The LONG PATROL : With Karen Guerillas in Burma by Mike Tucker Search Amazon for other books by or about Mike Tucker. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

The military dictatorship that has ruled Burma for the last few decades has relentlessly suppressed members of ethnic minorities living within their borders. Using forced labour, systematic rape and the use of starvation, burning of villages and, according to some recent reports, chemical weapons, the Burmese army has carried out its government's orders. The motivations for this are varied and range from revenge for the past to interference with illegal drug smuggling and logging operations.

In the case of the Karen, the motivation for suppression includes their history relative to the Burman majority. The Burmese are accustomed to thinking of the Karens, as well as other groups, as being inherently inferior to them and suitably only for being slaves. This enmity has been exacerbated firstly by the activities of American missionaries who converted many of the Karens to Christianity and, by teaching them to read and write, enabling them to obtain preferable jobs in the British colonial administration of Burma. Secondly, it was exacerbated by the Karen joining the British and allies in fighting against the Japanese during the Second World War. Burmese, like so many people in Southeast Asia, had contradictory feelings about the Japanese. They had no desire to be conquered and economically enslaved by the Japanese in the horse-rider relationship that characterised the Japanese colonial model in Korea and elsewhere. On the other hand, the Japanese were at least Asian like themselves and they were defeating the previously apparently undefeatable European colonists. When the post-WWII settlement, brokered by the British and providing for autonomy and plebiscites for ethnic minority, was abrogated by the faction led by Aung San, who had fought against the British, the stage was set for persecution of the ethnic minorities and this was greatly intensified by the onset of military rule under Ne Win in 1962.

The Karen people are the most numerous of the hilltribes people of Burma and number perhaps three million – accurate statistics are not available. They have acquired a reputation for friendliness and hospitality and, by virtue of their home environment in rainforests, hardiness too. Nevertheless, renewed attacks by the tatmadaw, the Burmese army, aimed at demoralizing the Karens as much as hurting them, have led to perhaps 400,000 Karens fleeing to Thailand to live in refugee camps and another 200,000 internally displaced within Burma. Inevitably, those living the life of a refugee are subject to the troubles that affect vulnerable people.

The Karens do try to protect themselves, of course. The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) attracts young men who are willing to risk their safety and indeed their lives in the effort to resist the tatmadaw. Their lives involve constant patrolling of the Karen territory trying to avoid the Burmese troops and their spies and to make strikes against them wherever possible. They are also of course keen to make better known their struggle and the atrocities committed against their people by the Burmese.

It was to help to publicise this struggle that the American Mike Tucker, a former member of the marines who had served in Korea, decided to try to enlist on a covert patrol with the KNLA. From his position as a faculty member at Zayed University at Abu Dhabi (where I myself was lecturing at the same time, coincidentally), Tucker managed to make contact with undercover members of the Karen National Union (KNU), the political wing of the KNLA. Using a variety of undercover techniques, he managed to arrange to meet up with a KNLA near to Mae Sot, which is a town on the Thai-Burmese border. Successfully crossing the river, Tucker embarked on his patrol, when he managed to get to know some of his Karen comrades and their people. Unfortunately for him, the trip goes wrong when his camera does not work and so he arranges to be taken back across the river and to return some months later. There follows his travails with trying to organise the return trip, in the face of what he believes to be treachery from the KNU and the Thai intelligence services. Ultimately, he is unsuccessful and cannot make his way back. This book tells the story of his frustration as well as providing some testament to the predicament of the Karens. It also contains fascinating details of the military aspects of patrolling in this difficult environment and many readers will be interested in the types of weaponry available and tactics used. Tucker summarises some interesting details about how to operate a guerrilla style war and how the KNLA might seek to take the fight to their more numerous and better armed but possibly less well-motivated enemy.

Tucker's prose style is functional but increasingly takes on a militaristic tone as he fancies himself returning to Karen state and perhaps playing the role of a hero. This short book will be of great use to anyone with an interest in modern history and with military conflicts in one of the less-publicised parts of the world.