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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Massive particle collider passes first key tests
Massive particle collider passes first key tests
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago
GENEVA - The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.
Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing and competing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite.
Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.
Physicists around the world now have much greater power to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure.
"Well done, everybody," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled scientists in the collider's control room at the Swiss-French border.
The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier, with the first beam injection at 9:35 a.m. (0735 GMT).
Eventually two beams will be fired at the same time in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.
"My first thought was relief," said Evans, who has been working on the project since its inception in 1984. "This is a machine of enormous complexity. Things can go wrong at any time. But this morning has been a great start."
He didn't want to set a date, but said that he expected scientists would be able to conduct collisions for their experiments "within a few months."
The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.
Scientists hope to eventually send two beams of protons through two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few protons will collide. The collider's two largest detectors — essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons — are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
The supercooled magnets that guide the proton beam heated slightly in the morning's first test, leading to a pause to recool them before trying the opposite direction.
The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
"It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN.
CERN was backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking , who declared the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.
Nothing of the sort occurred Wednesday, though the accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.
The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed US$531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.
Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC.
The complexity of manufacturing it required groundbreaking advances in the use of supercooled, superconducting equipment. The 2001 start and 2005 completion dates were pushed back by two years each, and the cost of the construction was 25 percent higher than originally budgeted in 1996, Luciano Maiani, who was CERN director-general at the time, told The Associated Press.
Maiani and the other three living former directors-general attended the launch Wednesday.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.
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On the Net:
CERN: http://www.cern.ch
The U.S. at the LHC: http://www.uslhc.us/
US concerned about welfare of Suu Kyi
US concerned about welfare of Suu Kyi
Web www.bangkokpost.com
Washington (dpa) - The United States expressed concern Tuesday about the health of Burma's leading democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who reportedly began a hunger strike last month to protest years of detention.
"The regime's continued isolation and detention under house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi makes it impossible to confirm reports such as these," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"The United States and the international community remain deeply concerned about her welfare."
McCormack called for the immediate release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners held by the military regime.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been held under house arrest since May 2003. Her National League for Democracy party issued a statement Sunday announcing that she began refusing food three weeks earlier.
The Veto Point»
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UN BUILDING 1
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/the_veto_point.php
Sep 9th, 2008 at 9:17 am
The Veto Point»
Adam Kushner has an interesting interview with Randy Scheuneman in Newsweek in which Scheunemann gets at an important issue:
[The UN is] an important organization that does some things well, but in addressing certain issues it doesn’t do well. If you look at Bosnia, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Burma—because of the veto power of Russia and China, the U.N. would be incapable of taking effective action in places where Russia or China see their interest in protecting the world’s most odious regime. That’s why McCain has called for a league of democracies.
There are a few things to observe here. One, even though people say this all the time, it’s not actually the case that it was impossible to secure U.N. authorization for military action in Bosnia. The Clinton administration sought, received, and used such authority though the mission was operationally undertaken by NATO rather than under UN administrative auspices. But the point about the veto is well-taken. The UN Security Council mechanism by design prevents any country from taking action that is deemed contrary to the vital interests of the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, or France. This causes some very real problems. It’s important to note, however, that it’s a completely two way street and, historically, the U.S. does more vetoing than any other country. I think it would make a lot of sense for the United States to propose shifting the Security Council from a unanimity rule to some kind of qualified majority rule. But what Scheunemann seems to be contemplating (a world in which the US does get to protect its vital interests, but Russia and China don’t) is going to be a non-starter in Moscow and Beijing for obvious reasons.
It’s a framework for new great power conflict. And, of course, it’s not going to actually stop Russia and China from trying to advance their interests. If the U.S. were to try to invade Burma in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition, in the context of new great power tensions, you’d just wind up with a bloody proxy conflict not with vast new humanitarian benefits. The problem, at the end of the day, is with the underlying pattern of facts — SLORC is terrible, Burma is close to China, China sees defending Burma’s sovereignty as important, and China is a big and important country these days. Given those facts, there’s no great procedural fix no matter what you do with the UN Security Council. But the Security Council mechanism, as currently operating, has a lot of value in other domains that would be lost if we cast it aside in pursuit of a fantasy that doing so would somehow allow us to completely brush off opposition of other major countries to certain proposed military adventures.
A Chilling War Of Words At The UN
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/09/a-chilling-war.html
A Chilling War Of Words At The UN
By Cernig
Yes, I know everyone wants to talk about (and read about) Sarah Palin, but meanwhile there's actually some serious stuff going on in the world.
For instance:
Russia's U.N. envoy asked the Security Council on Tuesday to impose an arms embargo on Georgia, which Russia invaded last month to stop Tbilisi from retaking a Kremlin-backed separatist enclave.
Washington quickly dismissed the Russian draft resolution as a ploy to divert attention from the fact Moscow had yet to pull out of Georgian territory outside two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as promised in a French-brokered cease-fire agreement signed last month.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin submitted the draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council. The text calls for countries to implement measures that would ban the sale of all "arms or military equipment" to Georgia, as well as any military "assistance, consultations or training."
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the council, Churkin acknowledged that that the United States, which helped modernize Georgia's military and backs Tbilisi's aspirations to join the NATO military alliance, might put up strong resistance to the resolution.
Gee, ya thunk? It's a purely political manouver, making a statement about involvement in Russia's backyard, and Russia doubtless expects the US and others to veto any resolution that might emerge. It's a as political a statement as Russia sending a fleet to Venezuela for manouvers - something that will tax Russian naval readiness to the utmost but is designed purely to say "hey, how do you like another major power playing in your backyard pool, huh?"
(And oh, by the way, while the US was sending Cheney to posture in Georgia, the Europeans were doing it by themselves, with Sarkozy brokering a deal for actual Russian withdrawal from Georgian territory outside the disputed regions.)
But this is just another symptom of a new combatative style of rhetoric at the UN.
Judging by the recent deadlock in the Security Council -- over Kosovo, Iran, Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe, Sudan and most recently Georgia -- one wonders whether the days of the Cold War are back in vogue. Or perhaps its political rhetoric?
In January last year, a Western-backed and U.S.-led move to castigate the Burmese government for human rights violations suffered a rare double veto, both from China and Russia.
And last month, history repeated itself when these two big powers exercised their vetoes again -- this time to stall a resolution aimed at imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe.
The U.S.-Russian political confrontation in the Security Council has been intensified in recent weeks with the Russian invasion of Georgia, and Moscow's subsequent decision to recognise the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
When U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad sought a response from Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin on whether or not the Russians were bent on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia, Churkin said he had already provided an answer to the question.
Maybe, he added rather sarcastically, the U.S. representative had not been listening when Churkin had given his response. "Perhaps he had not had his earpiece on," he added.
And when U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff recently blasted Russia for its perceived violations of international law and the U.N. charter during the invasion of Georgia, Churkin hit back with another dose of sarcasm.
"Did you find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?...And are you still looking for them?" he asked.
Matters haven't become as bad as during the actual Cold War just yet, experts say - but does anyone doubt that with the angry man, John McCain, in control of what would pass for US diplomacy, it wouldn't get worse? He might even make John Bolton his Secretary of State! A McCain presidency would lead to America's allies putting even more distance between themselves and the US and finish off the assault on American prestige that George Bush has so successfully mounted.
Posted at 05:06 PM in Foreign Policy & Affairs | Permalink
Technorati Tags: Bush Administration, Diplomacy, McCain, Pony Plans, Russia, UN, US
Asia's New Nuclear Map
Asia's New Nuclear Map
By MARTIN WALKER,
UPI Editor Emeritus
Published: Sept. 8, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Courtesy Of The: United Press International ( UPI )
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- It is not quite over yet, but the most important strategic development in Asia in this century so far is on the verge of completion.
The weekend decision of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to approve the unprecedented nuclear cooperation deal between the United States and India changes the strategic map of Asia. It also provides President George Bush with a last, critical success that may be seen by historians as the most far-reaching achievement of his presidency.
The Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who must give a final endorsement, may seek to deprive Bush of his triumph. But, given the impressive lobbying and fundraising skills of America's wealthy and well-educated Indian community, they would be ill advised to try. Moreover, the platform of the Democratic Party, as agreed at last month's convention, stresses: "With India, we will build on the close partnership developed over the past decade. As two of the world's great, multiethnic democracies, the U.S. and India are natural strategic allies."
The deal would bring India out of its pariah status as a rogue nuclear power that had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and would allow the country to obtain the nuclear fuels and technology seen as essential to India's soaring energy needs. And in formally joining the nuclear club, without joining the NPT regime, India would maintain the right to keep some of its nuclear reactors for military use out of the international inspection regime and thus gets something close to a free hand for future nuclear development.
By far, the most important feature of the deal is its sealing of the new strategic relationship, which might almost be called an alliance, between the world's largest democracy and its most powerful. The U.S.-Indian relationship, which was cool and sometimes even hostile throughout the Cold War, now joins the existing U.S.-Japanese alliance as the most important strategic relationship in Asia.
For China, which now can see the prospect of encirclement by the United States, India and Japan, this presages a new security environment in Asia, a system of insurance and potential control against China's ambition to become the dominant Asian power. China has only itself to blame for this, with its construction of ports and possible naval bases in Burma and Pakistan that India understandably saw as threatening.
This is the context that explains the angry reaction in Beijing, where the Communist Party's official paper, People's Daily, wrote, "The U.S.-India nuclear agreement has constituted a major blow to the international non-proliferation regime."
This is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. China has done more to destroy the non-proliferation regime than any other country. As former U.S. Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed, who used to be a nuclear weapons lab scientist, has revealed, China gave Pakistan blueprints for a simple uranium atomic bomb in 1982 and later tested a Pakistani version of the weapon in China on May 26, 1990. A declassified State Department memo obtained by the National Security Archive in Washington and since published in The New York Times concluded that China, some time after its first bomb test in 1964, had provided Pakistan with the technology for "fissile material production and possibly also nuclear device design."
"The Chinese nuclear weapons program is incredibly sophisticated," Reed claims. "The scary part is how much Pakistan has learned from them."
The really scary part is what Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, then did with the Chinese technology, building a kind of nuclear technology supermarket whose wares since have been traced to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
By contrast, India has an impeccable record of non-proliferation, although critics of the U.S. deal warn that it establishes a precedent that allows India to develop both civil and military nuclear capabilities without signing the NPT. The implications of this precedent for Iran are significant.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh staked his political career on the deal and on the personal relationship he had forged with Bush. Singh broke the political coalition in India's Parliament on which his power depended to force the deal through, despite the bitter opposition and walkout of his Communist Party allies.
The Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued a bitter statement Saturday, saying:
"The Manmohan Singh government stands thoroughly exposed before the country for compromising India's vital security interests. Proceeding with this deal will mortgage India's sovereignty and make India's civilian nuclear program vulnerable to U.S. blackmail for the next 40 years."
India overcame the opposition within the Nuclear Suppliers Group by promising to maintain its longstanding rules against nuclear proliferation commitments and also to maintain its voluntary moratorium on future nuclear tests. (Modern computer modeling systems make this far less onerous than it sounds.)
The Bush administration, which lobbied hard for the deal during the three-day meeting of the NSG, has also assured Congress that it has the right to block India's supplies of nuclear fuel and energy if it resumes testing. A letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released Friday by committee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., noted, "The fuel supply assurances are not, however, meant to insulate India against the consequences of a nuclear explosive test or a violation of non-proliferation commitments."
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Nuclear Distraction
Nuclear Distraction
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA
September 10, 2008
The U.S.-India civil nuclear deal came one step closer to final approval over the weekend, as the international Nuclear Suppliers Group granted its imprimatur. Yet the controversy over the proposed pact remains as fierce as ever, not least in India. As a result, ironically, it's still possible the deal could end up distracting both sides from the hard work of deepening their relationship.
This is mainly a consequence of how the deal has been oversold by politicians both in New Delhi and in Washington. From the time it was unveiled more than three years ago as an agreement-in-principle, its backers have framed the deal in terms of broader strategic objectives. Supporters in India have argued it will cement U.S.-India ties and facilitate technology transfers in fields beyond commercial nuclear power. Backers in the U.S. have argued the deal will make it easier for Washington to call on India as a counterweight to China's influence, and expand commercial opportunities for Americans.
But none of these claims is entirely realistic. In fact, these arguments merely distort the debate. In India, the nuclear deal has become a flashpoint for partisan debates about India's place in the world and how it should manage its relationship with the U.S. This will make the deal, and possibly the relationship, less stable if power changes hands between parties in a general election in India due at the latest by next April. And it's created unrealistic expectations in Washington.
In short, the hype over the nuclear deal needs to be tempered by certain realities.
First among these is that a durable U.S.-India partnership cannot be built on strategic opportunism, but rather must grow from shared national interests. In coming years, India will increasingly be aligned with the West economically. But strategically it can avail itself of multiple options, even as it moves from nonalignment to a contemporary, globalized strategic framework. In keeping with its long-standing preference for policy independence, India is likely to become multialigned, while tilting more toward the U.S.
Some clarity on this point from the deal's backers in New Delhi might have made it easier to secure support. It would also have helped had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh done what he had repeatedly promised: "build the broadest possible national consensus in favor of the deal." He should not have turned the deal into an openly partisan issue, for it will have to be implemented well after his government's term.
The danger now is that if the opposition wins the national election, it may re-open negotiations on the nuclear deal. That could risk sending the wrong signal about India's general commitment to maintaining positive relations with the U.S., given the significance this particular deal has assumed in that relationship.
The deal's backers in Washington have also been guilty of overselling it, albeit in different ways. On the strategic level, they have argued that the deal will bring India into the U.S. camp as a regional counterweight to China's growing influence. But it appears unlikely that India would allow itself to be used as a foil against an increasingly assertive China, lest Beijing step up military pressure along the long disputed Himalayan frontier and surrogate threats via Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. India, as would any country, will continue to craft policy based on its own interests.
The Bush administration is also going overboard in touting the commercial benefits. As Bush administration letter to Congress, released last week, states, the deal is supposed to help revive the U.S. nuclear-power industry through exports and "access to Indian nuclear infrastructure," allowing "U.S. companies to build reactors more competitively here and in the rest of the world -- not just in India." With its acute shortage of nuclear engineers, the U.S. intends to tap India's vast technical manpower.
But not all of this is entirely realistic, especially expectations that India will be a boom market for U.S. nuclear exports. Even with the deal, nuclear power will continue to play a modest role in India's energy mix. With the proposed import of eight 1,000-megawatt reactors within the next four years, the share of nuclear power in India's electricity generation is unlikely to rise above the current 2.5%.
The Indian economy will probably not get much of a boost from the deal as a result. Furthermore, private investment in nuclear power will be hindered by many factors. The messy terms of the deal itself, with its many eclectic provisions designed to assuage nonproliferation concerns, will still impose many barriers on the transfer of nuclear fuel and technology, and not all of the conditions are even explicitly spelled out. Political uncertainty in India will also remain given the strong partisan opposition. And time is short to ratify the pact in Washington before elections in the U.S. bring in a new Congress and new administration.
The nuclear deal does play a role in bolstering U.S.-India ties (albeit not as much as politicians would have you believe). India has agreed to fully support U.S. nonproliferation initiatives, for example, and to consider participating in U.S.-led multinational military operations. And as a thank-you for the role President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally played in securing the suppliers group's approval, Prime Minister Singh is expected to sign shortly three agreements that U.S. officials say are critical to forge closer bilateral military ties. These will facilitate cooperation on logistical operations, provide for monitoring of the end uses of transferred weapons systems, and enhance communications interoperability. But the two sides could have made progress on all these fronts independent of a civil nuclear deal.
The deal may also benefit ongoing negotiations over sales of military equipment to India. In addition to the orders it recently placed for American maritime reconnaissance aircraft and military transport planes, India -- one of the world's biggest arms importers -- is gearing up to buy other American weapon systems. If Congress ratifies the nuclear deal, America is most likely to clinch the intense international competition to sell India 126 fighter-jets in a $10-billion contract. In this contest, Lockheed Martin has pitched its F-16 against Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
Yet such progress isn't dependent on a civil nuclear deal. Indeed, that may be the greatest danger of the current discussion. Because it has become such a controversial issue, the nuclear deal is threatening to overwhelm the broader dialogue India and the U.S. need to sustain about their relationship. The raging controversy hasn't done anyone any good.
Mr. Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins, 2007).
Myanmar to set up first international-level beans, pulses wholesale center
Myanmar to set up first international-level beans, pulses wholesale center
+ - 21:40, September 09, 2008
Myanmar will set up its first international-level beans and pulses wholesale center in the country in a bid to further penetrate the international market, the local weekly journal Pyi Myanmar reported Tuesday.
The project will be implemented by the biggest business organization -- the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), the report said, adding that the UMFCCI has appealed to the domestic merchants to take part in the move.
Meanwhile, the Myanmar authorities have called for extended cultivation of marketable beans and pulses as a continued effort to maintain the status that such Myanmar crops have earned a good reputation for its quality in local and international market.
Noting that Myanmar beans and pulses have gained a foothold in the international market, the authorities urged boosting export of the crops as well as fetching handsome prices through extensive cultivation of quality strains of crops and use of fertilizers and pesticide.
Myanmar's five divisions and states of Ayeyawaddy, Bago, Sagaing, Mandalay and Magway are extensively growing beans an pulses that are marketable at home and abroad with the latter three divisions growing the crops on a commercial scale.
In addition, large-scale cultivation of soya bean is also being introduced as it is found in demand in the foreign markets, it added.
Merchants trading agricultural crops in Myanmar are also planning to set up special beans, pulses and sesame cultivation zones across the country to develop such crops production and boost export.
Beans and pulses are among the 10 major items of agricultural crops that Myanmar grow. Among them, gram, lablab bean, pigeon pea, butter bean and soya bean are cultivated most in the country.
The export items of beans and pulses cover green gram, pigeon pea, soya bean, cow pea and Myehtaukpe.
Myanmar has become the second largest beans and pulses exporter in the world after Canada and topped beans exporter in Asia with India standing as Myanmar's largest buyer of the crops which accounted for 72 percent of Myanmar's total beans export.
According to figures of the Central Statistical Organization, in 2007-08, Myanmar exported 1.177 million tons of various items of beans and pulses including Matpe, Pedesein, Pesingon, Gram, Sesamum seeds and Niger seeds, earning a total of 670 million U.S. dollars.
Since 1988-89, the cultivated area of beans and pulses has gradually grown year by year, reaching over 3 million hectares so far.
Beans and pulses, like other agricultural crops such as rice, stand as one of the mainstay of the country's economy.
Source:Xinhua
Lifting the Bamboo Curtain
A SHAN REBEL on the Burma-Thailand border. (Photo by NIC Dunlop/Panos Pictures)
As China and India vie for power and influence, Burma has become a strategic battleground. Four Americans with deep ties to this fractured, resource-rich country illuminate its current troubles, and what the U.S. should do to shape its future.
by Robert D. Kaplan
Lifting the Bamboo Curtain
Monsoon clouds crushed the dark, seaweed-green landscape of eastern Burma. Steep hillsides glistened with teak trees, coconut palms, black and ocher mud from the heavy rains, and tall, chaotic grasses. As night came, the buzz saw of cicadas and the pestering croaks of geckos rose through the downpour. Guided by an ethnic Karen rebel with a torchlight attached by bare copper wires to an ancient six-volt battery slung around his neck, I stumbled across three bamboo planks over a fast-moving stream from Thailand into Burma. Any danger came less from Burmese government troops than from those of its democratic neighbor, whose commercial interests have made it a close friend of Burma’s military regime. Said Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej recently: the ruling Burmese generals are “good Buddhists” who like to meditate, and Burma is a country that “lives in peace.” The Thai military has been on the lookout for Karen soldiers, who have been fighting the Burmese government since 1948.
Also see:
Spotlight: Burma
A look back at a 70-page supplement on Burma—covering arts, culture, politics, and more—written mostly by Burmese and published by The Atlantic in 1958.
Fallows on Burma
Recent commentary and photos by James Fallows at jamesfallows.theatlantic.com.
“It ended in Vietnam, in Cambodia. When will it end in Burma?” asked Saw Roe Key, a Karen I met shortly after I crossed the border. He had lost a leg to a Toe Popper antipersonnel mine—the kind that the regime has littered throughout the hills that are home to more than a half- dozen ethnic groups in some stage of revolt. Of the two dozen or so Karens I encountered at an outpost inside Burma, four were missing a leg from a mine. Some wore green camouflage fatigues and were armed with M-16s and AK-47s; most were in T-shirts and traditional skirts, or longyis. Built into a hillside under the forest canopy, the camp was a jumble of wooden-plank huts on stilts roofed with dried teak leaves, with a solar panel and an ingenious water system. Beyond the camp beckoned perfect guerrilla country.
Sawbawh Pah, 50, small and stocky with only a tuft of hair on his scalp, runs a clinic here for wounded soldiers and people uprooted from their homes, of whom there have been 1.5 million in Burma. The Burmese junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), has razed more than 3,000 villages in Karen state alone—one reason TheWashington Post has called Burma a “slow-motion Darfur.” With a simple, resigned expression that some might mistake for a smile, he told me, “My father was killed by the SPDC. My uncle was killed by the SPDC. My cousin was killed by the SPDC. They shot my uncle in the head and cut off his leg while he was looking for food after the village was destroyed.” Over a meal of fried noodles and eggs, I was inundated with life stories like Pah’s. Their power lay in their grueling repetition.
Major Kea Htoo, the commander of the local battalion of Karen guerrillas, had reddened lips and a swollen left cheek from chewing betel nut. Like his comrades, he told me he saw no end to the war. They were fighting not for a better regime composed of more enlightened military officers, nor for a democratic government that would likely be led by ethnic Burmans like Aung San Suu Kyi, but for Karen independence. Tu Lu, missing a leg, had been in the Karen army for 20 years. Kyi Aung, the oldest at 55, had been fighting for 34 years. These guerrillas are paid no salaries. They receive only food and basic medicine. Their lives have been condensed to the seemingly unrealistic goal of independence; since Burma first fell under military misrule in 1962, nobody has ever offered them anything resembling a compromise. Although the junta has trapped the Karens, Shans, and other ethnics into small redoubts, its corrupt and desertion-plagued military lacks the strength for the final kill. So the war continues.
Endless conflict and gross, regime-inflicted poverty have kept Burma primitive enough to maintain an aura of romance. Like Tibet and Darfur, it offers its advocates in the post-industrial West a cause with both moral urgency and aesthetic appeal. In 1952, the British writer Norman Lewis published Golden Earth, a spare and haunting masterpiece about his travels throughout Burma. The insurrections of the Karens, Shans, and other hill tribes make the author’s peregrinations dangerous, and therefore even more uncomfortable. He found that only a small region in the north, inhabited largely by the Kachin tribe, was “completely free from bandits or insurgent armies.” Lewis spends a night tormented by rats, cockroaches, and a scorpion, yet wakes none the worse in the morning to the “mighty whirring of hornbills flying overhead.” His bodily sufferings seem a small price to pay for the uncanny beauty of a country of broken roads and no adequate hotels, where “the condition of the soul replaces that of the stock markets as a topic for polite conversation.” More than 50 years later, what shocks about this book is how contemporary it seems. A Western relief worker arriving in the wake of last spring’s devastating cyclone could have followed Lewis’s itinerary and had similar experiences. By contrast, think of all the places where globalization has made even a 10-year-old travel guide out of date.
But Burma is more than a place to feel sorry for. And its ethnic struggles are of more than obscurantist interest. For one thing, they precipitated the military coup that toppled the country’s last civilian government almost a half century ago, when General Ne Win took power in part to forestall ethnic demands for greater autonomy. With one-third of Burma’s population composed of ethnic minorities living in its fissiparous borderlands (which account for seven of Burma’s 14 states and divisions), the demands of the Karens and others will return to the fore once the military regime collapses. Democracy will not deliver Burma from being a cobbled-together mini-empire of nationalities, even if it does open the door to compromise among them.
Moreover, Burma’s hill tribes form part of a new and larger geopolitical canvas. Burma fronts on the Indian Ocean, by way of the Bay of Bengal. Its neighbors India and China (not to mention Thailand) covet its abundant oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber, and hydropower. China especially needs a cooperative, if not supine, Burma for the construction of deepwater ports, highways, and energy pipelines that can open China’s landlocked south and west to the sea, enabling its ever-burgeoning middle class to receive speedier deliveries of oil from the Persian Gulf. These routes must pass north from the Indian Ocean through the very territories wracked by Burma’s ethnic insurrections.
Burma is a prize to be contested, and China and India are not-so-subtly vying for it. But in a world shaped by ethnic struggles, higher fuel prices, new energy pathways, and climate-change-driven natural disasters like the recent cyclone, Burma also represents a microcosm of the strategic challenges that the United States will face. The U.S. Navy underscored these factors in its new maritime strategy, released in late 2007, which indicated that the Navy will shift its attention from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. The Marines, too, in their new “Vision and Strategy 2025” statement, highlight the Indian Ocean as among their main theaters of activity in coming years.
But toward Burma specifically, U.S. policy seems guided more by strategic myopia. The Bush administration, like its predecessors, has loudly embraced the cause of Burmese democracy but has done too little to advance it, either by driving diplomatic initiatives in the region or by supporting any of the ethnic insurgencies. Indeed, Special Operations Command is too preoccupied with the western half of the Indian Ocean, the Arab/Persian half, to pay much attention to Burma, which lacks the energizing specter of an Islamic terror threat. Meanwhile, the administration’s reliance on sanctions and its unwillingness to engage with the ruling junta has left the field open to China, India, and other countries swayed more by commercial than moral concerns.
But some Americans are consumed by Burma, and they offer a window onto different, and perhaps more fruitful, ways of engaging with its complex realities. I saw Burma through the eyes of four such men. In most cases, I cannot identify them by name, either because of the tenuousness of their position in neighboring Thailand, whose government is not friendly to their presence, or because of the sensitivity of what they do and whom they work for. Their expertise illustrates what it takes to make headway in Burma, while their goals say a great deal about what is at stake.
The Son of the Blue-Eyed Shan
While the mess in Iraq has made the virtues of cultural expertise newly fashionable, champions of such experience often conveniently forget that many of America’s greatest area experts have been Christian missionaries. American history has seen two strains of missionary area experts: the old Arab hands and the Asia, or China, hands. The Arab hands were Protestant missionaries who in the early 19th century traveled to Lebanon and ended up founding what became the American University of Beirut. From their lineage descended the State Department Arabists of the Cold War era. The Asia hands have a similarly distinguished origin, beginning, too, in the 19th century and providing the U.S. government with much of its area expertise through the early Cold War, when, during the McCarthy era, a number of them were unjustly purged. One American who counseled me on Burma is descended from several generations of Baptist missionaries from the Midwest who ministered to the hill tribes beginning in the late 19th century. His father, known as “The Blue-Eyed Shan,” escaped Burma ahead of the invading Japanese and was conscripted into Britain’s Indian army, in which he commanded a Shan battalion. Among my acquaintance’s earliest childhood memories was the sight of Punjabi soldiers ordering work gangs of Japanese prisoners of war to pick up rubble in the Burmese capital of Rangoon. With no formal education, he speaks Shan, Burmese, Hindi, Thai, and the Yunnan and Mandarin dialects of Chinese. He has spent his life studying Burma, though the 1960s saw him elsewhere in Indochina, aiding America’s effort in Vietnam.
During our conversation, he sat erect and cross-legged on a raised platform, wearing a longyi. Gray-haired, with a sculpted face and an authoritative, courtly Fred Thompson voice, he has the bearing of an elder statesman, tempered by a certain gentleness. “Chinese intelligence is beginning to operate with the antiregime Burmese ethnic hill tribes,” he told me. “The Chinese want the dictatorship in Burma to remain, but being pragmatic, they also have alternative plans for the country. The warning that comes from senior Chinese intelligence officers to the Karens, the Shans, and other ethnics is to ‘come to us for help—not the Americans—since we are next door and will never leave the area.’”
At the same time, he explained, the Chinese are reaching out to young military officers in Thailand. In recent years, the Thai royal family and the Thai military—particularly the special forces and cavalry—have been sympathetic to the hill tribes fighting the pro-Chinese military junta; Thailand’s civilian politicians, influenced by lobbies wanting to do business with resource-rich Burma, have been the junta’s best allies. In sum, democracy in Thailand is momentarily the enemy of democracy in Burma.
But the Chinese, the Son of the Blue-Eyed Shan implied, are still not satisfied: they want both Thailand’s democrats and military officers on their side, even as they work with both Burma’s junta and its ethnic opponents. “A new bamboo curtain may be coming down on Southeast Asia,” he worried. This would not be a hard-and-fast wall like the Iron Curtain; nor would it be part of some newly imagined Asian domino theory. Rather, it would create a zone of Chinese political and economic influence fostered by, among other factors, American neglect. While the Chinese operate at every level in Burma and Thailand, top Bush-administration officials have skipped summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. My friend simply wanted the United States back in the game.
“To topple the regime in Burma,” he says, “the ethnics need a full-time advisory capability, not in-and-out soldiers of fortune. This would include a coordination center inside Thailand. There needs to be a platform for all the disaffected officers in the Burmese military to defect to.” Again, rather than a return to the early Vietnam era, he was talking about a more subtle, more clandestine version of the support the United States provided the Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s. The current Thai administration would be hostile to that, but the government in Bangkok, and its policies, routinely changes. The military could yet return to power there, and even if it doesn’t, if the U.S. signaled its intent to support the Burmese hill tribes against a regime hated the world over, the Thai security apparatus would find a way to assist.
“The Shans and the Kachins near the Chinese border,” my friend went on, “have gotten a raw deal from the Burmese junta, but they are also nervous about a dominant China. They feel squeezed. And unity for the hill tribes of Burma is almost impossible. Somebody from the outside must provide a mechanism upon which they can all depend.” Larger than England and France combined, Burma has historically been a crazy quilt of vaguely demarcated states sectioned by jungly mountain ranges and the valleys of the Irrawaddy, Chindwin, Salween, and Mekong rivers. As a result, its various peoples remain distinct: the Chins in western Burma, for example, have almost nothing in common with the Karens in eastern Burma. Nor is there any community of language or culture between the Shans and the Burmans (the ethnic group, not the nationality, which is Burmese), save their Buddhist religion. Indeed, the Shans have much more in common with the Thais across the border.
But Burma should not be confused with the Balkans, or with Iraq, where ethnic and sectarian differences simmering for decades under a carapace of authoritarianism erupted once central authority dissolved. After so many years of violence, war fatigue has set in here, and the tribes show little propensity to fight each other after the regime unravels. They are more disunited than they are at odds. Even among themselves, the Shans, as my friend told me, have been historically subdivided into states led by minor kings. As he sees it, such divisions open a quiet organizing opportunity for Americans of his ilk.
The Father of the White Monkey
Tha-U-Wa-A-Pa, or “The Father of the White Monkey” in Burmese, is also the son of Christian missionaries, originally from Texas. Except for nine years in the U.S. Army, including in Special Forces, from which he retired as a major, he has been, like his parents, a missionary in one form or another. He also speaks a number of the local languages. He is much younger than my other acquaintance and much more animated, with a ropy, muscular body in perpetual motion, as if his system were running on too many candy bars. Whereas my other contact has focused on the Shan tribes near the Chinese border, the Father of the White Monkey—the sobriquet comes from the nickname he has given his daughter, who often travels with him—works mostly with the Karen and other tribes in eastern Burma abutting Thailand, though the networks he operates have ranged as far as the Indian border.
In 1996, he met the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, while she was briefly not under house arrest. The meeting inspired him to initiate a “day of prayer” for Burma, and to work for its ethnic unity. During the 1997 Burmese army offensive that displaced more than 100,000 people, he was deep inside the country, alone, going from one burned-out village to another, handing out medicine from his backpack. He told me about this and other army offensives that he witnessed, in which churches were torched, children disemboweled, and whole families killed. “These stories don’t make me numb,” he said, his eyes popping open, facial muscles stretched. “Each is like the first one. I pray always that justice will come and be done.”
In 1997, after that trip inside Burma, he started the Free Burma Rangers, a relief group that has launched more than 300 humanitarian missions and has 43 small medical teams among the Karens, Karennis, Shans, Chins, Kachins, and Arakanese—across the parts of highland Burma that embrace on three sides the central Irrawaddy River valley, home to the majority Burmans. As he told it, the Free Burma Rangers is an unusual nongovernmental organization. “We stand with the villagers; we’re not above them. If they don’t run from the government troops, we don’t either. We have a medic, a photographer, and a reporter/intel guy in each team that marks the GPS positions of Burmese government troops, maps the camps, and takes pictures with a telephoto lens, all of which we post on our Web site. We deal with the Pentagon, with human-rights groups … There is a higher moral obligation to intervene on the side of good, since silence is a form of consent.
“NGOs,” he went on in a racing voice, “like to claim that they are above politics. Not true. The very act of providing aid assists one side or another, however indirectly. NGOs take sides all the time.” The Father of the White Monkey takes this hard truth several steps further. Whereas the Thais host Burmese refugee camps on their side of the border, and the ethnic insurgents run camps inside Burma for internally displaced people—even as the Karens and other ethnics have mobile clinics near Burmese army concentrations—the backpacking Free Burma Rangers operate behind enemy lines.
Like my other acquaintance, the Father of the White Monkey is a very evolved form of special operator. One might suspect that the Free Burma Rangers is on some government payroll in Washington. But the truth is more pathetic. “We are funded by church groups around the world. Our yearly budget is $600,000. We were down to $150 at one point; we all prayed and the next day got a grant for $70,000. We work hand to mouth.” For him, Burma is not a job but a lifelong obsession.
“Burma is not Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,” he told me. “It’s not genocide. It’s not a car wreck. It’s a slow, creeping cancer, in which the regime is working to dominate, control, and radically assimilate all the ethnic peoples of the country.” I was reminded of what Jack Dunford, the executive director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, had told me in Bangkok. The military regime was “relentless, building dams, roads, and huge agricultural projects, taking over mines, laying pipelines,” sucking in cash from neighboring powers and foreign companies, selling off natural resources at below market value—all to entrench itself in power.
Once, not long ago, the Father of the White Monkey was sitting on a hillside at night, in an exposed location between the Burmese army and a cluster of internal refugees whom the army had driven from their homes. The Karen soldiers he was with had fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Burmese army position, and in response the Burmese soldiers began firing mortar rounds at him. At that moment, he got a message on his communications gear from a friend at the Pentagon asking why the United States should be interested in Burma.
He tapped back a slew of reasons that ranged from totalitarianism to the devastation of hardwood forests, from religious persecution of Buddhist monks to the use of prisoners as mine sweepers, and much else. But, ever the missionary, the Father of the White Monkey barely touched on strategic or regional-security issues. When I asked him his denomination, he responded, “I’m a Christian.” As such, he believes he is doing God’s work, engaged morally first and foremost, especially with the Karens, who number many Christians, converted by people like his parents. He is the kind of special operator the U.S. security bureaucracy can barely accept, for becoming one involves taking sides and going native to a degree. And yet, operatives like him offer the level of expertise that the United States desperately needs, if it is to have influence without being overbearing in remote parts of the globe.
The Colonel
Timothy Heinemann, a retired Army colonel from Laguna Beach, California, does think strategically. He is also a veteran of Special Forces. I first met him in 2002 at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was the dean of academics. He now runs Worldwide Impact, an NGO that helps ethnic groups, as well as a number of cross-border projects, particularly sending media teams into Burma to record the suffering there. Another kind of special operator, Heinemann, with his flip-flops and his engaging manner, embodies the subtle, indirect approach to managing conflict emphasized in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, one of the Pentagon’s primary planning documents. Heinemann says that he “privatizes condition-setting.” He explains: “We are networkers on both sides of the border. We try to find opportunities for NGOs to collaborate better in supporting ethnic groups’ needs. I do my small part to set conditions so that America can protect national, international, and humanitarian interests with real savvy. Our work is well known to various branches of the U.S. government. The opposition to the military dictatorship has no strategic and operational planning like Hezbollah does. Aung San Suu Kyi is little more than a symbol of the wrong issue—‘Democracy first!’ Ethnic rights and the balance of ethnic power are preconditions for democracy in Burma. These issues must be faced first, or little has been learned from the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq.” Heinemann, like the Father of the White Monkey, also lives hand to mouth, grabbing grants and donations from wherever he can, and is sometimes reduced to financing trips himself. He finds Burma “exotic, intoxicating.”
Burma is also a potential North Korea, he says, as well as a perfect psychological operations target. He and others explained that the Russians are helping the Burmese government to mine uranium in the Kachin and Chin regions in the north and west, with the North Koreans waiting in the wings to supply nuclear technology. The Burmese junta craves some sort of weapons-of-mass-destruction capability to provide it with international leverage. “But the regime is paranoid,” Heinemann points out. “It’s superstitious. They’re rolling chicken bones on the ground to see what to do next.
“Burma’s got a 400,000-man army [the active-duty U.S. Army is 500,000] that’s prone to mutiny,” Heinemann went on. “Only the men at the very top are loyal. You could spread rumors, conduct information warfare. It might not take much to unravel it.” (Burmese soldiers are reportedly getting only a portion of their salaries, and their weapons at major bases are locked up at night.) On the other hand, the military constitutes the country’s most secure social-welfare system, and that buys a certain amount of loyalty from the troops. And yet, “there is no trust by the higher-ups of the lower ranks,” according to a Karen resistance source. The junta leader, Than Shwe, a former postal clerk who has never been to the West, is known, along with his wife, to consult an astrologer. “He governs out of fear; he is not brave,” notes Aung Zaw, editor of The Irrawaddy, a magazine run by Burmese exiles in the northwestern Thai city of Chiang Mai. “And Than Shwe rarely speaks publicly; he has even less charisma than Ne Win,” the dictator from 1962 to 1988.
Heinemann and Aung Zaw each recounted to me how the regime suddenly deserted Rangoon one day in 2005 and moved the capital north, halfway to Mandalay, to Naypyidaw, “the abode of kings,” which it built from scratch, with funds from Burma’s natural-gas revenues. The date of the move was astrologically timed. The new capital lies deep in the forest and is fortified with underground bunkers designed to protect against an American invasion. Heinemann sees China, India, and other Asian nations jockeying for position with one of the world’s worst, weirdest, wealthiest, and most strategically placed rogue regimes, which is vulnerable to a coup or even disintegration, if only the United States adopted the kind of patient, low-key, and inexpensive approach that he and my other two acquaintances advocate.
Heinemann’s last job in the military was as a planner for the occupation of Iraq, and he was an eyewitness to the mistakes of a massive military machine that disregarded local realities. He sees Burma as the inverse of Iraq, a place where the United States can do itself a lot of good, and do much good for others, if it fights smart.
The Bull That Swims
And then there is Ta Doe Tee, or “The Bull That Swims,” another American, whom I met in his suite in one of Bangkok’s most expensive hotels. His impeccably tailored black suit barely masked an intimidating physique—the reason for his Burmese nickname—and his business card defines him as a “compradore,” an all-purpose factotum steeped in local culture, the kind of enabler who was vital to the running of the British East India Company. The Bull was a staff sergeant in Special Forces in the 1970s and now works in the security business in Southeast Asia.
He is of the Army Special Forces generation that was frustrated about having just missed service in Vietnam, with little to do overseas during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in the mid-1970s, he was mentored, commanded, and led by some of the Son Tay Raiders. “Dick Meadows, Greg McGuire, Jack Joplin, Joe Lupyak”—he recites their names with reverence—were SFs who stormed the Son Tay prison camp near Hanoi in 1970 in a failed attempt to rescue American prisoners of war. “Vietnam and Southeast Asia were all they ever talked about,” he told me.
But in 1978, Jimmy Carter’s head of the CIA, Admiral Stansfield Turner, fired or forced into early retirement almost 200 officers running agents stationed abroad who had been providing intelligence, and many of them were in Southeast Asia. The CIA’s clandestine service was devastated. As the Bull tells the story, many of the fired officers would not simply “be turned off,” and decided to maintain self-supporting networks, “picking up kids” like himself along the way, just out of Special Forces. They sent him to learn to sail and fly, and he became a certified ship’s master for cargo vessels and an FAA-certified pilot. In the 1980s, he became involved in operations in Southeast Asia, such as bringing equipment to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. He blurred the line between such controversial and shadowy government operations and the illegal means sometimes used to sustain them: in 1988, while trying to bring 70 tons of marijuana to the West Coast of the United States with a Southeast Asian crew under his command, he was boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard. He served five years in prison in the U.S. and has been back in Southeast Asia ever since.
The Bull put on reading glasses and opened a shiny black loose-leaf notebook to a map of the Indian Ocean. A line drawn on the map went from Ethiopia and Somalia across the water past India, and then north up the Bay of Bengal, through the heart of Burma, to China’s Yunnan province. “This map is just an example of how CNOC [the Chinese National Oil Company] sees the world,” he explained.
He showed me another map, which zoomed in on Ethiopia and Somalia, with grid marks on the significant reserves of oil and natural gas in the Ogaden Basin on the Ethiopian-Somali border. A circle was drawn around Hobyo, a Somali port visited in the early 15th century by the Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose treasure fleets plied the same Indian Ocean sea lanes that serve as today’s energy routes. “Oil and natural gas would be shipped from Hobyo direct to western Burma,” the Bull said, where the Chinese are building a new port at Kyauk Phyu, in Burma’s Arakan state, that will be able to handle the world’s largest container ships. According to him, the map shows how easy it will be for the Chinese to operate all over the Indian Ocean, “tapping into Iran and other Persian Gulf energy suppliers.” Their biggest problem, though, will be cutting through Burma. “The Chinese need to acquire Burma, and keep it stable,” said the Bull.
There are other routes to energy-hungry inner China besides the one through Burma. The Chinese are also developing a deepwater port in Gwadar, in Pakistani Baluchistan, close to the Iranian border, and have plans to do the same in Chittagong in Bangladesh. Both ports would be closer than Beijing and Shanghai to cities in western China. But the Burmese route is the most direct from the Indian Ocean.
This whole development is part of the Chinese navy’s “string of pearls” strategy, which—coupled with a canal that the Chinese may one day help finance across Thailand’s Isthmus of Kra, linking the Bay of Bengal with the South China Sea—will give China access to the Indian Ocean. China is, in effect, expanding south, even as India, to keep from being strategically encircled by the Chinese navy, is expanding east—also into Burma.
Until 2001, India, the world’s largest democracy, took the high road on Burma, condemning it for its repression and providing moral support for the cause of Aung San Suu Kyi, who had studied in New Delhi. But as senior Indian leaders told me on a recent visit, India could not just watch Chinese influence expand unchecked. Burma’s jungles serve as a rear base for insurgents from eastern India’s own mélange of warring ethnic groups. Furthermore, as Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, has observed, India has been “aghast” to see the establishment of Chinese listening stations along Burma’s border with India. So in 2001, India decided to provide Burma with military aid and training, selling it tanks, helicopters, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and rocket launchers.
India also decided to build its own energy-pipeline network through Burma. In fact, during the 2007 crackdown on the monks in Burma, India’s petroleum minister signed a deal for deepwater exploration. Off the coast of Burma’s western Arakan state, adjacent to Bangladesh, are the Shwe gas fields, among the largest natural reserves in the world, from which two pipeline systems will likely emerge. One will be China’s at Kyauk Phyu, which will take deliveries of oil and gas from as far away as the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa, as well as from Shwe itself. The other pipeline system will belong to India, which is spending $100 million to develop the Arakanese port of Sittwe as a trade window for its own landlocked, insurgency-roiled northeast.
There is nothing sinister about any of this: it is the consequence of the intense need of hundreds of millions of people in India and China who will consume ever more energy as their lifestyles improve. As for China, it may not be a democracy, but little in its larger Indian Ocean strategy can be decried. China is not, and will likely never be, a truly hostile state like Iran.
But China’s problems with Burma are actually just beginning, argues the Bull, and the United States must exploit them quietly. As he observed, the minutiae of tribal and ethnic differences can easily displace grand lines on a map and the plans of master strategists. Just look at Yugoslavia, at Iraq, at Israel-Palestine. Given the energy stakes, he sees the struggles of the Karens, Shans, Arakanese, and other minorities as constituting the “theater of activity” for his lifetime, something that the Turner firings had denied him. Burma is where the United States has to build a “UW [unconventional-war] capability,” he said. Such would be the unofficial side of our competition with China, which should be forced over time to accept a democratic and highly federalized Burma, with strong links to the West.
Like the other three Americans, the Bull talked about the need to build and manage networks among the ethnic hill tribes, through the construction of schools, clinics, and irrigation systems. In particular, he focused on the Shan, the largest of the hill tribes, with 9 percent of Burma’s population and about 20 percent of its territory. Allying with the Shans, he said, would give the United States a mechanism to curtail the flow of drugs in the area, and to create a balancing force against China right on its own border. In any Burmese democracy, the Shans would control a sizeable portion of the seats in parliament. More could be accomplished through nonmilitary aid to a specific Burmese hill tribe, he argued, than through some of the larger weapons and other defense programs the United States spends money on. The same strategy could be applied to the Chins in western Burma, with the help of India. Not just in Iraq, but in Burma, too, American policy in the coming years should be all about the tribes.
Winning the Endgame
But while the former Special Forces and other Asia hands I interviewed see Burma as central to American strategy, the active-duty Special Operations community does not, because it is under orders to focus on al-Qaeda. This, my acquaintances say, shows how America’s obsession with al-Qaeda has warped its strategic vision, which should be dominated by the whole Indian Ocean, from Africa to the Pacific.
Larger U.S. policy toward the Burmese regime, meanwhile, has remained unchanged over several administrations. George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have all declared their support for Burmese democracy, even as they have demonstrated little appetite for supporting the ethnic insurgencies, however covertly. In that respect, American policy toward Burma can seem more moralistic than moral, and President Bush in particular, despite Laura Bush’s intense interest in Burma, may seem prone to the same ineffectual preachiness of which former President Jimmy Carter has often been accused. Bush, by some accounts, should either open talks with the junta, rather than risk having the U.S. ejected from the whole Bay of Bengal region; or he should support the ethnics in an effective but quiet manner. “Right now, we get peanuts from the U.S.,” Lian Sakhong, general secretary of the Burmese Ethnic Nationalities Council, told me.
American officials respond that they have in fact backed their affirmations of democracy with actions. The United States has banned investment in Burma since 1997 (though the ban is not retroactive, thereby leaving Chevron, which took over its concession from Unocal, free to operate a pipeline from southern Burma into Thailand). The United States added new sanctions in 2003 and 2007 and provides humanitarian aid through NGOs operating from Thailand. As for cross-border support for the Karen and Shan armies, officials note that the moment the word of such a policy got out, America’s embassy presence in Burma would be gutted. Of course, it’s unclear what good the U.S. diplomatic presence in Burma is doing.
Nevertheless, according to a top member of the nongovernmental-aid community, the United States is the only major power that sends the junta a “tough, moral message, which usefully prevents the International Monetary Fund and World Bank from dealing with Burma.” As a result, Burma has less money to build dams and roads to further despoil the landscape and displace more people. U.S. policy, this source went on, “also rallies Western and international pressure that has led to cracks in the Burmese military.” The regime will collapse one day, maybe sooner than later; when it does, America would presumably be in excellent stead with the Burmese people.
Though the prospect of another mass uprising excites the Western imagination, what’s more likely is another military coup, or something more nuanced—a simple change in leadership, with Than Shwe, 75 years old and in poor health, allowed to step aside. Then, new generals would open up talks with Aung San Suu Kyi and release her from house arrest. Even with elections, this would not solve Burma’s fundamental problems. Aung San Suu Kyi, as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and global media star, could provide a moral rallying point that even the hill tribes would accept. But the country would still be left with no public infrastructure, no institutions, no civil society, and with various ethnic armies that fundamentally distrust the dominant Burmans. As one international negotiator told me, “There will be no choice but to keep the military in a leading role for a while, because without the military, there is nothing in Burma.” In power for so long, however badly it has ruled, the military has made itself indispensable to any solution. “It’s much more complicated than the beauty-and-the-beast scenario put forth by some in the West—Aung San Suu Kyi versus the generals,” says Lian Sakhong. “After all, we must end 60 years of civil war.”
Burma must somehow find a way to return to the spirit of the Panglong Agreement of February 1947, the pact that the nationalist leader, General Aung San, negotiated among the country’s tribes shortly before independence from Great Britain. It was based on three principles: a state with a decentralized federal structure, recognition of the ethnic chieftaincies in the hills, and their right of secession after a number of years. Failure to implement that agreement, which collapsed after Aung San’s assassination that summer, has been the cause of all the problems since.
Meanwhile, the war continues. When I asked Karen military leaders in the Thai border town of Mae Sot what they needed most, they told me: assault rifles, C-4 plastic explosives to make Claymore mines, and .50-caliber sniper systems with optics to knock out the microwave relay stations and bull-dozers that the Burmese army uses to communicate and to build roads through Karen areas.
In his bunker in the jungle capital of Naypyidaw, Than Shwe sits atop an unsteady and restless cadre of mid-level officers and lower ranks. He may represent the last truly centralized regime in Burma’s postcolonial history. Whether through a peaceful, well-managed transition or through a tumultuous or even anarchic one, the Karens and Shans in the east and the Chins and Arakanese in the west will likely see their power increased in a post-junta Burma. The various natural-gas pipeline agreements will have to be negotiated or renegotiated with the ethnic peoples living in the territories through which the pipelines would pass. The struggle over the Indian Ocean, or at least the eastern part of it, may, alas, come down to who deals more adroitly with the Burmese hill tribes. It is the kind of situation that the American Christian missionaries of yore knew how to handle.
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/burma.
Mindful Reading for Burma
Mindful Reading for Burma
Reading Burma: A Benefit for
Cyclone Relief and Freedom of Expression
in Burma/Myanmar
Location: New York City
Event Date(s): September 23, 2008
Event Time: 7:00 p.m.
Great Hall at Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street
Speaker(s): Kiran Desai, Venerable U Gawsita, Siri Hustvedt, Joseph Lelyveld, George Packer, Orhan Pamuk, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Salman Rushdie
This event marks the first anniversary of the monks’ uprising, in which thousands of Buddhist monks protested against Burma’s military dictatorship, and the twentieth anniversary of the 1988 pro-democracy protests by millions of ordinary civilians. PEN, the Burma Project of the Open Society Institute, and the New York Review of Books will join together to honor Burmese writers whose work has been suppressed by the military regime and to support the victims of the recent cyclone. The event will also pay tribute to the thousands of monks who are missing or have lost their lives last year, and to those who have continued to speak out against injustice for the past twenty years.
All proceeds will be donated to the International Burmese Monks Organization, a network of Burmese Buddhist monks collecting relief aid for the victims of Cyclone Nargis.
In addition to readings of Burmese writers’ work, some of which includes unpublished accounts from the cyclone-affected areas of Burma, The New Yorker’s George Packer will join the Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leaders of the 2007 monks’ uprising, in conversation.
Featuring
· Nobel Prize Laureate Orhan Pamuk
· Booker Prize Winner Salman Rushdie
· Booker Prize Winner Kiran Desai
· The Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leading monks of the 2007 uprising
· Author Siri Hustvedt
· Journalist Joseph Lelyveld
· Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
· Journalist George Packer
· Other Special Guests
Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to hear from the monks who stood up to the Burmese regime in 1988 and again in 2007, and from those men and women whose lives have been changed forever by the recent cyclone.
Co-sponsored by the OSI Burma Project, PEN American Center, The New York Review of Books, and Cooper Union.
Location
Great Hall at Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street
Subway: 6 to Astor Place; N/R/W to 8th Street-NYU
New York, New York
For Donations and Tickets
Visit www.smarttix.com or call 1-212-868-4444 .
$20 (general admission) and $100 (includes post-event reception).
$15 for students and PEN members (with valid ID).
Support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma:
Become a member of the United States Campaign for Burma today.
Or, make a donation today.
People's Militia Forced to Joined Army
People's Militia Forced to Joined Army
9/9/2008
Narinjara.
Buthidaung: Members of the people's militia in Buthidaung Township north of Sittwe have been forced by army authorities to join the Burmese army to serve permanent posts as soldiers, said one member of the militia who recently fled to Bangladesh.
He said, "We are facing big problem after the army authority forced us to join the army. We do not want to serve in the army because we are all farmers with our own families and business here. It is impossible for us to join the army, so I fled to Bangladesh to avoid being conscripted into the army."
According to a local source, the Burmese army is now having a difficult time recruiting soldiers in Arakan State, despite that many Arakanese youth joined the army last decade. Many Arakanese youth are now looking for jobs in neighboring countries like Thailand and Malaysia.
"The army authority in our area could not recruit soldiers to fill its yearly target, so members of the people's militia have been forced to join the army," he said.
He also added, "We joined the people's militia so we could have a chance to work our business with family in our village, and would not need to leave our village for any frontlines to wage war with rebels. Because of that we joined the people's militia. But now the army authority is forcing us to join the army. It is really a problem for us."
A close source to the Burmese army said they have issued a new regulation for its soldiers - if any soldier wishes to retire from the army, he must recruit at least three new men to replace him. Without this recruitment a soldier can not receive permission to retire from his service.
"It is not only for forthcoming retiring army men, but also other soldiers. If any soldiers want to retire from the army without finishing their tenure, they can leave, but they have to recruit three new soldiers for the army," he said.
The Burmese army in Arakan State is facing problems with many soldiers deserting due to poor treatment and conditions, and the number of soldiers serving in the army are going down by the day.
According to a report from the Burmese army in Sakhaka 15, the Military Operation Management commend based in Buthidaung, there were over 100 soldiers that deserted from headquarters in the first six months in 2008. Sakhaka 15 is formed by ten battalions that are stationed in several rural villages in Buthidaung Township.
Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 documents Burmese ruling junta’s atrocities
Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 documents Burmese ruling junta’s atrocities
Wed, 2008-09-10 13:50
Bangkok, 10 September, (Asiantribune.com): As the first anniversary of Burma's September 2007 Saffron Revolution approaches, the Human Rights Documentation Unit (HRDU) has released a 964 pages Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007. Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 is revealed to be the largest and most comprehensive report ever published by the HRDU, but is also quite likely the single largest report ever produced on the human rights situation in Burma.Human Rights Year Book of Burma
Twenty years since the brutal suppression of the 1988 uprising, the Burmese military junta continues to exert tight control over the country's population, while executing a litany of human rights abuses against its citizens. Drawing on thousands of reports, news articles, UN statements, and other sources of information, the Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 documents the continuing and systematic perpetration of human rights violations in Burma as they occurred across the country throughout 2007.
The Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 reveals that the human rights situation confronting the people of Burma has not improved since the very first Burma Human Rights Yearbook was published fourteen years ago. On the contrary, widespread human rights violations continued to be perpetrated in Burma with near impunity throughout 2007.
Across the country, members of the civilian population have continued to be subjected to egregious abuses including, but not limited to forced labor, extortion, arbitrary arrest, summary execution, rape, forced relocation, the confiscation and/or destruction of land and property, religious persecution and ethnic discrimination.
Dr Sann Aung of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma on Tuesday said:
"Whether we look at it in terms of the time elapsed since the Saffron Revolution last year or over a longer timeframe since the uprisings in 1988, the result is the same. The root causes which gave rise to these protests have never been adequately addressed by the regime and the general grievances of the population remain. While it is difficult to say conclusively that the human rights situation in Burma is getting worse, we can say that it certainly isn't showing much improvement."
The Burma Human Rights Yearbook 2007 documents the suppression of human rights in 18 primary areas of concern, including the systematic oppression of the freedoms of expression and assembly, manifested in the brutal crackdown on the September 2007 Saffron Revolution protests. Reflecting deep discontent and impatience with military regime, the year 2007 saw a sharp increase in public dissent against the regime, which culminated in the monk-led September uprising – marking the largest public display of dissatisfaction against the regime seen in the country in almost 20 years.
The HRDU is the research and documentation department of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB). The HRDU was formed in 1993 to comprehensively document the human rights situations in Burma, in order to protect and promote the internationally recognized human rights of those persons in the country.
- Asian Tribune -
Myanmar 1990 election winners want junta's UN seat
Myanmar 1990 election winners want junta's UN seat
By EDITH M. LEDERER – 12 hours ago
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The pro-democracy winners of Myanmar's 1990 elections asked the U.N. secretary-general Tuesday to recognize their own representatives in place of the current military rulers' United Nations mission.
A letter from candidates elected to parliament in 1990 challenged the legitimacy of the military government that refused to cede power after a landslide victory by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The junta has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, ever since.
Daw San San, vice president of the Members of Parliament Union (Burma), said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press that the organization has set up a permanent mission to the United Nations and has appointed U Thein Oo as its permanent representative to the U.N.
"His excellency U Thein Oo is instructed to represent the people of Burma and the legitimate, democratically elected members of parliament in all organs of the United Nations," San said.
Oo was identified as an elected representative from Mandalay.
Brendan Varma, a U.N. spokesman, said the letter had been received by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office and would be studied.
Myanmar's U.N. Mission said Ambassador Kyaw Tint Swe was not in his office to comment.
The 63rd session of the General Assembly will open on Sept. 16, a week before world leaders arrive for their annual ministerial meeting, and San's letter could be referred to the assembly's credentials committee.
The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962 and has been widely criticized for suppressing basic freedoms. The current junta, which took power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations, held general elections in 1990 but refused to cede power to Suu Kyi's NLD. Since then, the country has been in political deadlock.
Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years. For about the last three weeks, the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has refused daily food deliveries to her home to protest her ongoing detention, her party said.
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Burma: Cyclone, starvation - now plague of rats devastates Burmese villagesGenerals ignore a once in 50-year freak of nature that wrecks communities
: Cyclone, starvation - now plague of rats devastates Burmese villagesGenerals ignore a once in 50-year freak of nature that wrecks communities
Pete Pattisson in Chin state, Burma
The Guardian, Wednesday September 10 2008 Article history
It is an impressive arsenal - more than 100 weapons, each with a sensitive trigger - but it is a feeble defence against the enemy threatening Mgun Ling and his village in Chin state, deep in the jungles of western Burma.
Theirs is an unconventional war: their weapons are traps, their enemy rats.
"We can catch hundreds of rats a night, but it makes no difference," said Mgun Ling. "They just keep coming. They've destroyed all our crops, and now we have nothing left to eat."
Burma
Four months after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, another natural disaster has struck the country. This time the ruling military regime has had 50 years to prepare for it, yet it has still proved unable and unwilling to respond.
The disaster, known in Burma as maudam, is caused by a cruel twist of nature. Once every 50 years or so the region's bamboo flowers, producing a fruit. The fruit attracts hordes of rats, which feed on its seeds. Some believe the rich nutrients in the seeds cause the rodents to multiply quickly, creating an infestation. After devouring the seeds, the rats turn on the villagers' crops, destroying rice and corn. In a country once known as the rice bowl of Asia, thousands of villagers are on the brink of starvation.
The last three cycles of flowering occurred in 1862, 1911 and 1958, and each time they were followed by a devastating famine. The current maudam is proving just as disastrous. A report last month by the Chin Human Rights Organisation estimates that up to 200 villages are affected by severe food shortages and at least 100,000 people, or 20% of the population of Chin, are in need of immediate food aid.
Chin, home to the ethnic minority Chin people, is one of the most undeveloped and isolated regions of Burma. These remote mountainous communities, which survive on subsistence farming, have reached breaking point.
"We have no food left," said the head of one village. "Last year during the harvest the rats came and ate almost all our rice. Our corn has also been totally destroyed. I have just one bag of rice left for my family. After that there's nothing. People in my village are going into the jungle to find wild vegetables, like leaves and roots to mix with a little rice. Our situation is desperate."
Leisa, 74, who witnessed the last maudam, claimed that this famine was worse. "In the past the bamboo flowered all at one time. The rats came, destroyed our crops, and then left. This time the bamboo is flowering in patches and each time it flowers, a new wave of rats come. Previously, we suffered for just one or two years, but now we are worried it may last seven or eight years."
The crisis is turning villages into ghost communities, as the Chin leave their homes in search of food, or a new life, in India. One village headman said: "Last year, we had 60 households in our village but half have already moved to India due to the food crisis. Even with only 30 households there is still not enough food for everyone."
Every day, scores of villagers follow a tortuous mountain track to an unmanned border post into India, battling monsoon downpours, knee-deep mud and malaria. Some move to India for good, others like Chitu trek for days to buy food and haul it home. "Every single week we have to walk to India to buy rice there. The round trip takes four days. My children have had to stop going to school because they have to spend all their time carrying rice."
Despite the predictability of the disaster, there has been no sign of help from the Burmese junta. One village chief said: "We made a formal request to the chairman of the township council and the local army commander for food, but we got no response from them."
In fact, rather than tackling the crisis, the military is compounding it. Since the junta took power in Burma in 1962, the Chin have suffered violent oppression at the hands of the army. The use of unpaid forced labour, forced substitution of staple crops for cash crops and arbitrary taxation is rife. A report last year by the Women's League of Chinland accused the army of systematic sexual violence against Chin women.
"Every month we receive a letter ordering us to attend a meeting at the local army camp," said one village head. "At the meetings they demand work from us and force us to send villagers to construct their barracks. Worst of all they order us to send them food, like chickens, cooking oil and chillies, but since we don't have any we have to collect money from villagers to send in its place.
"Last month, I failed to attend the meeting, because I was too busy collecting rice from India. When I got back to my village I found an envelope with a bullet in it. I was terrified. I thought they were going to come and kill me."
Cheery Zahau of the Women's League of Chinland said: "The maudam has affected India and Burma equally, but the Indian government has been preparing for it since 2002. For example, they pay their citizens for every rat they catch. The Burmese junta has done nothing. It's not just that they don't care. In my opinion, they are deliberately ignoring the disaster because they want the region to be cleansed of Chin people. Chin groups in the border region have been trying to mobilise aid, but our resources are very limited. We desperately need international assistance."
While the Chin await aid, the exodus to India continues. "We love our native land," said one villager. "But we don't know how we can survive here any longer."
Myanmar-Thai fibre optic cable ready for trials: MPT
Myanmar-Thai fibre optic cable ready for trials: MPT
By Kyaw Zin Htun
A CROSSBORDER fibre optic cable between Myanmar and Thailand, built under the Greater Mekong Subregion Information Superhighway project, is ready for use on a trial basis, Myanma Post and Telecommunications said last week.
A spokesperson from state-owned MPT’s information and technology department said the cable runs from Yangon to the border at Myawaddy in Kayin State, and then into Thailand.
He said the cable can carry bandwidth capacity of 10 gigabit (Gb) plus additional capacity of 2.5Gb on a microlink, permitting faster and better internet connection and telephone communications.
The link was one of two for Myanmar that have been built under the GMS project. The other, connecting Myanmar with China and having the same bandwidth capacity, was launched last March.
The GMS Information Superhighway project helps countries along the Mekong River – including Laos, China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand – to lay a sound infrastructure foundation for future smooth telecommunications connections.
The six Mekong nations signed a deal on jointly developing the information superhighway in November 2004.
Moreover, MPT also plans to build more data backbone fibre optic links across the country to ensure the smooth flow of data, the spokesperson said.
The projected network will be built with the Internet Protocol over Synchronised Digital Hierarchy (IP over SDH) system and will include about 10 main links for data connection to towns in all States and Divisions. “We’ve finished surveying for the network and we hope to start once we get the necessary facilities,” he said, adding that the fibre optic link would be constructed independently of telecommunications links.
The fibre optic links will be built to various standards, ranging from STM 1 to STM 16 – and bandwidth capacity will be 155MB on STM1 standard, 600MB on STM4 standard and 2.5Gb on STM16 standard, he said.
Dhaka proposes road links with Thailand through Myanmar
Dhaka proposes road links with Thailand through Myanmar
NEW DELHI, India – Bangladesh has proposed direct road links with Myanmar and Thailand to improve its business ties with the nations of Southeast Asia.
The proposal was made by Bangladesh Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury to the Myanmar and Thai foreign ministers during the latest Bay of Bengal Initiative for MultiSectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) meeting in New Delhi, India.
An official report from Bangladesh stated that Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury made the proposal on August 29 during his meetings with Myanmar’s Foreign Minister, U Nyan Win, and Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag.
The 10th Bimstec Ministerial Meeting was convened in New Delhi on August 29 with the intent to forge stronger ties and map out transportation and trade links between countries.
Foreign ministers from Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Thailand, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka attended the meeting.
Bangladesh has plans to build a road linking it with Myanmar, but the plan has yet to be implemented, even though the agreement between the two countries was made over five years ago.
Bangladesh believes that the road link will also provide access to China, eventually building connections between Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and China.
Bangladesh Foreign Adviser Ifthekhar during the meeting said: “This is still a very preliminary stage in the thought process. Bangladesh will benefit immensely from a road leading to the East, particularly to China and the ASEAN bloc via Myanmar. There seems to be a growing interest of these countries in this idea, which is good for all of us.”
Donations Bolster Exotissimo Relief Efforts For Myanmar Cyclone Victims
Donations Bolster Exotissimo Relief Efforts For Myanmar Cyclone Victims
After Cyclone Nargis struck the low-lying Irrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar in early May, Exotissimo Travel initiated immediate relief efforts to the devastated region. Thailand (NetSweets) September 9, 2008 -- After Cyclone Nargis struck the low-lying Irrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar in early May, Exotissimo Travel initiated immediate relief efforts to the devastated region.
An estimated 1.3 million of the population was affected by Cyclone Nargis. The storm was one of the worst natural disasters to hit Myanmar in decades.
Hamish Keith, Managing Director of Exotissimo Travel, said 窶廴yanmar is one of the destinations that we work and operate in. After learning the plight of the delta residents in the wake of the Cyclone Nargis, it is our obligation to lend a helping hand to the affected communities, especially the most vulnerable groups.窶・
He added, 窶弩ith our Exotissimo Myanmar office operating from Yangon, we are in a unique position to render quick and effective humanitarian assistance to the affected areas, lessening logistical and operational challenges.窶・
A four-member relief team from Exotissimo Yangon was immediately deployed to assess the situation and provide immediate and direct aid. After the initial assessment, Exotissimo returned to the affected area with much needed supplies, including cotton blankets, biscuits, mosquito nets, rice, beans and potatoes, to distribute to the cyclone victims.
Exotissimo and the Appletree Group set up an emergency fund with a donation of 20,000 USD, and have received over 80,000 USD from generous travel trade partners. Online travel company FriendlyPlanet.com and its clientele donated an incredible 12k USD over a few short days. Exotissimo is managing the funds until a reputable and trusted non-government organisation or charity is found to take over the funds.
In Shwe Taung Su village, Exotissimo teamed up with French travel company Ormes to reconstruct a primary school that has been leveled by the cyclone. The school is now furnished with enough furniture for the 150 students studying in the school. Exotissimo and Ormes contributed 7,000 USD and 8,000 USD respectively to this effort.
Belgium-based Kids of Myanmar helped Exotissimo to raise funds for the hard-hit region. The organisation was founded by responsible travel specialist Destinations Unlimited to provide supplies, water purifiers and medicine to the victims of Nargis. Kids of Myanmar has raised almost 70,000 USD by getting in contact with their pool of generous donors.
With the combined support of German tour operator Geoplan, a medical clinic was built in Ah Latt Chaung village. Now fully operational, the clinic services the surrounding community of six villages, comprising of 18,500 people.
With the kind contribution of 7000USD from Vietnam Women Association Bazaar, Exotissimo was able to provide 14 tractors and some diesel for Thamein Htaw Kon Tan village. In addition, Exotissimo also donated agricultural machinery, including 18 walking tractors and hand tillers, to the villages of Thamein Htaw Thein Gone and A Phaung in Pyarpon Township so that the local farmers can plough the fields in time for harvesting.
Exotissimo窶冱 work in Myanmar is led by Su Su Tin, Managing Director of Exotissimo Myanmar. She said 窶弩e are very encouraged by the progress made since the disaster. We hope donors will continue to respond generously to this relief and recovery appeal and Exotissimo will do as much as we can to help restore lives to normalcy.窶・
To date, 96,829 USD have been donated to Exotissimo窶冱 funds. Exotissimo has delivered emergency relief packages to more than 28,000 people in 58 villages.
How to help:
Donations can be sent via Exotissimo窶冱 website at http://www.exotissimo.com/gateway/myanmar-cyclone-relief-fund.php
Exotissimo Travel is a local tour operator based in Bangkok, but with offices throughout Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. The company focuses on designing custom travel holidays providing unique travel experiences. Opened in 1993, the company is now a network of 15 locally-based offices staffing over 500 travel professionals, and sales offices in San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and Melbourne. The company窶冱 depth of experience and large infrastructure enable it to create unique itineraries with the operational confidence to fulfill client expectations.
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