nternational rights groups accuse the Burmese army of deliberate attacks against civilians, torture, rape, forced conscription and summary executions. Both sides employ child soldiers and continue to seed the ground with land mines that have claimed combatants and civilians alike.
The conflict, which reignited when a 17-year cease-fire collapsed last June, persists despite a political thaw in lowland southern Burma that has taken hardened observers by surprise. Since coming to power last year, the nominally civilian government has freed hundreds of prisoners, eased media censorship and reached agreements with other ethnic minority rebel groups in a wide-ranging push to open up the country.
In remote Kachin, however, the fate of ancestral lands has been a sticking point for the mostly Christian Kachin rebels, who have a reputation for fearsome hit-and-run guerrilla tactics that date from World War II. The Kachins are one of more than 100 ethnic minorities in Burma, a strategic crossroads among China, India and Thailand.