Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (5 page)

Orthodoxy is required not only in the military government but among the opposition, the dissident expatriate Burmese community, and even in the corridors of many Western and Asian governments. Even the suggestion of alternative hypotheses or approaches becomes anathema. There is not only fear within Burma, whose citizens are subjected to pervasive intelligence surveillance, there is also palpable fear in expatriate communities where political heresies can result in social exclusion. Criticizing political icons becomes difficult at best.

Data are unreliable. Those who control its flow shape it to impress Myanmar’s rulers. The result is akin to a Potemkin village designed to impress those at the top of the political ladder. Positive figures are often inflated, negative facts diminished, and unpleasant realities ignored. Some data are simply not available, more are unreliable. Much of Burmese society operates outside of the formal economy—some say most of it does so.

Other difficulties abound. For foreigners, Burmese names are an enigma. There are no surnames, so relations among even nuclear families requires highly specialized and personal knowledge because every family member has their own, different name. Many Burmese also have the same name (the initial syllable is dependent on the day of the week one was born), and foreign confusion abounds. Events take place based on astrological or numerical calculations that are incomprehensible to the outside world, although obviously not to the
Burmese. The Burmese language (part of the Tibeto-Burman group) is difficult to learn. It has its own script and is unrelated to other major Southeast Asian languages. Learning it requires a great deal of time and a significant intellectual investment.

Even the name of the country is an enigma—and in the West, it has become a surrogate indicator of political persuasion. In July 1989, the ruling junta changed the name of the state from Burma to Myanmar, an older, written form dating back centuries, claiming that it was more ethnically inclusive and without colonial baggage. The United Nations and the world generally accepted that change, on which the military has assiduously insisted, using that name for periods and events dating back into Burmese history. The Burmese political opposition, and the United States and a few other states, did not do so and argued that this change was the product of an illegitimate military government. With nationalistic fervor and to rid themselves of a colonial taint, the military also changed the names of many cities (e.g., Rangoon to Yangon) to conform to Burmese spelling patterns, as well those of many rivers, place names, towns, and streets (see the Preliminary Notes section). Some 600 names have been changed.

In spite of the difficulties of access and the unreliability of data, we need to use the tools we have to analyze the multiple crises in Burma and their contexts. Western-oriented conceptual models and limited comparative studies make this even more difficult. Studying Burma/Myanmar is often neither science nor social science, but more akin to art, where truth is in the eye of the beholder. Consequently, different interpretations abound. The myriad problems facing the state are so diverse that if asked to provide lists of the most challenging issues, different observers would point to different examples. Yet there would be no disagreement about the seriousness of the problems selected herein. Those listed are broad categories
as seen through the eyes of one foreign observer who has experienced and watched that diverse society grow, stagnate, and deteriorate over some fifty years. These issues are enumerated in greater detail later in the text; they are included here to give the reader an impression of the breadth of the internal problems the leadership and the people face.

We concentrate on the internal problems facing the society. Those that are generated from abroad, such as questions of international acceptability, foreign relations, externally perceived legitimacy, and other issues, are considered separately.

The internal crises facing the state may be divided into a number of convenient and interpenetrated compartments for discussion. These are:

• A socioeconomic crisis. It has intensified with one-half the population below or at the poverty line (significantly, a line defined by the World Bank but not accepted by the Burmese government). Even primary schooling (most register but half drop out) is often too expensive for significant proportions of the population, health care is the second worst in the world, inflation eats into meager wages with 73 percent of income going for basic foods, and 35 percent of children under age five are malnourished to some degree. Land-lessness has mushroomed, and internal debt exploded. Myanmar is one of the world’s poorest countries. Per capita income is variously estimated to be about US$290 in 2008. Cyclone Nargis intensified the growing rich–poor gap. This is, in effect, a crisis in human security.
  
• A youth crisis. Social mobility is controlled by the military junta; jobs are scarce and unrewarding, many of significance are occupied by the military, and others are closely controlled or monitored. Many people desire higher education, but universities have been sometimes closed for long periods, and higher degree programs are said to be weak and are not internationally recognized. There is no correlation between a degree and a good job. Military
  control is ever present and constitutes a state within the state. A pervasive dissatisfaction and frustration have caused some 1 percent (an educated group) of the total population to escape Myanmar, either legally or surreptitiously, to foreign lands, their sense of hope for the future markedly diminished. This is, in effect, a long-term crisis of human capital that will negatively affect development.
  
• A crisis of the minorities, comprising one-third of the population. This is likely to be the most difficult and enduring issue facing any Burmese administration: how in some manner and degree acceptable to the diverse Burmese peoples are power and resources to be shared equitably and fairly in Burmese terms among the various ethnic groups of that state? Each ethnic group regards the protection of their individual languages, customs, cultures, and real or mythic histories as important to its identity. Significant portions of the major minority groups have been in active revolt against the Burman state at some time. Senior General Saw Maung estimated that a million people have been killed in the multitude of insurrections since independence. In eastern Myanmar alone, some 540,000 minority peoples have been displaced from their homes. The military has established some “free fire” zones. Some estimates calculate that Burma/Myanmar has experienced 236 “conflict years,” or 40 percent of all those in Southeast Asia, and 30 percent of all conflict casualties. Many minority armies now have negotiated cease-fires, but some are still active and one, the Karen rebellion that started in 1949, is the longest in modern world history.
  
• A crisis of governance. There is an intractable political crisis, characterized externally and simplistically, as one between democracy and totalitarianism, between the military and civilian leadership. The world has focused its attention on Burma/Myanmar mostly because of this issue. The validity of elections (those of 1990 and those planned for 2010), a referendum, a new constitution, the promises for a roadmap to what the leadership calls a “discipline-flourishing
  democracy” have all become part of the search for a political solution to a generation-long political stalemate.
  
• A crisis of administrative competence. In spite of the regime’s pride in extensive infrastructure construction that remains externally unrecognized, governance is enmeshed in a rigid hierarchy in which individual actions and initiatives are retarded by fear. Complicated by personal loyalties and entourages with resultant rent-seeking and corruption, initial bureaucratic inertia was aptly illustrated in the ineffective early response and management of the Cyclone Nargis crisis of 2008.
  
• An environmental crisis. The government and various cease-fire and present insurgent groups have unconscionably stripped the country of much of its unique teak forests and other hardwood resources. They have exploited its extensive mines without concern for pollution and have constructed (and planned) dozens of hydroelectric projects that dammed previously free rivers and forcibly evacuated thousands. More generally, the regime disregards modern environmental policies and guidelines.
  
• A crisis of fear that permeates society. The population fears the state’s administrative control mechanisms and military power. The military administration itself fears and mistrusts foreigners and is anxious about a possible invasion that some foreign rhetoric seems to imply. Military disdain and mistrust extends to their own civilian citizens and ethnic minorities; they are concerned that a return to civilian rule would lead to the break-up of the state. Fear leads to official censorship and even self-inflicted restraint as a defense. Myanmar is listed as having one of the world’s most controlled censorship regimes—164th out of 168 countries.
  
• A private sector crisis. The state’s 1988 reforms, the most ambitious since 1962, were to encourage the private sector through attracting foreign investment and spurring local industry and trade. It has, however, prompted widespread rent-seeking and corruption with meager results
  for the people, no matter how much the administration has benefited from exploitation of its natural gas and other reserves.
  
• A crisis of distribution. In 1988, the pauperized government that was on the cusp of the coup had only about US$30 million in foreign exchange reserves. In 2008, it had over US$3.1 billion but has not used these resources to improve the quality of life or standard of living of its diverse peoples.
  
• A crisis of internally perceived legitimacy. How the people of that state perceive the legitimacy of its administration is in question. Indigenous cultural-religious factors affect these views and their expectations of the state’s obligation to deliver goods and services. Foreign influences and opinions on the nature of political legitimacy may also affect these internal perceptions, but among what groups beyond the internationally oriented elite and to what degree is uncertain.
  

The scope and complexity of the problems facing the state and its peoples are set forth here to allow a context to begin considering what factors have influenced the generation of these problems. We can start to analyze the causes and historical context of these questions; the various Burmese governments’ attempts to cope with equity, growth, history, legitimacy, and international relations; and how the external world, in an age of globalization, has reacted to them.

To do this, we need to review historically the contemporary residual influences of four ages of Burmese history: the precolonial era of the monarchy (until 1885) in
chapter 2
, the colonial period (1885–1948) in
chapter 3
, the civilian government (1948–1962) in
chapter 4
, and military rule under the socialist government (1962–1988) in
chapter 5
. Each has had extensive impacts on current events (
chapter 6
), and each influenced and is reflected in the state’s social and political structure (
chapter 7
) and will likely influence the future (
chapter 8
).

The Burmese look with increasing pride on their precolonial history. No group has more assiduously made contemporary use of the record of approximately 1,000 years of Burman hegemony of the region we now call Burma/Myanmar and some neighboring areas than the present State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)/State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military government. They have used the past to justify the present, even employing prehistory to support their nationalistic (sometimes chauvinistic) claims to legitimacy. Members of the military consider themselves custodians of national unity and sovereignty, denying to any other institution or group that claim. The regime believes, and have emphasized in their newly written histories, that they are in the direct line of the great Burman kings, military leaders who unified the state. Their larger-than-life statues dominate the parade grounds at their new capital Naypyidaw, their images enshrined in the massive Defense Services Museum in Yangon.

Citizens of Burma/Myanmar have ample justification for pride in the history of their country. The three major dynasties that have controlled what we know today as Myanmar have contributed much to world culture through sponsorship
and support of Buddhist activities and knowledge, as well as art and architecture. They have also played important roles as expansionist rulers in the region.

Administrations around the world use and reinvent their national histories to explain, justify, and/or enhance their contemporary roles—their “imagined communities.” The
tatmadaw
(Burmese armed forces) is no different, although they have to a major degree rarely seen elsewhere invoked the past and in part rewritten it to surround themselves with what they regard as an impermeable nationalistic mantle.

In the new capital of Naypyidaw (literally, the royal national site), some 240 miles north of Yangon and on the verge of the traditional Burman central region called the dry zone (in contrast to the coastal regions where rainfall is two to three times as heavy), there are three gigantic statues of Burmese warrior kings (each thirty-three feet tall) who unified the state by conquering local kingdoms and expanding Burmese military power to neighboring lands. Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077), Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581), and Alaungpaya (r. 1752–1760) are the administration’s heroes and by implication the precursors of the present regime, which is the fourth (in their view) protector and unifier of the state. Rumors abound that at least one Burmese general (Saw Maung, chair of the SLORC, 1988–1992) considered himself (or was considered by some of his underlings) the reincarnation of King Kyansittha (r. 1084–1113) and is said to have dressed in royal regalia and performed traditional regal rites.