By Eric
Vandenbroeck
Underneath the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (Rangoon) seen from my (Summit
Parkview) hotel room:
The Shwedagon is not just a tall spire. It has volume too,
taking up the size of a couple of city blocks. It can be seen for miles. It is
always a magical scene at night with groups of young monks, nuns, or students
praying and chanting in the light of thousands of candles. Last time I was
here, on September 24, 2007, almost 20,000 monks and nuns took part in the
largest protest in 20 years and marched at the Shwedagon
Pagoda.
Since then,
especially considering the November elections, much is changing in Yangon. But
in the countryside outside the center of Myanmar, the
ruling generals still silence their opponents and take their people down a
rabbit hole of, dictatorship, and oppression. While Suu Kyi’s NLD has secured a
majority of the contested seats, the military still holds 25 percent of the
seats in both houses. Therefore, although the NLD has control over legislation
it does not have control over constitutional amendments, which require 75
percent support from the parliament. Through it all – the worsening poverty,
the collapse of the education system, an epidemic of secret informers, the sale
of its precious natural resources to neighboring
China, the disastrous decisions based on psychics and numerology, and the
attacks on ethnic minorities, the generals continue to grow ridiculously rich.
Thus despite
the NLD's sweeping win, public doubts linger about the military's
government role given its record of political intervention and lucrative
network of businesses that could be impacted by future policy shifts.
With all the optimism
about the Aung
San Suu Kyi transition talks, it is easy to forget that Myanmar remains
embroiled in several of the world's longest-running civil wars. A divided
nation, there are no less than 15 different armed rebel groups active in
Myanmar. Even the day I arrived, authorities once again blocked human rights day
events. Considered
"Aafaltering peace process" the outgoing
government has signed ceasefires with many of the ethnic armies, but many have
broken down. For example, more than 20 years ago a ceasefire was agreed with
the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance
Army in the Kokang region of Shan state, yet ongoing fighting with that group has
cost over 100 lives and displaced thousands of civilians, many of whom have
fled across the border to China.
"Peace
starts now" was the headline splashed in capital letters across the
front page of Myanmar’s state-backed newspaper on 15 October. It was an
ambitious statement on the day the government and eight armed groups signed a
ceasefire agreement intended to end 60 years of ethnic warfare, but one that
many would dismiss as pure propaganda.
It is clear that the so called peace accord is a useful campaign tool
for the government, which is dominated by former military men and serving
officers who hold a constitutionally mandated 25 percent of parliamentary
seats. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party can claim it as a sign
of its commitment to reform as it goes into the 8 November elections, but even
the ceasefire’s name is misleading. The agreement can hardly be considered
“nationwide”, since it excludes the majority of Myanmar’s approximately two
dozen armed groups, including some of the most powerful ones.
Only two groups signing the accord could be considered genuine rebel
armies: the Karen National Union, KNU, and the Restoration Council of Shan
State, RCSS and its Shan State Army South. A third, the Democratic Karen
Benevolent Army, or DKBA, has, in effect, been a militia on the side of the
government since it broke from KNU in 1994. The fourth group, a Karen faction,
is small, more of a civil society organization than a rebel army.
The fifth, the All-Burma Students Democratic Front has not been a
fighting force to be reckoned with since the 1990s. The Chin National Front is
a small, mainly unarmed group, and the Arakan Liberation Party is a tiny outfit
with no presence in Rakhine State. It consists of a dozen or so people staying
in KNU areas near the Thai border and should not be confused with the Arakan
Army, which fights alongside the Kachin Independence Army, KIA, in the north.
The last of the “rebel armies,” the Pa-O National Liberation Organization is a
one-man show led by a person who lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, who set it up
when the main rebel Pa-O National Organization/Army entered into a ceasefire
agreement with the government in 1991.
None of Burma’s main ethnic armies active in the north signed the
agreement – among them the KIA with approximately 8,000 soldiers and the
country’s largest ethnic army, the more than 20,000-strong United Wa State Army, or UWSA, and their allies in northern and
eastern Shan State. A total of about 40,000 ethnic troops is not part of the
deal with the government. Observers see the less than half-baked agreement as
little more than a face-saving gesture of the government-appointed Myanmar
Peace Center, which has received vast amounts of money from the European Union
and others. After several years of talks, the MPC needed something to show
international donors to justify what in reality amounts a failure to achieve
peace across the country.
The latest, signed to great fanfare on October 15th by President Thein
Sein, a former general, included just eight of the 15 armed rebel groups. Among
those that did not sign are the United Wa State Army,
which operates on the border with China, and the Kachin Independence Army, the
largest ethnic militia. Meanwhile, mob violence
against Muslim Rohingyas that began in 2012 in the western state of Rakhine
points to further conflict. Thousands have since fled by sea and overland,
often aided (or kidnapped) by human traffickers. And as recent as 3 Dec.2015,
the United States called for a credible, independent investigation by Myanmar's
government of reports
of military atrocities in the country's Shan State. And at the time of writing
(12 Dec. 2015) heavy fighting is going on in Kachin State (my next stop).
The background
As will be detailed below, prior to British colonization, Burma or
Myanmar, as it is known today, did not exist. Rather, the region consisted of
independent kingdoms; Burman, Mon, Shan, Rakhine, Manipuri, Thai, Lao and Khmer
kingdoms were located throughout the region, and were engaged in constant
conflict.
On 12 February 1947 General Aung San expecting a handover by the
British, signed the Panglong agreement with
representatives of the Shan, Chin and Kachin people, three of the largest of
the many non-Burman ethnic groups that today make up about two-fifths of
Myanmar’s population. The agreement said that an independent Kachin state was
“desirable”, and promised “full autonomy in internal administration” to
“Frontier Areas”, as today’s ethnic states were then known. Aung San was assassinated just over five months later.
Under the 60 years of mostly military rule that followed, the spirit of the
Panglong agreement has never been honoured.
Since achieving independence in 1948, Burma has experienced near
constant internal conflict.
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1) It was not with the hopes of achieving
significant political or economic gains that the British forces first invaded
the land which they knew as Burma - though both of these explanations were
later invoked to explain the extension and expansion of their campaigns.
Rather, the colonial army was first sent across the Irrawaddy from British
India to put an end to armed incursions by Burmese troops. Whereas later, in
the early 1960s when the complete dissolution of the union seemed an imminent
possibility. Stepping into the breach, as they had in many states in the
region during periods of (perceived) crisis or political uncertainty, was the
military. Continue… 2) Among the circumstances that contributed to the
survival of British India was that of the hill people of Burma who were
providing tough resistance to Japanese patrols and providing material
assistance to the Allied war effort. No one realized it at the time, but this
was one of the turning points of the war. Many asked themselves quietly
whether a Japanese-led Buddhist and Asian national solidarity was possible
and whether this was Burma's future. Unaware that Aung San and other young
radicals were already building a secret national army over the Thai frontier,
most Burmese watched and waited, untroubled by the small flurries of activity
among Europeans. Continue... 3) As the
Burmese Army flanked by the Japanese marched on into their homeland, Burmese
patriotic fervor sometimes took on a tinge of inter-communal hatred versus
the Karen and others. Continue… 4) Karen nationalism became very complex when the
diversity and local segmentation within the ethnic unity entered the process,
where religious dividisions plaid a decisive yet
partly concealed role. The British thus pointed to poor Karen leadership, no
sense of community and the old Karen weakness of following prophetic types of
leaders. The Karen leaders replied that it suited the British well to act confused,
thus avoiding clarification of their position and thus contributing to the
confusion. Continue… 5) Burmese supporters in London were put on their
guard in October when a Karen 'goodwill mission' arrived in town, yet rise of
communism throughout Asia weighed heavily on the minds of the British. Continue... |
6) The frontier areas would now have to be brought
within the remit of a Burmese cabinet. So, too, would control over affairs
concerning British and Indian imports. All expenditure would have to be made
subject to a vote of the lower house. The British could no longer hope to
'reserve' subjects (like the Karen or Kachin) that bore on their own
interests, as they had been doing for years. Continue… 7) The critical point during the India-Burma
Committee Cabinet meeting on 22 January 1947 in London according to Kyaw
Nyein, was not so much British commercial interests in Burma as the status of
the hill areas. Aung San was deeply suspicious of the Frontier Service
officers and Tom Driberg increased his alarm by saying that a British
government representative at Panglong might encourage the more recalcitrant sawbwas or minority tribal leaders to hold out for too
much. Continue... 8) Burma's independence and exit from the Commonwealth
had finally come to pass. Terrified by the memory of the assassination of
Aung San, Burma's youthful leaders had consulted numerous astrologers. They
had insisted that the date should be moved from 6 to 4 January and that the
proclamation itself should take place at precisely 4 o'clock in the morning
to take advantage of a favorable conjunction of the stars. Continue... 9) Under the surface of the Burmese government's
resurgence, however, the balance of power was shifting irrevocably towards
the military. Thus, a country that had once been one of the brightest hopes
for Asian prosperity, Burma soon had all but become one of the first 'failed
states’. Continue... 10) After the occupation and the end of the war
following the Japanese surrender in 1945, Japan retained a special place in
Burmese political developments. The immediate reason for this sentimental
attachment was the fact that it was Japan that had trained the "Thirty
Comrades" who were the core of the Burma Independence Army (BIA) which
actually fought against the British and contributed towards gaining
independence. The short duration of less than two-and-a half years between
the Japanese surrender and the declaration of Burma's independence in January
1948 meant that Japan was able to re-establish ties with Burma's
post-independence elite rather swiftly. The return of Japan post WWII. Continue... |
As can be seen from what is presented, World War II was to have a
dramatic impact on the Frontier Areas. Not only did British, American, Japanese
and Chinese nationalist armies enter the territory, but the semi-permeable
barriers that the British had created between the minority peoples and the
ethnic majority, the Bamar, were removed during and after the Japanese
Occupation. As it became apparent soon after the end of the war that Myanmar's
political independence was not only inevitable but imminent, elites throughout
the country began to make claims and counter-claims about the historic rights
of "their people". Ethnicity now was transformed from an object of
discussion and a principle of organization to political rallying cry. A
plethora of nationalist claims were advanced. The "federal"
constitution that the country adopted at independence in 1948 was the result of
compromises that the British had encouraged, and General Aung San achieved, at
the Panglong Conference in 1947. One of the primary requirements of the first
constitution of independent Myanmar was to reshape the state to meet those
expectations and in that it failed. Today a discussion was published stating: ‘It
Is Not Enough for Elites Simply to Get Along’.
My goal is to find out more about this including what currently is going
on outside of the core area of Burma Proper. Having spoken to some
representatives today, tomorrow I fly to Myitkyina in the Northern Kachin State
from where I will continue my investigation.
17 Dec.
2015: Myanmar P.2: A lot of the current fighting
is taking place in the area around Hpakant, not surprising one of the leading
jade-producing zones. Plus concern NLD goes the way of AFPFL in the
parliamentary era of the 1950s. To Myitkyina and
Kachin State.
19 Dec.
2015: Myanmar P.3 ethnic cleansing in Sittwe:
Among others the 969 movement (by some seen as influenced by the psywar
department) and how intolerance threatens Myanmar’s nascent transition to a
more open, democratic state. Two kinds of Monks.
On the left rural market, on the
right walking through Shan State
23 Dec.
2015: Traveling through Myanmar P.4 Shan State: Even after
having signed a ceasefire, the Burmese military continued to attack the Burma
Army and the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army-North areas. Ethnic
rebels in the north of Burma, such as the Kachin Independence Army (KLA) and
the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), have
accused the Burmese government of actively participating in the drug trade,
whilst at the same time claiming to be cracking down on it. The Challenge of Unity in a Divided Country.
27 Dec.
2015: Traveling through Myanmar P.5:
If the Kachin have suffered the most at the hands of the Burmans in recent
years, it is the Karen who have fought them for the longest. Past the Golden Rock to Karen (Kayin) State.
30 Dec.
2015: Traveling through Myanmar P.6:
Moulmein, Orwell, Kipling, the Mon, including revisiting the bizarre insurgency
of two teenage boys. Mawlamyine and beyond.
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