Although a number of initial peace agreements involving ethnic armed groups have been signed (see Analysis Paper No.1), sporadic fire fights and human rights violations continue to be reported in those ethnic areas covered. While there has been a tendency towards suggesting that such reports are indicative of the UOB Government?s deceitfulness, there is a failure by many observers to fully understand the enormity of the problem the country faces in relation to dealing with the military apparatus. Since 1962, and the seizing of power by General Ne Win, the Burma Army has made a concerted effort to fully militarise ethnic areas in order to completely control their populations. After implementing a scorched earth policy known as the four cuts campaign in the seventies, the Burmese military further increased its presence in ethnic areas and fully mobilised its troops through a number of operations against ethnic armed forces during the eighties and nineties. To ensure the complicity of ethnic populations in pacified areas, the Burma Army (BA) created a vast network of military outposts close to ethnic villages both in designated black areas, or free-fire zones, and brown areas, or contested territory where both ethnic opposition and government forces operate. As a consequence the military, both BA and resistance forces, has solely dominated and exploited the lives of those civilians in areas where they operate. It is hoped that this domination will be eroded by the new government?s peace initiatives; however, this can only be accomplished by encouraging reforms on both sides..."