In his round of Southeast Asia, TIME Correspondent Sam Welles visited Burma, reported:
Burma is the most distressful country that ever I have seen. Its government, in Burma's nearly two years of independence from the British Commonwealth, does not govern. Its economy is falling apart. Its communications are cut. Its civil war is not a war but chaos. "Of 21 stations in my charge," said a Burmese police superintendent, "I hold only six. The other 15 are held by five different kinds of insurgents."
U Kyaw Nyein, leader of the Socialists who are Burma's biggest political party, said: "We are so disrupted that 300 armed men can take any place except Rangoon itself. In the last two years there is scarcely a town in Burma which has not been seized at least once by rebels of some sort."
Rice & Rubies. Prewar Burma was the world's largest exporter of rice, teak, rubies and jade. Its oil wells supplied its own needs and most of India's. The Mawgmi mine was the world's chief single source of tungsten.
The Mawgmi mine closed down in June, the teak sawmills in July. Gem prospecting has almost stopped, and Burma is now reduced to importing instead of exporting oil. Rebel forays on transportation lines have forced the Burmese to fly oil to the interior, where the price has risen to $6.30 a gallon. Rice exports have tobogganed, too. Burma exported about 3,000,000 tons of rice before the war. This year's exports will be less than 1,000,000. Next year the government hopes to have 730,000 tons for export, but many believe the figure will be lower. This means that millions will go hungry in other parts of Asia, and that Burma will be without its major source of income for the imports it needs. "Burma," said National Bank head U San Lin, "may be bankrupt next year."
If Burma could solve the problem of the rebellious Karens, the chances are that it would then be able to set the rest of its chaotic house in order. The Karens, who number about 2,000,000, are a predominantly Christian (Baptist), politically rightist minority who have been steadfastly insisting that they have a semi-autonomous state within the Union of Burma. The Karens' exorbitant territorial demands include most of lower Burma.
The Karen question might have been settled peaceably last year if both sides had shown a little more trust, cooperation and coolheadedness. "The trouble with us," said Socialist U Kyaw Nyein (who became a cabinet minister at 32), "is that we are all young and inexperienced." Finance Secretary U Kyin echoed him: "We are free but we don't yet know how to rule ourselves."
Quotes from the Left. Burma's Communists are the chief beneficiaries of this Karen-Burmese hatred. Burma probably has less than 10,000 convinced Communists (split into two major groups), but it has millions of ardent leftists. Prime Minister Thakin Nu himself was long a disciple of Marx, and he depends for his chief parliamentary support on the Socialists, who are militantly nationalist and anticapitalist.