CHIANG MAI - After heaping
praise for the past year on Myanmar's supposed new
democratic direction, the international community
has grappled for a coherent and credible response
to the military's recent ferocious offensive
against the insurgent Kachin Independence Army
(KIA).
In recent weeks, heavy artillery
has been used to pound KIA positions while
Russian-built Mi-35 Hind helicopter gunships and
Chinese-produced Hongdu JL-8, or Karakorum-8,
attack aircraft have strafed military and civilian
targets in an unprecedented
barrage of firepower in
Myanmar's decades-long civil war between
government forces and various ethnic resistance
armies.
Western think tanks and other
international organizations, many of which have
touted the virtues of President Thein Sein's
reforms, have alternately forwarded the
government's line or offered other explanations to
salvage their credibility amid the onslaught.
Human-rights groups estimate the fighting has
displaced at least 90,000 civilians and have
strongly criticized the government for denying
humanitarian aid to areas controlled by the KIA.
In stumping for Thein Sein, the
Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG)
argued in a January report that "The KIO is not
blameless. It has not reciprocated the President's
announcement of a unilateral ceasefire and has
continued offensive actions against military and
strategic targets." (The Kachin Independence
Organization (KIO) is the KIA's political wing.)
"At peace talks on October 30, the Myanmar
military sent senior commanders to participate,
but the Kachin sent only lower-level
representatives, meaning that military discussions
on separation of forces could not be held. It was
interpreted as a snub by the military and left
government negotiator U Aung Min undermined as he
had worked hard to convince the army to send a
very senior army commander to attend the talks in
China only for him to be stood up," wrote the ICG,
which announced it will give its annual "In
Pursuit of Peace Award" to Thein Sein.
The
Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), meanwhile, suggested
in a January 10 report that "Regional commands in
Myanmar have long acted with an unusual degree of
autonomy; many commanders treated their areas of
responsibility as personal fiefdoms. In a
junta-run country usually facing at least a dozen
active insurgencies, this is understandable. But
in an emerging democracy seeking national
reconciliation, it undermines fragile trust in the
government and allows a minority of the military
to act as a spoiler." Other foreign analysts have
argued that the outside world needs to support
Thein Sein's "reformist" government against
so-called military "hardliners".
Myanmar
military insiders interviewed by this writer view
such analyses as misguided and argue that the
massive assault on the KIA's bases near the
Chinese border in December and January came as no
surprise. They say that the decision to launch a
major offensive against the KIA was actually made
more than three years ago - when the KIA still had
a ceasefire agreement in place with the previous
military government led by Senior General Than
Shwe. Than Shwe retired with the installation of
Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government in March
2011, but is still viewed by many as have the
final say in matters concerning national security,
which includes the military and the civil war.
From Than Shwe's perspective, the KIA's
"sin" was to lobby for a federal system when its
representatives took part in a
constitution-drafting assembly the government
convened as part of his "seven step roadmap" to
democracy.
At a meeting with all of the
Myanmar Army's regional commanders in mid-2009,
Than Shwe said that "We, the Tatmadaw [army], have
to fight the KIA because they have not accepted
our terms," according to a former Myanmar army
officer who was on active duty at the time.
The same year the KIA had refused to
become a "Border Guard Force" under the command of
the Myanmar Army as central authorities had
requested as long as the issue of federalism was
not settled. The former army officer says he
"remembers all this very clearly" and that there
was little doubt at the time that the central
government intended to break the ceasefire it had
maintained with the KIA since February 1994.
During meetings held in the old capital
Yangon to discuss a new constitution, Kachin
representatives presented in July 2007 a 19-point
proposal for a federal union. The proposal
outlined in detail what the responsibilities of
the center should be and which powers should be
vested with ethnic-governed states. It also
referred to Myanmar's first 1947 constitution,
which, the Kachins said, "specified a Union…of
states, [but] what actually transpired was a
system where all political power was centralized
as in a unitary system instead of a federation."
Unitary vision That clearly was
not what the ruling military elite had in mind,
and in a blatantly rigged referendum in May 2008 a
new constitution was adopted that perpetuated a
unitary system. The Kachins were probably unaware
of what Than Shwe said at the meeting a year
later, and some of them tried to contest the
November 2010 election to "work within the
system".
The Kachin State Progressive
Party, established by Manan Tu Ja, a former KIO
vice chairman, was not allowed to participate in
the polls, reportedly because military authorities
thought it would press demands for federalism if
elected to national or regional assemblies.
In June 2011, three months after Thein
Sein assumed the presidency, the Myanmar army
broke the ceasefire and attacked KIA positions
along the Taping river east of Bhamo. In late
December 2012, the fighting escalated dramatically
as government forces began to push for control of
Laiza, a town on the Chinese border where the
headquarters of both the KIA and the KIO are
situated.
Than Shwe's statement at the
closed meeting in 2009 was recently echoed by Hla
Swe, a former army commander and now Upper House
representative of the military-backed Union
Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), in an
interview with the independent TV station
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) on January 28: "It
is said that if the [KIO] can't be extended an
olive branch, then we should send them bullets
instead…So I said: how did the Second World War
end? Because two atomic bombs were dropped on
Japan, forcing them to come and sign a peace
treaty on an [American] boat."
That threat
was clearly not delivered by a renegade regional
commander acting autonomously of central control,
as the Washington-based CSIS has suggested. Moving
tens of thousands of troops, artillery, helicopter
gunships and aircraft across regional command
boundaries can only be done by the Supreme Command
of Myanmar's Armed Forces. Moreover, the
assumption that the latest bombardment was caused
by the KIA's ambushes of Myanmar Army supply
convoys, as suggested by think-tanks and even
Western diplomats, was actually refuted - albeit
indirectly - by military proxies long before the
present offensive began.
On May 2, 2012,
"Hla Oo's Blog", a website that often conveys the
views of the Myanmar military, stated: "On March 6
this year Burmese [Myanmar] military staged a
large-scale operational exercise involving a light
infantry division and tanks and heavy artillery in
Meikhtila. And the Commander-In-Chief General Min
Aung Hlaing had attended and watched the war-game.
The replicated field and the sand model used as
the enemy target was clearly the close replica of
KIO headquarters at Laiza on the Chinese border."
The blog entry was presciently headlined "Min Aung
Hlaing Taking Laiza Soon?"
The
interpretation that the recent fighting was in
retaliation for KIA ambushes, or because
high-ranking Kachin representatives did not show
up at the October 30 talks (which, they say, was
because the government army attacked their forces
as they were about to leave for the meeting in
Ruili across the border in China) is as
ill-founded as the notion that the Kachin war
reflects a rift between "reformists" and
"hardliners" within Myanmar's military-dominated
ruling elite.
Both President Thein Sein
and military supremo Min Aung Hlaing owe their
positions to Than Shwe. It is often overlooked
that Thein Sein, a former general and commander of
the Myanmar Army's Triangle Command in eastern
Shan State, was selected by the then ruling State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military
junta to serve as prime minister in April 2007. He
was formally appointed in October that year and
served in the position until he was appointed
president after the 2010 elections in March 2011.
According to sources familiar with
high-level Myanmar military thinking, Thein Sein
was selected by Than Shwe because he had "no
ambitions" and would not pose a threat to the
former strongman as he slipped from public view in
supposed retirement. In June 2010, Than Shwe
picked his trusted colleague Min Aung Hlaing to
become head of the armed forces, another soldier
who could be trusted not turn against his former
mentor.
It is still an open question to
what extent Than Shwe is directly involved in the
Kachin war operations. According to a source close
to Than Shwe's family: "He is still active, the
word 'retirement' is not how I would describe it."
Other sources say Than Shwe confines himself to
key strategic policy "mentoring" rather than the
management of day-to-day issues related to the
military campaign.
Either way, he is still
the most powerful military man in the country as
its only "senior general"; current army commander
Min Aung Hlaing was appointed "vice senior
general" on April 3, 2012, representing the second
highest rank in the Myanmar Armed Forces.
It is an open secret that Than Shwe sees
Myanmar's ancient warrior kings as his role
models. When Myanmar's annual Armed Forces Day was
celebrated for the first time in March 2006 at the
new capital at Naypyidaw, where the government was
formally moved in 2005, Than Shwe proclaimed
before a crowd of 12,000 soldiers: "Our Tatmadaw
should be a worthy heir to the traditions of the
capable Tatmadaws established by noble kings
Anawratha, Bayinnaung and Alaungpaya." Those were
the three most celebrated warrior kings in Myanmar
history and Than Shwe apparently would like to be
viewed historically as a similar "unifier" of the
country.
Standing at the parade ground's
then newly erected, larger-than-life statues of
the three warrior kings, Than Shwe spoke of a
unitary state that is fundamentally different in
nature from the concept of "unity in diversity",
federalism or some kind of parliamentary democracy
as formulated by Aung San, the founder of
independent Myanmar and the father of Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Rather,
in Than Shwe's "Myanmar'" everybody is a
'"Myanmar'" and subject of the present rulers.
Building a new capital was a major prerogative of
the rulers of all three previous Myanmar empires
and the founder of the envisioned "Fourth Empire"
under Than Shwe is no exception. The size of the
new capital's buildings and width of its avenues
reflect the strongman's vision of grandeur.
New allies, old foes But will
Than Shwe's master plan work? So far Myanmar's
highly touted political transition has been
positively received abroad.
The 2008
referendum on a new constitution and the 2010
general election may have been rigged and
fraudulent, but by releasing hundreds of political
prisoners, allowing opposition icon Suu Kyi and
her party members to take seats in parliament
through by-elections, and permitting unprecedented
freedom of expression through a once highly
censored media, Myanmar has graduated from pariah
to darling of the international community.
World leaders, including United States
President Barack Obama and United Kingdom Prime
Minister David Cameron, have recently visited
Myanmar, sanctions have been suspended and the
country once again has a functioning relationship
with multilateral lending institutions such as the
World Bank and Asian Development Bank after past
debts of nearly US$4 billion were forgiven earlier
this week. Foreign investors, meanwhile, are
queuing up to pursue opportunities in one of
Asia's last "frontier" markets.
To the
satisfaction of Myanmar's military and
quasi-civilian rulers, Suu Kyi has morphed from a
once fiery opposition leader to a now avid
supporter of their new order. In her most recent
praise for the military, Suu Kyi said in a speech
at the East-West Center in Honolulu on January 25:
"I've often been criticized for saying that I'm
fond of the Burmese [Myanmar] Army, but I can't
help it - it's the truth."
Such statements
have been widely perceived as insensitive and have
cost Suu Kyi support among the country's many
ethnic minority groups, many of which looked to
her for inspiration during the darkest days of
military rule. While Suu Kyi spoke in Hawaii,
thousands of Kachins, mostly women and children,
were hunkered down in newly-dug bunkers around
Laiza while the army and the air force ramped up
their indiscriminate bombardment.
In
government-held towns in Kachin state, civilians
feel the brunt of old-style military repression.
Sources in the state capital of Myitkyina say that
young people no longer dare to venture out after
dark because many have been apprehended by the
military and sent to the frontlines of the battle
for Laiza as porters and human mine-sweepers.
According to one source, 500 inmates from
Myitkyina prison have recently mysteriously gone
missing and have presumably been sent to the war's
front for the same purpose.
Few if any
independent observers believe that the ethnic
issue, of which the Kachin war is only one
manifestation, can be solved through military
means. On one hand, the military has been
successful at playing divide-and-rule politics
with ethnic resistance armies. In January 1995,
less than a year after the government had
concluded a cease-fire with the KIA, it went on to
attack and capture the Manerplaw headquarters of
the insurgent Karen National Union (KNU).
This time, the government concluded a
ceasefire agreement with the KNU in January 2012,
which was formalized in September, before
launching its latest intensified wave of attacks
on the KIA. According to a long-time observer of
Myanmar's civil war: "This shows again that the
army is still the only body deploying and
enforcing countrywide strategies to its advantage.
Even with the change in government, the long game
continues."
On the other hand, the
government has not been as successful as some have
claimed at resolving the country's various ethnic
conflicts. The Economist newsmagazine, for
instance, wrote on January 16: "One of the most
laudable achievements of Myanmar's ongoing process
of democratic reform has been the ceasefire
agreements the new government has signed with all
of the major ethnic insurgent groups - all but
one, that is: the Kachin, under the banner of the
Kachin Independence Army (KIA), fight on."
Yet Thein Sein's government has done
little more than reaffirm about a dozen ceasefire
agreements, some of which were concluded up to two
decades ago. Agreements were already in place with
the former Communist Party of Burma, now known as
the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Shan State
Army (SSA) and smaller armies representing the
ethnic Pa-O, Palaung, Padaung, Karenni and Mon
before Thein Sein became president. Indeed, the
only new cease-fires brokered on his watch have
been concluded with the KNU, a southern faction of
the SSA, and some smaller Chin and Arakanese
groups.
With the breakdown of the KIA
ceasefire, those deals should not be viewed as
major milestones on a path to national
reconciliation. The United Nationalities Federal
Council, a coalition of 11 ethnic groups - some
with and some without ceasefire agreements with
the government - recently expressed solidarity
with the Kachins at a meeting in the northern Thai
city of Chiang Mai on January 1.
The UWSA,
a militia with tens of thousands of fighters and
by far the country's strongest and best-equipped
ethnic army, and two allied forces issued a
statement the following week in support of the
Kachins. Those groups are no doubt aware that they
may be the next targets in the government's
attempt to "unify" the country by force. The
ethnic Shans, meanwhile, are known to be
recruiting and training in anticipation of a
possible future government assault. In Karen areas
controlled by the government, authorities are
believed to be preparing assassination squads,
infiltrating intelligence teams and re-enforcing
concrete landing pads along the border to support
helicopter gunships in preparation for future
battles.
The choice presented to Myanmar's
various ethnic armies is increasingly clear:
either accept the 2008 constitution, integration
into the command structure of the government's
army and centrally-led economic development
schemes, or face a military assault similar to the
one now underway against the Kachins. Without
addressing underlying political issues of
federalism and constitutional change, many
cease-fire groups are likely to resume hostilities
rather than acquiesce to the government's
centralized vision for the country. Those opposed
views will lead to more human misery in Myanmar's
frontier areas in the months and years ahead.
Far from securing a place for himself in
history as a great national unifier, Than Shwe's
peace through war policy will only deepen ethnic
divisions. The brutal onslaught on Laiza has
engendered immense hatred against the central
government and radicalized the Kachins to the
point that many see no future for themselves in
the country.
The KIO was previously
perhaps the most ardent proponent of federalism in
Myanmar and for years its leaders tried to
persuade other ethnic armed groups that separatism
was not a viable option. Now, amid the worst
government assault ever on an ethnic resistance
group, "relations between the center and the
ethnic groups have been set back by at least 50
years," said a Kachin lady who is not a member of
any political or armed group.
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), Land of
Jade: A Journey from India through Northern Burma
to China, and The Kachin: Lords of Burma's
Northern Frontier. He is currently a writer
with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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