The narrative “Myanmar is falling apart”, and that this will “trigger a human exodus”, is the single biggest threat to the struggle against military dictatorship at this moment.
So far, Myanmar’s neighbors and ASEAN have pretended to undertake various diplomatic initiatives. In reality, they have been avoiding any meaningful intervention, either diplomatic or humanitarian, and have restrained themselves from exercising any pressure. They have sat and waited, comfortably hidden, behind different ineffective and non-performing initiatives, like the Five Point Consensus, like Hun Sen’s loud and self-promoting “peace facilitating”, like Indonesia’s patient, behind-the-scenes, 300-plus dialogues with “all” stakeholders, or like the current Thai “humanitarian corridor”.
Myanmar’s neighbors do not like the junta. Nobody does. They see how rigid, incompetent, criminal, unpopular and predatory the military regime is. However, since the day of the coup, neighboring countries and others have been convinced that sooner or later the military would suppress civilian protests and armed resistance, and cement control.
Now, however, they understand that this will not happen. So, they feel pressed to actually do “something”. This “something” is to “facilitate temporary ceasefires”, offer humanitarian and other incentives, and get everybody to participate in an “all-inclusive” negotiating process. This means nothing less than aiding the junta’s survival by supporting its political dominance, impunity and economic control.
Others will be advised – and pressured – to accept corrupt deals as part of this process.
There is only one way to counter this interference of neighbors and other international actors in the legitimate liberation struggle of Myanmar’s people.
The required overarching strategy includes:
– Ongoing military pressure to secure small and large defeats of junta troops, combined with constant psychological and information warfare aimed at achieving the regime military’s implosion from the bottom up.
– Political and armed actors in the anti-junta camp must immediately initiate their own political process that will generate media coverage and draw diplomatic attention.
– The key is not to let neighbors or other international actors facilitate political dialogue in today’s Myanmar. Outsiders will continue to involve the military as a crucial stakeholder while also blurring the process by bringing in other irrelevant “actors” from the failed National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).
– Organizing strong civic campaigns protesting China, India, Thailand and ASEAN’s attempts to resurrect the junta from its deathbed. The campaigns should underscore the reality that it is Myanmar’s neighbors and regional actors, via their misguided initiatives, who are encouraging the junta’s terror war against the whole nation.
They are the ones offering time and incentives to a collapsing junta that is using the civilian population as human shields and turning urban centers into battlegrounds being bombed to rubble by junta aircraft supplied by Russia and China.
They are the ones who are blindly giving the junta time to switch its notorious “cleansing” operations to Myanmar’s cities. This is the biggest single factor that will trigger the human exodus that neighbors will not be able to contain with fences or border restrictions.
Myanmar’s neighbors and ASEAN must be called out for their current efforts to throw the dying junta a lifeline. This is the most critical external factor contributing to the destruction and disintegration of Myanmar.
This is the paradox of the current regional and international approach to Myanmar’s crisis. Neighbors who want nothing but stability in Myanmar are – via their wrongly designed foreign policies – actually contributing to the country’s destruction and breakdown.
The people of Myanmar and its armed uprising now face a dual challenge: to persist in defeating the junta’s military, and to urge neighboring countries not to intervene with the intention of aiding the junta’s survival.
