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By Root 4510 0

to the northeast claimed they had seen ‘white men’ fighting alongside their enemies. Secret radio messages between Calcutta and Moulmein were supposed to have been intercepted by the Indians. The Indian authorities also firmly believed that Tulloch had been planning to ship weapons from Pakistan to Burma, despite the fact that he gave an interview in Calcutta disclaiming that he was directing the Karen rebellion. By this time the government of India was also thoroughly alarmed. Armed communists had shot a soldier of the Assam Rifles shortly before and this was at a time when the Telengana communist revolt in India was still flickering. The Indians were also deeply worried about the safety of the 400,000-odd of their own citizens still living in Rangoon should the Burmese government collapse. They had already approached the British about aid and military support in this eventuality. But the ambassador had been told to politely refuse any plea for British aid. In mid September the Indian authorities asked Tulloch to leave the country, which he did under protest.71

Whatever the reality of Force 136 involvement in the Karen rebellions, the acid test for the Burmese government was the reaction of Smith Dun and the Karen battalions of the army. We will never know what they would have done if the communists or even a ‘popular front’ type government had come to power. In the event, Smith Dun, like the British and the Indians, probably decided that the incumbent Burmese government was about the best they could get. On 12 September he announced his unequivocal support for Nu. He declared to the New Times of Burma that he would ‘fight all lawless elements, whether Karen or Burman’ because it was essential to avert further trouble between the communities. He added in an obscure, but steely metaphor: ‘You could achieve some success with bayonets, but not sit on them.’72 In the longer view, this was to be the turning point for the government. It had held the mutineers to the north of Rangoon and within a year would begin to recapture territory to the south that had fallen under Karen control. The communist rebellion, though endemic in the delta for several years more, would make no further major political advance. In the short run, though, no one could see that the final crisis had been averted. The government was still effectively no more than the government of the city-state of Rangoon, maintaining a fitful communication with its surrogate to the north in Mandalay. Its economic problems continued to pile up.

The dissipation of the Force 136 problem did little to calm the nerves of the British either. They were now, like the Indians, deeply worried about the fate of their own subjects in Burma and also by the possible total forfeit of British economic interests in the country, which were still far from negligible. The alarm had been raised as early as June when Mr Forbes, manager of the Shan Hills Rubber Estate, had been murdered, along with his wife, by communist rebels in the vicinity of Thaton and there were several other attacks on rubber planters.73 Though Forbes was said to have been rather unpopular locally, there had been unsuccessful attacks on other estate managers around the country and the embassy reckoned that at least twenty British subjects were seriously exposed in the interior. Then there were large numbers of Britons in Rangoon and Maymyo, not to mention the British services mission, a particular target of the communists. Questions had already been raised in Parliament about the expatriates’ safety and several commentators drew disturbing parallels with contemporary assassinations in Malaya. Was this part of some region-wide communist plot?74 The problem was that if British fears became public this tended to undermine confidence in the already battered and impecunious Burmese government. If, on the other hand, the British flexed their muscles, this played into the hands of the Burmese left. The left was correct to be suspicious. Bowker, Britain’s man in Rangoon, was advocating a full expeditionary force to save British