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CIA activities in Myanmar were operations by the Central Intelligence Agency and before that the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from World War II onward in the nation formerly known as Burma. There appears to be somewhat limited information concerning CIA operations in Myanmar, as compared to other nations, such as Vietnam.[ citation needed ]
During World War II, OSS operations in Burma at the time, focused on fighting the Japanese occupation of Myanmar. During what was known as the Burma Campaign, the OSS aided British forces by organizing resistance to the Japanese occupiers among indigenous ethnic groups. The Burma Campaign commenced following the Japanese conquest of Myanmar in 1942. [1]
Roger Hilsman, later to become Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, was a veteran of the efforts to form partisan anti-Japanese resistance fighters among the various ethnic groups within Myanmar. Hilsman's experiences in these efforts instilled within him a penchant for guerrilla warfare, as well as for the importance of popular mobilization during counterinsurgency operations, both of which would influence his approach to the later Vietnam war. [2]
According to released documents from the National Security Archive, the United States continuously worried about communist influence in Myanmar during the Cold War. A main concern was over economic warfare. Since the country was a major exporter of rice, the United States worried that communist control of Myanmar could result in manipulation of price and distribution of Myanmar rice to the detriment of nearby United States allies, such as India, Ceylon, Malaysia, and Japan. [3]
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At the close of the Korean War, one of the final operational theaters involving the CIA was in northern Myanmar. This operation was a strategic attempt to diminish attacks against General MacArthur's forces in the north. Li Mi, a Chinese nationalist general, had roughly 1500 soldiers trapped in northern Myanmar. The CIA trained nationalist Chinese soldiers in Thailand, armed them, and dropped them into northern Myanmar. Maoist forces awaited them, easily slaughtering many of them, thanks to a communist informant in Bangkok. CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald attempted to correct the situation by dropping more weapons and ammunition into the area. The soldiers, however, refused to fight, and instead settled in the area, growing poppies, and intermarrying with locals. This blunder by the CIA resulted in Li Mi running a major heroin operation, which the CIA saw fit to eradicate twenty years later. [5]
In 1952, in an effort to bolster Li Mi's forces, 700 men were airlifted from Taiwan. Over the course of 1952 and 1953, flights carrying weapons and ammunition arrived in Mong Hsat in the Shan State of Myanmar on nearly a daily basis. Several tons of medical supplies and communication equipment were flown in as well. General Li Mi reported that such numbers were exaggerated, however, suggesting that there had only been 20 deliveries to Mong Hsat in 1952, and that each plane could only carry ten people and one ton of payload. [6]
A CIA document from 1988 suggests that Burma had a small chemical weapons production facility, supposedly built with the help of West Germany in the early 1980s. The document claims that the facility had produced mustard gas in the past, but had ceased production. The document also goes on to state that ethnic insurgents in Burma have claimed that the Army was importing chemical weapons from China, but the CIA was unable to verify such claims. [7]
On 10 September 2007, the Myanmar government accused the CIA of assassinating a rebel Karen commander from the Karen National Union who wanted to negotiate with the military government. [8]
According to media reports citing documents published by Germany's Der Spiegel in 2010, the Embassy of the United States in Yangon is the site of an electronic surveillance facility used to monitor telephones and communications networks. The facility is run jointly by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) through a group known as Special Collection Service. [9]
In 2011 the Guardian published leaked diplomatic cable information regarding Myanmar. The cables revealed that the US funded some of the civil society groups in Myanmar that forced the government to suspend the controversial Chinese Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy river. [10]
The Tatmadaw is the military of Myanmar. It is administered by the Ministry of Defence and composed of the Myanmar Army, the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Air Force. Auxiliary services include the Myanmar Police Force, the Border Guard Forces, the Myanmar Coast Guard, and the People's Militia Units. Since independence in 1948, the Tatmadaw has faced significant ethnic insurgencies, especially in Chin, Kachin, Kayin, Kayah, and Shan states. General Ne Win took control of the country in a 1962 coup d'état, attempting to build an autarkic society called the Burmese Way to Socialism. Following the violent repression of nationwide protests in 1988, the military agreed to free elections in 1990, but ignored the resulting victory of the National League for Democracy and imprisoned its leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The 1990s also saw the escalation of the conflict between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State due to RSO attacks on Tatmadaw forces.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
The Hmong people are an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a large diasporic community in the United States of more than 300,000. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America.
The Second Sino-Japanese War, also known as the Second China–Japan War and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1945, as part of World War II. This total war between China and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia, although some scholars consider the European War and the Pacific War to be entirely separate, albeit concurrent. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century and has been described as "the Asian Holocaust", in reference to the scale of Imperial Japan's war crimes against Chinese civilians. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under the China Burma India Theater of World War II by the Western allies.
The First Indochina War was fought between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 20 July 1954. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
Shan State is a state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China (Yunnan) to the north, Laos to the east, and Thailand to the south, and five administrative divisions of Burma (Myanmar) in the west. The largest of the 14 administrative divisions by land area, Shan State covers 155,800 km2, almost a quarter of the total area of Myanmar. The state gets its name from Burmese name for the Tai peoples: "Shan people". The Tai (Shan) constitute the majority among several ethnic groups that inhabit the area. Shanland is largely rural, with only three cities of significant size: Lashio, Kengtung, and the capital, Taunggyi. Taunggyi is 150.7 km northeast of the nation's capital Naypyitaw.
The August Revolution, also known as the August General Uprising, was a revolution launched by the Việt Minh against the Empire of Vietnam and the Empire of Japan in the latter half of August 1945. The Việt Minh, led by the Indochinese Communist Party, was created in 1941 and designed to appeal to a wider population than what the communists could command.
Khun Sa was an ethnic Chinese drug lord and warlord. He was born in Hpa Hpeung village, in the Loi Maw ward of Mongyai, Northern Shan State, Burma. Before he assumed the Shan name "Khun Sa" in 1976, he was known primarily by his Chinese name, Zhang Qifu (張奇夫).
Roger Hilsman Jr. was an American soldier, government official, political scientist, and author. He saw action in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II, first with Merrill's Marauders, getting wounded in combat, and then as a guerilla leader for the Office of Strategic Services. He later became an aide and adviser to President John F. Kennedy, and briefly to President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the U.S. State Department while he served as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in 1961 to 1963 and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1963 to 1964.
The United Wa State Army, abbreviated as the UWSA or the UWS Army, is the military wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP), the de facto ruling party of Wa State in Myanmar. It is a well-equipped ethnic minority army of an estimated 20,000–30,000 Wa soldiers, led by Bao Youxiang. The UWSA was formed after the collapse of the armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in 1989.
William Ray Peers was a United States Army general, who is most notable for presiding over the Peers Commission investigation into the Mỹ Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.
The Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization, also known as the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), was an organization created by the SACO Treaty signed by China and the United States in 1942 during the Second World War. It established a mutual intelligence gathering entity in China between the respective nations against Japan. It operated in China jointly along with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America's first intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA while also serving as joint training program between the two nations.
Mong Hsat is a town in the Shan State of Myanmar, the capital of Mong Hsat Township. It is served by Monghsat Airport.
The village of Santikhiri, formerly known as Mae Salong, is in the Thai highlands on Doi Mae Salong mountain of the Daen Lao Range, in Mae Fa Luang District, Chiang Rai Province, the northernmost province of Thailand. The area has an alpine-like landscape and climate, and is known for its hill tribe villages, tea plantations, and cherry blossoms.
This is a list of activities carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Indonesia.
CIA activities in Laos started in the 1950s. In 1959, U.S. Special Operations Forces began to train some Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare techniques as early as the fall of 1959 under the code name "Erawan". Under this code name, General Vang Pao, who served the royal Lao family, recruited and trained his Hmong and Iu-Mien soldiers. The Hmong and Iu-Mien were targeted as allies after President John F. Kennedy, who refused to send more American soldiers to battle in Southeast Asia, took office. Instead, he called the CIA to use its tribal forces in Laos and "make every possible effort to launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnam with its Asian recruits." General Vang Pao then recruited and trained his Hmong soldiers to ally with the CIA and fight against North Vietnam. The CIA itself claims that the CIA air operations in Laos from 1955-1974 were the "largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA."
CIA activities in Vietnam were operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam from the 1950s to the late 1960s, before and during the Vietnam War. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, North Vietnam was controlled by communist forces under Ho Chi Minh's leadership. South Vietnam, with the assistance of the U.S., was anti-communist. The economic and military aid supplied by the U.S. to South Vietnam continued until the 1970s. The CIA participated in both the political and military aspect of the wars in Indochina. The CIA provided suggestions for political platforms, supported candidates, used agency resources to refute electoral fraud charges, manipulated the certification of election results by the South Vietnamese National Assembly, and instituted the Phoenix Program. It worked particularly closely with the ethnic minority Montagnards, Hmong, and Khmer. There are 174 National Intelligence Estimates dealing with Vietnam, issued by the CIA after coordination with the US intelligence community.
Li Mi was a high-ranking Nationalist general who participated in the anti-Communist Encirclement Campaigns, Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War. He was one of the few Kuomintang commanders to achieve notable victories against both Chinese Communist forces and the Imperial Japanese Army. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he withdrew his forces to Burma and Thailand, where he continued to carry out guerrilla raids into Communist-held territory.
The Kuomintang Islamic insurgency was a continuation of the Chinese Civil War by Chinese Muslim Kuomintang Republic of China Army forces mainly in Northwest China, in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, and another insurgency in Yunnan.
The Kuomintang in Burma or Kuomintang in the Golden Triangle were Kuomintang troops that fled from Communist-controlled China to Burma in 1950 after their defeat by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War. Officially the Yunnan Anti-communist National Salvation Army, the Chinese Nationalist troops in Burma were commanded by General Li Mi. It attempted several incursions into Yunnan in the early 1950s, only to be pushed back into Burma each time by the Chinese Communist Party's People's Liberation Army.
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