inter-community conflicts which have continued in Burma (Myanmar) to the present day. There were Indians and Afghans who were part of Force 136 and were heavily involved in Burmese operation, like C. L. Sharma, an Indian professor of linguistics at British Army Headquarters in India who later became an active member of Force 136 and spent almost 6 years mainly in various missions of the Force in Burma. Karens, Chins, Arakanese and Kachins The majority community of Burma were the Bamar. Among the minority peoples of Burma, including Chins, Karens and Kachins, there were a mixture of anti-Bamar, anti-Japanese and pro-British sentiments. In 1942, the pro-Japanese Burma Independence Army raised with Japanese assistance, attempted to disarm Karens in the Irrawaddy River delta region. This created a large-scale civil conflict which turned the Karens firmly against the Japanese. The Karens were the largest of the minority communities. Although many lived in the Irrawaddy delta, their homeland can be considered to be the "Karenni", a mountainous and heavily forested tract along the border with Thailand. They had supplied many recruits to the Burma Rifles (part of the British forces in Burma during the early part of the war), and in the chaos of the British retreat into India, many of them had been given a rifle and ammunition and three months' pay, and were instructed to return to their home villages to await further orders. The presence of such trained soldiers contributed to the effectiveness of the Karen resistance. A few British army officers had also been left behind in the Karenni, in a hasty attempt to organise a "stay-behind" organisation. In 1943, the Japanese made a ruthless punitive expedition into the Karenni, where they knew a British officer was operating. To spare the population, a British liaison officer, Hugh Seagrim, voluntarily surrendered himself to the Japanese and was executed along with several of his Karen fighters. However, Force 136 continued to supply the Karens, and from late 1944 they mounted Operation Character, in execution similar to Operation Jedburgh in Nazi-occupied France, in which three-man teams were parachuted to organise large-scale resistance in the Karenni. Some of the Character teams had previously served on Jedburgh, others had previously served in the Chindits. In April 1945, Force 136 stage-managed a major uprising in the region in support of the Allied offensive into Burma, which prevented the Japanese Fifteenth Army forestalling the Allied advance