Reclaiming Ground
Coming Soon…
Founded in 2023, the Karenni Interim Executive Council (IEC) is one answer to a pressing question – what form will governance take, free of the military’s decades-long repression? Wtih a goal of a federal democratic union in sight, IEC Secretary Banya Khung Aung explains that the Karenni provisional government was established in a bottom-up process, bringing together military and civilian leaders, including MPs who won in the 2020 elections and women and youth representatives.
At least of 80% of the Karenni population, or 250,000 people, have been displaced by the conflict in the past four years, according to the IEC. After the coup, the priority was meeting this urgent need. “Fighting broke out in Karenni State in early May 2021. There were thousands of people fleeing from their homes and moving back to the deeper jungle, more rural areas across Karenni,” Banya Khung Aung says. “And we started to form some of the committees like the humanitarian, health, education committees to respond to the needs of all the people.”
Given the realities on the ground, drafting a formal constitution or holding elections was not feasible. Instead, the Interim Arrangements of Karenni State established the IEC as the executive body and the Karenni State Consultative Council as the main policy-making institution. The IEC also engages with other ethnic organizations in an effort to unify Karenni armed resistance groups under civilian oversight— an essential step given Myanmar’s long history with military juntas. “One of the key problems we’ve faced,” says Banya Khung Aung, “is that the military, ever since it seized power, has refused to allow any real degree of civilian oversight. It has effectively become a state within a state.”
As displaced civilians return to their homes, they find a landscape that has been transformed by landmine contamination. Before the coup, there had been only one known Karenni mine casualty in nearly 10 years. The intensified conflict has seen a sharp increase with 106 civilians killed and 450 injured by airstrikes, artillery and landmines in Karenni State in 2024 alone, according to the Karenni Human Rights Group, which Banya Khung Aung founded. He attributes the widespread threat to civilians mainly to the military’s planting of mines, although Karenni armed organizations also use use explosive devices for defensive purposes.
In the fifth episode of the Navigating a Minefield series, Banya Khung Aung relates how landmines have become a multi-layered threat for the Karenni people, causing injuries and deaths, creating a climate of fear for people on their own land, and making normal life dangerous on a daily basis. “Fear now makes the land become evil so they are afraid to even to step on the area where they are used to play happily,” he says. “[It forces] people to flee their lands and ensures they cannot return. This is a crime against humanity.”
There are neither national mine standards nor formal de-mining projects underway in Myanmar, which Banya Khung Aung attributes to the military’s refusal to allow progress on mine action after the National League for Democracy’s election victory in 2015. International humanitarian mine actors warn that ad hoc or untrained de-mining is exceedingly dangerous, with the lack of technical surveys and marking requiring areas to be cleared again in future.
Civilians returning to their homes cannot wait, Banya Khung Aung says. People need to grow food and maintain their livelihoods in already challenging circumstances. In the absence of major international support, the Karenni are using their own model and local knowledge for mine risk education and to conduct de-mining. Methods include disarming mines with knives or bamboo sticks at great risk, clearing areas with tractors, and controlled fires to detonate or damage explosive devices.
At present, there is very little international support for these efforts. There should be a parallel process for future collaboration with a civilian government guided by international standards, Banya Khung Aung says, while urgent local efforts have to continue. He adds that the international community should be learning from local knowledge and efforts on the ground in conflict areas to inform mine action standards, as well as providing support, for example in the purchase of tractors, in capacities where very modest funding can save many lives. The greater need for international aid, amid the large-scale recent cutbacks, encompasses the humanitarian crisis and support for community-based self-reliance and livelihood activities.
“We understand that there should be an MOU, there should be a very clear process working with the government. But we cannot wait until these times for a Karenni State. Now, more than 80 to 85% is under our control and then there are 1,000 landmines planted every day,” Banya Khung Aung says. “We need to survive today. We need to clean the land today… Sometimes we cannot adjust the process for the international standard, because we are so far from the international standard. We are in the war zone.”
The landmine threat cannot be viewed in isolation. The military’s persecution of civilians in ethnic states is a strategic campaign of fear, Banya Khung Aung says, intensified amid the widespread resistance triggered by the coup, with airstrikes and targeting civilians central to military operations. The immense challenges to people’s ability to grow food and sustain themselves, combined with long-term trauma and psychosocial impacts, are shared by the Karenni and many other populations across the country.
Banya Khung Aung describes a shared understanding, shaped by decades of experience dealing with the military, that any lasting resolution to landmine proliferation and threats against civilians will ultimately be decided on the battlefield. In his view, the upcoming December elections merely extend a familiar pattern—one in which the military consolidates power under the guise of legitimacy, followed by ceasefire negotiations designed to divide and weaken resistance movements. “We know that we we cannot take over from the military generals by a negotiation process,” he says. “We, the people in Burma, believe that the only one way that we should kick out the military is by military activity.”