Myanmar - The Moslem Problem

China is reported to have delivered up to five M-17 helicopters, some armed with Chinese heat-seeking missiles, to the UWSA (United Wa State Army) in the north. This would enable the UWSA to effectively attack government Mi-24 helicopter gunships, as well as more quickly move armed men and supplies around the sparely populated and generally roadless border region. China has long tolerated the UWSA buying small arms (mortars, machine-guns and 12.7mm sniper rifles), uniforms and other military gear from Chinese traders along the border. But Mi-17s are a lot more expensive (over $5 million each new, less than half that if second-hand) and require trained operators and maintainers (who are probably Chinese). China has long used these Russian Mi-17s and manufactures them under license. The helicopters may have been leased from the Chinese, or simply loaned to the UWSA for a while.

 

China denies supporting the UWSA on its border but apparently UWSA has some kind of arrangement with the Chinese government, who allow armed UWSA fighters to enter Chinese border towns to do business. The UWSA signed a ceasefire with the Burmese government in 1989, apparently with the understanding that the government would not interfere with UWSA drug operations (mainly methamphetamine but also opium and heroin). China tolerates this as long as most of the drugs flow into Thailand and not China. All these deals rely on the cooperation of corrupt officials because neither Burma nor China officially supports the production of illegal drugs. The Burmese are upset at continued shipments of Chinese weapons to the UWSA, including some armored vehicles. The helicopter deal is particularly scary. China denies all this, although the UWSA largely use Chinese weapons (but then, so do the Burmese troops.) Burma does not press China too hard on this issue because China is a major, if not the major, foreign investor in Burma. Letting the UWSA get helicopters may be a Chinese ploy to persuade the Burmese government to allow China to resume its dam building (for producing electricity for China), mining and oil pipeline operations in the north. In the last month the government has been more hostile to locals who have been protesting the Chinese operations up north. In the last week the police have been much more violent against the protesters. The main cause of opposition to the Chinese mines and pipelines is the government corruption that saw local farmers lose their land without fair (or sometimes any) compensation. Local tribes see the Chinese projects as another way to displace them from the areas they have lived in for centuries. 

 

The anti-Moslem violence continues and there appears to be no end in sight. The Moslems live in the south, often in separate neighborhoods, but right next to Buddhists. The anti-Moslem violence is spreading, sustained by generations of bad relations between Moslems and non-Moslems. With the police state government gone for two years now, people are free to act on their ethnic and religious hatreds and there’s more of it in Burma than the pro-democracy movement leaders realized. Just because you wish it weren’t so won’t make it go away. How to deal with these violent attitudes is giving the new government big headaches. This is especially true when orders to fix things are given but are not carried out. Senior officials say (and often believe) all the right things. But the closer you get to the violence the more you find local officials that are not inclined to be nice to the minorities. As a result it’s difficult to get the mob leaders and the killers prosecuted or the refugee camps for Moslems run properly. 

 

In the far north the Shan State Army–South (SSA-S) continues to battle soldiers who, since January have been advancing into tribal territory in violation of a December 2011 peace deal. This has led to a growing number of skirmishes and in the last few weeks over a thousand villagers have fled the violence. The army is apparently also trying to interfere with the tribal drug operations up north. The SSA-S is allied with the neighboring UWSA and these two groups are making a lot of money in the drug business. Opium and heroin production have been revived in the past few years. Production of methamphetamine is huge. Called "yaba" ("crazy drug") locally, most of it is smuggled out via Thailand. Over the last few years, production of yaba tablets has soared. The meth labs are easier to conceal than poppy fields (opium is the sap of poppy plants) and the meth labs are believed to produce several hundred million tablets a year. The tribal rebels, especially the UWSA use the profits to buy more weapons for their fighters, and run their rebel organizations. The government has been in a weak bargaining position here but always had the option to declare the militias in violation of the 2011 peace deal and officially renew the fighting. 

 

April 29, 2013: The government issued a long awaited report on how to deal with the problem of violence by the Buddhist majority against the Moslem minority. The main recommendations were to double the number of security personnel (mainly police, who tend to be Buddhist) in areas where Moslems live and to introduce family planning education to Moslem communities and make birth-control measures available. Most (89 percent) of Burmese are Buddhist with the rest being Moslem (4 percent), Christian (4 percent), Hindu (one percent) and various other (two percent). In some cities and towns Moslems are 10-30 percent of the local population. Relations are not always harmonious between ethnic (Buddhist) Burmese and Moslems (who are often not ethnic Burmese). Islam is the most intolerant religion in the region and Hindus and Buddhists have long reciprocated. This has caused centuries of tension that occasionally breaks out into deadly violence. The Moslems in Burma have a higher birth rate than ethnic Burmese and there is a fear that, long-term, Moslems are trying to force ethnic Burmese out of Burma. While the Hindu, Christian and other religious minorities strive to get along with the Buddhist majority the Moslems are less inclined to do this. Then there have been several decades of increasing Islamic terrorism worldwide. Some local Buddhist religious and political leaders have exploited the anti-Moslem feelings to expand their own power. The government study group did not see any quick solution to the problem. Shutting down anti-Moslem media activity by Buddhist religious and political leaders cannot be done openly because most Burmese agree that the Moslems are a problem. Foreign governments from the West and the Islamic world urge the government to crack down but since Burma is now a democracy making such a move would be political suicide and result in politicians getting elected who are even more anti-Moslem. 

 

April 23, 2013: The government announced it was freeing about a hundred prisoners, most of them jailed for political activity (against the former military dictatorship). This was apparently in response to the EU (European Union) dropping trade sanctions against Burma. The government had released over 800 political prisoners in the last two years, as an elected government replaced the military dictatorship.  

 

 April 22, 2013: The EU agreed to lift economic sanctions against Burma, although arms sales are still prohibited by EU members.  

Burma (Myanmar) - Violent Religious Bigots Seek Shelter

Fighting continues in the tribal north. For the last decade, there have been ceasefire deals that tend to collapse into a period of heavy combat followed by another ceasefire. The Shan, Kachin, Wa and some smaller tribes maintain armed and organized militias which can delay, but not stop army movements in the sparsely populated north. The militias do prevent the government from maintaining regular control of the tribal north. This pattern has persisted since the 195os because of corruption and ethnic tension between the northern tribes and the more numerous lowlanders. About a third of 58 million Burmese belong to various minorities and most of them are in the rebellious tribes of the north. The current ceasefires in the north are still broken when the army moves troops around and tribal militiamen open fire because they suspect the soldiers are up to no good. The troops have, in the past, regularly entered villages and engaged in looting and rape. The tribes don't forget this sort of thing.

 Decades of Burmese broken promises makes negotiations difficult, but the tribes are anxious to get access to teachers and medical care, as well as trade with the south. So the peace negotiations regularly alternate with periods of violence. The lowland Burmese have never had control of the tribal uplands. In fact it was the British colonial troops that gained some control over there tribal areas, and then made them part of post-colonial Burma in 1947. Britain had taken control of Burma in 1885, ending a thousand years of independence. During that thousand years the lowland kingdoms did not control the tribal areas most of the time. The British policy up north was to keep the peace and not exercise a lot of control over. That suited the tribes, who retained a lot of autonomy and were able to trade with the more advanced (in terms of economy, education and so on) south. The British encouraged trade with the tribes and brought peace and prosperity for over half a century. After 1947, the lowland Burmese sought to impose the control of their corrupt government which was eager to exploit, and not help, the independent minded tribes. That led to over half a century of perpetual rebellion.

Ethnic and religious violence, that was particularly intense last month, continues in the northwest ( Rakhine State, the northwestern coast just south of Bangladesh) but at a reduced level. There have been several hundred casualties, most of them Moslem and thousands of buildings destroyed. This has displaced over 40,000 people. The Moslems and Buddhists have never gotten along and there's always been some tension. Until recently, the military government suppressed any open talk of these tensions. But since the elections last year, there's been more freedom of the press and that has included more public discussion by Buddhists about how much they dislike the Rohingyas.

Rakhine State has a population of 3.8 million, with about 800,000 of them Moslems, mostly Rohingyas. These are Benglais, or people from Bengal (now Bangladesh) who began migrating to Burma during the 19th century. At that time the British colonial government ran Bangladesh and Burma, and allowed this movement, even though the Buddhist Burmese opposed it. Britain recognized the problem too late, and the Bengali Moslems were still in Burma when Britain gave up its South Asian colonies after World War II (1939-45). Bangladesh has refused to take these Moslems back as Bangladeshis, and the Rohingya have come to consider themselves a separate group. Burma never let the Rohingya become citizens, which helped stoke tensions between the Moslems and Buddhists. Bangladesh has long had too many people, and illegal migration to neighboring areas has been a growing problem. In the 1990s, an outbreak of violence led to over a quarter million Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. Some 28,000 are in refugee camps in Bangladesh, another 200,000 live outside the camps in Bangladesh and some are in Thailand, where they are considered economic migrants, and thus illegal. This year Bangladesh changed its refugee policy and refused to accept any more Rohingya, considering the refugee camps an unfair burden caused by Burmese refusal to absorb the Rohingya in their territory. This has led to Burma creating heavily guarded camps for these displaced Rohingya. Aid workers call these camps prisons, but the Burmese want to limit the movement of Rohingya who consider themselves at war with Buddhists. No Hindus, Christians or Buddhists in this region have fond memories of Moslems, who have been around for over a thousand years as invaders and violent religious bigots. These memories are sustained by the current wave of Islamic terrorism around the world. The UN is trying to get Burma to absorb the Rohingya, but the Burmese believe that absorption is not practical and these Moslems must move to a Moslem country (preferably Bangladesh, where they came from.) The Burmese resent the UN interference and have arrested some aid workers who are helping the Rohingya.

As part of a deal with India, Burmese troops moved into areas near the Indian border where Indian rebels groups have long maintained camps. But none of the camps have been shut down yet. When the camps are shut down, India will respond with economic aid and investment deals.

China continues to expel tribal refugees (Kachin) from Burma. The Chinese do not want a lot of these refugees because their refugee camps tend to become bases for armed Kachin and smugglers.

July 10, 2012:  The United States has lifted some of the economic sanctions imposed on Burma (because of its decades of military rule). The new elected government is showing signs of dismantling many aspects of the military dictatorship. That said, the new government is still full of retired generals. While these guys talk of changing their old dictatorial ways, the reforms are not coming quickly. The U.S. lifted some sanctions because the government replaced some hardline generals with some less hardline ones. The problem is that all these senior army officers stick together and the new democracy initiative is seen by many as an army scheme to get out from under all the sanctions and revive the economy while not threatening the wealth and power the army leaders have built up in the last half century. Burmese reformers are pressuring the retired generals to allow more change. This sometimes irritates the generals, like the growing tendency among Burmese to call their country Burma. The generals have insisted, for decades, that the country be called Myanmar. But because the generals were so hated, most Burmese saw "Myanmar" as another name for oppression and military dictatorship. Most Burmese prefer "Burma", which harkens back to better times.

July 9, 2012: Police and soldiers raided a methamphetamine lab in Shan state, seizing $3.7 million worth of meth (in pill form) and raw materials. This included 73 kg (161 pounds) of the pills ready to be smuggled into China or Thailand. Heroin and meth production has increased in the last few years as a way for the tribes to raise money for weapons and other military supplies. The government has pledged to shut down drug production by 2014. That is unlikely to happen, but the police and soldiers can do a lot of damage. 

July 4, 2012: In the south, along the Thailand border, police arrested 80 Thais and accused them of illegal logging. There's a lot of this going on along the border, and those arrested belonged to a gang that apparently did not pay bribes to the right people. Police also seized bulldozers (for creating roads) and heavy trucks (to carry out the logs), as well as heavy duty saws.