The world knows plenty about Aung San Suu Kyi and what she represents. But it knows almost nothing about the generals beyond their international pariah status.<\/p>\n
Self-styled Burma experts attest to this general ignorance of the essence of military rule and the psyche of those in power in Naypyidaw.<\/p>\n
In private policy circles and public forums, many of these tea-leaf-readers continue to discuss a myriad of the country\u2019s problems, still without putting their finger on the single most fundamental issue which most broadly accounts for the people\u2019s daily misery and country\u2019s bleak future.<\/p>\n
Is it \u201cbad governance?\u201d Is it Snr-Gen Than Shwe\u2019s callous leadership with its characteristic total disregard for public welfare?\u00a0 Is it the military\u2019s persecution of ethnic nationalities (or minorities)?\u00a0 Is it widespread human rights violations?\u00a0 Is it the war crimes, which the Tatmataw, Burma’s armed forces, are allegedly committing, especially in ethnic conflict zones?\u00a0 Or is it the country\u2019s kleptocratic, repressive, and pathological state?\u00a0 Is it the predatory neighbors?<\/p>\n
Of course, one would be tempted to tick the box \u201call of the above\u201d and argue that specific problems \u2013 the regime\u2019s failure, for example, to provide public services in health, education and social security or to set up an adequate and functioning system of agricultural credits for the country\u2019s farmers, who make up the bulk of the population\u2014need to be addressed, while waiting for the revolution to deliver.<\/p>\n
However, Burma\u2019s fundamental problem is not just about leadership, policy failure, dysfunctional institutions, rights abuses or fractured opposition movements.<\/p>\n
Categorically speaking, Burma is confronted with nothing less than a full-scale pathological process of internal colonization, this time by its own military. This is an evolutionary process which was set in motion within the past 50 years, at least since the coup of 1962 decisively established one-party military rule, where the military and the State became coterminous or two-sides of a coin.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Burma\u2019s problems can best be understood as those of a colonial order.<\/p>\n
Sixty-two years after independence from Britain, Burma has evolved into a dual-colony in which the population of more than 50 million citizens is being herded into a political space via the Orwellian \u201c7-steps road map for democracy.\u201d\u00a0 The ruling military clique backed by its 400,000-strong military will continue to make all decisions with massive societal and ecological consequences for the whole population; only this time their decisions are going to be made to sound constitutionally mandated, and in accord with the laws of the land.<\/p>\n
Further, this small group of men subscribe to an irredeemably myopic and toxic version of ethno-nationalism which refashions Burma along the old feudal lines where the majority \u201cBurmese and Buddhists,\u201d as defined by these men in generals\u2019 uniform, will be more equal in their Union of Republic of Myanmar.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the generals will pay lip service to ethnic unity and create nominal space for the ethnic people while pursuing \u201cdivide and rule\u201d as the overarching strategy. Substantial numbers of electoral seats won by the Shan and Arakanese parties which some analysts have hailed as \u201csymbolic victories\u201d look rather fishy in light of the looming \u201ccounterinsurgency\u201d operations against the Karen, the Kachin, the Karenni and others.<\/p>\n
It is worth stressing that the ruling generals have rejected the federal spirit of ethnic equality and violently opposed any struggle towards a genuine federated Union.\u00a0 They have declared dead the Panglong Agreement of 1947, the founding document of a modern, post-colonial Burma, wherein ethnic equality was enshrined as an inviolable pillar of multi-ethnic Burma.<\/p>\n
In Burma\u2019s new colonial rule under its own military, anything and anyone that doesn\u2019t bend to the generals\u2019 will is to be controlled, subjugated or crushed.<\/p>\n
Suu Kyi and ethnic minority leaders, whether armed or not, are heading on an inevitable collision course with Burma\u2019s military junta.\u00a0 For they have made repeated calls for national and ethnic reconciliation as well as genuine public expressions of inter-ethnic solidarity,<\/p>\n
The last thing any colonial power would want and would tolerate is social and ethnic solidarity across communities, regions and classes.<\/p>\n
For those who have viewed the emerging parliamentary and formal political processes as the only space in which the people\u2019s voices can be heard, policies debated and public welfare advanced, it is time for a serious rethinking and soul-searching. In a polity where those in power in effect accept nothing but total surrender, where politics are regarded as an extension of war and everything is viewed through Zero-Sum lens, choosing sides becomes necessary.<\/p>\n
There are no shades of gray in any colonial phenomenon. Battle lines are clearly drawn.\u00a0 The colonized are to be exploited, crushed, subjugated or co-opted.<\/p>\n
The generals, of course, don\u2019t see themselves as \u201cnative colonialists.\u201d\u00a0 They feel no need for reconciliation along ethnic or political lines with any person, organization or community. In short, they have done nothing wrong, and they can do no wrong.\u00a0 For they perceive themselves as the country\u2019s sole national guardian, untainted by partisan politics.<\/p>\n
They are committed to the abstract idea of a multi-ethnic nation while trampling on the very idea in reality.\u00a0 And they embrace an absolutist notion of sovereignty where the military, not the people in whose name it exists, is sovereign.\u00a0 They love the country, but they can\u2019t stand the people, especially the kind who refuse to go along with their design for the rest of the country. Political, defiant ethnic communities and 2,100 political prisoners spring to mind.<\/p>\n
Their politics is all about resuming and completing the process of re-consolidation of the power of the ethnic Burmese majority, most specifically the soldiering class, over the rest of the ethnic minorities \u2013a process only interrupted by the old kingdom\u2019s 19th century defeat by Great Britain.\u00a0 Sixty years after independence, the military has built its own version of local colonial rule serving as the constitutionally-mandated ruling class and where the rest of the civilian society, ethnic majority and minorities alike, are second class citizens.<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, when the generals launched a ceasefire strategy with nearly 20 disparate ethnic armed resistance organizations, they weren\u2019t acting out of genuine desire for reconciliation, but following a strategy to preempt the inter-ethnic solidarity between the Suu Kyi-led majority and rebellious minorities.\u00a0 Now that some of the most crucial ceasefires are likely to unravel, the highest strategic priority of the regime has become preventing inter-ethnic unity.<\/p>\n
Throughout modern history, no colonialism is ever known to have offered the colonized political processes or institutions which would undo, or even undermine, such broad colonial objectives as economic exploitation of land, labor and natural resource, political domination and subjugation of populations under colonial rule, and control over the cultural and intellectual life of colonies.<\/p>\n
Whether one has in mind the formal and classical version, which dissolved, thanks in no small part to colonialists slaughtering one another\u00a0 during the two 20th century world wars, or the subsequent and newer versions characteristic of the Cold War, the essence, objectives and nature of colonial rules remain virtually the same.<\/p>\n
Words such as political, ethnic and international solidarity have been used too often and too lightly.
\nHumanitarian assistance, developmental aid, foreign direct investment, increased trade or commerce may be needed in any systemic efforts to rebuild poverty-stricken Third World nations emerging from decades of war and conflicts.\u00a0 But they are no substitute for forging an inter-ethnic and class solidarity, on which an inter-generational political resistance, armed and non-violent, depending on one\u2019s own location, needs to be built.<\/p>\n
The fact is the colonial state in the Union of the Republic of Myanmar stands in between public welfare and international assistance and increased foreign direct investment, which has been in the billions thanks to Burma\u2019s economically predatory regional friends such as China, Thailand, India, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore.<\/p>\n
Precisely because this ethno-nationalist bond between the Burmese junta and the majority Buddhist Burmese has been irreparably broken down, the recent call by Suu Kyi and minority leaders for reconciliation and inter-ethnic solidarity against oppression poses the greatest threat to the ruling junta.<\/p>\n
While Burma\u2019s issues are complex, as far as the regime\u2019s strategy is concerned it is a simple, time-tested \u201cdivide-and-rule.\u201d\u00a0 The only way the opposition movements in particular and multi-ethnic communities in general can defeat these native colonizers is through inter-ethnic\u2014and inter-class\u2014solidarity. It\u2019s high time the international community, as well as ordinary citizens of Burma, address this strategic need and respond to the calls from Suu Kyi and the leaders of ethnic nationalities.<\/p>\n
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