And Yun Sun pointed out that KIA has even more at stake, because China has accused Kachin groups of harassing and blackmailing Chinese hydropower companies. Unlike the UWSA, which has refrained from colliding with the Burmese military, the KIA is openly challenging China’s bottom-line interests, and as a result is being seen as deliberately breaking the status quo and rejecting Naypyidaw’s offer of a ceasefire.

This may already have backfired on the KIA, because while the KIA had reached an agreement in April 2010 with other Sino-Burmese border-based groups such as the UWSA, Shan State Army (SSA) and the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) to support each other if attacked by the Burmese Army, heavy pressure from China prevented the UWSA from helping in the Kachin and Shan state fighting.

Thus, KIA and SSA have formed an alliance with the ethnic Chin, Karen, Karenni and Mon armed groups that are based on the Thai-Burmese border, forming an umbrella alliance called the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC).

 “Amidst our differences and diversities over the past five or six decades, we have managed to establish an alliance through creating a common platform on which we all can come together and share as a family. We all agree to work together towards bringing democracy and federalism into Burma,” said Colonel Solomon of the Chin National Front (CNF), a member of the UNFC, according to the Chinland Guardian, an ethnic Chin news agency. 

In a statement issued on February 17, the UNFC said that its basic principles and aims include working for better recognition of the ethnic armed groups, for ethnic equality, rights and self-determination, and for a genuine democratic federal Union of Burma.

Recently, ethnic leaders meeting with EU officials in Bangkok called for the EU to broker political dialogue between Burma's government and its ethnic groups.

“All the government troops will have to retreat to their former bases if there is a ceasefire,” said Nai Hang Thar, the secretary of the New Mon State Party. “Also, the government must declare ceasefires with all the ethnic armed groups in the country, not only in Kachin State.”

Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National Union, said, “We always welcome dialogue. But the dialogue must involve all ethnic groups, not on a case by case basis. Our aim is to establish a federal state.”