Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (37 page)

To date, however, little support has been advanced for any of these claims, and much evidence runs in the opposite direction. The tribunal for Yugoslavia, with the longest track record of any international court, has been hailed as a success by participants and supporters, though even in positive accounts there is clear documentation to the contrary.
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Indeed, in this case international justice did not deter abuse, but rather allowed violence to spread from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then to Kosovo. Condemnation or arrest of a wrongdoer in Bosnia and Herzegovina actually increased hostility among ethnic groups.
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The imposition of global standards was also problematic, with insufficient attention paid to local context.
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Ultimately, it was chiefly the prospect of EU membership that gave leaders of ex-Yugoslavian countries an incentive to prosecute international crimes domestically. Elsewhere, threatening abusive authoritarians with judicial referral has had mixed effects. In March 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir on war crime charges linked to the Darfur conflict.
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While this curtailed his global travel and created a measure of international isolation, it also prompted the immediate suspension of projects sponsored by 13 INGOs, including MSF, Oxfam and Save the Children.
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Russia and China, which has a large stake in Sudan’s oil industry, opposed the warrant, arguing that it would undermine peace-building efforts.
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Extensive intervention in Myanmar has been undertaken since the late 1980s, and on the whole has failed to deliver on its objectives. Nevertheless, the available options have not been exhausted. From coordinated diplomatic efforts launched by states from outside, to enhanced engagement by either states or INGOs on the ground inside, through to a state-sponsored ICC referral, the wider world can do a great deal more to shape the country’s politics. While the issue of where to pitch future interventionist strategies must ultimately be decided by the Myanmar people, broad exploration can be pursued here as a distant and tentative contribution to domestic debate. For three reasons, this analysis opts for discursive intervention and rules out assertive.

The first is that it is not possible in existing data to find much support inside Myanmar for assertive strategies. Clearly this is not conclusive, for the data are partial. Nevertheless, it is striking that although the NLD continues to voice support for sanctions, there is very little other domestic backing for assertive strategies. Indeed, an ICC referral was explicitly ruled out by Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2010: “I’ve never said I want [junta leaders] to be brought into the international court.”
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More widely, opposition parties and local actors all look in much the same direction, seeking external assistance with peaceful political reform, broad-based economic development, and inclusive national reconciliation. These themes are at the heart of speeches given by Aung San Suu Kyi and position papers released by the NLD in 2011.
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They form central planks of the platforms of parties that contested the 2010 general election.
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They emerge as dominant strands in listening projects.
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Certainly major differences of tone and emphasis cannot be overlooked, and in any case nothing definitive can be read into fragmentary evidence. Equally, though, in a context where data will never be perfect, the presence of these priorities and the absence of widespread calls for more aggressive action cannot be dismissed.

The second reason is that in contemporary Myanmar a key condition of sustainable political reform is meaningful social change at all levels. Comparative studies point decisively in this direction, and in recent years a prominent theme of much Myanmar analysis has been the need to recast the balance of political forces across the country by rolling back military dominance and creating spheres of grassroots control. In 2004, South placed local change at the heart of a new model for democratization. “While change at the national level, whether revolutionary or gradual,
is
urgently required, sustained democratic transition can only be achieved if accompanied by local participation.”
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In 2008, Duffield insisted that the key task is “to push back the boundaries of arbitrary personal power that have long been the root cause of Myanmar’s chronic emergency … [and] to create a
space of possibilities
.”
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In 2009, Thant Myint-U made a case for reshaping the terrain on which politics is contested: “the most important thing is to change the landscape first.”
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In 2010, Callahan argued for “a series of initiatives carried out inside Burma to gradually expand the space, legal and political protections, and opportunities for the poor, uneducated, unhealthy, malnourished, and disenfranchised citizenry.”
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Listening projects also regularly transmit this message.
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While there is no full consensus, much insider and outsider opinion prioritizes creating contending power centers able to challenge the status of the military machine as the essential political actor. While discursive engagement can reach inside the society to help extend political space, and facilitate moves toward political reform, it is hard to see how assertive action embracing sanctions and an ICC referral can contribute to this agenda.

The third reason is that assertive intervention has very unclear prospects. Sanctions are already known to have failed. Not only have they not delivered on their stated objectives, but also they have fueled regime hostility to the outside world and set both domestic and external relations on a battleground. On the whole, it is in such contexts that military personnel feel most comfortable. As Duffield notes from interviews inside Myanmar, putting politics on a war footing is often seen by local people as a gift to military leaders.
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An ICC referral seems likely to be similarly unproductive. Indeed, the evidence from elsewhere is that such a move could trigger many negative impacts. An escalation of violence is one possibility. Disdain and militant non-cooperation on the part of leading generals are highly probable. Intractable problems in securing support from China and other regional states are almost inevitable.
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While universal jurisdiction may deliver other benefits to the Myanmar people, its potential contribution to constructive political reform looks to be limited.

Interceding for change

The core substantive aim of discursive intervention is to foment meaningful social change sought by rights-bearing Myanmar citizens and needed by them to exercise political agency. In a context of disciplined democracy, this directs attention to enhancing political possibilities at all levels from the grassroots to the legislature and executive. Moreover, ways to do that do exist. Duffield argues that while fear effectively closes down the public sphere, the inability of the central state to secure full local implementation of its commands and directives opens up political possibilities. They can be seized first to build a basic social safety net for people subject to scant state provision, and second to roll back oppressive military control and create local space. In his words, the “crisis of self-reliance” can thereby be reinterpreted “in terms of a complex and multilevelled social ecology of survival and resistance.”
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Humanitarian engagement then becomes expansive, designed to embrace many aspects of social welfare, including education, health and livelihood issues. In this way, Duffield contends, the development enterprise can be made more “aspirational,” not content with meeting basic needs, but also striving to facilitate social transformation.
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As South put it several years ago, aid is “a
way into
political action.”
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Considerable work of this kind is already being undertaken inside Myanmar, and is endorsed by many key stakeholders including the NLD, which notably since Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in November 2010 has sought to reach out to civil society.
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The two leading local NGOs are Metta Development Foundation, formed in 1998, and Shalom (Nyein) Foundation, formed in 2000. Focused on agriculture, education, health, livelihood issues and capacity building, Metta operates through grassroots initiative, community participation, training and education, and local networks. Its global partners and donors include UN agencies, national governments and state agencies, INGOs and individuals.
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Shalom also has development programmes in the education and forestry sectors, but works above all on peace building. With five ethnic nationalities (Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah and Mon) it has developed high-level mediation programs aimed at facilitating dialogue reaching all the way up to the
tatmadaw
and armed militias. In its core territories it has also responded to grassroots requests to establish peace education programs through training courses, peace committees and an interfaith youth cooperative action program. This work is also supported by a range of outside bodies.
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In looking for productive engagement options, outsiders can learn from and build on initiatives of this kind, which are now replicated in myriad ways throughout the society. Many obstacles undoubtedly stand in the way. Politically, a culture of hostility to foreigners is not confined to the governing elite. Socially, deep cleavages between ethnic groups, political forces and even local people and exiles living in the diaspora make for a complex setting that can be quite bewildering to outsiders. Practically, all sorts of daily hazards are sure to be encountered. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this broad domain that the most innovative external engagement is currently taking place, with aid agencies from both the state and non-state sectors working through local bodies to implement programs, boost indigenous capacity and open up political space. Standard practice in major programs like the 3D Fund and LIFT is to call for proposals from grassroots agencies and fund them to deliver on agreed objectives. Many INGOs operate similarly.

At the same time, a great deal more can still be done. Partly the task is to broaden and deepen, so that territorial coverage is extended beyond vibrant Nargis-affected areas and driven more fully into the society. Partly it is to ensure that experience from elsewhere is brought to bear on local challenges, though always the issue of cross-border transfer must be handled sensitively. When studies in the 1990s and 2000s examined community mediation in leading Asian societies, they found local practices that set each apart from the others, and all of them apart from the US.
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Nevertheless, in an abundant literature there is much of relevance to Myanmar’s circumstances.
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For nearly 50 years interactive conflict resolution has been explored in real-world settings.
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Specific issues such as the best time to mediate, optimal choice of techniques, and individual decisions to invest in the process have been analyzed in great detail.
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Peace workshops in contexts such as Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and Sri Lanka have been picked apart for lessons.
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From these and other studies, the need to promote empathy across social cleavages has emerged as critical.
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In the Tibetan case, deliberative approaches have been piloted among exile communities.
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In Northern Ireland, where political change has already taken place, social psychologists continue to experiment with ways to resolve conflict and entrench peace through positive cross-group contacts designed to promote intergroup forgiveness.
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Comparative analysis also has much to teach about the critical importance of boosting civil society. For Myanmar, a poignant comparison is negative. In Sri Lanka in May 2009, President Mahinda Rajapaksa ended a quarter-century of interethnic civil war by declaring total victory over the Tamil insurgency. Ominously, Than Shwe and Rajapaksa then exchanged bilateral visits in June and November 2009, triggering fear that the
tatmadaw
is eager to draw lessons from its maritime neighbor.
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Looking back into recent history, though, Sri Lanka might well have pursued another path. From outside, first India and then especially Norway invested considerable efforts in consensual state engagement through peace facilitation.
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Local actors sought to underpin the process by addressing ethnic division through awareness-raising programs and cross-ethnic dialogue, reducing political tension through mobilization and informal diplomacy, and confronting economic issues through reconstruction and development. However, fatal weaknesses brought about by patronage, protracted warfare and a strong top-down project orientation drove out the mass-based, grassroots action needed for success.
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For Myanmar to take the different route desired by so many, the lesson again is that reconstruction of civil society is essential. In East-Central Europe after 1989, cross-border civic action was critical in taming ethnic hatred.
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In Uganda, where limited democratic progress in the 1990s has latterly been halted and even reversed, external engagement with domestic civil society is critical to building a positive human rights culture.
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