Wishful Thinking on Myanmar Won’t Lead to Change

Global Asia

Rumors and the musings of some analysts contend that Myanmar’s ruling generals may be brought down by the multi-pronged insurgency in the country that erupted after the coup in 2021. That is unlikely to happen. The military has ruled the country in one way or another since 1962 and remains largely united. The insurgency also is not cohesive and its victories do not threaten the country’s heartland.

In this situation, the only outside country with leverage on both sides of the divide is China, writes Bertil Lintner, and Beijing may hold the key to eventually breaking an agonizing deadlock. 

IN THE SECOND week of August, news of a supposed countercoup went viral on many Myanmar social-media sites and blogs. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who overthrew the elected government in 2021 and formed a junta called the State Administration Council (SAC), had reportedly sought political asylum in China. Another version said the SAC secretary, Lieutenant General Aung Lin Dwe, had seized power and arrested Min Aung Hlaing. One social-media report asserted that the wife of the SAC deputy chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win, had fled to Dubai.

The dust didn’t take long to settle and, as Myanmar researcher Naing Min Khant pointed out in an online commentary on Aug. 14, it “becomes clear that these rumors are more a reflection of wishful thinking or disinformation than impending reality.”

The same fanciful thinking could also be attributed to some international think tanks and many mostly Western “independent analysts,” who say that the co-ordinated efforts of a unified resistance have led to the SAC losing control over 60 percent of the territory of Myanmar, and that the junta is on the brink of collapse. It is correct that the central authorities have not suffered such setbacks since the turbulent years immediately after independence from Britain in 1948, when they controlled so little of the country that their administration was referred to as “the Yangon government.” But, as Naing Min Khant also said in his comment regarding the coup rumors: “The power structure within Myanmar’s military is tightly controlled by Min Aung Hlaing, making any attempt to overthrow him highly unlikely.”

Not Very Unified Resistance

As for the supposedly “unified resistance,” it consists mainly of ethnically based, non-Bamar armies in the frontier areas whose claims to territory often overlap resulting in rivalries and even bloody disputes between various communities. There is also the large Bamar-dominated People’s Defense Forces (PDF) and other local armed groups operating under other names along the frontier and in more central areas. But those groups may or may not take orders from, or even listen to, the National Unity Government (NUG), which operates in hiding and was set up by ousted MPs and pro-democracy activists after the 2021 coup. Some Bamar resistance groups are allied with the non-Bamar forces and have been armed by them, but the latter are more interested in gaining and securing control over their respective territorial bases, not in taking part in any synchronized march into the Myanmar heartland with the aim of capturing the capital, Naypyidaw, or the even more distant commercial center, Yangon.

That brings us to the sad reality: the military has been running the country under different guises since its first coup in 1962, and history shows that it cannot be easily dislodged from power. Nothing is likely to change unless and until there is a split among the top leadership — a real one this time — or a widespread mutiny within the ranks. And neither of those two scenarios appears probable in the foreseeable future. 

Nevertheless, it is evident that Myanmar’s generals seriously misjudged the situation in the country and the mood of the people when they sent their tanks into Naypyidaw and Yangon in February 2021. They probably assumed that protests would fizzle out after a few days when it became clear that a return to the quasi-civilian rule that Myanmar had enjoyed between 2011 and 2021 was off the table.

Intriguingly, the same “independent analysts” who are now predicting an imminent military victory by the resistance thought more or less the same as the military in the weeks after the coup. The protesters would soon accept the new regime and return home, the argument went, because, after all, in the words of one “expert” quoted: “People have got to eat.” And there was not going to be a repeat of the bloody events of 1988 when the military used lethal force to crush a nationwide pro-democracy uprising because, as a writer for Asia Times Online put it in a commentary published on Feb. 18, 2021, the “disciplined” Myanmar military had adopted “new thinking and tactics.” It had “opted for a strategy of slow attrition aimed at waiting out the storm” and, therefore, “a crackdown involving co-ordinated violence is unlikely.”

But, predictably, the military did respond to the post-coup protests in the same way it did in 1988 — and as it did in July 1962 when it opened fire on students protesting the military takeover in March of that year, and, in the 1970s, when students and workers demonstrated against harsh living conditions and the one-party dictatorship of the then ruling Burma Socialist Program Party. The only difference in 2021 was that the military did not immediately spray automatic-rifle fire into crowds of demonstrators. It began with snipers killing some of the youngest protesters in order to instill fear among the others and force them into submission. When that did not put an end to the protests, more direct lethal force was used.

How Did We Get Here?

With the military having ruled Myanmar since its initial takeover in 1962, a new constitution was adopted after a fraudulent referendum in May 2008 followed by a rigged election in November 2010, which was won by the military’s own party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), to the surprise of nobody. A new government headed by Thein Sein, a former army general who had been a leading member of the ruling junta prior to the election, was formed in March 2011. Not much was expected after those orchestrated events took place. But then a series of surprising initiatives were taken by the Thein Sein government that were unlike previous military moves. Political prisoners were released, political parties and non-governmental organizations were allowed to operate openly, and press freedom was guaranteed. Foreign journalists, previously banned, were given visas to visit and report from the previously almost hermetically sealed country.

Why did the military introduce those changes, which, in the end, backfired on them and their status in Myanmar society? It was not that the military had a sudden democratic awakening, or that Thein Sein was, as some misguided analysts said at the time, a “Myanmar Gorbachev” who wanted to dismantle the old system and pave the way for something new. The strategy was to remain in power and, at the same time, improve the country’s image and its strained relations with the West, which had imposed sanctions on the Myanmar military after the bloody 1988 crackdown and its continued abysmal human-rights record.

A Decade of Societal Change

During this period, Myanmar had become heavily dependent on China. Classified military documents seen by this writer and dated as far back as 2004 suggested that the country was losing its independence to its powerful northern neighbor. The solution was simple: Make some reforms — and the West would reciprocate by welcoming Myanmar back into the international community. It worked. Myanmar turned almost overnight from being an international pariah to becoming the darling of the Western world. Dignitaries ranging from US President Barack Obama to the King of Norway came on official visits.

To the chagrin of the military, the USDP lost the next election, held in November 2015. It turned out to be free and fair, and the military had no choice but to accept the results and allow the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi to form a new government in April 2016. However, when the NLD scored yet another landslide victory in the November 2020 election, the military had had enough. According to international election observers, that election had also been free and fair. But the military began to claim that it was fraudulent, arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders and elected MPs, and formed the SAC junta to run the country.

There are several misunderstandings of what really happened during the decade of relative openness from 2011 to 2021. It was not, as assumed by many outside analysts at the time, a “transition to democracy” because the military pledged time and again that it would not allow any substantial changes to the 2008 constitution, which gave the military supreme power. Nonetheless, what happened was a transformation of Myanmar society. An entire generation learned how to use the Internet, to communicate on social media, and to hold workshops and seminars on subjects related to democracy and human rights. That, in turn, led to massive opposition to the 2021 coup, first by peaceful means and then with armed struggle. As a Myanmar friend put it at the time: “the military messed with the wrong generation.” Min Aung Hlaing could not possibly have expected the societal storm he would inadvertently unleash when he used his tanks to seize absolute power.

A Patchwork of Resistance

The obvious problem is that guns are needed for armed struggle, and the result is a wide variety of different armed groups with varying motivations and capabilities. Local gangs armed with primitive weapons have done remarkably well in Sagaing Region in the northwest of the country, bordering India. Other groups have carried out assassinations of officials and suspected military informants in urban areas, including Yangon and Mandalay. But the most decisive fighting has taken place in frontier areas, especially northern Shan State, where the People’s Defense Forces and other dissidents have linked up with ethnic resistance armies and been armed by them. But, despite the successes, the war in northern Shan State also reveals the challenges the resistance faces and the disunity among the various forces in what is the ethnically most diverse part of Myanmar with all that entails. There is a front called the Northern Brotherhood Alliance, comprising the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA); a Palaung group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which was set up in Kokang, an area in the far northeast of Shan State that is populated by ethnic Chinese; and the Arakan Army (AA), whose main area of operation is Rakhine State but, because its fighters were initially trained by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Kachin State and later allied primarily with the MNDAA, also has a presence in this hotbed of intrigue and local conflicts.

The KIA is also active in northern Shan State, and so is the Shan State Army (SSA) of the Shan State Progress Party (there is also a rival Shan army, also called SSA, in southern Shan State). The Kachins, the Shans and the Palaungs claim more or less the same areas and the Kachins resent the TNLA’s increasingly strong presence in traditionally Kachin-dominated areas such as Kutkai and Namhpakka, while the Shans in Kutkai and Hsipaw complain about TNLA taxation in what they see as their homeland. The MNDAA does not have any ethnic constituency outside Kokang, but it now controls Lashio, the main city in northern Shan State where the population has always been mixed — and most residents fled toward Mandalay when fierce fighting erupted there a few months ago. These groups, and their Bamar allies, may pay lip-service to the National Unity Government, but are independent and act only under the command of their own officers.

China’s Role

The other factor in the northern Shan State context is China and the role Beijing has long played in Myanmar’s civil wars. China’s interest in Myanmar is mainly geostrategic: to secure an outlet to the Indian Ocean for imports and exports, bypassing the contested South China Sea and the congested Strait of Malacca. Chinese government officials began talking as early as in the mid-1980s about the need for such an alternative route for trade and commerce, but it was only in the 1990s that China became involved in substantial infrastructure projects in Myanmar. Road networks were upgraded, work began on a deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu on the Bay of Bengal in Rakhine State, and plans were made for the construction of railroad tracks that would carry high-speed trains between that facility and Yunnan.

This determination to protect what is called the China Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), makes Beijing the most important outside player in the Myanmar imbroglio. No other country has the same kind of vital geostrategic interest to protect in Myanmar. China is also the only country that has close connections with the military junta as well as the resistance armies in the north. In fact, those armies are equipped mainly with Chinese weapons obtained through China’s main ally in Shan State, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which has a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military, has declared its “neutrality” in the wars and is not taking part in the actual fighting. The SAC has not openly criticized China for this indirect support for the resistance, but it has mentioned that dissident successes in the north would not have been possible without weaponry obtained from “neighboring countries.” It has also allowed members of the Patriotic Monks Union and other pro-regime organizations to stage protests in Yangon, accusing Beijing of destroying Myanmar by supplying the resistance forces with weapons.

It has to be remembered that anti-Chinese sentiment is strong among the Myanmar military and played a crucial role in the policy changes that were implemented after 2011. The Myanmar military has not forgotten that China gave massive support to the now-defunct Communist Party of Burma in the 1960s and 1970s, and that thousands of its soldiers were killed by Chinese-supplied weapons in that war. China lost much of its previous influence in Myanmar when Thein Sein established links with the West, but the 2021 coup put an end to that, and the SAC now has few alternatives other than, most probably reluctantly, turning back to China for trade and diplomatic assistance.

This new development gives China a strategic advantage. It would be a mistake to assume that China is able to manipulate every move on the Myanmar chessboard, but no other country can rival the leverage that China has inside Myanmar — and that is likely to determine the future of the country. China has positioned itself as the only possible peacemaker, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid an official visit to Myanmar in August, after the Myanmar army had suffered unprecedented battlefield defeats. Wang met junta boss Min Aung Hlaing and, as the only foreign visitor in years, the old and now retired dictator, Than Shwe. He told them that Beijing is committed to “practical” bilateral co-operation and “opposes chaos and conflicts in Myanmar.” There is no doubt that Beijing would like a more stable Myanmar, and although it would prefer a strong role for the military in the country’s internal affairs, the Chinese would deal with anyone who forms a government in Naypyidaw. Significantly, the Chinese also went out of their way to have a good relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi when she was the de facto head of the government. She even signed agreements with China under its controversial Belt and Road Initiative, which bound Myanmar closer to China.

China’s policymakers have a deep understanding of the situation inside Myanmar, and are the only ones with the capacity and the means — as well as the motivation — to turn it to their advantage. Therefore, a possible future scenario would be for China to broker a new ceasefire deal with the resistance (a previous one initiated by China in January collapsed after a few months), and that would ensure a degree of status quo, where the SAC remains in power in most of the Myanmar heartland, and the various resistance armies refrain from advancing from the areas they already control. It remains to be seen if that might lead to a first step toward peace and a more stable condition inside the country. But without China’s active participation, any reasonably peaceful solution to Myanmar’s internal conflicts would not be possible.

Published: September 2024 (Vol.19 No.3)