Word: burma
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ever there was a country in need of a program to identify the players, it is cloistered, xenophobic Burma. Particularly in the uncharted "Golden Triangle," where a slice of northeastern Burma meets Thailand and Laos, the situation is a demographer's and political analyst's nightmare. Remnants of a Kuomintang army that fled China at the time of the Communist takeover vie with independent warlords for control of the region's rich opium crop, while armed independence movements representing a bewildering host of ethnic and tribal groups periodically challenge the Rangoon government of General...
...another threat has arisen. Since last fall a murky little war that pits the Burmese army against a large-scale offensive by a resurgent Burma Communist Party has been raging in the northeast. It is the largest rebellion to threaten Burma since the country gained its independence from Britain...
...Burma Communist Party launched its first major offensive at the end of 1971 by laying siege to the administrative outpost of Kunlong in the Wa States in the northeasternmost corner of Burma. The intensity of the Communist attack came as a surprise to Rangoon, which had hitherto paid scant attention to the existence of the small and weak party. But between 1968 and 1971, a group of Burmese Communists who had been given ideological training in China set up a strong organization among the peasants of the Shan State. The resulting attack on Kunlong ended in a standoff after...
...According to U.S. State Department estimates, the vast majority of rank and file soldiers are ethnic Burmese. But most of the officers and cadres down to the company level are probably ethnic Chinese trained in China. Still, nobody can say for certain that they are regular Chinese soldiers. Along Burma's porous and largely unpoliced border with China, it is very difficult to know exactly who is who among the various ethnic groups and rebellious armies...
...Switch. The impact of these efforts, however, remained limited without the help of Burma. For more than a decade, Burmese Strongman Ne Win had permitted one of Burma's militias, the Ka Kwe Ye (K.K.Y.), to engage in the opium trade as a reward for its support of his campaign against Communist guerrillas. With this franchise, the K.K.Y. and its most important leader, Lo Hsing-han, openly carried opium along Burmese roads. Early this year Ne Win abruptly switched policy. Worried about growing drug addiction among Burmese youth and realizing that he would have no chance of receiving...