Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (16 page)

It must therefore be emphasized that, while engagement with Myanmar through international participation in aid projects is likely to accelerate in the coming decade, at present many internationally-supported aid projects in conflict-affected areas are still in the early stages. On the macro level, the growing body of data gathered in field work since the mid-1990s has only served to confirm the severity of the humanitarian situation in many areas as well as the depths of socio-economic under-performance that became entrenched during the long decades of war and marginalization. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the result of this long-standing cycle of conflict and impasse is a pattern of “human insecurity” that is especially apparent in three “disparities” in the country: “regional and ethnic”, “rural-urban”, and “gender”.
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In particular, the most worrying statistics in relation to a number of issues, such as treatable or preventable illnesses as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy, come from the ethnic minority borderlands.
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Just a few examples follow. According to UNICEF’s Child Risk Index, most border regions fall “significantly” below the national average in terms of income poverty and access to health care, education, sanitation and safe water supplies.
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The highest levels of child malnutrition (between 40 and 50 per cent) are reported in the Chin, Rakhine, Shan and Karen States and in Tanintharyi Division, ethnic minority areas where it is estimated that just one-third of children complete the four basic years of schooling.
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In the eastern and northern parts of the Shan State, very high maternal mortality rates of over 500 per 100,000 live births have been recorded.
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And in its 2004 survey, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that there were still 260,000 households in Shan State involved in opium cultivation, earning an average of just US$133 per annum, which, in turn, represented 62 per cent of an average annual income nation-wide of only US$214.
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Given this background, it is notable just how much has been achieved in several areas since the ceasefires. As with any post-conflict situation, the results are most immediately apparent in areas where long-standing fighting has halted. Visible evidence of the change is seen in the new towns that
since the early 1990s have sprung up in the borderlands, towns such as Laiza, Pangkham and Mongla, for example. Immunization programmes by international agencies in the Wa and Kachin hills have resulted in significant improvements in life expectancy and the health of children;
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since 1996, crop substitution programmes supported by the UNODC have seen a cumulative reduction of 73 per cent in areas of the Shan State under illicit opium cultivation, with the total crop down to an estimated 370 metric tons in 2004;
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and in one innovative conservation measure, the world’s largest tiger reserve has been established, with the help of the Wildlife Conservation Society, in the former conflict-zone around the Hukawng Valley, near Myanmar’s borders with China and India.
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Among the local ceasefire and community-based organizations, particular attention has been given to training and education programmes, such as those organized by the Mon Women’s Organization in Mon State; Farmer Field Schools, such as at Sadung in Kachin State and at Nong Hkam in the Pao National Organization area of Shan State; and health and teacher-training programmes supported by the Kachin Independence Organization in various locations in the country’s far north. During the 2002–03 school year, for example, the New Mon State Party was reported to have administered 187 Mon national schools, with over 50,000 pupils.
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Similarly, students from the PNO ceasefire area today have access to seventeen government high schools, three of which have been opened in PNO territory since the 1991 ceasefire. In the Pao region, too, farming and business projects have noticeably accelerated, in areas from agriculture to natural resource mining and tourism, as many displaced persons have resettled on their lands. But according to the PNO’s veteran chairman, Aung Kham Hti: “The real success of peace is not in trade. Anyone can dig a piece of jade. The real progress has been in the health and education to improve the status of the people.”
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In the success of such grass-roots approaches (which have sometimes involved both governmental and non-governmental actors), the role played by local community-based organizations has often been vital. In Myanmar, such religious-based organizations as the Myanmar Council of Churches and the Catholic Bishops Conference have long experience of aid and development work, and have international linkages as well. Among ethnic minority peoples, too, local Culture and Literature Associations have historically been active. But in a new development since the ceasefires, a number of indigenous NGOs have also been established, such as the
Metta Development Foundation, Shalom Peace Foundation, and Karen Development Committee, which reflect new attempts at revitalizing communities that are recovering from conflict.

Such energy has not been confined to post-ceasefire areas but is indicative, many aid workers believe, of gradual changes that have occurred in the country at large during the past decade. Indeed a recent unpublished survey by one international NGO estimates that the past decade has witnessed the most rapid expansion of community-based organizations in Myanmar’s history. By 2003, there were over sixty indigenous NGOs with offices in Yangon alone. In such activities, some observers see the revival of civil society, without which peace and democratic reforms in the country are unlikely to be sustainable.
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However, one needs to take care not to run too far ahead in such theoretical analyses. As one senior religious leader admitted at a recent seminar on civil society in Myanmar: “It is an immense challenge ahead of us and we have barely understood some of the terms and concepts used by the UN and other NGOs.”

In summary, it remains important not to underestimate the scale of the difficulties that Myanmar still faces in relation to socio-political transition. The socially-based trends manifested in ethnic and ceasefire politics over the past fifteen years do highlight a determination to meet humanitarian needs and address the failures of the past in new ways. Experience to date has confirmed what can be achieved with good will and without the backdrop of war, but the sustainability of many initiatives has yet to be demonstrated, and there remain many questions about the effectiveness of public health and educational outreach, and about the future integration of planning and services.

Meanwhile time is passing, and some influential ethnic minority leaders fear that such continuing issues as poverty, the burgeoning epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and exploitative activities by powerful vested interests (including uncontrolled logging and a corrosive culture of corruption and local rent-seeking) threaten to produce a new generation of grievances, unless movement towards sustainable and accountable transition speeds up — and soon.
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Indeed, to take one example, UN officials privately estimate that as many as 60,000 people out of a population of 200,000 have moved out of the Kokang ceasefire region after an opium ban was enforced in 2003, due to the lack of food and alternative sources of income. As a result, the adjoining Wa region and nearby territories in Shan State, which are among the poorest areas in
Asia, could be facing an even greater humanitarian crisis when a similar ban is introduced in 2005.

Finally, no picture of the present situation would be complete without emphasizing that around the edges of the ceasefire regions remain areas where conflict has not ended, especially in the areas along the border with Thailand and along the northwest frontiers with India and Bangladesh. From all these areas, reports continue of intermittent fighting, village relocations, forced labour and other human rights abuses, including the indiscriminate use of land-mines and the conscription of child soldiers, in which all sides have been complicit. A litany of human rights violations, “especially in ethnic minority areas affected by counter-insurgency operations”, was again repeated by Paolo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN special rapporteur on human rights to Myanmar, in October 2004.
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Particular abuses he singled out for condemnation included violations of “economic, social and cultural rights” as well as sexual violence, and threats to life and the most fundamental human rights.

The most visible evidence of continuing conflict in Myanmar is the more than 140,000 ethnic-minority refugees in official camps along the Thai border, but the true number of those fleeing conflict (especially ethnic Shans) is estimated by international aid workers to be considerably higher. In 2004, for example, 905,881 “illegal migrants” from Myanmar took the opportunity of changes in Thai immigration policy to register themselves legally for work.
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But this is only the external face of crisis. Inside Myanmar, the Global Internally Displaced Persons Project estimates that more than half a million people are either in relocation settlements or displaced in the hills.
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Meanwhile, in the ceasefire areas many communities continue to suffer the long-term socio-economic consequences of earlier displacement.

Thus in early 2004, as the SPDC’s road map approached its first hurdle, speculation was high as to whether the National Convention would finally mark the inception of a process towards the end-goal that many parties had long been awaiting — that of political reform. Across the country, the political landscape remained divided, but it was the hoped-for potential for a new beginning that encouraged the KNU to resume peace talks. Indeed government officials told KNU delegates that while a formal ceasefire could not be arranged in time for the KNU to attend the first stages of the National Convention, this would be possible later. Moreover, fuelling hopes in many domestic and international quarters was the growing expectation (encouraged by some government officials) that
restrictions on the NLD and other electoral parties would be lifted, thus permitting them to organize and attend the National Convention.

Certainly, after over a decade of ceasefires, many ethnic nationality leaders were focusing on this moment. Many believed that the advance of peace in the ethnic-minority areas over the past decade had helped to provide an essential ingredient of inclusiveness that had been missing in earlier periods of crisis and change. Compromise and political solutions, they reasoned, could now be sought and found. This perspective was summarized by the PNO chairman, Aung Kham Hti: “We have seen the achievement of peace. In this way, the situation in the whole country can become stable. This is not just for the Pao. We must think of all the peoples. Therefore we want the National Convention to succeed and the whole road map to follow through.”
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At the end of 2004, it remains difficult to reach definitive conclusions. As during other critical times in Myanmar’s political history, the current landscape is still one of complexity. 2004 saw a succession of rapidly-unfolding events that may not yet have ended. Moreover, while the country remains in a state of supposed transition, it is salutary to recognize that the present incarnation of military-dominated government, in the form of the SLORC-SPDC, has endured longer than the fifteen years of the parliamentary era between 1948 and 1962. The central dilemmas about reform remain. Experience warns that unless political processes are inclusive and a new constitution is drawn up through agreements that have both popular and legitimate support, it is likely that a new cycle of problems will only be stored up for the country to face in the future. This remains the cautionary view of the United Nations which, while continuing to see the SPDC’s road map as a process that could bring peace and reform to the country, has repeatedly urged that the National Convention, and a future referendum or elections, must be open to representative parties, witness the release of all political prisoners, and be free from restrictions.
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On this basis, it must be said as an initial observation that the road map and the National Convention have proceeded so far without the participation of the NLD and several other parties that won seats in the 1990 general election, while the question of concluding a formal ceasefire with the KNU and other remaining non-ceasefire groups appears to have been put on hold by the SPDC. In addition, doubts about procedures and
continuity have been raised in recent months by the unexpected removal of the prime minister and Military Intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, along with several other senior officials who had been associated with the public face of the government since the late 1980s.

This has led to intensive domestic and international speculation about future changes in SPDC policy, whether for personal or political reasons. Many analysts believe there will be changes. But as of mid-November 2004, it can be noted that the rising group of new senior officers in the military government, including Generals Shwe Mann, Soe Win, and Thein Sein, have to date insisted that both the road map and ethnic ceasefires are on course as before. This is a message that they have personally taken to a series of ongoing meetings with different organizations, business groups, and ethnic ceasefire parties around the country. In turn, many ceasefire leaders have reiterated their commitment to continuing with both the ceasefires and the National Convention, despite predictions in the international media that both processes could be in for a very unsettled time.
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In response to these doubts, ethnic veterans privately point out that they have seen many crises before, and, at this time of potential constitutional change, their commitment to putting political ideas into the reform process is unwavering, as long as the opportunities for peaceful reform exist.
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Too many years of hardship and struggle have been invested for them to change course precipitately at the first sign of uncertainty. Such a view is also shared by the KNU, whose leaders say that, despite the October 2004 interruption in talks, they still intend to explore the possibility of peace at this time. “It’s better to keep talking. Both sides are playing a political game now,” commented Colonel Ner Dah, the son of General Bo Mya, in a recent interview.
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