CHIANG MAI - Talks between the Myanmar
government and ethnic resistance groups have
raised hopes of a lasting solution to decades of
ethnic strife, but the country's established
history of failed ceasefires threatens to repeat
itself with potentially disastrous consequences
for new foreign-funded peace and reconciliation
initiatives.
Nowhere is that more apparent
than in the northern Kachin State, where fighting
between ethnic rebels and the Myanmar government
flared up again last year after years of peace.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) entered into a
ceasefire agreement with the central government in
1994 that ended decades of civil war but failed to
produce a political solution to the group's calls
for autonomy and other rights.
The
then-ruling military junta told the KIA that a new
constitution had to be promulgated and an elected
government installed before it could engage in a
political dialogue about autonomy. KIA
representatives
participated as observers in a National
Convention, which the junta set up to draft a new
constitution, and agreed to hold a referendum on
the charter in the area under their control in May
2008.
When the new constitution was
promulgated and general elections held in November
2010, the promised political dialogue failed to
materialize. Instead, the KIA came under pressure
to put down their arms and join a Border Guard
Force under the command of the Myanmar army. In
exchange, they were offered little more than
business opportunities, similar to the terms of
the original 1994 ceasefire that led to the
reckless exploitation of Kachin State's once
abundant forests and resources by Chinese
businessmen, local entrepreneurs and certain KIA
officers.
The ceasefire collapsed on those
broken promises, and hostilities resumed in June
last year as government forces moved into KIA-held
areas. A year later, fierce fighting continues in
the far north of the country, forcing tens of
thousands of civilians to flee to the Chinese
border or take shelter in major Kachin State
towns. The renewed fighting has been attended by
widespread reports of rights abuses, raising
questions about the sincerity of President Thein
Sein's internationally lauded political reform
program.
Those efforts include tenuous
ceasefires with other armed ethnic groups,
including the Shan State Army (SSA) and the Karen
National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the
Karen National Union. However, the recent talks
between Thein Sein's government and ethnic groups
are following the same dead-end pattern seen in
the now failed Kachin ceasefire.
At a
meeting in the far-eastern town of Kengtung held
between May 19-20, SSA and government
representatives signed a 12-point agreement to
"restore peace" in that long restive part of the
country. Apart from humanitarian issues such as
resettlement and "rehabilitation" of people
displaced by the fighting, the agreement only
contains references to "existing laws" on all
major issues; autonomy is not on the negotiation
table.
The government's primary aim of the
negotiations is to get the SSA to accept the 2008
constitution and convince armed rebels to return
to what successive military administrations have
consistently termed as the "legal fold".
Talks with Karen rebels, who are also
fighting for autonomy in the areas they control,
have been along the same lines. They have been
offered business opportunities in exchange for
peace but no promise of constitutional reform.
Because the 2008 constitution does not recognize
federalism, there is no negotiating space for
concessions that would jeopardize the military's
notion of a unitary state with itself at its apex.
Minor amendments may be made to the
charter by a majority vote in parliament, as seen
in the lifting of the ban on the opposition
National League for Democracy that allowed the
party to contest by-elections on April 1.
But a tangle of 104 clauses means that
major charter changes cannot be made without the
prior approval of more than 75% of all members of
parliament, after which a nationwide referendum
must be held where more than half of all eligible
voters cast ballots. This complicated procedure
makes it virtually impossible to make any
substantial changes on issues of federalism and
ethnic region autonomy, especially considering 25%
of all seats in the upper and lower house are
reserved for the military.
Irreconcilable differences There are now two fundamentally opposing views
on how Myanmar's ethnic question should be
resolved. For the government, the solution to
ethnic strife is for the rebels to lay down their
arms in a gradual approach under terms stipulated
by central authorities. For ethnic rebels, hopes
are that the ceasefire process will through
negotiations eventually lead to the establishment
of a federal union and more regional autonomy.
Certain ethnic groups seem to have pinned
their hopes on a number of international peace and
reconciliation outfits that have recently flocked
to the country to assist in the reconciliation
process. Thein Sein's government, on the other
hand, wants the same foreign interlocutors to help
persuade armed resistance groups to effectively
surrender and embrace the terms of the new
charter.
The Norwegian government has
earmarked some US$5 million to support its own
peace plan and has asked other donors for
additional assistance, while several other
international nongovernmental organizations have
offered their services as intermediaries. Critics
argue the foreign pressure will not be on the
government to amend the constitution - a
far-fetched proposition in any case - but rather
on the rebels to agree to work within the new
existing political structures in exchange for
development assistance in their respective areas.
Despite their lavish foreign funding, the
peace initiatives are essentially non-starters.
Sai Wansai, general secretary of the Shan
Democratic Union, a non-armed Shan interest group,
said in a recent statement posted to the Internet
that "the change of political system, and not just
a few paragraphs change here and there of the 2008
constitution, is a necessity for long-lasting
peace and political settlement."
While
fighting and mediation efforts continue in Kachin
State, sources with access to military insiders
say that the central government refuses to accept
that the KIA is representative of the Kachin
people. They argue instead that the "elected"
Kachin State government and its "chief minister",
Lajawn Ngan Seng, who was appointed after the
rigged 2010 election swept by military-backed
candidates, are the true democratic
representatives of the Kachin State.
From
this perspective, the KIA must be co-opted into
the system or wiped out militarily. Not
surprisingly, several rounds of talks between the
Kachins and the government, most held in
neighboring China, have failed to produce any
tangible results.
The government's
hard-line stand has had consequences that
authorities may not have anticipated when the
peace process began. According to Kachin sources,
the negotiations have led to the emergence of a
new, younger generation of Kachin leaders who are
more driven by political struggle than commercial
interests.
The most charismatic of these
new leaders is KIA vice chief of staff General
Sumlut Gun Maw, a physics graduate from Mandalay
University who joined the KIA in 1987, a year
before the nationwide uprising for democracy. Many
of his old classmates and contemporaries took part
in that suppressed uprising, and Gun Maw has
maintained throughout that a solution to the
ethnic conflict and the struggle for democracy are
equally important.
Despite the rebel
group's name, the KIA does not advocate
independence from Myanmar but rather is fighting
for ethnic rights and federalism. The Kachins are
a predominantly Christian people who rose in
rebellion in 1961 after the government tried to
make Buddhism the state religion. Christianity
continues to be an important factor in Kachin life
and society. The fact that government appointed
chief minister Lajawn Ngan Seng belongs to the
Kachin State's tiny Buddhist minority was seen by
many Kachins as a slight to local culture and
sensitivities.
The problems are similar in
all parts of the country where non-Burman
nationalities reside. Other ethnic groups in
Myanmar will sooner or later have to confront the
same issues that compelled the KIA to scrap its
1994 ceasefire and resume fighting. As Shan leader
Sai Wansai argues, as long as the core problem -
the highly controversial 2008 constitution - is
not addressed, "it is hard to imagine that the
ethnic conflicts within [Myanmar] could be
resolved anytime soon."
Bertil
Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far
Eastern Economic Review and author of several
books on Burma/Myanmar, including Burma in
Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948
(published in 1994, 1999 and 2003) and The
Kachin: Lords of Burma's Northern Frontier
(published in 1997). He is currently a writer
with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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