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NEWS - 12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's
Subject: NEWS - 12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's Army, Brothers believed to have divine powers lead a group of Myanmar fighters
12-Year-Old Twins Rule God's Army, Brothers believed to have divine
powers lead a group of Myanmar fighters
Thursday, December 16, 1999
BY APICHART WEERAWONG
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KA MAR PALAW, Myanmar --
Here at the jungle base of God's Army, no one
questions the leadership of Luther and Johnny Htoo.
No matter that the 12-year-old twins are shorter
than the M-16 rifles some of their followers carry. The
fighters who have rallied behind them believe the
brothers offer divine protection in a children's crusade
that blends elements of the Old Testament and Lord of
the Flies.
An offshoot of the ethnic Karen guerrilla movement
that was nearly crushed in a brutal government
offensive two years ago, God's Army is made up of
about 100 battled-hardened veteran fighters, former
university students and children.
But the Htoo twins are unlike most of the estimated
300,000 child combatants in Third World conflicts
around the world. They rule their unit, which operates
from Ka Mar Pa Law, a village base in the malarial
jungle near Myanmar's border with Thailand.
They tell their followers when to fight, what to eat,
how to behave. Their leadership is never challenged.
Surrounded by adult aides and a bodyguard of
rifle-toting children, the twins speak little to outsiders.
Reporters must first be carefully screened by their
sympathizers in Thailand and then make a half-day trek
on foot through mountainous jungle to reach their
remote camp.
Johnny, chubby cheeked and shy, seems the more
childlike of the two. He readily lays aside his gun to
bounce a volleyball.
Luther, whose moods swing quickly between cocky
and sullen, has a disturbing 1,000-yard stare. Both
boys smoke cigarettes constantly.
"I have never cried," Luther told an Associated Press
reporter who recently visited the base. "Why would a
man cry?"
When Luther noticed a gun lying unattended, he
shouted for its owner. A larger boy came forward.
Luther ordered him to do 100 jumping exercises as
punishment.
Like most Karens, members of God's Army are
Christians in a predominantly Buddhist country. The
twins have a fundamentalist bent and don't allow
fighting, swearing, drugs or alcohol.
The twins' power dates to 1997, when Myanmar all
but crushed the Karen National Union, the mainstream
rebel movement that has fought for Karen autonomy for
half a century. According to refugee accounts,
government forces killed men in front of their families,
raped women and torched villages.
When the army came to Johnny and Luther's village,
the story goes, the guerrilla fighters fled, leaving it
unprotected. The twins rallied some men and directed
a successful counterattack.
Since then, the twins have been deemed to have
powers from God.
The government sees nothing divine about their
fighting force.
An official spokesman for Myanmar's military
government said the government considers God's Army
a group created by the Karen National Union to carry
out terrorist activities against Myanmar, such as the
Oct. 1 takeover of Myanmar's Embassy in Bangkok.
The spokesman insisted his name not be used, in line
with government rules.
While many in God's Army are children, others are
tough Karen National Union veterans or members of
the dissident student group that carried out the
embassy takeover in which 38 hostages were seized.
Their small following receives arms from the Karen
National Union, but operates independently.
The estimated 4,000 fighters of the Karen National
Union mostly carry out hit-and-run attacks, and God's
Army fights the same way. But because of the twins'
unbeaten record and alleged powers -- their followers
believe they are immune to gunfire -- it has high morale
and attracts hard-core guerrilla fighters.
"God sent these two leaders to rescue all the
Karens," said Su Bia, a veteran fighter who has joined
the ranks of God's Army. He said he lost six siblings in
the 1997 fighting.
"Those who do not listen to the leaders will not be
protected when they go out on the front line," he said.
The twins' parents live in Ka Mar Pa Law, and the
boys profess love for them, though they seem to have
little contact with them.
"We knew from the day they were born" they would
be special, their father, Pu Kaw, said. "We had a vision
that they would be pure, extraordinary people."