Free Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know by David I. Steinberg

of this writing.) Final solutions to the rebellions have yet to be negotiated. Whether the leadership of these groups reflects the views of their ethnic constituents is unclear, because none were elected. Those in active rebellion at any time have been a relatively small percentage of any ethnic-linguistic group, although among those groups there are many sympathizers.
    These rebellions were often supported or used by foreign states, exacerbating the isolation, suspicion, and concern among Burmans over both their minorities and foreign powers. Some British had supported the Karen; East Pakistan (and then Bangladesh) backed the Muslim Rohingyas on their border with Middle Eastern funding. The Indians were said to be involved with the Kachin and Karen. The Chinese assisted the BCP, the Naga, and Kachin rebels. The United States supported the Kuomintang, and the Thai a wide variety of rebel groups, essentially creating buffer states or zones to insulate conservative Bangkok from what they regarded as radical Rangoon.
    For obvious reasons, then, even in the civilian period the central government was suspicious about foreign involvement with their minorities.

Why didn’t Burma join the Commonwealth?
     
    In contrast to India and Pakistan, Burma did not join the British Commonwealth because of implicit internal pressures from the Burmese left wing. A Constituent Assembly met in May 1947 to draft a constitution, and the text proclaimed that Burma was to be “an independent sovereign republic,” thus eliminatingjoining the Commonwealth. There seemed to have been strong internal pressures on the planned government. If Burma had joined the Commonwealth, both the legal and illegal left could charge that the new government, soon to be decimated by the assassination of Aung San and his colleagues, was not really independent. The Red Flag Communists made this charge even before independence when they actively revolted. To demonstrate the autonomy of the civilian leadership and appeal to nationalist sentiment, this break in ties seemed the least costly means to deal with the left. The development of the Commonwealth-sponsored Colombo Plan to provide assistance to developing states, however, allowed the Burmese to participate and receive British assistance through this multilateral mechanism. Burma joined in 1952 but did not request assistance until 1954. Technical training was an important component of such aid.

How did the Chinese nationalist incursion affect Burma?
     
    The Chinese communists gradually defeated the forces of the Nationalist government (the Kuomintang), backed by the United States, during the Chinese revolution in 1948–1949. The Kuomintang evacuated its government to Taiwan, where it remains. Some forces, however, retreated from Yunnan Province into the Shan State of Burma. In this instance, history did rhyme, for in 1644 when the Manchu Qing Dynasty defeated the Ming government, Ming troops also fled into the area now known as Burma to take refuge.
    In the fervor against the spread of communism, these forces were supported not only by Taiwan but surreptitiously by the United States through the Central Intelligence Agency. The unrealistic expectation was that these troops, a relatively small number of perhaps 16,000 at their peak, would advance back into China. Although their strength could not defeat the regime’s army, their supporters thought they could spark a popular counterrevolution against the communist government. Seven attempts were tried, but all failed. Eventually,after the Chinese established their People’s Republic in 1950, the Chinese troops twice crossed into Burma to control the very modest threat to their regime. Finally, in 1961, Chinese communist forces of some 20,000 quietly crossed into Burma and with the support of 5,000 Burmese troops and effectively eliminated the Kuomintang remnants.
    Because of the weakness of the Burma army and the rise of other rebellions against Rangoon, these