As late as 1951, the BCP “made a bold bid to capture Mandalay, Burma’s old imperial capital. Government troops inflicted such damage on the Communist force that from then on, it ceased to be a military force and degenerated into a fragmented band of jungle guerrillas. … Undaunted, the party continued to fight. … With its headquarters in the Pegu Hills, it set up three main bases in strategic areas: the Irrawaddy delta, west of the hills; western Shan state, just to the north; and northeast Burma, near the Sino-Burmese border.”[627]
On at least three occasions, the White Flag Communists sought to work in the general political arena, without abandoning their guerrilla activities. In the early 1950s, when a split occurred in the Burmese Socialist Party, then the country’s largest party, resulting in the establishment of the Burma Workers and Peasants Party (WPP), the Communists were thought to have made use of this dissident group as a legal front for their activities. However, in elections held soon after the Socialist split, the Workers and Peasants Party won only one seat on the Rangoon City Council, and in parliament got only nine seats, compared with more than 200 for the Socialist Party.[628]
Nor was the Workers and Peasants Party able to make much headway in the organized labor movement. According to a leader of the Socialist-controlled Trade Union Congress Burma, the rival Burma Trade Union Congress, organized by the White Flag Communists through the WPP, only had about 1,000 members, mainly in small factories, compared with 80,000 who belonged to the Socialist-controlled central labor body.[629]
A second abortive effort of the White Flag Communists to undertake legal activities took place in April 1963, soon after the military coup led by General Ne Win established an Army-dominated regime that lasted more than three decades. Ne Win declared an amnesty for everyone except the politicians he had overthrown, and urged groups conducting guerrilla campaigns against the government to confer with the new government. Among those who came to Rangoon at that time was Than Tun of the White Flag Communists, accompanied by several aides who had just returned from China. During his stay in the capital, Than Tun gave interviews that were published in the local press. Soon afterward, he and his associates “returned to the jungle.”[630]
In the late 1960s, the White Flag again sought to conduct some legal activities. It controlled a front organization, the National Democratic United Front. A U.S. State Department source noted that “the only significant element in the Front, other than the BCP/ WF is the left-wing faction of the ethnic Karen insurgents, known as the Karen National United Party.”[631]
In 1970, government troops gained control of the Irrawaddy delta area, where the White Flag had until then been active. Thenceforward, White Flag guerrilla efforts were concentrated principally in the northeastern part of the country, near the Chinese border.
During the long years of guerrilla war, the White Flag Communists experienced considerable internal conflict. M. C. Tun noted that “in 1964, the BCP’s pro-Chinese stance touched off a vicious dispute between the old-timers and the Peking-trained new blood. Than Tun sided with the Chinese trained cadres and soon those who stood out against them were purged for alleged crimes ranging from revisionism to anti-party conduct.” In September 1968 Than Tun was assassinated “by one of his followers.”[632]
In 1975, Than Tun’s successor as party Chairman, Thakin Zin, was killed. Klaus Fleischmann noted soon afterward that “In May 1975 new leaders were chosen, and with Thakin Ba Thein Tin and Thakin Pe Tint, two long-time Peking residents of the BCP came to power… a major reshuffle has taken place and a second generation of BCP leaders, surely all trained in China, got into the Central Committee.”[633]
The Chinese continued to aid the White Flag Communists. Klaus Fleischmann noted that “With Communist Chinese aid given openly after June 1967 and continued secretly after the resumption of full diplomatic relations between Burma and China in 1971, the BCP stepped up its guerrilla activities in the Shan State.”[634]
Fleischmann also noted that ”President Ne Win’s visit to Peking in November 1975 evidently resulted in much less open relations between the Chinese and the Burmese Communist parties. … Reports state, nevertheless… that the armament of the Burmese Communists has improved so that they are able now to use heavier weapons than they had in the past, including artillery.”[635]
Even Teng Hsiao-ping visited Burma in 1978, but this did not bring an end to Chinese aid to the Burmese White Flag Communists. Soon afterward, Fleischmann wrote, “There are no indications that Teng Hsiao-ping’s visit led to any cutback in Chinese support for the BCP.”[636]
The White Flag Communists supported the successors of Mao. Thus, in 1977, in greetings sent to the Chinese party after its 10th Central Committee Plenum, the Burmese said that the appointment of Hua Kuo-feng, “good student and successor of Chairman Mao and good leader and supreme commander,” as well as the rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-ping and the arrest of the Gang of Four, constituted “a very heavy blow to imperialism, revisionism and all reaction and a great encouragement to the revolutionary forces in the world and the further development of the revolution.”[637]
This support of Mao’s successors continued at a November 1978 Central Committee meeting of the White Flag. A report to that meeting by Thakin Ba Thein Tin said that the Chinese party was “the most prestigious leading party in the world communist movement.” It praised the defeat of the Gang of Four, “who would have turned the CCP into ‘a revisionist party’ like the one now dominating the Soviet Union.” That report also presented “an extensive exposition of the Maoist three worlds theory.” Finally, the report denounced the Albanian party for its attacks on Chinese cooperation with the United States, and said that the Albanian Party of Labor was “frenziedly opposing and attacking China, demonstrating very wrong and reactionary thinking.”[638] In 1985, Alice Straub and Jon A. Wiant reported that “BCP propaganda organs have adapted to the shifts in Chinese communism, accepting China’s enemies as the BCP’s enemies, parroting Beijing’s worldview, and subordinating Burma’s problems to larger Chinese issues.”[639]
For some time in the 1980s, it was reported that the Burmese Maoists were benefiting from the drug trade that, since Thailand’s closing down at least some of that activity, was being diverted to India and Bangladesh via Burma. The drug trade was said to be offsetting declines in Chinese aid to the Burmese Maoists. In 1988, it was reported that the armed strength of the Maoists in Burma had declined from a high of 23,000 in the mid-1970s to about 10,000. At that time, “BCP-Chinese relations are stagnant. Chinese aid has never been completely terminated, it is much reduced from the mid-1970s, now primarily party-to-party financial aid and limited quantities of ammunition. … In spite of continued BCP-CCP links, Rangoon-Beijing relations appear good.”[640]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Burmese Maoism largely disintegrated. Charles B. Smith, Jr., wrote in 1991, “At least three organizations have emerged from the rebellions against the BCP leadership in March and April 1989… none of the successor groups appears to retain any adherence to communist ideology.” Smith added, “The remnants of party structure left after the 1989 near-total destruction of the BCP have further disintegrated during 1990 with the resignations or removal of much of the old leadership. Communist strength in Burma is now lower than at any time since the founding of the party. The three principal splinter organizations all claim an ethnic, rather than ideological, basis for existence.”
627
M. C. Tun, “A 25-Year Guerrilla War: Burmese Communist Party,”
629
Interview with Bok Kyin Hline, member of Executive of Trade Union Congress Burma, in New York, November 3, 1953.
630
Interview with Josef Silverstein, Professor of Political Science, Wesleyan College, in Washington, D.C., April 4, 1964.
631
635
Klaus Fleischmann, in
636
Klaus Fleischmann, in
637
Klaus Fleischmann, in
638
Jon A. Wiant and Charles B. Smith, in
639
Alice Straub and Jon A. Wiant, in
640
Charles B. Smith Jr., in