The Hindu Business Line : More at stake than monks and military in Myanmar

It would be desirable for India to work together with ASEAN on ways to bring in China towards evolving a national consensus in Myanmar on a roadmap to democratic governance.

G. Parthasarathy

In the stormy street protests in 1988 across Burma that brought down the one party Socialist regime of Gen. Ne Win, over 3,000 people perished when the army opened fire on peaceful demonstrators. Like most democracies across the world, India voiced strong condemnation of the massacres.

Despite its relatively friendly relations with the Ne Win regime, the US joined the chorus of international condemnation of the crackdown, prompting a senior American diplomat in Rangoon to tell the Washington Post: “Since there are no US bases and very little strategic interest, Burma is one place where the US has the luxury of living up to its principles”.

A few months later, students across China started a wave of protests that culminated in a ruthless suppression at the Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, where demonstrating students faced tanks of the Peoples’ Liberation Army. According to the Chinese Red Cross and Chinese Students Association, between 2,000 and 3,000 students perished in the carnage that followed. But the massacres in Rangoon, Mandalay and Beijing led to a new bonding between China’s Communist leaders and Myanmar’s military rulers.

Stakes for China

There have been several reasons motivating the close ties between China and Myanmar since the events of 1988 and 1989. From China’s side, the events of June 1989 showed that the spread of democracy can be contagious. The Chinese leadership has feared (not without justification) that an overthrow of an authoritarian Government in Myanmar by a popular movement for democracy will inevitably destabilise its Yunan Province, neighbouring Myanmar.

China also realises that an isolated Myanmar regime would suit its strategic interests of seeking access to the Indian Ocean and reinforcing its “containment” of India by a presence in the Bay of Bengal.

Finally and more recently, China believes that its own energy security will be enhanced by oil and gas pipelines from Myanmar to Yunan – a strategy that will enable it to bypass the Malacca Straits whenever needed.

Shift in stance

By 1992 India realised that its relentless attempts to isolate the Myanmar were regime were getting it nowhere, especially as not only China, but Myanmar’s ASEAN neighbours were following policy of “constructive engagement” with the military rulers in Yangon.

With the Khaleda Zia regime in Bangladesh joining Pakistan in arming and training insurgents in India’s North-eastern States and confronted with problems such as narcotics smuggling, India has, thereafter, worked closely with the regime in Myanmar to deal effectively with problems of border management, like counter insurgency operations.

With Myanmar joining ASEAN in 1997 and becoming a member of the Bay of Bengal Grouping BIMSTEC, cooperation expanded to include efforts to develop road and rail links across Myanmar and build transportation corridors linking India’s landlocked North-eastern States to the sea.

And in recent years, Myanmar has emerged as a partner for exploration and supply of significant amounts of natural gas and hydroelectric power. India’s private sector has, however, been relatively slow in utilising opportunities for exploiting Myanmar’s vast agricultural and forest potential in areas such as developing rubber plantations, or for producing paper pulp from the country’s vast bamboo forests.

Politically, the military regime showed its desire to maintain a semblance of balance in relations between its two giant neighbours, by supporting India’s candidature for permanent membership of the Security Council and eschewing any gratuitous comments following our nuclear tests of 1998.

Ground realities

The recent brutal crackdown on protests by Myanmar’s monks has naturally evoked worldwide condemnation and outraged public opinion in India. But while distant western countries can afford the luxury of unrestrained condemnation, India’s interests in neighbouring Myanmar necessitate a more measured response that takes into account the reality that China will not allow the western world to apply UN sanctions on Myanmar.

The other reality is that the military in Myanmar is not going to relinquish power in a hurry and that any move towards democracy in Myanmar can only be evolutionary. As Dr. Maung Zami, the Founder of the “Free Burma Coalition” who is now living in exile as Visiting Fellow in Oxford University, recently noted : “Change in Myanmar will come only in generational terms. There needs to be a 10 or 20 year policy, not ratcheting up the pressure right now. Right now, it won’t work”.

Those in the US and UK who know Myanmar point out that while American sanctions on Myanmar exports have not impressed Myanmar’s rulers, they have resulted in 80,000 textile workers being rendered jobless.

ASEAN role

Myanmar’s ASEAN neighbours are becoming more open in calling for democratic reforms. Meeting with Myanmar’s Foreign Minister, Mr Nyan Win, in New York on September 27, his ASEAN counterparts expressed their “revulsion” over reports that “demonstrations in Myanmar are being suppressed”. ASEAN Ministers urged Myanmar to “resume its efforts at national reconciliation with all parties concerned” and called for the release of all political detainees including Ms Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Like ASEAN, India has also stressed the need for “national reconciliation” and urged that the “process of political reform should be more inclusive and broadbased”. In effect, both India and Myanmar’s ASEAN partners are urging the regime that the process of drafting a new constitution that it has embarked upon, should be hastened and be made more inclusive by co-opting even those who are opposed to the regime. This has also been the thrust of the effort by the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative, Mr Ibrahim Gambari.

China’s Prime Minister, Mr Wen Jiabao, has called for “all parties” to exercise restraint, seek stability “through peaceful means” and promote “domestic reconciliation” and “achieve democracy and development”. More ominously, however, China is reported to have embarked on an “intense programme of training and cooperation” with Myanmar that has “focused on counter-insurgency and the suppression of street protests”.

In these circumstances, it would be desirable for India to work together with ASEAN on ways to bring in China to develop an Asian approach on how to evolve a national consensus in Myanmar on a roadmap to democratic governance.

Merely, resorting to issuing condemnatory statements as some suggest, will be of little utility in helping to facilitate a process of political evolution in a friendly neighbouring country.

Moreover, if China remains recalcitrant on this issue, western countries could well use the considerable leverage they have, by calling into question that utility and appropriateness of the forthcoming Olympics being hosted by China. Western pressure on this score did moderate Chinese recalcitrance on the massacres in Darfur.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)

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