Word: mi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...controlled its borders since the British Raj departed, Li's lawless veterans are "foreign bandits" who defy its writ, pillage its merchants and give the Chinese Communists an ever-ready excuse for threatening invasion. Last month, in a burst of near unanimity, the U.N. General Assembly condemned Li Mi and advised his guerrillas to get out or be interned. Li Mi refused, and in so doing defied the world. Last week, in Formosa where he is recuperating from a heart attack, he told TIME Correspondent John Meeklin his side of the story, in his first interview since the controversy...
Since then, the Nationalists have managed to cling to a piece of Burmese real estate the size of West Virginia. One million primitive Burmans are now ruled by five Nationalist generals, loyal to Li Mi. The National Salvation Army, says its commander, has its headquarters on the forested plateau east of the Salween River, where the Burmese, Siamese and Indo-Chinese borders meet. It maintains an air strip, has reliable radio contacts with the government of Formosa...
Trouble in Rangoon. To drive out Li Mi, the Burmese government is spending a large part of its total revenues. Li Mi retorts that this is Rangoon's own fault. His relations with the government were reasonably trouble-free, he says, until Burma's Foreign Minister visited Red Peking last July and was pressured into a phony "peace" pact whereby Communist guerrillas in Burma would cease their depredations in exchange for a Burmese offensive against the Nationalist redoubt. Since then, says Li Mi, the Nationalist Salvation Army has been attacked on all sides by 1) Red Chinese regulars...
...National Salvation Army is a collection of bandits. Such "vilification," he says, actually included the charges that he personally had been riding around Bangkok in a fancy limousine, that he supports no fewer than twelve concubines. "I don't think my wife would permit it," says Li Mi drily...
Washington and Taipei have repeatedly denied sending military aid to Li, but the evidence is mounting that in 1951 some U.S. supplies were airlifted to the Nationalist redoubt. More recently, the traffic has ceased, presumably because the State Department or the Pentagon became convinced that Li Mi's enterprise is doing more harm to Burma than it is to the Red Chinese...