Kachin Rebels Rebuff Myanmar Regime’s Peace Talks Overture: Sources

KIA troops patrol during a four-day summit between ethnic rebel army leaders and government representatives in KIA-controlled Mai Ja Yang town in Kachin State in July 2016. / AFP

The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) has rejected the regime’s invitation to meet around a table in Naypyitaw, sources told The Irrawaddy.

On Sept. 4, the regime’s National Solidarity and Peacemaking Negotiation Committee (NSPNC) formally invited the KIO, which is the political arm of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) that controls most of its home state, to meet in Myanmar’s administrative capital.

The invitation was signed by NSPNC Chairman Yar Pyae and carried no preconditions, the sources said.

But the KIO insisted that any dialogue should take place outside Myanmar, i.e. neither in Naypyitaw nor Kachin State.

The regime’s peace overture comes even as its forces ramp up offensives in Kachin State, backed by airstrikes and gunboats.

However, KIA spokesman Colonel Naw Bu said he was not aware of any such invitation or response from the KIO.

The Kachin rebels have previously made clear that they will not enter any talks with the military regime, which they consider illegitimate. Speaking at the 65th anniversary of the Kachin Revolution, KIA leader Lieutenant General Gun Maw reiterated that the real question is whether the regime is willing to engage with the parallel National Unity Government (NUG).

Since the 2021 coup, the KIO/KIA has fought the Myanmar military alongside the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and other Spring Revolution forces. It is also a member of the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF).

The regime’s latest overture comes as battles rage across Kachin State and along the Irrawaddy River between Tigyaing and Bhamo, where resistance forces have reportedly decimated a regime flotilla trying to resupply Bhamo.

Installing himself as president in April this year, coup leader Min Aung Hlaing invited ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to join peace talks in Naypyitaw within a 100-day window that has now closed.

But he also told heartland People’s Defense Force (PDF), which are loyal to the shadow NUG, to surrender.

All EAOs that turned up for the talks have been co-opted to varying degrees or maintained decades-long ceasefires with the Myanmar military.

The only outlier was the ethnic Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which was forced by China to stop fighting the regime in northern Shan and Mandalay only last year.