOVEMENTS

The peace movement that Thakin Kodaw Hmaing initiate

in the mid-1950s exposed differences between Burma’s

military and the elected government in perceptions of the 

ethnic conflicts. U Nu had tried to find a political solution 

to the war by initiating a move to create a separate Karen 

State within the union. The Karen had refused to attend

the conferences that were held before independence 

in the small Shan market town of Panglong and resulted 

in representatives of the Shan, the Kachin, the Chin, and

Aung San (representing the Burmans) signing an agreement on February 12, 1947, to form a federal union. Th

Panglong Agreement promised “full autonomy in internal 

administration for the Frontier Areas,” and the date it was 

signed is still celebrated in Burma as Union Day.8 Burma’

first constitution, in 1947, recognized separate states for 

the Shan and the Karenni. The Panglong Agreement stipulated that a Kachin State should be set up as well, which

happened immediately after Burma’s independence in

January 1948. In September 1952, a Karen State was also 

set up. However, the state was limited to areas in the 

eastern hills where the Karen do make up a majority, but 

it did not include the areas in the Irrawaddy Delta region 

where the vast majority of Burma’s Karen population

reside. Those two new states—Kachin and Karen—did not

have the right, which the Shan and Karenni States did, to 

secede from the union after ten years (that is, in 1958).9

The creation of a Karen State within the union, though,

did not lead to a peace agreement with the KNDO and 

its parent organization, the Karen National Union (KNU). 

Because of the civil war, the Karen State government did

not assume full responsibility of the areas under its jurisdiction until 1955.10 Further, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing’s efforts

were, in the eyes of the military and even the government, 

from the very beginning tainted by his affiliation with the 

Eastern bloc. He attended the 1952 Asia and Pacific Ri

Peace Conference, which took place in Beijing in Octobe

1952 against the backdrop of the Korean War. He traveled 

to China, Mongolia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union in 1953

and, in 1954, was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize by the 

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow.

That Thakin Kodaw Hmaing had strong, leftist sympathies is not in doubt, but his motives were political

he wanted a negotiated end to the wars. The military

leaders, however, were convinced that they could win 

the wars militarily and that the insurgents would eventually surrender. According to a 1959 document, the rebels 

were “constantly on the run. Their morale is almost

completely shattered and with few villages to harass and 

live on, it is quite assured that they will not be capable of 

holding out much longer in the inhospitable jungles.”11

1962: FEDERAL MOVEMENT AND COUP

U Nu’s government was forced to resign in September 

1958, and General Ne Win formed a caretaker government that ruled the country until elections were held 

in April 1960. The old Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom

League had split and U Nu had formed the Pyidaungsu 

Party, which won the 1960 election. Once again, he 

became prime minister. The main issue he faced was

national unity. The ten-year trial period for the Shans had

expired in 1958, and, when it became clear that their constitutional right to hold a referendum on secession from 

the union was not going to be honored, a rebellion broke 

out in the Shan Hills. Although the Shan princes, or sawbwas (saohpa in Shan), did not support the rebellion, they 

were concerned with military atrocities and the exercise 

of extra-constitutional power by the commanders, first in 

their campaigns against the KMT and later against the

Shan rebels.12 According to Jackie Yang Rettie, a native
8 PEACEWO      NO.

of Kokang, there was also “a feeling that the Mother 

government took more from the constituent states (via 

revenue from mining, forest, import/export business, for 

example) than it gave back (in grants to the states). . . . All 

leaders and all state governments shared the view that 

the Union . . . was a colonial-like structure.”13

Leaders of what was termed the 1961–62 Federal 

Movement included the head of Shan State, Sao Hkun 

Hkio, and Sao Shwe Thaike, sawbwa of Yawnghwe State,

who had served as the first president of Burma (1948–52),

and was now speaker of the Chamber of Nationalities,

the upper house of the Union Parliament. They wanted to

loosen the federal structure of the union, not to dissolve 

it but to make it more equitable. According to Sao Shwe 

Thaike’s son Chao Tzang Yawnghw

The federal movement [1960–62] must . . . be seen as an

act within the legal and constitutional framework undertaken by the responsible and moderate elements in Shan 

society and politics aimed at circumventing a civil war 

situation and defusing the armed rebellion. It had nothing 

to do with alleged secession plots or the discontent of the 

chaofa [sawbwa] over the loss of power.14

In April 1959, the thirty-four Shan princes had handed over 

power to the Shan State government in Taunggyi, but that

was done on their accord to adjust to changing times.

In response to the demands of the ethnic leaders, U Nu 

convened a federal seminar in early 1962, and a political solution to the ethnic crisis seemed to be in sight. 

The armed forces, however, had other plans. On the

morning of March 2, 1962, troops moved into Rangoon

to take over strategic positions in the capital. U Nu 

was arrested along with five other ministers, the chief 

justice, and more than thirty Shan and Karenni leaders. 

Among them was Sao Shwe Thaike, and in a shoot-out

at his house, his seventeen-year-old son Sai Myee was 

Map of Burma/Myanmar

Adapted from artwork by Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstoc

Bay of 

Bengal

INDIA

CHINA

THAILAND

Rangoon/

Yangon

Mandalay

Panglong

Lashio

Naypyidaw

Area 

enlarged

Irrawaddy/

Ayeyarwady

Delta

Kokang

Panghsang

Myitkyina

Pajau

Chin 

Kachin 

Shan 

Tenasserim/

Tanintharyi

Sagaing 

Magwe

Mon 

Kayin

Karenni/Kayah Arakan/

Rakhine

Rangoon/

Yangon

Mandalay 

Irrawaddy/

Ayeyarwady

Wa

Hills

Pegu

Yoma

Pokaung range

Pegu/

Bago
USIP.ORG 9

killed. Sao Shwe Thaike died in prison later that year.

Sao Kya Hseng, the popular sawbwa of Hsipaw, was 

apprehended in Shan State and never seen again.

Having abolished the 1947 constitution and ordered 

all political parties dissolved, Ne Win replaced the old 

federal order with a centrally controlled system where 

the military, and later its Burma Socialist Program Party

(BSPP), became the only institution of any relevance.

As a consequence, the rebellion in Shan State flared 

anew, and a Kachin uprising, which had begun in 

Kachin-inhabited areas in northern Shan State in 1961, 

spread to Kachin State. 

Major grievances of the Kachins included not only the 

military coup and what it meant for the ethnic minorities 

but also two unpopular steps taken by the previous U 

Nu government: a decision in 1960 to make Buddhism

the state religion—the Kachins are predominantly 

Christian—and a border agreement with China th

same year. That agreement was not unfair by any international standards: China gave up its claims to norther

Kachin State—until then Chinese maps had marked

the border in a west-to-east line a few miles north of 

Myitkyina and south of Sumprabum—and relinquished 

sovereignty over an area called the Namwan Assigned 

Tract, which the British had leased from the Chinese 

1898, in exchange for some remote villages at Hpimaw 

in Kachin State and Panhung-Panglao in the Wa Hills of 

Shan State. 

The Hpimaw area measured 152 square kilometers,

Panhung-Panglao 189 square kilometers, and the 

Namwan Assigned Tract 220 square kilometers, not

including the vast tracts of northern Kachin State, 

which China until then had claimed (and which are still

included in official maps in Taiwan). But the governmen

never explained the deal properly, which led to misunderstandings that linger even today. On the Chinese

side, many people believe that their government gave 

up large tracts of territory to Burma, because they saw

a new border with Kachin State, which had been the de 

facto border for decades. Ne Win’s military government 

honored the 1960 border agreement with China, but

Buddhism never became Burma’s state religio

Ne Win’s new government was surprisingly tolerant 

toward religion—“the Burmese Way to Socialism,” not

Buddhism, was its ideology—but cracked down hard on

any political opposition. On July 7, 1962, troops opened 

fire on students at Rangoon University demonstrating

against the military takeover. Officially, fifteen were 

killed and twenty-seven wounded. Independent observers put the number of casualties in the hundreds.15

That night, the army dynamited the historic student union building in Rangoon, an act that caused widesprea

resentment because it was there Aung San and his 

comrades had begun their fight for independence in 

the 1930s. In the wake of the massacre, many students 

took to the hills to join the CPB or, if they belonged t

minority communities, their respective ethnic armies.

1963: PEACE PARLEY

The renewed civil war prompted the new military government (or Revolutionary Council, as the ruling authority was called) to announce a general amnesty to a

insurgents on April 3, 1963. The offer, though, did not

extend to people detained during or after the March 

1962 coup, notably members of U Nu’s government 

and the leaders of the ethnic minorities.16 In June, the 

Revolutionary Council made a second gesture of conciliation by inviting all groups, ethnic as well as political

to Rangoon for talks: “No preconditions for the talks

were laid down; the insurgents did not have to surrender and they could hold their weapons; further, they 

were promised safe passage to and from the meetings, 

regardless of the outcome.”17

The rebels arrived in batches: Karens, Shans, Kachins,

Karennis, and communists of various stripes. The colorful Red Flag communist leader Thakin Soe probab

attracted the most attention when he arrived accompanied by a team of attractive young women in khaki 

uniforms. He placed a portrait of Joseph Stalin in front 
10 PEACEWO      NO.

of him on the negotiating table and then began attacking the “revisionism” of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev 

and the opportunism of Mao Zedong’s China. Not surprisingly, Thakin Soe was soon excluded from the talk

Negotiations with the other groups continued for 

months, and both Thakin Kodaw Hmaing and Kyaw

Zaw were active this time as well, but to no avail. 

The talks broke down in mid-November because no

agreement was reached on the definition of a ceasefire 

as a first step toward lasting peace. Nothing had to be 

written in that regard, but the government was urged 

to make clear what it meant when it said that the wars 

should end. Martin Smith also observed that “continuing Rangoon’s ingrained habit of playing down ethnic

minority questions, the nationalist delegations received 

little analysis in the state media at the time.”18

Despite the generous offers the government had made 

before the talks, the military’s negotiators turned out to 

be much less flexible than the participants had expected. The Kachins claimed that the government had “put

forward unacceptable conditions such as: all armed 

troops must be concentrated in designated areas, 

troops must not leave these areas without permission, 

all organizational work must stop, all fund-raising must 

stop, and the location of armed camps must be disclosed to C [the Revolutionary Council]

On the other hand, the rebels had widely varying 

demands. The Shan delegates demanded a return

with modifications to the pre-1962 federal system, 

the Kachins argued for an independent country, and 

separatist tendencies were strong among the Karens 

and the Mons as well. The Communist Party of Araka

wanted to set up a people’s republic in Arakan with the 

right to secede from the union.

At the same time, schemes were being hatched in 

China, which had long been wary of the ambitious and

sometimes unpredictable Ne Win. Six important steps 

were taken after the coup in Rangoon:

• CPB exiles in China, who had been there sin

the early 1950s and were not allowed to engage 

in political activities as long as U Nu was in power 

in Rangoon, were for the first time allowed to print

propaganda leaflets and hold meetings with state 

and party leaders in Beijing

• Following the split in the international communist 

movement, the CPB had sided with China, an

exiles in Moscow were forced to leave for Beijing,

where a “leading group of five” was set up to coordinate what was to become all-out Chinese support for

the communist insurrection in Burma. It was led by

Thakin Ba Thein Tin, the party’s vice chairman, 

had left for China in 1953

• Nearly all the CPB cadres in China were well-re

Marxist intellectuals who had little or no military 

experience. But Naw Seng and his battle-hardened

Kachins had been living in a people’s commune in 

Guizhou since they had retreated to China in 1950.

In early 1963, Naw Seng was brought to see the 

CPB exiles and told that the time had come to g

back to Burma and fight. They were given militar

training in Yunnan.

• In late 1963, San Thu, one of the Moscow returnees,

was put in charge of a team that began surveying 

possible infiltration routes from Yunnan into northeastern Burma. Naw Seng and his Kachins would

lead the first attack accompanied by political commissars from the CP

• Since the 1920s, small communist cells of ethnic 

Chinese had been working underground in Rangoo

and other towns. The Chinese embassy in the capita

now arranged for them to go to a base area that the 

CPB had along the Shweli River in northern Shan Sta

and wait for help that was going to come from China

• Most important of all, China and the CPB took t

opportunity offered by the 1963 peace parley in 

Rangoon to establish a link between the exiles in

China and those holding out inside Burma, primaril

in the Pegu Yoma. That linkup paved the way for a

new era in the history of Burma’s civil war. China wa

becoming a factor to be reckoned with.20
USIP.ORG 11

In 1963, twenty-nine CPB members arrived by ai

from China, ostensibly to participate in the peace

talks. Among the Beijing returnees, as they came to

be known, were prominent members such as Yebaw

(Comrade) Aung Gyi, Thakin Pu, Bo Zeya (one of t

legendary Thirty Comrades who had gone with Aun

San to Japan during World War II), a woman cadre 

named Sein Win, and Thakin Ba Thein Tin, who 

not actually participate in the talks but seized the opportunity to sneak out of Rangoon and visit the CPB

headquarters in the Pegu Yoma. He had brought with 

him radio transmitters from China, and the communist

fighters in the Pegu Yoma were shown how to use 

them so they could communicate with the exiles in 

Sichuan. They were also told to be patient. Big plan

were being hatched in China, and help would soon

be forthcoming.21

According to CPB documents, the government demanded that the communists should concentrate all thei

troops and party members in an area stipulated by the 

authorities, inform the government if any guerrillas or 

cadres remained elsewhere, stop all organizational activities of the party, and cease fundraising.22 The intransigence of the military regime was a blessing in disguise

for the CPB. The talks broke down on November 14 a

the various insurgents returned to their respective jungle 

camps. Thakin Ba Thein Tin and another CPB cadre

back to China, and the remaining twenty-seven Beijin

returnees went to the Pegu Yoma where they assumed 

de facto leadership of the party at home.

Most historians have assumed that riots in Rangoon’s

Chinatown in June 1967—when ethnic Chinese store

and homes were ransacked by mobs without any interference by the police—were the reason China was

Than Htay, chairman of Union Solidarity and Development Party, left, and Mutu Say Po, chairman of Karen National Union, right, speak during a ceremony for the Karen New Year Day in Payathonzu on December 26, 2019. (Photo by Aung Shine Oo/AP
12 PEACEWO      NO.

behind the first push into Burma on New Year’s Day

1968. Although it is true that China, for the first time,

stepped up its rhetoric against Ne Win’s government 

after the riots, calling him a “fascist and a reactionary” 

in broadcasts over Radio Beijing, those events wer

only a pretext for what, in fact, had been planned 

since 1962.

The 1963 peace parley had another undesirable outcome as well. The introduction of the Burmese Way 

Socialism—which meant that everything in sight was 

nationalized and handed over to a number of military-run state corporations as part of a new economic 

policy—led to economic collapse and the emergence 

of a huge black market. Further, not enough funds were 

available from central coffers to pay for the counterinsurgency operations that the government wanted to 

launch. The solution was to set up local militias or home

guards, known as Ka Kwe Ye (KKY, “defense”), which 

were allowed to trade in any kind of goods as long as 

they assisted the government’s army in its fight against 

the insurgents. Today, the same government policy is

repeated in a program that enables former rebel forces 

to become pyithusit militias, or border guard forces.

Some rebels who had surrendered during the 1963 

amnesty took this opportunity, as did several local 

bands of freebooters and brigands. The two most powerful KKY commanders to emerge from this scheme

were Luo Xinghan (Lo Hsing-Han), whose Kokang 

KKY became a major drug trafficking organization in 

the early 1970s, and Khun Sa, an alias of Chang Shifu

(Zhang Qifu), of Loi Maw KKY, another prominent drug 

trafficker. It was only when they began to negotiate 

passage for their drug caravans with the Shan rebels, 

who controlled the countryside, that they were arrested by the authorities. Khun Sa spent the years 1969 to 

1974 in prison; Luo Xinghan was incarcerated from 1973 

to 1980.

Among those who were leaders of ethnic armies in their 

own right (rather than militias established by Ne Win), 

only Saw Hunter Thamwe, alias Musso Kawkasa, surrendered to the government after the 1963 peace talks. He

had in the early years of the insurrection led the Karen 

forces in the Irrawaddy delta and served as chairman 

of the KNU and its administrative body, the Karen 

Revolutionary Council, from 1956 to 1963. But, as Mart

Smith points out, his surrender was “so loudly trumpeted 

out at the time that it obscured just how few Karen rebels 

actually came in.”23 Saw Hunter died in Rangoon in 1980

1970s: PEACE TALKS

The time between 1968 and 1973 saw a rapid expansion

of the areas under control of the CPB. Having entere

Mong Ko on January 1, 1968, the communist juggernaut 

rolled on into large tracts of northern Shan State, Kokang, 

the Wa Hills, and the mountains north of Kengtung as 

well as an area along the Chinese border in Kachin State.

By 1974, the CPB had taken control of more than twen

thousand square kilometers of territory in the north and 

the northeast. In the beginning, a large number of the 

CPB’s soldiers were actually Red Guard volunteers fr

China. It was not until they captured the Wa Hills in 1972

and 1973 that ethnic Wa came to make up the bulk of the 

communist fighting force. The Chinese aid to the

came at the same time as the Cultural Revolution rage

in China, which meant chaos at home and massive support for Maoist-oriented parties all over the world

The KIA found itself squeezed between two superior

forces and decided to reach out to what it then perceived as the lesser evil: the Burmese army. In 1972,

peace talks were held in Lashio between Lieutenant 

Colonel Zau Dan, commander of the KIA’s forces in

northern Shan State, and Colonel Sein Mya, commander of the 99th Light Infantry Division of the Burmes

army. Although the talks—and the ceasefire—lasted for 

three and a half months, no agreement was reached 

It has never been proven but is plausible to assume—and some independent Kachin sources have 

suggested—that China’s security authorities played a role in persuading the KIA to join forces with the CPB.
USIP.ORG 13

and the Kachins had to continue their fight against the 

CPB on their own. The military tried to pressure the K

into becoming a kind of local militia force. Meanwhile, 

the KIA negotiators wanted the government to provide 

them with arms and ammunition to fight the CPB , bu

with the KIA remaining an independent organization 

with its own high command. 

Zau Dan was killed in action with the CPB on March 1

1975. His brothers Zau Seng—the overall commander 

of the KIA—and operations commander Zau Tu, along

with Pungshwi Zau Seng, a Kachin intellectual, were assassinated on the Thai border on August 6 of that year.

Those former leaders had been staunchly anti-communist. Their demise paved the way for an unlikely allianc

forged in July 1976: the Christian Kachins led by Bran

Seng, a former headmaster of the Baptist High School

in Myitkyina, entered into a defense pact with the CPB

The KIA, which the government had denied weapons,

now began to receive Chinese arms through the CP

Within less than a year, the KIA had taken over most 

of Kachin State outside major towns, including a large 

stretch of the main road from Myitkyina and Bhamo.

The KIA’s headquarters moved from the Triangle are

between the Mali Hka and N’mai Hka Rivers in the north

to new locations near the Chinese border southeast of

Myitkyina: Na Hpaw for the KIA and Pajau for its political 

wing, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

It has never been proven but is plausible to assume—and some independent Kachin sources have 

suggested—that China’s security authorities played a

role in persuading the KIA to join forces with the CPB

so remarkable was the change. The KIA leaders at

the Thai border had even been active participants in

an anti-China organization called the Asian People’s

Anti-Communist League, a branch of the World AntiCommunist League founded by Chinese nationali

leader Chiang Kai-shek in 1966. The US chapter wa

led by General John K. Singlaub, a former US chief of 

staff of both UN and US forces in Korea.

1980: AMNESTY AND PEACE TALKS

The base area that the CPB built up in Kokang, the 

Hills, and other ethnic minority areas adjacent to China

was meant to be a springboard from which it would push 

down to the Pegu Yoma and central Burma, where its

future, if any, would have been—and maybe even farther 

than that. During the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, 

the United States talked about what it called the domino theory: if communism was not stopped in Vietnam, 

it would spread to the rest of Southeast Asia and perhaps even beyond. That theory may have been a good

one. For Mao’s chief strategist, Kang Sheng, who was in 

charge of China’s connections with overseas communist parties, however, the North Vietnamese leadership

and the National Liberation Front in the south were too 

close to the Soviet Union to be trusted. Kang’s plan was 

to spread revolution to the region: through the CPB an

then down to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where

Maoist-leaning communist parties were active. The plan,

absurd as it may seem now, also included the Communist

Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), a tiny group of pro-Beijing Australian radicals. One of Thakin Ba Thein Tin’s closest foreign associates was its chairman, a Melbourne barrister named Edward Fowler Hill. Thakin Ba Thein

this researcher, “Ted Hill and I were together in Beijing

We wrote appeals against the Soviet Union and for world 

revolution. He was a fine, cultured kind of man.”24

Burma’s military leaders realized that they would not be

able to defeat the CPB in the northeast, but that the Part

could be flushed out of its much weaker areas in central 

parts of the country, which had not benefited from the 

supply of Chinese munitions. In that way, the grand plan to

link up the “new” forces with the “old” would be thwarted. 

When the CPB was isolated in the northeastern borde

mountains, central Burma would be secure. The first targe

was the Pegu Yoma, where the Beijing returnees had

carried out bloody purges to rid the party of moderate elements. Yebaw Htay, who had headed the CPB’s delegation to the 1963 peace talks, was branded “Burma’s De

Xiaoping” after Mao’s main “rightist” rival in the Communist

Party of China, and executed. The veteran Hamendranat
14 PEACEWO      NO.

Ghoshal, an ethnic Indian who had organized labor strikes 

in Rangoon before he went to the Pegu Yoma in 1948, was

denounced as “Burma’s Liu Shaoqi” after China’s disgraced president and also killed.

In early 1975, a major offensive was launched in the Pegu 

Yoma. All remaining CPB camps there were overrun. O

March 15, the Burmese army even managed to kill party

chairman Thakin Zin and his secretary Thakin Chit (Tha

Zin’s predecessor Thakin Than Tun had been assassinated by a government infiltrator on September 24, 196

less than a year after the thrust into Mong Ko). Those

who survived the government’s operation in the Pegu 

Yoma either surrendered or fled to the Pokaung range in 

Magwe Division, where a handful of CPB soldiers managed to hold out until 1979. Very few, probably not mor

than ten or twenty, CPB cadres from the old base area

ever made it to the new base area in the northeast.26 One 

of the few was Kyaw Mya, the leader of the CPB forces i

Arakan. He left his area after the Burmese army mounted

a major offensive there in 1979. But he crossed the border

into Bangladesh and went to Dhaka, where the Chines

embassy put him on a plane to Beijing. From there, he

went down to the base area in northeastern Shan State.27

Changes in Beijing after the death of Mao Zedong o

September 9, 1976, also had far-reaching repercussions for the CPB and Chinese foreign policy in general. Kang Sheng was purged—and Deng Xiaoping ro

to become the main leader of China. The Chinese d

not curtail their aid to the CPB, but it was scaled down

As China began to open up its economy and abandon

old-fashioned socialism in favor of private enterprise 

and foreign trade, exporting revolution was no longer a 

priority. The first post–Cultural Revolution reforms we

introduced by Deng in December 1978 in a scheme 

that was called baluan fanzheng (eliminating chaos 

and returning to normal).

The government in Rangoon realized that it coul

use this entirely new regional security paradigm to 

its advantage and try to neutralize as many of the 

insurgencies as possible, whether China-supported

or not. On May 24, 1980, the government announced 

a ninety-day amnesty for all insurgents. It was the first 

move of its kind since the 1963 peace talks, yet the 

insurgents were not particularly enthusiastic. Officially, 

450 rebels from the CPB surrendered, along with 40

KIA soldiers, 260 from the Karen rebel army, 160 from 

Kokang, and more than 450 expatriates returned from 

the Thai border and abroad. These numbers total 1,72

but the government claimed 2,257.28

Cross-checking those contradictory figures is impossible, but the Kokang number refers to followers of the

opium warlord Luo Xinghan, who had gone underground in 1973 and then stayed in camps near the Thai

border. The expatriates—the noncommunist Burmes

opposition led by former prime minister U Nu, who had 

also been encamped on the Thai border—surrendered

as well, and so did the ragtag remnants of the CPB in th

Pokaung range and Arakan State. No insurgents surrendered in Kachin State and certainly none from the C

in the northeast. To whom would any Wa have surrendered? Most of them could not even speak Burmes

Nonetheless, both the CPB and the KIA were invited t

take part in peace talks with the government. Talks with

the CPB began in May 1981, after the end of the amnesty period, deliberately chosen to show that the part

did not recognize the government’s amnesty offer. The

CPB sent a three-man delegation to Lashio comprisin

vice chairman Thakin Pe Tint; Ye Tun, an older, form

peasant organizer from Pyinmana who had made it 

to Panghsang for earlier talks (discussed below); and 

Hpalang Gam Di, a Kachin from Naw Seng’s group of 

war veterans. (Naw Seng had died under mysterious 

circumstances in the Wa Hills on March 9, 1972. Many 

Kachins believe that he was killed by the CPB becaus

he did not want to take part in the fighting that the communists were then engaged in with the KIA.) Kyaw Zwa, 

a medical doctor who was with the CPB, also accompanied the party’s delegation to the talks. The Burm

army was represented by Major General Aye Ko, a 
USIP.ORG 15

high-ranking officer who had served as commander 

of the 88th Light Infantry Division, which had fought 

many battles against the CPB. Two other officers—T

Hlaing and Myint Lwin—also took part on the military’s 

side in the talks.

Although the CPB delegation spent a week in Lashio

actual talks lasted for only one day. The CPB delegat

demanded recognition of their party as a legal political organization with the right to maintain its army and 

control of its “liberated area” along the Chinese border.

Aye Ko and his team rejected those demands and 

suggested instead that the CPB become a local militi

similar to the old KKY home guards, and that communist cadres were welcome to work within the BSPP’s

People’s Councils and other administrative organs.2

The CPB delegates considered that tantamount 

surrender. The talks broke down

In contrast, the preceding talks with the KIO began in 

August 1980 and lasted until May 1981. At first, five ethnic 

Kachin government officials and church leaders from 

Myitkyina met a four-man KIO delegation led by Malizup 

Zau Mai, the KIA’s chief of staff and vice chairman of the 

KIO. The meeting took place at Dabak Yang, a major

village south of Myitkyina then under rebel control, and 

the mediators read out a message to the KIO saying that 

the people were suffering because of ongoing fighting 

between the KIA and government forces. Although the 

KIA was getting Chinese weapons from the CPB, that assistance was limited; the communists would never all

the KIA to surpass them in strength, and an independent 

Kachin State was not possible. Without armed force or 

independence as viable options, the Kachins turned to 

seeking a peaceful solution. The KIO responded favorably and trusted in the team of mediators, mainly because

it included well-known Kachin community leaders such 

Buddhist and Roman Catholic nuns at the Interreligious Gathering of Prayers for Peace in Yangon on October 10, 2017. (Photo by Adam De

New York Times
16 PEACEWO      NO.

as former Burmese army captain Hkun Seng, Father

Lawhkum Lawt Naw of the Roman Catholic Churc

and the Reverend Lahtaw Saboi Jum representing the

Kachin Baptist Convention. More talks were held i

Myitkyina, and KIA solders came out of the jungle to the 

towns to be with their families and friends—and to play 

soccer with Rangoon’s troops.

In October 1980, KIO Chairman Brang Seng, KI

General Secretary Zawng Hra, KIO central committee 

member Gauri Zau Seng, and Manam Tu Ja, Bran

Seng’s doctor, flew to Rangoon for talks with General

Ne Win himself. The government was also represented by General Tin Oo, head of Burma’s milita

intelligence, and San Yu, a high-ranking BSPP official

who was to succeed Ne Win as president of Burma in

November 1981 (Ne Win remained BSPP chairman until

July 1988). While in the capital, Brang Seng and his

colleagues appeared one Sunday at Judson Baptist

Church. Startled Kachin friends from the capital who

were attending the service asked what they were 

doing in Rangoon. Brang Seng revealed to the entir

congregation that he and other KIO officers had come 

to Rangoon to negotiate peace and that the KIA was

willing to lay down arms if the government granted 

genuine autonomy to Kachin State.30 The government

had intended to keep the talks secret, but now military 

intelligence officers who had escorted Brang Seng and

his colleagues to the church could only watch as the 

service turned into a prayer meeting for peace.

According to Brang Seng, the Chinese, eager to ope

the border for trade, put pressure on the government 

in Rangoon to accept the KIO’s demands for autonomy. San Yu, however, responded that “in our country,

we recognize only one party” (that is, the BSPP). In the

end, the government did not offer anything more than 

“rehabilitation” for rebels who surrendered; no political 

concessions were even considered. The talks ended in

failure to reach an agreement, but the KIO had scored 

a significant political victory. The Kachin public became

aware of its demands for autonomy—and not, as in 

the past, independence—and many were appalled at 

the government’s intransigence. Brang Seng had also

won the respect and admiration of the new leaders in 

Beijing. Unlike the CPB negotiators, he showed considerable flexibility. After the talks, the Chinese prai

Brang Seng for his efforts even as they seemed to

weary of the orthodoxy of the CPB’s leaders.

1989–95: CEASEFIRE AGREEMENTS

Following the failure of the 1980–81 peace talks, the KIO 

decided to deploy another tactic. Brang Seng believed

that the talks had gone nowhere because the KIO had 

negotiated from a position of weakness. The answer, he

argued, should be a broader front so the rebels could 

meet the government on more equal terms. In 1983, a 

group of Kachin soldiers led by Gauri Zau Seng trekked 

down to the Thai border, their mission to rejoin the

National Democratic Front (NDF), a grouping of about half 

a dozen ethnic rebel armies the KIO had withdrawn from 

when it forged an alliance with the CPB in 1976. The ne

step was to invite the NDF to the KIO’s Pajau headquarters for talks. On November 19, 1985, a twenty-six-man 

NDF delegation reached its destination after an arduous, 

eight-month journey from the Thai border. At Pajau, it decided to coordinate political and military activities—and to

seek an even broader alliance with the CP

From Pajau, the NDF delegates trekked down to 

Panghsang, where an agreement was signed between 

the NDF and the CPB to cooperate militarily and politically. That decision, however, caused a serious rift with

the NDF. General Bo Mya and other staunchly anti-communist leaders of the KNU and its armed wing, the Karen

National Liberation Army (KNLA), refused to honor the 

accord reached at Panghsang. One of the two KNU delegates who had taken part in the meetings in Pajau and 

Panghsang was even imprisoned for a while.

Meanwhile, Brang Seng and KIO General Secretary

Zawng Hra had made it to Thailand and, using passports acquired through Thai contacts, traveled t

West Germany and Great Britain in an attempt to
USIP.ORG 17

internationalize the issue. They did meet with some

sympathy from individual politicians and even some 

government officials. The aim was to solicit international support for peace talks, but those efforts were

overtaken by events as Burma was engulfed in political

turmoil in 1988. Student-led demonstrations in March 

and June were met by gunfire from the military, which 

only hardened the resolve of the populace. Decades of 

economic misrule and political oppression resulted in 

massive, nationwide demonstrations in August. 

Again, the military was called out and thousands of 

demonstrators were gunned down. That led to a general

strike, and for more than a month, daily demonstrations 

shook Rangoon, Mandalay, and every major city and town

across the country. Eventually, on September 18, 1988, the

military intervened again. Another massacre unfolded, and 

a junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Counci

(SLORC) took over. The BSPP government was dissol

and the SLORC abrogated the 1974 constitution, whic

had been enacted after a staged referendum in 1973. 

As David Steinberg observed, “The action in Burma wa

not to overthrow a failing government but to shore up a 

regime overwhelmed by popular protests.”32

The ethnic rebels—and the CPB—had remained conspicuously quiet during the upheavals in central Bur

As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the 

streets of Rangoon and other cities and towns, the Karen

and Mon rebel armies even clashed over who should be 

in charge of a position on the Thai border where “tax” was

collected on the contraband trade between the two countries. The orthodox CPB had some underground activis

who took part in the protests in urban areas, but the party 

leadership paid only scant interest in the pro-democracy 

uprising, which seemed to go against the Maoist doctrine 

of “capturing the countryside first, then surrounding the 

cities and moving into urban areas later.”33

On September 23, 1988—five days after the SLORC’

takeover—the CPB began to organize its response

and on December 13, the CPB and the KIA launched a

unusually savage ambush on a government column at 

Kongsa in the hills near Kutkai in northern Shan State. 

More than a hundred government soldiers were killed 

and fifteen captured, along with a large quantity of 

arms and ammunition. That battle, though, turned out to

be the last that the CPB would figh

The role China might have played behind the scenes i

the events that were to follow is still a matter of conjecture. By the time a mutiny broke out in April 1989, the

Chinese had signed several trade agreements with the

Burmese authorities, and Chinese pressure on the CPB

reconsider its old policies had become more persistent. 

Already in 1981, as Deng Xiaoping was beginning to put 

his first pro-market reforms into practice, the Chinese had

offered asylum to party leaders and high-ranking cadres. 

This offer included a modest government pension—¥250

a month for a Politburo member, ¥200 for a member of 

the Central Committee, ¥180 for any other leading cadre

and ¥100 (plus a house with a plot of land) for ordinary 

Party members. That, though, was on condition that the

retired CPB cadres refrained from political activity of an

kind in China. The old guard, especially those who ha

lived in China during the Cultural Revolution and be

close to Mao, saw the offer as treachery, but at first did 

not criticize China’s new policies openly. The offer wa

repeated in 1985 and again in 1988. Some of the younger, 

low-ranking CPB cadres accepted the offer to give u

and retire in China. The senior members simply ignored i

Then, in early 1989, the Chinese once again approached the CPB and tried to persuade the leadership to give up. A crisis meeting was convened

Panghsang on February 20, and, for the first time, 

Thakin Ba Thein Tin lashed out against the Chinese

Burma was engulfed in political turmoil in 1988. Student-led demonstrations in March and June were 

met by gunfire from the military, which only hardened the resolve of the populace. Decades of economic 

misrule and political oppression resulted in massive, nationwide demonstrations in August.
18 PEACEWO      NO.

an address to the secret meeting, he referred to “misunderstandings in our relations with a sister party. Even

if there are differences between us, we have to coexist 

and adhere to the principles of non-interference in 

each other’s affairs. This is the same as in 1981, 1985,

and 1988. We have no desire to become revisionists.”34

The minutes of the secret meeting were leaked, which

may have encouraged disgruntled local commanders to 

rise up against the old leadership. A major reason it had 

not happened earlier was that the ordinary soldiers, and 

their officers, were uncertain of China’s reaction to such

a move. After all, the CPB leaders still went to Chi

every now and then—and they were always picked up at 

the border by Chinese officials in limousines.3

But other rumblings within the party and its army were

audible, including simmering discontent among the 

hill tribe, mostly Wa, rank-and-file of the CPB’s army

leading to a mutiny against the party’s aging, mostly 

Burman leadership. As early as December 20, 1988,

Zhao Yilai and Bao Youxiang, two Wa leaders in the

CPB’s army, met for the first time to conspire agains

the leadership. Plans were drawn up to form a political organization that would be exclusively Wa, and 

not communist.36 But before they could make a move

against the CPB leadership, the unit in Kokang le

by Peng Jiasheng rebelled. On March 12, 1989, Peng 

announced that he and his troops had broken away 

from the CPB. Two days later, they took over the party

northern bureau headquarters at Mong Ko.37

On April 13, Zhao and Bao met again and decided that

they could not wait any longer. On the night of April 16–

17, seven hundred Wa troops marched into Panghsang 

and surrounded the headquarters area where the top 

leaders were staying. The mutineers went on to seize

the well-stocked armory, the broadcasting station, and 

other central buildings. As Wa soldiers were smashing 

portraits of communist icons Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin,

and Mao and burning party literature in an outburst of 

anti-party feelings, the Burman Maoist leaders and their

families escaped across the Nam Hka River into China

Burma’s forty-one-year communist insurrection was over

Because there were no more communist rebels in the

country, the NDF tried to exploit the situation and sent a 

delegation to Panghsang to negotiate with the mutineers. 

Apart from the ethnic armies, these also included, for the 

first time since the surrender of the U Nu–led rebels in 

1980, a Burman component in the resistance against the

authorities in Rangoon. In the wake of the 1988 massacres, more than ten thousand urban dissidents had

fled to the Thai and Chinese border areas and formed 

group called the All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front,

which received some arms from the KIA and the KNLA. 

The problem was that none of these ethnic groups

had any significant stockpiles of weapons they could 

share with the urban dissidents. The CPB mutineers, 

the other hand, had more than ten warehouses full of 

Chinese arms and ammunition, which had been supplied

mainly during the decade from 1968 to 1978. Few urban 

dissidents had made it to the CPB-controlled area, whic

was hardly surprising given the anti-authoritarian nature 

of their movement. After the 1989 mutiny, however, the 

only rebels in the country were ethnic and the possibility 

of a link-up between the urban dissidents and the ethnic 

groups (and the well-armed mutineers) along the Thai

and Chinese borders worried the SLO

The NDF delegation to Panghsang was led by Mahasang,

an ethnic Wa, but the first surprise came within days of 

the mutiny—and even before Mahasang had arrived in 

Panghsang. (On his arrival there, he was arrested by his 

Wa brethren but managed to escape and make it back to 

Thailand.) What had happened in the meantime was that

General Khin Nyunt, the powerful chief of Burma’s military

intelligence service, had called in the old warlord Luo 

Xinghan to act as an intermediary with the mutineers in 

his old home district of Kokang. Luo had been sentenced 

to death 1976 for “rebellion against the state”—a reference to a brief alliance he had forged with the Shan State 

Army (SSA) In 1973—but had not been executed. 
USIP.ORG 19

MARCH 21, 1989: The Myanmar National 

Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in Kokang 

made peace (Northern Shan State). Ex-CPB.

MAY 9, 1989: The Burma National United 

Party (which later merged with a smaller Wa 

group on the Thai border and became the 

UWSA) (Shan State). Ex-CPB.

JUNE 30, 1989: The National 

Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan 

State made peace (Eastern Shan State). 

Ex-CPB.

SEPTEMBER 2, 1989: The Shan 

State Army and its Shan State Progress 

Party (SSPP) made peace (Shan State).

DECEMBER 15, 1989: The New 

Democratic Army made peace (Northeast 

Kachin State). Ex-CPB.

JANUARY 13, 1991: The Kachin 

Democratic Army, sometimes called the 

Kachin Defense Army (Northern Shan 

State). Once the 4th Brigade of the KIA, 

it broke away in 1991.

FEBRUARY 27, 1992: The Kayan 

National Guard made peace (Kayah State).

APRIL 11, 1991: The Pa-O National Army 

(PNA) and its Pa-O National Organization made 

peace (Southern Shan State).

FEBRUARY 24, 1994: The KIO 

signed an official peace agreement

with the government to cement an

oral understanding reached on 

September 27, 1993.

MAY 9, 1994: The Karenni State 

Nationalities Peoples’ Liberation Front 

made peace (Kayah State). Ex-CPB ally.

JULY 26, 1994: An agreement was 

reached with the Kayan New Land Party 

(Kayah State). Ex-CPB ally.

OCTOBER 9, 1994: An agreement 

was reached with the Shan State 

Nationalities Peoples’ Liberation Front, 

southern Shan State. Ex-CPB ally.

JUNE 29, 1995: An agreement 

was reached with the Mon National 

Liberation Army and its New Mon State 

Party, Mon State.a

Groups Entering into Ceasefire Agreements with the Government, 1989–95

In addition, the Democratic Buddhist Karen Army (DKBA), 

Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army and some smaller groups 

in Shan and Mon State entered into informal peace 

agreements with the government. Some, like the Mong 

Tai Army and several smaller groups simply surrendered. 

Others, among them the DKBA, the NDA, and the PNA, 

became militias.

Note

Many of these groups formed following the fall of the CPB in 1989; some had been allies of the CPB. Timeline data drawn in part from The Irrawaddy, 

“List of Cease-fire Agreements with the Junta,” January 1, 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20111218073438/http://irrawaddy.org/research _show

.php?art_id=444. However, that list gives an incorrect date of the 1993 agreement between the KIO and the SLORC (October 1, 1993, instead of 

September 27, 1993). See also Zaw Oo and Win Min, Assessing Burma’s Ceasefire Accords (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), 86.

APRIL 21, 1991: The Palaung State 

Liberation Army made peace (Northern 

Shan State). 
20 PEACEWO      NO.

Instead, Luo had been released during the 1980 amnesty, 

when most of his men also returned from the Thai border.

He had also been given K2 million (Burmese kyats) by the

government to build a military camp southeast of Lashio. 

Called the Salween Village, it became the base for a

new home guard unit, this time under the government’s 

new pyi thu sit (people’s militia) program, which had been 

launched after the disbandment of the old KKY seven 

years earlier. The new agreement was effectively the

same as the former accord between the Rangoon and the

local militias: fight the rebels and gain, in return, access to 

government-controlled roads and towns for smuggling.

Luo’s meeting with the mutineers in Kokang was followed 

by a trip to the north by Aung Gyi, a Sino-Burmese former

brigadier general in the Burmese army who became a politician during the 1988 uprising, and Olive Yang, a colorful

and well-known Kokang Chinese warlord.38 She belonged

to the old ruling family of Kokang and had become famous 

when, in the 1950s and early 1960s, she linked up with the 

KMT and became the first drug trafficker to send opium

in truck convoys down to the Thai border.39 Aung Gyi and

Olive Yang met with Peng Jiasheng and Peng Jiafu, two 

brothers who had led the first mutiny in Kokang in March 

1989, under the watchful eye of Burma’s military intelligence in the garrison town of Lashio

In late April 1989, shortly after the Wa had taken over 

Panghsang and Luo, Aung Gyi, and Olive Yang had visited the north, Khin Nyunt himself and Colonel Maung Tint

the chief of the Burmese army’s Lashio-based northeastern command, helicoptered to Kunlong on the Salween

River opposite Kokang. They met Peng Jiafu and agree

on a temporary ceasefire. After this initial meeting, Khin 

Nyunt paid several visits to Kokang, which received wide 

coverage in Burma’s government-controlled media.4

The time was ripe to invite the main Wa leader, Zhao Yilai,

and his men, who controlled nearly 80 percent of the 

CPB’s old army. A helicopter was sent to the Wa Hills t

pick them up, and meetings were held in Lashio between 

them and Khin Nyunt, Maung Tint, and other officers from

Burma’s regular army, as well as its military intelligence

services. The junta in Rangoon pledged to spend K7

million on a “border development program” under which 

roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals were going to be 

built in the Wa Hills. Diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and rice 

would also be distributed in former CPB areas.

The fall of the CPB had a severe impact on several ethnic armies that had depended on the communists f

arms supplies. They entered into a similar agreement

with central authorities. Even the powerful KIO gave

in to pressure and made peace with the SLORC, a

did some smaller groups that had not been allied with 

the CPB but saw advantages in striking deals with th

military authorities in Rangoon. In return for ceasefires,

they could operate openly and engage in any kind of 

business, including—unofficially—drugs. 

These agreements came at a time when the government in Rangoon wanted, at any price, to prevent 

coalition between the urban dissidents and the ethnic 

rebels, so the latter had to be neutralized. Ironically, 

just when almost the entire population of Burma had

turned against the regime, thousands of former insurgents rallied behind the ruling military. The threat from

the border areas was thwarted. The SLORC could n

only survive but also consolidate its grip on power.

Of all these groups, however, only the KIO had a 

signed peace treaty at that time; other agreements 

were oral understandings.42 The UWSA signed basic

agreements in 2011 and 2012, really stressing only that 

war should stop and that the border areas needed development.43 Meanwhile, the Wa built up an army that 

was stronger and better equipped than the CPB ha

ever been. In the initial stages, funds came from the 

drug trade; weaponry was obtained mostly in China.4

Given the nature of the 1989–95 ceasefires, it was 

hardly surprising that they did not involve any substantial peace talks. Meetings between leaders of the 

ethnic armed organizations and the military tended to 
USIP.ORG 21

focus on business arrangements and where the various groups could have camps and collect taxes. Again, 

the only exception was the KIO. The Kachin rebels had

learned from their experiences of peace talks in the 

1960s, 1970s, and 1980 that they had to be well prepared if the talks were going to lead anywhere. They

also did not trust the military and were suspicious of 

its intentions. A four-man KIO delegation met with four 

military officers (one of them was Lieutenant-Colonel

Kyaw Thein, a high-ranking military intelligence officer)

at Panghsai on the Burma-China border on October 18

1990, to explore the possibility of a ceasefire. 

That meeting was arranged by Hpauyam La Wawm, an

ethnic Kachin who had served as Burma’s ambassador

to Israel, Lahtaw Saboi Jum from the Kachin Baptist

Convention, and his brother Lahtaw Hkun Myat, a Kachin

businessman. The talks were held in secret so as not to

have any adverse impact on the Thai-border based antigovernment alliance of which the KIO was also a member. More talks were held in Thailand, this time involvin

Brang Seng and Michael Baumann, a peacemaker fro

Germany. Baumann was the first European to becom

actively involved in peace talks in Burma, working

closely with the Thai peace activist Sulak Sivaraksa. Th

outcome was an informal agreement on September 27, 

1993, and then the official signing of a treaty on February 

24, 1994. Only the KNU/KNLA and some smaller allies 

remained in armed opposition to the government.

The bilateral agreement between the SLORC and t

KIO stipulated where the KIA’s troops should be stationed, where liaison posts would be established and 

other technical issues, and that the KIO would be involved in drafting a new constitution for Burma.45 In May

1990, five months prior to the beginning of the secret 

KIO peace talks, the SLORC had, to the surprise of many

agreed to hold a general election. Leaders probably 

assumed that no party would win a majority, or that the 

military’s own National Unity Party—the successor to the 

BSPP, which was dissolved in 1988—was popular in the

countryside. Whatever the case, the SLORC had grossl

misinterpreted the situation. The National League for

Democracy (NLD), which was formed by uniting a variety 

of smaller parties under the iconic leadership of Aung 

San Suu Kyi, scored a landslide victory, winning 392 of 

the 485 seats up for grabs in the 492-seat pyithu hluttaw

(national assembly). The National Unity Party won only

ten seats. The rest, apart from seven seats left vacant

because of ongoing insurgencies, went to local pro-democracy parties in ethnic regions.46

Having recovered from the shock, the SLO

moved the goalposts and, on July 27, 1990, issued 

Announcement 1/90, declaring that only the junta “has 

the right to legislative power” and that “the representatives elected by the people” would merely be 

“responsible for drafting a new constitution for a future 

democratic state.”47 Even that pledge was not honored.

When the National Convention, as it was eventually

called, met on January 9, 1993, it consisted of 702 

delegates, of whom only 99 had been elected in 1990; 

the remaining 603 were all appointed by the SLOR

48

Even so, it was suspended several times following

dissension from ethnic delegates. The NLD representatives withdrew from the convention altogether in 2006

In 2007—fourteen years after that first meeting—the 

constitution was eventually completed. A referendum 

was held in May 2008. According to official figures, 

93.48 percent were in favor of it, 6.18 percent against, 

and 0.34 percent (the remainder of the votes) either 

invalid or blank.49 But few neutral observers believed

those figures, Human Rights Watch labeled the results

“an insult to the people of Burma.” The NLD said th

vote was “full of cheating and fraud.”50 The armed

The fall of the CPB had a severe impact on several ethnic armies that had depended on the communists 

for arms supplies. They entered into a similar agreement with central authorities. Even the powerful KIO 

gave in to pressure and made peace.
22 PEACEWO      NO.

forces were guaranteed a quarter of all seats in the upper as well as the lower house—and in regional assemblies—and the right to appoint the ministers of defense, 

home affairs, and border affairs. No important clause 

in the constitution could be changed unless more than 

three-quarters of all members of both houses voted in 

favor—which gave the military the right to block any attempt to change the basic power structure of the state 

that has itself at the apex. Little power was given to the 

country’s seven regions and seven ethnic states. 

Burma remains a centrally governed country with what,

at best, can be described as a hybrid system in which 

the military remains its most powerful institution and 

elected members of parliament and the civilian part of 

the government run day-to-day affairs.

2015: NATIONWIDE CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT

Shortly after assuming office in March 2011, the new 

president, former general Thein Sein, began talking

about what he called a peace process. In June, however, 

the Burmese army broke the ceasefire agreement with

the KIO and launched an all-out offensive in Kachin State. 

The KIO had participated in the National Convention an

submitted a nineteen-point proposal that included suggestions on how to preserve and promote the cultures 

and rights of the country’s ethnic minorities.51 It is unclear 

why the military decided to attack the KIA, but it is most 

probably because the KIA had refused to become a 

government-supervised border guard force, an option 

given to them and other groups but accepted by only a 

few (among them the New Democratic Army, the ex-C

force in Kachin State, and some Karen factions).

The Thein Sein government, led by the military-backe

Union Solidarity and Development Party, appointed a 

body called the Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) to initiat

and oversee talks with the ethnic armed organizations. 

More than $100 million was poured into the peace 

process by foreign governments and institutions.52

Vast amounts were spent on various training programs, 

among them study tours to countries such as Northern 

Ireland, South Africa, Colombia, and Guatemala, which

had little relevance to the situation in Burma

In the end, the MPC had little to show for its efforts given

that most ethnic armed organizations in the country did 

not participate, or did so reluctantly. As a face-saving 

gesture in the lead-up the November 2015 election—

which the Union Solidarity and Development Party was 

not sure to win—the Thein Sein government announced

on October 15 that the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement

(NCA) had been signed by eight armed groups. A close

look at the list, however, reveals that only two of them 

actually had any armed forces to be reckoned with:

• The KNU/KNLA is a viable force with its own army

and civil administration.

• The Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) 

formidable force with an army called the Shan State 

Army—not to be confused with the original Shan State 

Army set up in 1964 whose political wing is the Shan 

State Progress Party (SSPP). The RCSS grew out 

Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army (the warlord surrendering to

the government in January 1996). To differentiate the

two SSAs, the RCSS army is often referred to as SSASouth and the SSA/SSPP as SSA-Nort

• The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) is

militia that fought with the Burmese army against the

KNU/KNLA and later split into several factions, one 

called the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and

another accepting the government’s offer to become 

a border guard force.

• The All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front gave u

its armed struggle in the early 2000s to focus on 

political work.

• The KNU/KNLA Peace Council is a tiny group wit

only a few armed members.

• The Chin National Front is another small group wit

little relevance until the peace process began; the 

MPC chief, Aung Min, even gave it a few villages in

Chin State so it would have a “base area” and some

credibility when the talks began.

• The Arakan Liberation Party and Army is a handful

of soldiers based on KNU/KNLA areas on the Thai
USIP.ORG 23

border. It never had any presence in Rakhine State

and should not be confused with the Arakan Army 

(AA), which is active in Rakhine State and has a formidable fighting force.

• The Pa-O National Liberation Organization was

formed by a handful of Thai-border based Pa-Os who

broke away from the Pa-O National Organization 

(PNO) when it entered into a ceasefire agreement 

with the government in 1991. Like the Chin National

Front, it was of no relevance until it signed the NCA

which enabled it to get fresh recruits from the Pa-O 

area near Taunggyi. Sources in Taunggyi also clai

that it has borrowed some troops from the PNO’s 

military wing, the Pa-O National Army.

On February 18, 2018, two more groups signed the 

NCA: the Lahu Democratic Union, which could best be

described as a nongovernmental organization based in 

the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, and the New Mo

State Party/Mon National Liberation Army, which was 

quite strong in the 1980s and 1990s, but then fell apart 

and dwindled into a small armed band with no military 

clout or influence.

It is evident that this entire peace process is a sham. 

The old ceasefire agreements from the late 1980s and

early 1990s were forgotten as soon as this new process 

began, and the KIA was not the only group that came 

under attack. The SSA/SSPP base at Wan Hai came under fierce attack in October 2015. Prior to that, in 2009,

fighting had broken out between the Myanmar National 

Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the government’s army in Kokang. Some members of the former 

CPB forces in Kokang were open to the idea of transforming their local troops into a border guard. Other

were opposed to that idea and wanted to maintain a 

semblance of independence from the Burmese military

leadership. In February 2015, however, MNDAA forces 

went on the offensive, provoking a fierce response from 

the Burmese army. Aircraft and heavy artillery were used

in what Jane’s Defense Weekly called “the largest war 

since Myanmar’s [Burma’s] independence.”5

In the Palaung area in northern Shan State, the April 

1991 ceasefire agreement between the Palaung State 

Liberation Army and the government had led to discontent as government forces began suppressing the local 

population. The outcome was the formation of th

Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), a rebel army firs

trained by the KIA that later became more closely allied 

with the MNDAA. Another new rebel army, the AA, grew 

out of similar circumstances. Its first recruits came from 

Rakhine workers in Kachin State—especially those in the

Hpakant jade mines, on banana plantations, and on road 

construction crews—and were then trained by the KIA. 

Like the TNLA, it became a close ally of the MNDAA and

got its first real combat experience in the 2015 war in 

Kokang. The KIA had trained the TNLA and the AA to carr

out attacks in their respective home areas—the Palaunginhabited hills of northern Shan State and Rakhine State

respectively—to relieve the pressure on KIA strongholds 

in the north of Myanmar. Later, though, they developed 

into formidable fighting forces in their own right, each 

numbering several thousand well-equipped soldiers. 

The TNLA and the AA are allied with the nonsignator

SSA-N, KIA, MNDAA, UWSA, and National Democratic 

Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State in an umbrella organization called the Federal Political Negotiating and

Consultative Committee (FPNCC), set up on April 19, 20

Those seven groups account for more than 80 percent

of the personnel in Burma’s ethnic armed organizations

and remain outside the peace process. The rise of the

TNLA and the AA—which have benefited from arms supplies from the UWSA and MNDAA—and the formation of

the FPNCC should be seen as the inevitable outcome o

a series of failed attempts to establish peace in Burma

That also applies to another, smaller armed force, the

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which launched

several attacks in the Muslim-majority areas of northern 

Rakhine State in 2016 and 2017, prompting the Burmes

army to launch a massive “clearing operation” that drove 

more than seven hundred thousand Rohingya into refugee camps in neighboring Banglades
24 PEACEWO      NO.

Conclusions and

Recommendation

The Thein Sein administration’s peace process was inherited by the NLD and its main actor, State Counsell

Aung San Suu Kyi, when it assumed power in March 

2016. The NLD had boycotted the 2010 election, but

participated in the polls in November 2015 and scored 

a landslide victory. The new administration has held

a series of talks with the ethnic armed organizations; 

these conferences are called Panglong after the town 

in Shan State where Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, Aung 

San, signed the Panglong Agreement in 1947. Apart 

from giving the process a new label, however, little has 

changed. The military has also stated time and again

that its duty is to defend and uphold the 2008 constitution and that it is prepared to alter only a few minor 

clauses. The NLD’s attempts to amend that constitution

in February 2020 to curb the powers of the military 

failed because of the military’s de facto veto power.54

The NLD’s peace efforts have been hampered by

ongoing warfare in Kachin, Shan, and Rakhine States,

the political power of the military, the Rohingya crisis in

Rakhine State, and now the spread of the coronavirus.

Some venues, though, could be explored in order to 

break the current stalemate.

Burma’s misguided peace process needs a fresh start,

and only a holistic approach to the problem can bring 

it forward. It should also be based on Burma’s past and

present realities, which in many ways are unique. More 

Panglong conferences should be held, but the approach of the government and military should not be to 

collect more signatures on the NCA, but instead to encourage serious discussions about what constitutional

changes would be required to satisfy the aspirations of 

the country’s many ethnic groups. That should be done

now, not later. It makes little sense to push for more 

groups to sign the NCA before a political dialogue

about the country’s future has been held. 

The designation of the ethnic armed groups as signatories or nonsignatories is a divisive policy that needs to

be abandoned, especially given that 80 percent of all 

combatants are designated as nonsignatories. Just as 

in 1963, the government should announce an unconditional ceasefire and then hold talks. This time, however,

both sides need to show more flexibility. The military

especially needs to stop clinging to the undemocratic 

and unfederal 2008 constitution, a stance that will only 

prolong the civil war. 

Almost seventy years of “peacemaking” in Burma point

to repeated failures because the military and other 

central authorities have always demanded that the 

rebels surrender but never offered them more than 

rehabilitation and business opportunities. Sadly, military 

attitudes have changed little since the 1950s. To avoid

repeating past mistakes, all stakeholders, internal as 

well as foreign, need to study all five previous failed 

attempts. Archival research is essential to establish 

an accurate historical record, as are interviews with 

survivors of those efforts. Documentation is available in 

the National Archives in Yangon, at Cornell University

in the United States, and in private collections. It may 

be hard to find any survivors of the efforts in the 1950s 

and the 1963 peace parley, but many of those who 

participated in the talks in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s 
USIP.ORG 25

are still alive and should be consulted. In this regard, 

foreign peace activists should listen and learn, and not 

be—as, unfortunately, the case often is—patronizing. 

Because one approach to a conflict somewhere else

in the world was successful, it does not mean that it is 

applicable to the situation in Burma. The attitudes o

foreign peacemakers should be modesty, humility, and 

willingness to learn, not to lecture. Only then can domestic and foreign parties work together constructively 

and share ideas.

It is vital for peace that the ethnic and religious diversity of Burma is recognized. It is not enough to talk

about 135 national races and claim that all of them are 

“Myanmar.” First, that official list is highly questionable 

in that it divides ethnic groups such as the Kachin, the 

Shan, and the Karen into several smaller subgroups 

that could not by any stretch of the imagination be 

considered separate ethnic entities. Second, not all 

those identified would agree that they are Myanmar 

given that that term is basically the same as Burmese:

how could Myanmar encompass 135 ethnic groups if 

the language once known as Burmese is now referred

to as the Myanmar language? Tackling this issue would

be one of the most important talks for any government, 

present or future, that wants to build peace in Burma.

Educational reform for the nation’s schools in badly

needed as well.

The peace process must also involve unarmed ethnic groups such as ethnic political parties, religious

institutions, women’s groups, youth groups and other 

civil society organizations. It is important that representatives of the people in the areas that have been most 

Officers with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army gather in Mar Wong, a village in northern Shan State, on January 12, 2015, marking the fifty-second

anniversary of the Ta’ang (Palaung) organizing against the rule of General Ne Win. (Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
26 PEACEWO      NO.

affected by the war should take part in the peace talks. 

It is, after all, for them and their well-being that peace 

has to be established.

The China factor is a significant one. China played 

important, some would argue devious, role behind 

the scenes in 1963—and it is doing so again. China

no longer exports revolution, but the so-called ChinaMyanmar Economic Corridor remains strategical

important for trade and commerce because it provides China with direct access to the Indian Ocean.

Therefore, China has become directly involved i

the peace process and, in recent years, managed to 

outmaneuver all the Western peacemakers. China’s

role, intentions, and modus operandi—taking part in 

the peace talks and arming groups such as the UWSA 

as well as, indirectly, the UWSA’s allies in the FPNC

should be studied carefully. Countering China’s growing influence in Burma is in the interest not only 

the international community but also of the Burmese

military, which sees protecting the sovereignty of the 

nation as its duty. Foreigners involved in the peace 

process should study China’s past and present involvement in Burma’s peace processes and draw thei

own conclusions as to what they could do to balance 

China’s influence and make the talks more inclusive

During the entire peace process, the role of the militias 

has been overlooked. Apart from the ethnic armed 

organizations, hundreds of major, medium-sized, and 

minor pyi thu sit forces are present in the country. An 

excellent report on the pyi thu sit by John Buchanan

should be studied carefully.55 It outlines the Burmese

military’s past and present policies of turning rebels 

into militias, and the consequences for Burmese

society of such moves: increased drug trafficking, illegal “taxation” of local residents, and general instability 

in the frontier areas. These approaches have certainly

not led to peace in conflict areas. Some of those militia 

forces, which are recognized by the military but act independently, are stronger and better armed than many 

of the ethnic armed organizations.

After decades of civil war and five failed peace efforts, 

Burma is no closer to reaching an agreement that would

bring an end to its many conflicts. As this study’s analysis of these previous attempts at peace demonstrates, 

every one of the peace negotiations foundered on 

immutable attitudes on both sides. The military side refused to discuss fundamental political issues underlying

the conflict, insisting instead on a limited security role for 

the ethnic armed groups under central military control, 

but with unlimited business opportunities. The armed

factions who accepted these terms became military-controlled militias with access to land and resources to participate in whatever business they chose, no matter how 

illicit. Those who did not were designated illegal. Thi

only further confounded the possibility for the remaining 

ethnic armed groups to coordinate a united position 

among themselves, thereby forcing peace negotiations 

into bilateral channels and keeping them focused on 

ceasefires that did not resolve the underlying political 

differences. Most of the ethnic armed groups eventually went back to war with the military. Until the military 

is willing to allow peace talks that address solutions to 

underlying political disparities with the ethnic minorities, 

and until all parties to the process are willing to place 

community interests and sustainable development 

ahead of short-sighted illicit economic activities benefitting only armed actors, peace will remain elusive.
USIP.ORG 27

Notes

1. Mary P. Callahan, “The Sinking Schooner: Murder and State in Independent Burma,” in Gangsters, Democracy, and the State 

Southeast Asia, ed. Carl A. Trocki (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 

2. For an account of the early years of the civil war, see Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948 (Chian

Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2011), 1–125; and Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (London: Ze

Press, 1991), 122–34.

3. Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 91

4. Union of Burma Ministry of Information, The Nine Months After Ten Years (Rangoon: Ministry of Information, 1959), 1

5. Union of Burma Ministry of Information, Nine Months, 11

6. Brang Seng, chairman of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), interview, Pajau, August 12, 198

7. Working People’s Daily, May 10, 1989.

8. For the full text of the Panglong Agreement and related documents, see Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, The Shan of Burma: Memoir

of a Shan Exile (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), 239–45.

9. For the full text of the 1947 constitution, which became effective at independence on January 4, 1948, see “The Constitution of th

Union of Burma,” September 24, 1947, www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/79573/85699/F1436085708/MMR79

10. Josef Silverstein, Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National Unity (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 19

11. Union of Burma Ministry of Information, Nine Months, 11

12. See Jackie Yang Rettie, Shan State Affairs (mimeograph, Mawson, Australian Capital Territory, 1994),

13. Rettie, Shan State Affairs, 

14. Yawnghwe, Shan of Burma, 111.

15. David Steinberg, “Burma Under the Military: Towards a Chronology,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 3, no. 3 (December 1981): 251–

16. Silverstein, Burmese Politics, 232.

17. Silverstein, Burmese Politics, 233. Silverstein refers to a manuscript of the talks titled “Internal Peace Parley,” published by the 

Revolutionary Council (Historical Documents No. 1, Rangoon 196

18. Smith, Burma, 208.

19. Kachin Research Society, Kachin Peace Efforts: Photograph Album 1963–1994 (mimeograph, 2009), 87 (copy in the author’s possession)

20. This list of points comes from Bertil Lintner, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univers

Press, 1990) 21–23. It is based on what the author concluded after interviewing Thakin Ba Thein Tin, Khin Maung Gyi, San

and other CPB leaders at Panghsang during my stay at the CPB headquarters, which lasted from December 1986 to March 19

The author spent another three months with the CPB’s armed forces in the fie

21. Thakin Ba Thein Tin, interview, Panghsang, December 24, 1986; Aung Sein and Than Maung, Pegu Yoma survivors, inter

Panghsang, December 25, 1986.

22. Communist Party of Burma, “A Short Outline of the History of the Communist Party of Burma,” Beijing, June 1964 (copy i

author’s possession).

23. Smith, Burma, 213.

24. Thakin Ba Thein Tin, interview, Panghsang, December 24, 

25. Aung Sein and Than Maung, Pegu Yoma survivors, interview, Panghsang, December 25, 1986

26. Magnus Fiskesjö, in his otherwise excellent research, makes the mistake of assuming that CPB cadres who had been driven ou

of central Burma established the northeastern base area. See Magnus Fiskesjö, “Kinesiska perspektiv på Wa-folkets historia,

Kinarapport [in Swedish] (March 2012): 82, http://tidskrift.nu/artikel.php?Id=7986.

27. Kyaw Mya, interview, Panghsang, December 29, 1986.

28. Working People’s Daily, May 10, 1989.

29. Ye Tun, interview, Panghsang, December 31, 1986

30. Brang Seng, interview, Pajau, August 12, 198

31. Brang Seng, interview, Pajau, August 12, 198
28 PEACEWO      NO.

32. David Steinberg, The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 1.

33. This line had been reaffirmed at the CPB’s congress at Panghsang in September–October 1985. See Lintner, The Rise and F

of the Communist Party of Burma, 36. The account is based on original CPB documents (copies in the author’s possessio

34. Handwritten minutes from this meeting were passed on to the author during his visit to Jinghong, southern Yunnan, in May 1989.

35. According to numerous conversations between CPB soldiers overheard during the author’s stay in the CPB’s base area f

November 1986 to April 1987.

36. United Wa State Party, Miandian Lianbang Wa Bang Zhi [A Record of the Wa State of the Union of Burma], Panghsang, 2018, 652–5

37. This was first reported in Bertil Lintner, “Rebels with a Cause,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 30, 

38. Aung Gyi, interview, Rangoon, April 21, 1989

39. For an account of Olive Yang and her exploits, see Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 120, 190, 230–31, 366. 

40. For instance, see Working People’s Daily, April 23, 1989.

41. Ai Pao, Wa leader in exile in Thailand, interview, Chiang Mai, April 19, 198

42. The international media and foreign peacemakers often state that the UWSA signed a ceasefire agreement with the government i

1989. That is incorrect. At that time, no agreement was signed with the UWSA or any other ethnic armed organization except for the KIO

43. See “UWSA Government 6-Point Union-Level Peace Agreement,” December 26, 2012, https://ucdpged.uu.se/peaceagreements

/fulltext/Mya%2020121226.pdf.

44. For an account of the growth of the UWSA, see Bertil Lintner, “The United Wa State Army and Burma’s Peace Process,” Peaceworks n

147, United States Institute of Peace, April 2019, www.usip.org/publications/2019/04/united-wa-state-army-and-burmas-peace-process.

45. For an English translation, see Euro-Burma Office, “The Kachins’ Dilemma—Become a Border Guard Force or Return to War

EBO Analysis Paper no. 2, 2010, https://euroburmaoffice.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/c1/9a/c19a9271-8cfc-4242-9f

-916a6250dde8/ebo_analysis_paper_no_2_2010_-_the_kachins_dilemma.pdf.

46. There is no question that the 1990 election was for a pyithu hluttaw with a variety of duties and not only for a constitution drafting assembly (see “The Pyithu Hluttaw Election Law - SLORC Law No. 14/89 (English),” May 31, 1989, www.burmalibrary

/the-pyithu-hluttaw-election-law-slorc-law-no-1489-english).

47. For the full text of the announcement, see “Declaration 1/190: SLORC to ‘Help’ in Convening of People’s Assembly,” Bu

Broadcasting System, Rangoon Home Service, 1330 GMT, July 27, 1990, in Summary of World Broadcasts, FE/0829 B, Jul

1990, reproduced from Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report FBIS-EAS-90-146, July 27, 1

48. See Human Rights Watch, “Myanmar: Chronology of the National Convention,” July 18, 2007, https://reliefweb.int/report/myan

/myanmar-chronology-national-convention. The number of elected delegates was also at one time 106, but that in no way reflected

the outcome of the 1990 election. And drafting a new constitution would have been one of several duties of the elected pyithu

hluttaw, not the handpicked assembly convened by the SLOR

49. Reuters, “Myanmar’s Charter Sails through Referendum,” May 26, 2008, www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-refere

/myanmars-charter-sails-through-referendum-idUSSP33290120080526.

50. BBC, “Burma ‘Approves’ New Constitution,” May 15, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/740210

51. Euro-Burma Office, “The Kachins’ Dilem

52. Saw Yan Naing, “Where Has Burma’s Peace Money Gone?,” The Irrawaddy, April 1, 2016, www.irrawaddy.com/news/burm

/where-has-burmas-peace-money-gone.html.

53. Anthony Davis, “Tatmadaw Quietly Launches Largest War since Myanmar’s Independence,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, May 20, 2015.

54. Htet Soe Lin, “NLD Sees Silver Lining in Charter Change Failure,” Myanmar Times, March 13, 2020, www.mmtimes.com/ne

/nld-sees-silver-lining-charter-change-failure.html; and Nanda Htoo Thant, “NLD Seeks Charter Change to Increase Civil

Control,” Myanmar Times, July 24, 2019, www.mmtimes.com/news/nld-seeks-charter-changes-increase-civilian-control.html

55. John Buchanan, “Militias in Myanmar,” Asia Foundation, July 2016, https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/0

/Militias-in-Myanmar.pdf.
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Making Peace Possible

NO. 169 | October 202

The world’s longest civil war is now more than seventy years old, having begun in 1948 with

Burma’s independence from Britain. On one side have been various ethnic groups, Musli

rebels, and communist insurgents. On the other, the central government. Since the latest 

peace process was launched in 2011, however, the fighting has only intensified. This report

looks at Burma's previous failed attempts at peacebuilding and draws valuable lessons from

those efforts in order to break the current stalemate, including potential changes to the 

constitution, ending the divisive policy of separating ethnic armed groups into signatories 

and nonsignatories of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, building an inclusive national

identity, and balancing China's growing involvement in Burma's peace proces

• China-Venezuela Relations in the Twenty-First Century: From Overconfidence 

to Uncertainty by Matt Ferchen (Special Report, September 2020

• Digital Inclusion in Mediated Peace Processes: How Technology Can Enhance 

Participation by Andreas T. Hirblinger (Peaceworks, September 2020

• After the Agreement: Why the Oversight of Peace Deals Succeeds or Fails by 

Aly Verjee (Peaceworks, September 2020)

• Nonviolent Action in Myanmar: Challenges and Lessons for Civil Society and 

Donors by La Ring, Khin Sandar Nyunt, Nist Pianchupat, and Shaazka Beyerl

(Special Report, September 2020

• Curbing Corruption after Conflict: Anticorruption Mobilization in Guatemala by 

Walter Flores and Miranda Rivers (Special Report, September 202

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