A Savage Dreamland

by David Eimer

  Another million Kachin live in Burma, where they divide themselves into six principal sub-groups. They reside predominantly in Kachin State, the country’s northernmost region, which they refer to as ‘Kachin Land’, as well as in northern Shan. The driver told me he now lived in Mai Ja Yang. ‘I can make more money driving between Kachin and Ruili than I can working in Ruili,’ he said.

  Heading north for forty minutes, we swung left on the outskirts of a small town and navigated a succession of streets until we joined a brick road. It was flanked on both sides by rice fields, over which women were bent double, their faces shielded from the sun by wide-brimmed floppy hats. We wound through the farmland, rice giving way to corn, the driver pointing to the hills in the distance: ‘Kachin.’ The road narrowed and got progressively worse, deteriorating from brick to a rocky track and finally a pitted dirt trail, and I knew I was back in Burma.

  Downtown Mai Ja Yang appeared, low-rise grey and white buildings topped with metal roofs lining a now-paved road. Immediately west are the hills that are the front line between the KIA and the Tatmadaw, rising steeply as they roll towards the rest of Kachin State. There were hardly any other cars and few pedestrians. A deserted traffic circle marked the centre of town. The driver told me 8,000 people live in Mai Ja Yang and I wondered where they were, because there was little sign of life around us. It was the same at the hotel, where the staff outnumbered the guests.

  From my room window I could see across the fields to the Chinese villages we had passed through. Mai Ja Yang is semi-rural itself, sugarcane growing on the outskirts, and hushed to the point where I could hear the birds twittering in the trees outside and the hotel workers two floors beneath me. Only the odd growl from a passing motorbike disturbed the peace. The near-silence was a shock after much louder Ruili.

  Waiting in the lobby was Htoi Pan, a Kachin teacher whose name I had been given. As we walked back towards the town centre along the main road, past mostly shuttered shops, phone numbers daubed on them for prospective buyers to call, she explained what I was seeing. ‘Mai Ja Yang was doing well when I first came in 2005. The casinos were open and that’s when all this was built,’ she said, waving an arm at the buildings on either side of us.

  Those were Mai Ja Yang’s boom years. In 2002 the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), the KIA’s political wing, started granting casino licences to Chinese businessmen to raise cash for their battle with the Burmese. Soon a sleepy border village was transformed into a tawdry haven of flashing neon, raucous karaoke bars, brothels, arcades and gambling halls, a baby Mong La that drew gamblers and partygoers from Yunnan in their thousands on the weekends. Then it all went wrong. ‘The casinos started closing in 2009, after the son of a senior Ruili official was killed here,’ said Htoi Pan.

  ‘Since then everything has slowed down. The biggest casino has reopened a few times, but when it does the Chinese put pressure on for it to close again. A lot of people come here from other parts of Kachin and Shan State, but they don’t stay because business is bad. One day you walk past their shop or restaurant and it’s gone. Then someone else arrives and it starts again.’ The only places I saw open were general stores, a couple of beauty salons and clothes shops, the odd basic pharmacy and motorbike repair places.

  At the end of the main road where it disappears into the hills towards Shan State and another front line between the KIA and the Burmese army, Mai Ja Yang stops abruptly. The last building is the covered market. A few stalls were still functioning, alongside a couple of noodle stands. Opposite the market is what had been the town’s largest casino. Pink and blue paint peels off the concrete walls, the windows are broken and deserted guard posts, where the gamblers were screened for weapons, stand at the entrances.

  Behind the casino is a forlorn square of chained gambling joints, one domed in imitation of a Mongolian yurt, and karaoke bars, their names written in both Chinese characters and the Latin alphabet introduced to the Kachin by American Baptist missionaries. Electronic gaming gadgets were abandoned outside some of them. We walked into one arcade whose doors were still open to find three lads playing pool, furniture stacked up around them, the walls lined with slot machines, dusty and destined never to light up again.

  Wooden boards covered the entrance of the optimistically named Sheraton Hotel, while chickens and dogs roamed where punters had once thronged. The only sign of human life was on a lane off the square, where there was a wildlife emporium I could smell twenty metres away. Its Chinese owner was inside amidst the stench, while outside two black bears were confined in a cage far too small for them, tossing their heads from side to side, going mad in their prison.

  Mai Ja Yang stands as an example, or warning, of what happens when the Chinese turn off the money tap. All the special regions along the Sino-Burmese frontier are dependent on both China’s cash and goodwill to survive. But the KIO and KIA don’t have the same warm relationship with the Chinese authorities that the rulers of Special Region 4 and the Wa and Kokang areas enjoy. The murder of a senior official’s son was the cue for China to withdraw their support for Mai Ja Yang’s casinos.

  Chinese companies are present across Kachin State, operating everything from agri-businesses to hydropower projects, as well as being heavily involved in the jade trade. The KIA is no fan of China’s economic presence in their homeland. And unlike the militias in Shan State the KIA dabbled only briefly with Burma’s communist insurgents, sometimes fighting against them. Its leaders aren’t former Red Guards and Marxists with connections to the Yunnan government.

  Adding to the wariness between the KIA and China is the fact that the Kachin people are predominantly Christian, mainly Baptist but some Catholic. The Chinese Communist Party has an extreme suspicion of organised religion, viewing it as a potential vehicle for dissent. Beijing dislikes Christianity the most out of all the faiths because it regards it as a western religion. Christians are closely monitored in China and those who worship in underground churches face persecution.

  Htoi Pan and her friend and fellow teacher Htoi Paw were both devout Baptists. ‘Do you believe in Jesus? You look like someone who does,’ asked Htoi Paw, who joined us for dinner at the only restaurant I saw open in Mai Ja Yang. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Maybe it was because I’d shaved that morning. Tall, slim and pretty, Htoi Paw was younger than the more rotund Htoi Pan. She had grown up in Mandalay, while Htoi Pan was from Myitkyina, the Kachin capital. I thought they must find Mai Ja Yang extremely quiet. ‘It’s OK as long as we have internet,’ replied Htoi Pan. ‘And we go home at Christmas.’

  Both women teach at the Institute of Education, a college for students who live in the conflict areas of Kachin State. Mong La has no university, for all its riches, but tiny Mai Ja Yang is an unlikely higher education centre with two colleges, one based in a former casino. Kachin students are banned from attending university if the authorities discover they grew up in areas controlled by the KIA. Many others are unable to afford the cost of living in the cities where Burma’s universities are located.

  ‘Here they pay £500 a year for food, board and education. After six months studying with us, they can easily pass the exams at the universities in Burma,’ Zau Seng, the Institute’s head, told me when I visited the next morning. Funded by international NGOs, with some support from the KIO, the college is on the western outskirts of town, where the hills start the climb towards the battle zone. The students were smiley and keen, most speaking reasonable English. ‘The quality of high schools in Kachin is lower than in Burma,’ said Zau Seng. ‘But here they do six hours of classes a day and three hours of homework.’

  Named in honour of one of the KIA’s founders, Zau Seng referred to Burma as if it is a separate country from Kachin. And for many who live in Kachin Land, Burma is a foreign state. ‘In my heart I think of Kachin as an independent country. But I know it is not a tangible thing, that it is not realistic. But autonomy within a federal union is a realistic aim,’ Htoi Pan told me over lunch. But she isn’t
expecting self-rule soon. ‘I am not optimistic about the future. As long as the Burmese army is around us, we don’t feel safe and there can be no peace. We don’t want conflict, but we believe we have no choice.’

  Like the TNLA the KIA has tried a ceasefire, downing arms between 1994 and 2011. They got little in return, except for an influx of businesses into Kachin territory controlled by the now-familiar nexus of local elites, Chinese money and the Tatmadaw. Htoi Pan and her colleagues were scornful of Daw Suu’s attempt to regenerate the peace process by naming the latest round of talks the 21st Century Panglong Conference, after the 1947 meeting where the minorities were persuaded to join the Union of Burma by Aung San. ‘The second Panglong trap,’ said one teacher with unconcealed contempt.

  Invoking the ghost of her father is an unwise move by Daw Suu. None of the minorities have happy memories of the original Panglong Conference. ‘It’s not us who have changed. The KIO has been very faithful to the idea of a genuine federal union. It is Burma and the army who gave up on that,’ stressed Htoi Pan, a forceful and articulate advocate of the Kachin cause. ‘I don’t like Aung San Suu Kyi, even if she is the best option. I don’t believe she cares about the grievances of the ethnic peoples. I don’t think she is sincere about wanting to address them or resolving the conflicts. I don’t think she realises the history.’

  Penned in their refuge by the Tatmadaw, while also defending positions in the north and west of Kachin State, as well as northern Shan, the 10,000-odd soldiers of the KIA are stuck in a grim stalemate. ‘We know the conflict is unwinnable for us in a military sense, and the Burmese army cannot win without it getting very ugly,’ said Htoi Pan. ‘But it is not about winning or losing for us. It’s about being on the right side of history and we are on the right side.’

  Unlike Shan State, with its myriad militias and rival political parties, the Kachin have in their favour the fact that they are broadly bonded together. There are dissenting voices and splits have occurred within the KIO and KIA. But compared to the Shan the Kachin are far less factional. ‘It is our tradition that no matter where you are from, who you are, whether you are Baptist or Catholic, we are all Kachin. We are all united,’ Zau Seng told me.

  Later, as dusk fell, Htoi Paw drove me on her motorbike to the headquarters of the KIA’s Third Brigade, north of Mai Ja Yang on the road that leads to Laiza, the KIA’s capital. Outside town the road is only paved for a mile or so, giving way to a stone and dirt track. We passed one of the camps for the internally displaced that are scattered throughout the KIA’s territory. Around 100,000 Kachin have fled their homes because of the fighting, the Tatmadaw employing heavy artillery and air strikes in its battles with the KIA. Htoi Paw told me some of her students had been raised in the camps.

  Waved through the base’s guard post, we drove uphill past the long wooden huts where new recruits live. The sound of lusty singing emerged out of a hall. We looked in and saw an NCO leading teenage boys in the tune. ‘It’s a patriotic song. Learning it is part of their training,’ said Htoi Paw. At the summit of the slope were bungalows that are the homes of the senior officers. I was struck by the unpretentious nature of their housing. Even the largest place I saw in Mai Ja Yang, the home of a former senior KIA commander, was modest in comparison to the mansions in Mong La and Panghsang occupied by their top militia men.

  Money is in short supply for the KIA, though. There are no profits from the heroin and methamphetamine trade to be spent on luxury items, villas or infrastructure. The KIA is an organisation as vehemently anti-drugs as the TNLA and posters warning against taking them are plastered across Mai Ja Yang. Most Kachin believe they are targeted with narcotics in an attempt to reduce their numbers.

  ‘Flooding our communities with drugs is being done deliberately by the Burmese government. They don’t take any action against the drug dealers, only we do,’ said Salang Kaba, the general secretary of the KIA’s Third Brigade. ‘There are Chinese people living in Burma who are selling drugs and they are being protected by the Burmese army, who are making money from it. The Bamar regions aren’t so affected by drugs. Why is that?’

  Salang Kaba was sixty-six, short and powerfully built with a dark brown, lined face. Informal in a white vest and purple trousers, he sat with me in his office drinking green tea. He oversees his unit’s ideological education and its interactions with civilians, while occasionally negotiating with both the Burmese authorities and China. ‘We have no political relationship with the Chinese, but we sometimes cooperate with them on anti-drug projects,’ he told me.

  Lacking narcotics money to fund their cause, and with the casinos of Mai Ja Yang closed down, I was curious how the KIA supports itself. I knew, too, that the KIA had largely lost control of the jade mining area of Hpakant in western Kachin State, once a prized income source, during the 1994–2011 ceasefire. ‘We raise funds from logging and trading, although the logging has mostly been closed down now. But we mine as well, gold, amber and limestone,’ said Salang Kaba.

  They are being squeezed on the battlefield as well, the front line now closer to Mai Ja Yang than before, just two hours’ march away in the hills. ‘There have been many clashes in the last few days,’ admitted Salang Kaba, deliberately interspersing his sentences with sips of tea, a way of keeping control of the conversation. ‘No KIA have died but two villagers delivering rations to the soldiers stepped on landmines and were killed. I have heard that the brigades farther south are fighting hard because their positions are next to the TNLA. The Tatmadaw has entered our areas to try and fight the TNLA.’

  Unsurprisingly, Salang Kaba was not optimistic about the prospects for peace. ‘In my opinion it will be very difficult for any talks to succeed,’ he stated. ‘The Tatmadaw were led by Aung San in the past and the generals will tell Aung San Suu Kyi that they are following his ideals and plans. I think she will do the same as her father. She won’t do anything to betray him. In the long term I think the situation will stay the same.’

  Returning to the hotel, the road was deserted. There were only the stars above us and the fireflies frolicking in the bike’s headlight for company, until we passed the refugee camp. Its inmates will surely be here for years yet, stranded in this nominally independent but beleaguered strip of territory. As we regained the paved road, the lights from Yunnan were glowing on the horizon, a different world from Kachin Land.

  17

  Enter the Dragon

  I was briefed on the journey ahead outside the 7-Eleven in Soppong. ‘When you get stopped at the checkpoints, just say you’re going to visit the hospital and school,’ said my contact, before introducing me to Ket, who was going to drive me to Loi Tai Leng in the deep south of Shan State. Both men were wrapped up in jackets against the nip in the air. Winter mornings in the far northern hills of Thailand are always colder than you expect.

  The drive from Chiang Mai to Soppong had been one long curve, more than 800 bends, some of the passengers in my minivan vomiting along the way. But it was a spectacular ride. We careened down hillsides covered in brilliant green ferns, sun-dappled forest glades in the distance, then corkscrewed back up towards the skyline, past fields of rice and maize, banana and mango trees and cosy hamlets of wooden houses.

  Soppong was hardly a town, its major buildings – post office, petrol station, shops – spread out on either side of the highway, a lazy river running to the east and houses scattered down the lanes that branched off the main road. With Shan State just twenty-five miles to the north, their residents are mainly Shan. But Karen, Lahu and Lisu live here, too, alongside a small community of Chinese, the descendants of Muslim immigrants from Yunnan. Thais make up just 20 per cent of the population.

  There are only two roads north from Soppong. The main one, which I had travelled from Chiang Mai, loops south-west to Mae Hong Son, close to the border with Kayah, Burma’s smallest state, a stub of land descending from the far southern reaches of Shan. Around Mae Hong Son are villages with largely ethnic Chinese populations. Their oldest r
esidents are veterans of the remnants of the Kuomintang (KMT), or nationalist, armies that retreated to Shan State after the communist takeover of China in 1949.

  Over the next twenty-odd years they launched ineffectual raids into Yunnan, backed by the CIA and Taiwan, while finding more lucrative work as foot soldiers for Shan State’s drug syndicates. They escorted the opium caravans south to Chiang Mai, before the Thai government recruited them to fight its own communist insurgency in the hills that border Shan. Their reward was citizenship and homes in the most remote stretches of northern Thailand.

  Our route was the other road from Soppong. Ushering me to his pickup truck, Ket barrelled off at an alarming rate, the road winding uphill almost immediately after leaving town. He didn’t slow down for the turns, rushing through blind corners at sixty miles an hour. Lahu villages went by like a speeded-up film, their occupants manning stalls of food, drinks and souvenirs for the Shan who would be passing through on their way to celebrate their national day in Loi Tai Leng.

  Four Thai army checkpoints lie along the road to the border. The Thais are much more rigorous about guarding their frontier with Burma than the Chinese, unless you travel off the few roads that run to Shan State, and the crossing to Loi Tai Leng is normally closed. But no one asked the reason for my journey, the soldiers just noting my name in a book. Shan State was already visible in the shape of the highest hills ahead, clumps of trees atop them, looking rugged and wilder than Thailand’s more manicured mountains.

  As Shan grew closer, the road degenerated into a deeply rutted dust track which we lurched along at no more than walking pace. In the rainy season it serves to cut the link to Loi Tai Leng. ‘No four-wheel drive, no come,’ Ket said in his broken English. The border sat on a ridge, overlooked by a small stockade manned by the Thai army. A red and white pole draped in barbed wire separated Thailand from Burma. The pole lifted, Ket drove on and I was back in Shan State.