Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (7 page)

Thus, looked at from outside or from the perspective of those who insist that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD must have a role in the current constitutional convention, the political situation in Myanmar looked as bleak at the start of 2005 as it did in May 2003.
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However, when examined from the perspective of the need to resolve the deepest fissure in Myanmar politics since independence was regained, perhaps the situation is not so disheartening. The virtual civil war between the government of Myanmar (whether under former Prime Minister U Nu’s
civilian governments or General Ne Win’s military Revolutionary Council and subsequent BSPP regime) and the ethnic insurgents was marked by various attempts to negotiate a political solution to the issues raised by demands for local autonomy and economic and political rights in the name of ethnicity within an essentially unitary state. Each of these attempts failed because of the unrealistic demands of the ethnic leaders or the unbending insistence by the government that the insurgents abandon their arms in order to complete an agreement. The remarkable achievement of the SLORC/SPDC regime has been to enter into tacit or real ceasefire agreements with all of the major insurgent groups and many of the minor ones. While this has allowed an end to the endless cycle of killing that marked the civil war period, the political issues which fuelled the conflict have yet to be resolved. The inclusion of twenty-eight former insurgent groups in the constitutional convention
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suggests, however, that not only have conditions on the ground in the minority areas begun to change, but that the means for enabling a political solution to Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts may also be found.

The prospects for political reconciliation and social consolidation, in the context of a political opening in Myanmar, momentarily looked promising at the beginning of 2004. Not only were twenty-nine members of the NLD released from detention, following the ending of the house arrest of five leading members of the party in November 2003, but a termination of the country’s oldest insurgency appeared to be in prospect. The key leader of the Karen National Union (KNU) during its more than half a century of armed struggle, General Bo Mya, met with Senior General Than Shwe, the Chairman of the SPDC, in Yangon in January 2004, raising expectations that a formal ceasefire agreement between the two sides, to replace the verbal “stand down” understanding which had been reached previously, would be concluded. Talks between the SPDC and KNU, Myanmar’s oldest and most entrenched ethnic insurgent army, had commenced in November 2003 and had progressed through a second phase in December. The arrival of a twenty-man KNU group led by Bo Mya (coinciding with his 77th birthday which was celebrated at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt) was made possible as a result of the KNU accepting the government’s terms for ceasefire talks.
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The talks between the KNU and the government in January 2004 did not prove to be conclusive, however, and efforts to reach a final agreement continued during the year. Reports emerged of occasional armed clashes between government troops and KNU forces or splinter groups in both November 2004 and January 2005. It would appear that a conflict erupted amongst the KNU leadership as to the desirability or necessity of a ceasefire deal with Yangon. Factions emerged, and some foreign groups involved in supporting the KNU clearly hold out the prospect that the insurgency can carry on as before.
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More importantly, there are apparently debates amongst the KNU and other non-ceasefire groups as to whether to maintain alliances with the NLD and other predominantly
Bamar
(Burman) organizations. However, after so many years of fighting by both government troops and rival ethnically-labelled insurgent groups over the right to tax local populations and to control regional smuggling routes, one might surmise that unless the isolated insurgent bands that still exist can enter the political process in some way, they may operate more like dacoits than guerrillas fighting for a political cause.

The KNU returned to Yangon on 18 October 2004 for five days of further talks, but left to return to their camps on the Thai border two days later when, following the ouster of Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt, their interlocutors in Military Intelligence became embroiled in the issues arising from the departure of their superior officer, the reputed architect of the ceasefire agreements. Once more factional conflict played a hand, potentially perpetuating a major issue in the search for a permanent peace in Myanmar. While the details are not yet fully clear, it would appear that the KNU’s government interlocutors were drafted into the process of reassuring the ceasefire groups in the Shan and Kachin states that the deals previously reached by them with the government under General Khin Nyunt’s auspices remained intact. This apparently entailed trips to Myitkyina and Lashio by the new Prime Minister, Lt. General Soe Win, and his successor as the new Secretary 1 of the SPDC, Lt. General Thein Sein. The latter, who also has chaired the revised constitutional convention, assured the public soon after General Khin Nyunt’s removal, which some described as a “palace coup”, that the road map process would continue to be implemented because it was not merely General Khin Nyunt’s policy, but that of the SPDC as a whole.

The prospects for the sustainability of the KNU insurgency, and that of the remaining armed groups along the Thai border amongst the Kayah
and Shan, look particularly bleak, since the government has clearly increased its capacity to penetrate and dominate border areas. Unlike conditions in the 1980s when travel was considered safe only in the central regions, today virtually the entire country is open to frequent and unimpeded journeys.
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This has, allegedly, led some of the members of the ceasefire groups to query whether their leaders have not conceded too much in exchange for the benefits they received by abandoning armed conflict. As some of their former military strongholds were occupied by government troops, and their leaders grew prosperous as a result of the businesses they were allowed to conduct, sometimes in conjunction with the army or Military Intelligence, the basis for new factionalism amongst the ethnic groups became apparent. In earlier years, such a situation might have led to the renewal of armed conflict.

Furthermore, even if factionalism does ensure the continuation of low-level insurgency, the Thai government is no longer willing to tolerate, let alone assist, anti-Yangon insurgent groups, and the presence of more than 100,000 Kayin (Karen) and other refugees in Thailand has become a major social and political problem for the local Thai authorities. The continuation of insurgent activities in the border area is also seen as a hindrance to the economic development of these regions. As the government of Thaksin Shinawatra has begun to achieve the reality of former Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhaven’s 1990 dream of turning the battlefields of Thailand’s neighbours into market places, the capacity of the Myanmar state to tax, police, and develop the border regions has increased. Moreover, the increased mobility of the Myanmar armed forces and the atrophying of what had been the “rear base areas” of the insurgents in neighbouring states has meant that a renewal of armed conflict has become an increasingly dangerous, and therefore unlikely, course for any ceasefire group.
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Indeed, finding a constitutional way to protect the economic and administrative rights that they have gained through the ceasefires has become ever more necessary.

Since 1989, the army government appears to have achieved by compromise, patience, negotiation, and material and psychological persuasion what its predecessors failed to do through armed confrontation. Though the peace achieved has not been cost-free to the regime, it has resulted in the government now having a greater say in the future of the border areas than at any time in the past, including during the British period, when these areas were known for their “light” administration or
indirect rule. Thus, when it came to forming the constitutional convention, the government, while it went through the ritual of consulting with the leaders of the ethnic communities before inviting them to the participate, had at its disposal the capacity to foreclose any options they might have considered if uncooperative.
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Speculation to the effect that some of the ceasefire groups would walk out of the convention, or not return to it when it resumes, has remained simply that — speculation. Indeed, government spokespersons claimed that they were assured by the leaders of the ceasefire groups after General Khin Nyunt’s departure that they would attend the next session of the convention, which, it was announced, would resume on 17 February 2005. This was confirmed by the publication, unusually, of statements by the leaders of several of the groups in the official Yangon press.

Though the convening of the constitutional convention provided an opportunity for the ethnic ceasefire groups to join a process which might eventually ensure a degree of autonomy and legality for their
de facto
semi-autonomous zones and businesses, the National League for Democracy is not taking part in the convention. Whether the NLD’s exclusion from the convention is the result of a decision willingly made by them, or the result of allegedly unreasonable conditions placed by the SPDC on their participation, is a matter of interpretation. In the weeks leading up to the opening of the convention, the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the party was permitted to meet on several occasions with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Vice-Chairman Tin Oo; both of them remained, nonetheless, under house arrest. The CEC proceeded to negotiate the terms of their participation in the convention. These included the possibility that the “six objectives” and “104 principles” agreed at the previous sessions be considered as merely suggestions, and that the NLD would be allowed to choose its own delegates to the convention as the ceasefire groups had been allowed to do. While the government remained studiously ambiguous on the first of these points, according to a statement released by the party on 14 May, the right to choose their delegates was conceded, even though individual invitations to NLD members who had attended the earlier sessions had already been issued.

However, on two other points no compromise was possible. The party would not be permitted to re-open its branch offices, closed following the Depayin incident, though its central headquarters had been re-opened; nor would Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or former General Tin Oo be released. While some contend agreement was nearly reached on all these points, only to be withheld at the last minute by the highest authority in the SPDC, others argue that the conferring of moral equivalency between the government and the NLD implicit in such a compromise ruled it out from serious consideration from the time the demands were made. In any event, the NLD chairman, former General Aung Shwe, announced on 14 May that “The NLD ha[d] come to the conclusion that it will not benefit the nation by participating in the national convention. Therefore it has been decided that the NLD will not attend the convention.”
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The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), the party that won the second largest number of assembly members-elect in 1990, following the NLD’s lead, also decided not to attend according to its leader, Hkun Htun Oo.

Although the NLD had participated in the first sessions of the constitutional convention in 1993, 1994 and 1995, during which time Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, soon after her release the party made a decision to withdraw from the assembly on the grounds that its procedures were undemocratic and its decisions, especially the guarantee of a leading role for the military in any future constitutional regime, were unacceptable.
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The non-participation of the NLD in the convention because of its unswerving reliance on demands that the political process be more fully open on its terms, and that the eventual decisions reached be acceptable to it, points to a fundamental dilemma for the party. Should it stick to its high democratic principles in the hope of eventually turning Myanmar into a fully-fledged constitutional democracy of some as-yet-undefined form, or should it be willing to broker deals with the generals in order to begin to share power with the military, as the ceasefire groups are hoping to achieve? The NLD’s all-or-nothing strategy wins it strong praise from powerful quarters in the West, but over a period of fourteen years has not been successful in opening any political space in which the party can operate. Some amongst the exile community who previously campaigned in support of Western sanctions in support of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi have finally begun to argue for a more gradualist, process-oriented, approach.
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The NLD, an organization as old as Myanmar’s current military regime, was born as a loose coalition of anti-BSPP, anti-army, pro-change students, veteran politicians, and former army officers who had served in, and fallen out with, the governments of General Ne Win over the previous quarter-century and more. It rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the old socialist order around its charismatic Delhi and Oxford-educated General Secretary, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. As the daughter of Myanmar’s national independence hero, General Aung San, a man whose brief political career can be interpreted to justify almost any form of politics, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi became a magnet for those opposed to the army, thus contributing significantly to the success of the NLD in the polls in 1990. Without her, and the national and international acclaim she has achieved since 1988, the NLD might merely be one of a number of political parties that arose between 1988 and 1990 in the hope that their leaders might have a role in the future government of Myanmar.