The seizure of two Burmese border towns by ethnic rebels is a significant move in the ethnic armed struggle of the past 20 years, and the latest attacks this week are a byproduct of the junta's controversial election on Sunday and are likely to spark other clashes.

On Sunday morning while Burma went to polls, troops of the 5th Brigade of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) entered Myawaddy and seized government buildings in the town which borders Mae Sot, Thailand. The following morning, DKBA rebels seized another township, Three Pagodas Pass, opposite Sankgkhlaburi, Thailand.

“We heard that the Burmese military regime forced the residents of Myawaddy to vote. People didn't want to go, and we heard that the junta threatened them with guns. So, we deployed our troops in Myawaddy for security,” said Col Saw Lah Pwe, commander of the 5th Brigade.
 
“The election will not bring democracy to the people of Burma and equality for ethnic minorities. It is not real democracy. The regime only shed their skin,” the rebel fighter, known as Bo Mustache for his  mustache, told The Irrawaddy in an interview hours after his troops seized the town.

Burma has had dozens of ethnic armed groups and at least 17 have signed cease-fire agreements after the current regime took power in 1988. But, other ethnic groups, including the Karen National Union (KNU) and Shan State Army (South), have continued to fight regime troops, demanding autonomy in their ethnic areas.

Troops of Col Saw Lah Pwe were part of the DKBA when it broke away from the KNU and signed a cease-fire agreement with the government in 1995. But last year, when the regime pushed all cease-fire groups to transform into a border guard force under the control of the government, Saw Lah Pwe's troops broke away from the DKBA, after it agreed to transform into a border guard force. The latest attacks by Saw Lah Pwe's troops are believed to have received support from the KNU.
 
The sham election on Sunday has reignited old war zones along the border. But it is even more alarming that the ongoing attacks in Karen State will probably spread to other ethnic areas. The worst scenario could lead to a full-fledged civil war.

Almost all major ethnic groups have had their own armies ever since Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948,

“This latest fighting is not a new development considering our country's history of decades-old armed ethnic strife,” said Dr. Manam Tuja, the former vice chairman of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a cease-fire group based in northern Kachin State near the Chinese border.

“But I think this [current fighting] is a consequence of the government's border guard force plan and also of other domestic problems,” said Tuja, whose party, the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), was not recognized by the junta's Union Election Commission to contest the election. It is believed that his party and two other Kachin parties were rejected because the KIO has resisted the border guard force order.
 
Though cease-fire agreements have been in place since the early 1990s, stability and peace has never been restored in many ethnic areas. Due to ongoing instability and sporadic clashes between ethnic groups and the government, as many as 150,000 ethnic refugees have sought shelter in at least nine refugee camps along Thailand's border for decades. Last year, government attacks on the ethnic Kokang army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, on the China-Burma border, sent 37,000 Kokang-Chinese refugees fleeing to China. The clash was a result of the Kokang army's rejection of the junta's border guard force plan.

Ethnic and pro-democracy leaders, including detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have shared an idea that a genuine dialogue between the military government and ethnic and opposition leaders could solve the problems of ethnic areas and lead to national reconciliation. The junta rejected the idea.

Last October, only two weeks before the election, a group of ethnic leaders and politicians who opposed the general election called for a second Panglong conference to establish a federal system that would allow equality and democracy in ethnic areas. The 1947 Panglong agreement, reached by the late national leader Aung San and ethnic leaders, led to the independence to Burma.

But such a conference is unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Whether Suu Kyi will be allowed to play a political role after her release from house arrest is unknown, and other ethnic leaders, including Shan leader Hkun Htun Oo, have served lengthy prison terms. The government has never allowed those leaders to sit at the same table to discuss the country's problems.