Word: kyaw
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...Kyaw Lin, 11, is so tiny that the barrel of his M-16 rifle is sawed in half so he can carry it. It is still almost as long as he is. He has a florid tattoo on his right arm -- a premature badge of manhood that also serves as an animist charm to ward off evil. Sometimes Kyaw Lin is shaky and feverish because, like most of his comrades, he suffers from bouts of malaria. Nobody is there to wipe his brow or take his temperature; he just lies in his bunker until the fever subsides...
Like the rest of the soldiers of the 101st Battalion in Komura, Kyaw Lin is tired. A few weeks earlier, he and other men in his squadron waded across the river into Thailand, chasing a battalion of Burmese troops that had slipped across the border to attack the Karen position from the rear. Karen troops battled the Burmese in the Thai village of Wang Kauo; by the time the fighting was over, twelve Karens and 70 Burmese were dead, and the village was a charred ruin. Kyaw Lin remembers stepping over dead bodies, but little else. He likes to keep...
...front line is a classic stalemate, with Burmese and Karen troops separated by only a 30-yd. killing zone of mines, bamboo stakes and barbed wire. Kyaw Lin has been close enough to spot the shovels of Burmese soldiers digging deeper trenches across the way. Ammunition is scarce, and so the Karens rely on mines handcrafted from bamboo and fuse-lighted grenades that are no more sophisticated than the ancient British Grenadier devices that gave them the name. Sometimes the Karens launch the grenades by catapult, stretching thick rubber bands between two stakes like a giant slingshot...
...Kyaw Lin hangs out with the other kids at Komura, doing chores and waiting for the orders of Lieut. Brown, 38, a Karen who lost his right leg to a mine ten years ago. His stump is covered by an intricate blue swirl of tattoos. Unable to go out on patrol, he trains the children and the volunteers from nearby villages. Brown insists that the children are not forced to fight, and he says he tries to keep them back. But, he acknowledges reluctantly, sometimes they do go to war. He adds that the children are mostly good fighters...
...Kyaw Sann said crowds yesterday raided two police stations, stealing rifles, pistols, and ammunition. Reports said that protesters, some carrying swords, spears and crossbows, were taking the weapons of the fallen soldiers...