After pledging to hold elections in December or January, the Myanmar junta has launched yet another initiative to gain some degree of legitimacy—a “peace forum.” According to military mouthpiece The Global New Light of Myanmar, a gathering was held at the Mingalar Thiri Hotel in Naypyitaw from June 25 to 27 with the stated
theme of working “towards a new nation of peace and prosperity through the integration of peace, elections, and development.”
The 259 participants reportedly included representatives of the military government and various political parties, retired army officers, signatories and non-signatories of the old Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), technicians, rectors of universities, representatives of international and local NGOs, as well as some current and former diplomats and “international intellectuals.”
But given the fighting that has erupted across the country since the junta overthrew the elected government in February 2021, this scheme is even less likely to lead to a peaceful solution to Myanmar’s decades-long ethnic and political conflicts than initiatives taken by the previous governments of ex-general Thein Sein and pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Notably, not one of the ethnic and political resistance armies actually fighting the junta attended the jamboree in Naypyitaw. Even the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), which signed the 2015 NCA and has since then shown more interest in striking business deals than participating in the resistance, ignored the event.
Even so, voices sympathetic to the peace forum may come from Myanmar’s partners in ASEAN and similar players that do not really care about democracy and human rights. The Myanmar military may be content with that. It is after all one step further toward acceptance back into the regional community.
This time it is unlikely that the West will pour any money into the efforts to the same extent it did under Thein Sein and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. During their respective tenures, international funders contributed at least US$ 100 million to what turned out to be pointless ventures. The most destructive outfits were Swiss and Norwegian, which employed foreign “experts” with little or no knowledge of the complexities of Myanmar’s internal conflicts. And the flow of money into the country corrupted local players as well.
Failed ceasefire agreements are nothing new in Myanmar. The only difference between Thein Sein’s and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s “peace processes” and what happened during talks between the military and ethnic and political resistance armies in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s was the involvement of foreign peacemakers and their money bags. The term “military-industrial complex” is often used to describe a network of defense contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals, institutions, and various government agencies in the United States. Myanmar under Thein Sein and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had its own “peace-industrial complex.” A foreign human-rights activist familiar with the situation in the war-torn frontier areas described the then foreign-dominated peace industry as “a cabal of carpetbaggers and con men whose real contribution to the peace process is shrouded in self-laudatory assessments that have no basis in reality.”
Unsurprisingly, Myanmar is now experiencing the heaviest and most widespread fighting since the years immediately after independence from Britain in 1948. It all began when Thein Sein created the Myanmar Peace Center in 2012 with the aim of negotiating peace deals with the various ethic armed organizations (EAOs) across the country. Paradoxically, intense fighting broke out in Kachin State in the north when that “process” was in motion, and, for the first time, the military relied heavily on airpower. Helicopter gunships strafed rebel bases as well as village homes, and tens of thousands became internal refugees, who are now euphemistically referred to as “internally displaced persons” or IDPs.
With nothing substantial to show, the Thein Sein government as a face-saving gesture before the November 2015 election got eight EAOs to sign the NCA. The event was held in Naypyitaw on Oct. 15 and described by one observer as reminiscent of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. Five of the signatories had no noteworthy armed forces, and one, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, had been a government-allied militia since it broke away from the main group, the Karen National Union (KNU), in 1994. That meant that only two of the signatories—the RCSS and the KNU—were engaged in armed struggle against the government before signing.
Groups representing 80 percent of Myanmar’s armed rebels refused to sign the agreement because they saw it as surrender, not the beginning of a comprehensive settlement for peace and the establishment of the federal union that they envisaged.
The government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, which took over in March 2016, followed in Thein Sein’s footsteps and initiated what was called the Union Peace Conference–21st Century Panglong, and foreign money continued to flow into Myanmar. Her initiative was named after the Panglong Agreement that her father Aung San signed with representatives of the Shans, the Kachins, and the Chins in 1947, paving the way for the establishment of a federal union after independence the following year. On Feb. 13, 2018, the government proudly announced that two more groups had signed the NCA: a relatively small ethnic Mon rebel army and a Thailand-based NGO representing the Lahu, another ethnic minority.
But at the same time, the war had spread to Kokang, an area populated by ethnic Chinese in the northeastern corner of Shan State. In October 2016 and August 2017, Muslim insurgents from a group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched attacks on security outposts on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, provoking a massive response from the military. More than 700,000 Rohingyas, a Muslim community in Rakhine State, fled to Bangladesh to escape what UN investigators and human-rights advocates have described as “ethnic cleansing.” Then, in early 2019, the Arakan Army (AA), a group drawing its supporters from the Buddhist majority of Rakhine State, clashed with the security forces, prompting another crackdown—and the flight of Rakhines and other Buddhists across the country’s western border. Since then, and especially since the 2021 coup, the AA has taken over most of Rakhine State.
The main problem with previous peace efforts was that the central authorities always put the cart before the horse by insisting on the EAOs’ signing a ceasefire before they had even discussed any political issues. That, of course, did not work. After signing the NCA in 2015, two groups—the Chin National Front (CNF), which until then controlled no territory, and the Pa-O National Liberation Organization (PNLO), a group that consisted of little more than a couple of Pa-O exiles in northern Thailand and a token force on the Thai-Myanmar border—even managed to build up formidable armies. Today, both those groups and the KNU are engaged in armed struggle against the junta. In other words, the NCA is dead.
It is also clear that the junta has no intention to negotiate with the actual resistance. Ye Myo Hein, a prominent Myanmar political analyst, remarked in an op-ed piece for The Irrawaddy on Sept. 26 that the regime had “issued a statement urging resistance forces to lay down their arms and participate in regime-organized elections. Titled ‘Offer to Resolve Political Issues by Political Means’, this statement sparked confusion, with some, including reputable international media, mistakenly interpreting it as an ‘appeal for talks on a political solution to the armed conflict’.” In reality, Ye Myo Hein said, “the regime’s message is clear: They intend to hold elections under the already-dissolved 2008 constitution, demanding that the resistance disarm, form political parties, and participate in these elections. Rather than an invitation to political dialogue, this call to participate in a rigged election is a deliberate strategy to avoid dialogue.” In his independence-day speech on Jan. 4 this year, junta boss Min Aung Hlaing also said that the EAOs and other revolutionary groups have to lay down their arms first, because he would not “yield to demands at gunpoint.”
So what can be expected from the SAC’s “peace forum”? Regional clout, of course, but in the end even some international actors may be tempted to join this farce. The peace industrial complex appears to be on a roll again, albeit more discreetly. Already Finnish, Swiss, Norwegian, and Australian entities as well as an obscure outfit called the Joint Peace Fund are quietly sniffing around the EAOs, hoping to “engage” them and reactivate the idea of talks with the military.
The losers in this process are the long-suffering people of Myanmar, who once again will be let down by a host of self-serving outside actors.
