He predicts that in three years they will take back control of more than half of the 160,000 square kilometres they want recognised as an independent Shan State.

Colonel Yawd Serk describes himself as "a simple man" who wants his people to come back to Burma to help him fight for independence. He is a small man with a pitted face and spectacles, but he has a larger presence as a leader.

He drums his fingers slowly as he listens to a question. He thinks carefully before he speaks. "The Shan people have been forced to relocate and forced to work as slaves by the Burmese Army", he says with obvious conviction.

Yawd says independence and freedom for Burma's ethnic minorities depend on educating and training Shan, Karenni, Chin and other ethnic minorities against a common enemy, the Burmese dictatorship and its State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

"The SPDC has no morals", says Yawd. "They do not teach their soldiers skills; they cannot develop the country. All the SPDC leaders want is power and control where we have unity."

He says: "We will never surrender".

Surrender, it seems, is not part of the Shan vocabulary. There are Shan State Army (SSA) camps in various pockets along the northern Thai-Burmese border. They watch for not only the SPDC but for the United Wa State Army, a 20,000-strong drug-producing outfit that entered into a cease-fire agreement with the Rangoon government in 1989. Wa fighters are believed to be descendants of head-hunters who are concentrated along Burma's border with China.

The international community blamed the UWSA for much of its drug woes. Some members even accused the Burmese dictators of turning a blind eye to drug trafficking.

The 1989 cease-fire agreement, orchestrated by Burma's intelligence chief Lt-General Khin Nyunt, was organised to neutralise the powerful Wa army, which had enough arms to last at least a decade. However, the former intelligence chief is now under house arrest, and relations between the UWSA and the SPDC have taken a downturn, though not to the point of fighting.

Yawd said he was willing to join forces with the UWSA, extending an olive branch to the Wa and perhaps cashing in on the tensions between the UWSA and the SPDC.

"The Wa do not love the SPDC," he said. "I hope one day we will achieve cooperation with them, coming together to fight the SPDC. First I want the Shan State people to have the right of self-determination."

A senior leader of the Karenni National Progressive Party, Rimond Htoo, agrees with Yawd, saying it is time to join hands to fight their common enemy, and while the KNPP and the SSA may be moving closer, the Karen National Union recently suffered an internal split when its 7th Brigade broke away and signed a cease-fire agreement with the SPDC.

The KNPP leader says the Karenni people "are not ones to fight but are peaceful in nature".

"The SPDC arrive in our villages, they take everything, they rape our women and burn down our houses", says the KNPP leader, sitting alongside Yawd after Shan National Day celebrations.

Rimond praised Yawd for the SSA's support, saying SSA fighters had helped the KNPP on the battlefield.

"They want to destroy all ethnicity; they want all ethnic minorities gone. The SPDC wants us to separate and fight each other. We must be very careful and organise for unity," he said.

More than 1000 people live at Loi Tai Leng. There is no running water, and water for the Shan soldiers and refugee families has to be brought up the mountain by truck each day.

The Shan say the SPDC will never be able to infiltrate this mountaintop camp, where over 400 refugees have been sheltering since 2000 after fleeing villages burnt by the SPDC. As part of the SPDC's strategy to deny the rebels support, many of the villagers in various pockets of Shan State have been forcibly relocated to areas designated by the government.

The head of the refugee camp in this SSA stronghold, Wa Ling, says he wants to return to his home but it is not safe. "The soldiers protect us here," he says.

Meanwhile, standing behind barbed-wire entanglements and trenches looking through binoculars as the Wa build a bunker, SSA's Major Wanlee watches a group of Wa soldiers from a lookout known as Kong Ka on the border of what is now regarded as secure Shan territory.

"I am not afraid to suffer, and I will die to achieve freedom," says the major, who took up arms 21 years ago when he was just 16.

While the SSA and the KNPP are forging closer ties, an alliance with the Wa may be a pipe dream. In April 2005 this lookout, where 15 SSA soldiers now stand guard, was the scene of heavy fighting against the UWSA and the Burmese Army. Wanlee says the battle lasted almost a month.

He said UWSA fighters were scrambling up the mountain firing their machineguns while the Burmese fired mortar rounds.

Mortar shells are scattered on the ground, and the huts where Shan soldiers sleep are scarred by machinegun bullets.

Wanlee shows off one of the Shan's own weapons, a steel-pronged anti-personnel device the size of a fist that pierces the foot of any soldier who steps on it.

Eventually the UWSA retreated, waving their white flags further down the hill.

"Everyone hopes for peace and for our country to have freedom," says the Major, "but we must protect our people, and this is the reason I carry my gun. I hold my gun to defend my people and my land.

"If they came with flowers we would reply with flowers, but if they come with guns we will fight back with guns."

Alice Coster

The Nation

Loi Tai Leng, Burma