Igor Blazevic
Parliament House in Bangkok hosted over the weekend a conference entitled “Towards a Democratic Myanmar and its Impact on Security Along the Thai Border”, an important event.
The title of conference states something simple but important. After three years of war, destruction and enormous suffering, Myanmar is not an intractable nightmare. It is possible to move toward a democratic, peaceful and stable Myanmar, and it is possible to do that relatively quickly and easily.
This movement toward democracy and peace is possible only if it also includes movement to a federal Myanmar and if that movement leads to the end of the military’s oppressive dominance and political role.
A little bit of help from neighbours and friends will be highly welcomed, because such help will significantly accelerate developments in a positive direction.
However, the engagement of neighbours in Myanmar’s calamitous crisis can also take a wrong turn and make things worse.
The event held on 2-3 March in Bangkok was a good and important one because for the first time in the last three years, Thailand has hosted gathering at which a lot genuine representatives of the people of Myanmar and authentic voices of the different segments of Myanmar diverse society were among the speakers. Just to mention some: Zin Mar Aung (Minister of Foreign Affairs, NUG), Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun (Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the UN), Saw Nimrod (KNU, Ko Toe (NUCC). ERO leaders were among the speakers as well as several representatives of the Myanmar’s brave Gen Z and editors of Myanmar’s independent media.
Many proven international friends of Myanmar were among the speakers as well, people like Kasit Piromya (APHR Thailand Board Member and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs), Charles Santiago (APHR Chairperson), Tom Andrews (UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar), Duncan McArthur (The Border Consortium), Jason Tower (USIP) and Matthew Smith (Fortify Rights).
A number of important Thai policymakers and respected opinion-makers attended the conference and spoke at it. It was a real pity that Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara withdrew participation at the last moment. Hopefully, he did not do that because of a “notification” coming from the bunkered guys in Naypyidaw.
The Myanmar junta sent a “Secret” and ridiculously formulated letter to the Thai Foreign Affairs Ministry expressing “strong objection” to the discussions taking place in Thai Parliament House. They used their usual threatening language saying that the talks will “create a negative impact on the existing friendly bilateral relations between the two countries”. The junta also required from the Thai Foreign Ministry to “notify” elected Thai parliamentarians “not to carry out any activities that could hinder the ongoing cordial ties in the future”.
The conference was organized at the right place and the right time.
The new Thai government has recently taken a lead role in the international approach towards the Myanmar crisis. ASEAN and the current ASEAN chair Laos are happy to let the Thais take the initiative
and deal with the serious and complex problem they do not really have leverage and interest to deal with.
Thailand – with its long border with Myanmar, deep historic and current interconnectedness on so many different levels, and with so many Myanmar stakeholders, activists, refugees and immigrants being in Thailand and on the Thai-Myanmar border – is the critically important country for Myanmar. It can be only welcomed that Thailand is taking this initiative.
However, there is a real danger that the Thai initiative, even if it is well-minded, can from the onset go in the wrong direction. That is why it is important that genuine voices from Myanmar are heard in Bangkok. Something like this was not, unfortunately, happening under the previous Thai government.
What we heard from Thai officials in recent statements, there is a plan to open borders for humanitarian assistance so that success with humanitarian aid can lead to trust building and renewal of “all-inclusive” ceasefire and peace negotiations.
Humanitarian assistance and facilitating political negotiations between the Myanmar stakeholders can be done in a good and productive way, which will truly contribute to bringing positive dynamics. There is not a single other country than Thailand that is better placed to play that role.
However, humanitarian aid and facilitation of political negotiations can also be done in a very wrong way, which will inevitably fail and will just give one more year to Min Aung Hlaing and his illegitimate junta to inflict destruction and suffering on the people of Myanmar.
So the Thai diplomatic initiative, even before it started to be implemented, is standing at a critical crossroads. The question is, will it choose to go in the right direction? Or it will take the wrong direction?
Yes, it is urgently necessary and long overdue to open the Thai-Myanmar border for large scale humanitarian assistance. However, this aid must be distributed through those who are helping and defending people – and who are legitimately representing people. It should be delivered to millions in emergency need through genuine civil society and humanitarian organizations and through existing National Unity Government (NUG) and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (ERO) public service bodies.
Cross-border aid should definitely not be delivered through the para-military Myanmar Red Cross because this cannot work and will not work.
It is also critically important that humanitarian aid is not instrumentalized for diplomatic and political purposes of the new Thai-led ASEAN initiative.
There is a real and dramatic need for aid in Myanmar. This growing and deepening humanitarian catastrophe has not been addressed so far because the Myanmar junta has weaponized aid, made it a tool of its notorious “four cuts policy” and because the UN agencies and humanitarian INGOs based in Yangon have allowed themselves to become junta hostages. In order to obtain visas and approval to operate inside the country, they have tacitly and shamefully accepted to deliver aid only where the junta wants them to deliver it, and not to deliver it where it is mostly needed. For the sake of their own institutional interests, UN agencies and many big INGOs have failed the people of Myanmar in the situation of a dramatic humanitarian emergency.
What Thailand now should definitely not do is to instrumentalize aid once more for the wrong purposes.
Delivery of aid should not become a pure PR exercise of an alleged “humanitarian breakthrough”. The “Thai humanitarian convoy” should not be handed over on the Thai border with a lot pomp to the military-controlled Myanmar Red Cross to be distribute to 20,000 people in military-controlled territories. This will be a travesty of humanitarian aid. It will be an insult to the suffering and true humanitarian needs of the Myanmar people.
Such showcase of “success of humanitarian opening” should definitely not be misused as a false “breakthrough” that will lead to the Thai Foreign Ministry and ASEAN immediately starting to organize “all-inclusive ceasefire and peace negotiations” which will have as its main hidden agenda intention to bring the military junta out of the cold and offer them incentives with the hope that this can tame the junta and made it acceptable for ASEAN and others.
Everybody familiar with Myanmar is well aware that Thailand and China have significant leverage over many actors in the anti-junta alliance. Everybody knows that Thailand and China are in a position to pressure and blackmail different EROs and other actors of Myanmar politics to join any talks organized by Thailand or China. Even if they are unwilling, they will have no option but to join.
That however will not mean that either China or Thailand, or anybody else, has leverage and influence to persuade or pressure actors of the anti-junta struggle to accept surrender to the ongoing military dominant role in Myanmar politics and the ongoing military’s predatory control over the economy and natural resources.
It is to be highly welcomed if Thailand will be willing to encourage and provide enabling safe space for inclusive political dialogue between different actors of Myanmar who are currently discussing, agreeing and building from the bottom up a new federal democratic country.
In the midst of both a tragic and heroic liberation struggle from the decides of oppressive and predatory military dictatorship, a new Myanmar in emerging. It is in everybody’s interest to encourage and support that development. This is the only path which can bring the peace, stability and functionality to the country from the abyss of current disaster.
The only diplomatic initiative which can save Myanmar from becoming a broken and failed state is the one which is facilitating political negotiations about a future federal, democratic Myanmar with the military coming under the control of an elected civilian government.
If the current Thai initiative is not to take a tragically wrong direction, it must start with a clear understanding that Min Aung Hlaing and the State Administration Council (SAC) do not want any negotiated solution.
Min Aung Hlaing and his illegitimate and completely discredited and broken junta need a short break due to their current extraordinary weakness. They need temporary ceasefires with few ethnic forces in the border areas so that they can reorganize their depleted and demoralized troops and throw them with full force against the resistance in the central parts of Myanmar.
It is critically important that Thai and ASEAN humanitarian initiative and Thai, ASEAN and China’s “ceasefire and peace” initiatives do not just give more time to Min Aung Hlaing to continue its war of terror against the people of the country.
The ASEAN Five-Point Consensus (5PC) did not achieve anything during the last three years. It just gave a free hand to Min Aung Hlaing to wage the war of terror against the Myanmar people – a war which his junta is currently losing.
The new Thai ”humanitarian” and “peace” initiative should not make the same mistake and lose one more year. During that year, Min Aung Hlaing will continue his war of desperation. He will try to forcefully recruit tens of thousands of young people and try to force them to fight thousands of other youngsters who have joined the resistance. He will try one more desperate effort to turn one ethnic and regional group in Myanmar against the other. He will try to conscript and misuse Rohingya against Arakan, Bama in Yangon against Arakan in the city, Pa-O against Shan, Shan against Ta-ang, Shanni against Kachin, Mon against Karen, Muslims against Buddhists, Buddhists against Christians and Muslims. Everybody against everybody, just for the sake of Min Aung Hlaing and the military to carry the One Ring that rules them all.
The danger – the real and tragic danger – is that if Thailand, ASEAN and China give Min Aung Hlaing one more year, he will take the war to the cities.
One should be alerted by the clear evidence that this is already happening. So far the Myanmar military has been destroying and burning villages because they could not control rural areas. Currently, the junta is losing control over cities and, as a response, they have started to use airpower to destroy cities.
This is the same strategy which Assad used in Syria, assisted and encouraged by Putin’s Russia. This has led to a minimum of 580,000 people being killed; with 13 million Syrians being displaced and 6.7 million refugees forced to flee Syria. Min Aung Hlaing does not have the military capacity to inflict damage of such proportions, but he can and – as he himself admitted – is willing to do “anything”.
He and his junta cannot and should not be part of any solution. Min Aung Hlaing and his junta must go.
The Military cannot have political power in a future Myanmar. Myanmar cannot be a highly centralized, unitary, military dictatorship.
Myanmar can and should be a federal democratic union.
In his opening speech at the Bangkok conference Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun rightly alerted Thai, ASEAN and other international friends that “the ultimate goal of our people is to live in a free, peaceful, inclusive, just and democratic society. The Joint Position Statement was issued on 31 January 2024 by Allied Organizations engaged in revolutionary struggle towards Annihilation of Military Dictatorship and Establishment of a Federal Democratic Union. I can certainly say that there is a broad agreement that the system to build such a society in Myanmar is through the governance system of federalism and democracy given our diversity of ethnic people. Self-governance and equality for all have to be upheld. We need such a system that is supported and sustained by effective, inclusive, accountable security and justice institutions. The biggest and immediate obstacle to the sustainable future of Myanmar is the brutal military dictatorship. Therefore, the first step toward lasting peace in Myanmar is to eliminate military dictatorship.”
Hopefully, these and other warnings and recommendations that were voiced at the Bangkok conference will be heard by Thai, ASEAN and China policymakers.
