Sir Charles Petrie, former UN assistant secretary general, has had more than 10 years of direct involvement in Myanmar—almost five as the UN representative in Myanmar, a further four (2012-15) coordinating the Norwegian-led support to the ceasefire process, and a final two writing policy briefs for Western governments (2017-19). He spoke to The Irrawaddy’s editor-in-chief Aung Zaw about the Myanmar people’s loss of faith in the UN, the special challenges of delivering humanitarian aid during a time of revolution, efforts he has observed by resistance forces to develop local governance in Karenni State, and the differences between the current and past military regimes, among other issues.
Aung Zaw: I just learned that you recently made a trip to the border areas, looking over Karenni [Kayah] State and Karen State. So, can you please share your thoughts and what you witnessed over there, and your changing thoughts over the situation in our country, where a civil war is raging?
Sir Charles Petrie: I guess the first thing that really struck me is how devastating the situation is for the population in Karenni State. How the SAC’s [the junta’s governing State Administration Council] air strikes, mortars, the drones, those attacks targeting hospitals, targeting of schools, targeting of churches, targeting of IDPs [internally displaced persons]. How much that has traumatized and … how much suffering it’s brought to the people of Karenni State. What has also struck me is how this suffering trauma is translated not into submissiveness but into absolute hate for the SAC. So that is something that struck me. It’s the suffering that the people are being subjected to.
The other [thing is]… how have things changed. You know compared to the past. I think in three ways… The first is an extension of the observation on the suffering of the people. It’s a sense that the SAC has actually lost control of the country and the people. Of course they control pockets but in terms of land movement, they are forced to mobilize significant resources to go from point A to point B. And they’re very dependent for their operations on air. But more importantly [they’ve] lost control of the people. These populations that are being subjected to mortaring and airstrikes are not scared of the SAC, they hate them.
But also I think what’s been interesting, and that’s sort of the second observation, is there are a new generation of Myanmar nationals, a young generation. A generation of Myanmar nationals who grew up, whose formative years were during that period of relative openness that came after 2011, 2012. So, it’s a generation that no longer had to buy a sim card for $2,000 per card, but were able to buy very cheap sim cards. So, it’s a generation that’s very interconnected, connected with the outside world, very invested in social media. They have their own language, they have their own way of looking at life [that’s] much, much more open. And above all, they don’t have the same fear of the military that their parents had. You know when I was in Myanmar 2003 to 2007, what struck me was the way the SPDC [the State Peace and Development Council, the previous military junta] controlled the people is by getting the people to self-censor their actions. So, periodically they would bring somebody to trial for having somehow infringed on a law. But ultimately it’s the people themselves who censored their actions. That doesn’t exist anymore.
Aung Zaw: Are you saying it was self-imposed?
Petrie: Yeah, imposed because the costs were so enormous… And then, also I think we have a new generation of young Myanmar who [are] not beholden to the same Myanmar traditions. Their music is different. And that I think is a fundamental change in the sociopolitical landscape. And it’s a youth movement that believes it’s at the forefront of a revolution rather than, this is more than civil war. I met somebody who told me, this is not just civil war, this is a revolution. And you feel it when you see the young.
And then, the third observation, and this really comes from Karenni State, is this emergence of the local governance. I think what we’re seeing in Karenni is the establishment of the structures and systems of governance, but as it’s being established the people have an opportunity to input into its establishment through a whole series of consultations at the village, village tract and other levels. So that I think is quite extraordinary.
Aung Zaw: You were the head of the UN in Myanmar from 2003 to 2007. Today there is talk of a humanitarian corridor for assistance to be delivered to Karen, Karenni, Shan or Chin states. So, Myanmar today is very fragmented and millions of people, if I’m not wrong, are in need of humanitarian assistance. But now as you said there’s an ongoing revolution in Myanmar. So, how do you see the humanitarian situation in the country? How can the external actors help alleviate the situation on the ground?
Petrie: I mean that’s a very good question and I don’t think the answer is easy…I think the discussions that are starting around this humanitarian corridor that the Thai government has launched, I think [are] very positive. I mean the notion of a humanitarian corridor is somewhat difficult to really understand. But the fact that Thailand is starting to engage… it’s an opportunity that needs to be seized.
In terms of assistance, my sense is that classic humanitarian aid with that in a context like Myanmar, we are seeing the limits of classic humanitarian aid. Because the essence of humanitarian aid is the ability to negotiate access. But when the regime in question is considered illegitimate or a pariah by the West, you can’t negotiate because again the essence of negotiation is you give a little to get a lot back. But you can’t give anything because the groups outside will not allow you to. So, in that sense your ability to negotiate that access is extremely limited. So that’s one side. I think on the other side… as you were saying Myanmar has fragmented. But, it’s fragmented into increasingly autonomous areas. So of course, the ethnic armed groups they [were] already well established. But for example, in Karenni you see the emergence of a new form of governance structure and that I think offers an opportunity to provide support in a way that helps build the local governance capacities of these areas.
I’ve heard one [donor] say in 10 years’ time, we don’t want to be accused of having been responsible for the breakup of Myanmar. And I’m arguing that yeah, you’re not going to be responsible for that. You need to look at the situation as it is [which] is an emergence of greater autonomous areas. None of these areas are pushing for independence, they want a level of autonomy. So, if you’re willing to acknowledge that then you have the basis for a bottom-up form of federalism.
I think there is an opportunity with Thailand developing this idea of a humanitarian corridor even if that may not be the result. But, I think there’s an opportunity to follow there, I think one needs to accept that humanitarian aid has its limits because of the the way it operates and I think there’s also an opportunity to work with local governance structures.
Aung Zaw: So explain for us local governance in this time of revolution, amid the debate about how to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people on the ground? How can international organizations or NGOs or even UN agencies come and work with the local governance without going through the SAC? Because I think there’s an old way of thinking and old structures still in place at international organizations including the UN. You know better than me. How can people work with the local governance as newly emerging actors?
Petrie: That’s a good question. Your last point is very strong! It’s the fact that they’re constrained in an old way of thinking. I think the first thing is to acknowledge that these local governance structures exist and to try and understand them. I think what’s emerging in Karenni is fascinating in terms of the participatory approach that the local authorities are taking in establishing an administration. And they’re doing it because for a large part, many of them come from civil society, they’re former civil society leaders. So, that’s fascinating. I think what’s also interesting about the Karenni experience is how it’s also influencing other areas—the KNU [Karen National Union] and other groups where they’re also trying to set up these interim executive structures.
In terms of the UN and others, you know everybody accuses the UN of being in bed with the regime. And each time they sign something it’s seen as further complicity. For me, that’s not the problem. The problem isn’t the fact that the UN is engaging with the regime. The problem is they’re not doing anything else. In a way, if you engage with the regime it should give you the confidence to engage with groups outside. When I was the UN rep in Myanmar, the regime was extremely uncomfortable with me seeing the ethnic armed groups in Chang Mai and Bangkok and Mae Sot. But, I would do it and then, when I’d come back, I would go see a senior official from the regime. And I would talk about this and that. And then, I would just let slip—so they would say something and I would say, “That’s really interesting, when I met [KNU peace negotiator] David Htaw last week in Chang Mai, he said exactly the same thing.” So, I was finding indirect ways of letting them know that I was seeing the groups on the other side. So, I think there’s no reason why the UN shouldn’t engage with groups outside, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t engage and provide assistance in areas not under control of the SAC. It’s just that they’re not doing it and they’re not smart enough to find ways of doing it. Because their mandate is to do it and you can do it. So, I think we’re stuck with a UN system that lacks imagination and that lacks courage. But there’s absolutely no justification for not engaging with the groups outside.
Aung Zaw: Are you saying that the UN has a mandate to engage with all actors?
Petrie: The humanitarian mandate gives them the obligation to engage with all actors to try to get assistance to reach the people in need.
Aung Zaw: But they are not doing it.
Petrie: No, they’re not.
Aung Zaw: So the UN is rather like a distraction—it’s not doing anything?
Petrie: No, I think the UN is basically irrelevant. I mean that’s the problem. It is that they’re in a situation of such horrific tragedy. The UN has not been able to position itself.
Aung Zaw: As a former head of the UN in Myanmar, Charles you just said that the UN is no longer relevant in Myanmar.
Petrie: Yeah, exactly that, given the context—given, as I said, the horrendous suffering. You know I mean it’s difficult to imagine the extent to which the population is traumatized and suffering you know. Given what the UN was created for, given the UN comes out of two world wars [with] a commitment to help create a better world. Given that, given the opportunities to do it. Yes, I think the UN has failed the people of Myanmar.
Aung Zaw: But at the same time we’re seeing reports that the UN has appealed for more international aid for the Myanmar people. How do you see that?
Petrie: Well, one, the appeals aren’t necessarily well met, which I think is a reflection of the lack of confidence in the UN that the international community has. And from engaging with communities in Karenni, I don’t really see—in terms of the most vulnerable population—I don’t really see the same level of support reaching the people that has been requested from donors. There’s a little bit of a disproportionate element between the level of the appeals and the actual assistance going to the people.
Aung Zaw: Have you given up on the UN?
Petrie: The answer is absolutely not. I as you know I served more than 20 years with the UN. I was in Rwanda during the genocide, I was the Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator. Before that I was in Somalia during Blackhawk Down, so I was chairman of the Admiral House Crisis Action Group. I spent three years with the Congolese rebels. I was in Afghanistan and the rest. And through it, throughout my career I’ve had a fundamental belief in what the UN represents and the Charter, and so I haven’t given up on the UN. I really want to help the UN to realize the dramatic point at which it finds itself and to help it reform internally. There’s still some good people in the UN, I mean there’s still a lot of good.
Aung Zaw: I believe so
Petrie: They are in there and they believe that the system should operate differently. And I want to use the experience I’ve gained through my years working in the UN and in conflict settings. You know I want to work with them to help the UN change. So, as far as Myanmar’s concerned, the UN can become a player but it has to change its approach and it has to find courage. But there is a crying need for the UN to assume its responsibilities in Myanmar and as long as the structure exists I and others will try to push it to do the right thing.
Aung Zaw: Listening to what you just said, the thought came to my mind that maybe the Myanmar people need to intervene in the UN. Because the Myanmar people have given up on it.
Petrie: Yeah, I agree. They need to insist—the Myanmar people should say “Yeah, why aren’t you…”
Aung Zaw: I think they have lost faith in the UN. As an institution.
Petrie: Which is dramatic. When you think of an institution that was born after two world wars to help create a better world and that the people…
Aung Zaw: It’s really sad.
Petrie: I think the saddest picture I saw after first the coup were those placards of “R2P” [responsibility to protect].
Aung Zaw: Right.
Petrie: That I think was profoundly sad. And then, to listen to politicians in Europe and in Australia, government officials saying, “Yes, R2P,” when they knew there would be no R2P intervention. No, I agree. It’s a very very sad situation where the people of this country have lost faith in the UN.
Aung Zaw: In your earlier remarks you talked about the revolution, and we have also discussed aid. And I’m sure that the local actors don’t want to be divided by humanitarian aid and assistance, because aid is also very political. It has its own regulations and its own categories and its own mandate. But in the past when aid was delivered to local communities, it created divisions. So, how do we change that? Because we now have a new generation leading the revolution. Some groups are arguing that the aid and humanitarian assistance must come now, but political groups and the Myanmar people want to be free from the SAC, want to be free from this regime and they want the revolution to win. How do we reconcile these two issues?
Petrie: It will be difficult but I think one needs to start from the bottom and go up. I think the first thing is there needs to be acknowledgement of local, these local governance structures and how they’re operating and to not go and fall into the trap of saying this is the beginning of a fragmenting of Myanmar, [we need] to see it as the beginning of a bottom-up form of federalism, which is very important.
Aung Zaw: A very positive approach to say that, because there are fearmongers who say that Myanmar is going to be split up and divided, even that there will be a balkanization.
Petrie: Yeah.
Aung Zaw: But this is not going to happen
Petrie: I think it can be prevented from happening if there’s acknowledgement of what’s happening on the ground. So, I think there needs to be acknowledgement of that. On the part of donors, there needs to be a genuine commitment to not taking the ownership of the process away from these local structures.
Aung Zaw: Very important
Petrie: Yeah, so I think there needs to be some sort of partnership with these groups. The one concern I have for the Karenni is that they become the donor “darlings” and that as a result they get flooded. So, when I was talking to, for example, people from the Interim Executive [Interim Executive Council (IEC), Karenni State’s revolutionary administrative body] and KSCC [Karenni State Consultative Council] … I met somebody who was telling me, “We are trying to work according to international standards.” And I told them there are no international standards for what you are doing. You are setting the international standards for what you are doing.
And then, I told them, what you need to do, you’ll have all of these people who are going to come and they’ll offer assistance, and I said, what you need to do is you need to invite them, tell them to spend a month in Karenni and after a month they tell you what they’re going to offer, what they’re proposing to offer. So, they need to keep that ownership and then I think the international community has to acknowledge that humanitarian aid in a revolutionary setting has limits in terms of what it can provide. and as a result, you need to come up with a parallel form of intervention.
Aung Zaw: What you just said is brilliant. It’s really brilliant because you talked about ownership and you talked about donors who have the ability to listen and learn.
Petrie: Yeah.
Aung Zaw: Not to come and impose or work in the old traditional way, right?
Petrie: Yeah, yeah and I think also it’ll be a lot cheaper. I think when you look at, I saw a number of projects… Rebuilding a hospital for $100,000, you know when you look at the amounts that are actually needed they’re nothing compared to these appeals. So, if donors were willing to go down that track, it would be much much cheaper than these classic humanitarian appeals.
Aung Zaw: Tell me about what you just saw over there, the local initiatives. For instance, like livelihoods and economic activities, vocational training and how the local people are helping each other. Can you share some examples?
Petrie: [There are] two things that make the Karenni exceptional. The first is the fact that unlike the ethnic armed areas where you have a well-established administration, in Karenni State it’s an administration that’s coming into form so there’s a lot more space for local initiatives. So, that’s the first. The second is that so many of the young from Yangon and the urban centers, Mandalay, actually moved to Karenni with a new form of dynamism. But what one sees—of course, IDPs, I estimate up to 80 percent of the population has been forced to flee because of the bombings and the rest. But what you see very quickly are the emergence of micro-economies, you know you see a café, a tattoo parlor, you know hairdressers, a lot of people from Loikaw or Demoso, who had industries like flour mills who wanted to cash in, well a number of these young people, young activists coming from Yangon, Mandalay actually buy the industry, and they have a system where 40 percent of their revenue goes for the functioning of the entity, 60 percent goes to the revolution and supporting the revolution. And supporting the revolution is either support to IDPs or support to frontline troops. It’s incredibly dynamic, incredibly committed, as one would expect in a revolution. Everybody is behind it.
Aung Zaw: But Karenni is the exception, what about other ethnic states?
Petrie: I think what’s interesting is a number of other ethnic groups are actually looking at for example the Interim Executive [Council] in Karenni and attempting to replicate it. So, it is an exception but I think it’s slowly turning into an example of governance. A lot of the other ethnic groups are principally armed groups who’ve been resisting for decades, to which have been attached administrations… And I think what Karenni is providing is the model of governance, so that I think is starting to influence some of the other groups.
Aung Zaw: As a former UN country head, now you’re seeing a revolution taking place in Myanmar and you’re critical of the UN. How has your thinking changed?
Petrie: I mean in terms of the UN, what I want to do is to get the UN to understand that a lot of the constraints that they feel they operate under are self-imposed. I think that it is possible to do a lot more and it’s possible to navigate the risks involved and that’s what I want to tell my UN colleagues. The reason I want to say it is because the UN has a critical role to play and I think what you were saying before, which was very strong, is it’s a tragedy that the people of a country would not, would have lost confidence in the UN. And for me it’s a tragedy that the UN needs to understand, it needs to confront. It’s not the fact that the people have lost confidence, it’s not the people who’ve lost confidence who are at fault. It’s the UN who’s at fault, for allowing the people to lose confidence in it.
Aung Zaw: How does the previous military regime compare to the current one?
Petrie: That’s an interesting question. Well… my period was very much defined by Khin Nyunt—the period when Khin Nyunt, the head of military intelligence, was around and then after, after the purge [of Khin Nyunt and the military intelligence apparatus] in October 2004 and early 2005. I think the regime we saw [then] was a softer version of what we see today.
During Khin Nyunt’s period, I think there was an opportunity to work in Myanmar principally because military intelligence, you know they followed individuals and had a very good sense of how poor the people were, so there was space. Khin Nyunt was purged and then you ended up with sort of a classic junta and they were very difficult to deal with. They weren’t as bloody, although the Four Cuts [counterinsurgency] strategy in certain areas was ruthless.
Aung Zaw: I think the key word here is “space”. We have been debating this for the last 10, 20 years about space—whether in terms of political space, humanitarian space. So that’s what I want you to explore: whether such space exists inside the country. Is it delusional or is it a reality?
Petrie: I was in Myanmar 2003 to 2007. From 2003 until the end of 2004, when Khin Nyunt was still the head of military intelligence, there was space. And it’s because there was an understanding of how vulnerable the population was. From 2005 to 2007 the space started shrinking.
Aung Zaw: After Khin Nyunt was removed.
Petrie: After Khin Nyunt was removed, because they got rid of the whole of military intelligence and it took them a few years to reassert full control of the country. I mean not that they lost much. Now with the coup I would argue that the UN actually has a lot more space.
Aung Zaw: How so?
Petrie: Because they need to find a way to operate outside the SAC-controlled areas. They have the mandate to do it. They have the humanitarian mandate there.
Aung Zaw: But they don’t.
Petrie: They do. They’re just not using it.
Aung Zaw: They don’t operate.
Petrie: Yeah that’s the problem. They need to find a way to operate. They can’t find a way to operate, they just need courage.
Aung Zaw: What is your advice, what are your thoughts on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar? One of the points requires the delivery of aid assistance. UN agencies inside the country as well as international donors are working on this. Given the ongoing revolution, what is your advice to them?
Petrie: Well, the Five-Point Consensus I think has been around for a while without necessarily big results. I think my key recommendation would be to embrace the Thai initiative, or see the Thai initiative as the beginning of an opportunity to really start addressing the humanitarian problems. It may not result in the corridor, we don’t know what the corridor is about. But the fact that Thailand is engaging in that sort of reflection, I think we should embrace that.
Aung Zaw: But there is a fear that this humanitarian corridor may lend legitimacy to the regime.
Petrie: I don’t think anything can, I mean definitely not with the people. You know maybe outside but I mean the legitimacy question I think is a sort of a nice intellectual question. I think on the ground legitimacy, non-legitimacy, it’s very clear: You get bombed, you see the jets fly over you or you get the mortars.
Aung Zaw: We keep hearing the horrendous stories every day; the regime is committing war crimes. Hopefully next time we can have more time to talk about transitional justice. So to my last question: Do you have a hopeful message for the people of Myanmar including the revolutionaries and the local government actors?
Petrie: I mean my message would be total admiration for what you’re doing. I think the fact that you’re no longer depending on outside help to deal with your situation is, I mean, more than correct. It shows your strength. My message is more the admiration. The hope that they’ve given me in terms of people resisting and building. I think the only message I can give them is sincere congratulations for resisting the way you’re resisting.
