India- Myanmar relations

India’s coastal shipping agreement with Myanmar​

October 7, 2020: Indian Army chief General M.M. Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla on Monday finalised India’s coastal shipping agreement with Myanmar in a meeting with its State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

It will further strengthen security ties between the two countries amid the Chinese aggression.

India and China continue to remain locked in a military face-off along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

On Monday, the Indian embassy in Myanmar said that Naravane and the Foreign Secretary along with Ambassador Saurabh Kumar called on the State Counsellor at Naypyitaw to discuss important bilateral issues.

Sources said the meeting ahead of the Myanmar general elections, was to finalise the coastal shipping agreement for the launch of the Kaladan multi-modal project and discuss measures to strengthen security ties against China-backed insurgent groups.

Myanmar will go to polls on November 8.

The coastal shipping agreement will allow Indian ships to reach Mizoram via Sittwe Port on the Bay of Bengal and through the Kaladan river multi-modal link. The project, envisioned by the Vajpayee government, had been pending for the past 20 years, sources said.

The two sides, sources said, also discussed security related issues and initiatives to block the India-Myanmar border to China-backed Indian insurgents and drug traffickers in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

The Paresh Baruah headed ULFA is based in Yunnan province of China. Sources said the top officials also discussed the return and rehabilitation of the Rohingyas refugees in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

As part of India’s contribution to help a friendly neighbour, Myanmar’s fight against Covid-19, Shringla and Naravane handed over 3,000 vials of Remdesivir to Aung San Suu Kyi, Ambassador Saurabh Kumar’s office in Naypyitaw said.
www.maritimegateway.com

India's coastal shipping agreement with Myanmar - Maritime Gateway

, October 7, 2020: Indian Army chief General M.M. Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla on Monday finalised India's coastal shipping agreement with
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Interesting fact: The last King of erstwhile Burma was exiled to Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. He died there and has a tomb in his name. Now if someone had a vision, this could become a major focal point of tourism and cultural ties b/w India and Myanmar.
 
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Calls for Fencing the India-Myanmar Border Gather Steam Again​

An ambush of an Assam Rifles convoy in Manipur’s Churachandpur district on Saturday morning, which killed a commanding officer, his wife, and their 5-year-old son as well as four other security personnel, has set alarm bells ringing about the security situation in the border state.

Two separatist groups, the People’s Liberation Army and the Manipur Naga People’s Front, have claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attacks, which also left at least six other personnel injured, have turned the spotlight on the decades-old insurgency in Manipur.

Apparently, the attack was planned and executed from their camps based in Myanmar. This has triggered calls for erecting a fence along the India-Myanmar border to curb the increasing cross-border criminal activities between the two countries.

Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh has announced that fencing the state’s border with Myanmar was a priority for the government to check “infiltration.” He explained that the central government had already sanctioned funding for the project but it has been stalled owing to disputes in some zones.

The India-Myanmar border spans a long distance of 1,643 kilometers, most of which is hilly terrain. Besides Manipur, the other Indian states that share a border with Myanmar are Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Mizoram.

A “free border regime” exists along the entire stretch of the border, which allows citizens from one country to travel up to 16 kilometers on the other side. Communities speaking the same languages and sharing the same customs and belonging mostly to the Naga and Kuki-Chin-Mizo ethnic groups reside on both sides of the border.

As many as six separatist rebel outfits from India’s Northeast and mostly from Manipur have camps and training facilities at some places in in Myanmar. Over the past several decades, attacks have been mounted on security forces in India by these groups from their bases in Myanmar.

One of the worst such attacks was on June 4, 2015 when a combined squad of rebels ambushed a vehicle of the Indian Army in Manipur, killing 20 soldiers.

Early in 2019, the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar’s military is known, dismantled most of these camps located in the Naga-inhabited northern region of Sagaing Division. The exercise, codenamed Operation Sunrise, was the outcome of an understanding arrived at by the two governments, which also entailed the engagement of the Indian Army to check the influx of rebels from Myanmar into India’s Northeast.

Besides the activities of militant outfits, a variety of drugs such as Yaba, World Is Yours, Heroin, and Brown Sugar are being smuggled from Myanmar to India’s Northeast, from where they are then dispatched to different destinations through well-established networks.

The same routes are also used by smugglers to import other contraband items such as gold from Myanmar. Authorities have confiscated consignments on several occasions over the past several years. Some Indian government officials are of the view that a section of the Tatmadaw is involved in mining and smuggling of gold from the mines of Sagaing Division.

Manipur’s border with Myanmar is 398 kilometers, but only 40 kilometers have been fenced so far. Border disputes have triggered protests and opposition by local groups. This has compelled the government to halt the project at some locations.

In 2013, several civil society organizations in Manipur threatened to launch an agitation if the government went ahead with the fencing project. The protest was sparked after an attempt was made by Myanmar soldiers to set up a temporary camp inside Indian territory near the border town of Moreh.

Again in 2018, a similar situation unfolded at another location north of Moreh at Kwatha Khunou where local inhabitants alleged that Myanmar had made attempts to change the boundary. A popular civil society organization called the United Committee Manipur (UCM) had warned the government to stop the fencing until the dispute had been resolved.

Opposition to a fence had also surfaced in Nagaland, which is another state in India’s Northeast bordering Myanmar and contiguous to Manipur. Work on fencing had to be shelved within a few months after it was begun in Noklak following opposition from local groups. The rationale of the project was to check the movement of militants from their bases in Myanmar.

Arunachal Pradesh, located north of Nagaland, had also approached the central government some years ago to execute a similar fencing project in the districts bordering Myanmar to check militancy. So far, the scheme has not been executed.
thediplomat.com

Calls for Fencing the India-Myanmar Border Gather Steam Again

A deadly ambush of an Indian paramilitary convoy in Manipur by two separatist groups was reportedly planned and implemented from bases in Myanmar.
thediplomat.com

India sends Covid-19 related relief assistance to Myanmar

Jakarta/New Delhi, Nov 27 (UNI) India on Saturday sent Covid-19 related humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, in response to a call by the ASEAN.
www.uniindia.com
 



New US Diplomatic Complex in Thailand Aimed at China and Myanmar
(Bertil Lintner, The Irrawaddi, jan.24)​


No one doubts that the American community in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, which consists mostly of NGO workers, missionaries and retirees, needs consular services. But could that be the only reason why a massive, new United States (US) Consulate General is under construction at a cost of US$300 million? Due to be opened in 2023, the buildings of the diplomatic mission will sprawl over no less than 6.6 acres, or 26,709 square meters, of land in a business park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. In a colorful, online brochure, the US Consul General in Chiang Mai describes the project as “a concrete sign of our long-term commitment to the people of northern Thailand and the future of our partnership” and the text goes on to state that the US Consulate General is “dedicated to serving the local American community or those wishing to travel to the United States”.

While all of that may be accurate, Michael Vatikiotis, a Singapore-based British analyst, argues in an op-ed piece for Nikkei Asia on January 7 that Beijing sees the construction of a such a huge diplomatic complex only 500 kilometers from the Chinese border and even closer to Myanmar and Laos “as an attempt to reinforce existing US intelligence gathering capacity in northern Thailand”.

Covert US activity of that kind would fit into the broader picture of geostrategic rivalries in the region. The rise of China as an economic and political superpower in Asia has been met by the formation of new alliances in the region. The first was the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which was set up in 2007 and brings the US together with Japan, India and Australia. Then, on September 15 last year, the formation of AUKUS, or the Australia-United Kingdom-United States pact, was announced with the specific purpose of coordinating activities in the spheres of “cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional underwater capabilities.” Under the terms of the pact, the US and the UK will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Both pacts are widely seen as efforts to counter China’s influence in the contested South China Sea and the Chinese navy’s increasingly frequent forays into the Indian Ocean. That was not lost on Beijing, who especially condemned the establishment of AUKUS. Only two days after the announcement of the pact, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the alliance risked “severely damaging regional peace… and intensifying the arms race.” He also criticised what he called “the obsolete Cold War… mentality” of the pact’s members and warned them that they were “hurting their own interests.”

In an editorial published in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times on September 30, the rhetoric was even blunter and more vitriolic: “The three countries, drawing lines based on ideology, have built a new military bloc that will heighten geopolitical tensions. The international community rejects the Cold War and its divisions, but the US blatantly violates its political claims of not engaging in any new Cold War and gangs up with others to create a small Anglo-Saxon ‘clique,’ putting geopolitical self-interest above international solidarity. This is a typical Cold War mentality”.

The editorial also warned of the danger of an escalating arms race: “The move will spur regional countries to accelerate the development of military capabilities, and even seek to break the nuclear threshold and increase the risk of military conflict. The US, on the one hand, hands out sanctions and suppresses some countries to pressure them not to develop nuclear capabilities, while on the other hand flagrantly transferring nuclear technologies to non-nuclear states. This is a typical double standard”.

The Global Times editorial did not expand on the reference to the possibility of nuclear proliferation, and Australia will certainly not become a nuclear power just because it is about to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. But the harsh rhetoric shows how concerned China’s government is, and that the battlelines in the new Cold War are becoming clearer. China is seen as the enemy of a range of countries which consider themselves guardians of democratic values. Needless to say, there are also competing economic interests between China and its adversaries. An increasingly affluent Asia is a huge market for consumer goods and the region is rich in natural and mineral resources which many countries are eager to exploit.

That competition can be seen also on land and it’s no coincidence that Chiang Mai has been chosen as a strategic listening post in the region. And in that regard, it appears that old ghosts have come alive again. The Americans first set up a diplomatic mission in Chiang Mai in 1950, and it was then mainly an intelligence station that coordinated support for nationalist Chinese, Kuomintang, forces that had retreated into Shan State in eastern Myanmar after their defeat in the Chinese Civil War. A string of bases was established just across the border in Shan State and, to the north, along the Chinese border. The tiny airstrip at Möng Hsat opposite Thailand’s Chiang Rai province was transformed into a formidable air base capable of receiving C-46 and C-47 transport planes, which brought in arms, ammunition, and medical supplies. This dramatic build-up was a joint venture between the Republic of China’s Kuomintang government, which still controlled the island of Taiwan, and the US security authorities to encircle and try to reconquer the Chinese mainland. But the effort failed miserably. The Shan State-based “secret Kuomintang” army attempted on no less than seven occasions in the early 1950s to invade neighboring Yunnan Province in China, but was repeatedly driven back across the border.

Then came the wars in Indochina, and the US consulate in Chiang Mai oversaw the gathering of human as well as signals intelligence in the region. Local agents were sent across the border and the Americans together with the Thais had an extensive network of listening posts in northern Thailand. The main such facility was located at Ramasun, 20 kilometers south of Udon Thani in northeastern Thailand. That base was first established in 1966 but then as an outpost for the main facility in Bangkok. In 1970, it was upgraded to an AN/FLR-9 Circular Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA) station, a large, circular array of Wullenweber antennas commonly referred to by the nickname “Elephant Cage” because its shape resembled an elephant kraal. The Ramasun facility picked up radio traffic from Laos, southern China and North Vietnam and monitored Chinese military movements in the region. Most importantly, it served as a military intelligence terminal for communications between the US and its various intelligence sites in Southeast and East Asia.

A similar signals intelligence facility was established near Lampang, 108 kilometers south of Chiang Mai, for the specific purpose of monitoring radio traffic in northern Myanmar and Yunnan. American Chinese language experts translated intercepted messages into English, and Burmese-speaking Shans translated messages in Burmese into Thai and English. A major target at that time was the China-supported Communist Party of Burma (CPB). There was always the possibility of a linkup between the CPB and the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), which would open a direct route for arms flowing down from China and into Southeast Asia. China’s plan at the time was to use Myanmar as a springboard to reach not only the CPT but, at least until the 1960s, communist movements in Malaya (now Malaysia) and Indonesia.

The “Elephant Cage” at Ramasun was officially dismantled in 1976, a year after the end of the Indochina wars and, in 1975, Thailand also switched recognition to the People’s Republic of China from the Republic of China (Taiwan). The Americans withdrew and the Thais took over operation of the Ramasun and Lampang facilities. Over the years, the “Elephant Cages” became obsolete and, in May 1986, the very last of them, in Alaska, was decommissioned. Today, there are more advanced and sophisticated ways of monitoring movements in cyberspace, as well as on the ground.

The current US mission in Chiang Mai is located in old buildings overlooking the banks of the Ping River. Some of them were built over a hundred years ago and then called the Chedi Ngam Palace, or the Beautiful Pagoda Palace. The compound once served as the residence of the last ruler of northern Thailand, Chao Kaew Nawarat, who died in 1939. After that it became government property and, eleven years later, the Americans moved in and turned it into a consulate. But it is important to remember that it remained a consulate until 1986 and only then became a Consulate General, or a proper foreign service mission. Before 1986, it was effectively an intelligence station, although it also provided consular services.

It is anybody’s guess what roles the new US Consulate General will play when it opens its doors next year. Apart from the obvious — that people will go there to get visas, for cultural events and to visit its libraries — intelligence gathering will most certainly be a top priority. Myanmar-watching will remain one of the consulate general’s main tasks, albeit in a different context as China no longer exports revolution. But Beijing’s expanding economic empire requires political protection and therefore also influence in its neighboring countries. Myanmar is right there, between Thailand and China, and the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor is China’s only direct access to the Indian Ocean.

Already in 2017, China’s then Consul General in Chiang Mai, Ren Yisheng, talked about Beijing’s multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, at the city’s university. Two years later, Ren attended a similar conference in Chiang Rai with the emphasis on development in the so-called Greater Mekong Sub-region, which includes parts of southern China, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam. Even China appears to have made Chiang Mai and their Consulate General there a base for their plans for the region.

Chinese boats with armed police, seen by this correspondent, are also now for the first time in history venturing down the Mekong River, almost as far as the riverine junction where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet. That may not be perceived as a major threat to the region, but it is nevertheless a new development that China’s adversaries would be keen to monitor. And while the US has strongly condemned last year’s February 1 coup in Myanmar, China is cozying up to the generals. In August, China transferred US$6 million to Myanmar to be used for projects and programs within Beijing’s Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Framework, seemingly a tiny gesture but important in the broader scheme of things. Then there are the insurgencies inside Myanmar where China maintains close links with the United Wa State Army while its rival, the Restoration Council of Shan State, receives most of its supplies from Thailand.

The new Cold War may not yet be as hot as the previous one sometimes was, but it is clear that the Americans and their Quad and AUKUS allies are building a bulwark against China and that the construction of a new US Consulate General in Chiang Mai is part of that strategy. But we can only wait and see what that means for the region — and especially for troubled and vulnerable Myanmar. There’s still a long way to go before we could see a return to the open confrontations of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. But, once again, Myanmar may well find itself in the midst of a geopolitical storm.

www.irrawaddy.com

New US Diplomatic Complex in Thailand Aimed at China and Myanmar

Huge new US Consulate General in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai gives Washington an intelligence base close to both China and Myanmar.
www.irrawaddy.com www.irrawaddy.com
 
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(TheWire.in, feb01)​

On the First Anniversary of Myanmar's Military Coup, Some Sober Reflections​

It is clear now that India needs to enlarge and expand its options in Myanmar towards a more comprehensive relationship rooted in support of the people, not the Tatmadaw alone.​

by Gautam Mukhopadhaya (former Indian ambassador in Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan)


The first anniversary of the February 1 military ‘coup’ against the National League for Democracy party government in Myanmar is an occasion for sober reflection on the prospects for democracy or continued military rule in the country, the regional and international responses to it, and what it means to Asia and the world, including India.

Put simply and bluntly, the quest of the Myanmar people for a life of opportunity and freedom from military dictatorship briefly realised over the last 60 years for a period of 10 years from 2011 to 2020 over both Union Solidarity and Development Party
and NLD rule, has once again been rudely quelled by brute military force unleashed by the Tatmadaw against its own people.

The international community’s responses, both political and humanitarian, including that of fraternal ASEAN, have been wanting.

Myanmar’s iconic leader and daughter of Independence hero Aung San, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been sentenced to six years in jail on flimsy charges – with other charges that could cumulatively amount to 164 years in prison – pending rulings. Unlike her previous spells of arrest until 2011, this time, she has been dropped as the poster-child of democracy by the international community for her stance on the Rohingya issue, depriving Myanmar of a natural leader around which the international community could rally.


More in External Affairs : Internal situation

Widespread protests and a robust civil disobedience movement against the coup in the initial months have been brutally suppressed and have given way to an armed resistance and a variety of People’s Defence Forces in urban centres and the countryside in many parts of the country some hitherto peaceful.

These have been embraced and supported by the National Unity Government (NUG) under a National Unity Consultative Committee (NUCC) formed by ousted parliamentarians, activists and some Ethnic Armed Organisations that have proclaimed a new Democracy Charter for Myanmar as a Federal Democratic Union. The NUG has been functioning as a shadow government, but has not been able to establish any headquarters of its own inside Myanmar or been recognised internationally, and been handicapped by the absence of a strong leader like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or an alternative.

According to the Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners, nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed by the military, and close to 12,000 interned, with many traumatised or tortured. Nearly 2,000 more are ‘wanted’. A military tribunal has also handed death sentences to two prominent opposition activists, Ko ‘Jimmy’ an 88 Generation student leader for incitement on social media, and an NLD legislator and hip-hop artist, Phyo Zayar Thaw on terrorist charges adding to more than 70 earlier.

Crackdowns on the internet and telecommunications continue.

Yet, while large scale protests have been subdued, daily ambushes, skirmishes, bomb blasts, IEDs, assassinations and attacks on military or government installations by rebels have risen, according to NUG tabulations, to nearly 1,000 incidents a month, while the Tatmadaw have resorted to punitive missions and, increasingly, aerial attacks, arson (including at least two gruesome cases of burning of civilians alive), and gross human rights violations in the Bamar heartland as well as ethnic areas.

Some of the worst affected areas are in Bamar-dominated Sagaing and Magwe Regions and the ethnic Chin state in western Myanmar towards the Indian border, where senior military officials from the State Administration Council admit losing control over several townships.

Air and artillery attacks have also been severe in Kayah and Kayin states. A growing number of Tatmadaw troops and officers have been killed, while others have fled or joined the rebels. Silent nationwide strikes, like one held after one such incident on December 10, reveal the depth of popular revulsion against the regime. Another is scheduled for February 1, today, to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup.

Clearly, the Myanmar Army has bitten more than it can chew. Meanwhile, hearings on charges of genocide against the Rohingya by the Myanmar Army filed by The Gambia on behalf of the OIC that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi defended at the International Criminal Court in 2019, are coming up for hearing in The Hague in February.

All this is already having an impact in India’s northeast. Some of the worst army offensives have been against rebel camps around Mt. Victoria and the Chin towns of Mindat, Tlantlang and Matupi sending waves of refugees into nearby Mizoram where their numbers are said to have reached ‘several thousands’ lodged in temporary camps sustained largely by the Mizoram government and Mizo civil society groups.

Taking advantage of the instability, there has been a perceptible increase in insurgent activity and drugs and arms smuggling, one of which resulted in an ambush killing an Assam Rifles commander in southern Manipur in November that has angered the government of India. Intelligence on insurgent movements was also likely behind the botched military operation in Oting in Mon district, Nagaland, that eventually resulted in the killing of over a dozen innocent Naga civilians.

More recently, a large consignment of explosives and detonators was apprehended by the Assam Rifles in Mizoram, likely bound for Myanmar. There have been reports of PLA cadres being used by the Tatmadaw against Myanmar’s People’s Defence Force along the India-Myanmar border, and a fresh report in TheIrrawaddy of an attack by a Chin National Army unit against a PLA ‘Headquarter’ south of Tamu, attributed by one report to the Indian Army, but denied, marking an intriguing twist to cross-border spillovers of military operations by both sides in Myanmar that could have wider repercussions.

Given the overwhelming military advantage of the Tatmadaw, their willingness to use lethal force, the lack of a charismatic national leader in the absence of the incarcerated Aung San Suu Kyi, a chronic mistrust between ethnic and Bamar-centric political parties including the NLD and NUG, and a poor tradition of unity and coordination amongst rebel forces and EAOs that have been fighting their separate wars over 70 years, it seems unlikely that the resistance, peaceful or armed, will be able to overthrow or replace the Tatmadaw in the short or medium term.


Having demolished national democratic institutions since the 1960s and staked it claim as the only institution capable of holding the country together, the NUG will also have to prove that it can hold the country together democratically.

The effects of the coup, civil disobedience, food inflation, a 60% depreciation of the currency, kyat, refusal to pay electricity bills and taxes, boycott of military produced goods, and swelling import bills, together with COVID-19, have battered the economy which, according to some estimates, has shrunk 30% since the beginning of the coup. Public services, especially health but also education, have collapsed. A total collapse of the Tatmadaw, though unlikely, is also not desirable, as it could trigger anarchy and Chinese opportunism.

At the same time, faced with a plucky and tenacious revolt against the hated Tatmadaw (a term of respect that ordinary Myanmar have dropped in favour of ‘terrorists’), the prospects of the Tatmadaw who consider democracy as a euphemism for anarchy and disintegration of the Union, being able to ‘stabilise’ and impose their version of ‘order’ in Myanmar too look dim.

There has also been a marked improvement in coordination and cooperation among some ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and PDFs this time with serious clashes between the Tatmadaw and EAOs like the Karenni National Progressive Party and the Karen National Union or Karen National Liberation Army in the east near Thailand, and Chin PDFs along the Mizoram border while other long term insurgencies like that of the Kachin, Shan, Kokaing and Ta’ang National Liberation Army continue to fester, and a few still abide by the 2015 National Ceasefire Agreement or watch and wait.

In Rakhine State, close to borders of Bangladesh and India, the potent Arakan Army is seemingly using a tactical ceasefire with the Tatmadaw to consolidate themselves politically and administratively and go their own way. Internecine conflicts and fissiparous tendencies are also beginning to rear their heads at places. In the north-east of Myanmar in the Chinese sphere of influence in Shan State, there are reports of clashes involving rival EAOs like the Wa and Restoration Council of Shan State.

Taken together, Myanmar seems set for a spell of prolonged instability. The cumulative effect of all this is a massive displacement and humanitarian crisis adding another estimated 320,000 to a similar number affected earlier. The possibility of the emergence of de facto independent ‘statelets’ along the periphery of Myanmar to the east and west, some covertly encouraged by China in its own interest, and a full-fledged insurgency in the Bamar heartland led by Bamar PDFs cannot be ruled out. The sheer multitude of PDFs all over the country too pose a problem for the unity of the armed resistance.


Politically, with the emergency originally proclaimed for one year, since extended to two, and multi-party elections earlier scheduled for 2022, now pushed to August 2023, it is clear that the Tatmadaw realise that their original game plan is not going according to script. Yet it lacks the political imagination and flexibility to come up with anything other than failed tactics of outlawing the NLD, trying to cobble together a coalition of loyalist parties led by the Union Solidarity and Development Party
that can get the quorum necessary to form a ‘civilian’ government minus the NLD with the help of the 25% of military MPs nominated by the Tatmadaw under the 2008 Constitution, or negotiating some modus vivendi with hostile EAOs with the help of China in order to concentrate on restoring order in the heartland as it has done in the past.

None of these are likely to work this time resulting in further prolongation of military rule or fresh crises in 2023 that could pose a challenge to the the leadership of Min Aung Hlaing within the Myanmar Army. The junta’s desperation for legitimacy may be seen in the latter’s strenuous efforts to court the Sangha (Buddhist monks) and even the Catholic Church, and Min Aung Hlaing’s efforts to project himself in civilian attire as ‘Prime Minister’.


Diplomacy

On the diplomatic plane, the international community has perhaps wisely left a resolution to the crisis to the ASEAN respecting its ‘centrality’ over an issue concerning a member, but the five-point ASEAN Consensus of April 2021 has not made any headway in the face the Tatmadaw’s insincerity, obduracy and refusal to end violence or let the ASEAN Special Envoy or anyone else meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.


Informal, behind the scenes efforts by China to make things easier for the military junta, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s more formal but cavalier initiative to visit Myanmar and rehabilitate the junta earlier this year to ostensibly advance a process, as also more unofficial contacts by the US and Japan to engage the Tatmadaw for specific ends, may have conveyed a false impression it was a matter of time that the world would to do business with the Tatmadaw (as it has with the Taliban in Afghanistan).

But Hun Sen’s initiative has hit a reality check from the junta and opposition in Myanmar, and within the ASEAN. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing used the visit to project his own five-point initiative for Myanmar reiterating the Tatmadaw’s rationale for the coup during the former’s visit to Myanmar, virtually mocking that of the ASEAN, and prioritising a peace process with the EAOs, making it clear that the Tatmadaw is not ready for any kind of reconciliation with the chief democratic opposition inside Myanmar.

Within ASEAN, Indonesia and Malaysia amongst others, have pushed back, forcing Hun Sen to accept that a summit-level participation was not possible unless there was progress on the Five Point Consensus. These have been reinforced by a hardening of sanctions by the US, and a recent decision of oil majors Total, Chevron and most lately, Woodside, to pull out of their stakes in the oil and gas sector in Myanmar, following that of Telenor in the telecom sector.

It has also led to calls by the NUG as well as international human rights organisations to expand western sanctions so far targeted mainly at regime leaders, military businesses and the Ministries of Defence and Interior, to cover the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) also.


Nor, despite possible appearances to the contrary, is China helping either a reconciliation process internally or Myanmar’s greater acceptability to the world at large so as to preserve its leverage over the Generals. It would limit Myanmar’s opening to its allies and the ASEAN at best (while dividing it in the process to its advantage elsewhere), and not want a return to the USDP opening to the world from 2011-15 when it was kept off balance by the re-entry of the US, Europe and East Asia into Myanmar.

As in the past, it has used the Tatmadaw (and Myanmar’s) discomfiture over its relations with the West over issues ranging from human rights, the Rohingyas and now the coup, to extract strategic and economic concessions from the government.

China’s renewed push for its BRI projects in Myanmar towards the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, and its gift of a Ming class diesel submarine to Myanmar just two days after the Chinese Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Myanmar in December 2021, effectively offsetting the gift of an Indian submarine to Myanmar in 2019 (with hindsight, probably the main reason for the timing of the visit), are clear signs that the regime is weaker than it looks under internal pressure, and willing to concede more to China than it has in the past.

Attacks against Chinese factories in Yangon in the early stages of the protests, and more recently against a Chinese owned nickel mine in Sagaing and an off-take station for its oil pipeline in Mandalay Region, are only likely to lead to Chinese demands to securitise their investments in Myanmar (such as laying mines in public lands around key oil and gas installations in Hsipaw in Shan state). Significantly, the Chinese have also turned to the NUG to ensure that Chinese projects and interests are not harmed.


Implications and options for India

These trends should give India cause for concern.

Ever since India’s overt support for the 1988 pro-democracy agitation in Myanmar backfired with the Tatmadaw suppressing the movement and reimposing its authority over Myanmar, India’s policy towards Myanmar has been predicated on dealing with the government in power in Myanmar for its most tangible security and strategic interests (embodied in its Look East and Act East policies) while continuing its support for democracy in principle. To some extent this is part of a secular trend in favour of greater reliance on the security state over democratic aspirations after its bitter experience with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the suppression of the pro-democracy agitation in Myanmar in the late 1980s.


Nevertheless, although Myanmar’s cooperation with India on border security has been partial, episodic and far from consistent at the best of times – the Tatmadaw has, for example, never expelled Indian insurgent groups of IIGs from its territory as have Bhutan and Bangladesh in the past, and the latter have not been above using IIGs for its own interests when it has suited it including since the coup. This dual strategy worked well enough as long as the Tatmadaw and USDP were in control until 2015, and through the period of strained NLD-military ‘co-habitation’ from 2015-2020, when both sides largely functioned within the parameters of the 2008 military-drafted constitution.

That contrived mutual arrangement has now totally broken down and is unlikely to be resurrected or restored. Whatever eventually emerges as a stable order out of the coup, it will not be the old order. India now faces challenges in Myanmar both from the point of view of its desire to consolidate Myanmar’s democratic opening to rebuild a full-fledged political, economic, security, people-to-people and strategic relationship commensurate with their past ties that requires a friendly Myanmar government at peace with itself; and its narrower security interests relating to the activities of IIGs based in Myanmar in the northeast, and China, that needs a friendly Tatmadaw capable of preserving Myanmar’s independence and keeping it together, and willing to cooperate with India on its borders.

India will now have to question how far a Tatmadaw that is at war with its own people, plays ducks and drakes with IIGs at the India-Myanmar border or has little control over them, and is prone to Chinese blandishments, can be relied upon for its security.

Too narrow a focus on selfish security, strategic or economic interests at the expense of popular sentiment, as China is doing, would be counterproductive. This is not a moral argument to put values over interests though that too is valid; but simply a ‘realist’ recognition that there are times when ones interests are better guaranteed by a popular movement than an oppressive state, and that we may be stuck in a policy reflex that is just not valid any more in Myanmar.

So far, while India has paid lip service to democracy in Myanmar, it has not really taken any serious political initiatives.

Like the rest of the world, it too has left a resolution to the ASEAN. But ASEAN has its own limitations imposed by its consensus principle and the wariness of many of its members towards pro-democracy sentiments. With a live insurgency along its borders, thousands of refugees from the same Chin stock in nearby Mizoram where they enjoy public sympathy and solidarity, Indian insurgents groups getting more active, and the recent detection of a large consignment of explosives in Mizoram likely meant for Myanmar, it seems clear that India cannot stay aloof from developments in Myanmar for too long.


The Foreign Secretary’s December visit to Myanmar was perhaps a welcome first step in this direction. This should be built upon both bilaterally and within a regional framework. By itself, India does not have the clout to influence the Tatmadaw which will resist any change towards the people’s will tooth and nail. Yet there is no option for Myanmar but to reverse course and return to a more open, democratic framework where the youth of Myanmar has a future, the international community can play a rightful role and Myanmar has greater options.

It is therefore time to enlarge reach out to ousted parliamentarians, NUG and NUCC representatives, ethnic parties and EAOs, and civil society activists grouped under the CDMs etc. with a view to moving the Tatmadaw and the opposition to a dialogue to restore democracy however difficult it may seem at present.

India can also use the enormous soft power as a provider of education to Myanmar youth at this juncture that could constitute its political capital in a changing future as it has done in Afghanistan.

Regionally, strategic rivalry, competing interests and lack of trust may preclude a close bilateral working relationship with China on Myanmar but India could work with China in a larger Asian framework. Despite its limitations, ASEAN remains the key player though there is a discrepancy between the extent to which India is directly affected by the situation as an immediate neighbour, and its status in ASEAN as a dialogue partner. India could however step up consultations with Thailand and Bangladesh as two most affected immediate neighbours. Within ASEAN, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam are natural interlocutors.

In the wider region, Japan which has both historical and economic influence in Myanmar and we have a strategic relationship with, and Republic of Korea, a new economic player, can help shape outcomes. India could also work with the new UNSR, Noeleen Heyzer who has indicated that she would involve Myanmar’s neighbours and the wider region in a ‘Myanmar-led’ strategy reflecting ‘the will of the people’ with a ‘humanitarian plus’ approach leading towards an inclusive political solution and elections in the medium term, that has evoked the interest of the opposition but not the military regime that has traditionally been suspicious of the UN.

As a member of the Quad, India will also have to manage its relationship with Russia which has played its Indo-Pacific card with its open military support for the Tatmadaw. Whatever the approach, India would do well to steer clear of any approach that could fall into a new Cold War rivalry involving the US on the one side and China, Russia and the Tatmadaw on the other. That would be a recipe for a failure.

India has a vested interest in a united, strong, stable and prosperous Myanmar that can be a buffer and bridge between India and China, and a launching pad for India’s terrestrial outreach towards the Greater Mekong Sub-region of South East Asia and the Indo-Pacific that can enhance options for the region.

A security-first policy predicated on the Tatmadaw worked so long the Tatmadaw was in control of the country. That is no longer the case. The 2008 constitution has reached a dead end as has the Tatmadaw strategy of total war against its people.

India needs to enlarge and expand its options in Myanmar towards a more comprehensive relationship rooted in the support of the people, not the Tatmadaw alone. This requires a new approach that would wait or work for a reformed Tatmadaw under a new democratic-minded military leadership as an institution that can play its role in the unity and integrity of the country within a much more accommodating federal democratic union that the people of Myanmar are moving towards. India should help that process.

Gautam Mukhopadhaya is a former Indian ambassador to Myanmar.

m.thewire.in

On the First Anniversary of Myanmar's Military Coup, Some Sober Reflections

It is clear now that India needs to enlarge and expand its options in Myanmar towards a more comprehensive relationship rooted in support of the people, not the Tatmadaw alone.
m.thewire.in m.thewire.in
 

Asean bars Myanmar, India talks​

Foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra visited Myanmar over the last two days in a continuation of India’s stated policy of charting its own course in dealing with Naypyidaw, days after the Asean blocked the participation of Myanmar’s military junta chief at the summit in Cambodia to signal disappointment over continuing violence.

During his meetings with the senior leadership of Myanmar, the foreign secretary discussed maintenance of security and stability in the border areas of India and Myanmar, raised human trafficking by international crime syndicates in the Myawaddy area of Myanmar in which many Indian nationals had been held hostage after fake job promises, and reviewed bilateral development cooperation projects, the external affairs ministry said in a statement.

Kwatra expressed India’s continued support to people-centric socio-economic developmental projects, including those along the India-Myanmar border areas, as well as New Delhi’s commitment towards expeditious implementation of ongoing connectivity initiatives such as the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project and the Trilateral Highway.

He reiterated India’s commitment to continue with the projects under the Rakhine State Development Programme and the Border Area Development Programme.

Rakhine State is the western province of Myanmar from where the Rohingyas have been displaced following the fighting between the Arakan Army and the Myanmar Armed Forces.

The readout about the two-day visit issued by the Myanmar foreign ministry said the two sides discussed promoting cooperation in trade, investment and ongoing development projects besides strengthening closer collaboration in regional and multilateral contexts including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the United Nations.

Myanmar was designated as a dialogue partner of the SCO along with the UAE, Kuwait, the Maldives and Bahrain at the summit meeting of the grouping in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September.

While the readout made no mention of India raising the issue of restoration of democracy in Myanmar and release of political detainees — as Kwatra’s predecessor Harsh Vardhan Shringla had done last year on a similar working visit to Naypyidaw — external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi had on Monday tweeted that the foreign secretary had discussed “India’s support to democratic transition in Myanmar” during the bilateral engagement.

Since the coup d’etat in Myanmar on February 1, 2021, India has opted to chart its own course with regard to dealing with the military junta, refusing to support sanctions against the country and continuing with its engagement.

India’s contention is that “as an immediate land-border neighbour, we have some very specific concerns on Myanmar which also guides our thinking”.
www.telegraphindia.com

Asean bars Myanmar, India talks

Foreign secretary Kwatra expresses India’s continued support to people-centric socio-economic developmental projects, including those along the India-Myanmar border areas
www.telegraphindia.com www.telegraphindia.com
 
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