Madeline Morgan fought to teach Black history in schools. 80 years on, her vision is not yet realized.

The Chicago educator urged students to think critically about African American history, but her pioneering curriculum was short-lived. 

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By Michael Hines  Feb 4, 2022, 

A James Baldwin quote is displayed at the National Museum of African American History

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First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education.

“...we still haven’t got all our rights, and that’s that.”

The words were written by Louis Brown,* a Black eighth grader at Emerson Elementary in Chicago. I first read them in late 2020, against a backdrop formed by the racial and economic inequities exposed by the pandemic, the seemingly daily drumbeat of police killings, and the surging protest movement for Black Lives. They struck me in their rawness, their immediacy. Brown, however, had written his words in the spring of 1943, sitting at a desk in school that had long since been shuttered.

I was reading his work in the archives of the George Cleveland Hall Branch Library and its Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, where much of the city’s African American past is preserved. As a historian of education, finding the voices of students in historical archives is rare. When those voices speak to the present in ways that collapse the distance of nearly 80 years, it is even more remarkable.

Michael Hines

 Courtesy photo

Brown’s statement about what the nation owed its Black citizens, and the still unpaid nature of that debt, was sparked by the introduction of a pioneering Black history curriculum at his school. Called the Supplementary Units for the Course of Instruction in Social Studies, it was adopted and used in Chicago schools between 1942 and 1945.

Back when most social studies texts marginalized or ignored Black Americans as a matter of course, the Supplementary Units were a groundbreaking contrast. Lessons included material on West Africa and its connection to the Black diaspora; honest accounts of the brutality of the slave trade; information on slave revolts, abolitionism, and Black military service during the Civil War; and descriptions of the accomplishments of Black artists, intellectuals, explorers, and inventors.

The lessons prompted students to think deeply and critically about Black history and about American history more broadly. Oftentimes those discussions also led to questions about the present, especially as the U.S. championed democracy on the battlefields of Europe while continuing to tolerate Jim Crow laws, lynching, restrictive covenants, a segregated military, and separate schools at home.

The Supplementary Units and their author, Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris) are the subject of my forthcoming book, “A Worthy Piece of Work: The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight For Black History in Schools.” In it, I follow Morgan from her childhood in Bronzeville, the beating heart of Chicago’s Black intellectual and cultural scene, through her education at Chicago Normal College (now Chicago State University) and Northwestern University, and into the classroom, where she began the push for Black representation. Her efforts ultimately manifested in the Supplementary Units.

Black women often remain unacknowledged in the history of American education. Yet their contributions are beyond dispute.

Along the way, I look at Morgan alongside other Black women educators. Black women often remain unacknowledged in the history of American education. Yet their contributions both as theorists and practitioners are beyond dispute. From the antebellum era on, Black women worked as school teachers and administrators, community activists and social workers, librarians, and archivists. They were knit together nationally through women’s clubs, civil rights organizations, and sororities. Morgan’s story is, in many respects, the story of these women and the networks that supported and sustained their educational activism.

The book also traces the historical moment that allowed Morgan to campaign so successfully for the inclusion of Black history in schools. World War II exposed the contradictions inherent in America’s claim to be the defender of freedom and equality. At the same time, it increased Black militancy in the fight for Civil Rights. Black Americans became committed to a Double Victory over the enemies of democracy, both foreign and domestic. Black teachers and their progressive white allies pushed for intercultural education, an early form of what we now think of as multiculturalism. Several cities and school districts took up these efforts during the war years. It was at this time that Morgan convinced Chicago school officials to back her creation of a Black history curriculum. Leaving the classroom for the district’s central office, she researched, wrote, compiled, and tested the materials for over a year.

Morgan’s curriculum received national attention, wide interest, and public praise. But it was short-lived. As the war ended and national priorities shifted, interculturalism and diversity efforts fell out of favor among white educators. Black teachers, meanwhile, faced increasing barriers to teaching Morgan’s Supplementary Units.

By the late 1940s, Cold War conservatism reigned, and Morgan’s work was largely abandoned. But her call to reframe how schools taught history by including Black voices could not be denied. It has resurfaced again and again, decade after decade. It lives today in the demands of organizations like Black Lives Matter at School, which echoes Morgan’s call to make Black history a central part of the school curriculum.

At a moment when conservative attacks on Critical Race Theory have turned school board meetings into open melees, governors have passed laws encouraging parents to report educators who teach about racism and discrimination, and history standards committees are forced to fear for their physical safety, Morgan’s legacy is more relevant than ever. For me, the current effort to police how our collective past is taught and understood shows just how far we still have to go to make Morgan’s vision a reality.

For Morgan, an honest account of the nation’s past was a critical step towards full citizenship for Black Americans. That we are still fighting for such histories is a reminder that, as Louis Brown put it, “we still haven’t got all our rights, and that’s that.”

*the student’s name has been replaced with a pseudonym.

Michael Hines is an assistant professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and a former K-12 history teacher. His first book, “A Worthy Piece of Work: The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight for Black History in Schools” is available for preorder now and will be released May 17, 2022.

Japan-Korea comfort women controversy re-erupts

Korean courts demand compensation but Japan says an official apology and final payments were delivered in 2015

By ANDREW SALMON

JANUARY 15, 2021
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Comfort women statues like this pair in a Shanghai park have been raised globally by South Korean civic groups. Photo: AFP/Johannes Eisele

SEOUL – As one of the most emotive legacies of the Pacific War raised its head in a Seoul court, Japan-South Korea relations have once again been placed on a collision course with no off-ramp in sight.

A Seoul court on January 8 ordered the Japanese government to pay compensation of almost $100,000 each to 12 “comfort women.” Judgment in a separate case, bought by 20 comfort women, was meant to be reached on January 13 but has been delayed.

On the surface, it may appear to be a simple case of victimhood and long-delayed justice – particularly given that similar suits filed in Japanese courts in the 1990s and 2000s had failed.

But there is nuance. The situation pits Korea’s simmering historical grievances against Japan’s insistence that the court judgments breach prior bilateral agreements and ignore compensation previously paid.

Seoul has tried to calm matters.

In an unusual move, South Korean President Moon Jae-in met Japan’s departing ambassador Koji Tomita on Thursday, suggesting it was time for relations to shift into a future-oriented gear. And South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa implored her Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, not to react excessively in a 20-minute phone call.

But Seoul’s ambassador to Tokyo was called in for a talking to after the judgment, and all indications are that Tokyo’s patience is fraying. According to Kyodo News on Thursday, Tokyo is mulling various responses, including delaying the dispatch of a new ambassador or even taking the case to the International Court of Justice.

“The ruling is absolutely unthinkable in terms of international law and bilateral relations and has resulted in an abnormal situation,” said Japan’s Press Secretary Tomoyuki Yoshida.

This issue makes waves far beyond academia and courts.

While Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula ended more than 75 years ago, historical disputes are at the forefront of bilateral relations, casting long shadows over strategic, political and economic ties.

The intractable situation exasperates US policymakers. South Korea and Japan are democracies with separate US alliances facing off against North Korea and China. But their historical squabbles obviate tri-lateralism.

The recent Korean court cases are largely symbolic. No South Korean court can force Japanese governmental compliance, and only one of the women who was part of the 12-person lawsuit remains alive. However, it is a humiliation for Japan.

Citing separation of political and judicial powers, Seoul can reasonably argue non-responsibility.


However, the key drivers of the comfort women issue, including the two lawsuits, are a pair of NGOs that lobby for justice for comfort women and which have shot down Japan’s past efforts to atone and compensate.

And there is direct link between the activists and the government. A former head of the most active NGO was last year granted a National Assembly seat by Moon’s Democratic Party of Korea.

A boy looks at a statue of a teenage girl symbolizing comfort women on a bus running through Seoul in August, 2017.

 Photo: AFP/Jung Yeon-Je

Who is right? Who is wrong?

The historical remembrance-apologies-compensation brouhaha is a tangled web.

There is no doubt that Korea was the victim of Japanese imperialism, and Korean activists have raised historical grievances in domestic and global forums

Many Koreans, and overseas Koreans, point to the refusal by some in the Japanese government and on the right to accept any responsibility for colonial-era atrocities, or even accept that they occurred. Politicians continue to pay respects at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined. Textbooks largely whitewash Japan’s wartime brutalities.


In today’s post-colonial world, these are powerful messages. In the court of international public opinion, Korea is winning. But Japan, too, has a case – albeit an under-reported and less emotive one.

Scores of apologies – from emperors, prime ministers and cabinet secretaries – have been delivered. Compensation has been offered by Tokyo – only to be refused or frozen. And agreements between the governments have been ignored or abrogated by South Korea’s courts and government.

Neither side accepts nuances surrounding the history of the issue.

Many Koreans insist that the victims of the comfort women system – a network of military brothels deployed across the Japanese imperium – were predominantly Korean. They assert that they were not prostitutes, but were innocents coerced, tricked or forced into the brothels, making them “sex slaves.”

Moreover, as the exclusive clients of the comfort stations were Japanese troops, Koreans demand that Tokyo bears governmental responsibility.

Conversely, many Japanese insist that a considerable proportion of comfort women were Japanese, and that the comfort women were paid prostitutes on contracts, not sex slaves. Moreover, they stress that private brothel operators – including Koreans – were responsible for recruiting the girls, thus absolving Imperial forces of moral or financial obligation.

Then there is the issue of veracity.

Koreans insist that oral and written testimony delivered by surviving comfort women since the early 1990s, when a newly democratized Korean society was reassessing historical issues, proves their position.

Japanese shoot back that Allied documentation from the war years on comfort women makes virtually no mention of forced service, and point to shifting narratives among some survivors

.

South Korean protesters tear a huge Japanese flag during a rally near the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2019. 

Photo: AFP/Jung Yeon-je

Japan strikes back

Japan largely endured Korea’s jabs from the early 1990s, when the comfort woman issue first entered the international limelight after advocacy by Japanese and Korean human rights organizations, until 2018.

That year, a Korean court seized assets of Japanese companies invested in Korea to compensate wartime forced laborers. A furious Tokyo insisted that the judgment undercut a 1965 treaty under which Japan had paid hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and aid to settle colonial-era issues – including forced labor.

Exasperated, Tokyo slowed exports of three key chemicals used by Korea’s semiconductor industry and downgraded Korea’s favored-nation trade status.

Seoul responded in kind, while furious citizens and NGOs demonstrated and launched boycotts of Japanese products. Koreans saw the villain as conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an internationalist who sought to improve Japan’s image globally, but who was painted as an ultra-nationalist, particularly given the role his grandfather, who was accused of war crimes, played out in the wartime exploitation of Manchuria.

Certainly, Abe was not well disposed towards Moon – for the forced labor brouhaha had been predated by a comfort woman imbroglio in which Abe alleged bad faith.

In 2015, a bilateral agreement was reached between Abe and then-South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Under it, Abe’s foreign minister offered Abe’s “most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.”

Financial compensation of 1 billion yen (approximately $8.3 million) was paid by Tokyo to surviving comfort women. Both governments agreed that the issue was “finally and irreversibly” solved. In return, Seoul undertook to negotiate with a civic group to remove a comfort woman statue standing outside Tokyo’s embassy in Seoul.

Tokyo’s apology and the compensation were accepted by 34 out of 45 living victims. However, the remainder, led by a high-profile NGO, furiously opposed the deal on the grounds that the victims had not been consulted. Meanwhile, not only had the Seoul statue not been moved, another one had been erected outside the Japanese consulate in Busan.

After the scandal-struck Park administration was replaced by the current Moon administration in 2017, Seoul repudiated the deal and froze the Japanese compensation funds, infuriating Tokyo.

There were yet more issues. In 2018, Tokyo angrily alleged that a South Korean destroyer had illuminated a Japanese aircraft with its target radar. And in 2019, Seoul demanded a Japanese vessel at a South Korean naval review either strike its “Rising Sun” ensign – which Koreans consider a symbol of oppression – or depart. It departed.

All this generated anger among Japan’s populace.

“A lot of the frustration that I see in Japan was directed more at the Japanese government than at the Korean side, especially the conservatives,” said Jason Morgan, an American professor who teaches history and international relations at Japan’s Reitaku University. “They could not understand why Japan had to keep taking punches. “

Politicians reacted. In 2019, Abe’s Foreign Affairs Minister Taro Kono interrupted the South Korean ambassador, telling him that Seoul’s position on the forced labor issues was “totally unacceptable” and “extremely impertinent.”

A video clip of the scene went viral across Japan. “I think people were happy that someone was speaking up,” said Morgan.

A picture of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe behind a statue of a teenage girl symbolizing comfort women.

 Photo: Jung Yeon-je/AFP

Who is really pushing the issue?

While the target of the lawsuits is the Japanese government, the Korean government can deny involvement. A firewall exists between the judiciary and the administration and unlike some nations, there is no mechanism for political leadership to overrule or ameliorate a court decision on diplomatic grounds.

However, sitting governments can, in fact, influence the judiciary through the Ministry of Justice. Two justice ministers resigned last year in a battle against the prosecution. But equally, The recent cases prove that the judiciary can push back.

But arguably, it is neither the government nor courts that have been the most influential players in the comfort women issue. That honor goes to civic groups.

Korean NGOs, over the years, have been tremendously successful at raising awareness of the comfort women and other Japanese wartime atrocities globally.

They have taken survivors on global speaking tours, and have assisted ethnic Koreans living in Australia, Germany and the United States to raise comfort women statues in those countries – to the embarrassment of Japan.

The recent court cases involve two high-profile NGOs.

The 12 cases were sponsored by Naneun-ae Jib (“House of Sharing”) and the 20-woman case is being assisted by Jeongeuiyeon (“The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan”) – formerly Jeongdaehyeop, ( “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan”), founded in 1990.

The Korean Council takes a particularly strong stance. In the early 1990s, it opposed the “Asia Women’s Fund,” a Japanese joint government-business initiative that offered compensation to surviving comfort women and a signed letter of apology from the sitting Japanese prime minister. The Korean Council’s intervention – which insisted that it should be the Japanese government rather than private business that paid compensation – killed that deal.

The group would subsequently become the key opponent of the 2015 Abe-Park deal, which was subsequently quashed by the Moon government. But it ran into legal flak last year when a high-profile comfort woman, Lee Yong-soo, publicly broke with it.

Lee alleged financial misdemeanors at the NGO, said that it had taken advantage of elderly survivors, and accused it of fomenting hatred among Korean and Japanese youth. (School children were regular attendees at the weekly demonstrations organized by the Korean Council outside Seoul’s Japanese embassy.)

The Korean Council was affiliated with a shelter for surviving comfort women, Pyeongwha-ae Jib (“House of Peace”). The manager of the house committed suicide last June amid investigations into Lee’s allegations.

A key figure in the controversy is Yoon Mee-hyang, who headed the Korean Council and who has been, since the early 1990s, probably the most active figure in comfort women advocacy. Yoon, though investigated by both prosecutors and right-wing media during the 2020 scandal, was not found guilty of any illegality.

What is clear, however, is Yoon’s links to the Moon administration.

By the time last year’s scandal broke, Yoon had left the NGO to take up a new position as a sitting lawmaker of Moon’s Democratic Party of Korea. It granted her a proportional representation seat after 2020’s April general election.

As an advocate of victimhood, Yoon is well positioned.

“The Moon government has prioritized the rights of victims,” a presidential advisor told Asia Times. Relatedly, it has made the eradication of “deep-seated evils” a principle of its policy.

This principle extends beyond crimes committed solely by Imperial Japan. Moon, a former human rights lawyer, has formally apologized for atrocities committed by authoritarian South Korean governments of yore – such as the pre-Korean War Jeju Island Massacre, in which thousands of civilians were killed during a counter-insurgency campaign against leftist guerillas.

Two former conservative presidents are also serving jail terms for corruption and abuse of power committed in-office.

The comfort woman statue outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. 

Photo: Asia Times/Andrew Salmon

What next?

Experts who would prefer to see bilateral amity are at their wits’ end.

“The Japanese keep trying to do something [to resolve historical issues] but Korean society doesn’t feel it’s enough or appropriate,” said Lim Eun-jung, an international relations scholar at Korea’s Kongju National University. “But there are a lot of wounded hearts and we Koreans pursue justice over international politics.”

There is precious little common ground for Seoul and Tokyo to stand upon.

“One of the major priorities for the Japanese government in foreign policy since World War II is respect for international law, and Japan felt shocked and humiliated,” Lim said. “Our counter-argument is that general trends are changing and this was a serious crime against humanity.”

So while Japan cites binding agreements, Korean courts cite the primacy of supra-national humanitarian principles over local law. This is frustrating for many Japanese, even those who admire Koreana such as cuisine, music, film and TV dramas, Morgan said.

“People are saying, well, something bad was done and we apologized and gave money and now it has come back,” he said. “They are thinking that the court system in Korea is not entirely on the level. Why do they want to keep re-litigating this?”

Lim, a Japan specialist, sees little hope of a breakthrough.

“There is no hope for restoring relations, I cannot be that optimistic,” she said. “Political leaders need to take risks and face challenges, but they don’t seem to have a strong will to break through this situation.”

“I just don’t see it changing unless there is a grand reset with Biden coming in,” added Morgan. “But short term, I can’t see how this can get solved.”

Baloch militant merger targets Pakistan and China

Newly formed Baloch Nationalist Army has already launched a deadly urban terror attack and vows to hit China’s interests next

By SALMAN RAFI SHEIKH

JANUARY 29, 2022

Ethnic Baloch militants in Pakistan in a 2020 file photo. Image: Twitter

In a new phase in the long-running Baloch separatist war in Pakistan, a recent Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA) terror attack in the city of Lahore indicates the insurgency is expanding from Balochistan’s rugged mountains to Punjab urban centers.

On January 20, a bomb blast ripped through a busy Lahore business district, killing three and wounding over 20. The BNA, which was formed less than two weeks before the bombing after the United Baloch Army (UBA) and the Baloch Republic Army (BRA) merged, accepted responsibility for the attack in a social media post carried by media.

The merger is significant not only because it fuses two potent militant groups fighting for the separation of Balochistan from Pakistan but also because the new entity will target China’s interests in the country, including likely Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.

The newly formed BNA also marks the coming together of the Marris and Bugtis, two of Balochistan’s largest tribes that historically have not always seen eye to eye.

But where the tribes do agree is in their fight against perceived state abuse in Balochistan, perpetuated in many instances through military-protected, China-funded infrastructure projects that they contend do not help or involve local populations.

The UBA is led by Mehran Marri, the son of late Baloch ideologue Khair Bakhsh Marri, who led the Marris for years. The BRA, on the other hand, is led by Brahumdagh Bugti, the son of Akbar Bugti, the Baloch sardar and leader of the Bugti tribe who was killed in 2006 in a military operation.

Although both Marri and Bugti tribes populate other militant groups, including the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) now led by Khair Bakhsh’s other son, Hyrbyair Marri, the UBA-BRA merger underlines how Baloch militant groups are increasingly converging across tribal lines to form a united front against the Pakistan state.

In 2018, the BLA merged with the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and BRA to form Baluch Raji Ajohi Sangar (BRSA), or Baloch Nationalist Freedom Movement.

Balochistan Liberation Army fighters at an undisclosed location in a file photo.

 Photo: AFP

This cross-tribal convergence is apart from the Baloch militant groups’ active attempts at cultivating support from non-Baloch disaffected ethnic militant outfits, particularly from Sindh province, which shares a border with Balochistan.

In June 2020, the BRSA formed an alliance with a Sindhi militant group known as the Sindudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA). The alliance was formally announced in July 2020 to “liberate” both Sindh and Balochistan and target the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$60 billion spoke on Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The newly formed BNA shares the same insurgent objectives. In a BNA statement shared with Balochistan-based media, the group said it was formed to “expand Baloch national resistance movement against the Pakistani military’s fascism.”

The statement also confirmed that the BNA would continue to be a part of the BRSA, and, like the BRSA, would intensify attacks against both “Pakistan state and its partners (e.g. China).”

This expansion appears to have two tactical facets. Whereas the BRSA has been keen to choose hard targets – Pakistan security forces or Chinese personnel and projects – the BNA’s first attack in Lahore, which apparently was originally going to target a bank, shows it will focus at least partly on soft targets in urban areas both inside and outside of Balochistan.

The two-pronged strategy is a major cause of concern for Pakistan, especially at a time when it is already facing a resurgent Islamist challenge from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistan Taliban. TTP has recently ramped up its cross-border attacks from Afghanistan targeting security forces.

The big unanswered question, however, concerns why is the Baloch insurgency intensifying now? The mergers and promise of intensified attacks are directly tied to the situation in Afghanistan for two reasons.

First, although the Afghan Taliban is not itself allied with any Baloch insurgents, its victory last year against a superpower has “inspired Baloch insurgent groups into forming a united front to achieve a similar victory, engage the Pakistan army in a serious war to give the Pakistan state a formidable challenge,” said a Baloch nationalist who requested anonymity.

Second, because Pakistan’s relations with the Afghan Taliban have deteriorated since the latter’s seizure of power in Kabul, reportedly with help and guidance from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Islamabad now lacks the influence to pressure the Taliban to eliminate Baloch separatists based in Afghanistan.

A Tehreek-e-Taliban fighter in a file photo. The terror group is ramping up its attacks in Pakistan. Photo: Facebook

The BNA’s hope for a strong, popularly backed war will most likely aim to leverage recent popular protests in Balochistan’s Gwadar against local people’s exclusion from fishing grounds and businesses in favor of privileged Chinese trawlers.


That comes on top of local exclusion from the China-financed port at Gwadar, which the Pakistan military has sealed off from locals for security reasons. Under terms of the port’s construction, China will receive 90% of revenues generated there for 40 years.

According to a veteran Baloch insurgent who requested anonymity, “with the crown jewel of CPEC in Pakistan now completely disillusioned with the promise of development, an opportunity for Baloch insurgent groups to win back popular support for their war does exist.”

He said the recent success of the Gwadar protests in forcing Pakistan authorities to meet at least their minimum demands, including protecting their businesses from perceived as illegal Chinese fishing boats, shows that the Pakistan state can be forced to yield to Baloch resistance.

A deep-seated sense of exclusion has driven Baloch nationalism and militant insurgency since the 1948 forced accession of Balochistan to Pakistan, according to Mir Muhammad Ali, a veteran Baloch nationalist who fought the Pakistan Army in the 1970s.

This, he says, continued during both military dictatorships as well as under the so-called democratic eras, with the present hybrid regime controlling Balochistan even more directly since 2018 than was the case during the previous government of Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N).

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s military-aligned administration clearly senses the rising risk

.

Pakistani naval personnel stand guard near a ship carrying containers at the Gwadar port. Photo: AFP / Aamir Quereshi

His appointment last year of Jamhoori Watan Party chief Shahzain Bugti to hold talks with Baloch militant groups has failed to make any meaningful progress on underlying issues, not least the fact that their province remains under the military’s political, economic and administrative control.

The Pakistan Army, rather than rolling back its presence to facilitate dialogue, is now expanding its security and economic footprint, seen in its fortified presence at Gwadar and involvement in the development of one of the world’s biggest untapped copper and gold deposits at the province’s Reko Diq.

Both, analysts and observers say, could provide potent targets for the newly merged BNA.

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCH 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCHISTAN 

 

Khan’s Afghan relief fund faces fire on all fronts

Pakistan leader’s plan to funnel funds to the Taliban to avert an Afghan humanitarian disaster clashes with a newly assertive central bank

By FM SHAKIL

JANUARY 25, 2022

Afghan refugees are arriving in droves in neighboring Pakistan. Photo: AFP

PESHAWAR – The Pakistan government’s bid to raise funds for Afghanistan’s cash-strapped government has been shot down by the suddenly autonomous State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), due to concerns that financing the Taliban regime could trigger international sanctions.

The SBP has advised against domestic and foreign donations to the government’s Afghanistan Relief Fund, telling the finance ministry that funneling funds to the Afghan government without involving “international organizations of repute” could result in sanctions from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-money laundering and terror finance watchdog.

Pakistan has been on the FATF’s “grey list” since June 2018; the Paris-based watchdog is set to review Pakistan’s performance on various metrics next month. Pakistan has not yet met two key FATF action items, including the prosecution and confiscation of assets of UN-designated terrorists, to be removed from the grey list.


The SBP’s stand against the government’s relief fund plan marks perhaps the first time the central bank has flexed its autonomy since legislation was tabled towards making it more independent. The SBP is undergoing some autonomy-enhancing reforms under a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a US$6 billion extended fund facility.

The government’s cabinet has already approved the SBP Amendment Bill 2021, but the parliament has yet to pass the legislation. The SBP autonomy bill legislation has drawn mixed reactions from politicians and specialists, with opposition parties reportedly opposing the bill on concerns the amendment would make the bank more powerful than the parliament.

Economists and experts, on the other hand, say that greater SBP autonomy is in line with international banking practices and would serve as a bulwark against fiscal irresponsibility and politically motivated financial decisions. That’s already starting to happen in the eyes of certain local observers.

Dr Kaiser Bengali, a leading local economist, tweeted on January 23, “Three cheers for “autonomous” SBP. First, it rejects the Government plan for Afghanistan {relief} Fund. Now, it has warned private banks of the risk of the Federal Government defaulting on its loans. Remarkable! SBP is treating Federal Government like a juvenile delinquent.”

A money changer counts Pakistani Rupee notes in Karachi in a file photo.

 Photo: Agencies

“In the past whenever they [the government] overdrew the budgetary ceiling and expended excessively without having fiscal space, they needed to go to the central bank for borrowings,” said Farrukh Saleem, an Islamabad-based Pakistani political scientist, economist and financial analyst. “Now the government cannot do this and would need to be fiscally disciplined or take loans from the private banks on market rates,” he said.


The government’s desire to funnel relief funds to Afghanistan to mitigate a humanitarian catastrophe that could quickly and massively redound on Pakistan through new waves of refugees, economic migrants and Islamic militants has put it on a collision course with the SBP.

An International Labor Organization (ILO) report released on January 19 said that a downward economic spiral has thrown more than half a million people out of work in Afghanistan, with women chiefly hit by the rise in unemployment. (Afghanistan’s population is recently estimated at 39 million.)

The ILO report said that Afghan companies were struggling to stay afloat and that thousands of Afghans were fleeing the country each day. It predicted more dire prospects in 2022.

With many of those fleeing headed for Pakistan, in late December the government approached the SBP through its finance division to open a collection account for its Afghanistan Relief Fund. It proposed that disbursements from the new fund to the Taliban could be made through banking channels.

The SBP countered that the transfer of funds directly to Afghanistan “through banking channels could be challenging.” It proposed instead that disbursements from the fund could be made through international relief organizations or extended by the government as “in-kind” support to help Afghans who now face acute food shortages.


The central bank asserted that opening fund accounts at overseas bank branches would require the authorization of foreign regulatory bodies, a time-consuming and cumbersome process – particularly in light of Pakistan’s FATF “grey list” designation.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has tried to soften the world’s stance on the Taliban, which most countries have declined to give formal recognition as the country’s government, and restore badly needed foreign assistance that contributed the lion’s share of the previous, US-backed Ashraf Ghani government.

A handout picture made available by the Iranian Red Crescent on August 19, 2021, shows Afghan refugees gathered at a border region. 

Photo: Mohammad Javadzadeh / Iranian Red Crescent / AFP

The international community, including the US, has responded to the Taliban’s takeover and Ghani’s ouster by force by freezing its overseas assets, cutting aid and offering only limited relief for humanitarian purposes.

In early December, Pakistan engaged various Muslim countries by hosting the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Islamabad, but the summit did not generate meaningful humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabia pledged US$365 million to establish by March a Humanitarian Trust Fund and Food Security Program managed by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). This was in addition to the $30 million Pakistan had already committed for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.

Pakistani pundits believe that the Taliban’s revenue from various sources will exceed $3 billion per year but the insurgents-cum-rulers seem reluctant to expend their resources to minimize the sufferings of the Afghan population.

The United Nations also estimates that the Taliban has increased their revenues in the five months of their rule. Deborah Lyons, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban collected a surprising $1 billion in exports in the last five months.

The Khan government’s relief fund plan, already stymied by the SBP on regulatory grounds, is also under political fire for raising donations that the Taliban would likely pocket rather than distribute to suffering Afghans.

“[The Taliban] are neither a state nor a government but are a mob who occupied Afghanistan by force,” Mohsin Dawar, chairman of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), a Pakistan National Assembly member and a Pashtun Tahafuz Movement activist, told Asia Times.

“You cannot expect from such a crowd that they would perform as a government and make budgeting for the uplift of the population.”

Follow FM Shakil on Twitter at @faq1955

EU tarries on Myanmar oil and gas sanctions

Observers had expected EU to sanction junta money-spinner Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise in time for Feb. 1 coup anniversary

By DAVID HUTT

JANUARY 29, 2022

A Myanmar energy worker on an offshore natural gas platform in the Yadana gas field. Photo: Total

The European Union is in a state of flux over its planned fourth round of sanctions on Myanmar’s military junta, with sources saying the targeted measures that were supposed to be announced next Tuesday (February 1) could be delayed until later in February.

A diplomatic source who requested anonymity said originally the sanctions were going to be publicly announced on February 1 – the first anniversary of the military coup – but are now likely to be unveiled later in the month after a last-minute interjection by some member states.

Asia Times understands that the delay revolves around whether to sanction the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), which has deep links with the military and is one of the largest financial contributors to the junta regime.


TotalEnergies, a French-owned energy giant, which had operated an offshore gas field with MOGE for years, announced its withdrawal from the country last week as well as its support for harsher EU sanctions against Myanmar’s oil and gas sector, a major contributor to the junta’s revenue.

The EU typically takes longer than the likes of the US or Britain to impose international sanctions due to the fact it requires consent from the 26 member states and must undergo lengthy legal checks to ensure the sanctions cannot be contested at the European Court of Justice.

Brussels has so far imposed three tranches of economic sanctions on individuals and businesses tied to the military junta that took power almost a year ago after ousting the democratically-elected government of the National League of Democracy (NLD).

In recent weeks, several senior NLD officials, including deposed State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, were sentenced to several years in prison on allegedly trumped-up charges.

Various political sources contacted by this correspondent were unsure of the date the latest EU sanctions would be announced. A mid-level official in the European Commission still thought the sanctions would be publicly confirmed next week and implemented later in the month, perhaps February 21.


But a senior source from the international NGO community said they had been told the announcement will instead be made on February 21, putting the delay down to technical issues “as well as [some member states] arguing that to sanction around the anniversary means they would have to sanction every year around the anniversary,” the source said

.

Anti-coup protesters show their support for Myanmar’s National Unity Government. Photo: Jose Lopes Amaral / NurPhoto via AFP

A high-ranking member of the National Unity Government (NUG) – Myanmar’s rival government that launched a people’s “resistance war” against the junta last September – said “most” EU member states wanted February 1 as the day to announce the sanctions. But a few unnamed members argued late in the day for sanctions to also be imposed on MOGE, which was not thought have been included in the previously agreed list of sanctioned firms, the NUG member said.

“MOGE and Myanmar’s oil and gas sector are the highest-earning sector and the main economic or financial pillars of the terrorist military junta,” Zin Mar Aung, the NUG’s foreign affairs minister, told Asia Times.

“Therefore, the withdrawal of oil and gas companies and sanctions against MOGE will starve the junta of cash and limit their ability to buy weapons to inflict harm on civilian populations.”

Oil and gas revenues make up about 50% of the junta’s foreign currency needs, noted Yadanar Maung, a spokeswoman for Justice For Myanmar, a group that monitors the military’s abuses.


“This foreign currency,” she said, “is necessary to purchase military equipment, including weapons from Russia and China, and thereby supports the military’s brutal operations against the people of Myanmar.”

An EU spokesperson refused to comment on the matter. “The process of preparing, discussing and adopting listings is confidential,” he said. “In order to respect the confidentiality of this process, we are not in a position to share any further information.”

Analysts said it is possible that the announcement made last week by global energy firms TotalEnergies and US-owned Chevron that they are pulling out of Myanmar, citing a worsening human rights situation, was the reason for the EU’s delays.

TotalEnergies said publicly that it supported further sanctions on the junta and reportedly appealed to the American and French governments to introduce targeted measures against Myanmar’s oil and gas funds.

TotalEnergies operates the Yadana offshore gas project along with Chevron, Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production and Myanmar’s MOGE. TotalEnergies has a majority stake in the venture and runs its daily operations, while MOGE collects the revenue on behalf of the Myanmar state, whose bank accounts are now controlled by the junta.


It is believed that TotalEnergies would only legally be able to stop contractual payments to MOGE, and therefore the military regime, if sanctions are imposed on the Myanmar gas firm.

TotalEnergies “will not only comply with any sanction decision from the European or American authorities but also supports the implementation of such targeted sanctions,” the firm’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, told Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, in a letter

.

French oil company TotalEnergies is set to withdraw from Myanmar.

 Photo: AFP / Martin Bureau

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement: “The fact that both TotalEnergies and human rights groups now support sanctions on Myanmar’s gas revenues leaves the US and European Union without any excuses to delay action.”

In a company study reported by the press, MOGE said it expected to earn about US$1.5 billion from offshore and pipeline projects in the 2021-2022 financial year.

MOGE accounts for roughly one 10th of Myanmar’s federal budget, explained Hunter Marston, a researcher on Southeast Asia at the Australian National University. “So cutting oil and gas profits flowing to the Myanmar military would singlehandedly pose a major disruption to the junta’s revenue stream,” he said.

A European diplomatic official said recent statements by TotalEnergies and Chevron “seem to indicate that MOGE could soon be added to the sanctions list.”

The United States, Britain and Canada imposed their latest round of sanctions on Myanmar in early December, although MOGE was not included in their lists of targeted entities.

Later that month, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated the escalating violence in Myanmar, in which military forces are accused of targeting civilians, meant “increased international preventive action is required,” adding that “the EU also stands ready to impose further sanctions against the military regime.”

Junta forces are accused of killing more than 1,400 civilians since the coup almost a year ago, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a human rights group.

Follow David Hutt on Twitter at: @davidhuttjourno

Junta cyber bill has Myanmar business up in arms

Proposed law is another step in taking the junta closer to the North Korean model

By DOMINIC OO

JANUARY 28, 2022

Myanmar junta legislation aims to curtail the use of Western social media platforms. Image: Twitter

YANGON – Myanmar’s military junta has been criticized by business groups and foreign investors for resurrecting a proposed law that seeks to shut down social media platforms and undermine internet privacy.

According to an official document not made public but leaked to Asia Times, the junta is proposing a draft cybersecurity law that criminalizes Virtual Private Network (VPNs), outlaws online gambling and mandates data localization.

Punishments for using a VPN without approval or online gambling include a fine of 5 million kyats (US$2,800), three years imprisonment, or both.


Personal data including name, internet and physical address and ID number will have to be stored for three years starting from the day of usage and must be provided to military authorities upon request.

“The military’s new draft Cyber Security Law repeats the repressive provisions of previous drafts and adds more, seriously threatening the safety and security of Myanmar’s digital space,” said rights group Free Expression Myanmar (FEM) in a legal analysis.

The new proposal “has also added a sixth vague category of expression that the military could order deleted: ‘expressions that damage an individual’s social standing and livelihood’,” FEM said, referring to Article 35(f).

Due to the vagueness of the language, it said criticism against coup leader Min Aung Hlaing could now be a crime. The move is not surprising given the regime’s record in cracking down on the digital space.

“Access to information is a fundamental human right. Since the coup, the regime has systematically amended multiple laws to restrict or criminalize free speech, freedom of assembly and basic human rights in its quest to consolidate control and undermine Myanmar’s democratic institutions,” a Western diplomat in Yangon told Asia Times.


The provisions have fueled worries among businesses that operations would be even more difficult as Facebook has effectively been banned without a VPN. “They [the generals] want to turn Myanmar into North Korea,” a foreign corporate executive told Asia Times in the commercial capital.

Even the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), the nation’s top business lobby widely seen as pro-regime, has hit back.

The UMFCCI released a statement that said: “We see the development and strengthening of the digital economy is of utmost importance in the current business environment as well as in relation to the global economic landscape … The UMFCCI would like to urge the government to remove or reconsider restrictions on VPN since it has become an integral part of doing business, not only domestically but internationally as well.”

Myanmar could soon ban foreign social media platforms through legislation that will pave the way for online surveillance. Image: AFP

Ten international business groups have collectively come out against the proposals. Through a joint statement released on Friday, eight western chambers – the American, Australian, British, European, French, German, Greece and Italy – and the US ICT Council for Myanmar and the Asia Internet Coalition, said they are “deeply concerned” about the proposal and warn that the draft law “disrupts the free flow of information and directly impacts businesses’ abilities to operate legally and effectively in Myanmar.”

“VPNs are a legitimate security device that protect businesses against cyber and financial crimes, and allow for secure access for businesses to support the overall digital economy,” the statement said. “International businesses depend on the use of VPNs to function effectively and securely, particularly when accessing secure corporate files and email servers outside of Myanmar.”

Access to information, technology and services is essential to operations and a healthy national digital economy, the chambers said.

Rights groups are also up in arms. “Any sort of online freedom of expression will be destroyed by this draft law, leaving the Burmese people in the dark,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “The junta thinks that if it cuts off internet communications it can win, but in fact it severely underestimates the damage this law will cause to the economy if passed.”

This time the regime might decide to force through the legislation despite the backlash. But doing so would deepen the growing divide between the generals and the business community, and seriously undermine the regime’s mainly futile attempts to woo investors.

The draft law is also widely seen as a litmus test for business advocacy, after recent controversies surrounding some commercial bodies accused of legitimizing the junta.

“It is essential for foreign chambers of commerce and international businesses in Myanmar to use all leverage available to push back against this law, in accordance with their international human rights responsibilities. Now is the time to speak up,” said activist group Justice for Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung.


“The junta is an illegitimate body that has no authority to pass laws. The cyber law is an appalling attack on the right to privacy and freedom of information, which will put lives at risk.”

A minority have declined to comment, including those from democratic countries such as the India-Myanmar Chamber of Commerce (IMCC), Korea-Myanmar Chamber of Commerce (KoCham) and Malaysia-Myanmar Business Chamber (MMBC).

This is expected, executives said. IMCC chair Sunil Seth leads India’s Adani Ports, which has yet to sell off its assets leased on military land, while Kocham chair Jeong-Hwan Park was named and shamed by international media for hosting an event in the military-linked Lotte Hotel with the junta’s civil servants.

Park, Seth and lawyer Jean Loi, who leads the MMBC, have not responded to requests for comment.

Since Malaysia is among the most vocal critics of the junta in ASEAN and South Korea supports the NUG, Jeong-Hwan Park and Jean Loi could be seen as undermining their home government’s efforts to support democracy in Myanmar.

All three chambers went to meet and greet junta-appointed Investment Minister Aung Naing Oo, a meeting condemned by the National Unity Government, an underground government set up by elected and ousted lawmakers.

“How is it morally defensible for a chamber to meet and greet a minister appointed by the junta while refusing to speak up on policy issues that seriously affect business operations?” a Yangon-based executive asked. “These businesspeople are digging their own graves. Not commenting is a way of commenting.”

Image: Twitter / Coda

This week the junta announced that China was the country’s top foreign investor, without giving any details. It added that Myanmar received $516.4 million from one Japanese investor, a combined $442.2 million from four Singaporean companies, $75.5 million from two Thai ventures and $66.1 million from five South Korean businesses.

Last year, the regime first tried to float the cybersecurity bill two weeks after the February 1 coup, and asked ministries, companies and business bodies for feedback. But it backed down after a backlash from more than 150 civil society organizations and business bodies.

Myanmar’s internet space has already shrunk significantly since the coup. The military has banned social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter but users and businesses have circumvented the ban by using VPNs.

Military-appointed ministers have nonetheless continued to use and post on Facebook, corporate executives pointed out. Social Welfare Minister Thet Thet Khine made more than five posts on her personal Facebook page to document her trip to Kachin state in mid-January.

Banning the use of VPNs “would have a chilling impact on business operations and the use of social media,” the World Bank said in the latest Myanmar Economic Monitor released this week.

“To the extent that such trends persist, significant longer-term impacts on the development of digital infrastructure and digitally enabled services in Myanmar are likely, which would carry significant economic costs in the form of reduced economic growth, productivity and output,” the report said.

The regime’s new internet tax, increased floor price for data, continued internet restrictions, ongoing threat of shutdowns and market exit by private sector providers all threaten to reverse the substantial progress made over the last decade, the report said.

Myanmar junta in toys-for-the-boys weaponry splurge

Myanmar top brass hopes big-ticket procurements will keep the beleaguered rank-and-file loyal, proud and satisfied

By BERTIL LINTNER

JANUARY 27, 2022

Myanmar soldiers march in formation in a file photo. 

Photo: AFP/Khin Maung Win

CHIANG MAI – Submarines would seemingly be the last type of weapon the armed forces of a nation engulfed in an entirely land-based civil war would want or need.

But Myanmar’s generals have recently acquired not just one but two diesel-electric submarines, procurements that have as much to do with diplomatic balancing as keeping the military’s rank-and-file loyal, proud and satisfied.

In March 2020, India reportedly gave Myanmar a 3,000-ton Soviet-era Kilo-class submarine, which was showcased in a naval exercise in October that year and is expected to be deployed at one of the navy’s bases on Bay of Bengal.

Then in December 2021, Myanmar took delivery of a 2,100-ton Type-035 Ming Class submarine from China. The attack vessel has already been seen in videos posted on social media moving up the Yangon River escorted by a Myanmar Navy Type 5 fast attack craft.

The optics of flexing the equipment are arguably as important as their strategic value. The deals obviously make strategic sense for China and India as suppliers. By transferring Myanmar a submarine, the Indians had hoped to gain an edge on the Chinese, whose rising influence in their eastern neighbor is a major concern for New Delhi’s security planners.

Since at least 2013, India has also delivered artillery guns, radars and night vision devices to the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw. In more recent years, however, the focus has shifted to naval cooperation in order to counter China’s rising influence in the Indian Ocean region.

At the same time, China strives to remain Myanmar’s main military ally and key arms supplier including for naval equipment. Myanmar’s navy is equipped with a Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship missile, while its air force operates several Chinese-built aircraft, including the Chengdu JF-17 Thunder fighter jet and Shaanxi Y-8 transport.

The submarine transfer thus signals Beijing’s intent to maintain and build on these already close links with the Myanmar military. Russia is also in the game: media reports indicate Russian-made tanks and other equipment were delivered to the junta on January 23.


For their part, Myanmar’s generals aim to ensure the officer corps and rank-and-file remain loyal to the top brass, led by coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. It is of imperative importance to the troops, regardless of which military service they belong, that they are on the surface part of a modern, well-equipped and world-class military – even if they’re not.

Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has vast economic resources at his disposal. Photo: AFP / Sefa Karacan / Anadolu Agency

The Myanmar military has also acquired tanks and heavy armored vehicles which are of little use against mainly jungle-based guerrillas. The acquisitions form part of Myanmar’s “toys-for-the-boys” defense doctrine, in which soldiers profit personally from big-ticket procurements. This aspect of military planning likely became even more important since last year’s February 1 coup.

The big-ticket purchases come at a time of deep economic and financial crises, witnessed in last year’s -18% economic contraction, caused in large part by the military’s destabilizing coup. But the junta’s priority is first and foremost on preserving power and maintaining loyalty among the military rank-and-file, which it believes equipment purchases will achieve.

For the first time in decades, Myanmar’s military is battling not only ethnic insurgents in frontier areas but also armed uprisings in urban areas in usually calm central regions of the country. There have also been security force defections, particularly among the police to anti-junta armed groups, commonly known as People’s Defense Forces (PDF).

According to casualty figures released by the PDFs, up to 8,000 Tatmadaw soldiers have been killed since the coup. Those claims may be inflated, but even independent observers believe that the Tatmadaw has suffered heavy, almost unprecedented, losses in the expanded civil war.

At the same time, human suffering has been immense. According to a January 4 joint report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 135,000 civilians have been displaced because of the fighting and, given more recent military operations in Karen and Kayah states, the current figure may be twice as high.

The UN agencies also list destruction and looting of property including religious buildings, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, forced labor, torture and killings. It is hard to imagine that all those acts would not affect the morale of the Tatmadaw’s rank and file, especially when it’s also taking place in areas inhabited by ethnic majority Bamars, which make up the bulk of the armed forces.

In the past, the Tatmadaw was an extremely brutal force committing numerous and often unspeakable atrocities on the civilian population, though mostly in ethnic minority frontier areas. But despite being quite poorly armed at the time, it was also a battle-hardened and largely effective light infantry force.

Soldiers were constantly on the move amid frequent firefights against communist rebels in the northeast, Karen guerrillas on the Thai border, Kachin in the far north and other pockets of armed resistance in ethnic minority areas.

All that changed after a pro-democracy uprising in 1988. The main fear then within the Tatmadaw leadership, perhaps as now, was that disgruntled soldiers might join the previous generation of pro-democracy activists, a scenario which could have marked the beginning of the end of military-dominated rule in Myanmar.

Myanmar soldiers on the march amid an anti-coup protest. 

Getty via AFP / Hkun Lat

Then as now, in order to prevent any significant intra-Tatmadaw cracks, everything was done to keep at least the officer corps satisfied. Beginning in 1989, the Tatmadaw spent more than a billion dollars on procuring new, more sophisticated military equipment.

Those procurements came primarily from China but also from Singapore, Pakistan and Israel. Most of the purchases, however, were even at that time materiel that Myanmar did not actually need, such as missile systems that would be of little use in counterinsurgency operations, heavytanks, armored vehicles, naval patrol boats and various kinds of radar equipment.

At the same time, Myanmar’s own defense industries began producing new infantry rifles to replace the old, heavy G-3 which was based on German designs. The troops also got new, smarter uniforms.

Even after a series of ceasefires with ethnic armed groups, the Tatmadaw was dramatically increased in size. The three services — the army, air force and navy — amounted to no more than 195,000 men before 1988. Nearly all of them belonged to the army; the air force and navy were very small and, many would argue, almost insignificant.

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and other international think tanks, the army now has 507,000 men, the air force 23,000 and the navy 19,000 for a total of 549,000.

Those think tanks may have grossly overestimated the strength of the Tatmadaw as most units are known to be undermanned and many troops may exist only in official reports from the field. The Tatmadaw’s actual strength may be only half of that, though that’s still greater than before 1988.

Because of the old ceasefire agreements, some of which lasted for nearly two decades, a generation of troops have had very limited fighting experience. They are, as one in-the-know source said, better at parades showing off their new uniforms and guns than in actual combat.

Moreover, the transition to a market economy following the 1988 uprising and crackdown provided officers with ample opportunities for self-enrichment. As one Myanmar source wrote on social media: “the army officers are only interested in taking bribes and making business deals with the cronies, they don’t want to fight battles anymore, they joined the army to get rich quickly.”

Or, as a retired Tatmadaw officer told this correspondent long before the coup: “Luxury when I was in the army consisted of a badminton set and a bottle of army rum, and I was a colonel. Now even captains and lieutenants have more than one car, several sets of golf clubs, and at least two mistresses. And they don’t have to fight.”

That “new” Tatmadaw is now being tested on battlefronts across Myanmar and indications are it is performing poorly. Troops are extended fighting Kachin rebels in the north, Karens in the southeast, Chins in the west and Burman resistance forces nationwide, including for the first time in urban areas including the old capital Yangon.

Armored vehicles are seen at a parade marking the 72nd Armed Forces Day in the Myanmar capital Nay Pyi Taw on March 27, 2017. 

Photo: AFP via Andalou Agency/Lamin Tun

Foot soldiers have been withdrawn from some areas after suffering heavy casualties as the Tatmadaw instead uses air power and heavy artillery fired from a safe distance, a sign of military weakness rather than strength in Myanmar’s context.

Given the dire situation that the Tatmadaw now finds itself, it is doubtful that even the acquisition of a Chinese submarine will do much to uplift the morale of rank and file troops. At the same time, Myanmar has restored its former pariah status in the West and has instability spreads risks becoming a pawn in wider geopolitical power games.

The submarine transfers show that China and to a lesser extent India, which delivered its vessel before the coup but has continued supplying the Tatmadaw with equipment for an air-defense station, are among the few friends the junta has left. That status will also take a toll on foot soldiers who are under increasing fire both at home and abroad.

Coup anniversary marks cruel reversal in Myanmar

One year since coup-maker generals seized power and the nation seems poised for years of conflict and suffering ahead

By BERTIL LINTNER

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Myanmar people attend a funeral for two protesters who were shot dead in clashes with security forces during anti-coup protests in Yangon, on March 7, 2021.

 Photo: Nyein Su Wai Kyaw Soe / Anadolu Agency via AFP


CHIANG MAI – One year ago today (February 1), the streets all over Myanmar were filled with people demonstrating against the military’s surprise democracy-suspending coup.

The atmosphere of defiance was initially carnival-like but soon turned lethal when the military responded as it has historically to popular uprisings – with random gunfire into the crowds of protesting citizens. Yet there are still sporadic demonstrations, usually held at night to protect protester identities amid a clampdown that now detains over 8,700.

Today’s one-year anniversary of the coup was met with yet another silent strike, where the streets of the old capital Yangon, the central city of Mandalay and other cities and towns were empty and shops closed in a unified show of civil disobedience. The junta had threatened anyone who took part in today’s silent strike with life in prison.


Now, the main resistance to the coup is being carried out by numerous pro-democracy People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, which have mushroomed across the country in recent months. Former parliamentarians and other politicians have meanwhile formed what they call a “National Unity Government” (NUG) to challenge the legitimacy of the military’s coup-installed State Administration Council (SAC) junta.

In the most recent indication of the international community’s tacit support for the shadow government, US State Department official Derek Chollet held an online meeting with NUG representatives including its acting president Duwa Lashi La, designated prime minister Mahn Win Khaing Tan and foreign minister Zin Mar Aung on January 27.

The US, Canada and European Union have all imposed sanctions on the junta and even a spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement issued on January 30 that he “stands in solidarity with the people of Myanmar and their democratic aspirations for an inclusive society and the protection of all communities, including the Rohingya.”

Anti-coup protesters show their support for Myanmar’s National Unity Government. Photo: Jose Lopes Amaral / NurPhoto via AFP

The SAC has its own version of events around the coup, which insists that it acted lawfully and in accordance with the military-drafted 2008 constitution, which gives the military the right to seize power in the case of a national emergency.

That propaganda is strikingly similar to what British author George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel 1984, which depicts a future, nightmarish state he calls Oceania. The book’s main character, Winston Smith, walks past a huge board displaying a message from the Ministry of Truth: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”


Orwell could not, of course, have predicted that this would be the new normal in Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s Myanmar. Deposed State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi is now being charged by the most corrupt institution in the country, the military, with corruption.

The same military that simply ignored the outcome of a general election its proxy lost resoundingly to Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1990, conducted a phony referendum on a military-empowering constitution in 2008 and rigged an election in its favor in 2010, now claims that it had to seize power because the 2020 election was supposedly marred by fraud.

International and local observers maintain that the election, which should have made it possible for Suu Kyi’s NLD to form another government – the first being established in 2016 after the 2015 election, marking the restoration of semi-democratic rule after decades of military dictatorship – was free and fair.

There is by now no doubt that the SAC lacks legitimacy and is widely loathed by the Myanmar population at large. But one year after the putsch that sparked a new surge of armed conflict across the country, destabilizing various areas of the nation that were previously calm, the question is what will happen in year two after the coup?

All signs so far are that the military will dig in and wait for the international community to lower its guard and begin to “engage” with the generals. Indeed, that is already happening.

Myanmar’s coup maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing attends the 9th Moscow Conference on International Security in Moscow, Russia on June 23, 2021.

 Photo: AFP via Anadolu Agency / Sefa Karacan

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, currently the rotating chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), traveled to Myanmar in early January for talks with Min Aung Hlaing. The strongman’s move was not approved by the other bloc members, but it nonetheless marked a first step towards, if not recognition, at least acceptance of SAC rule in Myanmar.

Then, on January 31, UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Noeleen Heyzer said in an interview with Singapore-based Channel News Asia that “the military needs to be part of the solution” and that she had requested to visit Myanmar and that the reactions of the military have been positive.

As in the past, it’s the proponents of engagement with Myanmar’s generals who end up being engaged — and often used — by them.

Myanmar’s top brass, of course, knows that they must remain in power at any cost — or they will end up in prison, or worse. Fear is the glue that holds the Myanmar military together, and, as a Western military analyst puts it, it is seemingly prepared to see the country destroyed with everything at their disposal rather than yielding to the opposition.

The anti-coup armed resistance may enjoy widespread popular support, but it faces insurmountable odds. According to Western and Asian military analysts, there are now at least 100 PDFs in nearly all of Myanmar’s 14 states and regions – and possibly even in the Union Territory around the military-fortified capital of Naypyitaw.


Outside the Myanmar heartland, newly formed PDFs have linked up with longstanding ethnic rebel armies, which are providing them with training and arms. But their chances of defeating the Myanmar military on the battlefield are still extremely remote, if not chimerical.

The military’s firepower, which now includes helicopter gunships, jet fighters and heavy artillery, is overwhelming superior to that of the resistance forces, which relies on mostly rudimentary small arms and crude low-grade bombs made from explosives apparently taken from local construction sites.

Meanwhile, the military is brutally punishing local communities that show support for the PDFs, with entire villages looted and burned to the ground. Not even places of worship, such as Christian churches in eastern Kayah state, have been spared from the military’s destruction.

An anti-military People’s Defense Force fighter holds up his weapon during an arms training exercise. Photo: AFP

The resistance also suffers from a fatal lack of centralized coordination. The NUG has a defense minister but it is far from clear if he is able to communicate with or command forces in the field.

What is being reported from conflict areas are mainly random attacks, which may have been successful locally, but without a unified command and common strategy, such small victories will not rock the power of the Myanmar military.

The bottom line is that a year after the coup and 60 years after Myanmar’s first military takeover in 1962, there won’t likely be any fundamental change in the country’s military-dominated power structures until and unless there is a deep and serious split at the highest levels of the armed forces.

To be sure, there have been some security force defections to the resistance, particularly among the police, but so far hardly enough to tilt the balance in favor of the pro-democracy movement. And even if such an intra-military split were to emerge, it would likely result in an even bloodier civil war than the one unleashed by last year’s fateful coup.

Follow Bertil Lintner on Twitter at @gardlunden

Can Myanmar be stopped from becoming a failed state?

A failed state in the heart of the Indo-Pacific would hit the security and economic interests of neighbors including China and India

By CATHERINE RENSHAW

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

A soldier stands next to a detained man during a demonstration against the military coup in Mandalay on March 3, 2021. Photo: AFP / Stringer

Myanmar is on the brink of collapse. One year after the coup, half the population does not have enough food. The local currency has lost 50% of its value. Foreign companies are pulling out of Myanmar. The military is shooting civilians in the streets and opponents of the military are carrying out bombings and assassinations.

With every week that passes, the suffering becomes greater, grievances mount and distrust between the military and its opponents increases. A full-scale civil war appears inevitable.

A failed state in the heart of the Indo-Pacific would be a blow to the security and economic interests of Myanmar’s neighbors (China, India, Thailand and Bangladesh). This would also be profoundly damaging to the credibility of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member.

For the United States, Myanmar’s collapse would undermine the effort to forge an Indo-Pacific strategy capable of balancing China’s deep interests in the region.

For the United Nations, civil war would lead to further questions about its effectiveness at a time when it is already under scrutiny over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the failure to avert crises in Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan.

If Myanmar is the epicenter of stability in Southeast Asia – a region critical to the security and interests of so many nations – why has such little progress been made in resolving the conflict? Why has the world failed to act?

Anti-coup protesters carry an injured man following clashes with security forces in Yangon last March. 

Photo: Stringer / AP via The Conversation

ASEAN’s stalled roadmap

Most commentators lay blame at the feet of ASEAN. Last April, the organization negotiated a “five point consensus” with the Myanmar military to lead the country away from destruction. This agreement included an immediate ceasefire, the appointment of an ASEAN special envoy to Myanmar, and the start of talks between the two sides.

But days after agreeing to the consensus, the military walked back on its commitment to a ceasefire, saying it could not follow through until the country’s security situation was under control.

Then it took almost four months for the special envoy to even be named. His first visit to Myanmar was subsequently canceled because the military refused to allow him to meet with leaders of the ousted National League for Democracy, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

In October, ASEAN won plaudits for excluding military chief Min Aung Hlaing from its biannual leader’s summit.

The summit is a prelude to the larger, annual East Asia Summit, which includes China, the US, Australia, India, Japan and Russia. The presence of the coup leader at the ASEAN summit would have been an embarrassment to the regional bloc – and possibly imperilled US involvement in the East Asia Summit to follow.
China’s leverage over the generals

Historically, ASEAN has had limited success in influencing the behavior of Myanmar’s generals. China, on the other hand, has been vital to Myanmar’s economic survival.

During the long decades of Myanmar’s previous military dictatorship, which ended in 2011, China’s support ameliorated the punishing raft of sanctions imposed by Western powers.

From China’s perspective, Myanmar provides abundant natural resources and access to oil and gas shipments through pipelines from the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, which are vital for Beijing’s energy security.

Myanmar protesters in front of the Chinese embassy in Yangon after the February 1, 2021 coup. Image: Facebook

Myanmar is also a key plank of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the military has enjoyed Chinese (and Russian) support on the UN Security Council.

China’s interests would be served by political stability in Myanmar. Beijing also has links to both the military and the ousted National League for Democracy (and ethnic armed groups in the border region). But among ordinary people in Myanmar, anti-Chinese sentiment runs high. After the coup, there was a wave of arson attacks on Chinese businesses.

Although China’s credibility as a formal peace broker is limited, there is much it could do behind the scenes to get the generals to the negotiating table.

As potential negotiators, the US and European Union are constrained by the sanctions they have imposed on the junta leaders and their business interests.

However, Japan is in a different position. It has a historical obligation to Myanmar stemming from the second world war, when it occupied the country – and a strategic interest in limiting China’s influence in the region.

For decades, Japan has made considerable efforts to support the people of Myanmar by walking a middle path between Western sanctions – which had little effect – and China’s exploitation of Myanmar’s resources and geostrategic advantages.

Although some Japanese companies exited Myanmar following last year’s coup, Japanese aid has continued to flow into Myanmar. Unlike China and the US, Japan has a degree of diplomatic credibility with both sides to the current conflict.
All eyes on ASEAN

For all its shortcomings, ASEAN will remain pivotal in efforts to end the crisis.

Cambodia has assumed the chairmanship of the organization this year, and its hardline leader, Hun Sen, has already opened a line of communication with the junta leaders, inviting them to the next ASEAN summit if progress is made on last year’s peace plan.

However, this likely won’t make him palatable to the military’s opponents as a potential peace broker.

In this context, the UN and the major powers with the most influence in the region – China, the US and perhaps Japan – must act concertedly to end the crisis in Myanmar. They must work through ASEAN, and leverage the bloc’s efforts, to bring the generals to the negotiating table.

In the year since the coup, the ASEAN strategy to resolve the crisis has paid few dividends. Nonetheless, it remains the primary hope for a political resolution.

The bloc must at least ensure humanitarian aid reaches Myanmar’s long-suffering people. That at least might be a flicker of hope in the country’s increasingly desperate conflict.

Catherine Renshaw is professor at the School of Law, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.