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Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebe



Subject: Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebels

Good post Julien Moe! Exactly one of the things needed in day of modern
guerilla communications.



> The ideal addition to their current jungle communications equipment, Mr.
> Mahinder said, would be a network of solar-powered FM transmission boosters.
> Placed on hilltops inaccessible to government troops, signal boosters would
> increase walkie-talkie range up to several hundred miles from the standard
> two or three miles, allowing signals to be received in cities within central
> Burma.
> 
> ''I could see sending swarms of people into the cities with
> walkie-talkies,'' Mr. Mahinder said. ''The government could trace the site
> of each broadcast, but by that time we would already have walked down the
> street.''
> 


> Paris, Friday, October 8, 1999
> Latest Technology Links Jungle Rebels
> Wired Revolution Helps Guerrillas
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> By Thomas Crampton International Herald Tribune
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> BANGKOK - After fleeing into the Burmese jungle on foot as military police
> closed in on his home, Sonny Mahinder soon found himself immersed in a world
> for which physics classes had not prepared him.
> One of the thousands of university students who fled Burma's central cities
> following the military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1988, Mr.
> Mahinder had no experience in jungle living and didn't even know how to hold
> a gun.
> 
> But equally important for his and other student associations that had been
> decimated after the crackdown was establishing effective communications to
> find out who was where and exactly what was going on.
> 
> While this took months to accomplish in 1988, Mr. Mahinder and members of
> rebel groups with strongholds along the Thai-Burma border say today's
> communications technology would have dramatically increased the speed of the
> process.
> 
> On arriving in the jungle, the students initially relied on communications
> networks already set up by long-established insurgent groups along
> Thailand's border. Many have been at war with the Rangoon government
> virtually nonstop since Burma gained independence in 1948.
> 
> To send a message into a city in central Burma, the rebel groups relayed
> messages via radio through a series of strongholds to the nearest friendly
> position, from where the final message was often delivered by foot messenger.
> 
> Although quite secure, the delivery time for foot messengers varies
> tremendously. Runners in low-risk areas can move at high speeds, while the
> presence of government troops limits messengers to night travel and forces
> them to circumnavigate large military emplacements.
> 
> Notes normally change hands several times, especially when they are taken
> into cities in central Burma.
> 
> Even after the students became more organized with the founding of the All
> Burma Students' Democratic Front, it could take up to two months to gather
> full information on allied and enemy emplacements.
> 
> The slow speed of communications hindered defensive deployments, prevented
> coordinated offensives and left soldiers blindly wandering into bloody clashes.
> 
> For those outside Burma, news was virtually nonexistent.
> 
> Now, however, the falling price of sophisticated radio equipment, the
> introduction of inexpensive satellite imagery and the spreading of news via
> Internet are making it easier to run jungle-based insurrection.
> 
> The communications revolution came to Mr. Mahinder in the form of FM
> wavelength walkie-talkies and shortwave radios purchased soon after he
> became regiment commander in charge of 200 soldiers.
> 
> ''The FM communication completely changed our ability to report and get
> instructions,'' Mr. Mahinder said. ''Finally our front-line troops could
> tell where the government troops were coming from so we could prepare for
> their offensive.''
> 
> Shortwave radios may have a greater range, but handheld walkie-talkies are
> the most powerful communications tool for jungle warfare, Mr. Mahinder said.
> 
> ''Walkie-talkies are easier to jam and easier for the government to
> monitor,'' he said. ''But it takes just a few minutes of training to operate
> a walkie-talkie, and it fits easily in your pocket.'' Shortwave radios run
> off bulky car batteries that must be recharged with a generator and setting
> up for a broadcast requires both skill and time.
> 
> All insurgent radio broadcasts use code to conceal information.
> 
> ''We learned very early that there are no secrets in the airwaves,'' Mr.
> Mahinder said, adding that the Rangoon government has an elite signals
> intelligence unit with sophisticated listening posts that monitor insurgent
> broadcasts.
> 
> All information regarding troop positions, estimates of enemy movements and
> the time and date at which operations will be undertaken are broadcast in
> code that can be deciphered only with the help of a paperback code book
> carried by each unit.
> 
> For added security, the soldiers occasionally use a radio scrambling
> technique known as channel-hopping, whereby the radio frequency is changed
> at irregular intervals to make it more difficult to monitor an entire
> conversation.
> 
> Certain information - planned movements, logistics details and the names of
> contacts - will only be communicated in writing between commanders and
> delivered by hand with a messenger, Mr. Mahinder said.
> 
> The ideal addition to their current jungle communications equipment, Mr.
> Mahinder said, would be a network of solar-powered FM transmission boosters.
> Placed on hilltops inaccessible to government troops, signal boosters would
> increase walkie-talkie range up to several hundred miles from the standard
> two or three miles, allowing signals to be received in cities within central
> Burma.
> 
> ''I could see sending swarms of people into the cities with
> walkie-talkies,'' Mr. Mahinder said. ''The government could trace the site
> of each broadcast, but by that time we would already have walked down the
> street.''
> 
> -