Interviews from a Revolutionary Borderbase 

Note: The following is a brief excerpt from my PhD. thesis that highlights interviews with a group of formerly Kachin officers, now retired elders in Lazia.  Please get in touch if you would like to read the full text.

Laiza, along the border with China to MJY and often informally called the ‘other capital’ of Kachin state, is home to both the Kachin political elite and dispossessed IDPs and famously beyond reach since its internal border with Myanmar is highly secured by the Myanmar military and its external border with China is beyond reach for academics and researchers. The town is replete with ‘multiple, old and recent, overlapping, symbiotic and clashing territorialities’ ( See Karin Dean's work here). It was quite clear to many on this borderland as well as my own reflections during multiple interviews and observations that this political flexibility to sustain the Kachin revolution and spatial mobility came at a cost. The most visible of these costs are the layers left by eras of extractable resource frontiers that had developed in Kachin state- teak, jade, opium and their discontents, including a generation of lost children to war and drugs; and now modern, cleaner frontiers with Chinese investment – bananas, dams and the abuses of cheap IDP labour as explored in Chapter 5. But how did Laiza elders make sense of their own spatial history being trapped between an expanding Burmese army and an extractive Chinese state? 

The elders were meeting for a rap (local consultation body) on other matters, which is why my freind was able to organise a group discussion with four of them that I was able to record, separate from my discussions with the returnees. These talks went on for two separate days, and the long history they covered is beyond the sppoce of what I can write here. I will let them narrate (indeed many of them are local historians of sorts) a glimpse of Laiza from the 1960s through the 1990s in their own words (to be read alongside and not as an alternative to textual scholarship on Kachin State). The quotes are placed chronologically to clarify some of the choices they made as early location scouters and communication officers to specifically choose Laiza’s place on the border as a base of operations for the large army, tied to the political demand for an eventual ‘democratic Kachinland’[1]:

‘After the siege of Mandalay in 1888, the British still had to work so hard and fight for 20 years, then only they finally got us. Before that Kachin was never part of the Burmese state. Kachins and Indians, we both died in the British quest for land and territorial expansion, didn’t we? Then they left and suddenly we have this unknown borderline. What do we do with it? Now the question comes of us as - do we want Kachinstate versus Kachinland (Jing Po Moon). We wanted ‘Gumrawg Gumsa’ [Democracy]. But suddenly we are faced with a new union that we rejected. Kachinland was the only option. Still they promised us the 1947 constitution, and we believed during Panglong. But in 1962, it was obvious they were there to annihilate us and take everything from above and below in Kachin state. That was the time for us to demand Kachinland.’ (ex-KIA officer, 89, 2017)

At this point he presented a map from the Panglong agreement in the 1960s to show the exact places where the KIA had moved to[2].

I asked an elder how they had chosen these specific locations. By the group’s accounts, he was the first officer to arrive to build up this particular base from the inland Kachin base of Pajau to the China border. Another elder smirked, clearly proud of his achievement and went about detailing how one of KIA’s stars aligned at the border because the people there were Red Chinese and weaker clans who could be bought off. He explained,

‘Even here, there was border conflict in the 1920s and 30s especially in the (redacted) area. But there was no clear border until the late 50s. In 1960, after China signed the boundary agreement, we know exactly where the actual border post was with China, and it was time for us to claim it. See, in the old days the Lisu Clan Lokhum Lthou used to own this land, on the other side in China was another clan called Hgum clan - who extends into Yingjiang [jade trading town in Yunnan] today. But when the fighting first started [in 1962], I was one of the first ones to arrive here - weeks after meeting many dense forest and backward Lisu people from the headquarters in Pajau. But, you know, Lisu people will sell you anything for money. They are too simple-minded to know the value of la muga [permanent land] but what they value is the old gold [opium.] That was good for us, and anyway, Lisu is Kachin. But we were not the only ones. Even the Chinese ceased Lisu land away from them. They were scattered and relocated elsewhere. It was only in the 80s that we got radio using China signal, (name redacted) was a communication officer then, he had the first radio.

All the elders talked about how essential China was to their strategic thinking and plan of action for Kachin state, then and now, a reflection, I noticed, of Laiza then and Laiza now:

‘We had our old headquarters in Pajau, but we always wanted to be close to the China border, because the time was so serious you needed to escape at any point. Laiza gave that edge, and we had good relations with the local Lisu and Jingpo clan on the China side. When the KIO/KIA first came here after running away from the Burmese troops, we did not have any connections with the Chinese side. Not even a radio signal here. And that is how we started, if you have to communicate, we use elephants and messengers on foot. General Zo Sang was the first general then. When I came, only three KIA families [one of them in the room with us] were living here for many years. This was all just deep jungle closer to the China side, this very house [pointing to the floor] also there was nothing here, my wife and I built it from the ground practically. Laiza exists because of the KIA/O. But the KIA exists for so long because of China – that is the blessing and curse for us.’ (ex-KIA officer, 81, Kachin state, 2017)

This interview was before the VFL Act 2012 was amended again in 2018 but even in 2017, one comparison that cropped up during the course of the discussion was the way land could be managed then under customary rules unlike now, except in these parts of Kachin land is not mediated by the Burmese federal government:

‘Back then, people came, KIA allowed land, and we made it ours – that is our customary rights. After all, this was all our land that the Bama wanted to cede to the Chinese. So what if they say they are Chinese Jingpo, they are all our people. We have common markets, common everything. All the other small groups in Dehong [China], were all living in our Jinghpaw land, before they were Chinese subjects. We were the gumlao[3] here. When we came and took land here, we followed the gumlao system not the Gumsa system which was abolished in 1969 federally, the central committee [of KIA] abolished it in place and put what we call MungBe, more equal for the people. Besides, you cannot have two lords on one hill. If you came, and you worked and till the land, and constructed your own house, then it means it’s yours. So as much as you could clear the forest, that land belongs to, not only for Kachin but other groups – Shan, Lisu, Chinese. Only the KIO village track officer would take a small revenue and administrative duties for the land. That is how informal it was when Laiza developed. A real place for us Kachins. Our problem was that when all this land became federal land in the socialist government era, we could not pass off land like we have done for centuries. It became then the question of rights versus ownership. Before we owned what was ours.’ (ex-KIA officer, 79 Kachin state, 2017)

These explanations did not count women in the Gumlao equation who did get land as dowry, because normally women did not inherit nor get land by simply tilling or laying claim on it. But the wife of the ex-major corrected me:

‘Of course, in the past, women did not inherit land, but many women here became headmen after abolishing the gumsa system in 69. But now when they married someone, the family has to give some kangdang [dowry] to the bride. There are considered inheritance and blessings. But if you have a lot of land, they used to give it to daughters as well. They could not dig it 6 feet below the soil traditionally [men could]. In the 70s, lots of battle and logging was going on, many men died. When he [pointing to her husband] was in the frontline, I was the village headman [says proudly]. Yes, all our women did everything because the boys were always in the frontline so only women were left to head the village. Then of course we had our own female brigade. Our women are fighting alongside men.[4].’ [ex-village headwoman, Kachin state, 2017]

Regardless, the spirit of the conversation was the ease and flexibility with which land could be used and cultivated before Burmese laws and Chinese involvement encroached directly into Kachin territory. Their thoughts switch to the early days of Chinese involvement, contrasting that to present day Laiza:

‘By the 90s, the Chinese started to have a bigger physical presence in Laiza, and it was a relationship of respect. They built a lot of new buildings and casinos, bringing revenue to us also, then it helps them to escape the restrictions in China. It’s all give-give you know? We all follow the border pass [blue card], and they don’t make trouble. Kachin who go to Myanmar will face more problems. They respect the fact that this is customary land for us, and the KIO mediates. They let us use some parts of the China territory while using the KIA military road. But now the Chinese almost own everything here. They are the big boss. Many corrupt and militia KIA people handled it badly. Chinese government wants to keep the status quo, so if they turn their eye, these bosses [NDA-K militia] think they are free to do anything here. NDA-K are even helping the Chinese in growing opium in Kachin state.’

Historically, this region, not yet fully configured into boundaries, was just as complicated, if not more than its present ethnography. Mappers, administrators and colonial surveyors saw this as a 'frontier' to claim. Yet as Sadan (2015: 152) notes: ‘Although local elites had much control over this boundary area, they were not entirely masters of their own destiny, a fact that reflects their interaction with regional and global histories rather than their dissociation.’ The quotes situate the modern predicament of that pathos. The elders, even in their conversation, kept juxtaposing the reasons for which Laiza was created next to China with their inability to change its obvious future destiny as a resource frontier and militarily advantageous topography that would be fought over. In that sense, they explain how a Chinese-propelled resource frontier was simply waiting to develop on top of Laiza in lieu of political flexibility and ethnic survival. Thus, the pathos of border spaces, which Gum Sha and his fellow returnees navigate, is also why the borderland could become the resource frontier.

Today, Chinese dominance in Laiza also extends to micro-border-diplomacy and local restrictions on crossing the border to and from Laiza. Like on the highway to Muse east on the China border, Nabang[5] hosts a China immigration gate. A network of informally operating drivers were at that time regularly working to bring officials, refugees, development workers, journalists and ‘informal’ guests. This system would become much tighter after 2019 because of the Northern Alliance conflict. Many of these drivers had switched sides after being involved for a long time with the Kachin.

By the time I began to write this in 2020, the ‘boss’ politics was now changing to another more assertive China, willing to take strong positions to get Kachins to sign the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the NLD government, since bigger, more important BRI projects were underway. Much had changed in Laiza; I was told that the informal pass that was freely allowed just a few years ago was now completely monitored. The deputy mayor of Laiza explained to me in the summer of 2019 in a phone call that China’s border security has increased. There were ten fingerprint biometrics now, and more arrests of Burmese migrant workers overstaying their visas. She continues:

’70 people were arrested in Yunnan. They [Chinese bosses] broke the bond labour and wage in China. Then China police attack. They fix it with the police. Labour gets 10,000 salary, police gets 3,000 – so it’s far more worthy to pay the police and then they will call us to repatriate the labour back to Burma without paying them. See how they are exploiting? Just yesterday we [KIO side] bribed Yingjiang police to send some 30 Kachin workers back. We did not pay for the others [non-Kachin]. There are so many migrant workers, they can do what they want. This is one small way the Chinese are pushing Kachin to sign the Ceasefire.’ (Laiza Deputy Major from Kachin state, 2019, Phone)

Historically, the vicious cycle of drugs, timber, the use of grey space and free access to the border in the Kachin border kept going until the breakdown of the ceasefire in 2011, but the end of the hostilities also led to the deaths of many of its youths. And for China, it meant they got to keep the status quo of illicit trade and raw resources (which the economy of Yunnan was largely predicated on) and were able to continue negotiating leverage with the Kachin leadership. The Kachins in return kept using the border for access and freedom against Burmese territorialisation to the west and liquid, quick use of cash for the sake of independence and revolution. Despite all this, the power of revolutionary zeal still drives the elders to keep faith in the dream they have worked for all their lives:

‘With the NCA and land act, all this land the Bama are trying to take from us, they want to invade, conquer this hard-earned land and then make their business here with plantations. They want NDA-K [militia] to come. We will fight till the end before we let them title this village. Kachin state territory is owned by Kachin, and we have our own rules from generations. We need our own self-determinations with Kachin and Shan federal union, our own state constitution under a true federal system. Whatever they do, we cannot allow them to take power away from the egalitarian rule of KIO. The KIO will follow this federal structure.’ (Ex-KIA officer, 89, Kachin state, 2017)

One night, as we returned to my hotel from talking to the elders, (name removed) reflected on the long meeting:

‘Do you see how these poor Buras [old men] are always still living in that beautiful dream of the past? They fed it to my father, he fed it to us. Sometimes I like it when they don’t even see what their sons and daughters have done in the 90s and are still doing. Everything is okay so long as it’s for Andom here. Let other people send their teenage daughters to die for revolution. I will send mine to India to study.’

[1] See Sadan (2013) and Hong (2019) for detailed explanation on this as opposed to Kachin State.

[2] Often in these conversations, my nationality as an Assamese Indian with several Singpho contacts (who had links with Kachin state and set me up on this route) incited feelings of comradeship, excitement and of affinity among the Kachin elders, inviting a response of sympathy (as a postcolonial Assamese subject, especially with the KIA’s good relationship with Assamese separatists).

[3] See Kawlu Ma Nawng's 1942 book The History of the Kachins of the Hukawng Valley and Sadan. But Gumlao is an idealistic Kachin equitable society as opposed to the hereditary and hierarchical Gumsa system.

[4] See Hedström (2017) for further critical perspectives on the Kachin revolutionary household, and Hedström (2020) where she argues (and I also have observed from other interviews) contrary to my interviewee’s optimism that, ‘public funds, to the extent that they exist, are diverted from social welfare services to enable the expansion, or simply survival, of military power. Under these circumstances, the duty to reproduce both the individual soldier and the army writ-large is placed disproportionally on the shoulders of women’.

[5] The only academic work written on Nabang region is scientific research done on a certain mosquito, called anopheles. Cansong and Biard published a paper building on a field trip to Nabang, see Biard and Cansong (2017).