It was most generous of the Naypyitaw government to sanction the Shan-Kayah meeting in Lashio, 20-22 March.

U Aung Min, Vice Chairman of the Union Peacemaking Working Committee (UPWC), ministers and officials from his Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) also deserve sincere appreciation both for gracing it with their presence and sharing their thoughts with the participants.

Thanks to Eleven Media Group, we now know what went on inside the closed doors of the latest round of peace talks in China’s Ruili, which was hosted by Ambassador Wang Zongying on 11 March.

“This ceasefire thing doesn’t have anything to do with peace,” a retired senior government official told me last month. “It is only a lunch break. To the Burmese military, there is only total war.”

I later found what “total war” was when I re-read War and Anti-War: Making sense of today’s global chaos written by Alvin and Heidi Toffler 20 years ago.

The joint statement that was released at the conclusion of the first formal talks on 20 February between Naypyitaw’s Union Peacemaking Working Committee (UPWC) and the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), the alliance of 11 armed organizations, spoke about the discussion on the draft framework for political dialogue.

When China offered to facilitate the latest round of peace talks between Naypyitaw and the Kachin Independence Organization / Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA), the only major armed movement that has yet to reach a ceasefire, it was to a large extent welcomed by those involved.

Today, the signing of the 1947 Panglong Agreement is being celebrated all over the country, as it was for the past 65 years.

Since 2010, following the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the opening of peace talks with armed resistance movements, voices calling for “Panglong II”, “21st century Panglong” and “a conference even surpassing Panglong” have become louder.

The offensive which started in June 2011 against the Chinese border based Kachin Independence Organization/ Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA) ended almost 18 months later by the end of January this year.

The first time I learned about the existence of the Arakanese, or Rakhaing as we call them, was when I started to graduate from reading comics to reading novels in the early 1950’s. One of them, Pan Phwet Tan (Riddle Game) written by Tetkatho Nandamit, has fortunately survived the onslaughts of Alzheimar up to this day.