Читать книгу Burmese Connection - Ashish Basu - Страница 5

It was many summers ago, but Aung still remembered the conversation vividly. Aung was close to his grandparents. One night, Aung’s grandfather was retiring for the evening at their ancestral home, when Aung and one of his younger siblings went to him. Both were requesting Granpho to complete “one last” story before they went to bed—Granpho was the best storyteller. He finally did. That story was about the Ahom rulers of Assam who were descendants of a Shan prince.

During the story, Aung asked, “Granpho, other armies do not attack Burma like they attack India. Why? My history books have stories of India getting attacked from the North by different armies.”

Before he answered, Granpho smiled and said, “Aung, I am happy to realize that you are actually reading your history books in Rangoon. At least all of your time is not getting invested in football.” Then, he patted Aung’s back and started answering, “There are three reasons, my son: the harsh terrain, long and intense rains for half of the year, and diseases. The Shans, Kachins, and the Lisu are adapted to this land by the forces of nature; they know how to live on and off this harsh landscape—the invaders do not. A few have attempted over the centuries, but those three reasons always got in the way. Eventually, the risks did not match the rewards. If the outsiders did not come by water or air, they were less likely to establish a foothold in Burma. One of my teachers in India used to call it ‘Burma’s natural protection’ from invaders.”

In later years, as the war raged between the Allies and the Japanese Army in different parts of Burma, Aung thought his granpho’s words were prophetic. Granpho was not there to see how it played out in WWII. Burma was naturally protected from the rest of the world with tall mountain ranges on the western flank, northern, and eastern borders. Before the war, it was a British colony with a degree of autonomy that was not very common within the British colonial empire. During the war, three countries—Britain, the United States, and China—fought the Japanese in Aung’s homeland in Northern Burma.

Each one of those countries fought with a different set of goals, though. The British Army was in the lead mainly because of the Allied command structure and Burma’s proximity to India. When the Japanese Army invaded and annexed large swaths of Southeast Asia, British and Indian troops under British command were sent to defend Burma. The majority of the fighting men in those British Army divisions were of Indian origin. The British goal was to create a buffer around India’s far Eastern flank. India was the jewel of the British empire and a major source of wartime revenue for the British crown. Under no circumstances could the British allow the Japanese to invade from the East and occupy India. That was the worst nightmare for the British.

The United States also tried to help Burma as a direct result of pressure from the Japanese Army, but the real American interest was different from those of the British. The United States looked to maintain Burma outside of Japanese control so that supply lines into China could remain open. The supplies traveled into China on land using the motorable road, the road that connected Kunming in China with Lashio in Burma. Supply lines to China were critical at that point because Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s forces were already struggling in multiple fronts, and Washington was worried about Mao’s successes.

At this point in time during WWII, United States had its Northern Combat Area Command, or NCAC, as a subcommand of the Southeast Asia Command, or SEAC. It controlled Allied operations in Aung’s homeland in North Burma, a bit unusual, but that was the command structure. For most of its existence, the NCAC was commanded by General Joseph Stilwell. From 1945, Lieutenant General Daniel Sultan assumed command of the NCAC after General Stilwell left. For the NCAC, Burma was a priority, and General Stilwell said so in every briefing.

Chinese National Army soldiers formed a major part of the combat units within the NCAC. That was part of the reason why Aung had seen a large number of Chinese soldiers with the Galahad forces in Northern Burma. They had the spirit but needed training to face the war hardened Japanese Army. Albeit different, those British and American worries about Burma were not unfounded—its strategic location was of great interest to the Japanese. By 1944, those fears about Japan’s annexation aspirations were coming out in the open for all parties to see. Japan had annexed a large swath of territory very quickly.

The Japanese war ministry was worried about America’s industrial production capacity: they knew Japan could never match it. To counter that deficiency, they had decided to go on the offensive and win as much territory as they could. That was war ministry’s doctrine of quick decisive victories. They also thought inflicting substantial damage to the Allied forces would discourage America from participating in the war fully. Both were dangerous miscalculations: Japan and the Japanese people paid dearly for those miscalculations and suffered a lot.

On the Japanese side, the Imperial Army wanted to incorporate Burma into its extended borders for its strategic location, oil, and other natural resources. Burma had been exporting crude oil since 1853. During WWII, Burma used to supply much of the crude oil that was consumed all across British India. The importance of that valuable resource during the war was known to the Japanese planners in Tokyo. The Japanese mainland was far away, and the availability of inexpensive crude meant greater mobility for Japanese heavy armor on land. In addition to cutting off supply lines to China, a Japanese controlled Burma could provide security to the expanded Japanese empire. With those goals in mind, Japanese command in Burma was hurriedly reorganized under General Masakazu Kawabe in 1943. Burma was seen like a launch pad.

Right after that reorganization, the Japanese war ministry decided to consider various options for invading India from Burma. As part of that vision of the war ministry, General Renya Mutaguchi was brought in to command the Japanese 15^th Army. The war was already going badly for Japan by 1944. Despite that, the leaders in the Japanese war ministry supported Mutaguchi’s ambitious idea of starting up a new invasion of India from the Burma command. The India invasion from Burma was considered to be pretty easy by the war ministry in Tokyo.

General Mutaguchi was a respected warrior, but he did not know much about the realities on the ground in Burma. Even his own staff officers were doubtful about his battle plans. He believed that British and Indian troops were inferior to the Japanese troops. Because of that mindset, the India invasion was not planned properly. General Mutaguchi assumed that the superiority of the Japanese troops on the ground would compensate for other deficiencies like the lack of air support by Japanese bombers. They paid very little attention to building and sustaining supply lines. In addition, Japanese planners had inadequate knowledge of the harsh geography; the planning reflected those gaps.

The fact that they lacked support from the bombers of the Japanese air force was widely known. By this time, the air over Burma and India’s Far Eastern flank was owned by the Allied bombers; there were regular flights over the “hump.” After the debacle in the Malay Peninsula, the Allied command structure was completely revamped, and the Allied troops were fighting with a new sense of urgency. At this stage, they knew losing was not an option. Aung had learned later that the optimism of the Japanese planners about the India invasion was mostly due to the influence of the Indian National Army (INA) on General Hideki Tojo.

Ultimately, from March until July 1944, the Japanese Army fought hard but got bogged down and failed in its goal of getting a foothold on Indian soil. Not just that—most of the Japanese divisions were driven back to Burma with heavy losses of men and equipment. The losses were staggering. The Japanese Army also suffered a significant loss of morale among its ranks. For the Japanese Army, the incorrect assumptions added to the already huge cost in lives and resources. The Japanese had assumed that the “inferior” Indian troops under British command would switch sides overnight and join the INA en masse.

They had widely publicized that the INA was fighting a legitimate battle for India’s independence from the British. They invited all patriotic Indian soldiers to join the INA at the earliest. They expected an uprising against the British as soon as the word was out. The regular radio broadcasts from the Azad Hind (Free India) force and the Japanese Army became folklore in India’s eastern city of Calcutta. Much to the dismay of the British, people in the streets and bazaars of Calcutta started imagining the arrival of Japanese ships in their port on the river Hooghly. The imminent British defeat in the hands of the mighty Japanese was the subject of evening chatter in the streets of Calcutta.

Ironically, that widely anticipated switching of sides by the Indian troops to the INA never happened. The widely expected uprising against the British never got started. On the contrary, the Indian troops under British command fought valiantly and won some of the bloodiest engagements of WWII. The Indians that Mutaguchi used to disparage defeated some of the best fighting formations of the Japanese Army hands down. They proved that they were not “inferior” at all, and ultimately, soldiers of the INA surrendered to the British Indian troops. Weeks later, when small bits of news of the failed Japanese invasion of India would reach Aung and his scouts, they would be overjoyed.

The disastrous India invasion was the turning point of the Japanese Burma campaign in WWII. Japan never recovered. The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal were the largest up until that time, and those defeats effectively doomed the Japanese Burma command. So comprehensive and humiliating were the defeats in Imphal and Kohima that the Japanese Army had to relieve both General Kawabe and General Mutaguchi of their respective commands. The Japanese Burma command and the fledgling INA disintegrated through surrenders quickly thereafter. Some of the senior officers of the INA faced trial in Delhi, India. The British Army regained momentum after its win in India and charged ahead.

Aung Lung was thrilled when Myitkyina fell to the forces of American General Stilwell in August of 1944. That was the beginning of the end of the Japanese occupation. He was overjoyed when the infamous 33^rd Imperial Japanese Army under General Honda was defeated in comprehensively and remaining parts of the Japanese Army surrendered. While the formal surrender of the Japanese forces happened in far-away Rangoon, bits and pieces of surrender-related news would trickle down to Northern Burma on a pretty regular basis.

Most of the news came through the visitors who used the Myitkyina Airport. Aung knew that Japan was struggling for its survival by then. Many of the Japanese divisions in Burma were busy planning a hasty retreat into friendlier Thailand. But the retreat was not easy: most were getting caught along the way and captured as POWs. The good news was the Allies treated POWs very differently.

Myitkyina was an important town for both sides not only because of its rail and river links to the rest of Burma, but also because it was on the Ledo Road. That was a huge advantage. General Stilwell and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were planning to rebuild that road. After all, without any formal military training, Aung himself had made that same decision about Myitkyina’s importance sometime back.

Aung knew that the fall of Myitkyina set the war for his homeland in an irreversible direction, but it was not over. As if to emphasize that point brutally, soldiers from the 3^rd Battalion of the 215^th Regiment of the Japanese Army entered the village of Kalagong in Mon State on July 7^th, 1945, and rounded up all villagers regardless of age. General Yamamoto’s soldiers then shot six hundred plus Burmese villagers. There was no reason for the massacre. The villagers were not soldiers—they did not participate in the war. The villagers did not have to die.

Aung was in his early twenties at this point; he had not seen life for very long. He had vaguely heard about the plight of the Jews in Europe but did not appreciate the scale and scope of that horror. Kalagong laid it bare for him. This kind of mass killing as a result of intense hatred from people of one culture or country for another was unfathomable to him till then. Aung had noticed that attitude earlier in 1942; many of the Japanese soldiers and officers considered themselves to be superior to the Burmese. It was as if the Japanese had the right to decide whether a Burmese person should live or die, and nobody called them out on that.

What bothered Aung more was the deafening Burmese silence. Burmese reaction was muted—he did not hear very many leaders exploding in anger and resentment. As a matter of fact, he did not see much of a reaction at all! Aung’s distaste for Japanese imperialism grew even more. Once he heard the news, he could not eat or sleep properly for many days. He suffered from acute depression for quite a while after that event in Kalagong. He hoped that the Japanese soldiers would be prosecuted as war criminals some day in the near future.

During the war and the Japanese occupation, much of Aung’s direct and extended family got scattered. Many members of Aung’s family perished without any trace; others left the village. Much of Aung’s 1945 was spent in search of his parents, siblings, and extended family. The Japanese Army was in a chaotic state toward the end of the war, and that meant tribal militias ruled. It was a total anarchy. A lot of displaced people from Shan States moved to Thailand around this time. Aung would often leave his home base in Myitkyina for several days with a handful of armed Kachin scouts and look for family members in the hills and places inside the Shan State up to the borders between Burma and Thailand. He had not given up hope—he continued trying.

The Shan that went into Thailand were not easy to find. The borders were quite porous, so there was a good chance that his folks crossed over. Thailand had a lot of Japanese sympathizers; Aung always made sure he remained inside Burma and never crossed into Thai territory. Aung knew that Thailand had signed a military alliance with Japan in 1942 and that the Shan States were to be under Thailand’s control. Even though Aung did not like Thailand’s proximity to the Japanese Army, he knew that there were enough Shan people there to hide his relatives if they were to seek refuge. He sought to locate his family through his contacts in the British and Chinese forces, but none of those efforts succeeded. It seemed that they had vanished without a trace.

Despite all his efforts, till the end of 1945, he could not connect up with any member of his direct family. His ancestral home was flattened by Allied bombers; the village itself had suffered major damage. When he spoke with the few remaining villagers, they said most families had fled toward Thailand. That sort of a vague guidance did not help Aung at all. In addition to the search he was conducting for his family, Aung was also tracking the changing political landscape in Burma.

Several major political events took place in quick succession. Those events changed Aung’s homeland forever. In March 1945, the Burmese National Army rose up in a countrywide rebellion against the Japanese. Burmese national leaders like Aung San and others began negotiations with Lord Mountbatten and officially joined the British side as the Patriotic Burmese Forces. It was a good move that helped the Burmese nationalists. By switching sides, albeit toward the end of the war, the Burmese leaders gave themselves the much-needed legitimacy.

At the first meeting, they represented themselves as the provisional government of Burma with Thakin Soe as Chairman. Aung San was the member of the ruling committee of the provisional government. Since the Japanese were completely routed from most of Burma by mid-1945, Patriotic Burmese Forces started formal negotiations with the British in due earnest. Despite the good performance of the British Army in the Burma campaign, it had setbacks that could have been avoided. Much of the British reputation for invincibility had been lost as a result of its many defeats at the hands of the Japanese Army.

Demands for India’s independence had also assumed thunderous proportions around that time. In Burma, the nationalists, headed by Aung San and the Burmese National Army, gave valuable support to the British Army in the final stages of the Japanese defeat. As a result of all those factors, the British returned to Rangoon as victors but could not to stay for very long—they knew it when they returned.

Around this time, the British public opinion was also shifting. The appetite for managing colonies far away from the British Isles was not what it used to be. Most British voters did not want colonies in distant places, and they participated in war for those colonies. The idea of the colony was going out of favor; the British had to accept that shift in domestic public opinion. Burmese nationalism was like a tsunami by then. The entire Burmese population craved independence. Having seized the administrative reins in the wake of the British advance, Aung San and his men were ready to take over the government right after the war.

Although the British government attempted to put up a brave front, it had to face reality. Its colonial hegemony in Southeast Asia was ending soon. Aung San traveled to the UK in 1947 to negotiate terms for independence. It was widely believed that the world would see an independent Burma under the leadership of Aung San in short order. But that was not to be. Discussions were proceeding in the right direction. When everything looked all set for stability, suddenly, Aung San was assassinated along with his cabinet. That whole event was a shock to all. Eventually, when Burma gained independence, the Federated Shan States became the Shan State and Kavah State with the right to secede from the Union of Burma after a certain period.

None of these developments changed our Aung’s day-to-day life in Myitkyina materially. The war had ended, but there were local skirmishes among various warring militias every day and all around. Being aligned with the victors, Aung and his scouts were treated with respect by the local militias; sometimes, they were called for advice. They still lived in Myitkyina and worked a security team for hire.

One morning, he and two of his scouts were returning from a security assignment when they saw a couple of soldiers lying by the roadside ditch. They looked Chinese and looked hurt. One Christian missionary was trying to help them. Aung and his two scouts stopped to help.

Aung asked in Kachin, “Father, could we help you?”

The missionary looked up from the ankle-deep mud on the roadside ditch and said, “You sure can, my son. I think it is the divine that sent you here. I have been struggling to move them. These young men are badly hurt. Both of them need immediate medical attention. Looks like they have lost a lot of blood already. They are very weak; they are in no position to even stand properly—forget about walking.

“If you and your men can help me to transport them to my church, I will treat them with the medicines we have at the church and look after them till they get better.”

Aung understood and sent one of his scouts to commandeer a hand drawn cart from the nearby village immediately. After that, the three of them brought the wounded soldiers to the back of the church for treatment. Aung and his scouts helped the Father set up makeshift beds in one corner, removed the soiled uniforms from the soldiers, and dressed their wounds.

They erected a small partition and made a workspace for the Father. Both soldiers were in their late teens, like Aung had seen earlier during the war. The Father said they would heal quickly and recover from the injuries. The church had its own small supply of medicines—the Father used those on the soldiers. He then asked the two scouts to help him make lentil soup for the wounded soldiers.

“They were probably starving for many days before they landed on that roadside ditch. When they wake up in a few hours, they will be hungry. Hot soup will give them the nutrition their bodies need, and that will help them recover quickly.” The Father smiled and commented while looking at the semi-conscious, emaciated faces of the two young soldiers. Aung Lung had not seen such acts of kindness toward fellow human beings in a very long time in Northern Burma.

He had seen so much death, destruction, and suffering around him lately that he had forgotten that such things even existed. People all around were just struggling to survive that there has been no time for higher order values like kindness, Aung thought to himself. War changed everything.

When they were about to leave, the Father came to Aung and said, “Who are you?”

Aung told the Father about his Shan Chaofa family and then introduced his Kachin scouts, briefly mentioning that they assisted the Allied forces in the war effort. He also told the Father that the wounded were probably part of the Chinese forces that came to fight the Japanese along with the Galahad to provide some context.

The Father said, “Who they were does not matter. Now, they are in God’s house; we try to save people here. We have to look after them—we have food and some medicine here. We will talk to them at length when they can, after they recover completely.” The Father looked at Aung and said, “Christianity came to the Kachin Hills much before your war, my son. We baptized and converted the first Kachins way back in 1882, and the Kachin church was founded during that year. Kachin literature was accepted by the British government way back in 1895. The Kachin Baptist Churches organization to which his church belonged was founded in 1890. We are familiar with these hills of Northern Burma, my son. We do God’s work and try to alleviate suffering. We do know what the war is doing to the people of these hills. It does not help, but people still go to war. Violence cannot solve any problem; it aggravates agony for the aggressors and the innocent.”

The Father spoke both Shan and Kachin: he spoke with Aung in Shan and his scouts in Kachin. One of his scouts told the Father his uncle and aunt became Christians just before the war. After a while, the Father said to Aung, “You and your friends have God in your hearts. You are most welcome to stay in the shed in the rear of the church if you like. You do not have to pay rent to the church, but the place might need a bit of fixing all around. You can easily get that done with your boys.” Aung was quite surprised by the generosity of the Father.

He accepted the offer and also told the Father to let him know if they could help the church in any other way. In two weeks, he and his two scouts converted that shed meant for farm tools into a functional home for themselves. They started liking it a lot. Gradually, Aung got to know the Father well. On some evenings, after his day’s work was done, the Father would talk to Aung about the Kachin Baptist Convention and its work. From him, Aung came to know how American Reverend George J. Geis, a Baptist minister and anthropologist, came to Northeastern Burma in the 1890s and started promoting Christianity amongst the local Kachins and Shans. Most of the Kachins and Lisu were animists at that time. He established missions throughout Kachin and Shan States. He traveled extensively to preach and also wrote about his experience. Since then, more and more Kachins came to the church and showed greater interest in the universal message of the gospel.

The Reverend tried his best to understand the hill tribes. Hundreds from the distant north came down to Myitkyina on bamboo rafts for the first time to hear the story of Jesus. The Reverend Geis frequently reported on his travels in the hills. He talked about his growing friendship with the local people, the opening of the first location in the mountains, and the substantial site that the government had granted. Kachins responded to the overtures by the Reverend with a lot of respect. Aung was amazed by the scale of the effort. He had no idea that the church had done so much for the tribes in such a short time. Most members of his scouts team sheltered around the Myitkyina Airport road; that place was getting crowded for the large scouts team.

Aung knew that the support they had from the British and Americans would dry up soon after the war was over. Aung was hoping that the tribes would have a chance to influence independent Burma, but he was not sure. The Burmar and Mon folks who were Japanese leaning were already switching sides to the Allies. They were better positioned to control Burma’s national agenda, and they knew it. Aung and his scouts had no steady job or source of income, so he started planning some vocational training for his scouts. They were also helping the church in running a school for the Kachins and a field hospital on Sundays. Food and supplies were scarce, and abject poverty was everywhere, but the optimism for the future of their homeland kept them happy and motivated. Everyone was thinking that the difficult times would pass, and all ethnic minorities would have a better future in independent Burma. They had high hopes because in independent Burma, the Burmese would make decisions about their peace and well-being.

Reality turned out to be quite different. Aung was ecstatic when Burma became independent. But his euphoria did not last long. During the first few years after independence, insurgencies continued unabated—sometimes led by the Red Flag Communists or the White Flag or led by army rebels calling themselves the Revolutionary Burma Army. Remote areas of Northern Burma were controlled by Kuomingtang (KMT) forces after Mao’s victory in mainland China. Burma accepted foreign assistance in rebuilding the country in these early years, but continued American support for the Chinese Nationalist military presence in Burma continued to be a problem.

Burma refused to participate in the SEATO, or Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and did not support the Bandung Conference of 1955. Burma generally tried its best to be neutral in world affairs. It was one of the first countries in the world to recognize Israel and Mao’s People’s Republic of China. By 1958, the country was beginning to recover. Aung and his scouts started getting odd jobs in local security—protection of government facilities. Economic activities were picking up slowly. However, politically, Burma was breaking apart in its seams. The political situation became very unstable, when U Nu survived a no-confidence vote in parliament only with the support of the National United Front. The National United Front had communists among them, so they were not liked by everyone—many saw them as Chinese plants. Army hardliners saw this as an opportunity, and then Army Chief of Staff General Ne Win was “invited,” or he “invited himself,” to take over the country. It was a matter of semantics.

By this time, Aung joined the Shan Federal Movement because he thought that was best way to help the Shan cause. He visited Rangoon dozens of times, met with the leaders, and thought he could agree with their vision of autonomy, peace, and prosperity for the Shan people. It was becoming clearer to Aung that the Shan needed to be part of the national platform in Rangoon. The Shan were not the ethnic majority in independent Burma, so isolation in the hills of Northern Burma was not a practical option. Having seen armed struggle from close quarters, Aung knew its limitations. He was doing his very best to convince his leadership to focus on education, health care, and development of the Shan.

He told them, “If those issues are addressed, many other things will automatically fall in place. People should see the difference.”

During one of his trips to Rangoon, Aung met Suu Myint, the sister of one of his Shan comrades. Her elder brother introduced the two of them. Suu Myint had finished high school and was wanting to go to culinary school. Her parents did not like the idea of culinary school at all, so they sent her to Rangoon to be with her brother and decide. Together, they were supposed to figure out if she could study hotel management or join the upcoming tourism industry in some way. Aung and Myint fell in love quickly, and the frequency of Aung’s Rangoon trips started increasing. Myint’s brother had known Aung.

He knew Aung from his days at the intermediate college they attended, and he loved Aung for his honesty and his passion for the Shan cause. He had said so to his sister when she had asked him about his impression of Aung. Myint and Aung had a number of interactions in the presence of others and one-on-one. Aung was a shy person, and Myint was not. She talked all the time. Rangoon was still recovering from its wartime devastation and carnage, so Aung and Myint’s romantic outings were limited to the immediate vicinity of Rangoon University.

Her brother studied there and lived nearby, so she was familiar with the neighborhood. During his fifth trip, Aung asked her out and somehow mustered the courage to ask her if she would marry him. Aung was a shy person, and during his four years at school in Rangoon, he knew only one girl. That girl was a distant cousin who was studying to become a nurse someday. So, what occurred in the case of Suu Myint was not normal for Aung. Something happened to him that day, and he felt he could not wait. After Suu Myint agreed, they spoke with her family and her parents. Myint’s brother introduced Aung to a few of their relatives around Rangoon. The war had dispersed their family.

Aung still remembered his last question to her that day: “You know me now, directly as well as through your brother. If there is one thing you want me to change what would that be? If I know it, I promise that I will try very hard to change it for you.” Aung knew he was not like a regular husband. He neither had a regular job nor a steady income. Marrying him was not an easy decision—it could mean much uncertainty. He thought it was fair that he asked that question to Myint that day because she was making a very difficult choice for life.

She did not wait for long, and she said, “I respect and support your commitment to the Shan cause, but when we have a family, our children would have to come first. I hope that would be acceptable to you.”

Aung was not prepared for that particular statement, so he had to think for a bit, and then he said thoughtfully, “That would be acceptable to me, and I would remember that commitment.”

Later that year, they decided to get married in a simple ceremony in front of his Shan comrades. She came from a Shan family, so the marriage was out and out a Shan affair. Aung stayed in Rangoon for a few days after their marriage and then returned to Myitkyina with Myint. His scouts had set up a one-bedroom apartment. The apartment was on top of a store—it was more comfortable than the hammocks and tree branches.

The caretaker government led by the army and Ne Win provided immediate stability. It paved the way for new general elections in 1960. The new elections returned U Nu’s Union Party in government with a majority, but not much of governing happened. Each stakeholder was pursuing its own narrow agenda. Increasingly, Tatmadaw and its staff officers had greater influence on everything. Nothing moved in Burma without their explicit or implicit approval. Despite the good start Ne Win had, the situation did not remain stable for long in Burma.

There was political bickering from all quarters. As soon as the Shan Federal Movement started talking about the prior promise of a “loose” federation, the others in power started calling it out as a separatist movement that would definitely hurt Burma. They said that the Shan Federal Movement was undermining Burmese national unity. The Burmar and the Mon leaders often said that the Shan insistence on the government’s agreement to the right to secession was happening at the wrong time. Some folks often called it treason or revolt from within.

Aung could not understand this dramatic shift in attitude in the same people that had expressed support for the idea. The only good news of 1960 was the birth of Aung’s son. He and Myint named him Win Lung. Win was born in a local hospital in Myitkyina. On the day he was born, the Father from the church in Myitkyina came and blessed the mother and son. As ethnic Sans, Aung and Myint were both born Theravada Buddhists via their families, but because of the life they had led both had developed a very inclusive view of religion.

They were both schooled by life during war. Rituals and bigotry often associated with organized religion meant nothing to them. They had both seen how so-called nonviolent Buddhists perpetrated extreme violence against fellow Buddhists in the Mon state, and they had seen the same treatment against the Muslim Rohingyas in the Arakan state. An outward allegiance to an organized religion without any real commitment toward tolerance had no appeal for Aung and Myint. They felt quite comfortable without any outward or visible attachment to any organized religion. If anyone asked, they said they were not sure as yet.

Both Aung and Myint had developed a liking for Kachin Baptists. Kachin Baptists in particular had a message on inclusion that resonated with both of them. Aung, in particular, loved their humanity. Their developmental programs were helping the hill tribes a lot; that also mattered. It was not just Aung’s wartime experience with the church in Myitkyina—some of his scouts and their families liked the KBC’s inclusive approach. He did not go to the church to pray every Sunday, but he continued to assist the church with its educational and social programs for the Shan and Kachins. Aung had developed a personal bond with the Father at the church in Myitkyina. In time, the vocational training program they started became widely popular.

Win resembled Aung closely like a carbon copy. In the Western tradition, he would have been named Aung Lung Jr. Aung, Myint, and baby Win did not have much material comfort in Northern Burma in 1960, but they were happy in their austere home in Myitkyina. Burma remained a very poor country postindependence, so one area of focus for Aung was to find a steady job and a source of income. He now had a family to feed, so he knew he had to do something about it sooner than later. Aung had seen the ravages of economic hardship among the tribes, and he did not want those to touch Myint or baby Win ever.

For the first thirty odd years of his life, the Shan cause was all that Aung was about. After Win’s birth, he realized that he was responsible for the well-being of baby Win and Myint. If it was not him, someone like him could pick up the Shan cause, but Win and Myint had no one else—they had no backup. Aung had to deliver a decent quality of life to his wife and son. Unlike others, he had no extended family on either side to lean on, so, Aung took the responsibility of looking after Win and Myint very seriously. He had always remembered the question Myint had asked when he requested her to marry him in Rangoon, so he had to act.

General Ne Win had already succeeded in stripping the Chaofas of their feudal powers in exchange for comfortable pensions for life. He staged a coup in 1962, arrested U Nu and several other leaders, and declared a socialist state run by a council of senior military officers nominated by him. They were all his own people. He effectively got rid of the last traces of the civilian government. Essentially, his band of brothers from the army ran the country according to their personal priorities. Self-interest was above all else for the corrupt generals.

After the 1962 Burmese coup, the status of the Shan States and the Chaofas’ hereditary rights were completely removed by the military government. At that stage, Burma was what Ne Win and his band of generals decided for her. She had no views of her own—nobody even asked. Some people in Rangoon called Ne Win’s style of governing a necessary form of “benevolent dictatorship” for Burma’s quick advancement. Aung could see the dictatorship part clearly but could not sense the benevolence part. At least there was none toward the Shan or the other hill tribes: they had learned to suffer in silence.

Independence usually brings progress and development in its wake, but Burma was an exception. There was very little progress and virtually no development immediately after independence. The fact that independent Burma was a multiethnic society that had different priorities did not seem to be a consideration for Ne Win. Most of the Burmese people had no independent voice; there were no real national elections in sight, so no one really knew what they wanted. As Aung had feared, the hill tribes had no influence in the national conversation.

The minority tribes were excluded from the agenda. Aung was surprised to see the process of national reconciliation implode; his Burma had become a fiefdom run by a few lords who made decisions for the many. Those few lords cared about their ostentatious lifestyles and their inflated egos, not much else. The downward slide toward fiefdom happened rapidly, and all opposition was stifled systematically.

After General Ne Win’s declaration, a part of Aung felt that he had wasted his life thus far. In twenty years’ time, he had come one full circle with almost nothing to show for it. Shans had no peace, no prosperity, and no say in the Burmese national government in Rangoon. The only difference was now the oppressors were the Tatmadaw full of Burmar and Mon people rather than the Japanese or the British. In some ways, the outside occupation was better because the locals were united; among the locals, there was empathy and understanding of one another. In Aung’s opinion, Burmese fighting against Burmese was worse because the biggest loser was Burma.

That was hardly any consolation for Aung. To him, his youth, the bloody battles he fought, the sacrifices he and his comrades made as part of the resistance, and the sleepless nights he spent in hammocks and tree branches in the Kachin Hills were all a colossal waste! He could not imagine baby Win living his life under the army. Aung was desperate to give Win a chance. Gradually and very painfully, Aung was realizing that he would not be able to achieve that goal in Burma.

Aung felt dejected and broken. He wanted to hide his agony but didn’t know how. He also did not know how things fell apart so quickly.