Joshua Kurlantzick: Burma's junta plays us again
[Joshua Kurlantzick is Special Correspondent for The New Republic]
From the hills outside Mandalay, Burma’s second city, the vista resembles a postcard of Asian serenity. Monks climb stone steps to a hillside shrine, where local men and women leave offerings of flowers and fruit. But the placid scene conceals one of the most repressive states in the world--a state that the Obama administration has decided may be more worthy of American friendship than American threats.
For more than four decades, Burma’s junta has persecuted its population. In conflict-torn eastern Burma, the army reportedly employs state-sanctioned rape of women and girls, conscription of local children, and the burning of villages. Nearly one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries, while those who stay are sometimes press-ganged into forced labor, during which, numerous reports reveal, they may be beaten or even killed. Dissent, of course, is virtually unthinkable. According to the documentary film Burma VJ, which chronicles the monk-led 2007 Saffron Revolution, troops raided monasteries after the protests, beating monks and tossing their dead bodies into creeks. The junta, meanwhile, has run the economy into the ground, while the regime’s senior leaders live in opulence.
From the hills outside Mandalay, Burma’s second city, the vista resembles a postcard of Asian serenity. Monks climb stone steps to a hillside shrine, where local men and women leave offerings of flowers and fruit. But the placid scene conceals one of the most repressive states in the world--a state that the Obama administration has decided may be more worthy of American friendship than American threats.
For more than four decades, Burma’s junta has persecuted its population. In conflict-torn eastern Burma, the army reportedly employs state-sanctioned rape of women and girls, conscription of local children, and the burning of villages. Nearly one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries, while those who stay are sometimes press-ganged into forced labor, during which, numerous reports reveal, they may be beaten or even killed. Dissent, of course, is virtually unthinkable. According to the documentary film Burma VJ, which chronicles the monk-led 2007 Saffron Revolution, troops raided monasteries after the protests, beating monks and tossing their dead bodies into creeks. The junta, meanwhile, has run the economy into the ground, while the regime’s senior leaders live in opulence.
This record of atrocity doesn’t seem to have dissuaded the current administration in Washington from attempting to engage the Burmese regime. After more than a decade during which U.S. administrations have isolated the junta through sanctions, visa bans, and other measures, the Obama administration has decided to re-engage. Speaking to a group of foreign ministers in New York this September, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that “[e]ngagement versus sanctions is a false choice, in our opinion. … To help achieve democratic reform, we will be engaging directly with Burmese authorities.”
The Burmese regime seemed to respond quickly to Washington’s warmth. Only weeks after the administration’s new policy was announced, the junta allowed foreign envoys in Burma to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest on and off for nearly two decades. Then, last week, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell became the highest-level American official to visit Burma in more than a decade; he also was allowed to meet with Suu Kyi. A commentary in Burma’s state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, normally vehemently anti-Western, captured this new mood. Burma and the United States, it sunnily declared, had taken “the first step toward marching to a 1,000-mile destination.”
Don’t expect to see the end of that march any time soon. Over the past two decades, the junta has used similar promises of rapprochement to get what it wants from the outside world. With each fake new dawn, the Burmese generals have skillfully played the international community for fools, promising the West just enough to win aid and investment without ever really releasing the junta’s stranglehold on power...
Read entire article at The New Republic
From the hills outside Mandalay, Burma’s second city, the vista resembles a postcard of Asian serenity. Monks climb stone steps to a hillside shrine, where local men and women leave offerings of flowers and fruit. But the placid scene conceals one of the most repressive states in the world--a state that the Obama administration has decided may be more worthy of American friendship than American threats.
For more than four decades, Burma’s junta has persecuted its population. In conflict-torn eastern Burma, the army reportedly employs state-sanctioned rape of women and girls, conscription of local children, and the burning of villages. Nearly one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries, while those who stay are sometimes press-ganged into forced labor, during which, numerous reports reveal, they may be beaten or even killed. Dissent, of course, is virtually unthinkable. According to the documentary film Burma VJ, which chronicles the monk-led 2007 Saffron Revolution, troops raided monasteries after the protests, beating monks and tossing their dead bodies into creeks. The junta, meanwhile, has run the economy into the ground, while the regime’s senior leaders live in opulence.
From the hills outside Mandalay, Burma’s second city, the vista resembles a postcard of Asian serenity. Monks climb stone steps to a hillside shrine, where local men and women leave offerings of flowers and fruit. But the placid scene conceals one of the most repressive states in the world--a state that the Obama administration has decided may be more worthy of American friendship than American threats.
For more than four decades, Burma’s junta has persecuted its population. In conflict-torn eastern Burma, the army reportedly employs state-sanctioned rape of women and girls, conscription of local children, and the burning of villages. Nearly one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries, while those who stay are sometimes press-ganged into forced labor, during which, numerous reports reveal, they may be beaten or even killed. Dissent, of course, is virtually unthinkable. According to the documentary film Burma VJ, which chronicles the monk-led 2007 Saffron Revolution, troops raided monasteries after the protests, beating monks and tossing their dead bodies into creeks. The junta, meanwhile, has run the economy into the ground, while the regime’s senior leaders live in opulence.
This record of atrocity doesn’t seem to have dissuaded the current administration in Washington from attempting to engage the Burmese regime. After more than a decade during which U.S. administrations have isolated the junta through sanctions, visa bans, and other measures, the Obama administration has decided to re-engage. Speaking to a group of foreign ministers in New York this September, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that “[e]ngagement versus sanctions is a false choice, in our opinion. … To help achieve democratic reform, we will be engaging directly with Burmese authorities.”
The Burmese regime seemed to respond quickly to Washington’s warmth. Only weeks after the administration’s new policy was announced, the junta allowed foreign envoys in Burma to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest on and off for nearly two decades. Then, last week, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell became the highest-level American official to visit Burma in more than a decade; he also was allowed to meet with Suu Kyi. A commentary in Burma’s state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, normally vehemently anti-Western, captured this new mood. Burma and the United States, it sunnily declared, had taken “the first step toward marching to a 1,000-mile destination.”
Don’t expect to see the end of that march any time soon. Over the past two decades, the junta has used similar promises of rapprochement to get what it wants from the outside world. With each fake new dawn, the Burmese generals have skillfully played the international community for fools, promising the West just enough to win aid and investment without ever really releasing the junta’s stranglehold on power...