The war that's still going after 50 years

By Ian Black
The Guardian

A Karen National Army soldier poses during a training exercise in Burma, 1988.
Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

It is the world's longest-running war and it may be coming to a bleak and inglorious end. Karen fighters have been seeking independence from Burma for a full six decades. Now the ethnic guerrilla army could be facing disaster as its enemy closes in on its strongholds on the border with Thailand.

The Karen belong to the long list of unlucky peoples let down by big powers that abandoned their promises when the hour of need was past. Many of them fought alongside the British when they were defending their then Burmese colony against the Japanese in the second world war, but never saw the independent state they were pledged. Their armed struggle began in January 1949.

Now the Rangoon military junta - the generals who imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi and routinely defy international protests and ineffective sanctions - are driving home their advantage. It looks, some analysts say, like the end.

The Karen, living mostly in Burma's hilly eastern region and the Irrawaddy delta, make up 7% of the total population of 47 million. Aid agencies estimate that some 200,000 of them have been "ethnically cleansed" during decades of war. Many thousands more live in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border. Hazards include rampant malaria, malnutrition and one of the world's highest rates of land-mine injuries. The Karen suffer too from the junta's suppression of religious freedom: 40% are Christians.

The bad news now is that after a three-year offensive that followed an informal ceasefire, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) fighters have been forced into small and isolated pockets of resistance that can do little to stop the Burmese army as it drives relentlessly east to the rice paddies and forests on the border. Making matters worse, the Thai government - dependent on its neighbour for raw materials - has cracked down and ordered Karen military commanders to leave the country. The Karen Human Rights Group has documented routine abuses such as forced labour, destruction of villages and crops, forced relocation, extortion, looting, arbitrary detention, torture, mass rape and summary executions. The majority are committed by Burmese government soldiers and officials. It is a poignant irony that the Karen call their homeland "Kaw Thoo Lei" or "Land Without Evil".