“This is 5,000 Burmese Kyats in cash and 1,000 US dollars. This is also our Christmas present to you.”
I was taken aback and not a little embarrassed. We had no money left but, on the other hand, we did not need any in the jungle. We got our army rations of food, extra supplies of personal necessities such as candles and writing paper. Accommodation was, of course, free. I tried to explain that as a journalist I could not accept so lavish a gift.
“But this is just a small gift,” Muivah insisted. “Chairman Isak would be so disappointed if you didn’t accept it.”
“Then I regret I must disappoint him. I can only accept money from the publications I write for.”
The argument see-sawed back and forth, Muivah still proffering the money while I persisted in my own position. Eventually, we settled on a face-saving compromise that broke the impasse. He handed me the money which I then gave back.
“This is a donation. Please use it to buy uniforms for your boys. I think they need it far more than I.”
We rose at 5 am on the 27th, ate breakfast and left a few hours later. Muivah and Angam waved us off. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief: we were at last embarked on the final leg of our trek to Kachinland. The Kachins too seemed in lighter mood. There were 29 of them left. Apart from the three killed, one soldier had been wounded in the arm by a bullet. The NSCN had promised to look after him and send him back to 2nd Brigade later.
Despite bright sunshine, the air was cool and crisp which made for far easier walking. We marched all day, mostly following narrow, little used paths which wound their way along steep-sided ravines covered with thick jungle—large trees, wild bananas and clumps of thick bamboo. We skirted Donyu and continued along a ridge which ran parallel to the Indian border.
At noon, the clatter of helicopters broke the stillness of the hills. These were the machines donated to the Burmese government by the United States for “drug suppression”. In fact, they had been used for everything except that, mostly to ferry dead and wounded from the battlefield, or—in this exceptional case—to hunt a pair of foreign journalists. The Burmese clearly had no clue where we were, and sending out infantry patrols would have been both futile and risky.
Some of the helicopters were also probably carrying off the spoils from the NSCN’s headquarters. According to the Kachins, the Nagas had left almost everything behind: office files, roneo machines, personal belongings, typewriters and even secret documents. Yaw Htung, while he was still alive, had urged them to carry anything important away, but they had not heeded his advice.
Worse still, the NSCN had been storing rice and rations for 300 people for two weeks because of the impending Christmas celebrations. All that too had been left abandoned. In any offensive in the border areas, the main problem for government units is posed by long and vulnerable supply lines and logistics difficulties which usually force a retreat within a few days. But now, thanks to the NSCN, they could dig in at their captured positions and stay for weeks, if so ordered.
We spent the night in a relatively large village called Longbaw, beyond the real danger zone. To reach the mountains along the River Chindwin, it remained to cross the Burmese lines of communication. Our main concern was the helicopters. On the second day of our march, the track led out of the jungle, over mountains stripped bare by slash-and-burn cultivation. Our group—including the Nagas, well over 40—was now wholly exposed to any aerial reconnaissance.
Then came one of those uncanny turns of circumstance with which our journey seemed to be interspersed. Despite it being late December and the beginning of the dry season, thick, dark clouds hung low across the mountains and a steady drizzle began to fall.
There were a couple of villages along the way where a detour was not practical and we marched through them in the rain and the mist. The villagers were huddled in their houses—but I noticed them peeping through the open doors, all their attention it seemed focused on me. They probably took me for the commander of a unit that was returning from the battle which they must have heard: umbrella, walking stick, field jacket, bush hat and no rifle. I hid my face the best I could under the umbrella and kept up a brisk pace.
At noon, we descended to the Nampuk River and forded the freezing, knee-deep water. I had put on a plastic poncho to protect me from the rain. One of the Naga girls was carrying Ee Ying. But although the baby remained dry, she felt the cold and cried continually. The 300-400 metre wide stretch across the valley bottom on the Nampuk was the first flat land we had seen since Assam. After more than a hundred kilometres of ascents and descents it was a welcome if brief respite.
Suddenly, we encountered a barking deer on the riverside. Standing orders were that nobody was allowed to shoot unless we ran into a Burmese Army patrol. So the startled animal ran past the whole length of the column—and three dozen guns, held by as many hungry men.
The river was soon lost again in the mists that hung in the valley below and we toiled on for hours along a path now treacherous and slippery with the rain. Finally, mud-splattered, wet and weary, we reached human habitation in the late afternoon. Called Chokrang, the settlement differed markedly from other Naga villages we had seen in the eastern hills. Besides the usual domestic pigs and chickens, Chokrang boasted cattle that grazed on the nearby slopes. Its bamboo houses were also built on high wooden stilts and were far longer than the typically small huts we had seen east of the Nampuk.
Karang, the Naga officer who was accompanying us as a guide, discussed billeting arrangements with the village headman. Then we split into small groups and went off to our allotted houses. Climbing the wooden ladder up to our longhouse, we were pleased to find a cheerful fire burning in the hearth in the middle of the room. We promptly changed our clothes and hung the wet ones up to dry. Hseng Noung heated water on the fire to wash Ee Ying while I made some tea. Our Naga host, dressed in a Burmese longyi, surprised me by producing a metal spoon. It was the first sign of the industrial world I had seen in a Naga household since crossing the border at Longva.
Indeed, the difference between the villages east and west of the Nampuk was remarkable. East of the river, Kachin Baptist missionaries had introduced Christianity, limited health care and a few schools in the 1950s; between the Nampuk and the Indian border scarcely any outsiders had ever dared to penetrate. Even the more “civilised” Nagas east of the Nampuk lived in fear of their head-hunting cousins in the wild hills we had just left.
At dawn the next morning, we set off on another steep climb. The peaks and ridges around us were soon bathed in early morning sunlight. Below, mist and clouds drifted through the Nampuk canyon. It was a landscape out of a dream. Far above the mists, our strenuous march continued through thick forest along a mountain range. We halted for a while in a jungle glade and lunched off cold rice and pork wrapped in leaves.
A full afternoon’s walk behind us, we passed the night in a large village called Galawn. It was built on a crest with the Nampuk to the west. Since the clouds now had cleared, we could see the river flowing gently through the deep gorge. A steep hillside with dry paddy fields rose to the east, and at that distance the small farmhouses looked like tiny matchboxes.
No Burmese Army movements had ever been reported anywhere near Galawn and for the first time in weeks, we could afford to relax. Since the attack on Kesan Chanlam on the 20th, we had kept our belongings packed, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Now, we had the leisure to wash our shawls, hang them up to dry and to check and clean our other gear. Despite her occasional bouts of diarrhoea, Ee Ying appeared to have withstood the rigours of the march remarkably well.
But there were to be no days off. The following day, we climbed an impressive mountain range east of Galawn. On my map, it was called Sanpawng Bum, but none of the local people had ever heard that name; they called it Kanyung and the biggest peak, Pungra Bum. Allied troops had been there during World War Two, Karang told me, and had set up a radio post on the top of the mountain.
As we climbed higher it grew
perceptibly colder and the forest gave way to pine trees. Flocks of monkeys gibbered excitedly in the treetops but they were intelligent enough to keep a healthy distance from our party’s rifles. Now that we were well beyond the Burmese area of operations, hunting was permitted.
On the forested pass at the top of the range, we halted. A dead woman lay on the path. The corpse was not yet stiff so indicating she had died not long before our arrival. She had not been old: perhaps around thirty. But her lot in a brief, care-worn life was plain to see: bare feet, a shabby homespun skirt made from coarse cloth, short, roughly hacked hair and a simple bead-necklace. An empty cane basket lay beside her. Presumably, she had dropped dead of a heart attack after the strenuous climb up the mountain. Mist drifted through the trees and as we stood in silence surveying the body, I felt the chill penetrate my bones. I shivered. Hseng Noung was the first to break the silence with an angry tirade.
“Nobody in Rangoon would believe it if you told them people live and die like this up in the minority areas. What does the so-called government do for them? Not a damn thing! Are you surprised there are tens of thousands of insurgents fighting against the government in this country? And the people in the towns don’t even know about it. And they are proud of that bloody army which only knows how to shoot people and burn down villages.”
The guerrillas dug a grave in the forest and buried the woman with her meagre belongings. A runner was sent with a letter to Galawn to inform the village headman who could read some Burmese. That night we camped out on the eastern slopes of Kanyung.
The next day was New Year’s Eve and, having descended towards the Chindwin, we celebrated in a village called Lolum. The Kachin soldiers brought out a cassette player they had salvaged from the NSCN’s headquarters and a few cassettes of Western rock music. The price of a pig was negotiated with a villager and, a deal once struck, the animal was slaughtered and gutted. It was soon roasting whole over an open fire while the soldiers gyrated and 1986 was welcomed in style.
On New Year’s Day, our line of march took us through thick jungle devoid of human habitation. Once, a tiger roared in the rocky gorge below the ridge we were following—but sensibly stayed clear of us. In the afternoon, we came across the first traces of Westerners we had seen east of the Indian border: a maze of World War Two trenches. According to one of the Nagas, a fierce battle had been fought here between Japanese and American forces more than forty years before.
Just before we reached Rasa, the village where we were to spend the night, we caught a glimpse of the Chindwin River in the valley below. Lashi Naw Ja, the young clerk who spoke a little English, pointed across it into the distance.
“On the other side is our Kachinland.”
Mercifully, the mountains on the far horizon appeared to be nowhere as precipitous as those we had been crossing.
In Rasa a generous villager presented us with some pomelos, the first fruit we had had since leaving India. For Hseng Noung it was a godsend. We were beginning to suspect that Ee Ying’s diarrhoea was due to Hseng Noung’s monotonous diet of rice and pork with few greens and no milk products—hardly a balanced diet for a nursing mother.
The next day’s march took us along a valley with large vegetable gardens and scattered fruit trees to a village called Taka. As a matter of standard guerrilla practice, scouts had been sent ahead to reconnoitre, and as we drew close to the village, one of them hurried back to report the presence of 30 armed soldiers there. Villagers had told the advance party they were Manipuris, not Burmese government troops. Our column halted in the forest while intelligence was verified. One of the Kachin soldiers who had been helping train the Manipuris at the KIA’s headquarters was sent forward to see if he could identify any of them. He came back, smiling. We moved off again.
We entered Taka at noon and once the order to fall out had been given, the two groups of soldiers intermingled and there was an animated exchange of news. The Manipuris, who came from an insurgent group called the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were on their way back to northeastern India after two years of training by the KIA. Consequently, they knew Kachin well and we learnt our route ahead was clear.
The Kachins told them of the battle at Kesan Chanlam and the death of Yaw Htung and the other soldiers. They were saddened by the news since Yaw Htung had been their liaison officer, interpreter and teacher when they first reached Kachin State. He had also learnt to speak Manipuri from them—one of the seven languages he mastered.
Although Taka was a Naga village, it was located on a valley floor beside a stream. In the afternoon, I joined the platoon for a bathe—the first opportunity to wash off the accumulated grime of days on the march. That night some soldiers bought rice liquor from an itinerant merchant who had come up from Singkaling Hkamti, two days’ walk to the south.
On January 3, we marched the few remaining hours along the Taka stream to its confluence with the Chindwin. Word had been sent ahead and dugouts awaited us on the riverbank.
The Chindwin, at last! We drifted downstream for more than an hour hedged in by dense green jungle on either bank. We saw a pair of hinthe, the rare Brahmin duck, skimming the gently flowing water. We reached a small Kachin village called Wan Phalang at noon, on the eastern bank of the Chindwin. Its inhabitants were from the Lisu tribe—and it turned out that several of them spoke English. They had recently moved down from Pinawng Zup, where the Morses had established their little Lisu Shangri-La in the 1960s.
“When I see you, I remember the Morses,” and old man in the village said and looked at me with tears in his eyes.
The villagers did no farming but seemed to survive on trading. The streams east of the Chindwin are full of gold dust and every dry season fortune seekers flock there. The Lisus, undoubtedly, earned more selling Burmese cheroots and provisions to the panners and there was a line of ramshackle huts on the riverbank which served as shops. They were surprisingly well-stocked with a range of basic consumer goods smuggled in from Thailand and China. Although Spartan in appearance, this row of bamboo huts were the first shops we had seen since India.
Lashi Naw Ja bought a tin of Polly condensed milk from Holland, a bunch of Burmese cheroots and a packet of biscuits from Mandalay for us. We had a little feast in the hut where we spent the night which Ee Ying celebrated with her first solid food: mashed potato and boiled fish, fresh from the Chindwin.
7
THE HUKAWNG VALLEY
Gazed at from Rasa village, the hills on the Kachin side of the Chindwin had looked green and pleasant. From that vantage point the maze of streams and dense bamboo thickets that cloaked their slopes remained invisible. Not so, once we were across the river.
As the terrain was devoid of paths, we were forced to follow the course of the streams, the surrounding jungle being almost impenetrable. When traversing from one streambed to another, we had literally to hack our way through the jungle, slowing our rate of advance to an exhausting, perspiration-sodden struggle. The slopes of the ridges, though not high, were terribly steep and rocky, and being taller and broader than the others, I was constantly tormented by blows on the head from branches and scratches across my face from thorns.
Through this terrain we toiled for six interminable days, seeing no traces of human life other than a few makeshift shelters, long since abandoned by gold- or ruby-panners. Three young Lisu men from Wan Phalang had joined the party as guides and this turned out to be just as well. Without them I doubt if we could ever have found our way through this vast natural labyrinth of dense jungle, streams and sharp ridges. I often had the impression we were walking in circles since every clearing looked the same as the next. And yet somehow—as I was able to verify on my compass—we maintained a steady easterly course.
We had brought rice, dried fish and some vegetables from Wan Phalang and cooked our meals over open fires in the jungle where we bivouacked. Ee Ying was blissfully unaware of our rugged surrounds: she slept soundly on Hseng Noung’s back and woke up only to cry to let us know she
wanted some milk. At night, Hseng Noung bathed her with water which she had heated in billy-cans over the camp fire. Our main concern, however, were the swarms of mosquitoes that descended every night. The Naga Hills had been too cold for mosquitoes; but we had now entered hotter climes where malaria was rampant. We rigged up a little mosquito net every night under the lean-tos of bamboo and wild banana leaves which the soldiers built for us and hoped she would be protected.
Lashi Naw Ja, the clerk, often joined us at night by the campfire and, little by little, his story emerged. It was in many ways a not atypical product of Burma’s long civil war. His father had been a preacher in the Kachin-inhabited areas of northeastern Kachin State, but had moved to Kachin State when the war broke out in the early 1960s. The family first settled in a government-controlled town. But constant harassment by the Burmese Army and intelligence agencies—who seemed to regard every Kachin as an actual or potential rebel sympathiser—forced them to move into insurgent-held territory.
“Where did you go to school?” I asked. It sounded as if he had spent most of his life in the jungle.
“We run our own schools,” he replied, pulling at his cheroot. “But only up to high school final. So after that, I joined the movement as a clerk. I work for the administration of the villages along the Nam Byu River. That’s a few days march from here and where we’re going now.”
I asked him if he was married. He smiled.
Land of Jade Page 18