Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country that was formerly known as Burma, has been under military rule in one form or another since 1962, when General Ne Win staged a coup that toppled a civilian government. The current junta, formed in 1988, threw out the results of a democratic parliamentary election in 1990 that was overwhelmingly won by the party led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and the daughter of Aung San, one of the heroes of the nation’s independence from the British Empire in 1948. For 15 years, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.
After years of stagnation, change is coming to Myanmar at a rapid pace, though still on the military’s terms. Nonetheless, there is hope that the country is veering away from authoritarianism and Soviet-style economic management that has left the majority of the country’s 55 million people in dire poverty.
Since taking office in March 2011 after deeply flawed elections, President U Thein Sein, a former general, has moved swiftly toward democratization, breaking sharply from the highly centralized and erratic policies of the past.
Mr. Thein Sein’s government has freed a number of political prisoners and taken steps to liberalize the state-controlled economy. It made overtures to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been released from house arrest in 2010. In response, in January 2012, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, returned to political life, running candidates in parliamentary elections. In April, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to Parliament and her party won nearly every seat in the elections — a startling result after her years of detention and the violent suppression of her supporters.
Still, the Parliament remained overwhelmingly controlled by the military-backed ruling party.
In May, the Obama administration decided to ease the ban on investments in Myanmar, a move that followed steps by the European Union and Australia to suspend sanctions, raising the prospect of a foreign investment boom in one of Asia’s most isolated countries.
Deadly Violence Raises Buddhist-Muslim Tensions
In June, deadly riots broke out in a western state in Myanmar, posing another obstacle to the government of Mr. Thein Sein as he tries to steer the country toward democracy. On June 10, speaking on national television, Mr. Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Rakhine State, where at least 17 people have been killed in a month of sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims.
Soldiers and police officers were trying to restore order in villages where clashes between Buddhists and Muslims have left many villagers wounded and 500 homes burned.
It was unclear what the practical consequences of emergency rule would be; the military and the police in Myanmar already wield significant power despite the country’s move toward democracy.
Mr. Thein Sein has made national reconciliation between the Burmese majority and the country’s vast patchwork of ethnic group a priority of his presidency. But the tensions near the border with Bangladesh fall outside the scope of reconciliation efforts because they involve people from a Muslim ethnic group, the Rohingya, whose 800,000 members the government does not recognize as citizens.
Myanmar’s government has not proposed a solution for the Rohingya, who live in conditions that resemble refugee camps and make up one of the largest groups of stateless people in Asia.
There are fears inside Myanmar that the clashes could widen into a broader religious conflict.
The violence in Rakhine State was set off by the rape and murder of a Buddhist in May, which prompted a series of “revenge attacks.” In early June, 10 Muslim men were reportedly dragged from a bus and killed. Days later, mobs of Muslim men attacked Buddhist villagers, leaving seven people dead, according to Burmese media.
In this impoverished country, the Rohingya, many of whom who have been in Myanmar for several generations, are perhaps the most vulnerable minority, plagued by what one United Nations official has called a “chronic crisis.”
They are not allowed to own land, they suffer frequent food shortages and they are technically restricted from travel outside of Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. Thousands have fled the country by boat in recent years seeking work in Malaysia and other neighboring countries. There are also hundreds of thousands of Rohingya on the Bangladeshi side of the border.
Surge of Illicit Drugs Also Clouds Reform Efforts
As Myanmar moves from military dictatorship to fledgling democracy, one of the country’s biggest businesses — heroin and methamphetamine manufacturing — is thriving in the area along the Thai border known as the Golden Triangle, led by members of well-armed minority ethnic groups.
The drug increase underlines the depth of the challenges facing Myanmar, as Mr. Thein Sein pushes ahead with his reform agenda. Impoverished areas where the central government has little control remain the largest base of drug production in Southeast Asia. If he cracks down on drug syndicates, Mr. Thein Sein risks alienating the ethnic groups he is trying to woo for his program of national reconciliation.
In the dark underworld of illicit drugs, no one can say for sure what is causing the current upswing in trafficking, but Thai officials describe it as a kind of perverse peace dividend. Mr. Thein Sein has pushed hard, and in many cases succeeded, in signing cease-fire agreements with rebel groups.
Thanut Choommanoo, the head of a Thai police investigative unit, said about the ethnic groups, “They don’t need to fight anymore, so they’ve deployed their soldiers into drug production.”
Maj. Gen. Somsak Nilbanjerdkul, director of an anti-drug command center set up by the Thai government, said there is a continued mistrust between the Myanmar government and ethnic groups and a feeling among traffickers that they better make money from illegal activities while they can.
Traffickers use a variety of methods to get their drugs through. Often armed with grenades, they travel down small paths that cut through jungle-covered mountains. Some hide drugs in trucks carrying produce. Last year, the police found two million methamphetamine pills hidden under a pile of pumpkins. Smaller drug deliveries are simply tossed across the border. The Sai River, which separates the two countries, is so narrow that traffickers throw bags of pills to the Thai side, where accomplices pick up the drugs.
Over the past three years, corrupt officials in Thai hospitals have been complicit in the drug business, selling to Myanmar-based gangs millions of cold tablets made from pseudoephedrine, which is used in the production of methamphetamines. The cold pills were sent into Myanmar, processed into methamphetamines and then smuggled back across the border into Thailand, investigators say. An estimated 48 million cold pills have been seized or disappeared from public hospitals since 2008, according to Thailand’s Narcotics Control Board.
Last year, as the reforms of Mr. Thein Sein were taking hold, opium poppy cultivation increased 14 percent in Myanmar. Much of the north is mountainous and ill served by roads, making it relatively easy to conceal illicit activity. But the large area dedicated to growing opium poppies — 43,600 hectares, or about 100,000 acres, according to the United Nations — suggests that the local authorities are at best turning a blind eye to drug production.
U.S. Restores Diplomatic Relations, Eases Sanctions
In January 2012, the United States restored diplomatic relations with Myanmar, responding to the new civilian government’s campaign of rapid political and economic changes that included a cease-fire agreement with ethnic Karen rebels and the release of 651 prominent political prisoners
The announcement was the latest in a series of cautiously choreographed steps that have eased tensions between the United States and Myanmar and that could remake American diplomacy in Asia, where the Obama administration has sought to refocus its foreign policy.
President Obama welcomed the pardon and release on Jan. 13 of the prisoners, including prominent leaders of student protests against the country’s military rulers in 1988, a signal uprising. It was the most significant release of political prisoners by the new government, and Mr. Obama called it “a substantial step forward for democratic reform.”
The day before, the government of Myanmar signed a cease-fire with ethnic Karen rebels who have been fighting for greater autonomy since the former Burma gained independence from Britain more than six decades ago. A collection of brutal civil wars has continued since independence in 1948, and an end to the fighting has been an important demand of the West — and of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi — as Myanmar opens the door to improved relations with the outside world.
In April, days after the election, the Obama administration announced its most significant steps to date to normalize relations with Myanmar, lifting a travel ban on some of the country’s senior leaders and easing sanctions on American investments in the country.
The announcement came as Myanmar state media confirmed that the opposition party led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi won 43 seats in Parliament, while the ruling party and a smaller ethnic-based party won one seat each.
The ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, is backed by the military. Its lone victory came in a contest in which the main opposition candidate was barred because of a breach of electoral rules involving the citizenship of his parents.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States would name its first ambassador to the country since 1990 and that a mission from the Agency for International Development would begin coordinating American assistance for programs in democracy building and health. Restrictions on operations by nongovernmental organizations are also to be lifted.
In Kachin State, Ethnic Civil War Intensifies
The largest ethnic civil conflict is in Kachin State, along the border of Myanmar and China. Kachin State is rich in jade, gold and timber, and has rivers that are being exploited by Chinese hydropower projects. Part of the state has long been controlled by the Kachin Independence Army and its political wing, which levies taxes on all commerce.
Both the United States and China would like to see the war resolved: the Chinese to ensure stability on the border and access to resources and important power projects; the United States to forestall the kinds of abuses by the Burmese military that present one of the biggest obstacles as President Obama considers lifting economic sanctions. At the same time, some Chinese officials and executives might welcome Burmese military control of the resource-rich areas, preferring to cut deals with the Burmese rather than the Kachin, foreign analysts say.
Some Kachin commanders say one factor that rekindled the war in June 2011 after a 17-year cease-fire may have been a desire by the Burmese military to widen its control of the areas with Chinese energy projects.
Such projects are a source of tension. After protests in 2011 by ordinary Kachin, Mr. Thein Sein suspended the planned Myitsone Dam, which was being built by a Chinese company in a part of the state controlled by the Burmese. That angered Chinese officials and executives, some of whom suspect Mr. Thein Sein of trying to wean Myanmar off its overreliance on China and to encourage investment from the West.
A major cause of the unrest was a government push in 2009 to get all the ethnic militias to disarm and join the Border Guard Force. A few groups agreed, but most balked. The Kachin intensified their military training. Their leaders now say they will not enter into another cease-fire unless Mr. Thein Sein can guarantee real political dialogue. Their aim is to maintain autonomy.
Meeting With the U.S. Secretary of State
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s announcement in November 2011 of her intention to rejoin the political system came shortly after President Obama disclosed that he was sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on a visit to Myanmar in early December, the first by a secretary of state in more than 50 years. Mrs. Clinton said that the United States would loosen some restrictions on international financial assistance and development programs in Myanmar, in response to a nascent political and economic opening in the country.
The United States and Myanmar also agreed to discuss upgrading diplomatic relations — which were suspended for two decades — and exchanging ambassadors, a step that could transform American diplomacy in Southeast Asia.
During her visit, Mrs. Clinton met separately with Mr. Thein Sein and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, underscoring the Obama administration’s cautious efforts to nurture a thaw in one of the world’s most isolated and repressive nations. In each meeting, she delivered a letter from President Obama, expressing support for the democratization of Myanmar.
Mrs. Clinton met Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi at the lakeside residence where Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi spent much of the last two decades under house arrest. Appearing with Mrs. Clinton on the porch of the house, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi endorsed the new American engagement with the country’s autocratic government and called on other countries, including China, to support Myanmar’s nascent efforts to build a freer, more open society and economy.
That these two women met at all — and appeared together before international and local journalists — was itself a measure of the changes that have swept Myanmar, since Mr. Thein Sein took office in March 2011.
A Country in Transition
The motivation for the changes has baffled American officials and others, but Myanmar appears eager to end its diplomatic isolation and rebuild a dysfunctional economy that has trapped the country’s population of 55 million people in poverty, which the government acknowledged for the first time in Mr. Thein Sein’s inaugural address.
Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who led the junta for nearly two decades and stepped down in March 2011, remains an uncertain factor in the tumultuous transition. It was under General Than Shwe’s leadership that the government carried out a deadly crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007 and restricted foreign aid in the aftermath of a cyclone that killed more than 100,000 people.
The reasons that General Than Shwe ceded power to the current government have not been fully explained beyond the notion that he was ready for retirement. In leading the drive for reforms, Mr. Thein Sein appears to be siding with a younger generation of military officers who believe that maintaining the junta’s oppressive policies and hermetic attitudes toward the outside world would be a dead-end path for the country.
2007: An Uprising Crushed
In August 2007, a decision by the government to sharply raise fuel prices led to street protests. After small demonstrations by students, the situation turned more serious when large numbers of Buddhist monks, who are widely revered, joined in. Some monks chanted “Release Suu Kyi.” Over 100,000 people participated in processions led by the monks, who marched to the gate of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s home, where she greeted them. It was the first time she had been seen in public for four years.
The resulting government crackdown, witnessed abroad in smuggled photographs and on videotape, drew worldwide condemnation.
2008: Cyclone Nargis
In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta and Myanmar’s main city, Yangon. Nearly 85,000 people died and 54,000 are still listed as missing.
The cyclone was one of the deadliest storms in recorded history. It blew away 700,000 homes in the delta. It killed three-fourths of the livestock, sank half the fishing fleet and damaged a million acres of rice paddies with seawater. The magnitude of the disaster forced the regime to react to outside pressure. The secretive and xenophobic junta, which feared an invasion by Western powers, agreed to accept air shipments of foreign aid after international outrage at their initial failure to help victims.
2009 and 2010: Military Administrates Elections
In May 2009, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after a bizarre event in which an American man swam across a lake and spent two days at her villa, claiming that he had come to save her from assassination. A court sentenced her to 18 months of additional house arrest, ensuring that she would remain in detention, with limited communications, through the parliamentary election in 2010.
A successful offensive against the Karen militants in June 2009 brought the Myanmar junta closer to its goal of national consolidation before the elections.
The junta said the multiparty election would usher in the first civilian government in almost five decades. However, the elections were criticized as a sham by many Burmese exile groups. Among many restrictive measures in the country’s election law, criminal convictions barred candidacy. That included Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Tin, a founding member and strategist for the opposition party.
Parliament last met in Myanmar under the one-party rule of Gen. Ne Win, who formally retired from politics in 1988 during a time of unrest, but the country has not had a genuine multiparty system since 1962, when the military took power in a coup.
Related: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi | Cyclone Nargis
General Information on Myanmar
Official Name: Union of Myanmar (formerly Union of Burma)
Capital: Naypyidaw (Current local time)
Government Type: Military - dominated
Chief of State: Than Shwe, chairman of State Peace and Development Council
Population: 47.37 million
Area: 421,600 square miles; slightly smaller than Texas
Languages: Burmese, minority ethnic groups have their own languages
GDP Per Capita: $1,800
Year of Independence: 1948
Capital: Naypyidaw (Current local time)
Government Type: Military - dominated
Chief of State: Than Shwe, chairman of State Peace and Development Council
Population: 47.37 million
Area: 421,600 square miles; slightly smaller than Texas
Languages: Burmese, minority ethnic groups have their own languages
GDP Per Capita: $1,800
Year of Independence: 1948
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