Bravo, Burma -- er, Myanmar!

I meant to put this post up yesterday but I discovered it's really hard to type and dance around my desk at the same time. So I finally gave up on the attempt and just danced for joy. Here are the headlines that got me dancing -- and I'm sure the headlines also got Johnny Cash smiling down from his cloud in heaven (the campaign anthem of Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters is inspired by a Cash song):

Guardian: Burma celebrates Aung San Suu Kyi's apparent landslide election victory: Nobel laureate expected to take office for first time after landmark poll that could see end to 50 years of military rule

Agence France-Presse: No serious complaints in Myanmar vote: ASEAN chief.

Of course there were some shenanigans at the ballot box -- people rising from the dead to cast a vote, etc., but it's very clear that Myanmar President Thein Sein didn't want complaints from international election monitors to interfere with his star turn at the ASEAN summit on Tuesday. And, if one considers the courage he's and intelligence he displayed in somehow talking the country's generals into making Myanmar an upstanding member of ASEAN, he wanted nothing to interfere with the star turn of Myanmar's people on the world stage.

Success has been in the air for weeks; if the by-election was even halfway fair, Aung San Suu Kyi would win by at least a healthy margin. Rumors were flying last week that the government had already offered her a cabinet position and that she'd turned it down, saying being a parliamentarian was enough for her.

"Auntie Suu" was herself in such a good mood by last week that the 66-year old daughter of Burma's oops! Myanmar's founding father couldn't resist a little banter with a serious-faced Western reporter. He inquired worriedly about her health, which had been strained by the killer pace of campaigning. She told him with a grin that her health was so delicate she just might faint if the press asked her any tough political questions.

My celebratory mood was short-lived -- it is always is -- as I mulled over a long list of recriminations I might hurl at various parties because what happened yesterday in Burma could and should have happened decades ago. But I don't think Auntie Suu would appreciate my acid pen at this time. So I'll limit myself to saying to the Christian missionaries, the Soros Crowd and the Gene Sharp Crowd that if you'd like to see Burma's generals lower the boom again, push the envelope again. Are we clear? If so I'm willing to let the past remain where it is.

Now, as to whether Burma is the next Asian Tiger economy: the problem with turning your country into a fortress for decades is that the country falls greatly behind; add to that ethnic insurgencies fomented by outsiders and you end up with a fourth-world country. That's where Burma is today. But the country's potential is so great that economists and country analysts who specialize in ASEAN countries are seriously asking the question.

Here are two answers: one, from IHS Global Insight's Asia-Pacific Chief Economist Rajiv Biswas, is upbeat; the other, from Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, full of caution; both should be studied.

As to whether there's a tiebreaker, I think the money quote is found in Biswas's analysis:

From an economic perspective, Burma’s economic reforms and tariff liberalization will be important to ASEAN’s objective to create a single market for trade in goods by 2015.

To meet the objective, Myanmar can count on help from other ASEAN members -- a lot of help.

Finally, a word to my own dear government: Don't tack 'defense-related' issues onto lifting sanctions that you said at the time you were imposing for humanitarian reasons.

Need I remind you that the Afghans are now so justifiably worried that their country is going to become a battleground between Iran and the United States that recently a member of the Afghan senate lashed out at both governments, and Hamid Karzai backed him up.

With that thought in mind, don't try to use Myanmar as a staging ground against China. If you don't want to confront Beijing's leaders directly, don't use the world's dirt-poor as a stealth weapon. I don't want to hear, 'They do it too.' Are you Chinese? And while I'm on the subject, stop weaponizing in the name of 'freedom' every principle Americans cherish.

Sorry, Auntie Suu. We're actually all for peace and love here in Punditaland.

Will Aung San Suu Kyi be released within the next 48 hours? We'll soon find out, won't we?

It is an affront to language to call the junta's rubber-stamping of the Union Solidarity and Development "Party" an "election." But now that the sham has played out --

Bloomberg, November 11 - 7:48 PM ET

Suu Kyi, Myanmar Democracy Fight Symbol, May Be Freed After Junta Victory
By Tony Jordan and Daniel Ten Kate

... Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, is scheduled to be released on Nov. 13, according to the terms of her most recent house arrest. The junta hasn’t said publicly whether it will free the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

“We are very confident she will be released,” Win Tin, a senior member of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, said by phone from Yangon. “She is a convicted person. If she was detained the detention could be extended, but a convicted person has to be released once their sentence ends.”

Suu Kyi’s release and the conditions surrounding it may trigger a review of U.S. and European sanctions against the regime for human rights abuses, including the jailing of 2,100 political prisoners. She plans to tour the country and consider her view on sanctions if freed, Win Tin said.

“She essentially controls U.S. policy, indirectly,” said David Steinberg, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University. “We think what she thinks.”

Suu Kyi won’t accept conditions attached to her release, and plans to help investigate charges of fraud during the Nov. 7 election, which was criticized for excluding the democracy activist and other political prisoners, Win Tin said. The poll was Myanmar’s first since Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory two decades ago in a result nullified by the junta.

‘Won’t Quit’

The Union Solidarity and Development Party, formed by Prime Minister Thein Sein, won the most seats in the election, according to reports in state-run Myanmar newspapers. Suu Kyi, whose party boycotted the election, will visit supporters around the country if released, Win Tin said yesterday.

“She’s the daughter of our national hero,” he said. “She won’t quit politics, no matter what the military junta offers.”

Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, who led the fight for independence from Britain in the 1940s. She was two years old when her father was assassinated, and spent much of her life outside Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. She married Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibet, and had two children while living in the U.K.

Her life changed in 1988 when she returned to Myanmar to nurse her ailing mother and led the struggle for democracy.

Myanmar came under military rule in 1962 when General Ne Win overthrew the government of U Nu, the man who succeeded Suu Kyi’s father and presided over 10 years of democracy after the country achieved independence in 1948. Political parties were outlawed in 1964 and the military created a socialist state approved in a 1973 referendum.

Defying Martial Law

Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo formed the National League for Democracy and began campaigning at rallies, defying martial-law restrictions. In July 1989, they were placed under house arrest for “endangering the state.”

In 1990, the junta agreed to hold multiparty elections, at the same time starting a crackdown on opposition leaders. Suu Kyi was banned from standing in the elections after the junta designated her as a foreigner, citing her marriage to Aris.

Suu Kyi’s party emerged with almost 60 percent of the votes, and made an immediate demand that the junta begin negotiations on a new assembly. The military insisted the elections were to choose a government that would operate under its direction and refused to recognize the result.

Rethinking Sanctions

The U.S. led the international response, imposing economic sanctions on the teak- and rubber-exporting nation of 53 million people. The sanctions, still enforced, have been undermined by Chinese, Indian and Thai investments in ports, railways and oil and gas pipelines that give them access to the country’s natural resources and trade routes in the Indian Ocean.

The sanctions hurt Myanmar’s image “more than what it deserves, to the point of deterring big multinational companies to invest in Myanmar,” said Luc de Waegh, Bangkok-based managing partner of West Indochina Ltd., which advises companies looking to invest in Myanmar. “Even though it’s legal for European companies to invest in Myanmar under certain conditions, they will not do it because the image is so bad.”

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations called the vote “a significant step” in Myanmar’s path to democracy, according to a statement from Vietnam, which holds the rotating chairmanship. China welcomed the smooth election, Xinhua reported, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

“It’s important not to be deluded into overly praising the regime for less than half measures,” Ron Hoffmann, Canada’s ambassador to Myanmar, said on Nov. 7. “We need the regime to take reform and human rights more seriously, and that means more than releasing one individual.”

"Effects comparable to the humanitarian disaster of Darfur but far less well known"

"... the Burma army ... rarely catches up with fighters and instead concentrates its attacks on civilians."

10,000 a year killed in secret jungle war
Civilians singled out and ethnic hill tribes targeted by the state army along Asia’s forgotten frontier
From Nick Meo in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border
Sunday Herald

HUNDREDS OF miles from the drama and trauma of Rangoon in the jungle-covered hills along Burma's border with Thailand, the Burma army was killing civilians last week.

They have been doing so for decades in one of the most remote areas of Asia. Unseen in a frontier where foreigners are excluded, a vicious war has been fought with effects comparable to the humanitarian disaster of Darfur but far less well known.

Nearly all of the ethnic hill tribes who inhabit Burma's frontier areas have suffered appalling atrocities in offensives which have singled out civilians for attack with brutality only rarely used against the majority Burman population in Rangoon or Mandalay.

The origins of Burma's long, painful civil war are complex, fuelled by an attempted communist revolution, the drugs trade, and ethnic conflict between Burmans and the country's patchwork of minority groups.

But for decades Burma's dirty little wars have been kept going by the army's poisonous ideology and the generals' lucrative private business enterprises dealing in gems, teak and, according to their enemies, opium.

As the Burma army expanded during the 1990s to become the world's 15th biggest force, it squandered more than half of the national budget on defence and became increasingly well-armed. Thanks to Burma's friends in China, many insurgent groups were forced to submit to the rule of Burma's generals.

Those which won't lay down their arms in ceasefire agreements have been pushed out of territory they held during the 1990s, fighting on in obscure jungle guerrilla wars in which the Burma army - the Tatmadaw Kyi - rarely catches up with fighters and instead concentrates its attacks on civilians.

One group to hold out is the Karen, one of Burma's largest ethnic groups. The Karen are largely Christian, and fiercely supported British troops during the second world war, though that didn't prevent Britain from shoehorning the Karen in with the Burmans when independent Burma was founded. The Karen had expected independence as a reward for their loyalty, but instead were embroiled in a war which is now in its 57th year.

These days the Karen National Union (KNU) says they would settle for autonomy, but attacks on their villages continue.

Attacks were stepped up in 2005 when the generals shifted the capital from Rangoon, where they felt vulnerable to an increasingly angry population, to Nay Pyi Taw, a former logging town on the edge of Karen State.

The military ordered the clearing of civilians from a huge area surrounding the capital with characteristic brutality.

In May last year exhausted farmers clutching their children began staggering out of the jungle where they had fled when their homes were burned, fleeing towards the border with Thailand which they were not allowed to cross.

Practically overnight, on a slither of jungle land controlled by the KNU, they built a bamboo city, complete with clinic and school, and planted crops. The Karen are nothing if not survivors.

Accurate casualty figures are difficult to come by, but some estimates suggest that 10,000 people a year, mostly civilians, are killed and thousands more flee. Around 2500 villages have been destroyed and, during years of conflict, between one and two million people have been forced from their homes. It is not unusual to meet elderly Karen who have been forced to flee dozens of times during their lifetimes from their childhood to their old age.

Human Rights Watch estimated that the offensive, which began in 2006, forced 27,000 Karen from their homes.

The Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a brave group of mainly Karen medics who venture into the frontier war zones, have tried to catalogue the atrocities. They record cases such as that of Naw Eh Paw, a nine-year-old girl whose grandparents were murdered in an attack on their village. Naw Eh Paw was shot, but survived.

An FBR report on the army's strategy said: "It is generally slow and insidious strangulation of the population rather than an all-out effort to crush them."

The worst atrocities take place in the so-called black zones, free-fire areas where anyone who moves can be killed by Burma army soldiers. Populations are enslaved, forced to become porters, who are commonly worked to death, or even used as human minesweepers. Disturbing evidence has been gathered of mass rape being used by soldiers against ethnic women as a weapon of war.

Other groups such as the Karenni and the Shan have suffered as badly. All are watching keenly to see if an upheaval in far-off Rangoon will bring an end to their suffering.

"We are hopeful," said Saw La Henry, a Karen politician. "Perhaps after all this time our war is finally about to end."