Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

TO PEOPLE OF JAPAN



JAPAN YOU ARE NOT ALONE



GANBARE JAPAN



WE ARE WITH YOU



ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာတဲ့ညီညြတ္ေရး


“ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲ နားလည္ဖုိ႔လုိတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ကာ ဒီအပုိဒ္ ဒီ၀ါက်မွာ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကုိ သ႐ုပ္ေဖာ္ျပ ထားတယ္။ တူညီေသာအက်ဳိး၊ တူညီေသာအလုပ္၊ တူညီေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ရွိရမယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာအတြက္ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ဘယ္လုိရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ဆုိတာ ရွိရမယ္။

“မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္… သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ”

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen to side with the oppressor.”
ေတာင္အာဖရိကက ႏိုဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီး ဒက္စ္မြန္တူးတူး

THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."

QUOTES BY UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Without participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, without her being able to campaign freely, and without her NLD party [being able] to establish party offices all throughout the provinces, this [2010] election may not be regarded as credible and legitimate. ­
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Where there's political will, there is a way

政治的な意思がある一方、方法がある
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ခိုင္မာတဲ့နိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္ရိွရင္ႀကိဳးစားမႈရိွရင္ နိုင္ငံေရးအေျဖ
ထြက္ရပ္လမ္းဟာေသခ်ာေပါက္ရိွတယ္
Burmese Translation-Phone Hlaing-fwubc

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Prelude to a Civil War?

CONTRIBUTOR
Prelude to a Civil War?
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By HARN YAWNGHWE Monday, September 7, 2009

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Many were surprised by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) attack against the Kokang forces.

Some had been so preoccupied with the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi that they were not even aware of the impending crisis. Others could not understand why the Burmese military would turn against their allies who have had a cease-fire agreement for more than 20 years.

Yet others thought that the Burma Army would never dare to incur the wrath of China. After all, had the Chinese not, in June, requested Vice-Snr-Gen Maung Aye to maintain stability on the border? This development was especially surprising to those who were convinced that Burma is a client state of China.

This failure to anticipate events underscores the weakness of the Burmese democracy movement, in particular, and the international community, in general.

We have often failed to understand the strategy and plans of the ruling military government. We have looked at their actions through our own prisms and misinterpreted their intentions. We have tended to see SPDC pronouncements as propaganda and have not paid enough attention to what it is planning to do.

Nobody is happy with military rule in Burma so we dismiss the SPDC “road map” to democracy and its constitution. But how many of us have actually studied the constitution in detail, not to criticize it, but to see how the military actually plans to implement its “road map” policies and how we can use its plans to our advantage?

In 2004, the SPDC announced the “road map,” and last year it announced plans for an election in 2010. We were outraged when the referendum was held two weeks after Cyclone Nargis had devastated the delta and Rangoon. We would not have been surprised had we realized that Snr-Gen Than Shwe takes the “road map” seriously.





He will not allow anything to stand in its way. A series of recent events has also taken some of us unaware—he release of U Win Tin; the first ever post-1990 congress of the National League for Democracy (NLD); Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial, the unseasonable attack on the Karen National Union; the attack on Kokang and now possibly an attack on the Wa.

These seem to be the random acts of a paranoid and unpredictable leader—he image we like to portray of Snr-Gen Than Shwe. But in reality, all these events have a common goal: the success of the 2010 elections. They are the rational outworking of a well-calculated and orchestrated operation plan of the SPDC.

The proposal to the ethnic cease-fire groups to transform themselves into Border Guard Forces (BGF) under the control of the Burma army is also an attempt to clear the decks before the 2010 elections. It was meant to either provoke the cease-fire groups to reject the proposal and be destroyed or frighten them into submission and acceptance of the SPDC road map.

It is clear that the BGF proposal was a provocation. This is because during the past 20 years, nothing of this matter was ever discussed with the cease-fire groups. They were told they could keep their arms and could negotiate with the newly elected government on the political terms they wanted.

Suddenly, in April they were told they had until October 2009 to decide. Analyzing the ceasefires, it is clear that the SPDC never meant to negotiate. The plan was to stop hostile action, provide incentives to entice individual commanders to split from the main groups and slowly weaken the ethnic groups to the point where they could be easily eliminated.

The cease-fire groups cannot accept the BGF because it is actually a plan to destroy the groups by attrition. But if they refuse to accept the proposal, they will be destroyed now, before the elections. The Kokang (MNDAA), the Wa (UWSA) and the Mongla (NDAA) groups rejected the BGF proposal and also refused to accept the SPDC’s road map and constitution. They do not want any changes. Therefore, if nothing changes, the SPDC will move against the UWSA and the NDAA. Which group will be attacked first will depend on the tactical advantage.

What about China? Is the SPDC not beholden to China? The short answer is—no. Whatever we may think about the SPDC, the Burma Army is very proud of the fact that it is “patriotic.” The SPDC has never danced to the tune of a foreign power. It has, rather, made foreign powers big and small dance to its tune. Since the SPDC has been largely ostracized internationally, it has had to depend on China.

But it was never happy about it. When Burma was discussed at the UN Security Council and it had to depend even more on China, the SPDC began to cultivate Russia, so that it would not be at China’s mercy. But Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s problem was solved when John Yettaw decided to take a swim. He enabled the SPDC to ensure that Aung San Suu Kyi would have no role in the election, and he also enabled Than Shwe to raise the stakes and create a direct link with the Obama administration.

This in turn gave Than Shwe the card he needed to ignore China’s wishes and move against the Kokang and Wa.

If Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s calculations are correct, the SPDC will be able to wipe out the Wa and Mongla groups, and the 2010 elections can be held on a less contentious playing field according to schedule.

The unpredictable factor, of course, is how much resistance the Wa army will offer. And what the reaction of the other cease-fire groups will be. Some like the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the New Mon State Party (NMSP) are in the process of negotiating with the SPDC over the BGF issue.

Other groups like the KNU and the Shan State Army (South) are watching closely to see how the battle develops. If Than Shwe’s calculations are wrong, Burma could face a period of serious instability and the 2010 elections will be jeopardized.

But on the other hand, the SPDC may have decided that the elections could actually lead to democratization, and it is trying to create a pretext to postpone the elections indefinitely.

Harn Yawnghwe is executive director of the Brussels-based Euro-Burma Office.


Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org



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