It is time to rethink Burma altogether, to place a moratorium on the old ideas we have been pushing since 1988 and to consider, creatively and expansively, what has worked and what has not. Evidently the west's strategy is in crisis, as Thant Myint-U argued on Monday. Burma has the most successful lobby in the world. It takes up more webspace in terms of blogs and online libraries, launched by individuals, NGOs and dissidents, than practically any other cause. This is, of course, good considering the irredeemably evil situation inside the country. But good for what - apart from our souls?
The regime is still outwardly strong. There is no new generation of leaders, to replace or augment Aung San Suu Kyi or the old guard forced to flee post 1988. Suu Kyi herself is so isolated as to be unable to give direction and her National League for Democracy (NLD) is decapitated and in a state of stagnation, which still gives little breathing room to other progressives inside Burma to debate the future or even strategy. There are only two cohesive forces left in the country, and even these are in some ways mirages. There is the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a monolithic national political party, created by the junta, whose membership is indoctrinated and largely conscripted - of the "join or we'll burn your village" variety. It is certain to be the only force to be competitive in elections given its national grass roots structure in Burma.
Then there is the military, which is not so much one entity as an ever-shifting web of allegiances whose hierarchy can best be estimated by surveying the array of two-inch-high lead figurines depicting the country's leading military officials that are on sale in the government gift shops. The only permanent faces on the counter are senior general Than Shwe, chairman of the SPDC and Maung Aye, his deputy and sometime army chief (both are conservative, old and sick). Below them, the generals who head government ministries and the country's battlefield commands are constantly shuffled to make sure none get too ambitious. Those who play the system too hard, pay with their lives, including General Tin Oo, allied to the former Burmese prime minister Khin Nyunt, who memorably died in a gunfight with rivals in his helicopter in February 2001, four years after his eldest daughter had been killed by a parcel bomb delivered to his Rangoon home. Senior General Than Shwe too plays the game, constantly setting his deputies against each other, in a game of brinkmanship sometimes referred to as A-lei-thar-sar, or "eating the middle", a reference to a well-known fable about two beavers fighting over a fish, both of them pacified by the fox who gave it to them.
But despite this the west still has nothing but low level contacts with USDA leaders or the military, no understanding of either, with just a handful of far sighted long-term Burma heads inside the country (normally from Scandinavian countries) secretly reaching out to the regime and those it supports and acting in the process as covert intermediaries for the NLD and Suu Kyi.
Of course there is also a third group in the equation, railed at by George Monbiot, in his attack on Gary Player that replays the old symmetry of the west vs Burma. This group has to be considered too: the entrepreneurs, the masters of the long shot, the opportunists and business people who are taking a risk by placing a bet on Burma. Anyone who has spent any time in Rangoon will agree that very few people have made any effort to get to know the generals other than the drug runners, loggers, gem dealers and Chinese oligarchs - and these entrepreneurs. But their "scene" in Rangoon almost solely consists of a Friday drinks evening at the neocolonial Strand Hotel's longish bar, where a bazaar cast of free-marketeers gather to console themselves over $8 cocktails, and dream up new ways of waiting for change.
No one could claim that this circle is influential. But it has tentative connections to the military that do not exist in Washington or London. Members of this group, who work broadly in computers, engineering, hospitality, security and agriculture, mingle with the children of the generals, many of whom endorse foreign projects, winning stipends off them but also giving subtle insights into what is otherwise a closed world. With their strange lifestyles (I met one who had brought a St Bernard to live with him and so had to build an air-conditioned kennel in order that the shaggy dog could survive a Burmese summer), it is easy to portray them as scabs, or parasites, trading off a cannibalistic regime. But the other end of the paradigm is closing the door to a military who simply slips out of another exit, getting succour from Asian countries outside the financial net, and whose personal fortunes long left the country for Singapore and China.
Let's stop name calling. Let's stop making calls for things that only make us feel more comfortable in our helplessness. We need to rechannel western energy into understanding the groups with power in order to break the deadlock, getting over the 50 years of antagonism that the military and the NLD are steeped in and that has led the west nowhere at all.
del.icio.us | Digg it | Tailrank | Reddit | Newsvine | Now Public | Technorati
This entry was tagged with the following keywords: burma aungsansuukyi thanshwe maungaye tinoo khinnyunt asia china singapore
Jeez....certainly the most sensible entry so far on this LP string.
Wonder how the self-indulgent moralists shall rant?
You can't negotiate with sociopaths. Can you really understand a regime which beats and murders monks.
I have read this article twice now and I still have no idea what the concrete suggestions are for international supporters of the Burmese people(and he seems to make no distinction between the grass-roots movement and the leaders of western nations).
Adrian Levy has suggested before that he thinks a power-sharing arrangement could be reached and he has criticised the leadership of the NLD in particular and Aung San Suu Kyi specifically for being too "morally pure". He has cited a Thai-style "democracy" as a desirable move in the right direction.
Apart from the extremely low quality of such a "democracy" where are the indications that the generals would countenance such a power-sharing arrangement?
I'm all for re-thinking strategies in the international solidarity movement(which btw has a momentum at the moment it has not for a long time) but there have been other suggestions as to what to do about those "entrepeneurs" he talks about.
The Monbiot article mentioned points out that the western and asian companies doing nicely profitable business with the generals have been named but not shamed.
Why, for instance , does Gordon Brown wring his hands while British companies do business in Burma to the tune of 1.2 bn pounds?
There are many ways to campaign:
-Calling for a boycott of the olympics-this is unlikely to happen, we know, but the threat may be pressure enough. It only takes one or two high profile athletes to boycott to embarass China. Many analysts are suggesting that Chinas interests in Burma are so significant that they will back the winner.
-campaigns against all those who do business with the junta. Publicise the dirty list, write,ring and pressure them to stop
-domestic pressure on our own governments to do more than make pious statements and send ineffective UN envoys
-support ,financially,politically and morally the people struggling within Burma to overthrow the dictatorship.
I've seen reference to a 'report' from the World Bank suggesting to the Burmese government that they cease price supports for fuels.
This advice was taken with the subsequent consequences of which we are all aware. Can anyone locate this report which might provide a different perspective on the much stated economic mismanagement by the Junta?
And how to view the suggestions similar to that of #3 of economic boycott of firms doing business in Burma if the Sterling World Bank is advising. Did the World Bank advise South Africa on it's economic policies during Aparthied era?
I've heard comments by those who study such activities in detail from a historic perspective, that boycotts of nations-economically,culturally,are ineffective in bring about regime change.
trusted partner
