Karen National Defence Organisation

Karen National Defence Organisation
ကရင်အမျိုးသား ကာကွယ်ရေး အဖွဲ့အစည်း
Dates of operation1947 (1947)–present
Active regionsKayah State
Kayin State
Tanintharyi Region
Mon State
Bago Region
Myanmar-Thailand border
IdeologyKaren nationalism
Federalism[1]
Historical:
Kawthoolei separatism
Anti-communism[2][3]
Part of Karen National Union
Allies Karen National Liberation Army
Karenni Nationalities Defence Force
People's Defence Force
Opponents Myanmar

Union of Myanmar (until 2011)
Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (until 1988)
Union of Burma (until 1962)

Communist Party of Burma (until 1952)[3][4]
Battles and warsInternal conflict in Myanmar

The Karen National Defence Organisation (Burmese: ကရင်အမျိုးသား ကာကွယ်ရေး အဖွဲ့အစည်း; S'gaw Karen: ကညီဒီကလုာ်ဂၢၤသးကရၢ; KNDO) is the older of two main military branches of the Karen National Union (KNU), the other being the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). The KNDO fought against the government of Myanmar from 1947 until 1949 as the armed wing of the KNU.[1] It was succeeded by the KNLA when KNDO militias were combined with KNLA forces in 1970.[5]

The KNDO's goals include self-determination, freedom for the Karen people, the recognition of Karen State and human rights.[6][1]

  1. ^ a b c Pike, John. "Karen National Union (KNU), Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), Democratic Karen Burmese Army (DKBA)". GlobalSecurity.org. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  2. ^ Smith 1999, p. 113.
  3. ^ a b Sein, Mahn Htein Win Aung (29 October 2019). "ကေအန်ယူနဲ့ ကော်သူလေးအရေး". BNI (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 14 February 2024. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  4. ^ Smith 1999, p. 112.
  5. ^ Smith, Martin (1 June 1999). Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 284–287. ISBN 978-1-85649-660-5.
  6. ^ "Burma's War and ethnic cleansing of the Karen people". Archived from the original on 8 March 2019. Retrieved 7 March 2016.