http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/14/AR2009081401667.html?wprss=rss_print/outlook
Let's Talk to Burma. China Sure Is.
By Thant Myint-U
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Twenty years of sanctioning and lecturing Burma's military regime have failed. The West needs to engage with Burma's leaders, increase humanitarian aid and reopen commercial relations with the country. If it doesn't, not only will positive change remain as elusive as ever, but the country will turn quickly and irreparably into an economic vassal of China.
In a sign of just how impervious the regime is to Western pressure, last week, opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to her fourth spell of house arrest. Two thousand political prisoners remain locked up. And a transition to democracy appears nowhere in sight.
I was born in the United States in 1966 to Burmese parents. My grandfather, U Thant, was then serving as the United Nations' third secretary general. I witnessed repression in Burma firsthand when I was 8, during the violent unrest surrounding my grandfather's funeral.
In 1989, just after college, I spent a year in Thailand and along the Thai-Burmese border, working with dissidents and trying help the first wave of Burmese refugees. Thousands had been killed during a failed anti-government uprising. Suu Kyi had just been placed under house arrest. And the ruling junta, after losing relatively free elections, was refusing to hand over power. Later in Washington I argued with members of Congress and others that maximum sanctions were the best way to topple the dictatorship. It was an easy argument to make.
By the early 1990s nearly all Western aid to Burma had been terminated, and development assistance through the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had been blocked. A decade later, embargos and boycotts had cut off nearly all economic ties with the United States and Europe. None of the senior Burmese government officials or their children (these are the only international sanctions targeting children) are allowed to travel to the West.
But as the regime not only survived but began to seek trade, investment and tourism, I started having doubts. My feeling was that the West should use the opening and find a back door to change while the front door remained firmly shut.
In 2006 I published a book, "The River of Lost Footsteps," in which I argued for a shift in the West's approach. Even when, in 2007, new protests were violently crushed, I still believed greater engagement was the right way. I felt that many policymakers and journalists were missing the bigger picture.
Few seemed aware, for example, that Burma was just emerging from decades of civil war. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government and more than a dozen different ethnic insurgent armies hammered out cease-fires, a breakthrough that went virtually unnoticed in the West. (Today, though the cease-fires remain, there is no permanent peace.) And few seemed concerned by the country's grinding poverty, the result of decades of economic bungling as well as embargos, boycotts and aid cutoffs.
In 1991, UNICEF's country director warned of a humanitarian emergency among Burma's children, arguing that more aid couldn't wait for the right government. Eighteen years later, Burma still receives less than a tenth of the per-capita aid handed out to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Tens of thousands die needlessly from treatable diseases.
These challenges have been ignored in the hope that sanctions and tough talk would lead to political change. But that hasn't happened.
Part of the reason is that the people who fashioned the sanctions didn't consider how the rise of Asia's giants -- China and India -- would transform Burma. As American businesses pulled out in the mid-1990s, Chinese and other Asian companies poured in. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of natural gas have been discovered offshore, and massive hydroelectric and mining projects are being signed. Within two years a 1,000-mile oil and gas pipeline will stretch across Burma, connecting China's inland provinces to the sea. The U.S. trade embargo led to the near-collapse of the garment industry in the late 1990s, throwing tens of thousands of people out of work, but for the regime this has meant little.
Burma today is in no danger of economic disintegration. Without Western engagement, however, Burma's 55 million people risk becoming a virtual colony of their 1.3 billion Chinese neighbors to the east. There is no nefarious Chinese takeover scheme, but the vacuum created by Western policy is being filled.
The old Burmese generals will soon retire, and a new generation will rise to the top. Gen. Than Shwe, Burma's powerful autocrat, is 77 and ailing. Any chance for change requires support from at least some military leaders. Yet we've done nothing to try to influence the worldview of Than Shwe's possible successors. The upcoming generation of officers will be the first never to have visited Europe or America.
Last winter the Obama administration announced a review of Burma policy. I hope it will reconsider the United States' long-standing reliance on sanctions. It's not just that they don't work, but that they've been hugely counterproductive, taking away the one big force -- American soft power -- that could have played a role in reshaping the landscape.
Asia has experienced many successful democratic transitions, and none came about because of the sanctions and lectures that Western powers and advocacy groups seem to think will work in Burma. Generals don't negotiate away their power in the face of threats. You have to change the ground beneath them.
Engagement is not just about talking -- it's about dealing with the powers that be enough to get a foot in the door and create new facts on the ground, especially through economic contacts with the Burmese people. Nor is it based on the notion that economic development will automatically produce democracy, but that we must tackle simultaneously Burma's political and economic ills.
Many in America and worldwide are again outraged by goings-on in Burma. But without new thinking, 20 more years will pass and the dream of a prosperous, democratic Burma will be more distant still.
thant@post.harvard.edu
ad_icon
Thant Myint-U is the author of "The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma."
မြန္ျပည္သစ္အား ခြဲထုတ္ရန္ စစ္အစုိးရ ျပင္ဆင္
၀ီရ/ ၁၄ ၾသဂုတ္ ၂၀၀၉
နအဖကမ္းလွမ္းထားသည့္ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းရန္ ျငင္းဆန္ခဲ့သည့္ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ အခ်ဳိ႕အား နအဖအာဏာပုိင္တုိ႔က ေသြးခြဲစည္း႐ုံးရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ေနၿပီး ပါတီဝင္ေဟာင္းမ်ားကုိလည္း ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရာက္ရန္ ျပင္ဆင္ခုိင္းေနေၾကာင္း စုံစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။
ထုိင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္တြင္ တာဝန္က်ေနသည့္ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ ေကာ္မတီဝင္တဦးက “ျပည္တြင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တခ်ဳိ႕ကုိ နအဖအာဏာပုိင္ေတြက တိတ္တဆိတ္ လာေတြ႔ေနတာရွိတယ္။ အဓိကကေတာ့ လာစည္း႐ုံးတာပဲ။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔အခ်င္းခ်င္းၾကားမွာ အျမင္မၾကည္ေအာင္ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြက သူတုိ႔နဲ႔ ခုိးေတြ႔ေနသလုိ အထင္ခံရေအာင္ လုပ္ေနတာ။ အမွန္က သူတုိ႔ပဲ လာေတြ႔တာ” ဟု ေခတ္ၿပဳိင္သုိ႔ ေျပာၾကားသည္။
နအဖအာဏာပုိင္တုိ႔က မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ၏ တပ္အင္အားႏွင့္ မြန္ျပည္သူမ်ားအၾကား အရိွန္အ၀ါရိွသည့္ မြန္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္သည့္ အခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကိုလည္း ေက်းရြာဥကၠ႒မွတဆင့္ ေကာက္ခံခိုင္းေနေၾကာင္း အဆုိပါ ေကာ္မတီ၀င္က ေျပာသည္။
နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ အသြင္ေျပာင္းရန္ ၾသဂုတ္ (၅) ရက္တြင္ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီမွ ပယ္ခ်လုိက္သည့္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ပါတီ၏ တပ္အင္အားကို ေကာက္ခံေနျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ပါတီ၏လက္နက္ႏွင့္ တပ္အင္အားစာရင္းကုိ နအဖက ေတာင္းခံမႈမ်ား ရွိခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ပါတီက အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ပယ္ခ်ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
အသက္ (၄၀) ႏွင့္ (၅၀) အၾကား လူလတ္ပုိင္း မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ၀င္ေဟာင္းမ်ားကိုလည္း ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေရာက္ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ရန္ ကမ္းလွမ္းေနေၾကာင္း ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ခ႐ုိင္မွ မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီ ဗဟုိေကာ္မတီဝင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။
၎က “နအဖက က်ေနာ္တုိ႔အဖြဲ႔က ခြဲထြက္သြားတဲ့ စစ္ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႏုိင္ကုိ ဆုံခ်က္အျဖစ္ သုံးၿပီး ပါတီဝင္ေဟာင္းေတြကုိ လုိက္စည္း႐ုံးေနတယ္။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဝင္ဖုိ႔၊ ပါတီဖြဲ႔ဖုိ႔ ကိစၥေတြအားလုံး တာဝန္ယူေပးမယ္။ အဲဒီလုိမ်ဳိး စည္း႐ုံးတာ႐ွိတယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။
မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီမွ ၂၀၀၈ ခု မတ္လက ခြဲထြက္သြားသည့္ စစ္ဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႏုိင္၏ လက္နက္အပ္ႏွံပြဲကုိ အေရွ႕ေတာင္တုိင္း စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္က အႀကိမ္ႀကိမ္ စီစဥ္ခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း အင္အားမျပည့္ေသးသျဖင့္ က်င္းပႏုိင္ျခင္းမရွိေၾကာင္း၊ ယခုလ (၅) ရက္တြင္ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႏုိင္အဖြဲ႔၏ လက္နက္အပ္ပြဲကုိ အေရွ႕ေတာင္တုိင္း စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တြင္ က်င္းပရန္ စီစဥ္ၿပီးမွ ထပ္မံပ်က္ျပားသြားခဲ့သည္။
“ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႏုိင္ကုိ သုံးၿပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ပါတီဝင္ေတြကုိ တိတ္တဆိတ္ ကမ္းလွမ္းေနတာ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး အျမင္ရွိတဲ့သူေတြကုိ စည္း႐ုံးလုိ႔ရမွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ လက္နက္အပ္ပြဲ လုပ္ၿပီးရင္ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ခြင့္ေတြ၊ နယ္ေျမေတြ၊ ဂိတ္ေတြကုိ တရားဝင္ သတ္မွတ္ေပးမယ္ဆုိၿပီး ေျပာလုိ႔ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႏုိင္က ဒီကိစၥကုိ စုိင္းျပင္းေနတာ” ဟု အဆိုပါ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္က ရွင္းျပသည္။
အသက္ (၆၈) ႏွစ္ရွိ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ ေအာင္ႏုိင္သည္ ယခုအခါ သံဃာဝတ္ျဖင့္ မုဒုံၿမဳိ႕နယ္၊ လက္တက္ေက်းရြာအနီးရွိ ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္း တေက်ာင္းတြင္ သီတင္းသုံးေနေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီအား နအဖက စစ္ေရးအရ ဖိအားေပးျခင္း မရွိေသးေသာ္လည္း ၎တို႔တပ္မ်ားကို ဘုရားသုံးဆူၿမိဳ႕တြင္ အင္အားထပ္မံ ျဖည့္တင္းရန္ရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
မြန္ျပည္သစ္ပါတီသည္ စစ္အစုိးရႏွင့္ ၁၉၉၅ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး သေဘာတူညီခဲ့သည္။
Aung San Suu Kyi left to pay the price for John Yettaw’s indiscretion
Richard Lloyd Parry: Analysis
First it was Bill Clinton in North Korea, escorting home two scared US journalists from the clutches of Kim Jong Il. Now, Senator Jim Webb returns from Burma with the hapless American eccentric, John Yettaw.
For a politician, there are few more glorious moments than jetting home from a despotic regime with imprisoned compatriots in tow. But the liberation of Mr Yettaw was the least important and interesting achievement of Mr Webb’s trip.
Whether you regard Mr Yettaw as a well-meaning buffoon or an arrogant busybody, he hardly deserved such a prompt and high-level intervention.
The ironies of his release this weekend are painful. In setting him free, the Burmese junta manages to project an image of magnanimity for cancelling a sentence out of all proportion to Mr Yettaw’s “crimes”. And, as he flies back to obscurity in Missouri, Aung San Suu Kyi and her two female companions are left to pay the price of his fecklessness.
Mr Webb did at least see Ms Suu Kyi and their conversation must have been an interesting one. For the senator is a firm supporter of an approach very different from her uncompromising idealism. In the absence of any ideal solutions for dealing with the regime, he believes in making the most of a bad lot and in engaging with the junta, dropping sanctions, and also backs participation in the bogus-sounding election promised for next year.
These would be highly risky steps, but the time is long overdue for a serious debate about alternatives to the present policies of Ms Suu Kyi and her Western supporters, which have achieved nothing very obvious other than high-minded isolation.
For encouraging such a conversation, Senator Webb deserves credit.
He would have done much to overcome stereotypes about American parochialism, and made a valuable point to the dictatorship, if he had requested Ms Suu Kyi’s release before that of Mr Yettaw, rather than vice versa.
Q+A-China's complex relationship with Myanmar
Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:27am IST
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voiced "serious concern" on Thursday about a sentence passed on Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in a watered-down statement designed to win the consent of China and Russia. [ID:N13234524]
Here are some questions and answers on China's complex relationship with its troublesome southern neighbour to explain why China comes to the rescue every time Myanmar is subjected to pressure from Western governments.
WHY IS CHINA UNWILLING TO CRITICISE MYANMAR?
China has a longstanding policy of non-interference in other countries' affairs, especially over human rights issues, in part because it does not want the United States and Europe criticising Beijing's own record. [ID:nBKK197002]
Beyond that, China's overriding concern is a stable Myanmar. Drugs and HIV/AIDS pour across the border into the southwestern province of Yunnan and China is desperate to control that flow.
Any action that might place unbearable pressure on the generals and force a government collapse could have dire consequences for China. Ethnic minorities in Myanmar, which have in some cases waged long-running insurgencies, could then set up de facto states along the Chinese border and their primary income would likely come from drugs.
China also argues that Myanmar is no threat to international peace and warrants no U.N. Security Council involvement, unlike North Korea and its nuclear programme.
WHAT ABOUT CHINA'S ENERGY AND ECONOMIC TIES WITH MYANMAR?
Energy-hungry China is keen to import gas from Myanmar. A pipeline with annual capacity of 12 billion cubic metres, is expected from 2012 to ship gas to Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. [ID:nPEK42962]
China will also start building an oil pipeline next month through Myanmar to enable it to facilitate crude imports from the Middle East and Africa. The link would allow Chinese oil tankers to avoid a 1,200 km (750-mile) detour through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
Overall, China has invested more than $1 billion in Myanmar, primarily in the mining sector, and is the country's fourth largest foreign investor, state media say. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to around $2.63 billion.
WHAT ARE CHINA'S BROADER STRATEGIC GOALS?
China has long worried about hostile neighbours, including India, or Japan and South Korea with their U.S. military bases. Having a friendly government in Myanmar is therefore important.
Myanmar gives China important access to the Indian Ocean, not only for exports from landlocked southwestern Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
There are no guarantees a democratically-elected civilian government would be as keen for close ties with a China which had previously supported the junta.
And China, with its own history of suppressing home-grown demands for democracy, is hardly going to push Myanmar to grant the kinds of freedoms it regularly denies its own citizens.
The sanctions already imposed on Myanmar by the United States and European Union have in any case had little effect. The government also defied expectations it would implode during violent pro-democracy protests two years ago.
ARE THERE SIGNS CHINA'S PATIENCE IS WEARING THIN?
Very small ones. At a May meeting in Hanoi, Asian and European foreign ministers urged Myanmar to free detainees and lift political restrictions, in a statement unexpected signed by China. [ID:nSP502104]
In 2007, China's Foreign Ministry published an unflattering account of Myanmar's new jungle capital Naypyidaw, expressing surprise that this poor country would consider such an expensive move and not even tell supposed friend Beijing first. (Editing by Ron Popeski)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
