BOOK REVIEW Strength and dishonor Building the Tatmadaw by Maung Aung Myoe
Reviewed by David Scott Mathieson
There is almost universal puzzlement as to the enduring staying power of the
Myanmar military regime. With such widespread fear, distrust and outright
hatred of the armed forces by the general population, not to mention a
staggering number of ethnic armed groups which have been in revolt for decades
or uneasy ceasefire for the past several years, how has the army maintained its
grip on the state in one form or another since 1962?
Maung Aung Myoe, a Myanmar security scholar, answers some of these questions in
his new book Building the Tatmadaw- albeit
not always intentionally. He also manages to raise several more questions as to
the durability of such a powerful if reviled institution. ("Tatmadaw" is
Myanmar for "armed forces", and includes the army, navy and air force.)
While many observers alternately dismiss the ruling State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) and its massive army as an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, as
inchoate xenophobic nationalists, or as delusional North-Korean type autocrats,
Aung Myoe approaches the Tatmadaw as a rational functioning institution with
its own desires, aims, purpose and limitations.
Aung
Myoe, who received his PhD from the Australian National University and has held
posts at Mandalay University, the National University of Singapore, the Myanmar
military staff college, and now at Inha University of South Korea, has written
one of the most insightful books yet on the Myanmar military. Building the
Tatmadaw is a curious mix of in-depth analysis, supposition, ambiguity,
technical catalogue, and at times down-right nerdy tank-spotting.
The book is arranged around several very tight chapters dealing with military
doctrine and strategy, organization and force structure, armaments and force
modernization, military training, and the financial side of force modernization
and troop welfare. There are some important insights into Myanmar's military
thinking, even if the author routinely engages in contradictions and offers
insufficient details on defense expenditure, the actual size of the military
and the internal dynamics and stability of the institution.
The opening chapter discusses the Tatmadaw's military doctrine, which while
increasingly conventional in nature, is still predicated on counter-insurgency
warfare against ethnic insurgents. The concept of "people's war under modern
conditions" is at the heart of the Tatmadaw's stated doctrine, essentially a
strategy of conventional defense against a feared-for low-level (foreign)
invasion which includes elements of "resistance ... organized at the village,
regional and national level to sap the will of the invading force" (p 35).
The Tatmadaw has over the past two decades embarked on a major conventional
upgrade, as well as expanded its social mobilization to deter possible foreign
intervention, including, the author writes, through aspects of "guerrilla
warfare and tunnel warfare". This strategy explains the rationale behind recent
significant arms purchases, including artillery, naval vessels and radar and
anti-aircraft capabilities, as well as all the new digging of underground
bunkers (with North Korean help) in Tatmadaw establishments around the country.
The "People's Militia" strategy has been a constant feature of speeches by
Senior General Than Shwe over the past decade. There is very little information
publicly available on the sinister sounding Directorate of People's Militias
and Public Relations in the Ministry of Defense, but the growth in Nyi Naung
Tatphwe (auxiliary forces) and social welfare organizations such as the Union
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), with an estimated 25 million
members, the Auxiliary Fire Brigade and the Myanmar War Veterans Association
has been dramatic in recent years.
At this year's Armed Forces Day parade on March 27, in the new reclusive
capital of Naypyitaw, several of these auxiliary forces were prominently
represented and received awards from top military officers, including members
of the Fire Brigade, National Police Force and the Myanmar Red Cross Society.
One worrying trend throughout Myanmar has been the increased
"para-militarization" of society, as family members of the Tatmadaw (especially
their wives) and other local elites have been coerced into rudimentary military
training.
These auxiliaries, in addition to scores of smaller Pyithu Sit (People's
Militia) armed units loyal to and controlled by the Tatmadaw, are located in
Myanmar 's borderlands and zones of low-intensity conflict. The next layer of
defense is the large ethnic ceasefire groups which maintain control over
semi-autonomous areas and business interests.
Recently leaked documents from the SPDC outline how dozens of non-state armed
groups will be transformed into "border guard forces" in the lead-up to the
2010 election, in effect subordinating these groups as sub-contractors for
border security duties and incrementally eroding their local economic power
bases to consolidate central control.
According to the memo (seen by Asia Times Online), many groups are being
instructed to reduce their manpower to around 326 troops and accept some 30
Tatmadaw members into their headquarters unit. The massive United Wa State Army
(UWSA) and its 20,000 strong militia have already rejected the terms.
Fuzzy figures
Aung Myoe has disappointingly little to say about the failure of the Tatmadaw
to resolve the long-postponed political aspirations of many of these groups,
and it is not clear how effective "people's war" will be against internal
opponents such as the well-armed Wa. The author engages in a long and
confusingly semantic discussion over the contested size of the Myanmar
military, a guessing game that has long enervated international observers, who
identify the size of the Tatmadaw as a key index in the strength of the SPDC
regime.
He concludes that with nearly 1,300 military units of various sizes, with
nearly half (504) of them consisting of infantry battalions, that the
Tatmadaw's "force structure is over 600,000 personnel". He qualifies this still
further by claiming most of these troops are "Civilian Construction Corps".
Pages later he discusses average battalion size, which in 1988 was ideally 777
soldiers per battalion and later grew to 814 in the 1990s, but later admits
that the size was effectively 670 plus in the earlier period and 350 plus in
the latter.
In 2008, the average infantry battalion size was 250 or less. At the same time,
the author dismisses another estimate from a now deposed military intelligence
colonel, Hla Min, that the Tatmadaw currently consists of only 350,000
personnel. All of this leaves the reader in confusion, though a reasonable
deduction is that the size of the Tatmadaw is probably nearer the lower end of
the estimates.
Force modernization, meanwhile, has been haphazard. While most small arms and
light infantry weapons are domestically manufactured, they remain low-tech, and
according to the author, "[T]he recent transfer of military technology from the
[People's Republic of China] is not particularly advanced either". (p 202).
The SPDC continues to purchase foreign weapons systems in an attempt to effect
a thorough force modernization. Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft, North Korean
multiple-launch rocket systems (and maybe rockets), Ukrainian armored personnel
carriers, Chinese ships, fighter aircraft and trucks, artillery from Pakistan,
Serbia and India, radios and cyber-warfare equipment from Singapore, and radar
and anti-aircraft weapons from a host of suppliers make up a formidable
shopping list. Yet there is little discussion about the absorption of these
weapons systems and whether they can actually be deployed effectively. Purchase
is one thing, effective performance a very different result.
Aung Myoe is also fuzzy on the financing of this profligate spending. Where did
the money for arms purchases come from? Natural resources sales, natural gas,
where in the government budget are there credible figures on defense
expenditure? The author doesn't dwell much on these points. The extravagance
required to sustain the military's vanity is nowhere better seen than in the
new capital of Naypyitaw, with its three gigantic golden statues of former
kings, eight-lane highways, massive replica of the Shwedagon pagoda, and
expansive government buildings. Little of it is aesthetically appealing, as
most of it is decidedly retro-fascist. This gated community designed by gauche
gangsters seems to have been designed to distance themselves from the people
they preside over with little compassion.
The book's sections on military training, especially officer indoctrination,
are revealing. The author states that protocols adopted in the past several
years prefer bo-laung (officer cadets) to attend the Defense Services
Academy (DSA) without a university degree (they get an equivalent at the
academy) and to come from a good family from the countryside and preferably not
the cities.
The protocols also state that they have no connection to contemporary politics
or protest tendencies, and that their wives should come from an educated
middle-class background, although their educational status must increase in
step with her husband's promotions. This is referred to as Sayar Dagar Setsanye
(patron-client relationship) to ensure swift career advancement, as an officer
and his wife are seen as the "father and mother of the battalion".
The author rejects reports of discrimination based on religion or ethnicity,
and claims reforms in the 1990s have made the officer corps more equitable. He
expends several pages detailing how the military has supposedly been more open
to minority recruits, only to contradictorily conclude: "[A]s a result of these
measures, the present day Tatmadaw is commanded by educated Buddhist officers
with a rural background, most of whom are ethnic Bama [Myanmar]" (p 200), which
sounds more like authoritarian homogenization. There is very little evidence
that the army is an institution conducive for career advancement for any member
of an ethnic group or a Christian, Muslim or woman.
Crimes of omission
The book hardly mentions training of the rank and file, a serious omission as
it leaves the reader with little understanding of the life of an average
soldier. Much of the training literature the Tatmadaw began to produce after
2000 is predominantly based on United States Army and Marine Corps field
manuals.
This may be because the head of military training appointed in 1998, Brigadier
General Aung Kyi, was trained at the US military special warfare center at Fort
Bragg at one point in his career. There is also a thriving defense publication
culture in Myanmar, with numerous translations of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz,
Western strategic and defense studies journals, and even the homegrown and
officially sanctioned, Sittheikpan Hnit Nipyinnyar (Military Science and
Technology) Journal.
Another of the contradictions in this book concerns the relative privilege
Tatmadaw members enjoy. The author writes, "Generally speaking, Tatmadaw
members did not receive special privileges" and then clumsily contextualises
that by saying, "Generally, despite the lack of off-budget welfare subsidies,
soldiers were better off than their civilian counterparts and even more so
compared with ordinary civilians" (p 167).
These glaring inconsistencies indicate the author is traversing a fine balance
between a congratulatory and critical study of the military, but such
contradictions yaw and pitch the narrative dramatically. It's as if the author
is trying to suggest the reader pick one or the other of his parallel
arguments: either clear Tatmadaw propaganda or open-source opacity. Yet Aung
Myoe is rarely conclusive on what he thinks the right information is.
The Tatwadaw's morale is often a cause for speculation, particularly among
those looking for cracks in military unity. A small section in the book on the
financing of troop welfare is revealing, arguing that the central War Office
could not sustain rations to frontline battalions who were compelled to
generate their own funding, an exercise in self-reliance that quickly
degenerated into rackets.
"Faced with unfair competition, monopoly, protection, and corruption, some
people started seeing the Tatmadaw's commercial activities as vehicles for not
only making the Tatmadaw a privileged institution, but also paving the way for
military personnel to make their personal gains" (p 189). Aung Myoe
inexplicably claims this self-sustainability policy has been repealed in recent
years, yet corruption inside the Tatmadaw continues to flourish, including
through land confiscation, exhortation of civilians, protection of opium
fields, and seizing civilian property and goods.
Living conditions in remote combat areas are never explored, even though we
know from a range of reports that the lives of soldiers and civilians are
desperate. By quoting from a leaked internal Tatmadaw command document from
2006, which discusses increasing rates of desertion and low morale related to
abuses by corrupt and "self centered" officers, the author tacitly acknowledges
that there are deep fissures and tensions within the military.
How the military is perceived by average people is nowhere addressed in the
book, nor are the voices of soldiers and officers themselves given space for
institutional introspection.
The book's most important omission - and one that questions the author's
credibility - concerns the Tatmadaw's deplorable human-rights record. Both
inside and outside Myanmar, the Tatmadaw is synonymous with abuse. Human Rights
Watch, Amnesty International, the Karen Human Rights Group, the Shan Women's
Action Network and many others, have documented systematic violations such as
forced recruitment of child soldiers, targeted attacks against civilians in
ethnic minority areas, sexual violence against women, burning down of entire
villages, the use of forced prisoner as porters in conflict areas and other
violations of international law, as noted by the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) in June 2007 and in a recent report by five prominent
international jurists writing for Harvard Law School.
Aung Myoe only briefly mentions abuses, such as the recruitment of child
soldiers, and then just as "foreign media reports". The circumscribed nature of
being an insider writing about such an important institution is evident in
these vaguely worded or excluded issues in the book.
Methodologically, the book is a fascinating melange of sources: scholarly works
on Myanmar, including the seminal works of Andrew Selth and Desmond Ball,
Western defense doctrine theory, and liberal use of the online reference
Wikipedia (whose highly detailed entries on the Myanmar military could have
been written by the author). Aung Myoe also uses internal military documents -
which indicates that he is probably sitting on a lot more that the SPDC doesn't
want to see the light of day.
Transforming the Tatmadaw, by Andrew Selth, underscores the hard reality
that for any major change to occur in Myanmar's long stagnant political
deadlock, and even for significant economic or social change, the deeply
entrenched Tatmadaw will either have to radically change and act as the
vanguard or guardian of any transformation, or be swept aside.
Both seem unlikely at present, though social tensions are so deep in Myanmar
that future uprisings like in 1988 or 2007 cannot be ruled out. Though his
Myanmar citizenship doubtlessly circumscribes what he can say, Maung Aung
Myoe's study is fundamental reading for anyone inside or outside Myanmar
seeking to understand that long-delayed transition.
Building the Tatmadaw Myanmar Armed Forces Since 1948 by Maung Aung
Myoe. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2009. ISBN
978-981-230-848-1. Price S$49.90, 255 pages.
David Scott Mathieson is Burma Researcher with New York-based Human
Rights Watch.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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Aung
Myoe, who received his PhD from the Australian National University and has held
posts at Mandalay University, the National University of Singapore, the Myanmar
military staff college, and now at Inha University of South Korea, has written
one of the most insightful books yet on the Myanmar military. Building the
Tatmadaw is a curious mix of in-depth analysis, supposition, ambiguity,
technical catalogue, and at times down-right nerdy tank-spotting.
