MYANMAR, formerly Burma, is in crisis for the sixth day. Highly influential Buddhist monks have led peaceful demonstrations in Yangon, protesting against the military government. Yesterday in a highly symbolic move, a thousand monks led other demonstrators to the home of Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi, who has spent 11 years under house arrest, came to her door and greeted them.
The challenge to the country’s military regime, condemned internationally and the object of very poorly applied sanctions, is growing. The question is whether the military will be prepared to act against the monks. The risk of action against them is that the general public would be roused to furious protest which could easily spiral out of control. Action might also cause divisions within the lower ranks of the military. Many junior officers were reluctant to take part in the 1990 suppression of widespread protests when the generals rejected the overwhelming electoral victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. At that time the monks did not join the protesters. Now one of their organizations has declared the military regime to be “the enemy of the people.” As in 1990, the key issue is that the present street protests are peaceful. Buddhism absolutely rejects violence. Thus, there is no physical threat to the military government. The moral threat, however, cannot be underestimated.
Since Myanmar gained independence from British rule in 1947, the military has regularly intervened in politics. Sixty years on, the country has little to show for such governance. All key industries are controlled by the military and soldiers do not make good businessmen. The inefficiency, economic illiteracy and sheer corruption that have characterized military control of the economy have brought poverty and deprivation to a country which might otherwise have benefited from the robust economic growth elsewhere in the region. It seems that Myanmar’s generals have run out of ideas, except for the principle of protecting their privileged dominance of a country that is surrounded by rising plenty. This ascendance includes the lucrative control of opium exports. How the three-man ruling junta, itself often divided, will finally react to the growing challenge will depend to a degree on the loyalty of rank and file soldiers. The junta may be hoping that the protests will blow themselves out without any crackdown. It may equally, even now, be preparing a clampdown, using carefully selected troop units upon which it knows it can rely.
There is a third possibility, which is that the generals realize that the game is almost up. Feelers may be out to political opponents as well as to Washington and neighboring states to see about arranging a safe exit from power into a comfortable and unthreatened retirement. For all their brutal faults, Myanmar’s generals are not genocidal criminals. Such a deal would not be too high a price to bring peaceful change and put the soldiers back in the barracks where they belong.
