2009 Kokang incident

Kokang incident
Part of the Internal conflict in Myanmar
Date 27 August 2009 – 30 August 2009 Location Kokang, Myanmar Status Burmese government victory
Belligerents
MNDAA	Union of Myanmar
Commanders and leaders
Pheung Kya-shin	Vice Sr. Gen. Maung Aye
Casualties and losses
According to junta government: 8 killed 640 weapons seized	According to junta government: 26 killed 47 wounded
1 Chinese civilian killed 30,000 displaced

The Kokang incident was a violent series of skirmishes that broke out in August 2009 in Kokang in Myanmar's northern Shan State. Several clashes between the Burmese military junta forces (including the Myanmar Armed Forces, also known as Tatmadaw, and the Myanmar Police Force) and ethnic minorities took place. As a result of the conflict, the MNDAA lost control of the area and as many as 30,000 refugees fled to Yunnan province in neighbouring China.

Before the events, the military government had a cease-fire with most of the region's ethnic groups since 1989. Since 2008, however, the military junta has proposed that the ethnic armies (so-called "cease-fire groups") be assimilated into the Tatmadaw and converted into "border guards"; most of the ethnic armies have opposed this. Some political analysts claim that the junta's motivation for this proposal is to "disarm" and "neutralize" the cease-fire groups before the Burmese general election scheduled to take place sometime in 2010.

The Kokang Special region is a self-administrating area in northern Shan State; it has been ruled by chairman Pheung Kya-shin (Peng Jiasheng, 彭家声) since its establishment in 1989, and is populated mostly by Kokang people (果敢), the name for Han Chinese living in Myanmar. Since its inception, Kokang has been implicated in the illegal drug trade and trafficking as well as gambling and prostitution.

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