Word: kachins
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...insects to feast on his body. Felix has never fought in the jungles of northeastern Burma, where a rebel army is preparing for war with one of Asia's largest militaries. With no heavy artillery and little more than flip-flops and used flashlights to give their recruits, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) can only depend on guerrilla tactics to deter soldiers of the Burmese military regime. The 24-year-old cadet at the KIA's military academy, deep in the monsoon-drenched hills of Kachin state, juts his chin out, blinks back tears and announces he is ready...
...various armed ethnic groups in the country's northern borderlands. In late August, the military regime unexpectedly overran the army of the nearby Kokang minority, sending some 30,000 refugees spilling into neighboring China. Now other ethnic militias who control various jigsaw-puzzle pieces of northeastern Burma - the Kachin, the Wa, the Eastern Shan - are reinforcing their ragged armies and playing a terrifying guessing game: Who's next on the junta's hit list? (Read "A Closer Look at Burma's Ethnic Minorities...
...armies as part of a centrally controlled border guard force, the first step in what many fear will be the death knell to ethnic autonomy. The deadline to accede to the regime's demand is October. Most ethnic groups have already responded with a firm no - among them the Kachin and the Kokang, whose two-decade cease-fire with the Burmese abruptly ended last month when junta forces invaded its tiny territory. The ease with which the Kokang were defeated presumably buoyed the junta, many of whose members gained their battlefield experience against ethnic militias. "Everyone in the West talks...
...parties coming in second and third and the junta-backed party finishing fourth. However, the junta ignored the results and kept its grip on power. "Some analyses say that even a rigged election is O.K., if it leads to democracy," says Gun Maw, a high-ranking officer in the Kachin Independence Army, one of the armed ethnic groups operating on the border with China that has decided not to give up its guns. "But it looks like these elections will not lead to democracy, so it is better not to be involved...
...sends People's Liberation Army reinforcements to its land across from the conflict zone, it can only hope that the Burmese regime keeps a fragile peace with the various ethnic groups in other border areas. "This area has always been like a bomb waiting to go off," says the Kachin Independence Army's Gun Maw. "Everyone, from all sides, has to be very careful...