By developer (Originally published in newsletter no. 21, January edition for 2024)
Intro:
On the 1st of February 2021 , the military took over Myanmar once again in a brazen coup. They dissolved the democratically elected government led by the NLD, and placed the party’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest. Protests broke out throughout the country with students, workers and even Buddhist monks uniting against the military regime.
Rangoon was the scene of massive mobilizations of thousands of people uniting to protest the military regime, risking their life and limb to do so. The military responded with harsh crackdowns. The military showed their repressive fangs in these actions. Even as the spectre of the pandemic loomed over the impoverished and isolated nation, the junta turned their energies in imprisoning the Burmese populace under their grip. The people did not take this lying down. The youth of Myanmar took the lead in organizing an armed resistance against the military rule, organizing under the People’s Defense Force. Together with the rebel armies of the Karen, Chin, Shan, and Arakan states, they form a united front against the rule of the Tatmadaw.[i]
It has been over two years since the coup happened. Myanmar which had been in a state of war and civil war since it’s inception, once again devolved into the spiral of civil war, as secessionist rebellions re-emerged in force. Today this war appears to be reaching a climax, as the Karen, and Shan rebel armies take over vital overland crossings into India and China.
These unprecedented developments show the weakness of the Tatmadaw, and show the very real prospect of independence for the long struggling peoples of Myanmar’s Northern frontier region. Should they succeed, the military regime may as well collapse, and open the prospect of a return of Burmese democracy.
The armed insurgencies led by the People’s Defense force, and the various secessionist insurgencies, constitute a democratic struggle in Myanmar that strikes at the heart of the revolutionary struggle in Myanmar.
The legacy of world war 2 :
Myanmar has the dubious distinction of being one of the only countries in the world which has had civil wars for almost the entirety of it’s existence. This is the legacy of it’s troubled history with problems rooted in the days of the British Raj.
Myanmar was annexed to the British Empire, and made a constituent part of the British Raj, after the third Anglo-Burmese war of 1885. The British brutally crushed the resistance of the feudalistic lords and implemented changes which turned Myanmar into a colony for resource extraction. Of chief importance was Myanmar’s mineral wealth, Myanmar’s oil, forestry products (the famous Myanmar teak), and rice.
By annexing Myanmar, the British had in their hands one of the most fertile regions of Asia, they could vie for control of South and South East Asia’s rice trade. The biggest beneficiaries of British rule in Myanmar were Scottish entrepreneurs and civil servants who effectively ‘ran’ Myanmar, the Chettiar money lenders of Southern India who dominated finance in Myanmar, and became the owners of a quarter of all Burmese land, and a small section of the comprador elite of Myanmar.
Much like India, British rule brought about the destruction of old pre-capitalist social and political relations, and their replacement with capitalist ones. The impact of this was the creation of modern bourgeois institutions like the University of Rangoon, which would become epicentres of anti-colonial resistance in Myanmar.
The Burmese independence movement grew parallel to the Indian independence movement, and briefly converged in 1940 when Aung San met with Subhas Chandra Bose at Ramgarh during the Congress session there, under the shadow of the second world war.
The war would prove to be the most decisive event in modern Burmese history. British rule, which had already been strained from two decades of intense anti-colonial national movements, the first world war, and the global economic crisis in 1929, was given it’s body blow when the Japanese invaded and steamrolled the unprepared British colonial forces in Myanmar. Within a few months, five decades of British rule fell, but what came in it’s place was a worse more oppressive Japanese rule.
The Japanese pushed Burmese to forced labour to build railroads and infrastructure for their wartime needs. They massacred entire populations, and intensified the exploitation of Burmese agriculture much like the British had done. Despite this, Aung San and many other national leaders sought Japanese assistance in fighting the British.
The alliance with Japan showed the weakness of Myanmar’s bourgeois leadership. Much like in Indonesia, Aung San and Ba Maw cooperated with the Japanese during their occupation of Myanmar. The Burma Independence army[ii] proved that they were not above sinking to the levels of the British in committing atrocities, when the BIA destroyed hundreds of minority Karen villages over the course of the invasion. Nearly two thousand Karen were killed in the Irrawaddy campaign. This incident highlighted among other things, the rift between the Bamar majority who dominated the plains, and the ethnic groups of the hills and border areas of Northern Myanmar.
The cooperation with the Japanese did not last long, thinly veiled efforts by the Japanese to keep Myanmar under their thumb while pretending to grant independence did not convince anyone. In 1943, the so-called ‘state of Burma’ was set up, having no better relationship with Japan than colonial Myanmar did after 1937. The exploitation of Myanmar for the benefit of Japan’s war aims intensified. The next year, Aung San would break ties with Japan and switch over to the very allies he had been fighting against for most of his life.
The Japanese lost the war and were driven out of Myanmar, but left the country in a ruinous state. The British following a policy of abandonment, did no better. The relentless bombing campaigns, the blockades, and the policy of arming certain ethnic groups against the Japanese, left a toxic situation in Myanmar. The worst case of these was the Rohingya, who were armed by General Wavell’s V-Force to fight the Japanese, but all this did was inflame inter-communal tensions within Arakan. Muslim Rohingya killed Arakan Buddhists, and the latter retaliated with the help of the BIA and Japanese, twenty thousand Arakan Buddhists and forty thousand Rohingya were killed in these clashes, and forever scarred inter-communal relations[iii].
Despite the devastating consequences of arming ethnic minorities, the British continued the policy of arming ethnic minorities in North Myanmar in their campaign against the Japanese. It did not help that the national movement of Myanmar was Bamar-centric, and failed to win over the ethnic minorities in common cause against British rule. The fighting in the Second World War only inflamed pre-existing tensions further. Myanmar would enter independence with these tensions.
A mutilated independence :
Myanmar won it’s independence through armed struggle. The British were forced to concede independence to Myanmar at a time when the empire was exhausted, nearly bankrupt, and it’s military capabilities stretched to beyond their limits. India witnessed massive protests across the country in the aftermath of the Red Fort Trials, where three commanders of the Indian National Army were put on a war trial. India burst out into a revolutionary wave, nowhere was this more acute than Calcutta which saw whole sections of the city barricaded by students protesters, and city squares being taken over by marching protesters. The upsurge would culminate in a mutiny of the naval ratings in Bombay, quickly followed by ratings at Karachi, Calcutta, and Madras.
In Myanmar, the populace was already armed and ready to fight, battle hardened by the fighting in World War 2. Aung San had a sizeable army behind him to enforce independence, the Burma independence Army, which would become the foundation for the tatmadaw, the army of modern Myanmar. The new united front which ultimately came to rule Myanmar had unified every anti-Japanese force under the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, an umbrella organization formed by Aung San and the thirty comrades to fight Japan. Negotiations were initiated which culminated in the Aung-Atlee Agreement that formed the basis of the Panglong Conference. Aung San had crafted the only possible way in which a united and free Myanmar could be won, through granting autonomy to the various ethnic groups. However, he would not live to see how his vision unfolded.
The Panglong Agreement took place on the 12th of Februiary 1947, and became the basis of an independent Burmese state, in July 19th of 1947 the founding father of Myanmar, Aung San, along with eight other ministers, was gunned down by assassins. Overnight, Myanmar was left leaderless when it needed leadership the most. The mastermind of the assassination, a rival bourgeois politician, U Saw, was tried and hanged for the assassination plot.
Myanmar entered it’s life as a new nation leaderless and mired in conflict. A country already ruined by the fighting in world war 2 would soon find itself in the throes of a new conflict within the context of the cold war. Over the course of the Burma campaign, Northern Myanmar had been held by Chiang Kai Shek’s National Revolutionary Army. Even after their withdrawal, the influence of the Chinese nationalists remained in this troubled part of Myanmar. Over the course of the Chinese civil war, the lost division of the Chinese nationalist army would end up capturing a substantial part of Northern Myanmar, destabilizing the region and forcing the fledgling war torn country into another deadly conflict. The legacy of this period was to transform Myanmar into one of the key countries of the South East Asian drug trade. This disaster was made possible with no small help from the CIA, who wished to take advantage of the anti-communist army in Myanmar for their own ends.[iv]
The legacy of the Panglong Agreement would be failed hope and bitterness between ethnic groups. A communist insurgency initiated the very year that Myanmar won it’s independence from Britain, and ethnic groups organized to oppose their union with Myanmar. The Panglong conference was flawed with some groups having no representation whatsoever and others being clubbed together. Importantly, there was no representation from the Rakhine region or from the Mon people. The Karen and Karenni had no representation in this conference.
Myanmar had won it’s independence under the government of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, a united front combining with it various ethnic groups who had taken arms against the Japanese, and the Communist Party of Myanmar, which shed any struggle against Britain in favour of collaborating with it to fight Japan, even before the Japanese invasion began. This united front was united only on paper, in truth there were over fifty conflicting groups. The flaws were fully exposed after independence when the Communist Party of Myanmar initiated an insurgency against the Burmese government.
The Communist Party following the Maoist line, wished to replicate the success of the Chinese civil war in Myanmar, but all this actually achieved was a lot of bloodshed and brutal reprisal from the AFPFL government. To make things worse, discontent over the botched Panglong Conference, led to the rebellion of the Karen people in Central Myanmar. The Communist Party had supported rebellion in the Rakhine, the Shan states, and the Arakan rebellion, but dismissed the Karen rebellion and it’s leadership as reactionary. Thus, a three way conflict ensued between the Communist Party on the one hand, the Burmese AFPFL government on the other, and the Karen rebels. The consequences of this conflict was ruinous for the fledgling country.
Civil wars and ethnic conflict :
The conflicts which began soon after independence, continued for decades, with the ethnic war continuing into modern day.
The first major war broke out against an insurgency by the Communist Party of Burma beginning in 1948 and lasting until 1989. A combination of internal division, and brutal suppression by the Burmese government eventually brought the Communist party insurgency to an end. This was but one of many in the long line of failures of the protracted people’s war line of the Maoists.
While the communist party insurgency raged, the fledgling Burmese state had to deal with the rebellion of the Karen, and the occupying forces of the KMT’s lost army. The war torn country was devastated, and would soon be left leaderless by the assassination of Aung San and most of his cabinet.
Myanmar’s bourgeois democracy, such as it was, already found itself at the precipice. The British had built Myanmar into an agrarian and extractive colony, this economic set up did not change after independence, and in fact hasn’t fundamentally changed even today. The weak foundations were ravaged further by the Second World War, whose legacy is still felt in the war torn country, as it sees the culmination of decades of civil war.
The new country came under the leadership of Prime Minister U Nu, who attempted unsuccessfully, to lead Myanmar towards an industrial welfare state. U Nu was a left leaning bourgeois leader, in the mould of India’s Jawahar Lal Nehru. Myanmar had far less to begin with than India did in terms of industrial infrastructure and had to deal with the destruction left in the aftermath of the second world war. So it began at a disadvantage.
Despite great optimism after independence, the Burmese state could not deal with the consequences of the failed Panglong Agreement, nor the devastation left by the fighting in the second world war. The seeds of a future military rule were sowed from the very origin of the Burmese state, in the hegemony of the Bamar majority, the failure to address the ethnic group’s right to self-determination, and in the socio-economic backwardness of Myanmar, still trapped in an agrarian economy.
In 1962, Burmese democracy ended with a coup conducted by General Ne Win, who became Myanmar’s first dictator. His action pushed Myanmar to the abyss from which it is still unable to escape.
Dictatorship :
Ne Win led the ‘socialist’ faction within the armed forces, and was closely aligned with Prime Minister U Nu. However, this political orientation did not stop him from conducting the coup. Before the coup of 1962, Ne Win had led the caretaker government at U Nu’s invitation, effectively suspending bourgeois democracy in Myanmar in 1958. A new government was formed with U Nu as Prime Minister in 1960, and a mere two years later, the military launched a coup, with the excuse that the civilian government was inept and could not administer Myanmar. There was fear among the ranks of the military that federalism and granting autonomy to the ethnic nationalities would eventually lead to the dismantling of the Burmese Union. This threat was especially acute for the Kayah and Shan minorities who were pressing for their right to separate under the 1947 constitution. Tensions only grew further
The fear would lead Ne Win to institute one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, under the cover of ‘socialism’. In truth, he created a state capitalist dystopia, an economic system geared towards the maintenance of military rule, and an autarky to isolate Myanmar and further the impoverishment of it’s people. As inadequate and disappointing as the parliamentary period was, the dictatorship would prove to be a disaster, one that wasn’t as apparent at the outset for the relatively bloodless nature of the coup.
Soon after Ne Win seized power, students at the Rangoon University struck against the government. Protests broke out across the country. The military regime responded with harsh crackdowns. The students protests turned violent in the defence against crackdowns by the military regime, who fired on student protesters and destroyed a student union building. All universities were closed for two years following the coup.
This was only the beginning of a hellish period of Burmese history and set the tone for the disasters that would follow. Ne Win was not an ideological politician, he aligned himself with the socialist faction of the AFPFL and sympathized with Marxists, but never bothered to understand or implement those ideas. He concocted a hodge podge ideology which supposedly blended Buddhism and Marxism into what he called ‘The Burmese way to Socialism’. It was in practice a doctrine of isolation and autarky designed to serve the interests of the military regime.
Ne Win nationalized most of the economy, and begun the expulsion of those deemed foreign. The Anglo-Burmese community and the Indian Tamil community were the worst affected by the expulsions. The worst aspects of Burmese nationalism were shown in the coup regime in the brutal imposition of Bamari hegemony and the brutal xenophobia shown towards the Indian and Chinese communities in Myanmar. Even before independence, the anti-Indian riots in 1930, and the mass evacuation of Indians following the Japanese invasion, the actions against Indians and ethnic minorities by the Burmese Independence Army, all revealed the great weakness of the Burmese independence movement.
However, it was only after Ne Win’s coup, that the xenophobic tendencies in Burmese nationalism became institutionalized[v].
As Ne Win’s grip on power grew, the state of Myanmar worsened. The civil war showed no signs of dying, organizational rights were curtailed, and freedom of speech was stamped out. Ne Win who was infamous for being superstitious, withdrew several large denominated currency notes on recommendation of his astrologer, who suggested the number 9 was auspicious for him. The new denominations of 45 and 90 kyat were issued on the recommendation of his astrologer, leading to economic chaos and the loss of life savings for millions of Burmese citizens.
Ne Win’s most toxic legacy however, remains the new citizenship law which was promulgated in 1982. The new law denied citizenship to anyone deemed a foreigner, who had settled in Myanmar before 1823, the year the British began annexing Burmese territory. This law is used to deny the Rohingya citizenship, and strip many Indians and Chinese of any right to citizenship despite having been born in Myanmar and lived in Myanmar for generations. It was a xenophobic piece of legislation, which laid the foundations to turn Myanmar into Bamari ethno-state.[vi]
The 8888 uprising and Aung San Suu Kyi :
Ne Win’s misrule undid much of the potential benefits from some of his more progressive early policies, such as the abolition of usury, the abolition of landlordism in the countryside, the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, and the protection of peasant’s right to property. The culmination of misrule and exploitation at the hands of the military regime led to the massive student’s protests in 1988, led by General Aung San’s daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The protests followed the tradition of radical student’s movements in Myanmar which were crucial in ending British rule. The protests of 1988, were popularly called the 8888 uprising after the calendar date which marked the peak of nationwide students protests, on 8th August 1988.
What started as a protest at the Rangoon Arts and Sciences University evolved into a nationwide revolution. The military regime under General Ne Win rightly felt threatened, and responded with force. Martial law was declared, soldiers opened fire on protesters, hundreds were killed, and thousands were put under arrest and tortured. Despite brutal crackdowns by the army, the protests did not die down, students were joined by monks, and wide sections of the peasantry. Soon, the countryside erupted along with the cities. Military positions were surrounded by protesters.
By the end of August, it became impossible for the military regime to hold on to power, Ne Win suddenly announced his resignation. This act dampened the momentum of the 8888 uprising, and the military prepared their counter-action. Ne Win’s resignation was followed by another coup on the 18th of September.
The new constitution of the coup government undid Ne Win’s 1974 constitution and promulgated a new one under the so-called State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). The new military ruler Saw Maung would oversee one of the most brutal chapters in modern Burmese history, the crackdown and destruction of the 8888 protests. At least 3000 were killed, many as a result of torture in prisons.
In the following year the country was officially renamed Myanmar. The new government was still cautious of the revolutionary momentum unleashed by the 8888 protests. Fearful of another outbreak of protest, they conceded to having a general election. This would be the first general election in Myanmar since the military coup of 1962.
The 1990 general elections saw Aung San Suu Kyi and her national league for democracy win by a landslide. Had the election results been honoured, military rule in the country would have ended. That was not to be the case, instead the tatmadaw would annul the election results and reimpose military rule. With protesters on the backfoot, the army succeeded in reinstating control, and the brief moment of bourgeois democratic restoration ended with military rule. The new regime would be no less cruel than Ne Win’s, but Myanmar would begin opening up to the world, and allow foreign corporations to exploit it’s mineral wealth more freely.
All the while the armed rebellion of ethnic groups such as the Shan and Karen people continued to rage.
The SPCD and the ‘roadmap to democracy’ :
Faced with mounting pressure from every corner of Burmese society, the military realized soon that it could not simply keep responding with coercion. Coercion worked to contain the insurgency in the Northern and bordering areas, but it could not be used to indefinitely keep the masses of the majority Bamari people of the central plains subjugated. The military required concessions to pacify the people before it could dominate them and secure it’s rule. The heavily rigged and manipulated election of 1990 was meant to do just that, to fool the masses while the military retained ultimate power in Myanmar, not unlike how the army acts in Pakistan.
The ‘roadmap to democracy’ framed by the so-called ‘State peace and development council’ was designed to do just that. Rigged elections were the order of the day in order to keep the supremacy of the military intact while creating the façade of bourgeois democracy. Such thinly veiled dictatorship defined the regime that rule Myanmar during the period following the 8888 uprising, implemented by General Saw Maung, and continued by General Than Shwe. The first elections to be held after 8888 uprising was in 1990 which Aung San and her NLD won by a landslide, but the military regime did not recognize and put her and much of the party under arrest.
The transformation of Myanmar from total isolation to re-emerging as a major energy resource exporter (as it was under British rule), occurred during this period from 1992 to 2011. The retreat from state capitalist authoritarianism as exercized by Ne Win, towards a stage managed democracy similar to modern day Pakistan, was necessitated to fully exploit energy export policies. The exploitation of cheap labour and resources for the benefit of foreign capital, went hand in hand with the oppression of the masses by the military, especially the subjugated national and ethnic groups in Myanmar’s North. It’s worth noting that the bulk of Myanmar’s energy resources lay in zones which are contested with Karen, Chin, and Shan ethnic groups in the country’s North, while a strategically significant area lay in Arakan where the genocide against the Rohingya is being perpetrated.[vii]
The road to 2021 :
The junta’s strategy of democratic pretence had it’s benefits, as the new regime headed by former military leader Thein Sein, ensured Myanmar’s entry into the ASEAN and further opened it’s economy, inviting investments from ASEAN, india, the US, and China. The exploitation of Myanmar’s resources would only deepen.
This strategy culminated in 2015 with the Thein Sein government releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from arrest, and conducted an ostensibly fair election which saw Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD win by a landslide. Despite this, the military held a strategic share of the seats through appointment. About 25% of the seats in the lower house are reserved for military appointees.
There was much hope after these elections that Myanmar would change course. Aung San Suu Kyi could not become Prime Minister owing to a constitutional rule preventing her, as her husband and children were foreign citizens. Instead, she was given a defacto position created for her, as “state counsellor”. Aung San Suu Kyi’s new Myanmar was still the Myanmar of the juntas, behind a façade of bourgeois democracy, elections, and limited freedoms of press, a genocide of Rohingya was being perpetrated.
A particularly virulent section of Buddhist monks emerged during this time, who used social media to preach hate of Muslim Rohingya minorities. The face of this new type of fundamentalist Buddhist was Asin Wirathu, who had the full backing of the military junta. State Counsellor Aung San did nothing to try and prevent the military from initiating it’s genocidal actions against the Rohingya, which has resulted in the mass expulsion of 750,000 Rohingya in 2017, and the deaths of tens of thousands.
Asin Wirathu incited Buddhists against Rohingya, which resulted in violent pogroms around Arakan.[viii] As far as the treatment of minorities went, the new ‘democratic’ government was not much better than the military regime that had preceded it. The destruction of the Rohingya in Arakan came together with major Chinese funded infrastructure projects, such as Sittwe. Securing the Arakan was key to develop Myanmar as an essential center of trade and logistics in the Bay of Bengal region. The ‘price’ of this development was paid by the Rohingya people.
Promoting such communal and religious hatred served the military, as it distracted the populace from their country’s exploitation by the junta and foreign capital. Rohingya muslims suddenly became the main enemy. Aung San Suu Kyi, proved to be a useful idiot in serving this agenda.[ix]
The contradictory ‘democratic’ regime continued until 2021. While the charade of democracy played out, fundamentalist Buddhist monks continued to incite violence against muslims, and the army continued to commit it’s genocide against Rohingya. All the while, the war against Karen, Chin and Kachin groups continued. Not long after the establishment of civilian rule in 2011, the tatmadaw began a series of campaigns against the ethnic rebel groups, resulting in enormous suffering for the people of the border region. Hundreds of thousands were displaced in these military operations, with thousands dead. The military campaigns did not cease even after Aung San Suu Kyi’s government coming into power.
Coup and revolution:
The contradictions of Myanmar’s dysfunctional bourgeois democracy would culminate in 2021 when the Tatmadaw under the leadership of general Minh Aung Laing conducted Myanmar’s most recent military coup. Preceding the coup was the general election of 2020 which saw a sweeping victory for Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. The army saw this as a threat and took action.
The elections were fought within the limitations of the 2012 constitution which retained a stake in government for the military. Despite it’s flaws, the limited bourgeois democracy that Myanmar had experienced had granted rights to it’s workers and peasants, freedoms to organize and agitate, that made the otherwise exploitative set up somewhat bearable. The concession to democratic rights was a major victory of the workers and peasants of Myanmar won through the struggles of the 8888 uprising, and the monk’s protests.
The coup would reverse all of that, in one fell swoop. Myanmar became an authoritarian dictatorship once more. The military would commence it’s genocidal campaign of repression against ethnic minorities, which had been picking pace since 2015.
The immediate aftermath of the coup, saw widespread protests in Rangoon with trade unions, students unions, and Buddhist monks, coming together to challenge the military regime. Teachers, doctors, and students, the country’s youth was at the forefront of this agitation. The military responded with coercion. Rangoon/Yangon saw military snipers fire at protesters, soldiers could be seen gunning down protesters on the streets. Soon, the internet would be shut down, and Myanmar would be isolated from the world.
The protests however, did not die down. The youth took up arms, and began to organize urban guerrilla bands. Gun fights in the streets were not an uncommon sight. The youth army eventually reorganized in the countryside, joining forces with the ethnic armies of Karen, Kachin and Shan. The coup had sparked a revolutionary uprising, which had now expanded by combining with the pre-existing war of the oppressed nationalities in Myanmar’s bordering regions.[x]
The protests coalesced into a National Unity government to fight the coup regime, which calls itself the State Administrative Council. The National Unity Government organized an armed wing with youth volunteers under the “People’s Defense Force”. The united force of the PDF and all other ethnic armies, launched it’s major offensive against the Tatmadaw on the 10th of October 2027, under operation 1027. The offensive has gained numerous successes, and pushed back the junta forces all over the North, cutting off the land routes to China and India. As of today, it is believed that the tatmadaw has lost a third of all townships, albeit controlling the major population centers around Central Myanmar and South Myanmar.
The civil war has reached a turning point where the army is facing the frightening possibility of it’s ultimate defeat in the face of a united front of ethnic armies, and the people’s defense force. Joining in this civil war, is the offshoot breakaway force of the Myanmar National Democratic Army, which broke off from the Communist Party of Myanmar. Adding to the conflict is the Wa state army which has been described as a proxy of the Chinese government.
The Burmese regime is unravelling, and it’s impact felt across the border in China and India. One of the immediate fallout has been the destabilization of India’s North Eastern states. The ethnic conflict in Manipur has worsened owing to the actions of the Tatmadaw and it’s scorched earth strategy. Thousands of Zomi refugees have flooded into India, adding to the ethnic tensions in the region between Kuki-Zo and Meitei. There have even been border clashes where the Tatmadaw have attacked fleeing refugees into Indian soil with artillery strikes and air strikes. The Modi government, has remained silent about this.
As of now nearly 1.6 million people are internally displaced, and 55000 civilian buildings have been destroyed[xi]. The war is still active, and the tatmadaw has continued to stumble, and it seems more and more likely that the PDF and the National Unity Government would score a final defeat of the Burmese military regime.
Tasks ahead :
The situation in Myanmar has already reached the point of armed struggle and insurrection. The civil war which raged since Myanmar’s independence, has reached a new level of intensity with the armed forces being pushed back on all fronts. The idea that a formidable military which has held Myanmar in an iron grip, armed to the teeth with weaponry from India, China and Russia, could unravel as spectacularly as this, is as inspirational as it is incredible.
However, even if the military junta should be destroyed, and the army destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up, the future of Myanmar would remain capitalistic. That means, Myanmar’s position as a semi colony for the exploitation of agrarian, mineral resources, and energy resources, would remain unchanged. Only now, we would have the veneer of bourgeois democracy to hide the exploitation. The conflict would likely be subjected to the geo-political rivalry between China and the US, with the US aligned ASEAN nations leaning towards the National Unity Government, while China attempts to save the failing tatmadaw regime. India would attempt to ‘balance’ both sides to gain the biggest benefit from whichever faction wins.
The NUG for their part, has attempted to placate both China and Western imperial powers. France was among the first countries to formally recognize the NUG as the legitimate government. The NUG has called on the People’s Defense Force to refrain from attacking Chinese projects, despite these infrastructure projects and their funding being a vital support for the military regime. The ethnic rebel armies such as the Karen independence army, or the Kachin independence army, have done little to change the socio economic realities of the people within their zones of control.
At various points in time India or China has attempted to back the insurgents, not out of principled concern for the right of self-determination, but to influence the politics of Myanmar, and secure resources. Both eventually competed to influence the military regime, indirectly strengthening the repression of the tatmadaw over the Burmese people.[xii][xiii]
Despite these realities, it must be acknowleged that the war in Myanmar is a war for bourgeois democratic rights. The resolution of the right to self-determination of the oppressed nationalities, the ending of autocratic military rule, and the secularization of Burmese society, against the weight of religious reaction from the likes of Asin Wirathu, are all necessary tasks of the Burmese revolution.
The two most essential tasks for a Burmese revolution are :
- Securing the right to self-determination; whether through the achievement of federal autonomy, or through outright independence, the Kachin, Karen, Mon, Rohingya, and other ethnic groups who live along the bordering regions of Myanmar, must be granted their right to self-determination. This includes, especially for the non-Buddhist minorities, the right to freely practice their faith, and culture. The Burmese bourgeoisie has proven over the 80 years since independence that it is not up to the task.
- Securing the independence of Myanmar ; Myanmar is a semi colonial nation, dependent on the exportation of raw materials, largely under the control or influence of imperial capital. Critical infrastructure, raw materials, and finance are held by a million strings in the hands of foreign capital, chiefly Chinese, Indian, Japanese and US capital. The tatmadaw is the instrument of foreign capital to keep the exploitation of Myanmar going. Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD and now the NUG, is positioning itself to play this role. Securing Myanmar’s independence, means the nationalization of foreign capital, and the commanding heights of the economy, as much as it means the ouster of the imperialist’s tool that is the Tatmadaw military regime.
If Myanmar’s bourgeois leadership are failing, the task falls squarely on the shoulders of the workers and peasants to conduct the bourgeois democratic revolution. This brings us to an inescapable conclusion that without the seizure of power from the workers and peasants, the bourgeois democratic revolution of Myanmar would come undone. The vehicle to achieve this, is the revolutionary party, and an inescapable conclusion is to build this party in struggle.
Myanmar is in the midst of a revolutionary war, one which can define the future course of the country. It depends on revolutionaries to give this struggle the leadership it needs. International solidarity is the need of the hour. A revolutionary Myanmar, can become a bridge to a wider revolution in South and South East Asia, and spread over to China and East Asia.
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Myanmar_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Independence_Army#Background_of_Burma
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_massacres_in_1942
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang_in_Burma#CIA_assistance_and_opium_trade
[v] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33973982
[vi] https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/burmas-path-to-genocide/chapter-2/stripping-away-citizenship
[vii] https://www.slideshare.net/myanmarbusiness/myanmar-oil-gas-enterprise-moge
[viii] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230103-buddhist-bin-laden-firebrand-monk-feted-by-myanmar-junta-chief
[ix] https://www.vox.com/2016/3/28/11306856/aung-san-suu-kyi-muslim-rohingya-bbc
[x] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo8-v8lZ95M
[xi] https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/editorial/mass-exodus-successive-military-regimes-in-myanmar-drive-out-millions-of-people.html
[xii] https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/indias-kachin-connection-in-myanmar
[xiii] https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/12/19/china-is-backing-opposing-sides-in-myanmars-civil-war