ABSTRACT
At times during the late 1940s and early '50s, the 'Rangoon Government' had governed little more than the capital and its immediate environs. Throughout the following three decades, insurgent forces still controlled vast tracts of countryside. Indeed, until the fall of the first KNU bases along the Thailand-Burma border in the early 1980s, the only points along the entire border under firm government control were the garrison and trading towns of Tachilek and Myawaddy.
