Mong Ko

Mong Ko (Mān Kang)
Town
Mong Ko (Mān Kang)
Coordinates: 24°6′1″N 98°18′50″E / 24.10028°N 98.31389°E
Country	Burma
State	Shan State
District	Mu Se District
Township	Mu Se Township
Elevation[1]	1,480 ft (450 m)
Time zone	MMT (UTC+6:30)

Mong Ko, Möng Ko, Monekoe, Mān Kang or Man Kan, also known as Man Guo,^[2] is a village in Mu Se Township, Mu Se District, northern Shan State. It lies by the border of China.^[3]

Like many places in that hapless region, Mong Ko has been a drug-producing and trading point where 'walking down the main road one can smell the chemicals wafting from the houses'.^[4]

History

The Communist Party of Burma (CPB) entered Shan State on New Year Day 1968, captured Mong Ko, and established the first war zone ‘303’ of the CPB North-East Command (NEC). This was quickly followed by ‘404’ in Kokang substate winning over the local warlord Pheung Kya-shin.^[5] For 20 years Pheung controlled Kokang as a member of the Communist Party of Burma.^[6] In 1989, however, the CPB split up^[6] and Pheung established his own army, the National Democratic Alliance Army,^[7] with which he mutinied and captured Mong Ko town.^[8] After this he signed a cease-fire with the military junta, which allowed the Kokang army to retain their weapons, and established an autonomous Kokang region as the "First Special Region" of Myanmar.^[7][9]

References

1. GoogleEarth
2. Shelby Tucker, Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma. p. 27
3. Möng Ko: Burma
4. Peter John Perry, Myanmar (Burma) Since 1962: The Failure of Development. p. 152
5. Smith, Martin (1991). Burma – Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London and New Jersey: Zed Books.
6. Lintner, Bertil; Chiang Mai (28 June 1990). "A fix in the making" (PDF). Far Eastern Economic Review. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
7. 果敢乱局当前 传“果敢王”已逃离 (in Chinese). 南国都市报 (Southern Metropolitan). 29 August 2009. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
8. Tucker, Shelby (2001). Burma: The curse of independence. Pluto Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-7453-1541-6.
9. "Tense situation in N. Myanmar's Shan state prevails". Xinhua. 28 August 2009. Retrieved 27 August 2009.