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The French oil company Total states there is
no collusion between itself and the Burmese army.
An on-the-spot enquiry reveals the reality to be less clear cut.
With a gold watch on his wrist and a latest-model pistol in his belt despite a monthly salary of 2,200 kyats (less than 50 francs [$7]), Major Zaw Lwin wears his new uniform round his base, Ban-I-Tong, comprising 30 bunkers perched on impregnable hills in south-eastern Burma. Zaw Lwin commands Burmese Army Battalion No.282, one of those referred to here as "the Total battalions" because they are responsible for security of the French oil company's gas pipeline in this rebellious region bordering Thailand.
According to numerous local sources, Battalion No.282 receives regular payments from Total, not to mention benefits in kind and in vehicles. Questioned on this subject, Major Zaw Lwin merely smiles, his way of saying the matter is taboo.
But a deserter, encountered in the region, from Battalion No.410, another "Total battalion", is more talkative. "I did everything during my period of service, from press-ganging to guarding the forced labourers on the site, as well as actually guarding the pipeline. We often carried boxes of ammunition and baskets of grenades in Total's helicopters; one simply had to ask and they would send us a chopper." He then enumerated the Burmese Army's standard practices around the pipeline site, sometimes under the eye of foreign employees: mass arrests, seizure of property, displacement of population and destruction of villages.
A veteran sergeant of Battalion No.402 recalls "military and political training courses" organized in the field by "eleven armed employees of Total".
The management of the oil company denies all these facts as well as collusion with the military authorities, who have a reputation for dubious practices.
However, according to a French employee who worked until 1998 at Kanbauk, the "living-base" of Total in Burma, the oil company initially felt itself ensnared by an omnipresent army which "controls everything" and ended up by "closing its eyes".
Summed up one of the sergeant's superiors: "Total's people know what goes on, but they must not see it."
On the side of the Karen guerillas, who oppose the pipeline crossing their territory, the attitude is nowadays less one of confrontation than negotiation. Two former Saint-Cyriens [i.e. graduates of the French Army's military academy] who fought alongside the Karen rebels have been discretely "filtered out" by the French authorities. The old warrior chief, General Bo Mya, interviewed in his stronghold of Walakee 200 km [125 miles] north of the pipeline said he was ready to do a deal: "If Total agrees to pay us an annual tax of 20 million dollars for crossing our territory, I can guarantee there will be no attempts at sabotage." Wasted effort? Amongst his staff it is mentioned that "a Western embassy in Bangkok" has addressed a very firm warning to the guerilla forces: in the event of action against the pipeline, all assistance to Karen refugees will be halted.