Evan Williams reports

The following article was written exculsively for the Dispatches website by Evan Williams...

"Shhhh – everyone down and quiet," came the whispered order of my translator.

I was on a track in an open piece of tropical forest with dozens of guerrilla fighters from the Karen National Union. Enemy troops from Burma's government army were just ahead of us... close enough I was told to hear their footsteps on the dirt road where they were patrolling less than fifty metres away.

The Karen National Union is an ethnic rebel army that has been waging a bitter civil war against Burma's military dictators for more than fifty years – it is the world's longest-running civil war.

The Junta ruling Burma refuses to hand over power to an elected government inside Burma and mercilessly attacks civilians from Burma's many ethnic minorities.

If they resist direct army control they can be raped, killed, forced in to slave labour and subjected to the arbitrary rule of local military commanders who operate with complete impunity.

Over the years this strategy has led to more than 600,000 deaths and up to one million people being displaced. The Karen army are one of the last ethnic armies offering any real resistance.

However, it's an increasingly hard struggle. They are isolated and supplies of food and ammunition that used be easily transported across the border from Thailand are becoming more and more difficult to obtain.

Burma's neighbours like Thailand, India and China are more interested in doing deals with Burma's military rulers to buy up new found reserves of oil and gas than they are in helping a people struggling for survival.

This conflict receives little international attention and less action even from bodies like the United Nations, which is supposed to be intervening to protect people like these.

Recent USA pressure may see the first binding Security Council resolution on Burma. But entrenched resistance from China and Russia could scupper any meaningful change.

None of that mattered as we hunkered down on the path, straining our eyes and ears for any sign of government troops moving through the undergrowth towards us. I felt very exposed on that little hillside. But then the rebels I was with face this kind of inner terror every day as they escort dwindling supplies of ammunition and aid to fellow Karen villagers deep inside Burma on the front lines of government army offensives.

It's these raids that government troops often attack innocent men and women of all ages. They burn villages, arrest and torture anyone suspected of working with the rebels and have been even known to hunt down and kill children as they flee in terror. The ethnic Burmese soldiers have orders to rape women from the ethnic minorities under their control and leave them pregnant to breed out the resistance.

We got the all clear and moved off, back into the jungle. There were dozens of us and it amazed me how we could move through the country so freely. But every villager we met is on the rebel's side. The army may have the roads but it doesn't have the people. And the more the army kills and burns, the deeper the anger, and the more stubborn the resistance.

We were in the village of He Daw Kaw, twelve days walk inside Burma from the Thai border. It had been attacked by a nearby Burmese army post, and much of it was burnt to the ground.

Villagers told me the soldiers had used mortars and automatic weapons on them. Hundreds of the villagers fled into the surrounding jungle where they lived in the open forest, subject to disease and discomfort. Damp, cold, rain and poor nutrition take their toll, many children and adults develop lung infections and mortality rates among the young here are among the highest in the world.

My main conduit into the Karen was the Free Burma Rangers, a group of mainly Christian medics who deliver aid and comfort to villagers attacked by the army. They are helped by several foreigners who do not want to be identified. They rely on donations, mainly from US and UK church groups and deliver blankets, money, medicine and clothes all carried in over the arduous jungle tracks. They work within the Karen guerrilla army which provides security and intelligence. It's an amazing thing to see a hundred people walk off into the jungle straight towards enemy lines.

The attack on He Daw Kaw was just the beginning. Rebel leaders intercepted government army radio traffic indicating a large new offensive was on the way. I walked to a village that was right in the path of the expected attack as I thought I could be well placed to meet refugees as they fled the offensive. But after just two days the villagers asked if I could move back towards the border. They were worried spies might go and inform the government troops that I was there which would lead to a direct attack. The troops were close enough for that to be a very real reality, very quickly.

Before I left they told me how they were being starved out. Those who do not accept army rule and moved to virtual concentration camps under military control, are all deemed rebels and can be shot on sight in any major town. That means they cannot go to the towns to sell or buy food, they only have rough jungle rice paddy and not enough for a full year to feed their families. They have to hunt and scavenge in the jungle to supplement their diets and every month the troops get closer. This village had been attacked and burned three times in recent years.

I left them to an uncertain fate. Just weeks later, their area was attacked when thousands of government troops fanned through the Karen hills. Eighteen thousand people were forced to flee, one of the biggest movements of internally displaced refugees in South East Asia since the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. Some made it to neighbouring Thailand where tens of thousands from Burma live a life in limbo forced to make whatever they can through merciless labour brokers who pay them virtually nothing for dangerous jobs no-one wants to do. Many more Karen refugees were caught inside Burma exposed to further attack. A small group of foreign aid groups try and help, The Thai-Burma Border Consortium among the best.

As we left He Daw Kaw village I was told we should visit a small bush clinic, it was hidden away in a steep gulley behind scrub and along virtually invisible tracks to prevent further attack. Inside was a 75-year-old man who had stepped on a land mine laid by government soldiers after they had attacked the village. The mine was laid right out side this man's door so that if he returned to his home he might step on it.

The army lays several mines like this in each village they attack as a way of discouraging civilians from returning, they even laid one right outside the path leading to the village church – many Karen being Christian.

The old man stepped on one of these when he retuned home to get food for his starving family hiding in the bush. His leg was torn off above the knee and he was carried along steep jungle tracks to the bamboo clinic, bleeding profusely and dazed. A young Karen medic immediately tried to stabilise him. He tightly bandaged the leg and started to cut away at the ripped flesh and shattered bone... to amputate with what he had at hand. The only instrument he had was a Leatherman (pocket knife) which he used to first hack through and then file the bone. There was no anaesthetic, the old man almost died three times during the operation but was saved. The medic's only comment was – 'please send a proper bone saw, the Leatherman is getting blunt after several operations.'

The Karen struggle on in the jungle, their desperate plea for some form of international intervention ignored by a world caught up with bigger crises and more pressing issues. But how long can they hold out in the face of a relentless enemy who seems to relish the crimes they can perpetuate while keeping Burma off the world's news pages.

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