In what seems to be preparations to take on the armed ethnic rebel group the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its armed wing, Burma’s ruling junta yesterday despatched 18 tanks and dozens of military vehicles to the Northern Regional Command Headquarters in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, said local sources.
With war clouds looming in the horizon the fresh batch of tanks and trucks were sent for Burmese troops under the Northern Regional Command. It was transported from Mandalay along the Mandalay-Bhamo-Myitkyina Road, said local sources close to the Burmese Army.
Eyewitnesses told Kachin News Group today that about 150 trucks crossed to Kachin State from Mandalay. However, 97 trucks arrived in Myitkyina including 18 tanks carried in the trucks. Over a dozen trucks and an unknown number of tanks were sent to Bhamo, said local residents.
A day after the unfruitful meeting between Naypyitaw’s negotiator Lt-Gen Ye Myint and KIO delegates in Myitkyina on the contentious Border Guard Force issue, the fresh lot of tanks and trucks were despatched to Myitkyina.
Now, the KIO has been given a fresh deadline of April 28 to respond positively to transforming the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), its armed-wing to the Burmese Army-controlled BGF by the junta, said KIO officials in Laiza headquarters in Kachin State, near the China border.
On the latest deadline, the KIO is planning to call an urgent public meeting in Laiza headquarters. The issue will be thrashed out after the public meeting, said a KIO officer in Laiza.
On the thorny BGF issue, the KIO is being continuously pressurized by the junta since April last year. The KIO on its part has been trying to convince the junta that it would like to take up the BGF issue only after the political imbroglio is resolved.
Last month, China provided over 300 military trucks to the junta. These were distributed to 13 regional military commands across the country.
In December, last year, the junta bought 20 MiG 29 fighter jets from Russia.
James Lum Dau, Assistant Foreign Relations in-charge of KIO based in Thailand’s capital Bangkok lambasted the junta for its military expansion by buying myriad weapons from Russia and North Korea during the ceasefire period with ethnic armed groups.
The junta also gets weapons from China, India, Singapore and Ukraine.
