Guerrillas Fight for Independence in Myanmar : Insurgency: The junta controlling the former Burma faces a 43-year-old resistance. The rebels have kept some rugged terrain out of military hands.

MANERPLAW, Myanmar —  Surrounded by some of the world’s most forbidding jungle, outnumbered guerrillas of Asia’s oldest continuing insurgency are battling troops of the Burmese military government for control of a mountaintop called Sleeping Dog Hill.

It is a battle that opponents of the military junta that rules Myanmar, formerly Burma, say could determine the future of not only the 43-year-old Karen ethnic rebellion, but the country’s beleaguered democracy movement as well.

The Karen (pronounced Ka-REN) rebels, led mainly by Baptists and other Christian converts, are fighting on Sleeping Dog Hill to defend this sprawling jungle camp that Burmese troops have been trying to capture for nearly 20 years.

Overlooking the Moei River, which forms part of the border between Myanmar and Thailand, Manerplaw is both the capital of Kawthoolei, the independent state that the Karens have long dreamed of establishing, and, since December, 1990, also is the seat of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, a shadow administration of mainstream Burmese opposition to the military rule.

The junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, but the ethnic minorities and the opposition do not accept the change. Although the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory over junta-backed candidates in May, 1990, elections, the junta has refused to honor the returns. Aung San Suu Kyi, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has been under house arrest since July, 1989, in the Burmese capital, Yangon, formerly Rangoon.

“If we lose Manerplaw (the junta) will make a lot of propaganda that could demoralize people inside Burma,” said Sein Win, a cousin of Aung San Suu Kyi and an elected legislator who heads the coalition shadow government.

“It’s the last stand for the democracy movement in Burma,” said Saw Wallace, a Karen Baptist activist with the opposition Karen Refugee Committee. “If the Karens had no more base, I don’t think the other (opposition) groups would have a chance.”

The battle for Sleeping Dog Hill, a 4,000-foot peak about 6 miles west of Manerplaw on the western bank of the Salween River, represents the Burmese army’s most ambitious attempt to crush the rebels and take this camp. Thanks in part to increased use of Thai territory to stage their attacks during the current dry season, the Burmese troops have made significant headway against the Karens, who themselves have long used sanctuaries in Thailand.

Although widely viewed as one of the world’s most repressive military dictatorships, the Burmese junta has improved relations with the Thai armed forces by granting lucrative logging and fishing concessions to Thai interests with military connections.

According to Bo Mya, the leader of the Karen insurgents, the junta since December has thrown more troops and heavier weapons into its campaign against Manerplaw than in previous dry seasons. In a three-pronged attack using up to 7,000 soldiers and thousands of civilians brutally dragooned into forced labor as porters, he said, the Burmese army has advanced closer to the strategic base than ever before.

Bo Mya said “nearly 3,000” of his soldiers are defending the area. He said Chinese military advisers have been spotted helping the Burmese forces to use new 120mm mortars supplied by Beijing as part of a major arms deal reportedly worth at least $1.2 billion.

Sleeping Dog Hill-- Chwipawi Kyo in Burmese--is a key objective in the campaign because its capture from the Karens would enable the Burmese troops to place big guns there, shell other Karen positions and cover a crossing of the Salween toward Manerplaw.

Sitting under a thatched shelter on a hilltop east of the Salween last week, Bo Mya followed the battle on a walkie-talkie as the two sides traded mortar and small-arms fire--sometimes from within 50 yards of each other--in the dense malarial jungle on the mountainside across the river.

He said the army was currently bogged down and taking relatively heavy casualties; units could be heard quarreling among themselves over their radios, he said. But he expressed concern that the junta’s troops could cross into Thailand or attack Manerplaw from the air.

“We are worried, but what else can we do?” he said. “It is our duty to defend ourselves. We are determined to hold this position.”

The largest ethnic minority in the country, Karens are believed to number about 3.5 million; Myanmar’s population is 42 million. The Karen army is estimated to field up to 4,000 regular fighters, plus village defense forces.

While the great majority of Karens are Buddhists or animists, the rebel movement’s leadership is dominated by Christians, who account for about 15% of the Karen population. The majority of them are Baptists, descended from converts of Adoniram Judson, an American Baptist missionary who found acceptance among the Karens when he arrived in Burma in 1813.

Expecting independence after World War II, the Karens launched their insurgency in 1949 and today are probably the strongest of at least a dozen ethnic groups battling the government. Unlike some other rebel groups, however, the Karens have shunned drug-trafficking as a means of financing their activities.

Instead, they have generated income by taxing cross-border trade with Thailand and selling timber products, cattle and precious stones.