Myanmar's perpetual junta: Solving the riddle of the Tatmadaw's long reign

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 60, 2009, Pages 27-63

  Callahan, Mary ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 72249106846     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (68)

1. I use the terms Burma/Burmese and Myanmar interchangeably for the country/population. The former, which probably dates back to the last dynasty before colonial rule, derives from the majority ethnic group, the Burmans; the latter, a literary form, first appears in 12th-century inscriptions. In 1989 the toponym's romanization was changed to Myanmar by the ruling junta, with corresponding revisions for cities and ethnic groups (a move comparable to China's introduction of the pinyin system). Usage of pre-1989 names became a litmus test for certain exile and advocacy groups in the 1990s. Today the new names are widely used inside the country and some minority leaders prefer Myanmar, as less associated with the Burmans (now renamed 'Bamars'). Currently, the us, UK, Canada and Australia insist on 'Burma', while much of Europe, Russia, Japan and all the country's near neighbours-India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos-use Myanmar.
2. The regime has some grounds for suspicion. See Andrew Selth, 'Even Paranoids Have Enemies: Cyclone Nargis and Myanmar's Fears of Invasion', Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 30, no. 3, December 2008.
3. See Kyaw Yin Hlaing, 'Challenging the Authoritarian State: Buddhist Monks and Peaceful Protests in Burma', Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 32, no. 1, 2008.
4. Edmund Leach, 'The Frontiers of "Burma"', Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, 1960, pp. 49-68.
5. Over the last ten years, sophisticated debates have emerged over many aspects of second millennium history on the Pagan, Pegu, Taungoo and Thaton dynasties. Original sources have been re-examined and reinterpreted, raising fundamental questions about the accepted narratives of Burmese history.
6. See, for example, Michael Aung-Thwin, The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend that was Lower Burma, Honolulu 2005.
7. Relations between king and sangha were complex and often fraught. In times of scarcity, the sangha and the monarch competed for control over wealth and labour. Economic hardship sent larger numbers of indigents into monasteries, which reduced the royal tax base and labour force. Corruption in the monkhood provided pretexts for kings to purge the sangha. On tensions between state and sangha
8. see Michael Aung-Thwin, Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma, Honolulu, 1985;
9. Victor Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580-1760, Princeton, NJ 1984.
10. Statistics on ethnic makeup in Burma are inadequate and widely contested: the last systematic national census to include the minority regions was conducted in 1931.
11. Thant Myint-U makes this case in his The Making of Modern Burma, Cambridge 2001.
12. John Cady, History of Modern Burma, Ithaca 1958, p. 133.
13. Thant Myint-U notes that more troops were deployed here than in 'either the Crimean War or in the occupation of Egypt just a few years before': River of Lost Footsteps, New York 2006, p. 28.
14. One regimental history defended these tactics: 'In practically all engagements with the enemy we had to fight an invisible foe. The dacoits waylaid our troops as they came up the river in boats or by road marches, poured forth a heavy fire upon the advancing forces as they got within range. Not only was it difficult to locate the enemy in their hidden lairs, but our men laboured under the vast disadvantage of having to force their way through the close undergrowth of an unknown forest, whilst the enemy knew all the ins and outs of their tangled labyrinths and were able to keep concealed... Our only means of punishment was to burn these villages.'
15. Sir Reginald Hennell, Famous Indian Regiment, New Delhi 1927 (reprint 1985), p. 134.
16. See the account by the first Chief Commissioner of Burma: Charles Crosthwaite, Pacification of Burma, London 1912 (1968).
17. See also Daw Mya Sein, Sir Charles Crosthwaite and the Administration of British Burma, Rangoon 1938, and the brilliant (if romantic) critique of Crosthwaite's system by scholar-bureaucrat
18. J. S. Furnivall in Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India, Cambridge 1948.
19. In the next generation, charismatic monks such as U Ottama and U Wisara led revivalist movements in the rural areas, aiming to rescue Buddhism from British oppression. They were imprisoned by the British and are remembered as martyrs (in 1924 and 1930, respectively) of the national cause.
20. Most of the population of this zone was Burman, and predominantly Buddhist; the rest consisted of Karens, Indians, Chinese, Mons and others.
21. Kingsley Davis estimated that a total of 2.5 million Indians migrated to Burma during the colonial period: The Population of India and Pakistan, New York 1968, p. 101.
22. J. S. Furnivall pointed out that before the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885-86, Burma had far more children at school than any other country in 'the tropical Far East': Colonial Policy and Practice, p. 211.
23. Ne Win, who would run the country from 1962 until 1988, also attended Rangoon University but flunked out in 1931. After failing to break into the charcoal market, he found a job as a postal clerk.
24. Official Burmese sources estimate a figure of 50, 000: see, for example, Maung Maung, Burma's Constitution, The Hague 1961, p. 55
25. and Tatmadaw History, 1824-1945, Rangoon 1994, vol. 1, chapter 5 [in Burmese].
26. Andrew Selth, 'Race and Resistance in Burma, 1942-1945', Modern Asian Studies, xx, 1986, pp. 483-507.
27. Nu (1907-95) was famous for having translated Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, into Burmese. He also authored a stridently anticapitalist and anti-colonial novel in Burmese with the Hobbesian title, Man, the Wolf of Man.
28. See his eccentric memoir, Saturdays Son, New Haven 1975.
29. Maung Aung Myoe, Building the Tatmadaw. Myanmar Armed Forces Since 1948, Singapore 2009
30. and Andrew Selth, Burma's Armed Forces, Norwalk, CT 2002.
31. Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, 2nd edn., London 1999, p. 101.
32. Ward Keeler, 'Fighting for Democracy on a Heap of Jewels', Working Paper no. 102, Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1997, p. 14.
33. Bangkok Post, 4 February 1989.
34. Christian Science Monitor, 13 June 1989.
35. Andrew Selth, Transforming the Tatmadaw. The Burmese Armed Forces Since 1988, Canberra 2006.
36. Lt. Col. James McAndrew, 'From Combat to Karaoke: Burmese Military Intelligence, 1948-2006', MS Thesis, National Defense Intelligence College, 2007, p. 77;
37. McAndrew served as US military attaché in Rangoon in the early 2000s.
38. Tom Kramer, 'Thai Foreign Policy Towards Burma, 1987-1993', MA Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1994, esp. p. 68;
39. and Pavin Chachavalpongpun, A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations, Lanham, md 2005.
40. Through clever accounting, the gas revenues have been converted into kyat at the official rate, meaning that 6 kyat for each of the 2.5 billion dollars earned this year will enter the national treasury. Unofficially, the kyat trades at about 1, 200 per dollar.
41. Sean Turnell, 'Burma Isn't Broke', Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2009.
42. China may build a second pipeline to transport Gulf oil from tankers docking at a new deepwater port on Myanmar's Rakhine coast, thus avoiding the flashpoint of the Strait of Malacca.
43. See Ashild Kolas, 'Burma in the Balance: The Geopolitics of Gas', Strategic Analysis, vol. 31, no. 4, 2007. Figures may overstate future revenues, given the current volatility in energy prices.
44. See Chronicle of National Development, Myanmar Ministry of Information, 2007.
45. Nancy Hudson-Rodd and Myo Nyunt, 'Control of Land and Life in Burma', Land Tenure Center Brief, no. 3, April 2001.
46. UNDP/Myanmar and Ministry of National Planning (Myanmar), 'Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey in Myanmar. Vulnerability-Related Information', 8 March 2006.
47. 'Statement of the UN Country Team in Myanmar on the Occasion of UN Day', Rangoon, 24 October 2007; Department for International Development (UK), 'Country Assistance Plan, Burma', London, October 2004, p. 3.
48. Churches provide similar services in regions with large Christian populations, such as Chin State, Kachin State, and Karen villages in the Irrawaddy Delta. Some of the most effective relief programmes after Nargis were undertaken by monks and Christian pastors who had previously established a humanitarian interfaith network.
49. One such protest in February 2007 ended with the small crowd craftily chanting, 'Long live the Senior General.
50. Little known in Rangoon before 2007, this militia had made appearances in rural areas since at least 2005. There have also been reports in ethnic-minority regions of forced conscription into the pro-government 'Pyi-Thu Sit-Tat' (People's Militia).
51. All Buddhist boys are expected to spend a few months in a monastery as koyin. At 19 they can be ordained as hpongyis, but this need not involve renouncing the secular life forever. Many men return to the monkhood for short periods to study, find respite or prepare themselves for major life changes such as marriage or migration. Predictably, statistics on religion are unreliable in Myanmar. Burman leaders probably inflate the proportion of Buddhists; on the other hand, while Burmans and Western NGOs generally assume that Kachin, Chin and Karen minorities are Christian, the majority of Karens are actually Buddhists.
52. See Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, The Karen Revolution, Washington, DC 2008.
53. Juliane Schober, 'Buddhist Visions of Moral Authority and Modernity in Burma,' in Monique Skidmore, ed., Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century, Honolulu 2005, pp. 113-32.
54. See also Ingrid Jordt, Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power, Athens, oh 2007.
55. In his classic History of Modern Burma, John Cady writes that throughout the country's history, the alms boycott was used by monks in 'an evil community needing to be disciplined effectively' (p. 51).
56. Khin Nyunt and his family were arrested, and upwards of 600 officers were jailed. In October 2007, many angry Rangoon residents told me that none of this would have happened if he had been in power. He would have understood how serious the situation was and apologized. For background, see Kyaw Yin Hlaing, 'Myanmar in 2004: Another Year of Uncertainty', Asian Survey, vol. 45, no. 1, 2005, pp. 174-9.
57. This account of the protests and crackdown is based on research in Myanmar from November-December 2007, January-March 2008, and October 2008.1 also draw on: Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, 'Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar', UN Human Rights Council, 5 December 2007; and Human Rights Watch, 'Crackdown: Repression of the 2007 Popular Protests in Burma', December 2007.
58. There were a few exceptions in ethnic-nationality areas, such as Myitkyina, Kachin State.
59. In 2005 the UNDP/CSO survey found that the proportion of people living below the poverty line was 52 per cent in Eastern Shan State, and 70 per cent in Chin State.
60. See the analysis of the new constitution in International Crisis Group, 'Myanmar Towards the Elections', Asia Report, no. 174, 20 August 2009.
61. New light of Myanmar, 23 May 2006;
62. on its founding see New Light of Myanmar, 16 September 1993.
63. The four are the United Wa State Army, 15, 000-20, 000 troops; the Kachin Independence Organization (kio), 5, 000-6, 000 troops; the Mongla-based National Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State (NDAA-ESS), under 2, 000 troops; and the Kokang ceasefire group, 1, 000-1, 500 troops.
64. See Tom Kramer, 'Burma's Cease-fires at Risk', Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, September 2009.
65. The United Wa State Army did send troops to Kokang in early August, but Wa leaders insist they were there to mediate between the Burmese Army and the Kokang, and that they left without a shot fired on August 28, when they concluded their mediation had failed. A small number of Wa soldiers stayed behind to protect a bridge of strategic value to the Wa, but they did not fight on the behalf of the Kokang. Kramer, 'Burma's Cease-fires at Risk".
66. The SLORC regularly invoked the Village Act (1907) and Towns Act (1907), laws which allow local leaders to demand compulsory labour from residents. Martin Smith makes the point about conflict 'management' in State of Strife: The Dynamics of Ethnic Conflict in Burma, Washington, DC 2007.
67. Any attempt to give a specific number of groups is somewhat misleading, given that the regime on several occasions managed to break off small factions, sometimes performing lavish ceasefire ceremonies with only a few dozen soldiers.
68. In December 2008, Ne Win's daughter, Sanda Win, was released after six years under house arrest. Her husband and three sons remain in jail. For the charges, see New York Times, 27 September 2002.