The anarchy in Myanmar since the February 2021 military coup is showing no respite. A violent resistance against the junta by the People’s Defence Force of the Bamar people has become a potent challenger, having found ready allies in many of the country’s ethnic insurgent groups fighting their own wars against the Union of Myanmar since the country became independent in 1948.
But the battle lines are not as clear as they seem. What complicates matters
is the fact that none of the country’s ethnic insurgencies has a common goal: they are only united in their resistance to a common enemy — the junta. The PDF, too, remains a conglomeration of local uprisings with no tangible, centralised command structure.
What is even more disturbing, as the International Crisis Group pointed out,
is the emergence of pro-junta civil militias, the Pyusawhti, who are “resisting the resistance”. The resultant tit-for-tat killings are making this conflict uglier and bitter. Many think that the junta, though stressed, does not really have to go all out to win but simply wait for the resistance to drain its energy.
For Myanmar’s neighbours, including India and Bangladesh, the concern is that the anarchy in Myanmar could spill over into their territories. India’s current trouble in Manipur and that of Bangladesh in the Chittagong hill tracts bear evidence of the legitimacy of their apprehension.
There are other concerns. China has a deep interest in Myanmar and is ready to go to any length to have whoever is in power in the country on its side. China’s game is to ensure that it remains relevant to the powers that be in Myanmar. For China, Myanmar is the most convenient land route to the Indian Ocean and, from there, to its resource centres in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It also has strategic interests in this part of the globe. India’s recent decisions to suspend the Free Movement Regime agreement along the 1,643 kilometre India-Myanmar border and to fence it were surely influenced by its anxiety regarding China even though the decisions were attributed to the trouble in Manipur.
China’s presence has also led to speculation that its rival, the United States of America, is looking for a base in the region. The much-publicised claim of the Bangladesh prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, that she had been approached by a “white” foreigner before the country’s January elections promising smooth sailing for her party if she allowed his country to set up an air base in Bangladesh, fuelled this speculation further. Even if Wajed’s claim was meant to garner political legitimacy after an election victory that was tarnished by a boycott by the main Opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and a poor voter turnout, several geopolitical analysts do believe that the US has a deep, China-induced, strategic interest in the region. Half a century ago, this US interest was evident in its support for Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in the latter’s fight against Mao Zedong’s communist movement.
Lezlee Brown Halper and Stefan Halper’s book, Tibet: An Unfinished Story, which bases its contentions largely on declassified documents of the Central Intelligence Agency, has some telling observations. In the mid-1950s, while Bangladesh was still East Pakistan, the US had a “Strategic Air Command recovery field in East Pakistan’s Kurmola”. This base was used for “Washington’s clandestine program in Tibet”, including transporting Tibetan insurgents beginning October 1957 to the US’s Saipan Naval Technical Training Unit, Mariana, via Okinawa. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was no communist but he refused US overtures to join the anti-communist crusade and preferred India to remain non-aligned in the unfolding Cold War. This was the reason, the Halpers imply, why the US turned to Pakistan for an alliance.
While it is true that conspiracy theorists often go ridiculously far in their claims, India definitely has reasons to be cautious of the developing rivalry among big powers next door in Myanmar.
Pradip Phanjoubam is editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
