OPINION

Myanmar's national disgrace is the Tatmadaw

PUBLISHED : 27 MAR 2021 
NEWSPAPER SECTION: OPED
WRITER: MARK ADAMS

Today is a national holiday in Myanmar called Armed Forces Day. It is intended to honour that country's military and, as such, it is a fitting time to reflect on what exactly is worth celebrating.

Known within the country as the Tatmadaw, it justified its Feb 1 coup by reverting to painfully well-trodden messaging. The generals argued their forceful political intervention, ousting an elected government at gunpoint, was necessary to protect the country from destabilising democratic processes. Alleging corruption in recent elections, the generals disregarded the observations of both domestic and international election observers that despite some issues the election certainly produced legitimate, free and fair results.

In the weeks since the coup, the country has increasingly descended into widespread public protests, mass desertions of the civil service, and the collapse of the economy. In response the junta has instructed security forces, the police and military, to steadily respond through beatings, terrorisation and outright mass murder. As the violence escalated, Singapore's foreign minister aptly declared the junta's actions against peaceful protesters a "national disgrace".

The wider truth is ever more evident: the Tatmadaw is and has been Myanmar's national disgrace for over 60 years. The military long justified its role in Myanmar's politics, economics and society because of the "disunity" and prospects for "disintegration" among its diverse peoples. This self-fulfilling prophecy has been sustained more by the Tatmadaw than any other actor. Many ethnically and religiously diverse countries are developed and stable.

More than any other stakeholder, the Tatmadaw deserves responsibility for the country's ethnic divides, civil war, political repression and impoverishment. For decades the Tatmadaw has applied barbaric counter-insurgency methods that target civilian populations with violence and deprivation. It used extreme violence to crush the 1988 uprising as well as 2007's "Saffron Revolution". The Tatmadaw is now capping off its decrepit history of division and violence by the genocide of Rohingya in 2017 and savagely trying to repress a country near universally erupting against it in revolt.

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As Myanmar's people brace for what comes next, the only national cause remaining for Myanmar is overcoming its tortured history of military dictatorship. The unfolding resistance to Min Aung Hlaing's junta is an opportunity to rectify the mistakes of independence and the decades since. Independence was done in unfortunate haste and incomplete through the assassination of its founding father Aung San and the failure to see through compromises ensuring equity and equality via federalism. Ever since 1948 Myanmar has had a fractured political settlement. The bane of its existence has been a military that has long designated itself the country's keeper, manipulating its politics and diversity for its own benefit.

The current circumstances necessitate that Myanmar's people unite and fight for a future freed from the Tatmadaw in its current form. In important ways, the current period is potentially more significant to nation- and state-building than either the coups of 1962 and 1988, and in some ways even more so than independence. It is a historic opportunity to redo things for the better. Myanmar's people suffered under military rule for over five decades. The last decade was a heavily conditioned attempt at power sharing between the military and an elected civilian government. In the end, the military could not abide by the rules of the game that they themselves established in writing the country's 2008 constitution. Myanmar's people deserve to be free of military rule once and for all.

The question now facing Myanmar's people is how the junta can be defeated. For this there is a necessary but painful point to be made: pleas for international assistance will not be answered in any meaningful way. Most obviously because there will be no response to directly prevent violence by the junta's security forces. There will be no UN peacekeepers or US air raids targeting the Tatmadaw. The only countries that will undertake significant measures -- the support of weaponry, financing and political cover -- are those willing to benefit the junta. Russia and China's support is evident for the junta. The hard truth is that should the junta win and suppress the protesters, the world will simply re-engage with whatever government the junta forms.

Regardless, the reality is that Myanmar's people don't need international saviours for the junta to fail. Myanmar's people have the heart and bravery to do what is needed for themselves. That has become increasingly clear since Feb 1. There is now a historic moment building to rectify the mistakes of the past through solidarity and commitment to a shared future free of the military. The country's political settlement can be rebuilt on sincere notions of equality and equity manifest in the form of a democratic federal union. Uniting in the common cause of deposing the curse that is Myanmar's national disgrace of a military once and for all is necessary for the country to finally rectify the sins and mistakes of its earliest years.

The Tatmadaw's perpetual claims of superiority, patriotism and national duty, framed around twisted notions about the rule of law and need for stability, only ever served to justify repression, division, violence and theft. Myanmar's people deserve to be free of tyrannical military rule once and for all. Only Myanmar's people can decide the appropriate means necessary to achieve it. If disillusionment sets in, some groups will simply stop protesting, others will retreat into their mountainous citadels, while others will be left in the junta's prisons. Unity must come from the solidarity of persevering against a common national enemy, the Tatmadaw, and fundamentally relying on nobody else in what is a fight for a future worth having.

Mark Adams is a researcher focused on Southeast Asian politics and economics. An earlier version of this article appeared in Oxford Tea Circles.