MYANMAR/BURMA — When I began writing about Myanmar nearly five years and more than 1,000 posts ago, I had no delusions about special knowledge and still today I am far from anyone’s understanding of an old Burma hand, but I think I can at least hold my own in a conversational way on the country.
So when Dr. Zarni attempts to reduce Myanmar’s tragic state to one issue, my sqicky meter goes off. Zarni has a point, it may even be a very good point, but I think he over simplifies Myanmar.
From The Irrawaddy:
The world knows plenty about Aung San Suu Kyi and what she represents. But it knows almost nothing about the generals beyond their international pariah status.
Self-styled Burma experts attest to this general ignorance of the essence of military rule and the psyche of those in power in Naypyidaw.
In private policy circles and public forums, many of these tea-leaf-readers continue to discuss a myriad of the country’s problems, still without putting their finger on the single most fundamental issue which most broadly accounts for the people’s daily misery and country’s bleak future.
Is it “bad governance?” Is it Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s callous leadership with its characteristic total disregard for public welfare? Is it the military’s persecution of ethnic nationalities (or minorities)? Is it widespread human rights violations? Is it the war crimes, which the Tatmataw, Burma’s armed forces, are allegedly committing, especially in ethnic conflict zones? Or is it the country’s kleptocratic, repressive, and pathological state? Is it the predatory neighbors?
Of course, one would be tempted to tick the box “all of the above” and argue that specific problems – the regime’s failure, for example, to provide public services in health, education and social security or to set up an adequate and functioning system of agricultural credits for the country’s farmers, who make up the bulk of the population—need to be addressed, while waiting for the revolution to deliver.
However, Burma’s fundamental problem is not just about leadership, policy failure, dysfunctional institutions, rights abuses or fractured opposition movements.
Categorically speaking, Burma is confronted with nothing less than a full-scale pathological process of internal colonization, this time by its own military.
I understand Zarni’s point, I really do. It is not so very different, however, from the way the United States of America fulfilled its manifest destiny by colonizing the lands it won from the British, purchased from the French, wrenched from the Spanish and, ultimately stole directly and indirectly from the first people’s.
This might make sense from some academic anthropological view, but I don’t see it helping the people’s of Myanmar win their country, if such a post-colonial country does indeed exist.
Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.
