Wisdom in wooing Burma
source :The Statesman (New Delhi)
December 5, 2000
If the North-east is to become stable, politically, economically and security-wise, then it's time that those of that region and policy makers in India realised that the bridge between India and South-east Asia is not the North-east. It is Myanmar, writes SANJOY AZARIKA
IN the past years, Myan-mar's military rulers and diplomats have gone on a foreign policy offensive aimed at winning friends in South and South-east Asia, attracting multilateral and mul-tinational investment into their impoverished land and exorcising their dismal human rights record. Apart from the economic oppor-tunities that this campaign will develop, it is also aimed at gaining two basic things: credibility and accept-ability.
These two virtues are surely among the most difficult to achieve for any individual, community or nation and even more so for a nation such as Myanmar (I like the country's old name, Burma, far better) which has been isolated from the world by a secretive regime since the 1960s and which has cracked down mercilessly on its domestic detractors.
Credibility and acceptability become tougher goals to reach when there is a personality such as Aung San Syu Kyi, the Nobel Prize winner, who keeps challenging the junta at every oppor-tunity, who is an internationally respected figure, and whose rights are severely curtailed even today.
Mrs Syu Kyi is under house arrest and is allowed virtually no visitors especially after she was detained when she tried to break out of the govern-ment-imposed isolation and take a trip out into the country by train.
The question arises here: how much and why does the State Peace Development Council fear this one person, this frail woman who cannot even travel through her own country without inviting Yangon's wrath?
No amount of defensive statements and criticism of the outside world by the Myanmarese government can answer this convincingly. After all, you need to carry conviction if you are to win credibility and acceptance.
This is why the visits of General Maung Aye, the Myanmarese military chief and his high-profile delegation, including the polished foreign minister U Win Aung,and that of the earlier visit of the low-profile home minister, assume significance. Indians and Myanmarese have had historic links.
Apart from being the birth place of Buddhism and the various pilgrimage sites, India's Independence movement and the role of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were especially imp-ortant for countries such as Myanmar and others in the colonial vice.The last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah died in lonely exile in Yangon and more recently, the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose marched through Myanmar's hills and plains, with the Japanese, in an effort to liberate India. But what many do not remember is an event in the 13th century which changed the face of North-east India as we know it today.
A princely member of the Shan community, at the trijunction of China's Yunnan province, Myanmar and northern Thailand, moved his ancestral kingdom with his followers and travelled to Assam, over the Patkai Range. This was the coming of Su Ka Pha, the first king of the Ahom dynasty which was to rule Assam for about 600 years, until the British overthrew the last Ahom king.
There was a Myanmarese cause for the end of the Ahom kingdom: the Ahoms were defeated and devastated by Myanmarese invasions at the start of the 19th century. They appealed to the British for help. The British gave a lending hand and added Assam, with its great and rich valley and verdant forests, as the last jewel to the British Crown. The defeated Myanmarese renounced all claims to Assam th-rough the Treaty of Yandaboo of 1826.
Over the past years, India has had a tacit understanding with the military side of the administration in Myan-mar. Essentially, this involved limited cooperation aimed at curbing the activities of insurgent groups in the region and based in Myanmar.
These have included both factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the United Liberation Front of Assam and a few Manipuri factions. Myanmar has been the historic link for the North-east insurgents and China: T Muivah walked across the Myan-marese jungles to Yunnan in 1964 with the first ba-nd of Naga guerrillas. In his foot-steps fol-lowed the Mizos. The China con-nection was officially snapped in 1976 but recent dis-closures show that the contacts are alive.
While India toned down its public anti-Myanmar rhetoric in the 1990s, it also actively sought Myanmarese help in combating the North-east insurgents. One of the first major cooperative strikes was a pincer movement involving Indian security forces and the Myanmarese army a few years ago, when they moved against a joint group of the NSCN, Ulfa and the People's Liberation Army of Manipur on the Indo-Myanmarese border.
But the bonhomie was shortlived: the announcement of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award to Mrs Suu Kyi ended further cooperation and infu-riated the Myan-marese.But quiet con-tacts over the years involving former defence secretary NN Vohra and then more visits by the for-mer Army Chief Ved Malik (two in 2000 alone) and a recognition by New Del-hi that me-re moral and politi-cal support (and to a degree, material backing) to "pro-democracy" forces was marginalising whatever role India could have in its large neighbour.
One major consideration was the huge influence that China yields today in Myanmar not only is it the largest trading partner, but large numbers of Chinese have moved into northern Myanmar over these past years, predominantly as traders and businessmen. It is the biggest supplier of arms to Yangon and was a political ally during the time of international ostracism when the world shunned Myanmar becau-se of its crackdown on democracy and human rights and its tolerance of poppy cultivation and heroin production.
That is why Gen. Maung Aye's visit assumes great importance for it indicates that, however tentatively, Myanmar is now trying to tread a middle path between the Asian giants. It is in this context that the foreign minister's remarks should be viewed.To a small group of Indian reporters, Mr Win Aung declared that Myanmar would not allow any foreign country to set up any base on its territory: the reference was to a question about the alleged Chinese presence in Coco Island of the Myanmarese mainland which enabled China to monitor activities on the missile-testing ranges at Balasore and Chandipur-on-Sea in Orissa.
In addition, he said that as far as the North-eastern militants were con-cerned, that Myanmar would coop-erate with India to tackle this issue at the local military levels and on the border. Myanmar would not, he declared, allow any group to "use our territory to make trouble" against India. In addition, he acknowledged that private shipments of Chinese weapons through Myanmar to the North-east did take place and that Myanmar would now "exert every effort" to stop such shipments.
In other words, he was saying that the exiles could stay on in India as long as they wanted. Myanmar was not going to put pressure on India to push them out.The additional economic cooperation with India is also welcome. Myanmar has opened up to Indian government enterprise, if not to private businessmen, with highways being built by Indian public-sector companies in western Myanmar to connect that region to the North-east.
All these costs are being met by New Delhi. On the security front, there have been a series of strikes against SS Khaplang's faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, whose rival group, led by Muivah and Isaak Swu, are negotiating peace with India. It is interesting to note that the military in Myanmar has not hit the bases of the Muivah group, leading to conjecture about its relationship with that faction.
But it appears that India is finally moving with a sense of coherence as far as its relationship with its eastern neighbour is concerned. For, if the North-east is to become stable, politi-cally, economically and security-wise, then it is time that those of that region and policy makers in India realised that the bridge between India and South-east Asia is not the North-east. It is Myanmar. The North-east and South-east Asia are bridgeheads. Myanmar is the key.
So while we must continue to assure the exiles of our support for peaceful democratic movements and give them sanctuary here, we must also develop closer relations with the government of the day in Myanmar.
For one day, surely, democracy will return to Myanmar, perhaps not in the precise form that the dissenters seek or in the form that the SPDC is prepared to concede.
But by that time, if realistic assessments and logic guide our policies, India will have emerged as a strong, stable and reliable economic, political and security partner for Myanmar, enabling that country to develop an evenly balanced relationship with China and South-east Asian countries.
(The author, formerly of the New York Times, is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.)