Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The Cold War Comes to Burma

Given the present interchange between Russia's Vladimir Putin  and President Obama, the following true story from 1961 may be of interest.

2 p.m. February 15, 1961: Squadron-Leader Tin Maung Aye, accompanied by the commander of the 5th Kachin Rifles, Major Aye Win, were flying reconnaissance in a Burma Air Force Cessna southeast of Kengtung. Over the Mong Hpayak area, they spotted a field with strips of cloth laid out to spell “D Z” and realized that the Kuomintang forces were preparing a supply drop zone. They returned to Kengtung airstrip and sent up three BAF fighter planes with orders to force any KMT aircraft they encountered to land at Kengtung. The squadron patrolled the area for about a half-hour with no success. Then, just when they were about to return to base, they spotted a green four-engine plane enter Burmese airspace from the south and make two air drops. Squadron-leader Maung Thein radioed the intruder to identify itself but got no reply. The three Burmese Sea Fury fighters closed in and were fired upon but not hit. When they fired back, the intruder made a U-turn, heading for Thailand. In a second pass, both the intruder and one fighter were damaged and crashed just inside Thai airspace. The Burmese pilot, Noel Peters, died in the crash. One of the other fighters managed to reach Kengtung with part of its tail shot away, the third fighter was undamaged..
The Burmese army and the KMT often fought on the ground but this was their only air battle, at least during the years I lived in Kengtung. The KMTs, of course, were the remnants of General Chiang Kai Shek’s anti-Communist Chinese forces supported by Taiwan. They had had little effect on the Chinese Communist army since the 1949 Communist takeover, but often harassed the Shans and mountain people of Kengtung State.
Radio Voice of America that night announced that the Burma Air Force had shot down an unarmed plane bearing relief supplies to refugees in Northeast Burma. I could see the damaged fighter parked beside the local airstrip, and the Burmese newspapers were full of reports of the battle and the death of Pilot-Officer Peters. I knew VOA had it wrong, possibly misinformed by Taiwan, its ally in the so-called “Cold War” of communism vs. democracy in the mid-twentieth century.
By the time Burmese officials could inspect the wreckage across the border in Thailand, KMTs had stripped the four-engine plane of identifying markings and equipment. It appeared to be a modified World War B-24.
A Taiwanese group calling itself the Free China Relief Association acknowledged chartering the plane to supply “Chinese refugees.” Taipei news editorials compared the overflight of Burma to America’s use of U-2 spy planes over Russia, said the flights would continue and “if we are caught, we are caught.”
A week later the Burma Air Force flew military attaches of the United States, India, Indonesia and Thailand to Kengtung to inspect the damaged BAF fighter, and then on to Mong Paliao near the Laotian border, where they had recently captured a KMT base. There, reporters saw 75 mm guns, machine guns, mines, ammunition, radios and fuel drums, all bearing United States markings. The Nation, an English-language Rangoon newspaper, printed a photo of one label: “Commanding Officer, Erie Ordnance Depot, Port Clinton Ohio, TO: Officer in Charge, Air Freight Terminal, Travis AFB, California”. A Burmese reporter noted the American officials paid closest attention to equipment several years old, and said it could be bought by anyone at any surplus store. The reporter said they made no comment on items manufactured within the past year.
Burma had enough trouble fighting its own insurgent armies in those years without involving itself in conflicts between world powers. It wanted no part either of the United States and its allies, or of China and the Soviet Union. It declined foreign aid from either side whenever possible, and distanced itself from both. References to the “American Way of Life” made little impression in Burma. Burmese could read reports of American racial problems as well as anyone else, and were familiar with Russian maneuvers as well. No one could prove the United States knew what Taiwan was up to. But some thought that if it didn’t know, then of what use was the CIA?
In any case, there were protest demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon. A crowd of 3,000 demonstrators got out of hand. Before police controlled the riot, two demonstrators died and fifty three were hospitalized. Things quieted down until two months later, when U.S. Senator Fulbright publicly declared that he didn’t think it a good idea to send American boys to the jungles of Laos. The terrain was not suited to them, he said; better for them to fight in Vietnam, Thailand, or Burma.
Russia showed the world that it could make equally bad foreign relations blunders. In April 1959 TASS, the official Soviet news agency, implied that a prominent Burmese newspaper editor was in the pay of the U.S. Embassy. The TASS correspondent must have been dismayed when many Burma newspapers published front-page blasts against him personally and started two lawsuits for libel, pointing out that the source he quoted didn’t even exist.
About the same time, the Russian military attachĂ© entered Rangoon General Hospital and, according to news reports, tried to pass along information (nature unknown) to Burmese Intelligence. He then jumped from a hospital window in an apparent escape attempt. His Russian comrades caught him and hustled him back to the Soviet Embassy, and from there to the airport at Mingaladon. Several reporters tried to question him there while he was being put aboard a plane, and his Russian escorts beat them up. Even pro-Communist Burmese newspapers then united with other Burmese to denounce the Soviet Union, and about forty reporters gathered at the Soviet Embassy to hurl tomatoes. The Russians emerged armed with broken chairs and joined battle. Police soon stopped the fight, but the Burma press gleefully pointed out that in Russia, May 5th is celebrated as “Freedom of the Press Day.”
It is not surprising that for many years Burma’s attitude toward the world powers was, in effect, “A pox on both your houses!”

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