(David Scott Mathieson’s article from The ASIA TIMES on 07 July 2022.)
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| Myanmar soldiers: Killed & Wounded |
Myanmar is in conflict freefall, as the State
Administration Council (SAC) junta regime fights a myriad of proliferating
resistance groups on fronts across the country, many galvanized to arms by the
military’s democracy-toppling February 2021 coup.
Fighting in
western regions such as Sagaing, Magwe and Chin State has surged in recent
months, as scores of People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) ambush military columns and
battle pro-SAC militias.
The military, in turn, has pulverized civilian villages with air strikes, heavy artillery and army columns in expeditionary arson campaigns that have destroyed close to 20,000 houses, by some estimates. Internal displacement in the country, meanwhile, has surpassed one million.
Despite the
desperation of the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, many analysts
estimate that the military has been seriously degraded by armed resistance to
the coup. That’s been led by PDFs and many established ethnic armed
organizations (EAOs) such as the Karen National Union (KNU), some of which have
forged alliances with or otherwise pledge loyalty to the National Unity
Government (NUG), a parallel administration formed after the coup.
So what does the SAC leadership do when faced with
such unprecedented and geographically spread resistance? Logically, it calls
for peace talks, the tried and true escape hatch for military repression in
Myanmar.
Myanmar’s
Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) was signed by eight mostly small
organizations in 2015 (another two signed in 2018), but despite incessant talks
and secretive mediation, the agreement was moribund by October 2018.
The military
commander Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the current dictator who staged the
2021 coup, announced a “Ceasefire for Eternal Peace” in December 2018,
extending it every few months for years through the Covid-19 pandemic right up
to the coup, even as fighting raged with EAOs in many parts of the country.
The call for new
peace talks in April this year conforms to a consistent pattern of perfidy over
peace talks. Using a motley crew of desperate or insignificant NCA signatories
is for the SAC desperate political necrophilia.
The first round of “talks” in May was with Chairman
Yawd Serk of the insurgent Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) resulted in
a number of agreements related to the “Union Accords”, which were negotiated
for several years in a pre-coup process.
The RCSS’s
eagerness can be largely explained by its strategic missteps since late 2015.
It used the cover of signing the 2015 NCA as a pretext to expand operations in
northern Shan state, triggering a multi-sided conflict for control of territory
and commodities between various EAOs, especially the ethnic Ta’ang armed group
and the RCSS parent organization the Shan State Army (SSA) formed in 1964.
This conflict
displaced thousands of civilians, many for several times a year, disrupting
livelihoods and trade and exacerbating intercommunal tensions amid aid
restrictions by the military and previous government. The RCSS has decided to
sit out the post-coup resistance and prioritize its own survival now that it
has been restricted to territory closer to the Thailand border.
The arrival of Saw Mra Razar Lin of the Arakan
Liberation Party (ALP) at the junta’s peace talks was particularly surreal. The
only senior woman leader of an EAO to attend peace talks for several years, she
commands few troops, most of which are based on the Thailand-Myanmar border far
away.
The ALP and its
armed wing are meaningless compared to the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army (AA),
which is estimated to field more than 8,000 troops. In heavy fighting between
2019 to the end of 2020, AA fought the Myanmar military to a standstill,
inflicting hundreds if not thousands of casualties during a conflict that
displaced some 200,000 civilians.
An uneasy
ceasefire has allowed space for the AA to expand its own judicial and taxation
system on an estimated 60% of western Rakhine state, incorporating Rohingya
Muslim representatives of the Arakan People’s Authority (APA).
The AA suffered
a blow on July 4 when an air strike killed six of its soldiers in a base in
Kayin state close to the Thailand border, raising new questions about the
durability of their uneasy post-coup ceasefire.
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| Burmese soldiers captured by AA recently in Maungdaw. |
Other groups that attended the talks included the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army Peace Council, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), the New Mon State Party and the Pa-O Nationalities Liberation Organization (PNLO).
These groups
could potentially muster several hundred troops combined among them, but they
have essentially been artificially inflated by Western donors to the peace
process for several years. They are now ornamental bit-part actors in the SAC’s
shoddy process.
The largest EAO in Myanmar, the United Wa State Army
(UWSA), controls its own autonomous region on the Chinese border with an
estimated 30,000 troops and sophisticated weaponry, and didn’t really need to
attend the peace talks.
It dispatched a
nominally senior official of no real significance in the hierarchy, and
released a statement following the talks which basically stated that the Wa had
their own autonomy and this was a Burman problem they wanted nothing to do
with.
Planned talks
with the Shan State Progress Party, or SSA, have not been held as fighting
continues between their forces and the SAC’s army in northern Shan State.
In another
indication of renewed bellicosity, well-known Myanmar model and actress Thin
Zar Wint Kyaw has reportedly been arrested after wearing an SSA military
uniform at a recent wedding ceremony close to the EAO’s headquarters at Wan
Hai, after traveling to the area to endorse business initiatives. The SAC is
making enemies of everyone, even as it supposedly cultivates peace.
Further adorning
the pretense of peace talks, the SAC has called for PDF members, or people
involved in the civil disobedience movement (CDM), to defect from the
“terrorist” NUG and return to the “legal fold”, a euphemism for the peace
process of the 1990s which resulted in reduced conflict fighting but no
conflict resolution.
The SAC in
recent days has even pledged to open “reception centers” for resistance actors
to surrender along the borders, another indication of the junta’s underlying
desperation.
The subterfuge
of peace talks extends to efforts at mediation by the Association for Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose Special Envoy Prak Sokhonn visited Myanmar
recently and was instructed to only meet with EAOs who had attended the SAC
talks.
This clearly
violates the terms of the Five Point Consensus the SAC’s leader reached with
ASEAN in April 2021: “constructive dialogue among all parties concerned shall
commence to seek a peaceful solution in the interests of the people.”
ASEAN is further
compromised by the role of the ASEAN Humanitarian Center (AHA), which is
conducting a needs assessment essentially as cover for the United Nations to
operate in SAC-controlled areas and not areas of armed conflict where
belligerents who are not part of the peace talks operate, and where civilian
communities and aid workers are not represented and rely on cross border
assistance not covered by the AHA or the UN.
The NUG and main
EAOs fighting the SAC issued a bitter statement condemning the role of ASEAN in
humanitarian aid delivery in May, as the exercise was seen as clearly pro-SAC.
Myanmar’s
military leaders may lack sophistication but they possess the cunning to
checkmate rule-bound international aid actors, consistent with the past decade
during the previous peace process.
A serious danger
is that peace talks, alongside SAC announced plans for a nationwide election in
2023 with an entirely new electoral system that will likely ban the coup-ousted
National League for Democracy’s participation, provide the bare minimum of a
lifeline for the international community, especially the UN and international
aid agencies, to justify their continued presence.
It is perilous
to promote fake peace while a conflict is raging elsewhere. The only accurate
gauge of the SAC’s true intent is its behavior on the ground, seen in the
thousands of civilian casualties, burning villages and interdiction of
humanitarian assistance. In Myanmar, talk of peace is often cover for just more
war.
(David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst
working on humanitarian, conflict and human rights issues in Myanmar.)
