LOI TAILENG, Shan state, Myanmar - Colonel Yawd Serk, leader of the 10,000-strong Shan State Army (SSA), recently observed the 48th anniversary of Shan armed resistance against Myanmar's government from his fortified mountain headquarters at Loi Taileng along the Thai-Myanmar border. "All of us want freedom, and each one knows there is only one way to achieve freedom and that is through unity," he said.

Yawd Serk, 49, was speaking primarily of unity of the country's Shan ethnic group. But the divide-and-rule military tactics of Myanmar's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) are taking a growing toll on the Southeast Asian country's remaining ethnic armies, including the Karen National Union (KNU) and (SSA), which have battled central authorities in the world's longest-running armed conflict. The latest indications are that the conflict, which had wound down in recent years, is set to intensify again in the coming months.

Security analysts are now busy assessing whether SPDC-backed ethnic-on-ethnic struggles have weakened the KNU's and SSA's defenses enough to allow the national army to take control of their territories in a major new offensive the central government launched in February and that has extended into the monsoon season. The ruling junta, which recently moved the national capital to Pyinmana in central Myanmar, is reportedly spooked that ethnic insurgents might launch attacks on the city.

As many as 16,000 Karen civilians have fled their villages in the recent fighting, with the Taungoo, Nyaunglaybin, Papun and Thaton areas hit hardest. Thousands have crossed the Thai border, while many others have been stranded at insecure camps for internally displaced persons. The United Nations has publicly condemned the renewed violence, and the junta's brutal policies in the ethnic territories, including razing whole villages and forced mass resettlements, could soon garner global attention if the United States is successful in its current drive to get Myanmar's political situation on to the UN Security Council's agenda.

Significantly, the renewed fighting brought to a violent end the so-called "gentlemen's ceasefire" brokered between the KNU stalwart General Bo Mya and former prime minister and intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt, who was removed and criminally charged by the army in an October 2004 purge. The SPDC has publicly claimed that recent fighting in Karen areas stems from an internal rift within the KNU. Independent sources along the Thai-Myanmar border contradict that assessment, claiming that the army's 66th and 99th divisions were directly involved in the major new offensive launched in the area in February.

Ethnic divides

That three-month military campaign represents the largest SPDC assault on Karen targets since the major battles in 1997, which eventually dislodged the KNU from territories it had long held and pinned the rebels directly up against the Thai border. The army's latest offensive is being aided by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which broke ranks with the predominantly Christian KNU on religious lines in 1994. Both the DKBA and KNU claim to represent the interests of the Karen, but their infighting over the years has worsened the security situation for Karen civilians.

Since its breakaway, the DKBA has served as a Yangon proxy force in KNU-held territories. The degree of cooperation with armed forces loyal to the junta in the ongoing campaign is not clear, but the SPDC have definitely launched their own attacks against the KNU. One well-placed border watcher says the DKBA has also been involved in armed disputes with the KNU's armed military wing, known as the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), over rights to logging areas.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the two largest ethnic armies in the Shan state is just as fractious as the KNU-DKBA rivalry in Karen territories. Over the past 15 years, the semi-autonomous United Wa State Army (UWSA), the world's largest drug-trafficking armed militia, with more than 20,000 soldiers, has frequently acted as a proxy force for the SPDC in dry-season offensives against the SSA.

The UWSA played a key role in the 1994 defeat of opium drug lord and Mong Tai Army leader Khun Sa. The SSA represents a splinter group from the former Mong Tai Army, which agreed to a ceasefire. For its military assistance, the generals granted the UWSA control over large swaths of Thai-Myanmar border territory, which was perfectly situated for trafficking heroin and methamphetamines, and later pirated music and video discs, into Thailand.

According to a ranking SSA official, the UWSA is reluctant to engage the SSA as part of a proposed wider onslaught on ethnic insurgents because of the heavy casualties it suffered during last year's dry-season offensive on Loi Taileng. The Myanmar army's artillery rounds repeatedly missed their mark and hit UWSA troops who were mounting an uphill offensive on the Shan headquarters.

Furthermore, the UWSA's northern leadership in the town of Phangsang has decided against sending troops to reinforce the UWSA South's 171 Brigade led by the notorious drug trafficker Wei Hsu Kang, who has been indicted by a US court and is now fighting the SSA on the junta's behalf. Speaking to Asia Times Online, Colonel Yawd Serk claimed the reason Wei Hsu Kang's branch of the UWSA participated in last year's attack against SSA headquarters was that SSA troops had raided and razed his drug factories.

Thailand's army is known to have contacts with the SSA, and Bangkok has identified the drug trade emanating from UWSA-controlled territories as a threat to its national security. A US-supported task force based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, known as Task Force 399, had previously trained Shan in drug-interdiction techniques. The special covert unit has since been closed down.

The junta's decision to attack KNU strongholds, as opposed to SSA positions, lends insight into its current military capabilities and its security concerns. The KNU control and maneuver in a territory that is geographically close to the new jungle capital recently established at Pyinmana. Ethnic military officials believe that the generals have Karen-controlled territories directly in their sights to preempt possible insurgent threats to the new capital, which was strategically forged from a mountainous, jungle-covered area.

SSA leaders believe that Yangon is strategically preparing for a future large-scale offensive against their positions by taking control of KNU territories from which it could launch a two-front offensive. The SPDC has recently started to move reinforcements into former KNU strongholds, which they have recently overtaken. Judging by the ongoing fighting, it's unclear whether that strategy will play out as they plan. However, what is clear is that Myanmar's ethnic territories are in for more war and violence.