Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (19 page)

In 1959, the military Caretaker Government passed a universal military draft law on an Israeli model that included women. It has never been implemented. There are women in the military, but not in combat roles and not at the decision-making level. There are, however, many women in the higher echelons of the civil service, and some at the director general level, although not in the cabinet. During the BSPP period, abortions for medical reasons needed approval by the husband and the party.

Although rape in wartime and periods of conflict has been prominent, there is no evidence that this has been a state-sponsored policy, as some have charged. Few have been charged or convicted of such crimes by the government, which amounts to avoidance of the issue. The charge that rape has been an effort to dilute the minority population by genetically “Burmanizing” them seems unfounded. Yet in one sense women are treated as inferior: to enter Buddhist nirvana, they must first be reincarnated as a male. Burmese nuns, numbering over 40,000, have far lower status than monks. As one scholar wrote, “Military rule, however, has reinforced the authoritarian, hierarchical, and chauvinistic values that underpinned male-dominated power structures.”

The SLORC/SPDC, in a tactically clever maneuver, began the process of negotiating cease-fires with a broad spectrum of the minority organizations that revolted against central authority. This process was led by General Khin Nyunt, at that time secretary-1 of the SLORC and in charge of military intelligence. When he was ousted in October 2004, the SPDC said that the cease-fires were a product of the junta as a whole, and that they would continue and be respected. At this writing, there
are about twenty-five such cease-fires, almost all of which are verbal agreements. Seventeen have been recognized, and those minority troops control special regions where they are effectively local government. There are approximately twelve groups still in some form of rebellion. Splinter groups form and reform, so the situation is dynamic. The remaining military forces in revolt have dropped to only several thousand distributed among all insurgents.

These cease-fire groups have widely divergent relations with the central government and different degrees of autonomy or control. Three degrees of authority exist: those that have near devolution of authority (and thus are essentially autonomous), those effectively under military occupation, and those where a fragile form of coexistence exists. The most autonomous are the Wa and the Kokang, both on the China border. Here, the local authorities are in command, and it is said that Burmese army troops cannot go into Wa territory without permission of the Wa and in some cases without surrendering their weapons. The second group includes those in which a military occupation is the reality: the Rakhine State in the west, and in the east in parts of the Kayah and Karen States. The coexistence groups are in the north among the Kachin, and also on the eastern frontier and include the PaO, Mon State Army areas, and the Buddhist Karen region.

The general agreements were that these groups would retain their arms but not engage in any action against the government; within the territories they controlled, they could continue to engage in their normal economic activities, with the exception of opium production (see that question in this chapter). The agreement originally was that these groups would turn in their weapons before a referendum on the new constitution. This has not happened.

The fear that pervades minority–majority relations means that such groups will have little incentive to comply with this regulation except in some meaningless, formalistic manner. They might turn in some outmoded arms in some
symbolic ceremony, while retaining their essential weapons in hidden caches. Minorities fear not only the
tatmadaw
but also other potential adversaries of the same ethnicity. When Khin Nyunt was prime minister, it seemed apparent that he was prepared to offer some compromise on the questions of arms, such as enfolding some of these groups into militias or national guards or some Burmese equivalent (this occurred under the BSPP). This seems to be a necessary step if the fighting is not to erupt again. Under the new constitution of 2008, various militias are allowed, but there can only be one national
tatmadaw
.

Before the scheduled elections of 2010, the government is said to demand cease-fire groups be reconstituted into border patrols or forces with a significant admixture of Burman troops (10 percent). Whether the minorities will comply with this order is unclear at the time of this writing.

In addition to allowing some of the cease-fire organizations to retain the territory they administer, the government has offered to some groups economic incentives to enable them to increase their wealth and services to their own people and to tie them to the central government. Investments in a jade mine by the PaO minority has brought them considerable wealth that they have invested in other, countrywide ventures.

The Burman–minority relationships cannot be easily characterized, for they vary in the degree of intrusion and repression. In many cases, the
tatmadaw
and government, and through the government its agents such as the USDA, are seen as predatory. They have confiscated land, forced villagers to grow food for the troops, coerced the building of Buddhist structures and other forms of construction, set up checkpoints to extort funds, and increased license fees for many activities. For decades the state has enforced a system known as the “four cuts,” which has been widely condemned. This is the denial to insurgents of food, finances, recruiting, and intelligence in village areas. This system was also used in the BSPP period and seems derived from the British attempts to wipe
out the communist insurrection in Malaya in the 1950s and by the U.S. counterinsurgency programs in Vietnam.

The complexities of the various stages of the rebellions and the cease-fires as well as their causes preclude simple, standard approaches to mediation that may have occurred in other countries. These are old animosities and fears, dating back to independence in many cases. Some have had international dimensions and links, but most are related to deeply rooted decades-old social and humanitarian issues. Some of the insurgents and former insurgent groups have developed what have been called “alternative systems of profit, power and even protection”—that is, vested interests in maintaining control over certain areas and peoples. This makes solutions even more difficult.

The BSPP had founded in Sagaing Division an institute for minority education, perhaps formed along a Chinese model, to train minorities in the official ideology. In 1991, the SLORC changed this into a University for the Development of the National Races.

Many of these cease-fire groups participated in the National Convention that produced the new constitution. The dilemma for these organizations now, and for others as well, is whether they should participate in the planned 2010 elections. To do so undercuts whatever status and validity may still accrue to the 1990 elections, but to eschew them means to be cut out of even a modest role in a new government. In minority areas, by early 2009 various groups were considering organizing political parties on either ethnic or regional bases. Yet the various exiled ethnic organizations have each produced drafts of constitutions they deem acceptable. They have done so abroad, because to do so internally was considered an offense by the military. All of them, to one degree or another, call for a federalism that the military abhors. Whether these cease-fire groups—a few of which will be given townships where they will have some local governing authority—will be satisfied with the situation remains uncertain.

As Myanmar enters its third decade of military rule following the coup of September 18, 1988, relations with the United States have sunk to their lowest ebb since that date. Prospects for the near term are not optimistic, although some alternative approaches have surfaced in 2009 under President Barack Obama. The United States has enacted four stages of sanctions against the regime.

Although the previous government run by the military through the BSPP was an autocratic, single-party socialist state without any fig leaf of democratic governance, since 1979 the United States had an economic assistance program centered on basic human needs (today called humanitarian assistance). This was prompted by the poverty of the people. It also had a military assistance program to provide helicopters and equipment that was designed to help reduce opium production, which was at that time the primary source of the U.S. heroin supply. It started in June 1974 and by 1983 the cost totaled some $47 million. The violence with which the people’s revolution of 1988 was repressed, together with the coup and subsequent retaliation against its opponents or sympathizers, prompted an immediate U.S. reaction.

Whether U.S. legislation legally required the cut-off of economic aid following the coup is unclear, as the law indicates that all foreign assistance monies, except humanitarian assistance, have to cease if a coup overthrows a democratically elected government, which the BSPP obviously was not. The United States also halted military assistance. In effect, these comprised the first wave of sanctions against the SLORC. For a period, the U.S. ambassador consciously decided not to meet with the authorities because it might confer a degree of legitimacy on their actions. When he finally did, there was agreement that there would be no publicity.

Following the elections of May 1990, and intensified by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, the U.S. antipathy toward the junta increased and hardened.
It also became more personalized around the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi. Further sanctions were enacted in 1997. These restricted visas for certain Myanmar military officials and their families and prohibited new American businesses from investing there. Some in Congress pushed for divestiture of previously established businesses, but the State Department’s views prevailed, and the action was limited only to those firms that had not invested prior to the act’s passage.

The third stage came following the Depayin incident in central Myanmar in May 2003 when an NLD caravan, including Aung San Suu Kyi, was attacked and an unknown number of people were killed. This was the most strict of Myanmar sanctions, preventing the use of U.S. banking facilities (including interbank transfers that went through New York), and further restricting travel to the United States of higher ranking military and their families, as well as senior civilian employees of the government. The minuscule Myanmar assets in the United States were frozen. All users of U.S. banks needed to have individual U.S. Treasury waivers, for example, to pay for programs or international nongovernmental personnel. All Burmese imports into the United States were stopped, including textile imports that annually amounted to some US$350 million. The law was shortly amended to allow the import of educational materials, art, and handicrafts. Diplomatic relations, however, continued, although the representation by both sides was reduced over time to the chargé d’affairs level.

The fourth stage (Public Law 110-286), which occurred in 2008, was prompted by the Saffron Revolution of 2007. It restricted the importation of jade and rubies of Burmese origin even if processed in some third country. Also, U.S. executive orders prohibited any U.S. citizen from aiding third-party foreign investment in that country, purchasing shares in a third-country business if its products are primarily for Burma, and required U.S. representatives to vote against any multilateral financial assistance for which Myanmar was the recipient.

The United States had carried out an extensive International Military Education and Training (IMET) program in Burma. In the period 1950–1962, 972 officers were trained in the United States, and during 1980–1988, 255 graduated—more than in any other country. The restart of program corresponded with the restart of USAID program. During 1974–1980, the United States sponsored an antinarcotics program that provided helicopters and pilot training. In the period 1980–1988, 415 officers were trained abroad, of whom 255 went to the United States (61.4 percent). During the civilian era, 1948–1962, 1,852 officers were trained overseas, of whom 1,227 went to the United States (66.3 percent). Contrary to the European Union, which withdrew all military attachés, the United States wisely kept that position open in the embassy, thus providing a modest but desirable avenue of professional contact between the two militaries. The 1978 International Security Act stipulated that the United States could not provide IMET in countries “engaged in a consistent pattern of human rights violations”—which certainly should have excluded Burma under the BSPP—but this provision was ignored. The claim was that although such training did not improve human rights, it set standards that were important.

In the semiannual State Department reports to the Congress on Burma, the U.S. government has most often called for the recognition of the results of the May 1990 election, swept by the NLD, in effect calling for the resignation of the junta. This was in fact a call for regime change, and the Burmese government interpreted it as such. The futility of such a demand on a foreign state by the United States should have been obvious. The United States lobbied hard for ASEAN to deny entry to Myanmar in July 1997, and the United States, contrary to international practice, has refused to call that country Myanmar, instead using the older term Burma. High-level U.S. officials did not travel to Myanmar, but in June 2007 the Chinese arranged a meeting between a deputy assistant secretary of state with three Burmese ministers in Beijing. There were no
apparent positive results of that meeting. In March 2009, an office director from the State Department met with the Burmese foreign minister at Naypyidaw, signaling interest on both sides for exploring improved relationships.

Perhaps to improve his standing in the SPDC or because he felt better relations with the United States would be useful, in 2002 General Khin Nyunt took an initiative that eventually proved unsuccessful and may have contributed to his downfall. In February 2002, the State Department did not refer to the May 1990 elections but rather to the need to improve human rights and governance, to which the United States would positively respond. The change in the U.S. position was one factor in the release of Aung San Suu Kyi on May 6 of that year. This was followed by the visit to Washington, D.C., of the highest-ranking Burmese military official since the imposition of sanctions to discuss conditions for the removal of Myanmar from the list of countries engaged in narcotics activity. (This was possible because of changes in the legislation prompted by the political need to ensure Mexico did not fall into that category.) It was only after the congressional elections of November 2002, which the Republican Party won, that the assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, at a Washington conference on Burma/Myanmar on November 21–22, reverted back to the hard line of the May 1990 elections, thereby vitiating any potential progress for improving relations between the United States and Myanmar at that time.