Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  It was a rural idyll. Beside the track ripening paddy undulated in the breeze; in the rivers, people were panning for gold, and the villages were alive with commercial activity. Between them, the KIA maintained outposts and roadblocks where traffic was checked and taxes levied on traders coming from or going to China across the mountains.

  Maj.-Gen. Zau Mai at the KIA’s headquarter at Na Hpaw.

  The road was surprisingly smooth although the KIA had demolished all the major bridges to hamper any attempt by the government to recapture the area. Now, rickety bamboo structures that could be dismantled at a minute’s notice had replaced World War Two-vintage Bailey bridges, the remains of which were visible at every river crossing. Consequently, no motor vehicles could use the road but we met plenty of bullock-carts, bicycles and mule trains.

  In 1984, we were told, a Burmese Army unit had actually managed to penetrate the area as far as Japu, a big village on the road. They were ambushed by the KIA and retreated. While they were making their way back towards Myitkyina, a section of 13 soldiers were spotted in the forest by a party of aged Kachin hunters armed with muzzle-loading flintlocks. When the commandos stopped for a rest in a glade, the Kachin grandfathers surrounded the unit and crept up on them from all sides.

  At a signal, they leapt from the undergrowth with their single-shot rifles pointed at the heads of the government soldiers who, sensibly enough, surrendered without further ado.

  The grandfathers, who were dressed in their traditional longyis and turbans, escorted the government troops in their martial fatigues to the nearest rebel camp. The prisoners and their weapons were triumphantly handed over to the KIA. In retaliation for army losses during the raid on Japu, the village was bombed by government aircraft two months later.

  At about noon, we cycled into Gandau Yang, a big village where we stopped for drinks and a snack. While sitting with Khun Nawng by one of the roadside food stalls, I noticed a convoy of bullock carts arriving outside the local school, a large wooden building on an open field. They were carrying big sacks and being received by KIA officers in uniform.

  “Who are they?” I asked Khun Nawng.

  “Rice traders. Shans from the government-controlled area.”

  I sauntered over to talk to them. By law, they were supposed to sell most of their rice harvest to the government for the ridiculously low price of 10 Kyats per basket. But if they could conceal some of the yield and smuggle it into the rebel-held areas, the KIA was willing to buy it at four times the government-regulated price. Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism” is rich in economic ironies, if nothing else.

  We continued for another few hours and reached another big village, Hkala Yang. But unlike Dabak Yang and Gandau Yang, this village was not marked on any maps; it had sprung up in recent years and was inhabited mostly by people who had moved out of government-controlled areas.

  A village school-master, in whose house we put up for the night, jokingly referred to the village as a big refugee camp. But as such, it was remarkably developed. There was electricity from petrol-driven generators in nearly all the houses, the usual range of shops and even a big video hall. A large blackboard outside proclaimed that evening’s showing to be “The Last American Virgin.”

  We remained in Hkala Yang for another day while La Nan contacted the central rebel authorities to inform them of our arrival. By this time we were aware of the fact that there were actually two headquarters. One was the KIA’s GHQ at Na Hpaw, about five hours’ march away in the mountains east of Hkala Yang, where the Chief of Staff, Maj.-Gen. Zau Mai, was based. To the northeast lay Pa Jau, the political headquarters of KIO Chairman Brang Seng.

  We reached Na Hpaw on April 13 and a welcome committee was waiting to receive us as we walked into the camp. I shook hands—not for the first time—with the tall, rangy KIA military commander. I had first Zau Mai in 1984 during a clandestine trip he made to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. It was then that he had invited us to Kachin State and written the letter of introduction which we had carried to India and the Naga Hills.

  Zau Mai and the other officers invited us into a large wooden building where we sat down to rest after the climb up into the mountains from Hkala Yang.

  “We’ve been waiting for you for months,” Zau Mai said, his habitually stern countenance broken in a wide smile.

  Riding a bicycle down the Myitkyina-Bhamo road was a welcome change!

  Gold was abundant at Hkala Yang market. Jade and opium were exchanged for consumer goods from China.

  Anti-aircraft position at the KIA’s headquarters at Na Hpaw.

  Hseng Noung gives Hseng Tai a bath in a fresh mountain stream.

  At Pa Jau, the political headquarters of the KIO, Bertil interviewed Brang Seng, who masterminded an alliance between all major rebel armies in northern Burma. But, at the same time, there was time for popular music in the Kachin Hills!

  I explained briefly the delays in India and the trouble in the Naga hills.

  “We know all about that now,” he said lighting a cigarette. “I sent some of my men over to find out. Do you remember those two Sema gentlemen who were at the NSCN’s headquarters when you arrived? They said they were arbitrators for some kind of peace talks.”

  I did indeed remember them as their inquisitiveness had immediately aroused my suspicions.

  “They were Indian intelligence agents. As soon as they got back to Kohima, they informed the authorities there. At first, the Indians though you’d return to their side. But when you didn’t, they passed the information on to Ma Sa La who came up and attacked.”

  The major-general also had news of what had happened after our crossing of the Chipwe road. The unit that we had briefly encountered in Manwing had radioed back to Myitkyina that they had “spotted the enemy and opened fire”, but that the enemy had “escaped”. Some days later, however, two companies of government troops had been dispatched in pursuit.

  Since we were long gone by the time they had reached the eastern mountains, they obviously found nothing. But they did burn down Sapoi—a village we had not even visited—and a few houses in Uthau, where we had stopped for a beer and gazed upon the mountains of Yunnan. KIA units from the 3rd Battalion had attacked the patrols which, after some inconclusive skirmishing, retreated.

  The only conclusion to be drawn from all this was that intimidation of civilians living in insurgent-controlled territory was standard operating procedure for the Burmese Army. There was simply no other rational explanation for such behaviour.

  As it happened, our arrival at Na Hpaw coincided with thingyan, the Buddhist New Year festival. Celebrations revolved around music, dancing and, not least, the splashing of water on one another. The central meeting hall in Na Hpaw was decorated with paper streamers and flowers and that night a team of KIA entertainers put on a variety show. Although the vast majority of the Kachins were Christians, some of the KIA’s allies in the NDF, the Shans and Palaungs, were Buddhists.

  In the audience there were also a few Arakanese rebels from the Bangladesh border and even some Burman defectors from government forces. The sound of drums, gongs and cymbals resonated through the night and the soldiers danced under the light of a full moon. The wild beat of the music was reinforced by the rhythmic clatter of cartridge belts and rifles as the guerrillas twisted and swayed in dance. The festivities continued on into the small hours.

  We rested for a few days at Na Hpaw before leaving on April 16, which also happened to be Hseng Noung’s 25th birthday. This was the final leg of a 900 km-long trek from the Indian border at Longva. It was difficult to grasp that at the end of it lay Pa Jau, a point we had struggled to reach for months. It was now almost exactly a year since we had met Vemesü in the New Delhi coffee shop and made our first contact with the Nagas.

  For seven hours we traversed a mountain landscape of upland savannah, covered with cogon grass. The last stretch before Pa Jau led us down steeply to a large market place by a stream in a narrow valley. We halted in a cluster
of wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Then orders came, requesting us to proceed. Hseng Noung and I were asked to take the lead. The troops and Ma Shwe carrying Ja Reng followed behind.

  Halfway up a hill behind the market, hundreds of people were lined up along the road. An old man stepped forward to greet us. It was Maj. N’Chyaw Tang, the first Kachin officer I had ever met. That had been in 1982 on the Thai border. Having served in the British Army in the World War Two, he spoke excellent English.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked expectantly, extending his hand.

  I shook it warmly. “Of course, I do, Major. It’s a pleasure to meet you again.”

  Some Kachin women came forward to present us with bouquets of fresh flowers. Clutching them in the crooks of our left arms, Hseng Noung and I moved along the line, shaking every proffered hand. A Kachin video cameraman meanwhile recorded the event. I felt uncomfortably like an American presidential candidate on tour.

  As we came to the end of the line, the path led on to an earthen platform between two large wooden houses. A welcoming committee of a Shan, a CPB and three Kachin officers stood waiting. Prominent among them was a man in a brown suit, a white shirt, a blue tie and brown polished shoes. It was the short, sturdy figure of Brang Seng. I removed my bush hat, shook his hand and addressed him with a Kachin phrase I had memorised especially for the occasion.

  “Ningbaw Kaba, gaja I?” How are you, revered teacher?

  He laughed and replied in perfect English:

  “Who taught you that?”

  We moved into the house on the left where some Kachin ladies were waiting to greet us with rice beer, sticky rice and chicken. Everyone was full of questions about our journey and Ja Reng was handed around and admired on all sides. She smiled and burbled confidently at everybody; throughout the trek, she had been an invaluable asset in creating rapport with whomever we met and she did not fail us now.

  Soon after, the throng of well-wishers withdrew to let us settle into our new accommodation and rest. We were indeed tired—but more than that, supremely happy. We had beaten the odds: we had finally reached our destination.

  9

  PA JAU

  After nearly six months on the move across northern Burma with only a few halts along the way, arrival at Pa Jau meant we could now enjoy the luxury of settling down. For once, we knew we would be staying for months rather than days or weeks.

  Pa Jau was spread out on more than ten hillocks surrounding a central market which straggled along the stream that ran through the valley. The settlement boasted several solid wooden buildings with tiled roofs. On one knoll was a church which on weekdays served as a kindergarten; on another was a telephone exchange. Offices were scattered throughout the settlement; there was a large school and, in the valley near the market, a video hall.

  On the highest hillock stood a large wooden building, the headquarters of the rebels’ civil administration in Kachin State. Beside it fluttered a Kachin flag, an upper red field and a lower green one with crossed Kachin dahs superimposed in white. In the evening between 8 and 10 pm a petrol-powered generator provided the entire camp with electricity. From a distance, Pa Jau, at an altitude of almost 2,000 metres, looked almost like a resort in the Swiss Alps, and all the more so when smoke drifted from the chimneys of the wooden cabins.

  We were housed in a large, wooden building on a levelled terrace cut into a hillside. The place was equipped with an iron stove which proved especially welcome at night when the temperature fell to near freezing. In our bedroom, for the first time since India, we had a real bed with a mattress, sheets and thick quilts. Ma Shwe and Atom—a girl soldier who had joined us in Na Hpaw to help take care of Ja Reng—had their own bedroom. I also had a study which I set up with a large desk, a typewriter, my radio and books—and stacks of international magazines which Brang Seng had lent us. This was our first “home” since Ja Reng’s birth.

  During our first week at Pa Jau, the thingyan festivities continued with almost daily music and dance performances in the community hall. The celebrations were organised by the Shan State Army delegation at the Kachin headquarters, and they culminated with a Buddha image being carried in procession up to the SSA office, to the accompaniment of traditional Shan music. When the gongs, the drums and the cymbals had ceased reverberating through the hills, we began to explore the camp. To our delight, we found that Pa Jau market—called Gat Yang—had a wide selection of goods we had not seen for months: baby powder, all the medicines we needed for Ja Reng, baby clothes, Chinese tinned food and fruit, Chinese powdered milk in plastic bags, Shwe Kyaung coffee from Mandalay, and marmalade in glass jars smuggled up from Thailand. There was even tinned butter from New Zealand and Australian processed cheese. The only bread, of course, was dried mong gyut. But with cheese, butter, marmalade, fried eggs and hot coffee with milk, we managed an approximation of an English breakfast that brought back instant memories of Calcutta’s Fairlawn Hotel.

  The outside world was now closer in other respects too. Brang Seng’s headquarters was in daily contact with the KIA camp near the Thai border, more than 600 kilometres to the south. Immediately after our arrival, I sent a message in Morse code via that camp to our Kachin contact in Thailand asking him to contact the Far Eastern Economic Review’s Bangkok bureau and inform our colleagues that we were still alive and well. Three days later, a uniformed radio operator arrived at our doorstep. With a smart stamp and salute, he handed over a short, typed message:

  Pleased to hear from you [] Hong Kong informed [] All your letters in hand [] Hang in there [] Regards John [] End []

  Hseng Noung and I were both delighted. The message came from the Review’s Bangkok bureau chief, John McBeth, and it meant our letters from 2nd Brigade headquarters had arrived. We could also assume our film was there as well and that the new rolls we had ordered were on their way. We would soon be able to set to work in earnest.

  Our most immediate concern was having missed the NDF meeting that in fact had been the whole purpose of our journey. One day, however, Brang Seng called us over to his house to watch a video tape of the Pa Jau conference, which had ended in January. We sat down in his spacious living room which also served as a meeting hall for the top Kachin leaders. It was furnished with a large wooden table, a portrait of Jesus on the wall above a pair of buffalo horns, and rows of wooden benches on which people from all over Pa Jau sat at night to watch video.

  “We had a get-together just after you’d reached our 2nd Brigade headquarters,” Brang Seng said smiling, while he was plugging in the video machine and selecting the tapes. “So I told them, ‘Just now, Mister Lintner arrived in the Hukawng Valley’. You should have seen their faces! ‘But how did he get there?’ they asked. ‘By a mysterious route’, I told them.” He laughed heartily. “You should have been here during the meeting, though. You’d have found it very interesting. It’s a pity you got stuck in India for so long.”

  From what I saw, I could only agree. In the tape’s opening sequence, the NDF delegation led by U Soe Aung, a Karen leader in his late sixties, marched through a wide, green valley in Kachin State, escorted by armed troops from the Kachin, Shan and Palaung rebel armies. On arriving at the first KIA camp, civilians and soldiers presented garlands to them and two Kachin elders played Scottish bagpipes, a legacy of the days when they had served together with the Gurkhas in the colonial Indian Army. During the actual meeting, which took place in Pa Jau’s community hall, the Kachins had advocated their policy: regional autonomy for Burma’s ethnic minorities and an unequivocal forswearing of previous separatist demands.

  The other NDF members accepted this. But dispute had erupted over a more controversial proposal: the formation of a united military front with the CPB. The videotape ended as the NDF delegation set off from Pa Jau on a long trek south to the CPB’s headquarters at Panghsang, where a second meeting was to be held to discuss the united front.

  “I’ve actually just come back from Panghsang,” said Brang Seng, as he turned off
the video and sat down at the table with us. “Our NDF members signed a defence treaty with the CPB on March 24. It worked out well and there was no misunderstanding as to our intentions.”

  This was unexpected and significant news. For the first time ever, the armed opposition in Burma, regardless of ethnicity or political conviction, had managed to forge a degree of real unity. For decades the ability of the Rangoon government to withstand the insurgent challenge had been due to the fragmentation of the rebels more than any other factor.

  I asked where the NDF delegates were now.

  “They’ve left Panghsang and are on their way back to the Thai border.”

  Brang Seng, the leader of the Kachin rebels, gives a dinner talk for the Lintners at Pa Jau.

  I was eager to file a report on this development immediately, particularly as I was in a position to communicate with the outside world by radio. But for security reasons, Brang Seng urged me to wait until the delegation had safely reached the Thai border. I agreed, hoping fervently no other journalist would get to break the news first. A full year spent reaching the story would be difficult to justify, if the wire services in Bangkok ended up breaking the story ahead of us.

  But a few days later, the news was out anyway. Unexpectedly—and despite the agreement to maintain secrecy until the NDF delegates had reached the Thai border—the CPB’s clandestine radio station broadcast the full text of the statement signed in Panghsang on March 24. I now had to move fast. I pounded out the story on my typewriter. Hein Wom, Brang Seng’s personal physician, was getting married that day and I had to apologise for missing the beginning of the wedding. After finishing the story, I tiptoed into the packed church.