Another Nargis moment in Myanmar
THE 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar has destroyed cities and townships and taken a heavy human toll. The historic city of Mandalay, the epicentre of the quake, has been devastated. The towering Yadanabon bridge over the broad sheet of the Irrawaddy river is broken. South of Mandalay, the capital Naypyidaw, the pride of the junta, with its shimmering eight to 20-lane roads, has not been spared either. The control tower collapsed at the international airport, the closest to the areas of maximum destruction, hindering rescue and aid efforts. The junta has put out a death toll of 1,600, with 3,000 or more injured. The true extent of the casualties, the destruction and the humanitarian crisis may take weeks, if not months, to emerge.
The humanitarian emergency can only deepen Myanmar’s other crisis, ongoing since the 2021 military coup. Myanmar has been in a state of civil war for over four years, because people refused to surrender to the military’s power grab. Civilian “people’s defence forces” (PDFs) control swathes of territory. Several ethnic armed groups with their own agendas joined in on the side of the people. The PDFs are the declared armed wing of the National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel dispensation set up in exile by hundreds of parliamentarians elected in 2021 but pre-empted by the coup from taking their places in parliament. The junta’s chosen means of retaliation to retain its increasingly fragile hold is aerial bombardment of townships and villages.
This extraordinary cruelty of the junta has come to the fore again. On March 28, when the disaster struck, the junta reportedly carried out air raids in several quake-hit areas, including in Sagaing, in the northern Shan, and in areas south along the Thai border. The NUG claims that till March 31, the junta carried out 20 attacks, aerially and with artillery, in which 12 people were killed.
The capacity of the junta to inflict suffering on the people they claim to represent is reminiscent of the conduct of a previous military regime in Myanmar. In 2008, when Cyclone Nargis tore into Myanmar, destroying everything in its path and killing close to 85,000 people, the junta, then led by ‘Senior General’ Than Shwe, diverted critical resources to hold a shotgun referendum for a new constitution that the regime had drawn up, giving itself a dominant role in an elected government. The saving grace this time is that the junta, aware of its own limitations and its lack of access to many areas, requested international assistance straightaway. India is among several countries that responded swiftly.
But Cyclone Nargis was also a tipping point. A world shocked by the callousness of the regime put pressure on the junta to permit international aid workers from the UN and other agencies, which it did on realising that it had no capacity to rebuild the country, and that people were getting restive. It was in the economic and humanitarian struggles after Nargis that the junta began loosening its grip on the country. Aung San Suu Kyi was released two years later, and after several calibrated steps in which the Barack Obama administration played a key role, the country held its first full election. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won, but had to form a hybrid civilian-military government. That experiment collapsed under the weight of its contradictions in 2021.
Could the quake be a new tipping point to restore peace and reboot the rudely interrupted democratic transition? Over the last four years, neither ASEAN nor any other country has been able to persuade the junta to draw back from its hardline stance against pro-democracy groups. The military stalemate in Myanmar has been punishing for civilians. The quake has further exposed the junta’s capabilities.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi flies to Bangkok for the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) summit on April 3-4, he and other leaders have the opportunity to make this quake another Nargis moment in Myanmar’s political evolution. This will be the grouping’s first in-person summit since 2018, with Thailand, also rattled by the quake, saying that the summit will be held as scheduled.
BIMSTEC comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. For years, India has pushed the idea that BIMSTEC, a grouping without Pakistan, is a more viable regional platform than SAARC. Bangladesh used to be a key ally of India in BIMSTEC. After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, the Delhi-Dhaka relationship is on the rocks. Since the 2022 virtually held summit, Sri Lanka, too, has been through its catharsis, and is now a known unknown for India. In Nepal, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has accused India of fanning pro-monarchy protests in his country. This means that BIMSTEC is no longer the same group of nations whose leaders gathered for a retreat in Goa hosted by PM Modi in 2016, and from where Delhi thumbed its nose at Islamabad and SAARC.
In the changed circumstances, BIMSTEC runs the risk of becoming another SAARC, hijacked by India-Bangladesh hostility, just as SAARC was held hostage by India-Pakistan feuds. It is a moment of truth for BIMSTEC. This summit would be meaningful only if it was about Myanmar. Nothing else is more important.
Since 2021, thousands of refugees have fled to border areas in Thailand and India, where only Mizoram welcomes them warmly, as most arrivals are from Chin state, and share their ethnicity with the people of Mizoram. After a Myanmar national died in the Imphal jail recently, other prisoners there want to be shifted to Mizoram, hoping that they would get better treatment and access to medical facilities there. Bangladesh hosts nearly a million Rohingya people.
The point is that what happens in Myanmar does not stay in Myanmar. India shares a 1,643-km border from the India-Myanmar-China trijunction in Arunachal Pradesh to the India-Myanmar-Bangladesh trijunction in Mizoram. When India’s political leaders blame the fires in Manipur on the cross-border influx, they ignore the failures of a chief minister who was permitted to preside over the troubles for nearly two years. But they also disregard the reason more people have crossed over using the “free movement regime” between the two countries — the unrest and violent chaos triggered by the military coup next door. In the wake of the earthquake, more refugees, especially from the badly affected Sagaing, will arrive at India’s doorstep.
A founding principle of the grouping is non-interference in the politics of members, but its charter holds members to the commitment to make BIMSTEC a “dynamic, effective and result-oriented regional organisation for promoting a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable Bay of Bengal region through collective efforts...”
‘Senior General’ Min Aung Hlaing, expected to attend the summit, needs to hear some home truths from BIMSTEC partners: Myanmar is not contributing to the peace of the region; it is, in fact, the biggest source of instability. The coup was a bad idea, and it is even worse to hold an election to sanctify the power grab, as he plans to do later in the year. Instead, the junta must declare a truce with the people so that they can rebuild their lives. It must release all political prisoners. First steps always lead to more.
