Cracks in the Junta

The Burmese junta is probably the second most repugnant regime in Asia after the slave state of North Korea. Burma is ruled by a band of aloof generals who recently moved the capital from the biggest city, Yangon, to an artificial one as if to emphasize their estrangement from the people. I had the privilege of visiting this beautiful country five years ago. I call it Burma and not Myanmar because the latter name was introduced by the junta in a campaign of cultural homogenization. “Burma” is a relic of British colonialism, so pick your poison.

Back to the dawn of 2005: My family had tried unsuccessfully to book a trip to Phuket for New Year’s. Fate spared us when a giant wave ripped up the coastline and left a thousand tourists dead there. We were instead airborne on our way to Burma when the tsunami hit. At our hotel in Yangon came rumors that several Burmese had died in the wave. No one knew how many or where exactly because the country has no press. The junta has you, in life and in death.

While the rest of Southeast Asia held its breath for the tsunami postmortem, Burma slept in the junta’s steel embrace. It was a kingdom of muted monks, frail farmers, and hushed hawkers. The regime seemed to have the order it sought. I am not sure I saw a policeman, soldier, or any other authority in my ten days in Burma. Billboards were the thought police. One read:

“People’s Desire:
OPPOSE THOSE RELYING ON EXTERNAL ELEMENTS, ACTING AS STOOGES, HOLDING NEGATIVE VIEWS
OPPOSE THOSE TRYING TO JEOPARDIZE THE STABILITY OF THE STATE AND THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION
CRUSH ALL INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ELEMENTS AS THE COMMON ENEMY.”

Burma’s is a drowsy, stifled hinterland. The economic malpractice of the junta keeps poverty at a suffocating level. Little in the way of commerce flows through those dirt roads. And while the hinterland lies motionless, civil war flares on Burma’s frayed edges. The Shan states have been unruly subjects of the junta for decades. Most of the rebel encampments are across the border with Thailand as the Burmese military brutalizes its own landscape.

It is a whole lot of misery against a breathtaking backdrop. A bleeding sun scales the pagodas to kiss the bald heads of monks on their way to work. Lithe old fishermen bow to the current as they comb the depths of Inle Lake for their next catch. Clouds of ash drift above treetops as supper is prepared and the sun scars the sky in descent.


Aung Aan Suu Kyi is Burma personified. She has been imprisoned in her own house since winning election twenty years ago. She is worth much more than a bumper sticker for Westerners who read about her in the paper. Rather than flee the country, she suffered alongside her people as the junta’s squeeze tightened. The legitimacy gap between the kleptocrats who rule the country and the dissident who holds its soul is screaming for international attention. China, the Burmese regime’s principal benefactor, has been largely silent in the face of this suffering. The junta’s heavy-handedness is all too familiar to Beijing. The United States, meanwhile, has been principled but ineffective in not engaging the Burmese generals. Sanctions have failed to bring the country out of isolation.

We have to start exploiting the cracks in the junta, especially those opened up by the regime itself. The New York Times reports of “guarded hope among business people and diplomats” that Burma “may be moving away from years of paranoid authoritarianism and Soviet-style economic management that has left the majority of the country’s 55 million people in dire poverty.” A new constitution may come alive at the end of the year, perhaps followed by the first elections since the one stolen by the junta in 1990.

Other reasons for optimism include some privatization of state-owned factories, the lifting of ownership restrictions on cars, and the way in which Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz was eagerly received by the junta in December. The generals are now interested in reviving a rice industry that they watched drown in a cyclone two years ago.

Any election held while 2,000 potential candidates sit in jail is a sham. But it will mark a diffusion of power that could be a watershed for Burma. This Gorbachev-esque move is why I give the Burmese regime second place to Pyongyang on the list of the most draconian in Asia (some of the “-stans” in Central Asia are a close third). Sadly, despite Kim Jong-Il’s poor health, North Korea isn’t much closer to cracking the way Burma apparently has.