Table of Contents
Who are Burma’s Karen rebels?
- The Karen conflict is an armed conflict in Kayin State, Myanmar (formerly known as Karen State, Burma). The conflict has been described as one of the world’s “longest running civil wars”
- Karen nationalists have been fighting for an independent state known as Kawthoolei since 1949.
- In the over seventy-year-long conflict there have been many different combatants, the most influential of which are the Karen National Union and their Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), and the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar.
- Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced throughout the course of the conflict, 200,000 of whom have fled to neighbouring Thailand and are still currently confined to refugee camps
- Kawthoolei state
- The KNU is the dominant political organization representing ethnic minority Karen communities in Karen, or Kayin, State, bordering Thailand.
- Its aim is self-determination for the Karen people in a region of about 1.6 million people, roughly the size of Belgium, where they are the ethnic majority in the state.
- Marginalized in then Burma’s post-independence political process, the KNU started a rebellion in 1949, which it waged for nearly 70 years. One of its key grievances was the majority Bamar community’s dominance of Myanmar’s state and military.
- The Karen people are one of the largest ethnic minorities in Myanmar.
- The word ‘Karen’ is derived from different Tai and Burmese names for a collective term referring to people in the forest and in the mountains.
- The Karen National Union declared war to the Burmese government on 31 January 1949. Ever since the start the conflict has been characterised by seasonal dependent fighting, internal struggles within the KNU and atrocities being committed by both sides.
- The KNU and its military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), have historically been one of the biggest adversaries of Myanmar’s military, or Tatmadaw as it is known.
- The KNU signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the government of Myanmar on 15 October 2015, along with seven other insurgent groups.
- The KNU resumed its fight against the Myanmar government following the 2021 military coup. On 27 April 2021, KNU insurgents captured an army camp on the west bank of the Salween River, which forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand. The Tatmadaw later retaliated with airstrikes on KNU positions.
- Military jets last month launched the first air strikes on KNU territory in 20 years after an attack on a post by KNU fighters that killed 10 soldiers. KNU forces have been attacking Myanmar army positions and trying to cut off supply routes, triggering sporadic clashes and air strikes.
- Myanmar’s pro-democracy forces have sought to bring the KNU and other ethnic minority armies into an alliance against their common enemy, the Tatmadaw, which is struggling to govern.
- The Tatmadaw is the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar
- Despite having fewer troops, less firepower and no air assets, an alliance of ethnic armies could pose a significant problem to a Tatmadaw that has to fight on several fronts.
- But such a conflict would be a long and bloody one and any armed alliance would face challenges with resources and weaponry, or be susceptible to power struggles, factionalism or external intervention.
- The military mastered divide-and-rule tactics during its 49-year rule of Myanmar and might strike deals of its own to weaken its opponents.
- Should the resistance movement prevail over the Tatmadaw, a political transition could be fraught with problems.
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