To understand Myanmar, don't start with August

The News & Observer
19 Oct 2007
Peter A. Coclanis

CHAPEL HILL - Myanmar (known as Burma until 1989) has been much in the news because of broad-based political protests against the military regime and the brutal manner in which that regime has responded to the same. Indeed, few international stories over the last few years have proved more compelling in the West, with various and sundry groups voicing moral outrage, scheduling vigils, circulating petitions, etc. Noted authorities and human-rights activists such as Jim Carrey, Sylvester Stallone and Laura Bush have expressed both their principled opposition to the generals and their new-found solidarity with the Burmese people.
I've no use for the economically inept, kleptocratic generals, either, nor for the mechanisms through which they control the country: the huge military force of over 400,000, the paramilitary thugs known as the Union Solidarity Development Association and the Orwellian-sounding governing arm, the State Peace and Development Council. But the lack of historical context in the effluvia emanating from American college campuses, Malibu mansions, the White House and editorial pages in the mainstream media isn't helping citizens here gain much insight into the roots or nature of the conflict over there.

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CLEARLY, ONE SHOULDN'T TAKE AT FACE VALUE the generals' contentions that the country would fall apart in short order were it not for the military, which they argue is the only force capable of preventing the dissolution of the country. It is nonetheless true that since the time of independence in 1948 Myanmar has been held together politically by baling wire, with scores of ethnic minority groups chafing at the political monopoly of the majority Burmese population. Until the 1990s a number of these minority groups waged low-grade, but often quite bloody wars for secession -- a few still do.

Both the resiliency and the intractability of military rule in Myanmar would be more understandable if observers paid more attention to such ethnic strife -- and to history more generally -- rather than act as though the crisis began in August. With a few notable exceptions, even the most thorough media accounts trace their analyses back only to 1962 with the advent of military rule.

The problem with this strategy is that unless one appreciates the trials and tribulations that the country went through from the early 1930s at the latest until the coup that brought the military to power in 1962, one is in danger of underestimating the generals' resolve and of caricaturing their worldviews.

To cut to the chase, it is difficult to find a place anywhere in the world that went through what Burma experienced between the early 1930s and the 1962 coup: The devastation, dislocations and suffering that occurred in this most Buddhist of nations over the course of this period were almost biblical in nature. For starters, there were an economic depression, a millenarian revolt and an anti-colonial struggle in the 1930s. They were followed by horrific action, destruction and death totals during World War II, the full extent of which is just becoming known.

After the war came a difficult period of decolonization -- epitomized by the assassination in 1947 of the struggle's principal hero, General Aung San, father of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. It was followed by a communist rebellion, the prolonged, uninvited and powerfully destabilizing presence in the country of (U.S.-supplied) military forces controlled by Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, the aforementioned secessionist struggles, the flight/expulsion of huge numbers of Europeans, Indians and Chinese from the country (including many members of the newly independent country's small educated middle class), economic stagnation and infrastructural collapse.

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SOME NATIONALISTS WOULD START THE CLOCK ticking on this tale of woes as far back as the 19th century when the British swallowed up Burma in three bites, and, in so doing, eliminated (or forced into exile) much of the traditional ruling class.

Such were the preconditions for the military coup in 1962. By the late '50s, the civilian government was becoming increasingly ineffective, even inert, and the generals -- the leaders of the independence struggle and self-styled heirs to the warrior class that had attempted to safeguard Burmese sovereignty for most of the previous millennium -- stepped in, first in 1958-59, then more decisively in 1962. In their self-interested view, they alone have kept chaos at bay over the past 45 years.

Those interested in Myanmar's current situation should keep this in mind, particularly those who would like to see the generals step out, lest activists become frustrated with the pace of change and move on to a new international cause next month.

(Peter A. Coclanis is associate provost for International Affairs and Albert R. Newsome Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has been to Myanmar 13 times since 1993.)