The ethnic Kachin armed group, Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) today went into a huddle on the first day of its crucial central committee meeting to decide on the contentious issue of transforming its armed-wing to the Border Guard Force as has been proposed by Burma’s ruling junta.
The meeting got off to a start in the group’s Laiza headquarters in Kachin State near the China border in northern Burma, said Laiza sources.
The KIO’s central committee meeting will be held over several days. It is expected to decide on the thorny issue of transforming its Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to the Burmese Army-controlled Border Guard Force, according to KIO officials in Laiza.
A day after the junta-set deadline on February 28 for the KIA to be transformed to BGF expired, the KIO began its central committee meeting, a central committee member in Laiza told Kachin News Group today.
Both the KIO and the junta are gearing up for a civil war, which seems inevitable though there are no signs yet that a military conflict will take place soon between the Burmese Army and the rebel group, said KIA officers on the frontlines in Kachin and Shan States.
All Burmese troops of the Light Infantry Battalion No. 601 in the Bhamo army base had been deployed on the frontlines against the Karen National Union (KNU) in Karen State in the country’s south last January. However the troops were quickly recalled to its battalion base in late last month, said residents of Bhamo.
The Burmese troops were recalled to Kachin State because a civil war could erupt between the KIO and the Burmese Army, local KIA insiders and military analysts feel.
Meanwhile, the poles of bridges on the Myitkyina-Bhamo car road has been protected with bamboo fences by Burmese soldiers since January, local eyewitnesses told KNG. The fences are meant to stop the KIA planting bombs, said local people.
The KIO is not sitting idle either. It is also into full-scale preparation to meet a possible Burmese Army onslaught in its territories in Kachin and northeast Shan State, said KIO sources.
