Misery Spirals in Burma As Junta Targets Minorities

But this year, the government's campaign has extended through the rainy season and assumed far larger dimensions, appearing to be a final assault aimed at smashing the resistance. Over the past 10 months, sources familiar with Burmese military actions say, its forces have pushed into major Karen strongholds, building 12 new permanent army bases.

Burmese government officials did not return phone calls seeking comment from their embassy in Washington. But observers say the campaign is almost certainly tied to a desire to extend security around the new capital, which is meant to serve as a protective jungle fortress for the junta. The Burmese have already begun moving government offices there from Rangoon, the old capital, and are finishing work on a sprawling military bunker.

Economic development appears to be another motivation for the offensive, according to observers. Burma, a country that was once one of Southeast Asia's richest nations and is now among its poorest, has sought to create revenue by signing a deal with Thailand to build multiple dams on the picturesque Salween River, which runs through Karen state. As the Burmese military attempts to exert its control over the river, it has moved into other Karen strongholds.

"The new capital and the dam projects have become an incredibly destructive pretext for the Burmese military to take control of Karen state using indiscriminate force," said Jack Dunford, executive director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), a U.S.-funded relief group based in Bangkok. "I fear this may be the beginning of the end there."

An increasing number of Karen civilians fleeing the violence have made their way here to Eituta, an emergency camp perched on a muddy hilltop overlooking Burma's border with Thailand. The rows of primitive bamboo huts are protected by a battalion of armed Karen soldiers.

With Eituta's population topping 1,500, and growing at a rate of about 10 percent a month, Karen authorities here are making plans for a second camp nearby.

Although the Thai government has adopted a more lenient policy on Burmese refugees in recent years, aid groups say the bureaucratic process of admitting new arrivals has been slowed by the sudden uptick in the number of Karen seeking asylum. With the new military offensive, the number of arrivals at the already over-crowded official Karen refugee camps in Thailand has jumped 60 percent, to almost 900 a month, according to the TBBC.

The situation has effectively created a precarious limbo for the displaced people at Eituta, located only two hours by foot from the nearest Burmese military outpost. Almost two-thirds of the refugees here are children younger than 12, many of whom are sick with malaria and dysentery.

Relief organizations have cut out a section of the dense jungle canopy to build a small medical clinic. But the wounds of many children here run deeper than any medicine can cure.

On a recent day at the camp, a foreign journalist with a video camera approached an ethnic Karen man and a smiling 2-year-old girl sitting on straw mats in their hut. Suddenly, the girl began screaming uncontrollably. "She thinks it's a gun," said her father, Saw Say Nay, pointing to the video camera.

Saw, a farmer, fled here with his family of four last month. Like many displaced Karen, they had been living in hiding in the jungle since the summer, when Burmese troops began constructing a base near their village of Sayztaing Gyi, about 40 miles from the new capital.

"They were going village by village, forcing men and women into labor," he said. "Then they started burning villages, so we packed what we could and escaped into the jungle. From the trees, we saw them set our homes on fire. They burned our crops. They left us with nothing."

Thin and languid from malaria, Saw said he found out there was no going back after one villager tried to return, only to lose his leg when he stepped on a freshly laid land mine.

"We don't know what to do," he said. "My heart wants to go back, but I know it is not safe for my family. I don't know if we can go to Thailand. I don't know if they will accept us. So we are here. We have nowhere else to go."

Travis Fox of washingtonpost.com contributed to this report.