She once wrote an essay for school on the Karen. Karen insurgents, who had once controlled a ministate within Myanmar, lost most of their territory. “We want to do this, not only for Karen people, but all people in Burma.”, Padoh Saw Hser Bwe, a joint general secretary of the Karen National Union, the largest Karen political force, remembers the magical powers that Johnny and Luther used to wield, their status “just one step lower than God.”, “They have lost their magic power, and they are now in a foolish state,” he said. Thierry Falise/LightRocket, via Getty Images. “After Johnny and Luther were born, life got better. Just before the turn of the century, Luther and Johnny Htoo, then not even 10 years old, took command of a Karen militia hundreds strong that aimed to protect the ethnic group from incursions by the Myanmar Army. Meanwhile, the Burmese army had 21,000 troops in the area. [11] After the raid, God's Army were strenuously pursued by the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) and shunned by other Karen rebels. God’s Army was finished. The militia’s ranks were augmented by war orphans, who had nowhere else to go, a Swiss Family Robinson crossed with Lord of the Flies. “I miss where I grew up.”. Johnny and Luther stayed to fight. For multiple users rates contact TRAC. In 2009, Saw Ma Cher, a Baptist pastor who once fought for God’s Army, moved with his wife, five children and 13 grandchildren to New Bern, N.C., a river town where nearly 1,000 Karen were resettled. After a couple years of online dating, she asked him to come home to Myanmar. Separatist / New Regime Nationalist / Ethnic Nationalist, Hostage Taking and Barricade as a Terrorist Tactic. Surely someone was impersonating Luther Htoo, one of the boy twins who had commanded God’s Army. One day, in his home in Gotene, Sweden, a woolen hat on his head, Luther went on Facebook and plugged in a common Karen woman’s moniker: Naw. The legend of the boys was embraced by locals who viewed the existing Karen National Union as corrupt and ineffective. They may have been victims of a calamitous turn in God’s Army’s fortunes that came after it became enmeshed with an even more fringe Burma anti-government group. “You know that you are being shot at but the bullets don’t hit.”. “Drunk,” his girlfriend’s mother, Naw Htay Myint, said, more an observation than an indictment. But neighbors stared when Karen families tried to dry fish outside. But the Karen, some five million people, chafed against the fledgling government’s chauvinism. Luther and Johnny were not part of the raid, but God’s Army lost some of its best fighters. Adult soldiers prayed in a circle and then lifted the twins on their shoulders during battle, like child amulets. But their followers, descendants of Baptists converted by American missionaries, worshiped the twins. His eyes stared at nothing in particular. Everyone is isolated, Ms. Pe Khen said, even if a dozen relatives live together. As Myanmar infantrymen surged over the densely forested hills, the Karen National Liberation Army lost hundreds of soldiers. Some groups that originally engaged in violence but have since become legitimate political parties are included to provide historical perspective. YOU MUST HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO ACCESS THE REST OF THIS CONTENT. Many more lost limbs, livelihoods and their grip on reality. He married another Karen refugee, and they had a child. On Johnny’s arm is a tattoo, its Karen script rough like that of a child who grew up in the rainforest, measuring his height against an M16 rifle. Johnny, left, and Luther Htoo in 1999. She sighed. The people were tall, he heard, and pale-headed. Some of the followers of the twins believed that they had "Animist and Christian powers". Luther, 32, in Myanmar. Three God’s Army men were killed in that battle. [4][5], God's Army was formed in an area of eastern Burma populated by the Karen ethnic group, who had been fighting against Burmese army at various times for over fifty years, primarily through the Karen National Union. [13], In October 1999, a group calling themselves Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors along with the God's Army seized the Burmese embassy in Bangkok and the situation ended with their departure, at which point they were taken in by God's Army. He did two years ago, Swedish passport in hand. Of his early adulthood, Luther mostly remembers the cold. By the time the twins were a decade old, the villagers said, the boys had assembled armies of invisible men who could ambush Myanmar soldiers with barely a rustle of bamboo to give away their positions. Some fight each other. Her paper earned an “excellent” in assessments. While TRAC attempts to ensure the accuracy of its TRAC database, the entries in the database are from numerous different sources. They have been described as a terrorist organisation. Two decades later, the Htoo twins’ mystique endures. “We were bulletproof.”. It doesn’t take any English to lop off 2,000 turkey tails in an hour. TRAC is a unique, comprehensive resource for the study of political violence of all kinds. Unlike Luther, Johnny has no passport to visit New Zealand. Hundreds of miles away, in the forests of eastern Myanmar, the light from a cheap cellphone shone on Luther Htoo’s bare chest, where a tattoo of the flag of the Karen people covered his heart. The night insects hurtled at the screen, attracted by the light. Luther was impish. In January 2001, the Htoo twins and the less than 20 remaining members of God's Army surrendered to Thai soldiers and requested sanctuary. “I worry that the Burmese Army will shoot him,” she said. No eggs, no pork, no alcohol, no lying and no swearing. [6][7] God's Army was led by brothers Johnny and Luther Htoo beginning in 1997, who were at that time estimated to be only ten years of age. He is now in a mental institution. They demanded the Thai government stop shelling Karen positions in Burma and treatment for their wounded. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is now the nation’s civilian leader. Each, they said, could use prayer to conjure up a battalion of invisible soldiers sent by God. His girlfriend concedes that they once prayed together on a full moon night, and Luther remained visible. He is back home in Myanmar but still feels as lost as any exile. [11] “I love Asia,” he said. For Naw Lay Kapaw Wah, living in a Karen village where Myanmar soldiers had sent inhabitants fleeing into the forest, the Facebook friend request seemed like a prank. Like his brother, he struggles with alcoholism. [14] The Burmese Government called the attack "a pure act of terrorism" and in Washington the State Department, which has been critical of the Burmese military regime, also condemned what it called "a terrorist attack".[15]. As Myanmar’s borderlands remain at war, United Nations investigators have accused the nation’s army of acting with genocidal intent against its own people. Many Karen refugees have settled in New Bern, North Carolina. “It’s like a super power in a movie,” Johnny said. Luther returned from Sweden to Myanmar to live with his girlfriend, Naw Lay Kapaw Wah, whom he met over the internet. He divorced. Johnny’s cousin hushed the others in the shack on Thailand’s border with Myanmar. The boys were barely taller than their rifles. Yet more than one-third of Burmese Americans, of whom the majority of arrivals this century are Karen refugees, live below the poverty line, according to the Pew Research Center. She is the first member of her family to go to college. They were based along the Thailand-Burma border, and conducted a string of audacious guerrilla actions—including allegedly being involved in the seizure of the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok-during the 1990s and early 2000s. Most Karen refugees in the United States end up in low-wage jobs, like meat packing. Their followers kept the faith, even as God’s Army’s adult commanders partnered with a radical student group that laid siege to the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok. More than a decade after arriving in the country, the twins’ mother, Pe Khen, cannot get used to the highways or the inability to just stroll to a friend’s house on a dirt path. At the time, the boys took command of an army of rebel soldiers who believed the twins possessed magical powers. [12], God's Army[2] was situated in mountainous rainforests along the border between Burma and Thailand. The coronavirus stalks their workplaces. “I don’t want to go home.”. Below it was a pucker of scarred skin. When the coronavirus began infecting workers in factories around New Bern, about 70 Karen fell ill. One has died. Her life has taken a different path. He sleeps when others are awake, curled up like a quotation mark missing its companion. Saw Ma Cher helped found, worries every time her father returns from work at a poultry processing plant.