Kuomintang in Burma

The Kuomintang in Burma (KMT) were Chinese Nationalist troops that fled to the Burmese border region in 1950 after their defeat to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War. Technically termed the Yunnan Anti-communist National Salvation Army (sometimes also referred to as the 'lost army'), the KMT was commanded by General Li Mi. It made several unsuccessful invasions into Yunnan Province in the early 1950s, only to be pushed back into Burma each time.

The entire campaign, with logistical support from the United States, Taiwan, and Thailand, was controversial from the start. It not only violated Burmese sovereignty and destabilized the political situation in the fledgling Burmese nation but also saw the Kuomintang's (KMT) involvement in the region's lucrative opium trade. In 1953, the frustrated Burmese government appealed to the United Nations and put international pressure on Taiwan to withdraw its troops the following year. It was not until coordinated Sino-Burmese military operations in 1960–1961 that forced the complete evacuation of the KMT troops and drove the remaining troops out of Burma into neighboring Laos and Thailand.

Civil war broke out in Burma soon after it gained independence in 1948. The causes of the conflict were largely a legacy of British colonial rule and can be best summed up by what Martin Smith calls the "dilemmas of unity in a land of diversity." First, up until 1937, British Burma was not administered as a separate colony but a province of British India. While the British administered the Burman majority in central "Ministerial Burma", the ethnic minorities in the "Frontier Areas" remained under the nominal rule of their traditional rulers. The contradictions that existed in the fact that the Burman majority and the historically antagonistic ethnic minorities came to be bound within a single administrative entity were not resolved before the British left.

Second, the 1947 Burma Constitution failed to provide for the interests of the diverse minority groups that wanted to retain their autonomy and equal rights within the Union. The federal arrangement between the central government and the peripheral states retained its colonial legacy: Shan and Karenni sawbwas were granted a status similar to that of the rulers of the princely Indian states, with autonomy over administration and law enforcement. On top of that, the Shan and Karenni States also had the extraordinary right of secession after ten years in the Union. In contrast, the Kachin, Chin and Karen remained under central administration, while the Mon and Arakanese did not even have any separate political representation. The contradictions and ambiguities of the Constitution therefore satisfied no one and were the cause for much ethnic dissension.

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