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But once more, it seemed, Burma's stars were unfavorable. In the new republic's first year of freedom, no fewer than 40% of Burma's elected M.P.s and their supporters came out in armed revolt against Prime Minister U Nu. Trade, commerce and government revenues slumped; the civil service fell away, demoralized. In police HQ, Pegu Province, a weary superintendent checked his dossier: "Of 21 stations in my district, I hold only six. The other 15 are held by five kinds of insurgents." In faraway London, Winston Churchill, then in opposition, rumbled:
"Burma is descending into a state of anarchy, tempered by Communism."
The chain reaction of disaster:
¶ Red Flag Trotskyites, 6.000 strong, rebelled first, in protest against even negotiating for independence with Prime Minister Attlee. Their leader: Thakin Soe, 48, onetime clerk in the Burma Oil Co. and jailmate of Prime Minister U Nu.
¶ White Flag Communists, 13,000, ordered into rebellion March 1948, in Moscow's first postwar campaign to undermine Southeast Asia.
¶ Burmese Army Deserters, 8,000 professionals, rebelled in July 1948, protesting U Nu's decision to fight the Communists, who had been the army's old comrades in the struggle for independence
¶ Karen National Defense Organization, 12,000 militants among Burma's 2,000,000 predominantly Christian Karen people, rebelled in August 1948, demanding a separate Karen state on the Thailand border.
¶ Chinese Nationalists, remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's beaten army, driven into Burma from Red China in 1949.
"The outbreaks were dealt with as best we could," said U Nu. "Only after some time did we realize our mistakes." He first tried to win the Communists back into "leftist unity" by appeasement; he referred to them as "ignoramuses" in their deviation from the true Marxism, and drafted a 15-point plan calling for the propagation of "Marxist doctrine" (a plan he now very much regrets). The Communist answer was characteristic: they gathered their forces, and struck when they were ready. "Give us three years," cried Communist Than Tun in 1948, "and Burma will be ours!" Prime Minister Nu, the Buddhist who would not kill the cobra, had a battle on his hands.
War & Sympathy. U Nu regrouped Burma's shaky 12,000-man combat force, its three-fighter air force, and stopped the Communists seven miles from Rangoon. In the spring of 1949, U Nu flew north in his flowing longyi and organized the recapture of Mandalay. In 1950 and 1951, Burma's army gained the decisive Irrawaddy Plain. In 1952 the Burmese edged the Chinese Nationalists behind the deep-cut Salween gorges. For a man of peace, U Nu had accomplished a reasonable military job.
U Nu was determined from the start, however, that Burma's civil war must become something more than a conventional deployment of military force. He could not see it all yet. but in his mind lay the vague shape of a counterrevolution, many-sided, thorough.