Myanmar people, Burmese people ethnics & more

Myanmar government in then Yangon and armed Mon groups plus Karen, Shan and from time they have been joined by Kachin and Chin people. Kachin live in the north of Myanmar, that is the Himalaya region and Chin are on the northwest region bordering India. One tribe of the Chin people are the Naga which are the same as the Indian people in Nagaland on the Indian side.

Presently the obstacle to peace between the people of today in 2011 are only two groups, the Karen and Shan of northwest Myanmar, the Shan of that area are more or less left alone by the central government who just take taxes from them.

The Shan People of the very north east Myanmar,

called "the golden Triangle" at the border to China earn their money by growing opium poppy  and production of amphetamine and other drugs, they trade this stuff mainly to Thailand. The Thai make lot of business with the Myanmar's in the Mae Hong Son area since they all come over to Thailand to buy their goods, there is no much supply on the Myanmar side. This mainly done in the Myanmar area west of Thailand's Mae Hong Son.

Sometimes riots in Chin State and elsewhere erupt. Chin State is really totally neglected and probably the poorest in Myanmar. Naga people are a sub tribe of the Chin. Almost all struggle between the central Myanmar government and the different ethnic groups came to an end around a decade ago. The only groups left who

missionaries, and there are to-day upwards of a hundred thousand Christian Karen in the country. The Karen occupy a long strip on the east at the border to Thailand and a considerable portion of the Irrawaddy Delta. By temperament the Karen differ radically from their Burmese neighbors. They are singularly devoid of humor, they are stolid and cautious, and they lack altogether the light gaiety and fascination of the Burmese. Yet it is not suggested that in some qualities they do not surpass them.

If their origin is still obscure, it is at least certain that they are not the aborigines of the land. All their traditions point the other way. " In my early travels," wrote Mason, their picturesque apostle, " the Karen pointed out to me the precise spots where they took refuge in the days of Alompra, and where they had come down and avenged themselves on their enemies; but when I asked them who built this city, as we stood together on the forest-clad battlements of a dilapidated fortification they replied : These cities in our jungles were in ruins when we came here. This country is not our own, we came from the north, where we were independent of the Burmese and Thai who now rule over us but now they are Myanmar people.

Then we had a city and a country of our own near called Toungoo. All the Karen of Thailand and Myanmar came originally from that region.' When I asked for the time of their dispersion they were silent. The fact was clearly before them ; but the retrospect was too obscure to determine the distance. Yet they saw far beyond Toungoo. On the edge of the misty horizon was the river of running sand which their ancestors had crossed before coming. That was a fearful trackless region, where the sands rolled before the winds like the waves of the sea. They were led through it by a chieftain who had more than human power to guide them." The river of running sand was boldly identified by Mason with the Gobi desert, of which Fa Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, has left this description : "There are evil spirits in this river of sand and such scorching winds that whosoever encountered them dies, and none escape. Neither birds are seen in the air, nor quadrupeds on the ground. On every side as far as the eye can reach, if you seek for the proper place to cross, there is no other mark to distinguish it than the skeletons of those who have perished there ; these alone seem to indicate the route." But the identity of the traditional desert of the Karen with the desert of Gobi has yet to be established.

from Myitkyina to the Third Defile; and along the Chindwin, where traces of their former supremacy survive in the principalities of Singkaling, Hkamti and Thaungdut. They have ruled at Ava, and have come near to the mastery of Burma. They owe their failure to their inability to combine on any national scale, in economic qualities they surpass the Burmese.

The funny or rather not so funny thing is that on the one hand the US have their war against the drug and opium growing business in the north east Shan state, called " Golden Triangle". On the other hand they support the Shan against the central government of Myanmar. Its typical US politics, nothing makes sense and the left hand don't know what the right is doing.