From Guerrilla Fighter to Myanmar Peace Negotiator<br />Years before Mr. Min earned a Ph.D. from George Mason University, or advised the United States military in Afghanistan, or became one of Myanmar’s leading peace negotiators, he spent his early 20s in the thick<br />and humid Burmese jungle, a grunt in a student militia trying to overthrow the country’s military regime.<br />ackground allows him to inhabit two worlds: part U.S.-educated academic, part Myanmar peacemaker." Mr. Min said he was able to succeed in negotiations like this<br />because of his combination of military and academic training. that unique b<br />"I met one government official who was shot 14 times by the leader of the K.N.U.," an ethnic political group.<br />Today, after years of brokering talks between ethnic rebels and the central government to end a decades-long civil war, Mr. Min, 43, looks more like a banker than a former guerrilla fighter from a country<br />that remains stricken by conflict (most recently involving the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group).<br />He spent four years with the All Burma Students Democratic Front fighting the government alongside ethnic rebel groups.<br />Mi Sue Pwint, a central committee member of the All Burma Students Democratic Front, said in a message<br />that she had no issue with Mr. Min’s decision to leave the militia and support the government-backed peace process.
