In the midst of growing tension between the two sides, the Burmese military junta ordered the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) to shut down all its branch liaison offices immediately in Northern Burma, KIO sources said.

The liaison offices of the KIO, and its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), are mainly based in Kachin State and Northern Shan State.

A central committee member of the KIO, at its Laiza headquarters in Kachin State, confirmed to the Thailand-based Kachin New Group today, that all branch liaison offices were warned last week to shut down immediately, by the junta. Only the main liaison office in the Kachin capital, Myitkyina, as well as the KIO-owned Buga Company Office and Buga Electricity Supply Office, were not included in the order.

The order was given over a telephone call to Col. Ji Nawng, the officer-in-charge of the KIO’s Myitkyina Liaison Office, by a Burmese military officer from Northern Regional Command, based in Myitkyina, last week, the KIO officers said.

Following the directive from the Burmese military, the KIO gave the order to shut down all liaison offices, except three offices in Myitkyina, including the main liaison office, the Buga Company Office and Electricity Supply Office, by November 25, according to a KIO central committee member.

The KIO’s order came following an urgent meeting of central committee members on November 20, according to committee members.

The liaison offices in Northern Shan State started to shut down the day the order was released by the KIO. The KIA’s 4th brigade with four battalions is based in Northern Shan State.

On October 18, the two KIO liaison offices in Mohnyin and Hopin were surrounded for hours by Burmese troops and police after a KIA security mine killed two and injured one in Pinball village tract, in Mogaung Township, on October 13.

The KIA was referred to as an insurgent group on October 17 in the junta-run newspapers after the explosion in Pinball.

The regime cut off all diplomatic relations with the KIO, and banned the movement of KIO/KIA members on September 1, which was the deadline set by the military for the KIA to surrender its weapons. That demand was rejected by the KIA.

Local military analysts said civil war will not break out immediately because of these recent developments, however the relations between the two sides has reached a new low.