Burmese Rebel chief more boy than warrior
Source : Seth Mydans and Suan Phung, New York Times
Between them, the 12-year-old twins say, they command 400,000 invisible soldiers. If anybody shoots at them, the bullets just bounce off. And they can kill their enemies simply by pointing a rifle at the ground and concentrating really hard.
These might be the fantasies of a million schoolboys. But they are the beliefs that have led grown men into battle -- the legends that surround two child warriors who lead a ragged ethnic insurgency called God's Army, just across the border in Myanmar, the former Burma.
Last week, one of the twins, Luther Htoo, made a four-day hike with 15 of his soldiers from his mountain hideout to the hills along the border for his first interview since God's Army carried out a suicidal raid on a Thai hospital in January.
He met with Jason Bleibtreu, an American photographer and video cameraman, and spoke with The New York Times by satellite telephone -- a fidgety child with a little-boy voice who answered many of the questions by turning to his followers and asking, "What shall I say?" After some discussion, some of his answers were these: He wants freedom for his people, the Karen minority. He is invulnerable to land mines and bullets. His favorite toys are real guns and ammunition. And he misses his mother and father.
On videotape, he seems more like a spoiled mascot than a general, carried through the woods on the shoulders of his men, handed a lit cheroot whenever he murmurs, "I want a smoke," and tolerated benignly as he climbs in and out of the laps of the men he commands.
He sports a camouflage fatigue shirt with a "U.S. Army" patch, a "Love" tattoo on his arm and a new short-cropped haircut, and he turns away from time to time to double over in a wrenching smoker's cough.
Luther and his brother, Johnny, did not join the January raid, in which all 10 gunmen were shot dead after taking hostage more than 800 patients and staff at a hospital in the town of Ratchaburi. But the chain-smoking twins with their long hair, vacant expressions and claims of divinity became the objects of widespread curiosity abroad.
They also became the targets of a stepped-up hunt by the Burmese military, found themselves barred from their potential sanctuary in Thailand and lost the support of other Karen separatists, who are now under increased pressure as a result of the disastrous raid.
On the run and short of food, the fighters say, God's Army has split into three small groups. The twins, leading two of the groups, now talk to each other only by hand-held radio. Altogether, their men say, they command fewer than 200 fighters.
In a separate interview here in a Thai border village, one of the boys' followers, a 45-year-old guerrilla, talked at length about the insurgency and the extraordinary legends that have grown up around the Htoo twins.
Using the Karen term "bu," or "little brother," he referred to Luther as Bu Lu and to Johnny as Bu Joh, and he was careful to note which miracles he claimed to have witnessed and which he had not.
"Once, when Bu Joh was bathing in a stream, he shouted to everybody, 'Look at me!' and he jumped into the water," said the guerrilla, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"When he came out he was an old man with long white hair and a white beard," he said. "All the soldiers were afraid, but he said, 'Don't be afraid: I'm Bu Joh! If you don't believe me, I'll change back.' And he jumped back into the water and came out as a boy again. I didn't see this myself, but more than 100 soldiers did see it."
Several other incidents described by the guerrilla also suggest that the boys are constantly proving their powers to skeptics.
In one incident he said he did witness, Luther gave each fighter three magic bullets but admonished them to save them for emergencies. One doubter disobeyed and shot one of the bullets at a tree. When he checked the tree, there were 10 bullet holes.
"After that, he believed," the guerrilla said.
In another incident, Luther sent his men into battle but remained where he was, pointing his rifle silently at the ground. Afterward he asked how many of the enemy had been killed. Twenty, he was told. He then held up his rifle; exactly 20 bullets had disappeared from its magazine.
Legends like that challenge the imagination of most people, including most other ethnic Karens. But one Karen student in Bangkok, who is not a follower of God's Army, said he was quite ready to believe that the boys are reincarnations of heroes from the past.
The emergence of charismatic holy men with claims to magical powers "is fairly common in Southeast Asia in times of trouble," said Dr. Sunai Phasuk, a Thai political scientist who has studied the God's Army phenomenon. "They don't have other sources of reference, they don't have support from authorities, and they don't have a big army, so they turn to supernatural beliefs."
The Karen have been fighting a separatist insurgency since Burma became independent of British colonial rule a half century ago. Most other ethnic groups have reached an accommodation with the government in the last decade, but some Karen have continued to fight. The emergence of God's Army in the last three years is a sign of divisions and desperation as the Karen suffer defeat after defeat.
Movements like God's Army are similar to end-of-the-world movements that predict an imminent apocalypse, Dr. Sunai said. Indeed, the guerrilla fighter quoted Luther as saying, "Please believe me, not too long from now the world will explode."
Like some other movements of this kind, God's Army lives by ascetic rules. Although smoking is obviously permitted, alcohol, drugs and adultery are banned, along with milk, eggs and pork. Many Karen are Christian, and the boys are said to know the Bible by heart although they have never studied it.
What is unusual about God's Army, he said, is that it is led, at least nominally, by children.
Their fighting force includes a number of other child soldiers, the guerrilla said, many of them orphans of the war. Indeed, he said, with God's Army split into three groups, a third 12-year-old leader with magical powers has emerged named Chopa Thupli, or King of the Black Tongue.
This boy, he said, is actually 200 years old, a Thai king who fought against the Burmese in ancient times and decided to return as a Karen so that he could keep on fighting them.
His divinity is marked by the black coloration of his tongue, a sign among some people here of magical powers. The guerrilla said the twins did not have black tongues, as others have reported, and Mr. Bleibtreu also said it did not appear that Luther had a black tongue.
But the twins are also reincarnations of past leaders, with a direct connection to heaven, the guerrilla said.
Johnny, the funny, talkative one, was born first and goes everywhere first, he said, even though Luther has greater divine powers. The difference is measured in the size of the armies they command: Luther has 250,000 invisible heavenly soldiers while Johnny has 150,000.
But it seems that Johnny commands more of the everyday kind of soldier. According to the guerrilla, he has about 100 fighters, who protect some 300 civilian followers, apparently including the boys' parents. Luther has about 30 fighters, although in the interview he had to ask a subordinate for the number.
The boys' parents are simple farmers without magical powers, the guerrilla said. When the boys became leaders, their father put down his hoe and took up a gun to follow them. And now, if he is in need of special help, the guerrilla said, the boys will detach a contingent of invisible soldiers to assist him.
In their meeting with Mr. Bleibtreu on Thursday, the guerrillas -- both boys and men -- carried an assortment of M-16 and AK-47 rifles and grenade launchers. They wore fatigues, shorts and a Donald Duck T-shirt along with black head scarves and rubber sandals. Some were barefoot.
The deep forest was filled with bird song, the buzz of insects and the constant dry coughing of the fighters.
There was only one moment when gunfire seemed a possibility.
"I can shoot a weapon -- would you like me to show you?" Luther said to his visitor, but his soldiers told him, "No, no, better not, because the Burmese Army might hear."
Mr. Bleibtreu said the soldiers seemed to treat the boy with a mix of deference and patient parenting.
"They wouldn't allow him to act upon all of his whims," he said. "Sometimes he would want to ride on someone's shoulders. He would motion, lift me up, lift me up, and they would talk him out of it."
There seemed to be nothing extraordinary about this 12-year-old apart, perhaps, from his childishness.
"What struck me most was he seemed to want attention, emotional contact," Mr. Bleibtreu said. "He wanted more hugs from his mother. He would sit down with me and put his hand on my shoulder. I got the feeling he wanted me to hug him. He would jump from soldier to soldier to their laps. The other boys weren't doing this. I felt sad, as a father: geez, this kid wants a hug."
At one point, though, the atmosphere darkened for a moment as Luther seemed to grow annoyed at the constant questions. "He yelled out, and everyone was quiet. It was almost like a bark, and it was quite clear it was, 'Stop badgering me!' I was surprised, and I was taken aback by it, and the people took it fairly seriously."
At the end of the videotape, the group pauses in silence as one of the fighters leads a prayer. And Luther, the holy man, could be any child -- perhaps a 6-year-old child -- shifting and squirming in boredom.
Comfortably cradled in the lap of a tough-looking guerrilla, the boy yawns and rubs his eyes. Then he rubs his face. Then with an effort he sits forward and closes his eyes in an attempt at concentration. Then he begins playing with a canteen cup, wiggling its handle. Finally, as the men sing a closing hymn, Luther blinks himself back to attention and joins in for a word or two.
The guerrilla who is holding him seems used to this. He pays no attention.