Peace
drive splits Myanmar's Karen By
Francis Wade
CHIANG MAI - The Karen
National Union's struggle for autonomy from
Myanmar's central government, now in its sixth
decade of armed resistance, is widely recognized
as the world's longest-running insurgency. Now, a
split within the KNU's senior ranks threatens to
weaken its armed front and undermine its
negotiating position at a time when President
Thein Sein's push for peace with ethnic armies
gains greater international recognition.
Three top KNU figures - military chief
General Mutu Say Poe and central executive
committee members Roger Khin and the late David
Taw, who died last week - were sacked by the KNU's
central committee on October 2 for breaking
organizational protocol in their individual bids
to strengthen ties with Naypyidaw through a
Norwegian government-sponsored Myanmar Peace
Support Initiative
(MPSI). Thein Sein has received firm backing and
tangible support from Western countries, including
Norway, for his ceasefire initiatives.
The
three senior officers were nominally dismissed for
opening a liaison office with the government, as
called for in the MPSI, without permission from
the group's central command. While the move
represented a significant breach of the KNU's
chain of command, it also masks an important
subtext that links any ceasefire to potentially
destructive state development projects that would
ultimately draw Karen State under greater central
government control and strike at the heart of the
Karen's long battle for self-governance.
The three dismissed senior officials
represent a "moderate" KNU faction that favors
negotiation of a ceasefire agreement with the
government in exchange for development assistance.
Such a deal would open the way for large-scale
investment in the resource-rich eastern state, an
accommodation that a competing "hardline" KNU
faction and many among the Karen population who
have suffered from decades of military persecution
are not yet prepared to back.
Led by
General Secretary Zipporah Sein, the hardline
faction has taken a more tentative, circumspect
tack in negotiations with Thein Sein's
quasi-civilian government. The faction has
consistently pointed towards the dangers of
opening too much, too fast to outside investment
before a lasting political solution of the
grievances of the Karen population have been
achieved. Although not elected, the KNU view
themselves as representative of the interests of
the Karen people.
The experience of the
ethnic Kachin, whose 17-year ceasefire with the
government ended last year amid renewed armed
hostilities, was marked by environmentally
destructive, often state-led development projects,
including hydropower, logging and mining ventures
in Myanmar's north. The accompanying
militarization of the areas targeted for
development has provided a cautionary tale for the
Karen. Their mountainous eastern state bordering
Thailand is likewise rich in gold, hydropower
potential and possibly shale gas.
Karen
State has already faced the downsides of resource
extraction-led development. Physicians for Human
Rights, a US-based rights group, said in an August
report "that people who lived near a mine,
pipeline, hydroelectric dam, or other economic
development project promoted by the [Myanmar]
government [in Karen state] were… almost eight
times more likely to have been forced to work for
the army and over six times more likely to have
been uprooted or had restrictions placed on their
travel."
With such reports and the Kachin
State precedent, KNU leaders have debated over the
extent and on what terms they should allow outside
investors into their territory. At the center of
the debate is the massive US$50 billion Dawei port
and industrial project scheduled for development
on Myanmar's southern coastline. If completed as
designed, the Thailand-backed project will
represent Southeast Asia's largest industrial
site.
Access highways connecting the port
to Thailand are already under construction through
territory controlled by the KNU's 4th Brigade.
Other KNU battalions close to the project and its
extended infrastructure have resisted the
roadwork. In December last year, fighting broke
out between the KNU's 4th Brigade and government
troops tasked with protecting a stretch of the
highway near the town of Myitta. Similar clashes
erupted sporadically throughout 2011.
Zipporah Sein was quoted by the Karen News
Group in July 2011 as saying that companies who
entered the region without KNU permission "will be
regarded as military dictatorship-backed
companies".
Corporate
interests Yet the multi-billion dollar,
foreign-invested Dawei project is central to the
government's push for peace in Karen state. Early
ceasefire talks last year between government and
KNU representatives were also attended by
delegates from Dawei Princess, a Myanmar partner
in the Dawei project led by Thai engineering giant
Italthai.
In an earlier incarnation, Dawei
Princess operated under the name Hein Yadana Moe
Company and had been granted logging concessions
in the Dawei region by the KNU's 4th Brigade. This
relationship, coupled with managing director Ngwe
Soe's one-time post as a colonel in the Myanmar
army, means the company is uniquely positioned to
mediate between the government and KNU. Dawei
Princess' own interests in an end to the fighting
are substantial. Italthai signed an agreement with
Dawei Princess in April 2011 that gave the company
the lead role in the construction of the project's
Thailand-Myanmar access highway. The KNU's control
of territory along the route, however, has been a
significant obstacle to progress.
The
company's involvement in the ceasefire talks has
not been publicized by either the government or
KNU. Company officials, including managing
director Ngwe Soe, however, have been photographed
at several rounds of talks alongside Aung Min, the
Myanmar government's chief peace negotiator. The
recently dismissed General Mutu Say Poe and David
Taw reportedly pushed for a quick ceasefire
agreement at the talks.
But with an
estimated 30,000 civilians, including a large
number of Karen, facing displacement and the
prospect that large numbers of Myanmar troops will
be deployed to protect the project close to
KNU-controlled territory, many KNU officials are
concerned about the potential environmental,
social and political impact of the Dawei project.
"On the government's side so far they are
pushing for development," KNU Vice President David
Takapaw told the Democratic Voice of Burma in
January, days after the first of the ethnic army
ceasefire deals with the government was struck.
"We see it as a trick, a treacherous offer,
because development will corrupt our people and
environment by bringing in international companies
to make our people laborers."
A statement
released by the KNU in February said that
"ceasefires alone will be insufficient to bring
about … lasting peace." Zipporah Sein later said,
"If development projects are set up in KNU areas
and if the military sends more troops for security
then there will be more human rights violations.
That is why we only want to see development when
there is peace and stability."
Around the
time of the first ceasefire deal brokered earlier
this year, despite persistent denials that a split
of the leadership was imminent, tempers reportedly
began to flare inside the KNU. David Takapaw and
David Taw, both influential veterans of the KNU's
struggle, were reportedly at loggerheads over the
pace at which the group should move closer to the
government.
Peace bomb Takapaw
had the backing of KNU chief Zipporah Sein, while
Taw's side reportedly had developed ties with
moderate elements in Thein Sein's government
through the Norwegian government's MPSI. In recent
months, Norway has channeled millions of dollars
worth of aid to Yangon-based groups to facilitate
post-ceasefire development in Karen state.
Initially involving small-scale landmine
clearance projects, MPSI has been designed to
branch out into more substantial economic
initiatives that aim to help rehabilitate the
war-torn state. Those have included the creation
of "community development committees" and
government and ethnic army liaison offices in each
other's controlled territories to improve
communications.
While the initiative has
been supported by the United Nations and received
the endorsement of other ethnic armies such as the
Shan State Army, it has also courted controversy.
First and foremost, Norway has used only
government-approved organizations as local
partners, despite the existence of many
independent community-based organizations in Karen
State and along the Thai border. Those independent
organizations have repeatedly stressed that the
MPSI must win the trust of grass roots groups,
many of which are still suspicious of the motives
behind Yangon's peace-for-development offer, to
succeed.
Some Karen fear the Norway-backed
initiative will ultimately coerce grass roots
groups into joining hands with a government they
still distrust acutely, while paving the way for
state-led economic development before Karen State
is stable enough to distribute effectively the
benefits of investment to a grass roots level.
MPSI representatives have denied that the
multi-million dollar project has created divisions
within the KNU, yet its work in Karen state has
been placed on hold until the KNU resolves its
current internal crisis. Since its inception, MPSI
representatives have been accused of dealing
solely with those in the KNU sympathetic to its
proposals, while bypassing those known to be
resistant to the initiative.
Zipporah said
in May a few months after the MPSI was launched
that the initiative should not go beyond a pilot
stage until the KNU had reached a "political
settlement" with the government. It was a call
from the KNU's top that the Norwegians apparently
ignored in their push for peace through
development.
Since news of the split broke
last week, analysts have highlighted the Myanmar
government's continued use of divide and rule
tactics with ethnic groups. Those tactics are
certainly in play - indeed, by some estimates
there are now at least five native Karen armies
with varying degrees of affiliation to the
government - but overlook the fact that
differences of opinion inside the KNU have not
been well managed at the top.
A similar
incident occurred in 2006 when the late Karen
leader, General Bo Mya, met with Myanmar officials
in Thailand to discuss a possible ceasefire deal
without the permission of the KNU's central
command. He retained his post, but angered the
armed group's senior ranks in the process.
KNU veterans are wizened to the
government's tactics, including the frequent
extension of olive branches only to exploit the
ensuing calm to fortify their positions before new
fighting. Yet the more war-weary among the KNU's
leadership apparently see the lure of development
and a tentative political role in the country's
future as a viable way ahead. The recent split may
ultimately be more about negotiation tactics than
divergent end goals.
Elsewhere in the
country, namely in Kachin state, recent events
suggest there are still substantial risks to
engagement with the government. While rhetorically
promoting peace with ethnic groups, Thein Sein has
failed to rein in the army, which continues
bruising and rights abusing offensives against the
ethnic Kachin in the country's remote northern
region.
Despite a tentative ceasefire,
armed hostilities also continue in Karen state.
The Free Burma Rangers relief group said in a
September bulletin that despite the ceasefire,
Myanmar troops continue to "supply their camps
beyond the normal supply rate and continue to use
forced labor" in Karen State. The relief group,
which often works undercover in conflict areas,
also said that Myanmar troops are building new
camps and launching military assaults in declared
ceasefire areas.
Those reports raise
questions about the sincerity and coherence of the
government's peace overtures towards the KNU. They
also raise doubts about whether Norway and other
Western countries now eagerly backing Thein Sein's
peace initiatives are aware of the fragility of a
reform process that is driven primarily by the
Myanmar elite's hunger for business opportunities
in resource-rich ethnic territories.
At
the same time, a KNU divided into "moderate" and
"hardline" camps bodes ill for peace prospects in
Karen state. Influential power-broker David Taw's
death last week, after a long battle with illness,
will further complicate the KNU's internal
dynamics. The government's divide and rule tactics
have again contributed to a split of the
leadership of a rival ethnic army. But a
fragmented KNU will be more difficult to deal with
than a unified one.
Francis Wade
is a freelance journalist and analyst covering
Myanmar and Southeast Asia.
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