Mizzima

Bern Smith

Mae Sot

A makeshift camp near the Thai-Burmese border in Tha Song Yang district last year. Karen refugees lived in this camp for months, through the worst of the wet season. Photo: Mizzima

An exodus of refugees in numbers never before seen along the Thai-Burma border could begin within days, the KNU/KNLA Peace Council has warned.

In a plea to the “international community”, the Peace Council this week said 6,000 to 10,000 people could initially be evacuated, but if the Burma Army made a clean sweep of its capital, as many as 100,000 people could be affected.

The KNU/KNLA Peace Council signed an agreement with Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, in 2006 when it broke away from the Karen National Union.

Since then it has developed a capital on the western side of the Dawna mountain range, at Hto Kaw Ko, and its leaders have entered into business arrangements with the Burma Army.

Peace Council leaders have been consistently accused of switching sides merely to enrich themselves.

Earlier this year the SPDC demanded ethnic groups transform themselves into Border Guard Forces, taking orders directly from the Burma Army.

The KNU/KNLA Peace Council has repeatedly refused to become an armed wing of the Burma Army and steadfastly refused to fight troops of the Karen National Liberation Army. But now the SPDC has demanded the Peace Council begin obeying orders or be declared an “unlawful or illegal organisation”.

KNLA Colonel Nerdah Mya

Burma Army Lt-Gen Ye Myint has met with Peace Council leaders and delivered an ultimatum: Join forces with us by Sunday or the population of Hto Kaw Ko will be displaced and your capital destroyed.

In a move that could be perceived as tactically unwise, Peace Council leaders say they dismissed the demand on the spot and began preparing to defend themselves.

The Peace Council is well armed – this correspondent has seen truckloads of brand new M-60s and M-16s and many thousands of rounds of ammunition in their possession.

A spokesman for the Peace Council said: “If the Burmese determine to breach and violate the peace agreement and initiate war, then the Karen will have no choice but to do everything in their power to defend [themselves].

“However [if the] safe area [Hto Kaw Ko] is no longer considered safe, the children and families may have to cross over the border into Thailand.

“Acceptance by the Thais is not certain,” the spokesman said.

Elements of the KNLA last night declared that they would flank KNU/KNLA Peace Council units if they were forced to evacuate to the Thai-Burma border.

KNLA Colonel Nerdah Mya, eldest son of the late KNLA General Bo Mya, said: “We are all Karen and the people must be defended.”

He said his men would certainly help the Peace Council forces if they were attacked by the Burma Army and found themselves in danger of being overwhelmed.

Colonel Nerdah’s primary concern was for the civilian population, he said.

By all accounts it is unlikely the Thais will accept thousands of Peace Council refugees pouring over the border. While contingency plans have been made for three sites around Mae Sot – at Tha Son Yang, Phop Phra and Umphang – there are strict conditions for people seeking refuge in Thailand.

Anyone who comes across the border must be directly fleeing fighting and no combatants of any side, or their families, will be given food or shelter.

The Thai Third Army, which controls an area from Kanchanaburi in the south to Mae Hong Son in the far north, maintains the dispute between the SPDC and the Peace Council is an “internal affair”, one for the Burmese to sort out amongst themselves.

While NGO workers along the border are treating the situation developing between the Peace Council and the Burma Army as a serious matter, they remain sceptical that 100,000 people might flee Burma.

Faced with reduced capacity because international donors are becoming fatigued by more than six decades of fighting in Karen State, the organisations providing for refugees are hoping they are not inundated with tens of thousands of new arrivals from Burma.

But, should the Burma Army make a clean sweep from Hto Kaw Ko to the Thai-Burma border, the number of people fleeing could well dwarf last year’s exodus to Tha Son Yang.

Last year, during June and July, about 6,500 people ended up on the Thai side in Tha Son Yang district when the KNLA lost its Seventh Brigade region to the Burma Army-aligned militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.

What followed was a disaster, as people clustered in small groups along the border and NGOs scrambled to keep up with simple needs, such as sanitation, food and shelter.

ENDS

Reality bites as junta officials horde cash, assets

Missing middle class leaves vaccum for rising ‘criminal class’

Mizzima

By Bern Smith

Sydney

Sean Turnell

Senior Burmese government officials are “salting down” assets of all sorts and stashing cash in offshore banks in a sure sign the insiders are beginning to hedge their bets on the ruling military junta’s future, an economics analyst has said.

Professor Sean Turnell, from Sydney’s Macquarie University, said the officials were looking to guarantee their families’ futures in Burma’s ruling class.

Prof Turnell is a principal of Burma Economic Watch and has addressed the United States’ Senate Sub-committee on Foreign Relations about the effectiveness of US sanctions.

He is a firm believer in sanctions.

Prof Turnell is also a former Reserve Bank of Australia senior analyst, and says little can be expected of ASEAN, India, nor China when it comes to pushing for reforms from the junta, but there is some hope from within the military clique.

“Some developments are quite dramatic at the moment,” he said.

“There are sizeable holes in the regime, but that’s really it on the upside.”

Prof Turnell, who will next month travel to Washington DC to meet with members of Congress, believes some senior figures within Burma’s military administration are “running scared”.

“With the election coming, it’s obvious that it will be the farce that everyone says it’s going to be, and the most senior [generals] will still have everything,” he said from his Sydney home.

He said some elements of the international community saw these key figures as rising “robber-barons” in Burmese society, comparable with the American phenomenon of the 1900s.

In America such businessmen, or “robber barons”, amassed great personal fortunes, but national institutions such as libraries and foundations and infrastructure such as railroads, were a positive byproduct of the era.

But in Burma, reality was far more bleak, said Prof Turnell.

“In the last six months what we’re really seeing is the rising of a criminal business class, with the privatisation push it’s really a rapid criminalisation of the economy,” he said.

“They’re protecting themselves more in the manner of the mafia,” he said.

“It’s morphing from this nationalistic, quasi-Stalinist state into a criminal economy”, where the individual plays a more prominent role than is healthy for a developing economy, he said.

And with the focus turned to the connected individual capable of securing a concession or privilege from the junta comes greater disparity.

“We’re not going to get a Hyundai or Daewoo out of this,” said Prof Turnell, dismissing the argument of economic liberalists that democracy and human rights evolve with economic development.

“These people [with privileges granted by the junta] are not innovators, nor manufacturers, this is simply rent seeking,” he said.

There was no new middle class coming to the fore and demanding their rights and exercising newfound power as consumers, he said.

A classic example of what Turnell describes as the “madness” of the generals is a recent decision to ban the export of onions to combat a domestic shortage.

“Farmers had entered into contracts, they had contractual obligations,” he said.

But those obligations will not be fulfilled now, because of the generals’ actions.

And so a promising industry has been cut off at the knees.

He compared the current onion ban with that of beans and pulses a few years ago.

Once the bean and pulse export industry had been ruined by export bans, the generals left it alone – in the past few years it has been making something of a comeback.

“There is no path to anything [for producers] other than mere survival,” he said.

Prof Turnell bemoans the argument that development will lead to greater rights for the people of Burma and a more equitable system will bloom with time.

“If it was genuinely developing then you would have to say ‘well, that’s better than nothing’, but it’s just not happening,” he said.

The Age

Hamish McDonald

  Rangoon, Burma

August 16, 2010

Burma’s army has evaded Australian government sanctions to obtain radio sets from a Perth manufacturer that allow it to scramble its communications, gaining a new advantage in its wars against domestic rebels and dissidents.Prestigious British defence journal Jane’s Intelligence Review reports that Perth-based Barrett Communications has been selling its radio sets directly in response to tenders by Burma’s Ministry of Defence, contradicting suggestions by the company it was selling the radios to civilian agencies of the Burmese government.

When the military’s use of the radios was first reported in January, Barrett managing director Phil Bradshaw insisted the radios were used for general communications and were not of a kind ”for military use”.

The company told Jane’s that any Barrett 2050 radios sold to Burma did not include the frequency-hopping option that makes monitoring all but impossible and which would contravene Australian export controls on sensitive military technology, including signals encryption, in place since 1991.

Mr Bradshaw is quoted as saying the frequency-hopping option could only be installed at the company’s factory by authorised staff.

The Defence Department in Canberra backed this up. ”This could not be done in-country [by the customer]”, the department told the journal.

But an industry source familiar with Barrett radios has said the processor and software that hops messages across 500 frequencies is built into every Barrett 2050. This and other extra functions could be enabled by input of a random nine or 10-digit code generated by a computer at Barrett’s office and matched to the serial number.

”It wouldn’t be impossible for an experienced department, especially in the military, to figure out a way to bypass it,” the source said. ”If frequency hopping required an extra part or key to unlock, then it would be far more secure to send overseas. However, since it’s already built in, it’s just a matter of cracking that code.”

Jane’s writers Samuel Blythe and Desmond Ball said the Barrett 2050, costing about $3300 a set, was coming into growing use by the Burmese army for communications between its headquarters and divisional commands.

BurmaNet News

Asian Energy

  Bangkok, Thailand

August 16, 2010

Thailand’s oil and gas developer PTTEP says it wants to sell minority stakes in five gas blocks in Burma for which it has exclusive exploration and production licenses. The Thai government-controlled company has 100 percent ownership of the development rights in the blocks, which include the rich M9 in the Gulf of Martaban.

The Thai government-controlled company has 100 percent ownership of the development rights in the blocks, which include the rich M9 in the Gulf of Martaban.

Only two weeks ago, PTTEP signed a deal with Burma’s junta-controlled oil and gas agency, the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), to buy 80 percent of the gas produced from M9.

PTTEP has previously said the block is estimated to hold about 50 billion cubic meters of gas, and could begin delivering more than 8 million cubic meters per day by 2014.

It had been expected that MOGE would take the other 20 percent of the M9 output.

However, this week PTTEP chief executive Anon Sirisaengtaksin said he wants to sell stakes in M9 and the M3, M4, M7 and M11 to “diversify investment risks.”

PTTEP is also seeking to raise capital to help fund a bid for BP’s assets in Vietnam which the British company plans to sell to help pay for Gulf of Mexico oil leak damage.

Industry observers think potential investors in PTTEP’s five Burma blocks will include China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and India’s GAIL and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) companies.

CNOOC expressed interest in buying into the M9 block in 2008.
GAIL and onGC are involved in developing two blocks of the huge Shwe gas field in the Bay of Bengal, most of which is being sold to China.

Thailand seeks to dilute cost of developing Burma gas fields

August 14th, 2010
Kong Janoi, IMNA

Several opposition political parties in Burma are chafing under yesterday’s announcement of the date of the country’s upcoming election, now set for November 7th of this year.

Three parties interviewed yesterday told IMNA that they are financially unprepared to submit their candidate lists to Burma’s Election Commission, which according to yesterday’s announcement must now be sent in between August 16th and August 30.

All candidate lists have to be submitted to the Commission along with a fee of 500,000 kyat [500 USD] per candidate, which parties now have less than a month to raise.

U Thein Htay, the leader of Union Democratic Party (UDP), told IMNA that he feels that yesterday’s announcement, which has effectively limited the submission of candidate lists and money to within the next 15 days, has made the election process less democratic.

“We see that this [announcement] is cutting the democratic force in the parliament, because there is no logical procedure for submitting parties’ registration lists. They are not following their election regulations. They [the Election Commission] just announced suddenly that they have given limited time for preparations. Parties lacking financial support, like our party, are struggling to submit party candidate lists and money.”

U Thein Htay also elaborated on the difficulties that opposition groups have getting funds.

“To be able get funds from the individual donors, as you know in Burma many businessmen have connections to the military regime. Although they want to support democracy, they are afraid that their businesses will be destroyed [if they give opposition parties money].”

Like the UDP, the All Mon Region Democracy Party (AMRDP), which will run for election in Mon State, is also struggling to attain funds for candidate fees to submit to the Election Commission. The AMRDP is still in the process of campaigning around Mon state in search of financial support; representatives from the party reported to IMNA that candidates from many opposition parties, including their own, are being forced to fund their positions on candidate lists with their own savings, as their parties cannot raise the necessary finances.

U Thu Wai, who leads the group known as the Democratic Party, told IMNA yesterday that the party’s planned number of candidates will be cut in half, because of the limits placed on candidate lists by the Election Commission’s time frame and funding requirements.

“Right now, we have 100 candidates who are able to fund themselves. We also have a second group of over 100 candidates have the potential to run in the polls, but these individuals do not have enough money to fund their registration fees. Besides, the party is not able to fund them so we can only submit the 100 candidates who are able to fund themselves,” he explained.

Many of the parties interviewed informed IMNA that the financial problems caused by yesterday’s announcement have only added to a slew of election-related difficulties.

The Democratic Party has reportedly already complained to the Election Commission that party members have been intimidated by the Special Police (SP) after submitting party member lists to the Commission

“We think the Election Commission handed over our party’s profile to the SP because many SP in town came questioning our party members,” said U Thu Wai.

UDP chairman Thein Tin Aung informed IMNA that the party has not even been able to commence campaigning due membership issues and financial problems; the group’s party leader Phyo Min Thein resigned on August 5th , claiming that the election process was too inherently “unfair” to take part in.

Independent Mon News Agency

Mizzima

By Bern Smith

  Mae Sot, Thailand

August 15, 2010

With the closure of the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge near Mae Sot, truck inner tubes are currently the only way for Burmese migrant workers to cross the Moei River to Thailand. But the bridge does open, under cover of darkness and to those who pay enough. Photo: AFP

The Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge, spanning the Moei River between Mae Sot and Myawaddy, is open – at the right price and under the cover of darkness.

Thai traders in Mae Sot have told Mizzima that trucks laden with goods can pass over the bridge if the right people are paid the right money.

Shipments must be arranged via Democratic Karen Buddhist Army commander Chit Thu and Thai authorities must be paid, the traders said, on condition of anonymity.

The bridge was closed by Burma in early July, allegedly because of moves by Thailand to construct a wall along its side of the river, beefing up security along the international border.

The Tak Chamber of Commerce has since demanded the Thai government intervene and negotiate with the Burmese, claiming 20 days of closure had cost Thailand revenue of 20 billion baht.

Thai promises to supply construction materials and pay labour costs to build a structure on the Burmese side initially seemed to have healed the rift between the two neighbours.

But then, say Thai business sources, the Burmese side upped the ante, demanding 50 new trucks also be handed over as part of the deal to re-open the bridge.

It seems Thai pragmatism and the desire by the DKBA to make money to supply its bitterly-divided fighting force has since spurred new arrangements.

Now shipments can pass across the Friendship Bridge late at night, or as Thai sources say, “always about midnight”.

Thai authorities are now charging an extra baht per kilogram for goods passing across the bridge, making the total 21 baht per kilogram.

Thai businessmen said with breakaway elements of the DKBA fighting against the Burma Army, the Karen militia’s need for money was greater than ever.

The Karen National Liberation Army’s Colonel Nerdah Mya confirmed smuggling activities were occurring, but said it was not the DKBA behind the operation.

He said certainly such movements across the bridge in the dead of night would have to be approved by Chit Thu but, “You must remember that Chit Thu has already signed an agreement with the SPDC, he is SPDC.”

Colonel Nerdah said the movements across the unmanned bridge were not political, but rather “people just trying to make money”.

But the facts are inescapable.

The SPDC ordered the bridge closed in protest against a Thai plan to bolster security along its international border.

In what could only be considered bilateral blackmail, Burmese authorities then demanded construction materials and money from the Thais to reopen the bridge.

The Tak Chamber of Commerce then supplied the cement and promised to pay labour costs for the Burmese to build their own wall along their side of the Moei River.

But the bridge remains closed, and the SPDC, troops of which have vice-like control of Myawaddy, is now allowing illicit illegal international trade across the bridge.

ENDS

Mizzima News Special Report
Friday, 06 August 2010

By Perry Santanachote

(2 of 3)

Military culture: a paradigm shift

In 2003 Aung Min was riding high on drug “taxes” collected from traffickers that crossed into his command area, but one day he arrested and executed 15 traffickers, seized their heroin and sold it on the Chinese black market for 200 million Kyats (US $200,000), 20 times more than he would make in a year of tax collecting.

An opium poppy sticks out among others in this field outside the village of Lowi Soi, on the Lwe San Sone Range in Burma’s Northern Shan State, close to the Chinese border, in January 2000, when Burmese authorities took Interpol delegates and journalists to see the results of its anti-opium campaign. Critics now call the 15-year drug eradication campaign that started in 1999 a sham aimed at attracting UN and NGO aid for development the junta should be carrying out itself. Photo: AFP

Military intelligence investigated Aung Min shortly after the incident when his foot soldiers were seen suddenly adorned in gold jewellery and he had made a considerable transaction to his mother in the middle of Burma’s banking crisis that had left several banks bankrupt and the Kyat inflated beyond repair. That red flag landed him 15 years in prison. However, the crime he committed was not really the problem; it was the spectacle that got him in trouble.

“Military officers’ involvement in drug trafficking is very common, particularly in Shan State. Even the killing,” said an ex-army captain and friend of Aung Min. “It’s rare that they are arrested. Aung Min was inexperienced so he didn’t know how to be low-profile.”

The former officer divulged Aung Min’s story on condition of anonymity. He left the army last year after 10 years of service and now lives across the border in northern Thailand. He went through three years of officer intake with Aung Min and said they were close friends. The last time they saw each other was on October 7, 2002.

“He was very honest – a simple man,” he said. “I was surprised when I found out. I think it was due to the environment because he was assigned to this area and this kind of bribing, taking money, dealing drugs – this might have changed him.”

Many Burmese soldiers survive on revenues collected from extortion fees because their salaries are meagre and the government has cut off their rations. Today, a private earns about 16,000 Kyats a month, a sergeant earns 35,000 to 40,000 Kyats, while a major general earns 800,000 Kyats.

“The army capacity is also declining: the fighting capacity, military capacity, administration capacity, organising capacity. It’s all due to mismanagement,” he said. “While at the top level they’re getting more benefits and becoming wealthier.”

The ex-army captain explained that battalions had been cut down, but they still had the same amount of work. Faced with the challenge, they had to get creative and make deals with traffickers instead of trying to fight them.

“We can’t fight Karen rebels with 120 soldiers. It’s like 120 people with the duties of 500,” he said.

In 2005, headquarters ordered him to set fire to 180 homes in a Karen village in Kanasoepin Village, Thandaung Township.

“My superiors asked the villagers to forcibly relocate to a designated area. They wanted to control them and destroy the village so they couldn’t communicate with rebels,” he said. “I had to get an agreement with the village head to set up three houses only, document and report to regional command. This way it’d be win-win.”

In this incidence, “win-win” was not bribery, it was security. He only had 18 soldiers with him that day, in an area he referred to as “the black area” where Karen rebels are active.

“If we burned down the village, the Karen rebels would have attacked us,” he said. At that point, he realised he wanted out of the army. “I didn’t want to live with that stress anymore – to deal with that anymore.”

He said there were no official orders to bribe opium farmers or traffickers, but that it had become a major component of military culture. Everyone takes bribes and the money goes all the way up the chain until it eventually reaches Senior General Than Shwe. Officers stress that discretion is key because of the military’s appearance of reform. If a soldier’s actions threaten to expose their role in the drug trade, he will suffer the same fate as Aung Min.

Aung Min’s story illustrates the military’s deep involvement in the drug trade – a complete contradiction to the image it has projected to the world.

Appearances deceptive

A favoured tactic of the regime in its delusive fight against drugs is the highly publicised heroin eradication programme, which the ex-officer explained is set up.

There would be orders from the regional command centre to cut off poppy at a plantation, he said. The authorities would call the farmers and village leader before heading out and telling them to prepare the crop. Upon arrival the farmers would show the soldiers the unusable poppy plants, made so by the plants’ inability to produce the seeds required to make heroin. The soldiers would slash these and leave the good ones intact. Then they would document the eradication with photographs and bonfires. Afterwards, the soldiers collect 10 million Kyats from the village head. This process is repeated every three months.

The Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), an NGO based in Mae Sot, Thailand, found in its 2009 report, Poisoned Hills, that only 11 per cent of poppy fields had been destroyed the previous season, mostly in areas visible to the UN’s satellite monitors. The police reports they obtained claimed that 25 per cent of fields were destroyed.

More “taxes” are collected in the trafficking process too. The ex-army captain explained that regional commanders communicate with ceasefire group leaders and issue passes to place on the narcotics cargo trucks so that they are exempt from searches at checkpoints. There are 13 regional commanders throughout the state. About three of them: the Eastern, the Northeastern and Triangle commanders are active in the drug trade. Prime Minister Thein Sein is a prime example of the power these regional commanders hold, as he was the Triangle Regional Commander in 2001 and dealt with Shan warlords on a regular basis before his promotion in 2007.

‘Politically correct’ drug trade

“In my 10 years in the army there’s been an increase in drugs, trafficking, bribes and this kind of involvement,” said the ex-army captain.

The escalation in drug activities is partly caused by the growing number of militia and ceasefire groups.

“Before the army got an agreement with the ceasefire groups they fought against the rebels and weren’t involved in drug trafficking because they were not friends, they were enemies,” said the former captain. “After the ceasefire they had to get money from them for sustainability.”

Today there is an estimated 17 ceasefire agreements with the country’s ethnic rebel groups. The number of active militia groups is unknown, but the SHAN received junta documents that revealed 396 in the Northeastern command alone. In the run up to this year’s election, the military has increased pressure on ceasefire groups to join its Border Guard Force. Those that concede and support the junta’s political ambitions are awarded with military support in their drug activities. SHAN editor Khun Seng said that the junta party needs canvassers that have influence in their respective communities.

“Those who are most influential are involved in the drug trade, especially the militia leaders,” he said. “These people will take advantage of the situation.”

Khun Seng said that as an extra incentive, each militia group was now assigned an operational area where they could do whatever they want without disruption.

“If you are ‘politically correct’, you can do anything in Burma,” he said.

As an example he described this year’s Armed Forces Day in Burma.

“The commander [Colonel Khin Maung Soe] in Tachilek spoke on the sidelines to the militia leaders, ‘This is your golden opportunity. My only advice is that you send your products across the border, but not on this [Burma’s] side’,” Khun Seng said.

PWO’s investigation corroborated SHAN’s accounts that more drugs were indeed coming out of militia-run areas. It reported that opium cultivation increased over 200 per cent in Mantong and Namkham townships in Shan State, both areas controlled by the government. During the 2008-2009 season, the acreage found by PWO for only these two townships, out of the total 23 townships in Northern Shan State, was nearly three times (4,545 hectares) the total recorded by UNODC for all 23 townships combined. The UNODC reported a 100 per cent increase in that same time period in all of Northern Shan State, from 800 hectares to 1,600 hectares.

Both SHAN and PWO have criticised the UNODC’s methodology, which relies on data reported by the junta’s (State Peace and Development Council, SPDC) eradication reports and satellite imagery without proper verification.

The ONCB in Thailand also acquires its Burma drug data from the SPDC.

“For the most part we exchange data with them with good communication and understanding,” Pornthep said. “There has been no lying on their part and their data can be backed up. For instance, the figures for poppy cultivation are the same as the UNODC, the US and China.

“We never meet with the NGOs in Burma,” he added. “We only communicate with the government and narcotic police.”

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 1

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 2

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 3

Mizzima News Special Report
Friday, 06 August 2010

By Perry Santanachote

(3 of 3)

Seizures mean little

Khun Seng also disputed a statement in the UNODC World Drug Report that attributed the increase in methamphetimine production to ethnic insurgencies in Shan State readying to fight the SPDC by selling more drugs to purchase arms.

“The Kokang and Wa are producing at the normal rate, no more, no less. The increase is due to the involvement of the militia groups, he said. “Now with the Wa and Kokang, these people can produce but they can’t transport without the co-operation of the militia groups. If they do it by themselves they are caught.”

A Burmese soldier walks between opium flowers while destroying poppies in January 2000 in the Lwe San Sone Range. Junta soldiers and villagers destroyed acres of plantations in Shan State, one of the world’s largest opium-growing areas, as part of a broader campaign started in 1999 by the junta to eradicate the narcotics trade in the country. Eleven years on, drug lords continue to operate with impunity and the Burmese Army remains closely involved in the lucrative opium economy, using it as leverage against ethnic ceasefire armies. Photo: AFP

Which explains the number of seized drugs in Burma. UNODC Regional Representative Gary Lewis stated at the release of the 2010 World Drug Report in Bangkok, that 23 million methamphetamine pills were seized in Burma last year, from one million in 2008. Lewis said the numbers likely reflect a surge in production, rather than crime prevention.

Khun Seng agreed that more seizures meant more production, but said that was only part of the picture. The military was particular about where the seizures came from. That is, when the seizures were not fabricated. Militia-produced drugs almost always made it across the border, he said.

The Kokang, a ceasefire group well known for drug production and trafficking along the Sino-Burmese border, were recently attacked by the SPDC for their refusal to join the Border Guard Force and all their drugs were seized. The regime long turned a blind eye to the Kokang’s drug operations and even publicised the area as a “drug-free zone” after its eradication campaign, but in August last year, this all changed and the regime announced a massive seizure of drugs in the Kokang area, while driving more than 37,000 refugees into China.

Several large shipments of methamphetamine, believed to have originated from the United Wa State Army (UWSA), were also recently seized in Tachilek near the Thailand border.

“Seizures are irrelevant and are made only when the authorities want to put pressure on, for instance, the UWSA, for political and security reasons,” Lintner said.

The UWSA, armed with 30,000 soldiers, is the largest ceasefire group to reject the junta’s proposal to become part of the Border Guard Force and the military has turned up the heat as the election approaches. Much of the seized drugs last year are believed to have come from the Kokang and Wa – seizures that would never have happened in the past.

“Proceeds from the drug trade were always a major source of income for several rebel armies in Burma, before and after the ceasefires,” Lintner said. “But the Burmese government and the UNODC chose to turn a blind eye to the traffic as long as the ceasefire groups were on good terms with the government. Now, when some of the ceasefire armies are resisting the government’s demands that they transform their respective armies into Border Guard Forces, they are suddenly being accused of trading in drugs, which they have always done.”

Even with the drastic surge in methamphetamine seizures, the World Drug Report noted that seizures continued to remain very low in Burma. Despite being the second-largest producer of heroin in the world, only one per cent of worldwide heroin interception was seized in Burma in 2008. Similarly, of the 32 million tablets seized in East and Southeast Asia in 2008, only about three per cent, or 1.1 million, were seized in Burma.

The report also states that the number of tablets and the amount precursor chemicals seized in Burma jumped last year, when the SPDC entered by force parts of north and eastern Shan State not under their control.

The new political order

The new drug economy that the SPDC has built in Burma will only worsen as the regime’s crusade for power and control intensifies in the run-up to the election. Lintner anticipates the drug trade will eclipse what was seen in the 1990s.

“In 1990, only opium was produced, and the derivative heroin,” he said. “The production increased dramatically in the 1990s, and now is back to what it was 20 years ago. Plus methamphetamines, which were unknown in the Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle 20 years ago.”

In 1997, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knew all too well where Burma’s drug trade would lead when she aptly stated, “Drug traffickers who once spent their days leading mule trains down jungle tracks are now leading lights in Burma’s new market economy and leading figures in its new political order.”

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 1

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 2

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 3

Karen National Union flag.

Another blow for Burma’s ethnic diversity at the hands of the generals

Peacerunning, August 10, 2010

Adopting a tough stand, the Burmese military junta yesterday ordered the removal of the Karen national flag from the gates and military camps of ceasefire groups in Karen State.

“The order to remove Karen flags was released at 9:30 am yesterday.  All the flags were removed by 3 pm, a DKBA soldier told KIC.

According to DKBA sources, the order came from Col. Khin Maung Htay of MOC 12, who is directly appointed by Nay Pyi Daw to solve border issues.

A Kawkareik local on condition of anonymity said that the removal of Karen flags was done in Myawaddy, Kawkareik, and Pa-an in Karen state. The DKBA and other ceasefire groups were ordered to remove Karen flags, he added.

“When I saw the Karen flag being removed, I felt a pang in my heart that a thing of heritage is being done away with,” a DKBA soldier from 999 gate said in a pained voice.

Among Karen ceasefire groups, are the DKBA, Karen Peace Council (KPC), Hong Thayaw special region, Phayar Gone ceasefire group, and Thantaung special region.

The removal of Karen flags is a temporary act because high ranking junta officials will come to their area, a soldier from KPC told KIC.

“The idea is to keep the flag away from the pole temporarily because senior junta officials will come. Representatives of MAS (Military Affairs Security) checked every gate at midday yesterday. Some gates are yet to remove the flags. Our gate (KPC gate), Kyauk Phyar gate has removed the flag,” the KPC soldier added.

“Our leader Saw Ba Oo Gyi had said Karen can create the future of Karen. We will raise the Karen flag wherever we are based,” a commander from the brigade of Col. Saw Lar Pwe, who rejected transformation to the junta’s Border Guard Force (BGF) said.

Since August 3, the Burmese Army has told ceasefire groups that if they go downtown, they should not wear uniforms and not carry weapons, which can be carried only in army camps.

Myawaddy locals said the Burmese Army will transform DKBA 999 brigade into BGF in Myawaddy town on August 16.

Major Saw Mauk Thon, a commander of DKBA Kalo Htoo Baw strategic command, accepted transformation to BGF on August 2. He has been helping DKBA soldiers sign the agreement in his office in Myawaddy.

“Soldiers came to Maj Mauk Thon’s house, which is also the office of the strategic command for three days. DKBA vehicles carrying solders also came to his house and signed the agreement with Maj Mauk Thon at his gate,” a woman eyewitness said.

According to ceasefire groups and locals, Lt. Gen. Khin Zaw, commander of the costal division, and Brig. Thet Naing, commander of north east military command, are already in Myawaddy.

Even though Col. Than Naing Win, commander of MOC 19, is responsible for the area of Thaung Yin River, which demarcates Thailand and Burma, Col. Khin Maung Htay, commander of MOC 12, took over the duty on July 30.

KIC news

The regime’s biggest threat for the past half-century, besides Aung San Suu Kyi, has been rebel armies from various ethnic groups. For decades the regime has worked to increase its presence in these rural areas by building paramilitary allies in hostile regions. The local militias suppress rebel activities in exchange for the freedom to produce and transport drugs with full military co-operation. As the military brokered more deals, its obsession with power quickly took precedence over its war on drugs. Now the regime is more powerful than ever, due to a survival strategy that is largely subsidised by Burma’s multi-billion-dollar drug trade. Perry Santanachote examines trade, the people who benefit from it and cover it up, the victims and those caught in between

MYANMAR, LWE SAN SONE RANGE: A Myanmar soldier, holding his machine gun, displays to foreign journalists opium poppies 15 January 2000 during the destruction of an opium field near the notorious Golden Triangle. Fifty thousands villagers will be uprooted from their homes in this lucrative opium area to be relocated in an unprecedented mass migration project designed to crippled heroin production. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel Dunand

Welcome to Shan State: land of the drug lords

Aung Min, like many in Rangoon, grew up poor. He enlisted in the Burmese army in 1999 at the age of 18 with ambitions that he would one day join the ranks of his commanding officers. By 2003 he was a second lieutenant stationed in Laukkaing Township in Shan State and led a group of 20 men – his pockets filled reliably with drug money.

Opium production has been an economical lynchpin in eastern Shan State since the late 1940s when military leaders refused to honour the Panglong Agreement that granted autonomy to ethnic states. Rebel armies grew as their drug trade took over the region, and then the world. Shan warlord Khun Sa dominated Southeast Asia’s infamous Golden Triangle with his heroin enterprise through the 1980s and 1990s. By 1995, the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet, became the world’s leader in opium production. His 30-year revolutionary war ended in 1996 but heroin continues to flow out of the state, albeit at a lower rate, with a new breed of drug lords.

Despite acknowledgement by the US State Department that poppy cultivation in Burma today is less than 20 per cent of what it was in the mid-1990s, it’s still an annual multi-billion-dollar business. Burma remains the world’s second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, and processed 330 metric tonnes, or 17 per cent, of last year’s world supply, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2010 World Drug Report. Poppy cultivation has also been on a steady incline for the past three years.

Other pages in the report show that Burma is also Asia’s largest producer of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), which include methamphetamine, distributed in the form of the cheap and chemically dirty pills, most commonly known in Thailand and the region as ya baa (crazy drug); and the more expensive and cleaner crystalline form known as Ice. Burmese production of methamphetamine coincided with reduced opium production, but producers did not necessarily switch over.

“There has been more production last year when it comes to stimulants because of the increased involvement by the junta-backed militia groups,” Khun Seng, an editor at the independent media and research group Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), said. “When the militia groups support the political aspirations of the junta they are also supported by the junta in their drug activities.”

“And if you’re the drug boss,” he added. “You’ll do anything that’ll bring in money. If I’m producing more meth it is because of the market – the buyers. Right now, for two years in a row, opium production has been down so there is less production of heroin than in other years, that’s all. They are not intentionally switching from heroin production to meth production.”

Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board in Chiang Mai, said heroin and opium production was down because of climatic conditions and drought, not because of eradication. “Meth” quickly filled that gap in recent years, he said, because consumer demand in Thailand is high due to economic and social instability. Thais are becoming addicted to ya baa at an alarming rate, while they were never too keen on heroin.

“Making meth is so much easier too,” Pornthep said. “Cooking up meth or Ice doesn’t require any crop.”

Another big difference between today’s drug trade and that of the Khun Sa era, is that it is now increasingly controlled by the government. Former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt engineered a series of ceasefires with major drug-producing militias in 2003-2004 and incorporated them into the economy and constitutional process, creating an environment conducive to drug production and collusion between military personnel and drug traffickers. The regime has been suspected of involvement in the drug trade in the past but never at the level seen today.

In the past decade, the military regime has prioritised keeping it under wraps and making it appear as though it has waged a war on drugs. In 1999 the military inducted a 15-year drug-eradication programme, made lofty promises to the international community to crack down on trafficking, publicised some token drug busts and even opened an anti-drug museum. But these acts were all sleight of hand – an illusion to placate the international community. Although, they may have worked.

The UNODC commended the junta for its “considerable decrease in the area under cultivation and a strong decline in potential opium production” in its Opium Poppy Cultivation Report last year and budgeted US$7.7 million for the eradication programme between 2004 to 2007.

“It’s just another attempt to get the international community to pay for ordinary development programmes instead of using the state budget for that purpose,” said Chiang Mai-based author Bertil Lintner, who chronicled the history of Burma’s heroin warlords in his book, Burma In Revolt, and more recently the multi-billion-dollar methamphetamine trade in Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle.

“And most of the UNODC’s programmes are just that – ordinary development programmes that have little or nothing to do with drug eradication,” Lintner said.

Pornthep says the Thai government gives Burma 20 million baht (US$625,000) annually every year for opium eradication.

“Their [Burma’s] government isn’t doing enough because they don’t have the resources,” he said. “Therefore they need co-operation and aid from other countries.”

Eleven years later, drug lords continue to operate with impunity and the Burmese Army remains closely involved in the lucrative opium economy, using it as leverage against ceasefire armies. As its deadline approaches, Burma is nowhere near being a drug-free nation. Only 13 townships of the targeted 51 can claim to be poppy-free, while the others are still growing, according to the 2009 Shan Drug Watch Report.

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 1

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 2

Drug economics in Burma’s new political order, part 3

KNU general-secretary says Saw La Bwe may come home, on one condition – no drugs

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FRANCIS WADE

  Mae Sot, Thailand

August 3, 2010

An order has been sent by senior Burmese army officials to troops in Karen state to capture the commander of a government-allied militia faction, as tensions appear to be escalating.

Officials have also introduced tight regulations on civilians in towns bordering territory belonging to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army’s (DKBA) Brigade 5, whose commander, Saw La Bwe (also known as Na Kham Mwe), continues to refuse to transform into a Border Guard Force.

Fears that escalating tensions will erupt into fighting have already caused an exodus of refugees in Burma’s eastern Karen state into Thailand

An intelligence directive, received at the weekend by DVB, was sent by the Southeastern Regional Military Command to Burmese troops stationed close to DKBA Brigade 5 territory. It said that the “order by the Burmese army to capture the DKBA Brigade 5’s commander Saw La Bwe (a.k.a Na Kham Mwe) was dispatched to the frontline’s Military Operations Command 8”.

“However, according to the MOC8’s report, Saw Hla Bwe (a.k.a Na Kham Mwe) has gone into hiding in territory close to the KNU Brigade 6,” it added, referring to the opposition Karen National Union (KNU) whom the DKBA broke away from in 1994.

Zipporah Sein, general secretary of the KNU, said that there had been “no official information” as to Saw La Bwe’s whereabouts. “That’s the rumour – he was in KNU territory three months ago but it’s not clear where he is now.”

Since the split, the DKBA have been fighting alongside the Burmese army in their decades-old conflict against the KNU. Reports have surfaced in recent months of defections by DKBA members back to their old group.

“If [Saw La Bwe] fights against the Burmese army then we can accept him back, as long as he is no longer involved in drugs,” Zipporah said. The DKBA are reportedly involved in a number of illegal trade and activities, including trafficking of methamphetamine.

A wing of the Burmese army, known as the Frontline Military Strategic Command, has ordered troops in Payathonsu township, close to the Three Pagodas Pass in Karen state, to heighten surveillance on civilians. Brigade 5’s territory is said to stretch from Myawaddy, across the border from Thailand’s Mae Sot, to Payathonsu.

Regulations on civilians include a ban on carrying shoulder bags at night time – perhaps to diminish the threat of bomb attacks, although this is not clear – and a ban on civilians leaving or entering the town at night.

“Responsible personnel in the town are advised to keep collecting information and continue with other tasks,” it adds. Troops are also ordered to block communication between the DKBA Brigade 5 and members of the New Mon State Party (NMSP), another armed ceasefire group operating in the area.

“It is advised to use effective ways of punishment on the civilians who break the regulations,” the directive ends.

Saw La Bwe has repeatedly rejected the Border Guard Force plan, which would see his troops assimilated into the Burmese army. A Brigade 5 official said last week that the government had threatened force against the DKBA officials who were resistant to the idea.

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Elliott Prasse-freeman

  Norway, Oslo

July 26, 2010

Senior General Than Shwe

The first two parts of this article suggested that an alternative politics could be fashioned in Burma by focusing on socioeconomic idioms. But it remained vague on exactly what this alternative politics would look and feel like in practice. Part three turns to an example from Burma’s own recent past, exploring in more detail the actions of the 88 Generation Student (88GS) group, arguing that it operates as a model of this kind of alternative politics that can coax ordinary Burmese to become re-engaged with the political realm. Its remarkable Open Heart Campaign portrayed the values and desires of average Burmese people – providing a set of key data points that reflected the daily realities to which any future political projects must be accountable and resonant.

Part two suggested a model for change: alternative politics impels civil society demands, and the state reforms, at which point the cycle begins again or settles into a new equilibrium. And here is the big question: what keeps the cycle going, what allows it to stop?

The problem with focusing only on socio-economic indicators is that political voice itself is not a goal, only a way of getting some improved material outcome. The risk then is that new equlibria will be found once the material outcome improves marginally, and then silence will descend again. Or worse: episodic flare-ups will emerge and then dissipate when palliatives are delivered from the government. A good example are the small 2009 protests in Mon state over an absence of electricity during school exam time. The protests were successful in attaining their short term goals (electricity), an impressive feat in itself. But a year later, according to informal reports, electricity is again absent, and so are the protests. In other words, there was a point where people could not take it anymore and they demanded change. They got what they asked for, and so they stopped. When the same conditions emerged again, for whatever reason it was not enough this time to motivate collective action.

How to escape this trap? Politics must tap into the normative groundings – a community’s collective values – to insist that citizens go beyond bargains with the state. As collective values (of justice, fairness, decency, the proper relationship between society and state) are put into politics, they become the interests themselves: instead of just militating for socioeconomic benefits, the politics transforms the socioeconomic claims into the basis for the values. So it is not simply “We need electricity.” It is “We need electricity… because we are a member of this country and the role of the government is to provide it!”

Here is where politics can be truly transformative: the project of evincing these values may create the values themselves. Or, rather, a commitment to the values can crystallize through the process of asking constituents to reflect on their situations. There is thus a pedagogy to politics: by asking people what they value, the political subject can come to value the values even more, and be willing to then go the next step and demand them.

The 88GS did just that. Led by former political prisoners, many of whom were released in 2005 after the ousting of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, the group of about 40 core member began to engage the citizenry with small campaigns that slowly worked to build both a political consciousness and habituate defiant actions. Its respective and progressing Signature, White, Prayer, and Open Heart campaigns of 2006-07 began to demonstrate how a movement can be built through coaxing involvement of ordinary people, sustaining that involvement, and increasingly motivating them to act.

Knowing that it was too much to request that people immediately take explicit risks, 88GS members consciously worked to gradually build from small actions that were both non-threatening and anonymous. As interviewees in the 88GS put it, the group built upon the confidence and momentum in the successes of early conservative activities, eventually introducing bolder campaigns which would compel citizens to ‘show their face’:

“First we tried the Signature Campaign, to get the [political] prisoners released. And people could do it because there was no risk to them: there was no document with their personal information, just their signature. Next was the White Campaign, which allowed people to be involved with little risk – they could tell the authorities, ‘We are just wearing a shirt [it happens to be white].’ But people were still afraid, because they were in public. But when they did not get arrested, this built their confidence.”

The strategy of plausible deniability emerges: those ‘participating’ in these activities could always feign ignorance if accosted by authorities. The colour of a shirt, the act of praying; these are not explicitly political actions, and could be painted as coincidences. In Burma, where law is utilized as a tool of oppression, these kinds of political actions demonstrated a sophisticated politico-legal shrewdness on the part of the actors.

In so doing, rather than giving the authorities the pretence to destroy the nascent movement at the outset, the 88GS devised ways to gradually build momentum by remaining legal. Moreover, by making its actions explicitly non-political, the 88GS utilized symbolic repertoires to deliver messages to the broader public: both ‘everyone knew’ what they were ‘really’ doing, and yet no one was sure. The ambiguity in this space is a strategy outlined in Part Two in regards to the civil society realm, here turned to politics.

Evidence of the efficacy of this approach was born out by the responses: the 88GS claimed 200,000 signatures, and incited the formation of other independent groups. But it was the Open Heart Campaign (OH) that constituted a truly noteworthy political action, both in regards to its socioeconomic focus, and regarding the type of engagement requested of people.

The OH encouraged people to write letters to Than Shwe to ‘share their hearts’ – to let the leading general know how difficult living conditions were, how the government could help, and how the state often chose to exacerbate the hardships. The fact that 2689 letters made it to the 88GS (many more are assumed confiscated by authorities) shows a willingness to engage in politics when the political idioms are grounded in everyday life. “They wanted to speak out [locally], but they could not. The people knew they might get in trouble, but because they knew they had done nothing wrong [they felt that writing the letters was worth the risk]. This was an opportunity.” There is significant political nuance here: not able to speak up locally (as there was no tradition of raising demands), people saw OH as a less confrontational politics that could reach the central state and cascade back down to their own realities.

The OH did not have an opportunity to be taken further than this. Some 88GS members with whom I spoke actually lamented the 2007 fuel de-subsidization, given it came just when they were starting to build something. The irony was that the 88GS had created the very political consciousness that precipitated the protests, actions that in turn eventually undermined the 88GS. Though consistently excluded from breathless Western media accounts of the Saffron Revolution, evidence shows that it was 88GS members who led the first ‘walking protests’ after the desubsidization (even these first protests were brilliant politics: they took the quotidian act of walking to work and made it a political commentary on a callous regime’s neglect of people’s livelihoods). However, if the 88GS had devised a way to communicate the messages more broadly (to people across the entire country), and strategically (through civil society organizations), we can see here the potential creation of a political consciousness operating both about local issues, but also transcending the local – allowing Burmese to see their struggles as shared.

But the lessons of the 88GS do not stop here. Rather, the letters themselves constitute a window into state-society relations that usually remain opaque.  First, certain state-society relations that other socio-legal systems would declare abusive, are in Burma seen as natural (and even legitimate) under the correct circumstances. Take forced labour, which is mentioned directly in 95 of the letters. While unequivocally a crime under international law, if one reads each letter, it becomes clear that Burmese do not always share this understanding. It is typically not forced labour in itself to which the letter-writers are objecting: only 24 percent of the letters mentioned forced labour as abusive, objectionable, or illegitimate by definition. 71 percent of the letters, on the other hand, expressed forced labour as just one symptom of a larger socio-economic problem, while the remaining 5 percent made both arguments simultaneously.  Case 10 outlines this succinctly:

“I run a shop. When the shop is usually opened, the customers come. However, now, I am forced to labour, so I cannot always open my shop. I also was forced to give the money for that. These hinder my works. The present situation is bad for the poor. There is no job for the one who want to work.”

Forced labour here is embedded in a larger struggle to manage socioeconomic realities. Strikingly, the act was only mentioned explicitly as a human rights violation in a single letter; moreover, many subjects seem to present forced labour as better than nothing, provided the state does its part by supplying resources, ending wasteful schemes (like the planting of jatropha), and respecting people’s dignity.

This example illuminates how an un-contextualized political agenda (based on external norms of law or human rights, for instance) may fail to connect with Burmese people. A campaign to end forced labour might mean an end to social services like critical infrastructure. As such, most peasants would oppose it, ignore it, and/or might feel they are being manipulated by it. This may be why many average citizens have rejected the ‘traditional politics’ based on human rights, procedural democracy, and rule of law. They do not reflect the precarious life led by many at the margins, they do not tap into collective values and daily concerns.

Yet these letters on forced labour are also not simply socioeconomic demands. They are linked with a broader sense of justice – there are certain things that the state should not do, certain things it should do that it currently is not doing.  Political messages that understand this nuance can compel recursive, dynamic cycles of challenge that build on one another, slowly compelling the state to do more, even as what people can expect from the state expands. But much depends on the initial set of demands. We can learn a great deal from the 88GS in this regard, and a great deal about Burmese people by reading their own words in the OH Campaign.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

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Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

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Elliott Prasse-freeman

  Norway, Oslo

July 26, 2010

Senior General Than Shwe

Part one demonstrated how in Burma peripheral state agents engage in fragile bargains with local societies, resulting in space at the margins for civil society activity. Juxtaposed with this somewhat optimistic reading, we also saw how these bargains only hold because ordinary Burmese have been trained to be silent – and thus civil society space is not capitalized upon to impel political changes. This is largely a result of despotic power deployed by the military-state aggressively dominating the political realm, foreclosing on political organizing and preventing mass political consciousness from developing.

But can the upcoming elections alter the existing stasis? They can be a necessary first step. Social and political evolution may begin in Burma through a cyclical three-part process, each led by what can be referred to as ‘political opposition’, ‘grassroots civil society’, and ‘elite civil society’ leaders. The process involves first structuring an alternative political discourse that breaks from ‘traditional’ politics and which centres around socioeconomic idioms, and from which opposition forces will begin to build a collective political consciousness.

Second, grassroots civil society can also begin to make gentle demands on the state for better governance. It is critical that these demands come from multiple sites, and essential that the state sees them. If these demands emerge from thousands of different places, through multiple different idioms (Buddhist, human security, moral, pragmatic, and so on), the state may not see the gentle demands as out of the ordinary, but rather as symptomatic of systemic problems in Burma. This can undermine the current equilibrium, and force the state to act on them.

Finally, because the demands are gentle, they are unlikely to precipitate a crisis, but rather may produce moments of compromise as the regime seeks a new balance to ensure stability. At this point advocates in civil society at the elite level (Third Force, the UN, etc) who have been articulating technical-administrative policy solutions will become indispensible to the state. New bargains will allow the state to manoeuvre while maintaining stability, and will improve conditions for the grassroots. At this point the cycle either begins again, or stops. The point is that it’s the demands which constitute the mechanism for change, and the demands can begin through these elections.

For instance, the very existence of the election gives some civil society organizations an opportunity to broach politics carefully. Take the example at the top of an NGO holding civic education. When authorities inquired about the content of the sessions, NGO members replied that it was their responsibility to educate the people about the upcoming elections, elections the authorities themselves after all endorse. The NGO also invited authorities to participate and share their thoughts, remaining true to their word of including everyone, and further defusing any suspicion on the part of the state.

We see here how the NGO is not fixated on whether the elections themselves will change things. Instead it has used the process to evolve the programs it can run. The elections are providing cover for the building of political muscles at the grassroots. And while most organizations will likely not have the skills or the wherewithal to be as active as the NGO mentioned here, they will still act as conduits for disseminating information that emerges from specific political campaigns.

Therefore, it is imperative that there is something meaningful to disseminate – political parties must get their messages to the people. The recently announced Election Law banning mass rallies need not cause democrats to abandon the responsibility of campaigning in other ways, of taking advantage of these civil society networks. For instance, in 1990 mass rallies were also constrained, and yet the people learned enough about the NLD’s message to reward it with a majority of votes.

Today, the internet, satellite radio, and an explosion of uncaptured media (see here and here) can be added to the list of information dissemination opportunities. These are not as essential as the classic ‘word-of-mouth’, which will enjoy more freedom than usual given that politics are not officially outlawed during this period around the election. More importantly, because the complexities of power in Burma are not lost on the millions who live there, people will continue to navigate them, knowing when and in what context they can share their opinions about what is occurring.

Word-of-mouth will allow people to learn what those campaigning cannot tell them explicitly. While it will not contain the kind of detail necessary for robust democracy (a citizen will not be able to pore over the specifics of a proposed platform), nor can it act as an assault on the regime’s lies and misdeeds (it won’t draw out the connections between regime policy and the daily miseries, showing where state propaganda stops and reality begins), word-of-mouth can communicate the general tenor of what a given party stands for and what it opposes.

The official messages, on the other hand, can work mutually with the hidden, acting as the concrete description of what opposing parties would do differently if given the opportunity to govern. As I have argued elsewhere, the critical questions thus surround the content of the political information communicated: will opposition parties design platforms, plans, and policies that will resonate with the average Burmese person? Will opposition groups not participating use the space around the election to communicate what they stand for, what they would do differently if they were given governing responsibilities?

These questions, rather than questions about procedural fairness, should dominate the discussion. We know the regime will do everything in its power to tilt the hand towards the status quo. And while energies can be directed at making these tactics known, these injustices should not become an obsession that removes focus from the real issues inside: reaching out to people, evincing their needs and desires, and turning them into political demands of whatever new regime takes power in 2010. Ultimately, the elections are just the first step in a larger process of inciting civil society to get back involved in the political conversation. If the elections are the destination, then they are a dead end. But if they are seen as the point of departure, toward getting average people to put pressure on the state, they may be the first step in a process of change. Part three will explore how this alternative politics would look and feel like in practice.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

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Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

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Elliott Prasse-freeman

  Norway, Oslo

July 26, 2010

Senior General Than Shwe

Prevailing current opinion is that Burma’s elections this year will be a charade and the opposition is right to condemn them. Burma, commentators say, is a totalitarian state controlled by a military clique that has ruled the country for nearly half a century. But the myth of totalitarianism should be challenged, as should the assumption that there is no potential for meaningful social change to exist around the election process. Because while the conditions for politics in Burma are hardly ideal, a legitimate opportunity for reconnecting with average people – and opposing the military’s march toward pseudo-normalcy – exists in this year’s elections.

The debate requires an accurate understanding of how power in the country functions, particularly in regards to how it operates to constrain and/or animate politics. So to examine power, let us begin with a story in two parts:

The first is that society is so suffused with fear of the state that Burmese will only whisper about politics, even when they are walking along a noisy city street. The sheer number of journalistic accounts telling of this narrative is remarkable (Google the words ‘Burma’ and ‘whisper’ together), and demonstrates its durable and diffuse reality in Burma, not to mention the media’s ongoing obsession with it.

But the second part of the story complicates the first: if people are afraid to speak of politics, one might expect lots of men with guns on those streets. Yet, the thugs refuse to materialize. How can these two phenomena exist simultaneously? The common explanation is that Burmese people live under the constant watch of the state, and over time have internalized the panopticon: there isn’t the need for men with guns at every corner because people discipline their neighbours by silencing themselves.

This story is largely true: oppositional politics – which have primarily involved militating for “human rights”, parliamentary political processes, and legal reforms – is viewed by people as irredeemably dangerous in Burma, to be avoided. If politics is like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to remain strong, the Burmese collective political muscles have degenerated over the years.

Juxtapose this first story with another: that of the NGO currently holding sessions on ‘civic education’ with local community associations, discussing both procedural and normative issues around democracy. “What is the right form of government?” “What do other Constitutions around the world look like? How does ours compare?” “What is the role of an engaged citizenry?” The NGO is able to hold forums around these kinds of questions. And while this NGO may be somewhat exceptional – in that it has etched out an ability over time and with painstaking effort to hold sensitive activities – it is not Myanmar Egress. By which it is not that controversial organization that sometimes appears the exception that proves the rule. Rather, this NGO is more like the others: just one of a rampantly growing Burmese civil society sector. Estimates have 240,000 organizations delivering social services, running spiritual groups, assembling cultural and recreation events, and providing community-based forums for discussions about socioeconomic development. While all of these groups (Egress included) have to navigate the state in one way or another – which entails, inter alia, never encroaching into the terrain of the political – many are effectively independent from state domination. This story is also true.

How can both stories then exist side-by-side? How can the state evince seemingly totalitarian tendencies in certain spheres, but abandon so much space in others? A simple answer is that events in Burma have been consistently misinterpreted by external critics. They assume that militarised Burma is a nightmarish reflection of the ‘modern state’, a hegemonic collection of institutions and structures that centralises and bureaucratises everything to control and discipline all aspects of political subjects’ lives.

Burma, however, lacks the population management tools needed to reach into every corner of its nation and control its citizens. To illustrate: there are no biometric identity cards, no security cameras on every street corner; there is neither a robust social security system, nor a sophisticated taxation apparatus. Indeed, when cyclone Nargis occurred in 2008, communication was so poor that the military had to get its marching orders by interpreting the newspapers! The Burmese state is a different animal altogether.

Does this mean the state is not as bad as it is sometimes portrayed? On the contrary, in many ways it can be even more brutal and despotic in the absence of these other structures. The key is that Burma’s military-state deploys resources selectively to create its regime of control, and the generals prefer control on the cheap. Indeed, realizing totalitarian control would necessitate sacrificing resources currently expended on priorities for maintaining political stability: namely, buttressing military and police apparatuses such that they can quash any perceived threat, and directing resources toward military families and business-sector clients.

In Burma, power radiates out of centres and dissipates over geographical and institutional space, operating through peripheral officials who dominate political activity, attempt to monopolize violence, extract resources (through small-scale resource plundering), and maintain social order through intermediaries (communities themselves). In fact, the military-state likely sees totalitarian control as actually risky, as it leaves civilians with few avenues for escape from the state: patronage networks, maintained through bribes and personal relationships, would be restricted, likewise would the black market that keeps resources flowing to places of demand. Whether consciously or not, the military-state has avoided power relationships that spur collective resistance.

In this way, it is helpful to utilize political scientist Michael Mann’s typology: the state deploys high despotic power (the ability to crush what it can see) but low infrastructural power (an absence of institutions that would allow it to see everything). Where it is strongest, the state attains significant control at reduced cost: despotic power, while focused around political expression, leeches into the social realm as well. When people are significantly dominated politically – and when almost any act can always be interpreted as a political one – silence comes to deafen much of the population (punctuated by moments of collective eruptions at the indignity and oppression of it all – 1988, 1996, 2007 – before silence descends again). This results in a simple avoidance of political topics; coded speech when there is speech about politics at all; a lack of trust in general of those outside of the family; and an absence of ‘social capital’. In this regard the state gets something for nothing.

Civil society space

At the same time though, because power is not total, there are spaces at peripheries – both institutional and geographic – for civil society to grow and function relatively autonomously. Power dissipates concentrically, both through the three institutional branches of the state (military, Peace and Development Council [police], administration), and away from the geographical centres of power (Rangoon, Naypyidaw, major cities). Therefore, a local commander in a distant Chin state village (geographical), or a low-level official in the marginally powerful Ministry of Social Welfare in Rangoon (institutional) may both be distant from the centres of military-state power.

As a result, these agents retain a certain autonomy to recreate their own systems of control. Many choose to be as despotic (in the case of commanders or police) or as uncooperative and/or scrutinizing (in the case of state administration) as the central state. This is especially true in ethnic areas where “security threats” are privileged by police or military on the ground – often agents there are even more abusive than the standard centralized state. However, many agents cannot afford to replicate the central state’s will. This is because they are constrained from both above and below: superiors from above demand a subdued populace, while the agent must manage patron/client relationships, as well as ensure that conditions don’t completely deteriorate for the people below.

Many state agents thus must propose a bargain: they reach out to civil society for assistance. This is somewhat risky: civil society has some inherent political content – indeed, people getting together to talk about how to address social problems tends to lead to conversations about the nature of those problems, which is inherently political. But in the end the state agent feels the bargain is worth the risk. Civil society political content is likely too meagre itself to spark rebellion, given the way that power pre-empts the formation of broader political consciousness; given the way that collective forms of political resistance have been put down by the despotic power of the state in the past. And so the state agents allow civil society participation; not only that, they often prevent centralized-state penetration of civil society activities: they lie to their higher-ups, or more accurately, engage in the brilliant strategy of plausible deniability when interacting with civil society: ‘Just don’t tell me what you’re doing!’

Local state agents therefore simultaneously deploy two contradictory desires: they want to ensure civil society does not act politically, yet they also refuse to know what civil society is actually doing! This results in tense and symbiotic bargains which remain stable only provided civil society is both apolitical and will always remain so. In other words: the state vets an organization, ensures it is only delivering services, and then is compelled by the limits of a system of despotic power and its own need for plausible deniability to become partially blind to civil society’s future activities. And herein lies the opportunity.

Let us imagine if civil society organizations began bending the rules. Not breaking them (holding mass rallies), but simply bending them (beginning to facilitate covertly political discussions: talking about politics through other idioms). Given that these pockets of space do exist in Burma for discussion and perhaps even politics, imagine if there was a mechanism for imbuing that civil society with political consciousness and get it to begin disrupting the current ossified bargains.

Part two will explore how this might play out. The argument will not be for rebellion, but rather that the expected elections may be a first moment in a slow process of repeated negotiations with, and demands of, the state. These demands, emerging necessarily from a number of different realms of civil society, may lead to a potentially radical transformation of power and society in Burma.

Elliott Prasse-Freeman is currently an MPA-ID student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is leading a number of research projects through the university’s Human Rights and Social Movements Program. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.

DVB

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 1)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 2)

Retaking power in Burma (Pt. 3)

(From an article posted July 3, 200)

Former PM pegged hopes on UN chief

Gordon Brown

But it is also a crucial moment for the international community.

In recent weeks, we have seen an extraordinary consensus around the world in support of all those forced to suffer under the Burmese regime.

The UN, the EU, and ASEAN have all made clear the need for urgent change. More than 45 Heads of State have added their voices to the call.

How we respond to the injustices in Burma will send a message about our resolution to tackle similar abuses across the globe.

Political and humanitarian conditions in the country continue to deteriorate.

When over 140,000 were killed and millions made destitute by Cyclone Nargis last year the world’s efforts to help were resisted, a peaceful uprising by monks in 2007 was violently quashed, ethnic minorities are persecuted and under armed attack.

The media are muzzled, freedom of speech and assembly are non-existent and the number of political prisoners has doubled to more than 2000.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon

As Secretary-General Ban arrives, the most high profile of them — Aung San Suu Kyi — faces further persecution from the Generals as her sham trial resumes.

She has long been a symbol of hope and defiance during her 14 years as a prisoner of conscience.

She is a most courageous woman. In those long years, she has barely seen her two sons — yet is resolute in her faith in democracy and the Burmese people.

Her refusal to buckle in the face of tyranny is an inspiration.

I call on the regime to mark Ban Ki Moon’s arrival by immediately halting her trial, which makes a mockery of justice, and ending her detention which undermines their credibility in the eyes of the world.

But while hugely significant, this alone would not be the sole measure of progress.

Only agreement to release all political prisoners, start a genuine dialogue with the opposition and ethnic groups will give any credibility to the elections in 2010.

I hope that Ban Ki Moon can convince the Generals to take the first steps. A serious offer is on the table: the international community will work with Burma if the Generals are prepared to embark on a genuine transition to democracy.

But if the Burmese regime refuses to engage, the international community must be prepared to respond robustly.

We should not rest until Aung San Suu Kyi — and all those who share her commitment to a better and brighter future for Burma — are able to play their rightful role in it.

The Burmese people have been condemned to nearly half a century of conflict, poverty and isolation. It is time to give them the chance of a new beginning.

The regime can choose to ignore the clamour for change. Or it can choose the path of reform as the region, and the world, have urged.

Today can be the start.

Gordon Brown is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

[originally posted at Huffington Post]