CHIANG MAI - A mass movement is spreading across Myanmar on a scale
not seen since tens of thousands of Buddhist monks led anti-government
demonstrations in 2007 and the massive nationwide pro-democracy uprising
against the old military regime in 1988.
This time the mobilizing force is a by-election contested by
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy
party to fill 48 seats in parliamentary bodies currently dominated by military
aligned representatives.
Wherever Suu Kyi appears on the campaign trail thousands of people of
all ages have shown up to listen to her speeches, or just to line the roads and
cheer along the routes of her motorcade. Big screen televisions, expensive
sound systems and other sophisticated paraphernalia at her rallies are clear
indications of support from sections of the private business community, which until
recently had links almost exclusively with the traditional military
establishment.
Until a year ago many Western observers, including prominent European
Union diplomats in Bangkok who cover Myanmar, asserted that Suu Kyi was a spent
political force, that many young people didn't even know who she was because
she had spent years under house arrest. Instead they felt that a new
"Third Force" was emerging, one that challenged the supposed
uncompromising stands of both Suu Kyi and the NLD, and the military-dominated
government.
The present mass movement shows clearly how wrong they were; most
outsiders failed to understand that Suu Kyi was not only a political figure
but, in the minds of many ordinary Myanmar citizens, a female bodhisattva who
was going to deliver them from the evils of the country's military regime. At a
recent rally in Mandalay, two teenage girls carried between them a huge red
banner declaring that Suu Kyi was "a second god." Suu Kyi herself is
opposed to her apotheosis but such representations promise to continue in the
context of Myanmar's polarized political landscape.
The existence of a viable "Third Force" may be a myth invented
by donor agencies of Western countries and a host of mainly European private
foundations eager to expand their enterprises and see a solution to Myanmar's
decades-long political crisis. But there is a "third factor" to the
equation which is bound to make Myanmar's journey towards democracy and peace
extremely difficult: the unresolved ethnic issue.
In the far north of the country, a bloody war between government forces
and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an ethnic insurgent group fighting for
autonomy within a federal union, shows no signs of abating despite several
rounds of peace talks and mediation efforts by foreign reconciliation outfits.
In other parts of the country, fragile ceasefire agreements between the
government and various other rebel forces have maintained a semblance of peace.
As Myanmar's history shows, ceasefires only freeze underlying problems and to
date have not provided lasting solutions. There are still at least 50,000 men
and women under arms across the country of ethnic resistance forces.
To address these underlying problems, Suu Kyi has called for the
convention of a second "Panglong Conference," in reference to an
agreement that her father Aung San, who led Myanmar's fight for freedom from
colonial Britain, signed with representatives of the Shan, Kachin and Chin
peoples at the small market town of Panglong on February 12, 1947. The
agreement paved the way for a new federal constitution, which was adopted in
September of that year and declared independence on January 4, 1948.
Aung San was assassinated by a political rival in July 1947, but his
Panglong agreement was honored in the constitution. Chapter Ten of that charter
even granted the Shan and Karenni States the right to secede from the Union
after a 10-year period of independence. Other ethnic states were not granted
that right but the Panglong agreement stipulated that "full autonomy in
internal administration for the Frontier Areas is accepted in principle."
One of Myanmar's main ethnic groups, the Karen, did not sign the
Panglong Agreement and instead resorted to armed struggle in 1949. Other,
smaller ethnic groups such as the Karenni, Mon and Muslim mujahids also took up
arms, as did the powerful Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and various groups of
mutineers from the regular army who wanted to turn the country into a socialist
republic. The civil war and political chaos led to the formation of a military
caretaker government in 1958, which after less than two years in office handed
power back to an elected civilian government.
In March 1962, Myanmar's experiment with parliamentary democracy and
federalism ended abruptly in a military coup. Then civilian prime minister U Nu
had convened a seminar to discuss the future status of the ethnic frontier
areas, not in order to dissolve the union, but rather to find ways forward by
better defining and strengthening the country's federal structure. The new
military government, led by General Ne Win, arrested all the participants in
the seminar and abolished the 1947 constitution. With federalism abolished,
Myanmar adopted a strictly centralized power structure with the military at its
core.
Very little has changed since the 1962 coup; the military has remained
in power in various guises ever since. The 1974 constitution laid down
provisions for seven "divisions" - where the majority Bama live - and
seven ethnic states but there was no difference between those administrative
entities. The new 2008 constitution grants the formation of local assemblies
and the old divisions have been renamed "regions", but Myanmar is a
Union only in name. The first chapter of the new constitution enables "the
Defense Services to be able to participate in the National political leadership
of the State." (sic)
Colonial construct
When Suu Kyi first broached a "Second Panglong" after her
release from house arrest in November 2010, she received the backing of several
ethnic leaders and organizations, among them the Shan Nationalities Democratic
Party, the All Mon Regions Democracy Party, and the Rakhine (Arakan)
Nationalities Development Party. At the same time, several pro-government
bloggers branded her a "traitor" for resurrecting the autonomy
granting agreement. Among them was a "Myanmar patriot" who wrote last
November in a commentary on the exile-run Irrawaddy's website: "The
incoming Parliament must make Panglong illegal! Anyone who promotes Panglong
must be tried for treason, for endorsing the divide-and-rule of colonizers. NO
way! We will fight all the way to stamp out traitors."
Suu Kyi has since gone quiet on a "Second Panglong" but the
problem with the new constitution and its centralized power structure remains a
huge obstacle to achieving lasting peace in ethnic areas. Even if such a
conference was convened, the procedure would be the reverse of what it was
during the independence struggle of the 1940s. In January 1947, colonial
authorities set up what was known as the Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry,
which held talks with representatives of various ethnic groups. The Panglong
Agreement was signed under colonial rule and half a year later an elected
Constituent Assembly gave the country a new federal constitution under which
independence was declared.
Myanmar, then known as Burma, is a colonial creation that includes
nationalities which historically had little or nothing to do with each other
until British authority was established over the old Bama kingdom and a
horseshoe-shaped ring of surrounding mountain ranges. Even today, there are
remote tribal areas where the local people do not even know that they belong to
a country called "Burma," or even less so "Myanmar."
Myanmar's new military-drafted constitution is a non-federal one which
ethnic representatives have been pressured to accept and lay down their arms in
the name of national reconciliation. The constitution was ostensibly drawn up
by a National Convention which met on and off over a 15 year period. Its
delegates, however, were mostly handpicked by the then ruling military junta.
Ethnic group representatives were clad up in their respective colorful national
costumes for the spectacle and spent most of the time listening to endless
speeches rather than discussing their regions' futures. A prominent Shan
representative, Khun Htun Oo, was even charged with high treason and sentenced
to 93 years imprisonment for criticizing procedures relating to the National
Convention. He was released in January this year along with several hundred
other political prisoners.
None of the ceasefire agreements which the government has concluded
with more than 20 big and small rebel groups since 1989 includes any political
concessions by the central government. Rebels have in some instances been
granted unofficial permission to retain control over their respective areas -
and been encouraged to engage in any kind of business to sustain themselves.
The government's strategy seems to have hoped rebel groups would be more
interested in making money than pressing demands for constitutional reform and
political autonomy. That strategy is obviously not working, as the flare-up of
hostilities in the northern Kachin State shows.
On the other hand efforts by the various ethnic resistance forces to
form a united front - or even to devise a common political platform - have also
failed miserably. Most neutral observers familiar with Myanmar's ethnic issues
would argue that the conflict is not only between the Bama and other
nationalities but also between different minority ethnic groups.
For instance, tensions have existed for centuries between the Kachin
and the Shan, between the Shan and the Karen. A smaller group, the Pa-O, even
took up arms in the early 1950s to fight against local Shan princes. In later
years, Shan and Kachin rebels fought turf wars for control of areas in the
country's northeast which have sizable Kachin populations but belong to Shan
State. Even more recently, the Shan and Wa armies have fought bloody battles
for control of areas adjacent to Thailand's border.
Ethnic divisions
It is also clear that the different backgrounds of Myanmar's multitude
of ethnic groups, many with armed insurgent wings, will make it difficult to
achieve a lasting solution to the problem. The insurgency among the Karen, who
number at least 3.5 million and live in the Irrawaddy delta southwest of the old
capital Yangon and in hills near the Thai border, is one of the longest lasting
in the world. Many of them are Christian, mainly Baptist, and they have
dominated most Karen rebel movements for more then six decades. The majority of
the Karen, however, are actually Buddhist and fierce battles have been fought
between the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and the forces of the Christian-led
Karen National Union.
The Shan are Buddhist and related to the Thais and the Laos, and
traditionally have been ruled by feudal princes called saohpa, or "Lords
of the Sky." They took up arms when the Panglong Agreement's 10-year-trial
period was up in 1958 and it was clear that they would not be allowed to
exercise their then constitutional right to secede from the union. The Kachin
in the far north are almost entirely Christian, also mainly Baptist. Their
rebellion broke out in 1961 when the then U Nu government tried to make
Buddhism the state religion and at the same time had negotiated a border
agreement with China which many Kachins disapproved. Shortly after the war
broke out, Kachins, whose guerrilla warfare skills were recognized and utilized
by Britain and the United States during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s,
quickly seized control of most of their rugged hill country between China and
India. The government has consistently failed to dislodge the Kachin from the
geographical strongholds they established in the 1960s.
The strongest and most powerful of Myanmar's ethnic armies, the
drug-trafficking United Wa State Army (UWSA), has recently received scant
attention. Its more than 30,000 men and women in arms are equipped with
sophisticated weaponry obtained mainly in China, including modern automatic
rifles, heavy machine-guns, 120mm mortars, and even man-portable,
surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles. The UWSA was born out of a mutiny among
the Wa hilltribe rank-and-file of the CPB in 1989 where they drove the old,
orthodox communist and mainly Bama leaders into exile in China.
The CPB subsequently crumbled and was later divided into four regional
ethnic armies of which the UWSA was the strongest. Currently the UWSA controls
a huge area adjacent to the Chinese border, enclaves along the Thai border in
the south, and most of the lucrative production areas of narcotics, opium,
heroin and methamphetamines in the Myanmar sector of the so-called Golden
Triangle. The Wa have never been controlled by any central government in
Myanmar. They were headhunters well into modern times and few outsiders entered
the area before it was taken over by the insurgent CPB in the early 1970s.
Since the 1989 mutiny, the UWSA has independently administered the areas it
controls.
The pre-2010 elected government requested that all of those ethnic
armies convert themselves into "Border Guard Forces" under command of
the Myanmar Army. That proposal, however, had few takers; only some of the
smallest former rebel groups agreed. For now, the plan seems to have been put
on ice but it is unclear how the government aims to tackle the issue over the
medium term. At the same time, there has been no deviation from the previous
ceasefire strategy: stop fighting, engage in business, and forget any visions
of a federal Myanmar. According to sources familiar with recent
government-ethnic group negotiations, ethnic leaders have been told that
"a discussion about federalism is not even on the table."
On the other hand, there are few countries in the world that have a
federal system based on ethnicity or along linguistic lines. India, the former
Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia are a few examples and show the perils
ahead for such a potential model in Myanmar. India has survived and despite all
the problems that country faces is perhaps the best model for Myanmar to adopt.
The United States has geographical entities as member states of a union,
Germany is based on ancient kingdoms and principalities, and even multinational
Malaysia has a federal system based not on ethnicity - there are no Malay,
Chinese and Indian states there - but on the old Malay sultanates.
Whichever model Myanmar aims to follow, it cannot be done unless
significant clauses in the present constitution are amended. Most of these,
including those concerning state structure and ultimate military control over
the decision-making process, cannot be considered without the approval of at
least 75% of all parliamentarians in both the Upper and Lower Houses and would
need to be enshrined through a national referendum. In practice, this makes any
fundamental constitutional reform impossible.
Scrapping the 2008 constitution and drafting a new one based on some
kind of federal concept is likely the only viable way ahead to resolving
Myanmar's unresolved ethnic issue. Judging from the government's response to
ethnic demands, that isn't likely to happen any time soon. Whatever the outcome
of the present mass movement and the likelihood of some token NLD
representation in parliament after the April 1 by-elections, Myanmar's ethnic
quagmire will endure and the government's half-hearted calls for national
reconciliation will remain unfulfilled.
Bertil Lintner
Asia Times
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