Episode #178: Locked and Loaded
“It is safe to say that nobody has written more about Burmese small arms than me. In small arms journals and reports in the Western world, full stop, period: Nobody else has written as much as me! I am humbled to say that, but I know it's the truth, because I've written it, and I've seen everything else, and I've researched everything else.”
These are the straightforward words of Miles Vining. A former US Marine and current member of the Free Burma Rangers, he spent his teenage in Yangon, where he saw a very different side of the country than most tourists and expats.
Miles attended the elite International School of Yangon. His classmates ranged from children of diplomats and aid workers, to military cronies and illicit traders. He notes the odd juxtaposition of his adolescent years within the context of an oppressive society. “I was just a teenager going through a really rough time, against the very crazy geopolitical backdrop of a military dictatorship going on! So it was kind of like, ‘Oh, man, this is a military dictatorship, but alright, what am I going to wear for prom?’” Many of his peers had little awareness—and little interest—in the political and social reality beyond the walls of their school and home, and if anything, took advantage of the prevailing lawlessness. For example, even Miles talks about how he would give traffic policemen cigarettes, so that with a wave of the hand, they’d change the traffic lights when he approached, and he wouldn’t have to wait. The events of the Saffron Revolution in 2007 and Cyclone Nargis the following year brought the political reality of the country crashing down at least in some small way; school was cancelled for extended periods in both years—although for many of his classmates, these were like little more than snow days in a New England winter.
Miles expands on his teenage angst. “I was a pretty obnoxious, rambunctious, troublemaking kid who had a very tough time fitting in,” he admits. “I didn't make very many friends, and pissed off a lot of people and teachers.” As he didn’t have much of a social network, he turned to such video games instead, such as Call of Duty, Counter Strike, and Medal of Honor. Intrigued by the games’ digital weapons, he became interested in guns in the real world. And he didn’t have to look far, as armed Burmese guards could be found in front of embassies and government buildings all around Yangon.
“I began this adventure series of trying to look at all their guns,” he recalls. “So it would become a game, and I would be like, ‘Okay, if I can get the serial number of a rifle, that's a win. If I can look at the entire rifle, that's a win. If I can have the rifle in my hand, that's a win. If I can take it apart, that's a win. If I can disassemble it and take pictures of it, then if I can make a video with it, that's like the ultimate win right there! And I started doing that.”
As Miles had been told by a friend that most of the guards weren’t allowed live ammunition, that gave him confidence to be more daring in his approach, to see how far he could get. Additionally, he acknowledges his skin color was also in his favor. “To be dead honest, my white privilege was really working for me in all this. If you want to call a spade a spade, if I had been an Asian kid, if I had been even a brown American kid, no way would I have been able to get away with this,” he notes. “But [it worked] because I was this random white kid showing up on a bike and saying, ‘Hey, man, you want some cigarettes? Can I see your M-16?’”
By the time he was 16 years old, Miles had amassed a huge database chronicling specific information on the Burmese military’s collection of small arms, which far surpassed the published work of any professional military analyst up to that point. That year, he happened to meet the editor of Small Arms Review, who, amazingly, suggested that he submit an essay on his findings to the magazine. Adapting the pseudonym “V. Kenneth,” the article immediately put him on the radar of scholars and journalists, and continues to be cited to this day.
What started out merely as a way to keep himself entertained was taking on a life of its own. Now, beyond simply recording entries, he wanted to make greater sense of his findings. “How did they get here?” he would ask himself about the latest entries. “What do these serial numbers mean? And how do I deduce more information from this? What's the bigger picture? And what's the bigger story that I can put together?” So Miles set out to not only catalog detailed information about each gun he came across, but also understand how and why a Burmese soldier got possession of it. He was also able to find anomalies that didn’t fit the general patterns he was seeing. One example of this occurred during the Saffron Revolution, when 40-millimeter grenade launchers appeared on the streets for the first time.
As he recorded more and more entries, Miles found that the origin of these small arms was incredibly diverse. He recorded models from Singapore, Egypt, China, Turkey, Syria, Yugoslavia, as well as remnants from the Vietnam War. “The Burmese never throw anything away,” he notes. “As long as it's working, they keep using it and they cannibalize parts. They refurbish wood, they paint it over, they keep what they have. That is a recurring theme when looking at third world economies or third world small arms dynamics… The Burmese are able to keep things in service for a very long time! Many years after [the guns] are decommissioned everywhere else in the world, they're able to keep things still running.”
Miles breaks down how small arms are initially shipped into Myanmar by a foreign manufacturer, and then copied for local production. “Almost every derivative and variant of Burmese small arms that has been used by the Burmese military, it has been entirely manufactured by local industry,” he notes.
As an example, he cites the strong West German presence in the post-World War II period—which included the arms manufacturers Heckler and Koch, and Fritz Werner—but both companies left after the 1962 coup. “But then, Israel swoops in and completely revamps Burmese small arms production and all the infantry arms used by the Burmese infantry… the light machine guns, the under-barrel grenade launchers, the main battle rifles and the carbines are all of Israeli design and manufacture.” Miles describes their close relationship going beyond arms, however, and extending to support during United Nations voting as well.
Over time, Miles also started to wonder why there would suddenly be a surge in the number of a particular model weapon, originating from a particular country. He realized that actually, small arms are just the tip of the iceburg; it was the hidden parts that now demanded his attention. “Small arms are usually the icing on a cake, right? They get chucked in there along with bigger negotiations. So it's like, ‘Oh, we're going to help out that country with like oil reserves, and this and that. And oh, by the way, we'll upgrade your small arms program as well’…. I take that to mean that the small arms development in Burma has always tied itself to larger political partners.” Again, Miles goes back to Israel to illustrate his point. “Israel's relationship to Burma was crucially important for Burma. But Burma did not solidify very good relations with Israel just to upgrade their small arms programming.” In his mind, then, the increased availability of Israeli small arms among Burmese soldiers is likely a sign of much bigger, largely unknown relations between the two countries.
Miles’ research has since expanded to include the country’s armed Ethnic Armed Groups (EAOs). He’s particularly impressed with the smalls arms being manufactured by the Kachin and the Wa, noting that the latter produce so much that they end up selling to other EAOs. And many of these weapons are now in high demand by PDF (People’s Defense Forces) units besides the EAOs. But they all are being used to fight the Burmese military. “I mean, in Karen state, you have corrupt Burmese commanders and corrupt Burmese bases that are actually selling their own ammunition to local Karen, who then give it to the KNLA [Karen National Liberation Army], who then use it against the Burmese! So you've got this weird dynamic where they're fighting the people they also supply at the same time!”
Much has been made about the fact that the PDFs are not as well armed as the military, but to Miles, it is more a matter of quality than quantity. “In the Burmese context… low altitude air defense weapons will change the battlefield entirely,” he says. “You want something that is effective at those lower altitudes, so you can hit helicopters, so you can hit low flying aircraft… The Burmese have air superiority in the sky, so they are completely unmolested. If you had some of these air defense weapons, that would completely change the game.” But Miles sees little chance of this happening, as the Western countries that own this technology are hesitant to provide equipment that could result in “another Malaysian airliner being blown out of the sky.” He notes that the Wa do have Soviet-era air defense systems, but it’s unclear to what extent they’re willing to allow other groups access to these to use against the military. (It is worth noting that others approach the issue of the Tatmadaw’s air superiority from different perspectives; for example, Amnesty International’s Montse Ferrer spoke with us about their efforts to limit the supply of jet fuel in a recent episode).
While some analysts have posited that a true coalition of ethnic fighting forces could take down the military within a week, Miles doesn’t see any signs that this will be happening anytime soon. “They don't have the capacity to go beyond what they’ve got. They're barely holding on,” he notes, “Every act is defensive. You can't go on the offense when you're still fighting the good defense! They don't have the capacity, they don't have the manpower, they don't have the arms to support it.” Because of that, the conflict remains at a standstill, with each side only able to hold the ground they now have. “The Burmese [military] is always going to have the financial funding, they're always going to have the airpower, they're always going to have the manpower. The ethnics are always going to have the jungle to hide in, they're always going to have the popular support of the people around them, but they're never going to have the funding.”
He also sees the military’s willingness to press on no matter how many of their soldiers die on the battlefield. “The military itself is a state within a state, and everybody in the military owes their allegiance to it. This isn't a professional army that exists elsewhere, this is an entire livelihood and industry within itself!”
In this context, he sees the conflict as becoming a “Forever War.” However, he also mentions possibilities that could change the prevailing dynamic, such as if resistance forces could get their hands on an air defense system, or if the Wa decide to lend a hand against the military in a more direct way. But even this latter possibility is complicated by the very profitable illicit trade, including drugs, that funds the Wa army, and the complicated relations that China has with both the Tatmadaw and the ethnic organizations. “So I don't know,” Miles says. “I don't know the answer to that at all, to be honest.”
Miles continues to keep an eye on small arms, pointing to the many answers that can still be found there. “Diving into small arms research in Burma, you can go down some of the most amazing and fantastic rabbit holes and relationships and geopolitics and then who double crossed who and backtrack to where things are getting made and what secret deals were going on. It's all there, right? All these crazy things happening! And also developments in small arms use, like, there's designs that will blow your mind away, like, wow, this happened!” Miles says in closing. “It's all there. The whole shebang is there! But it's untouched, and nobody's interested in it, because it's the dark hole that Burma is, so it’s no surprise there. It's like the world doesn't care about Burma yet again! The field of small arms research in Burma is just as bleak as the field of everything else to study when it comes to Burmese anything. And that's the unpleasant truth that I think epitomizes it.”