Myanmar’s long-running 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 was that the Lady, as she is widely known, could finally end the country’s long-running civil war.
Surely if anyone could bring the military to the negotiating table with the myriad armed ethnic groups, it was the revered leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
A year and a half later, the odds of achieving national reconciliation appear as slim as at any time in the past six decades.
Until the NLD 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 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 cease-fire 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, which is essential to resolving conflict.
Suu Kyi also carries the burden of historical legacy. Her father, General Aung San, led the country’s struggle for independence from the British 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 of national reconciliation. 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.
When the NLD entered parliament with a clear majority in early 2016, it promoted its own leaders as chief ministers in states where it had won, even if it had lacked a majority of votes. The move alienated opposition politicians and ethnic citizens who resent the NLD’S imposing stature.
The international community has condemned Suu Kyi’s failure to dampen racial and religious 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.
The latest round of peace talks has been indefinitely postponed and negotiations appear to have lost momentum.
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 will the general’s daughter be able to fulfil Myanmar’s long quest for genuine peace and national reconciliation.
— The Washington Post