Not even Aung San Suu Kyi can fix Myanmar’s civil war
IN NOVEMBER 2015, the party of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in the country’s first free election in decades. The expectations of her supporters were sky-high. Among the most prominent hopes of her constituents: that the Lady, as she is widely known, could finally end the country’s longrunning civil war.
A year and a half later, the odds of achieving national reconciliation appear as slim as at any time in the past six decades. And that bodes ill for a country whose geopolitical position between China and India makes it a strategic linchpin of its region.
Until the National League for Democracy, the party Suu Kyi leads, makes genuine political concessions to recalcitrant armed groups in Myanmar’s north, lasting peace will almost certainly remain unattainable. Ethnic groups want the government to grant them increased autonomy and ensure that certain areas will be off-limits to incursions by the Burmese military – concessions that are unlikely given that the generals, who retain considerable power, view federalism as a threat to national unity.
Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Myanmar’s democracy struggle, inherited previous president Thein Sein’s quest for a ceasefire accord following her political ascendance. Now in office, Suu Kyi is in a tough position, grappling with the military’s entrenched dominance over civilian government while working to earn the generals’ trust.
Suu Kyi also carries the burden of historical legacy. Her father, General Aung San, led the country’s struggle for independence from the Brit- ish following World War II, until he was assassinated on the eve of nationhood in 1947. Before his death, he laid out a comprehensive vision for power-sharing among the country’s ethnic groups. In his absence, war broke out between them and the central government in 1948 and has continued ever since.
Now the daughter of the revolution is seeking to accomplish her father’s dream. In 2015, eight of 15 ethnic armed groups signed a nationwide ceasefire agreement with Thein Sein’s government. A new series of talks followed in September 2016. But since then negotiations have stalled. Some members of the ethnic groups accuse Suu Kyi of being blind to their political grievances and steamrolling local leaders to enforce her party’s agenda. Despite the great priority she has placed on achieving a peace deal, she has lost trust outside of central Myanmar by lecturing, rather than listening to, the views of ethnic groups.
Distrust lingers on all sides. Suu Kyi has called for unity and self-sacrifice from ethnic groups still fighting the central government. Yet critics from various states have lost faith in her party. Many ethnic groups perceive the military, and by extension Suu Kyi, as imperious and out of touch with their concerns. Citizens in Mon state protested her government’s decision to name a bridge there after her father, the general who more than 70 years ago fought to liberate and unify the divided country.
The international community has condemned Suu Kyi’s failure to dampen tensions in Rakhine state, where some 140,000 Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, remain confined to squalid refugee camps and face fierce repression from security forces and the Rakhine Buddhist population.
It is the NLD’s move to make if the party truly wants to move ahead with talks. To do that, however, Suu Kyi will need to demonstrate that she is willing to back up her words of “selfsacrifice” and “national unity” with action. Only by delivering on political compromise, which will include conceding that some form of federalism or decentralised authority is inevitable, will the general’s daughter be able to fulfill Myanmar’s long quest for genuine peace and national reconciliation.