{"id":279921,"date":"2024-11-11T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=279921"},"modified":"2024-11-07T06:28:38","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T06:28:38","slug":"myanmar-looks-more-like-aseans-syria-than-a-democracy-in-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/11\/myanmar-looks-more-like-aseans-syria-than-a-democracy-in-waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar Looks more Like ASEAN\u2019s Syria Than a Democracy in Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mon State Kyomaro Township, According to local residents, many houses have been set on fire due to the SAC\u2019s air attack on Dhammatha village as well as heavy weaponry. Photo: Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

6 Nov 2024 – Myanmar\u2019s armed conflicts are, tragically, no longer a simple, binary morality tale of Good vs. Evil. Yes, the Tatmadaw remains the country\u2019s largest armed organization and regularly commits atrocities. On their part, the anti-junta adversaries fighting \u201cthe Common Enemy\u201d also perpetrate their fair share of atrocities against localized \u201cenemy\u201d ethnic populations.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Almost four years after anti-coup protests engulfed my birthplace, Myanmar under Min Aung Hlaing\u2019s junta looks more and more like Assad\u2019s Syria in the wake of America\u2019s failed \u201cColor Revolution.\u201d The escalating conflict in the ASEAN country has morphed into a brutal civil war.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, the anti-Junta ethnic armies have made significant military gains against the Tatmadaw, Myanmar\u2019s Chinese- and Russian-backed military junta that seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

joint revolutionary forces capture Tatmadaw equipment in Kawlin, November 2023. Wikipedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Myanmar\u2019s armed conflicts are, tragically, no longer a simple, binary morality tale of Good vs. Evil. Yes, the Tatmadaw remains the country\u2019s largest armed organization and regularly commits atrocities. On their part, the anti-junta adversaries fighting \u201cthe Common Enemy\u201d also perpetrate their fair share of atrocities against localized \u201cenemy\u201d ethnic populations. Not all of these groups share an inclusive, democratic vision for the entire country of 55 million.<\/p>\n

In October, Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN\u2019s \u201cIndependent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM),\u201d wrote that war crimes and crimes against humanity are \u201cbeing committed with impunity across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the violence in Myanmar is both vertical \u2013 the central state v. the rest in society \u2013and horizontal \u2013 internecine ethno-communal conflicts \u2013 with different parties, spouting political bromides like \u201cdemocracy\u201d \u201crevolution\u201d, to justify their violent actions.<\/p>\n

Take Rakhine state. Civilians from all ethnicities in Rakhine have suffered, but especially vulnerable are the now stateless, Rohingya population who have been directly targeted for a slow genocide for over four decades. In 2017, Myanmar\u2019s military conducted a \u201csecurity clearance operation\u201d against them that led to the exodus of 740,000 Rohingyas into neighbouring Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

Rohingya who survived Myanmar\u2019s state-organized genocide in 2017 have long been caught in\u201d what I call the \u201cgenocide triangle\u201d in the shifting alliance between Myanmar military and Islamophobic Rakhine Buddhist nationalists since the country\u2019s independence in 1948.<\/p>\n

According to the war-fleeing Rohingyas, the anti-junta Rakhine group like the Arkan Army (AA) has become the spearhead of a new wave of the genocidal violence while talking up human rights. \u201cOnce again, the Rohingya people are being driven from their homes and dying in scenes tragically reminiscent of the 2017 exodus,\u201d said Agn\u00e8s Callamard, Amnesty International\u2019s Secretary General. \u201cBut this time, they are facing persecution on two fronts, from the rebel Arakan Army and the Myanmar military, which is forcibly conscripting Rohingya men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alarmingly, in Burmese and Rakhine language social media, these supporters of AA publicly cheer on Israel ongoing genocide of \u201cMuslim terrorists\u201d in Palestine. Some of them express their admiration for the Jewish Supremacist state as their Rakhine nation-building model.<\/p>\n

Amidst the escalating civil war, Myanmar\u2019s economy is in dire state. This August, the UN offered this staggering statistic \u2013 since the coup of 2021, approximately 3 million people have been internally displaced in Myanmar. That number is growing. According to the World Food Program, 13.3 million, one in four, are \u201cfood insecure\u201d (13.3 million) and 18.6 million are \u201cin need of humanitarian assistance\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Civilians fleeing to Thailand during the siege of Myawaddy, 2024. Photo: VOA\/Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The junta\u2019s active campaign of mass conscription has also resulted in the panic exodus of thousands of working-age young men and women.<\/p>\n

In collaboration with Myanmar junta, China has shut down Sino-Myanmar overland trade. The PRC is pressuring the border-based anti-junta ethnic groups to fall in line with Beijing\u2019s goal of ending the armed conflicts and re-establishing stability in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the prices for essential commodities like rice, medicine, food and machine oil have surged. Chinese authorities have added to the misery by cutting off water, electricity and the internet to the rebel-controlled border regions.<\/p>\n

Are the junta\u2019s battlefield and territorial losses then a win for multi-ethnic peoples?<\/p>\n

Yes and No.<\/p>\n

Yes, because these regions are ancestrally non-Myanmar ethnic regions where the junta\u2019s imposition of brutal military control for decades generated so much local resentment.<\/p>\n

No, because these armed groups have so far been unable to translate their military victories into policy victories that will bring communal stability (law and order), economic betterment, social and health services, and education, and ultimately, an inter-ethnic peace plan both inside these regions, and for the nation at large. The junta\u2019s retaliatory aerial bombings have also hampered any efforts to rebuild any local institutions or start new community structures.<\/p>\n

Worse still, the Big Picture of the international power politics provides little hope for an end to this civil war.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In 2023, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Myanmar\u2019s Foreign Minister Than Swe jointly meet the press after the eighth LMC Foreign Ministers\u2019 Meeting. Photo: Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

China\u2019s significant policy shift to back the unpopular generals could not have come at a better time for the junta. Beijing has enabled the junta to operate, at least within Southeast Asian region, as a de facto state. In October, the junta\u2019s Myanmar hosted the well-attended and important ASEANPOL conference while no UN member appears ready to recognize the anti-junta National Unity Government \u2013 whose leadership calibre is also a suspect \u2013 as the country\u2019s legitimate government.<\/p>\n

Even under Indonesia\u2019s chair, ASEAN\u2019s big actor, the bloc has proven incapable of moving beyond its Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar. ASEAN\u2019s policy failure is due to the members\u2019 conflicting interests, and divisions over how best to help end Myanmar\u2019s all-out civil war.<\/p>\n

At the end of the Cold War, the United States was seen, rightly or wrongly, by many pro-democracy activists as a force for good.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s vicious Global War on Terror post-9\/11, its failed attempt to build the unipolar world which it planned to dictate, and, presently, US unconditional support for Israel\u2019s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine has, once and for all, shattered the US image as the white knight of human rights.<\/p>\n

Today Washington\u2019s nominal backing of Myanmar resistance has become both a moral and strategic liability. Understandably, China wants no group which it sees as lackeys of US to be in power next door.<\/p>\n

Recently activists and artists from the predominantly Buddhist nation of Cambodia and Vietnam organized a solidarity event for the people of Gaza. Their conspicuous silence about the ongoing civil war in another predominantly Buddhist ASEAN nation, speaks volumes about just how morally uninspiring Myanmar\u2019s anti-junta resistance is.<\/p>\n

No moral citizen of the world wants to support a resistance movement that demands human rights, freedom and democracy only for their own ethnic groups, but refuses to extend the same rights to the Rohingya genocide victims.<\/p>\n

Four years into the anti-coup movement, I have had the time and privilege to reflect on my early post-coup post-NLD optimism. On 26 March 2021, I wrote an optimistic op-ed in the Washington Post, shared my hope for a better future in Myanmar with the BBC World Service, and argued confidently that the post-Aung San Suu Kyi Myanmar was going to be morally different. I believed that the Nway Oo Revolution (or Myanmar Spring) and their multi-ethnic armed resistance, which I supported financially and otherwise, would usher in an era of progressive change and transform my homeland into an inclusive society.<\/p>\n

Alas, my optimism has been proven rather premature.<\/p>\n

Last week, UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Julia Bishop pointedly told the UN General Assembly committee, \u201cMyanmar actors must move beyond the current zero-sum mentality. There can be little progress on addressing the needs of the people while armed conflict continues across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Myanmar who care about the country\u2019s future must swallow the bitter pill of reconciling with those whom they view as \u201cenemies\u201d. Otherwise, our strife-torn country will become permanently fractured, like Assad\u2019s Syria.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Buddhist humanist from Burma (Myanmar), Maung Zarni, nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center \u2013 Cambodia.\u00a0Zarni is the co-founder of <\/em>FORSEA<\/a>, a grass-roots organization of Southeast Asian human rights defenders, coordinator for Strategic Affairs for <\/em>Free Rohingya Coalition, and an adviser to the <\/em>European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge. <\/strong>Zarni holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education, National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015). His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the <\/em>New York Times, The Guardian and<\/em> the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are <\/em>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), <\/em>An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and <\/em>Myanmar\u2019s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal). He co-authored, with Natalie Brinham, <\/em>Essays on Myanmar Genocide.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – forsea.co<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Nov 2024 – Myanmar\u2019s armed conflicts are no longer a binary tale of Good vs. Evil. The Tatmadaw remains the largest armed organization and commits atrocities. The anti-junta adversaries fighting \u201cthe Common Enemy\u201d also perpetrate atrocities against localized \u201cenemy\u201d ethnic populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":228999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[526,413,92],"class_list":["post-279921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-syria","tag-violent-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279923,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279921\/revisions\/279923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}