Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [276]
government and the Karens to negotiate, thus freeing up the government to deal with the communist menace. He was convinced that a simple military solution would not work. He pointed out to Nu that, in Malaya, even after eight months the powerful and well-equipped British army had yet to make much headway against a similar group of ‘freebooters’ and self-styled communists. Yet the situation in Burma seemed to deteriorate further. The communists refused to lay down their arms, despite strenuous efforts by Nu to conciliate them. Worse, the much larger bands of insurgent PVO men seemed unwilling to fall in behind the government again, even though he offered to incorporate them into the national army and initiate a ‘leftist unity programme’. Nu regarded the revolt of the white-flag communists of the PVO the previous year as a stab in the back, but more dangerous yet was the Karen situation. After their initial uprising in 1948, Karen leaders had held their ground and had begun to negotiate with the government through non-political intermediaries. They were awaiting further government commissions on the status of an autonomous ‘Karenistan’ and also a resolution of the issue of the military service of the Karen defence volunteers. Newly instituted discrimination against Karen volunteers for the army must be halted, they insisted. Between November 1948 and January 1949, however, the negotiations collapsed. Karen National Defence Organizations (KNDOs) renewed their assault on Rangoon, occupying dozens of delta villages, driving out or killing headmen and destroying government property. Where they were in a weaker position in the lower Irrawaddy district, the KNDOs made common cause with communist insurgents and helped them to capture a number of towns and cities. Stung by the unexpected coalition between Karens and communists, the government bitterly assailed the Western commentators who had so often claimed that Karen autonomy would help form a bulwark against communism in Southeast Asia. On the contrary, Karens ‘cooperated fully with both red and white flag communist insurgents to further their interests of a separate state. They invariably released all communist prisoners from the jails overrun by them to increase the difficulties of the government.’19 To add to the government’s woes, the ministerial services union decided to strike for more pay and better conditions on 4 February 1949. Though most of the police stayed at work, government offices across the country ground to a halt. Within a few days the Karen forces were back in Insein, just north of Rangoon. Nu’s government again seemed likely to be the first of the post-colonial governments to fall victim to a coup.
Karen rebel forces remained dangerously close to the capital and the rice harvest seemed in danger. The crisis spurred the government to greater piety. The day officially beginning the Buddhist season of fasting was set aside as a national day of prayer and supplications for peace were chanted in Rangoon and throughout the country. When the Buddha had chanted those prayers thousands of years earlier, war had come to a stop. Relics were paraded through the countryside and Nu visited monasteries, giving alms to the monks and propitiating the nats. Divine aid was slow in coming, though. Nu called the months of February, March and April 1949 ‘the bleakest months… all of us were kept in a terrible state of suspense’.20 There were said to be 10,000 rebels in the field under communist or Karen leadership and probably half of these were deserters from the army, police and other services. Even the leaders of the hitherto-loyal PVOs (known as the yellow-band or yellow-flag PVOs to distinguish them from the white-flag communists of the rebellious PVOs) resigned from the government, threatening a new crisis. Nu’s government still controlled little territory beyond the cities of Mandalay and Rangoon.
Yet the important point was that the Burmese government did continue to control the cities. Rangoon, in particular, was vital, for it was through that city that rice exports flowed