Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (11 page)

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  Elaboration of these and related arguments may be found in John H. Badgley, ed., “Reconciling Burma/Myanmar: Essays on US relations with Burma”,
NBR Analysis,
Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2004.

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  Largely increasing transaction costs and creating market uncertainties.

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  While one can argue that Western sanctions and consumer boycotts have denied Myanmar workers jobs in the textile, tourism, transportation, and other industries, the impact of these on the regime has been not only negligible but derisory. The European Union member state that has apparently pressed most determinedly for sanctions has been the United Kingdom. There has been a modest anti-SPDC campaign in Britain for a decade or more, perhaps amounting in all to several hundred people spearheaded by an organization with a staff of five on a good day. This campaign has, however, been remarkably effective in stopping critical thought in the United Kingdom on the subject of European policy toward Myanmar. When pressed to provide one example of how the European sanctions regime has negatively impacted on the regime in Yangon, on behalf of the minister responsible, a senior Foreign Office official could only conclude that there is “anecdotal evidence” that the sanctions “rankle” the generals. Personal correspondence.

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  It would appear that the efforts by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to pressure the regime are placed in the same category as US and EU expressions of concern.

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  The sudden departure of General Khin Nyunt has caused concern amongst ASEAN governments, although Thai Prime Minister Thaksin, who was informed early of the change, appeared sanguine. The unannounced surprise visit of the Indonesian Foreign Minister to Yangon on 11 November 2004 to discuss developments underscores regional concerns.

Larry Jagan

Over the last seventeen years, since the army seized power in Burma on 18 September 1988, there has been a series of extended power struggles within the top levels of Burma’s ruling military clique that have severely affected the country’s move towards democracy. The most crucial of these, perhaps, was the downfall of the prime minister and intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, in October 2004.

Khin Nyunt was arrested on 18 October at Mandalay airport, flown back to Rangoon, and placed under house arrest. His supporters in Cabinet and government were subsequently purged in a series of cabinet shake-ups, dealing a severe blow to the pro-democracy movement.

General Khin Nyunt, who was appointed prime minister in August 2003, was a pragmatist, and favoured involving the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the national reconciliation process — as the military prefers to call plans for political reform. But he was at odds with the country’s hard-line leader, General Than Shwe. It is well known that the
Senior General hates even hearing the mention of Aung San Suu Kyi’s name.

Within weeks of Khin Nyunt’s arrest, hundreds of military intelligence officers were arrested, interrogated, and charged with economic crimes and corruption. Most of them are facing more than thirty years’ jail. The military intelligence division was immediately disbanded. More than thirty thousand junior officers and soldiers were summarily dismissed. Some senior officers were allowed to retire and some foot-soldiers were reassigned to infantry divisions and sent to the most isolated and dangerous border regions. Since then, anything to do with Khin Nyunt has been purged. Photographs, posters, and billboards showing him have been taken down. The spire in the famous Shwedagon temple in Rangoon that Khin Nyunt had covered in gold has been boarded up. The authorities have also scoured the civil service and sacked anyone who had got their post as a result of a recommendation from a military intelligence officer. It is reminiscent of the days of the former Burmese monarchs — when the king was overthrown or died, the next king had all the old king’s relatives killed.

Before Khin Nyunt’s arrest, Burma’s top military leadership had been waging a bitter power struggle for some time. At the root of the conflict were major differences between Khin Nyunt and Than Shwe over Burma’s political future. On one hand, the prime minister favoured change. He understood that Burma’s future depended on political reform and economic development, and that these were linked. On the other, the hardliners around Than Shwe believed the best way to preserve the military’s central role was simply to do nothing and maintain the status quo. Despite increased international pressure following the brutal attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters on 30 May 2003, when she was travelling in the north of the country, Burma’s hard-liners clung to their perception that there was no need to compromise with the pro-democracy activists.

Days after Khin Nyunt was made prime minister in August 2003, he announced a seven-stage road-map for movement towards democracy. This involved reconvening the National Convention to draw up a new constitution. (The Convention had originally started its work ten years previously, in January 1993, but went into recess in November 1996 after the National League for Democracy (NLD) walked out.) The draft constitution would then be put to a referendum, followed by fresh elections under the new constitution.

“Although there are seven steps, it won’t take seven years to achieve,” the Burmese Foreign Minister Win Aung said in the corridors of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit of leaders in Bali in October 2003.
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He did, however, concede that the first step was likely to be the most difficult.

Khin Nyunt had frequently told Asian leaders and the UN envoy Razali Ismail that he supported involving Aung San Suu Kyi in the national reconciliation process. He wanted the National League for Democracy to participate in the National Convention. General Than Shwe, on the other hand, has steadfastly refused to allow Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD to participate in the National Convention. He has always insisted that the political parties would only be given a role in the national reconciliation process after a new constitution was drawn up and new elections called.

After several months of negotiations, the National Convention opened with some ethnic groups involved, but without the major political groups being allowed to participate. Discussions between senior representatives of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the NLD continued up until the last minute. There was a flurry of meetings between the two sides in the final days before the Convention was due to open. The NLD leaders were allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and Deputy Chairman U Tin Oo, who were still under house arrest, to consult on their position. The NLD insisted on a series of conditions most of which were rejected by Than Shwe, the key one being the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. In the face of the military’s unresponsive attitude, the NLD declined to participate in the Convention.

At that point Khin Nyunt’s usefulness ran out. Than Shwe was already angry with the prime minister, following UN envoy Razali Ismail’s visit to Rangoon in March 2004, when Razali had called for Khin Nyunt to be given a mandate to work with Aung San Suu Kyi on the national reconciliation process. In effect, the UN envoy was calling on the senior general to empower his prime minister. Nothing angers the top leaders more than public suggestions that there are major differences between them — even if there is a bitter power struggle in progress.

From this time, Khin Nyunt and his clique of senior military intelligence officers knew they were on borrowed time. Not long afterwards, Khin Nyunt, who was still nominally head of military intelligence, warned his senior military intelligence officers to be careful as he could no longer protect them. One senior military intelligence
officer even told friends in Rangoon that he suspected that his phones, including his cell phone, were being bugged. This kind of paranoia increased amongst the senior ranks of military intelligence in the months before the army moved against Khin Nyunt.

By the end of July 2004, after the National Convention went into recess, things were coming to a head. Relations between Khin Nyunt and Than Shwe worsened dramatically. In mid-June, Than Shwe cancelled Khin Nyunt’s scheduled visit to Indochina — his symbolic first visit as prime minister to Cambodia and Laos — and ordered him to go to the National Convention and deal with the ethnic groups who had been resisting the way the Convention was being managed and refusing to back down. The trip was rescheduled, but Khin Nyunt refused to talk directly to the ethnic leaders. This may have sealed his fate.

“My prime minister is in a very dangerous situation,” Burma’s foreign minister Win Aung told his Asian counterparts and the UN envoy Razali Ismail at the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Jakarta from 30 July to 2 August. “And he may have to flee the country,” Win Aung said.
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It is understood that shortly before Khin Nyunt was arrested, one Southeast Asian country informally offered him political asylum. “But he procrastinated until it was too late,” a military source said.

Over the past few years there has been growing resentment within the army over the latitude Khin Nyunt had given his military intelligence officers to get involved in business activities. “I can’t educate my children,” a Burmese army officer once complained to me, “but every MI [military intelligence] sergeant can afford to send their children to school abroad.” Tension between the army and military intelligence in the border areas had been growing for months. “It was in part a battle over business interests and resources but it was also a war over status and authority,” according to a UN official who works in Burma’s border areas. The regional military commander in Lashio in northern Shan State finally moved to end the conflict with military intelligence, at least in Shan State, and called in his boss — army chief General Maung Aye, who took decisive steps to end the dominance of military intelligence. In September 2004, on the orders of General Maung Aye, more than twenty intelligence people were arrested in the border town of Muse on the Chinese border because of their business activities. Over a hundred government employees — customs officials, immigration officers, and border guards were also detained on corruption charges. The military
intelligence compound in the northern city of Lashio was surrounded and two officers were arrested for corruption. Both had illegal bank accounts in China.

General Than Shwe was firmly behind the move against Khin Nyunt, and launched the campaign on the pretext of rooting out corruption in the military. Many intelligence officers had indeed been actively involved in business, but now that was used as the excuse to round them up and cashier them. Than Shwe’s approach to power is largely drawn from his mentor, Burma’s former strong-man General Ne Win, who was a master at eliminating military rivals. Frequent purges were a major characteristic of his rule. In the mid-1970s Ne Win sacked the army commander, Tin Oo, after the soldier’s growing popularity within the army and among the people marked him out as a potential rival for power. Ne Win also fired another Tin Oo in the 1980s, and later the military intelligence chief, when his growing power and influence began to rival Ne Win’s.