Poverty haunts the people of Myanmar but those who live in remote, landlocked Karenni State are among the poorest of the poor. Karenni, Myanmar's smallest state, is also the least populated with less than 250,000 inhabitants, many of them landless. Communication is poor and there is little employment. The state has also been a region of violent conflict for decades. During the 1990s, some 20,000 Karenni people fled to refugee camps in neighboring Thailand. The reasons for the strife are many, but history has provided some of the motivation, and Karenni's exploitable resources has provided much of the wherewithal.
In 1875, an agreement between the rump Burmese monarchy and Britain recognized the Karenni States (there were then four) as independent of the Burmese authority. After World War II, Britain changed tack, and together with the soon-to-be independent Burma decided to incorporate the Karenni into Burma. A subsequent 1947 agreement at Panglong between Burmese and ethnic minority representatives accepted a unified state but allowed for the possibility of a referendum on Karenni (and Shan) secession in 1957. However, this was never really permitted. Since independence, and especially since 1957, guns have substituted for political dialogue.
According to a 2000 report by the Burma Ethnic Research Group titled "Conflict and Displacement in Karenni: The Need for Considered Responses," the situation today is bad. "There is a myriad of armed State and non-State groups vying for control of populations and territory in Karenni," the report states. "These include government armed forces, cease-fire groups, splinter groups, opposition groups partially based in Thailand, and smaller militias."
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