Thai ties bind Myanmar cyclone relief
By Brian McCartan
CHIANG MAI, Thailand - As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
bids to play a front-line role in the relief efforts in cyclone-hit Myanmar,
members' respective bilateral policies towards the military regime promise to
complicate and potentially undermine a collective and coherent group response.
Nowhere is that more clear than with Thailand, which has long maintained strong
commercial ties with Myanmar's military government. Bangkok was notably the
first capital to order the shipment relief supplies just days after the
disaster first struck on May 2 and 3. Bangkok is now serving as willing host to
a logistics
center for the United Nations and international humanitarian aid agencies
responding to the cyclone.
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon's request on May 19 to use
Bangkok's former Don Muang international airport as a logistical hub for relief
efforts was readily agreed to by the Thai government, although use had already
begun a day earlier. Airport hangars have been provided to the UN's World Food
Program to store supplies set for shipment to Myanmar, while the United States
has used the large military airfield at U Tapao for its relief flights into
Yangon.
Relief supplies are also being sent in convoys from the Thai border town of Mae
Sot, sometimes in Thai Army trucks, and earlier this week a Thai medical team
was the first foreign emergency team to gain access to the country. They have
even been allowed to work in the Irrawaddy Delta region, the worst-hit area to
which the junta has restricted foreign aid worker access.
Thailand has served as interlocutor between Myanmar's government and the UN and
US to persuade the ruling junta to open its doors to international relief
efforts. The reclusive government had earlier refused to allow in Western aid
and still has not allowed Western aid workers into the disaster hit areas.
While the Thai Air Force was able to broker a deal to let US Air Force relief
flights in, other efforts have not been as successful.
But even while sending emergency supplies, providing support for relief efforts
and acting as a liaison between the reclusive generals and the outside world,
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundarvej's government has simultaneously been busy
cementing business deals and drawing up policies that threaten a harder line
against the various exile opposition groups based in Thailand.
Samak eventually traveled to Myanmar on May 14, in a diplomatic bid to gain
wider access for relief aid. During the visit, Myanmar state-run television
showed clips of Samak being led around relief centers outside Yangon filled
with blue tents, where he greeted refugees, checked out relief supplies and
even watched television and joked with refugee children.
These spic-and-span camps have since been derided by opposition groups and
critics of the junta's relief efforts as show pieces, while the great majority
of the estimated two million people affected by the cyclone fight for their
lives amid insufficient shelter, food and medicine. The World Food Program has
estimated that only 30% of those affected by the disaster have been reached
with any relief supplies.
Amid reports of theft of aid supplies, movement restrictions, and a general
official neglect, Samak surprised many with his appraisal of the junta's relief
efforts when he said on May 14 that "from what I have seen I am impressed with
their management". He went on to say that the generals had given him a
"guarantee" that there had been no outbreaks of disease or any starvation among
cyclone survivors.
He notably failed to gain more access to disaster areas for the UN and other
international relief organizations and said he was satisfied that the junta
"have their own team to cope with the situation" and did not need foreign
experts. Samak's counterintuitive remarks are hardly surprising given the
commercial results of his previous trip to Myanmar in March 14 and a reciprocal
official visit by Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein to Thailand on April 29,
just days before the cyclone hit.
During his visit in March, Samak controversially agreed to disperse the
remaining funds from a 4 billion baht ($125 million) EX-IM Bank of Thailand
soft loan for communications equipment first initiated by ousted prime minister
Thaksin Shinawatra's government. Thaksin is currently under investigation for
alleged irregularities surrounding the government-to-government loan, which
critics have said benefited his then family-owned company, the Shin
Corporation.
The two governments also agreed to move ahead with the controversial Ta Sang
dam project on the Salween River. Human rights and environmental organizations
allege widespread abuses have clouded the project's development. Other
infrastructure projects were also agreed, including the development of a deep
sea port at Tavoy on the Andaman Sea in the Tenasserim Division of southeastern
Myanmar.
During the April meeting, the port was further discussed as were agreements for
Thai-invested contract farming of rubber and palm oil plantations in Myanmar.
Thein Sein announced that around 100,000 rai (16 hectare) near Tavoy would be
set aside as an industrial zone for energy related industries including
petrochemicals and refineries.
Thailand is currently Myanmar's third-largest trading partner and largest
energy importer and as of 2007 had paid-up investments of US$1.3 billion in the
neighboring country, according to statistics from Thai Foreign Trade
Department. Some contend, however, that those budding commercial deals have
compromised Thailand's ability to play the role of honest broker between the
junta and outside world in the wake of the cyclone crisis.
While on one hand playing an active role in providing relief to cyclone
survivors, on the other Bangkok has made almost no public statements denouncing
the regime's widely condemned, including by the UN and US, closed-door approach
to accepting international aid and foreign relief workers. Instead, Samak's
government took the rather tactless opportunity of an emergency cyclone-related
meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
with the military regime for the Tavoy port and a separate road link project.
The MoU was signed on May 19 by Thai foreign minister Noppadon Pattama and his
Myanmar counterpart Nyan Win.
The big-ticket infrastructure project envisions expanding the current port at
Tavoy and building a road linking it with Thailand's main port Laem Chabang
outside of Bangkok. The expanded port will be able to accommodate larger
vessels and cut days off the travel time of current shipments which must
navigate around the Malay peninsula. Thai Transportation Minister Santi Prompat
has said the port project will cost between 40 and 50 billion baht ($1.2-1.6
billion) and that another 100 billion baht ($3.1 billion) will be invested to
develop the industrial zone.
According to the minister, PTT Plc, the Thai oil company has expressed interest
in setting up an oil refinery in Myanmar and the construction of a pipeline to
pump oil products to Thailand. Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama says the
project will take five to six years to complete, while a construction survey is
expected to be completed by the end of this year. Once built, Pattama said
private Thai firms will be granted a concession to manage the port on an
initial five year extendable contract.
The MoU also covers the construction of a 130-kilometer road to connect
Myanmar's Tenasserim Division with and Thailand's western Kanchanburi province.
The cyclone may have by default brought a temporary reprieve for Myanmar's
ethnic and political opposition groups, refugees, internally displaced persons
and the nongovernmental organizations which assist them, while the junta
redirects its military focus on maintaining stability in cyclone-hit areas.
That could change soon, however, if reports hold true that Samak agreed to
Thein Sein to step up monitoring of opposition groups active in Thailand in
exchange for closer commercial ties.
According to people familiar with the policy shift, Thai
authorities will be tasked with cracking down on the insurgent Karen
National Union, which operates in remote border areas. Meanwhile known
political opposition group leaders are to be closely monitored and their
movements severely restricted.
Exile-run media groups long based in Thailand would also be monitored to
determine whether their coverage was harmful to relations between the two
countries. Cross-border movements would also be severely curtailed under the
new hard-line policy, including the flow of food, medicine and other supplies
sent by local and international relief organizations to villagers displaced by
the ongoing armed conflict between the junta and rebel groups.
With the huge international attention now drawn to Myanmar and the region in
the wake of the cyclone, the policy has not yet come into force. Already a
planned forced repatriation of newly arrived Karen refugees in Thailand's Mae
Hong Son province was averted by the UNHCR, who alerted the Thai government to
the likely bad press coverage that would result if it forced back refugees
during a time of crisis. Several NGO workers noted, however, that this could
all change once attention shifts elsewhere, which is already starting to happen
with the earthquake disaster in China.
Thailand's Myanmar policy will certainly benefit from ASEAN's now assumed
front-line role in dealing with the cyclone disaster. Each ASEAN member has
agreed to provide 30 medical personnel, of which the Thai medical team was the
first to arrive. The UN, however, says this international response is still not
enough to stave off disease outbreaks and that the country's doors need to be
opened to all foreign experts to avert a wider humanitarian crisis.
Critics say ASEAN's intervention will only allow Myanmar's military regime to
hide behind the group's long held non-interference policy in member states'
internal affairs. Myanmar's intransigence has in the past tried the 10-member
group's patience, but with this recent agreement ASEAN has once again provided
Myanmar a buffer from international criticism.
That's clearly the preference of Thailand and a benefit to Bangkok's business
interests.
Brian McCartan is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist. He may be
reached at brianpm@comcast.net.
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