Word: serke
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...S.S.A.'s straight-talking leader is Colonel Yawd Serk, 47, who wears a dark suit and city shoes, resembling a bureaucrat rather than a rebel commander. He gives TIME a tour of nearby Gon Kha hill, scene of the recent fighting. When the rain stops, it can be reached by a narrow dirt road, which Yawd Serk negotiates in a blue Isuzu pickup truck, with his revolver tucked into the dashboard. Linked by deep, zigzag trenches, Gon Kha's bunkers look down upon a handful of fortified U.W.S.A. positions, the closest about 500 meters away. Around 800 U.W.S.A. soldiers charged...
...Several kilometers away, from positions of relative safety, the Burmese army launched more than 3,000 heavy mortar rounds, Yawd Serk adds. These not only hit the S.S.A.?six Shan were killed and 31 injured, he says?but also caused U.W.S.A. casualties and sowed panic in its ranks. Today the Wa fortifications below seem deserted, but Yawd Serk's soldiers are taking no chances. Nearby, on grassy slopes recently littered with Wa corpses, they plant fields of punji stakes made from sharpened bamboo to prevent a repeat assault...
...Yawd Serk says the U.W.S.A. want to crush the S.S.A. and secure new smuggling routes. Among those Wa indicted by the U.S. Justice Department is ethnic Chinese druglord Wei Hseuh-kang, who leads the U.W.S.A. troops now ranged against the S.S.A. The U.S. is offering a $2 million reward for information leading to Wei's capture. Yawd Serk denies old allegations that his own army is involved in the drug trade, and says the S.S.A. is funded by taxing goods such as logs and livestock and by donations from Shan exiles overseas. "Our door is open for anyone to come...
...disquieted by the rebel group's bristling armory and aspirations for nationhood, while Wa resentment grows at fighting and dying in the Burmese army's own battles. Whatever happens next in the violent and complex relations between Burma's ruling generals and its diverse ethnic groups, Colonel Yawd Serk is not expecting peace for his long-suffering Shan anytime soon. "If the Wa don't come for us," he says from his hilltop redoubt, "the Burmese will come for sure...
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