Remarkable for their military prowess, their receptivity to
Christianity, and their intricate all-embracing kinship network, the
Kachins are a hardy mountain people living in the remote hills of
northern Burma (Myanmar), and on the peripheries of China and India.
During the Second World War they strongly sided with the Allies in
defending Burma against the imperialist deigns of the Japanese military,
earning themselves sobriquets such as “amiable assassins” and “Gurkhas
of Southeast Asia”. After Burma’s independence in 1948, the Kachins were
given their own state, but in the early 1960s they went to war again,
this time fighting for autonomy for their homeland. For half a century,
funded largely by the world-renowned jade trade they control, they
maintained their armed insurgency, playing a key role in Burma’s
internecine struggles. In 1994 the Kachins and the Burmese government
signed a cease-fire agreement, which they hoped would mark the start of
an era of peace. However, in June 2011 government forces broke the truce
and war flared anew in the Kachin hills.
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