Leading God's Army

By Terry McCarthy/Ratchaburi

Luther shaves the front of his head, has a stare that could kill at 1,000 yards and is prone to mood swings that make him bark sharp reprimands at his followers. Johnny has long hair, effeminate features and a beguiling smile that doesn't fade even when he fires off rounds from his assault rifle. Together the legendary 12-year-old Htoo twins control "God's Army," a nominally Christian force of 200 youthful Karen tribesmen in the mountainous rain forest of Burma (now known as Myanmar). The army's tots-to-teens fighters revere their boy leaders as bulletproof messiahs.

Last week the troops came out of the heart of Burma's darkness to engage in a century-against-century collision straight from Apocalypse Now. Ten of the young fighters wrapped their faces in black masks, left their home base on Kersay Doh, or "God's Mountain," commandeered a bus to cross the nearby Thai border and took 500 patients and staff hostage in a hospital in the town of Ratchaburi. Big mistake. They had wanted to protest recent shelling by Thai military units, who were cooperating with the Burmese military junta to roust out hill tribes and make way for border trade and roads. But the impulsive raid quickly dissolved into a debacle. Marching into a hospital with guns and explosives squandered any sympathy the Karen rebels had had in Thailand, their traditional safe haven. Within 24 hours, Thai commandos stormed the building, shot dead all the rebels and trussed the bodies in white sheets to show the world that Thailand would not give in to blackmail.

But the picture that shocked the world was the one widely broadcast of Johnny and the cigar-smoking Luther, still at large. The spectacle of foreign jungle fighters commanded by illiterate, messianic twins forcing their way into a modern medical facility was as bizarre as it was outrageous. But it shone the global spotlight for a moment on one of the century's longest-running insurgencies, where ethnic minorities have been struggling for some form of autonomy from the government of Burma since the country's independence in 1948.

For the past three years, stories, rumors and superstition have swirled around the Htoo twins as mysteriously as the early morning mists that swathe the mountain forests where they live. Ka Mar Pa Law village lies on the side of a steep slope ringed with minefields, and the path is known only to local Karens who bring in supplies and a few visiting missionaries. There, in a huddle of thatched huts, the boys preside over an encampment with subsistence food, no electricity and little knowledge of the outside world. God's Army shuns strangers and mostly wants to be left alone.

Luther and Johnny reportedly emerged as leaders in 1997, when other Karen fighters fled in disarray ahead of a massive government assault on the country's last unruly region. The Htoo twins told their villagers to stay and fight. "At one point there were just seven of them surrounded by Burmese troops," says Father Augustine, a Thai missionary who has frequent access to the twins. "Somehow they fought their way out, and some believe an army of spirits came to help them." After the twins' initial success, other guerrillas joined them, leading to more victories over the Burmese army. Soon they splintered away from the main body of Karen rebels and began calling themselves God's Army.

There is a church in the twins' village, and both Johnny and Luther are Baptists who claim to base their moral guidelines on Christian beliefs. But "when their soldiers died in the struggle against the Burmese, they moved backward to the old gods," says Sunai Phasuk of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. Christian teachings combined seamlessly with ancient native messianic traditions to build up belief in the twins' mystical powers.

Few outsiders have climbed God's Mountain. An A.P. Television News crew, invited in last December, found that most of the soldiers surrounding the twins were barely in their teens. The reality of war seemed to be beyond their grasp. The twins played with guns as if they were toys: after Johnny fired some shots, another boy put a papaya on his head as if vamping a part in William Tell. The twins said they had lost count of how many Burmese they had killed. Said Luther, the more serious of the two, to the A.P. crew: "I have never cried. Why would a man cry?"

The twins have laid down strict rules for the village: consumption of pork, eggs and alcohol is forbidden. Smoking, though, is clearly allowed. "Some who didn't believe in [the twins] were punished and asked to leave the village," says Father Augustine. He thinks their unchallenged authority derives from their reputed ability to predict danger and the way they are able to defuse personal disputes in the village. "This kind of power is a gift, a strange gift."

The mystique has spread far. Karen villagers interviewed along the Thai border last week said that the boys could not be hit by bullets and that people who walked with them were immune from harm. They cited cases of followers who stepped on land mines that failed to detonate. "The twins have special powers," asserts Plee, 20, a Karen woman who grew up in Johnny and Luther's village. She has taken refuge in Thailand, but still occasionally sees the twins. "I am sure they won't be killed in battle," she says. "They are able to control a large number of people, so that's why I believe in them."

But not all the Karen do. "They are just like normal kids," says Avudh Aree, 60, a Karen living across the Thai border who also knows the twins and thinks the stories of their special powers are exaggerated. "They play with dogs and cats, climb trees." Some suspect they are manipulated by adults. Members of the mainstream Karen resistance, who are more conventional Christians, regard the twins as little better than heretics. "They aren't God's Army--they are Satan's Army," says Major Mary Ohn of the Karen Refugee Committee. "God has no children with guns." The mainstream Karen rebels have reason to be angry with God's Army: they face increased pressure to negotiate with the junta now that the hospital disaster has put Thai goodwill in jeopardy.

But most of the Karen villagers who live close to the God's Army base still believe the twins have the supernatural strength to defy the Burmese army and allow them to return to a peaceful life free of outside interference. Plee, the refugee Karen woman, nostalgically recalled a Christmas feast in 1998 in Ka Mar Pa Law, where the main dishes were a giant lizard, monkey, deer and wild vegetables. "We ate three times a day, and there was singing and dancing all night."

Last week the sound of music had been replaced by the shriek of war. As Plee spoke, artillery shells could be heard slamming into the mountain. Burmese troops have stepped up their assault on the rebels' base. Some reports by week's end suggested the Htoo twins had been forced to flee into the jungle. They may have brought down the apocalypse--or they may escape to fight the Burmese again. As ever, rumor and mystery thrive best on God's Mountain.

--With reporting by Robert Horn/Bangkok

With reporting by Robert Horn/Bangkok