Small Wars Journal: Insurgent Relief and Assistance Teams: The Free Burma Rangers Organize-Train-Equip-Sustain Model

Full article available here. Excerpt:

“Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is a Burma-based, multi-ethnic, conflict relief and assistance organization. It is supported by private individuals and organizations, and does not receive funding from, or is associated with, any foreign government. Ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) inside Burma send men and women to FBR to be organized, trained, equipped, and sustained in teams to be deployed by their parent organizations into areas, under attack or in crisis, to provide emergency medical care, shelter, food, clothing, and human rights’ documentation.  Rangers are all volunteers who choose to work for the freedom for all people under oppression. They go towards the attack to help people and they will not run away if the people, they are helping, cannot escape. Men and women of many ethnic groups and religions in Burma are all part of FBR. In addition to Burma, FBR has conducted organize-train-equip team training in Sudan, and direct relief and assistance missions to Kurdistan, Iraq, and Syria by FBR’s headquarters’ international team from Burma. Thus, FBR occupies a unique position through providing relief and assistance to oppressed people in Burma, Sudan, Kurdistan, Iraq, and Syria until freedom and sustainable peace finally comes to them.

Aspects of FBR’s organized-train-equip-sustain model in Burma may prove especially useful to unconventional warfare in support of insurgents and is the primary focus of this article. However, FBR’s direct relief and assistance missions in the Middle East will also be briefly presented to reflect the full scope of its operations.”