Burma's Ethnics: Score One for the Good, er, No-So-Bad Guys
Revolutionary movements have lost their luster. Their leaders
will never be romanticized again as the likes of Trotsky and Che
Guevara once were. Since the onset of the Information Age, it's
impossible to tune out the tendency of revolutionaries to resort
to violent excesses that sometimes equal or exceed the forces
against which they rebel. Near Burma's eastern border of
Thailand, the Karen ethnic group has long resisted what it calls
the three A's -- annihilation, absorption, and assimilation --
by Burma's junta. In fact, over 60 years in duration, it's the
world's longest-running war for independence -- or its most
extended exercise in futility. Some background from a piece I
wrote a couple of years ago: The Karens, as well as other ethnic
groups, actually arrived in Burma before the majority group
known as the Burmans (as opposed to the Burmese, all the
citizens of Burma). But, in the sixteenth century, the Burmans
conquered most of Burma and pro