Four years after the military coup on February 1, 2021 led by General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s destiny continues to be uncertain. The multiple ethnic fault lines the country has always had to live with since its independence from British colonial rule are now coming out of dormancy to make this excruciating civil turmoil even messier.
This is very relevant to India’s northeastern states bordering Myanmar. This is because Myanmar’s problems have had a tendency to spill over into them. This
had happened during a similar face-off between civil resistance groups and the military in the wake of the August 1988 uprising; it is happening again.
The unfolding civil conflict in Myanmar is multilayered. There is indeed the fight being put up against the military junta by civil militias formed essentially among Myanmar’s majority community, the Bamar, in different regions of the country. All these local militias are loosely bound under the nomenclature, Peoples’ Defence Force, but they are far from being under a strict and united command structure. The PDF owes allegiance to the coup-ousted National League for Democracy of Aung San
Suu Kyi which has now formed an underground government, the National Unity Government of Myanmar.
The PDF spontaneously raised militias in response to the coup. Therefore, initially, it suffered from the lack of combat training and firepower. But this shortfall was made up by the alliances forged with several of Myanmar’s experienced and well-armed ethnic insurgent groups that have been fighting the State since Independence.
The equation, however, is not linear. All ethnic rebel armies, some very powerful, have not chosen to ally with the PDF. Many have remained neutral and some, including civil militias amongst the Bamars, are even fighting alongside the junta: they are locally referred to as ‘Pyusawthi’. In an article, the International Crisis Group, a reputed peace-building organisation, called this phenomenon “resisting the resistance”.
The complexity of the relationship between the Buddhist Bamar who form 68% of Myanmar’s population and other ethnic communities also becomes apparent from even a cursory look at some social media chat groups of Myanmar people. A contest over a local term, ‘Myo Chit’, is a pointer. This phrase combines the idea of patriotism, nationalism, national fighter, and pride in peoplehood. The junta is wont to using this term to describe itself and its soldiers but this is ridiculed by an overwhelming majority on these fora.
Interestingly, when the PDF uses the term to describe itself, there is unease that
this may alienate the non-Bamar ethnic allies because this signifies the Bamar-defined hegemonic idea of Myanmar nationalism which the latter revile. Even if
the junta is defeated — which many neutral Myanmar observers such as Bertil Lintner and Richard Horsey think is unlikely — Myanmar’s endemic existential crisis manifest in
ethnic unrests is unlikely to be resolved.
Even during NLD’s rule after the 2015 election, the Myanmar Union’s distrust of the ethnic states was not purged. In that election, Shan state and Rakhine state returned local parties as majorities, yet the Union government under Suu Kyi’s party used a draconian clause in Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution to impose NLD chief ministers in these two states.
The Tatmadaw obviously overestimated its own influence and underrated the capability for resistance of the Myanmar people when it decided to grab power four years ago. The junta’s plan seems to be to hold elections to reinstall a popular government as an honourable exit strategy for itself. But for this strategy to be trusted by the rest of the country, the Tatmadaw will also have to be satisfied with a role limited to being the country’s military. Thus far, it has been intoxicated by the idea of dwifungsi which, Lintner wrote, is borrowed from the Indonesian military’s outlook.
Pradip Phanjoubam is editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics