KACHIN SUPPORT FOR THE
ALLIED CAUSE
It is easy in retrospect to see the Kachin
support for the Allies to have been opportunism
which could have equally well have been utilised
by the Shans. However the Kachins helped the
British in 1942 when they were clearly losing
(Clifford, 1979) and in 1943 over the first Wingate
long range incursion when victory for the Allies
was still seemingly marginal and they were
warned that this was not the beginning of a British
reoccupation and yet small groups of survivors
were helped in the Kodaung (Ferguson,1945) and
in some cases they went to extraordinary lengths
to protect abandoned wounded (MacHorton,
1958). Only in 1944-5 could the Kachins have
clearly known that the Allies were winning, when
the Burmese nationalists changed from their
armed support of the Japanese to aiding the
Allies. Opportunism in this last phase but
providing dangerously brave support earlier.
At no time did the British officers in Force
136 in their months of close association with
their Kachin guerrillas, suggest that winning the
war would provide lead to political support for
their quasi-separatist post-war aims vis-à-vis the
Burmese who had clearly opposed the British
until the last few months of the war.
Many survivors who had been helped by the
Kachins. Senior British commanders and the
officers who had been in Force136 as well as most
administrators felt that the British Government
owed these frontier tribal people a debt of honour.
This was impossible to fulfil without the
agreement and long term political good will of the
incoming government of an independent Burma
whose politicians had no particular interest in
these tribal peoples to whom with some justice
they felt superior..
Thus this administrator had to explain to
groups of Kachins that neither he nor the British