Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (11 page)

In fact, the military was already in much the stronger position, notably as a result of the historical accident that saw part of the Cold War played out on Burmese territory in the wake of China’s October 1949 Revolution.
³⁹
Although Mao Zedong’s victorious Red Army drove most of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist troops to Taiwan, a large contingent trapped in southwestern Yunnan Province in 1951 took refuge across the border in Shan and Kachin States. As fears of communist contagion mounted, US technical advisers employed by the Central Intelligence Agency offered support. Formal Burmese complaints to the UN in 1953 were ineffectual.
⁴⁰
In consequence, the Nu government sought urgently to create a force capable of protecting Burma’s borders and securing national sovereignty. Callahan sees this as the key factor in setting the stage for
tatmadaw
rule. Noting that India, Malaysia and the Philippines had similar experiences of colonialism, war and independence, she asks why only Burma was left with ingrained military control. Her answer is that “As the Cold War threatened to swallow up Burma, military and civilian leaders had few choices but to reinvigorate and redeploy the colonial security apparatus to hold together a disintegrating country during the formative period of postcolonial state transformation.”
⁴¹

Gradually the
tatmadaw
positioned itself as the critical institution in the state, and built a cohesive core group dedicated to defense of the nation. “Over the 1950s the Burma Army turned itself from a small politicized and factionalized hybrid force, half British and half Japanese by training, into a more professional and more coherent military machine, loyal only to itself,” writes Thant Myint-U.
⁴²
One key step was incorporation of many
tats
, “village defense units, forest guards, power station guards, and in a few places, the Union Military Police,” into the
tatmadaw
.
⁴³
Another was the creation of a solidly Burman military. With time, a Cold War effect became decisive. For Callahan, “The military solution to internal crises crowded out other potential state reformers, turning officers into state builders and citizens into threats and—more characteristically—enemies.”
⁴⁴
Moreover, as the
tatmadaw
began to secure both the state and its own interests, it started to branch out. In 1951, a Defence Services Institute was set up to run canteens for servicemen. Broadly, its early functions were similar to those of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes formed by the British government in 1921 to supply goods, provide catering facilities and meet troops’ recreational needs. As early as May 1952 the DSI opened a retail store in Rangoon, however, and outlets in Mandalay and elsewhere followed. In the late 1950s, it expanded into major economic sectors and was often the dominant actor, operating banks, shipping lines and a range of import-export businesses. As these agencies were exempt from tax, they were both competitive and profitable.
⁴⁵

In parallel with this commercial activity, military leaders sought to deepen their social engagement. Internally, the Directorate of Psychological Warfare, formed in 1952, published a contemptuous analysis of Burmese people as apathetic, prone to manipulation and in need of reshaping.
⁴⁶
Some molding was launched through required use of Burmese in schools and parliament, Burman dominance of newspapers and film, and internal migration by the majority ethnic group.
⁴⁷
The Directorate also led efforts to inoculate the people against communism. “Billboards in conspicuous places have proclaimed the danger in which Buddhism finds itself, over one million pamphlets in more than half a dozen languages have pointed to communist excesses and the newspapers have continually reported mass meetings called to denounce atheistic communism,” reported Fred von der Mehden in 1960.
⁴⁸
In addition, the military elite openly criticized the 1947 constitution. Externally, a 1955
tatmadaw
report, “Yugoslavia: Similarity with Burma,” noted many shared features in two artificial nations, including intensive wartime struggle, complex ethnic composition and strategic location in the shadow of Cold War powers.
⁴⁹
Senior generals also expressed frank admiration for tough militaries in, for instance, Israel and Pakistan. They were “frequently courted by British, Yugoslav, Czech, and U.S. arms manufacturers and dealers, who paid for many of the purchasing and study missions that inspired army leaders to expand military influence in domestic, nonsecurity realms.”
⁵⁰

Direct political impacts of
tatmadaw
emergence as the preeminent force within a nation subject to widespread institutional destruction during the colonial era began to be felt little more than 10 years after independence. In September 1958, personal conflict split the governing AFPFL.
⁵¹
Maung Htin Aung, then Rector of Rangoon University, later put it this way: “The monster that really killed the parliamentary democracy was the bitter acrimony that discoloured the struggle for power between the two factions of the broken A.F.P.F.L.”
⁵²
In consequence, Ne Win, chief of staff of a
tatmadaw
of some 70,000 men, served as prime minister for 18 months from October 1958 to April 1960 with a mission to restore law and order and revive the country’s still young democracy.
⁵³
This intervention, though sometimes identified as the first coup against Burmese democracy, was technically constitutional. At the time, strenuous attempts were made to distinguish it from praetorian government in other parts of Asia. “It should be borne in mind that the armed forces in Burma have achieved a most respected position,” wrote Trager in January 1959. “Unlike in Pakistan and Thailand, the military leaders have never evidenced dictatorial ambitions.”
⁵⁴

Nevertheless, this experience further bolstered the army’s position within both state and society, largely because of the efficient and effective work undertaken during its interregnum. “The caretaker administration has set standards of competence and integrity that the politicians will have to try to live up to if they are to win the support of the educated public (including the military),” noted Richard Butwell in February 1960, just before the return to party government. He judged that it was “unquestionably likely that for several months and probably some years to come decisions will partly be made by the politicians on the basis of how they will be received in top military circles.”
⁵⁵

However, a subsequent coup, performed on March 2, 1962 with the loss of a single life, removed that likelihood by setting the
tatmadaw
in total control of national politics. This coup was entirely unconstitutional. One trigger was Nu’s religious commitment, which saw him win the February 1960 general election on a promise to make Buddhism the state religion, and pass the relevant legislation in August 1961.
⁵⁶
Several observers argued that Nu’s growing immersion in Buddhism rendered him unfit for political leader-ship.
⁵⁷
A second trigger was a concomitant drift away from socialism, long axiomatic for the entire political class. A third was fear of national disintegration, generated notably by a “federal seminar” convened by Nu to discuss with Kayah and Shan representatives ways forward for a unified state facing federalist pressures. Airing much criticism of the
tatmadaw
, the forum prompted Ne Win to seize power, abrogate the 1947 constitution, and rule by decree.
⁵⁸

Essential to the opening provided to the military was perceived economic failure, and a pervasive sense that despite a plethora of plans the country was failing to modernize.
⁵⁹
In 2009, Charney had no hesitation in characterizing Nu’s Burma as “from the start an economic nightmare.”
⁶⁰
In fact, annual growth of 5.3 percent for the 14 years of the democratic period was very respectable. Indeed, Myat Thein argues that in comparison with Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, Burma was possibly the “front runner” in 1962.
⁶¹
However, such progress did not enable an expanding population even to regain the standard of living experienced under the British, for while total GDP moved above prewar levels, per capita GDP in 1961–62 was still 14 percent below the 1938–39 figure.
⁶²
Also contentious were the trappings of modernization. In 1952–53, the presence of no more than a few dozen American advisers became controversial when clandestine CIA activity in the eastern borderlands suggested that the era of foreign control was not yet over.
⁶³
Moreover, the good lives the advisers were able to lead symbolized a growing gulf between elite and mass and cast the AFPFL as insufficiently nationalistic.
⁶⁴
In March 1953, the Nu government thus announced that US assistance would end within months. Later, under Ne Win’s caretaker administration, the contracts of all remaining advisers were abruptly terminated.
⁶⁵

By the late 1950s Burmese soldiers viewed themselves as state builders in three key respects. First, it was their task to secure the territorial integrity of the nation. Second, it fell to them to shape the institutions of government. Third, by them alone could the patriotic spirit of the people be cultivated.
⁶⁶
Ironically, military leaders at the same time constructed not only a state within a state, but also a society within a society. To this day, parallel structures of military hospitals, schools and welfare services exist across the country, and can be readily observed in major cities. Also by the late 1950s an increasingly Burman nationalism had come to the fore, promoted by Ne Win’s attempt to assert central control and curtail splittist tendencies. Always the greatest failing of Burmese democracy under Nu is judged to be its failure to engender national unity.
⁶⁷
In 2009, Callahan drew a contrast with Indonesia: “[President] Sukarno spent the 1950s assiduously travelling the archipelago to forge a common national identity while the multi-ethnic uprising against the Dutch was still fresh in living memory…. The problem of bridging historically exacerbated ethnic and religious differences was never a priority for the Nu government.”
⁶⁸
Rather, the route taken in Burma was projection of an aggressively Burman identity to tie together a manufactured nation. Driving it was the fight for dominion that emerged among Burman leaders toward the end of the colonial period. This found its fullest expression in the
tatmadaw
, which not only led the independence struggle, but also held the country together in the difficult early years of
de jure
sovereignty and
de facto
disintegration.

Taking the long view, Burma’s 14-year democratic interlude from 1948 to 1962 is atypical, and debate continues about whether contemporary opposition leaders can learn from it.
⁶⁹
That democracy collapsed in 1962 was the result of historical contingency, much of which originated outside Burma. No less decisive for that, it provided an opening for the militaristic, nationalistic and centralizing state formed in the 1960s and still in place today. In 1950, Nu wrote a play entitled
The People Win Through
to appeal for peace and democracy in a strife-torn land.
⁷⁰
By the end of Burma’s long 1950s, however, it was the military that had the upper hand.

Revolutionary Burma

The March 1962 coup saw an overtly authoritarian 18-member Revolutionary Council, headed by “Big Number One” Ne Win, dismantle the democracy created jointly in the late 1940s by outgoing British officials and the incoming AFPFL government.
⁷¹
Nu and other ministers who had won a clear majority at the 1960 general election were imprisoned, several Shan leaders were incarcerated, and moves to censor all opposition were made.
⁷²
Heartbreaking accounts of those bleak days, written from the perspective of ethnic leaders subject to centralizing control, can be found in Inge Sargent,
Twilight over Burma
, Patricia W. Elliott,
The White Umbrella
, and Sao Sanda,
The Moon Princess
.
⁷³