Word: rebels
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...plus ethnicities agreed to join the union in exchange for autonomy. But uprisings quickly proliferated in the country's vast frontier, only worsening after the military regime wrested control of the country in 1962 and began limiting ethnic freedoms. Beginning in 1989, cease-fires were signed with 17 rebel militias, and certain ethnicities were granted a measure of self-rule. The junta claimed victory for having united one of the world's most diverse countries - and promptly began mining the natural resources that abounded in tribal regions...
...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 about democracy and [Nobel Peace Prize laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi," says Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military expert and former communist rebel living in exile in China's Yunnan province. "But the junta's biggest enemy is not her. It is the ethnics." (Read "Burma Court Finds Aung San Suu Kyi Guilty...
...renewed threat of civil war in Burma isn't just an internal problem. The country's minorities are concentrated in its borderlands, and in recent weeks, as the junta has surged into rebel territory, tens of thousands of ethnic refugees have poured into Thailand and China...
...estimated to have caused some 200 civilian casualties, left the other alliance members ill-equipped to respond immediately. But exile groups in China and Thailand are reporting that the Wa - which, with some 25,000 foot soldiers and an arsenal of heavy artillery, is the strongest of the rebel armies - is providing support to the shreds of Kokang forces still fighting, as well as giving sanctuary to Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng. With the junta reinforcing troop levels in the country's north, another ethnic militia, the Karen National Liberation Army in eastern Burma, hopes to recuperate after a devastating series...
...well as the junta, could change the nature of battle in Burma. At the KIA's self-styled Pentagon, a collection of simple concrete buildings on a breezy hilltop, members of other ethnic groups have come to be schooled in military tactics from one of the most tenacious rebel militias. One youth leader from the western state of Arakan spoke to me in smooth, American-inflected English. "I need to do something practical," he said. "I need to prepare for war. Politics in this country is crap. It's just a way for the SPDC to stay in power...