Last month, speaking from Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, US President George W Bush announced that he
would withhold some US aid from Myanmar. Then at the
United Nations on September 21, while promoting
democracy for Myanmar, as he has done so often for Iraq,
Afghanistan and the whole of the Middle East in recent
months, Bush told the General Assembly: "The democratic
hopes we see growing in the Middle East are growing
everywhere. In the words of the Burmese democracy
advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, 'We do not accept the notion
that democracy is a Western value. To the contrary,
democracy simply means good government rooted in
responsibility, transparency and accountability.'"
It is fortunate that not many outside of the
United States - except those dyed-in-the-wool liberals
who consider Suu Kyi to be Myanmar and Myanmar to be Suu
Kyi - believe what Bush says when he talks about
democracy. Such strident pro-democracy rhetoric could
just as well be a precursor for a unilateral strike on
Myanmar, some say.
Many outside the United
States have scant respect for the democracy rhetoric
issued from Washington because when they look at the
record of these noisemakers it doesn't take them long to
figure out that this is really a series of threats,
dressed up in the fancy garb of democracy.
Individuals such as Republican Senator Mitch
McConnell from Kentucky and Sam Brownback, a Republican
from Kansas - both of whom are on the front line in the
United States promoting democracy and human rights in
Myanmar - belong to the Christian right and were
champions of "shock and awe" in Iraq. A visit to their
websites makes clear their warlike sentiments.
It doesn't take long to apprehend their
untrustworthiness, either. There is no question that
Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her political party, the National
League for Democracy (NLD), won Myanmar's general
elections handsomely in 1990, and the military's
nullification of the elections, which would have put the
NLD into power, was wrong. At the same time, the events
surrounding the 1990 elections merit substantial
redefinition. The old shibboleth that the NLD won the
1990 elections but the junta refused to hand over power
implies that the military authority then in power had
agreed to the transfer of power before the elections;
whereas the military authority had undeniably set
conditions for the transfer of power through the
promulgation of a new constitution, a process that Suu
Kyi herself had articulated before she was placed under
house arrest.
There is also no doubt that
keeping Suu Kyi and a number of NLD leaders, many of
whom were former high-ranking army officers, imprisoned
is not in the best interest of the nation. At the same
time, it is almost laughable to believe that US
policymakers under President Bush have in their hearts
only the interest of bringing democracy back to Myanmar.
Different yardsticks If ushering in
democracy in other nations is so precious to Washington,
why then does it have different yardsticks for different
nations? In 1999, for instance, General Pervez Musharraf
took power in Pakistan through a bloodless coup.
Musharraf had the duly elected prime minister, Nawaz
Sharif, jailed and then exiled to Saudi Arabia. If
Sharif tries to come back to Pakistan now, there is no
question that he will end up in prison, if not hanged.
Even his brother Shahbaz Sharif, who is also in Saudi
Arabia, cannot show up in Pakistan.
A similar
situation exists for Benazir Bhutto Zardari, another
former prime minister of Pakistan, who spends her time
shuttling between Dubai and London. She cannot go to
Pakistan either. Musharraf, now Pakistan's president,
was questioned by some US lawmakers on many other
issues, but no mention was made of his exiling Sharif.
For Washington, clearly there are acceptable
military dictators and unacceptable military dictators.
Just as clearly, there are considerations more important
than democracy for the US administration. The Myanmar
junta is considered by Washington to be bad military
dictators.
In the years since the 1990
elections, the junta has kept the NLD out of power and,
for much of that time, Aung Sun Suu Kyi under house
arrest. The junta has also cracked down on opium
cultivation. In fact, according to the United Nations
Narcotics Control Board, "opium cultivation in Myanmar
shows a 29% decline [this year] in comparison to 2003".
Opium cultivation this season in Myanmar is estimated at
44,200 hectares, representing a significant cumulative
decline of 73% when compared with the 163,000 hectares
under cultivation in 1996. The production of opium for
the year 2004 amounted to 370 tonnes, representing a
decline of 54% with respect to 2003. One would think
that accomplishment deserving of US support - opposition
to drug-trafficking is core to US policy, isn't it? Not
necessarily, it turns out.
The apple of
Washington's eye at this point is Afghan President Hamid
Karzai. During his watch, and under the supervision of
Washington, opium production in Afghanistan this year
will be close to 4,500 tons. During the period of the US
occupation since the winter of 2001, Afghanistan's opium
production has shown a "healthy" growth rate of more
than 20% annually. This opium, and heroin in its refined
form, is destroying human beings, mostly in Europe, in
larger numbers every year. But neither Senator McConnell
nor Brownback has expressed any doubt publicly about the
drug policy of the Karzai administration or criticized
the Bush administration for allowing drug production to
grow in leaps and bounds in Afghanistan.
Another
core US "democracy and human rights" policy commitment
is to the battle against HIV/AIDS. Yet Washington is
blocking international aid to Myanmar to fight the human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Myanmar has already paid
an extremely high price for its isolation. International
organizations have cut back or eliminated their work in
the country and much bilateral foreign aid has been
eliminated too. One result is that HIV and AIDS, the
disease the virus causes, have run rampant in Myanmar,
and the country has received almost no help in getting
the epidemic under control. Myanmar's HIV/AIDS crisis is
now by far the worst in Southeast Asia.
Sanctions: Who benefits? If US policy
seems confusing from a distance, there are indications
that it is less so close up: within Myanmar not many
really believe the US sanctions are meant to right the
wrong. To begin with, the NLD, which for cheap political
reasons had endorsed US sanctions on Myanmar, has now
come to realize that the sanctions never achieved what
was intended. The official spokesman of the NLD, U Lwin,
told Reuters on October 12 that economic sanctions,
especially those imposed by the United States, had been
ineffective in persuading the Yangon government to
reform. "Nothing has happened. What we really need in
our case is meaningful dialogues," U Lwin said.
His admission pulls the rug out from under the
US sanctions policy. In 1997, former secretary of state
Madeleine Albright justified sanctions on the Burmese
(despite the change of its name to Myanmar in 1989, US
authorities could never get away from addressing the
country as Burma) junta by claiming that "the junta had
run that country's economy to the ground".
Indeed, the sanctions U Lwin's party had
supported, and even actively lobbied for in the United
States, have further jeopardized the economic situation
within Myanmar. Young women with no visible source of
income have now become involved in prostitution in large
numbers in order to survive. But this has not deterred
the McConnell-Brownback crowd, which has attacked this
phenomenon as though the Yangon government had sponsored
"human trafficking".
The inadequacy of sanctions
is widely appreciated among members of the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "Well, you know that
the position of me and Indonesia - not only Indonesia
but the entire ASEAN - we don't believe that sanctions
are very effective and, especially in a country like
Myanmar, sanctions can even seriously hurt the
livelihood of the ordinary people," said Indonesia's
envoy to ASEAN, Ali Alatas, when he spoke to the
Washington-based Radio Free Asia on October 12.
Indonesia is the current chair of ASEAN.
Outside
of ASEAN, India is in the midst of an important
initiative toward Myanmar. On Monday, Myanmar's top
authority, Senior General Than Shwe, will be in New
Delhi. Six agreements will be on the table for signing
during Than Shwe's visit, including a protocol on
bilateral cooperation against terrorism.
Sources
say that Than Shwe will be welcomed with a gun salute,
accorded to a head of state, in the forecourt of the
Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's House). That will be
followed by delegation-level talks and a lunch hosted by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Hyderabad House.
President A P J Abdul Kalam will host a banquet in the
general's honor the same evening.
On Tuesday,
Than Shwe will fly to Bangalore to explore India's
information-technology industry. A visit to the
Hindustan Aeronautics establishment is also in the
offing, given Yangon's interest in Indian military
hardware, especially the advanced light helicopter. The
next day, Than Shwe will visit Kolkata before returning
to Yangon.
Old geopolitics It is
evident from the schedule set up for Than Shwe in India
that New Delhi has now begun to realize the importance
of stabilizing Myanmar. China understood the importance
of a stable Myanmar years earlier.
Myanmar sits
where three great regions of Asia meet. China in the
north, Southeast Asia in the south, and India in the
west all meet at Myanmar. Myanmar is the key to a smooth
infrastructural land-based link-up among Central Asia in
the west, Japan in the east and Russia in the north. If
Asia - and it must - hopes to develop a strong economic
developmental structure based on a viable physical
economy, Myanmar must not only be a stable nation, but
it must also be developed economically. Strong
infrastructural development, a far-reaching educational
base and the development of wide-ranging small-scale
industries would put Myanmar fully in the picture. This
would not only bring an Asian economic integration
process in to play, but would work as the necessary
first step to resolving Asia's security problems.
For US policymakers, brought up with
British-taught choke-point theories, Myanmar is
conceived to be the quintessential choke point, where
the prevalence of US influence would prevent the
integration of China, India and Southeast Asia, and
indeed, the integration of the whole of Asia.
Washington would like to see a regime in Myanmar
that would depend on the United States and reliably
check Asian integration moves. That necessitates a
regime change in Yangon. This is the crux of the present
US policy toward Myanmar. The rest is hokum.
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