Myanmar still cowering under brute force

When several armed groups launched simultaneous attacks last weekend against positions held by Myanmar government troops and police in northeastern Shan state, close to the Chinese border, it served as a grave reminder that peace never comes easy. Myanmar continues to struggle, no matter how much the international community wishes that the situation will improve.
Hundreds of militant ethnic fighters and civilian refugees fled across the frontier, where the Chinese bundled them into temporary shelters. Fearing a further escalation in the conflict, Beijing has placed its own army on high alert and is pleading for calm next door.
The attacks over the weekend were a severe blow to Myanmar’s de factor leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who came to power hoping to end the military onslaught against the minorities. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, many of them, particularly Shan and Karen, ending up in Thai refugee camps.
Suu Kyi’s victory at the polls may have closed the door on military dictatorship, but it has done little to stop the armed forces from undermining domestic security. The ruling National League for Democracy is handcuffed by a military-drafted constitution that keeps the generals’ fingers in the decision-making pie. But Suu Kyi cannot be absolved of the moral obligation to speak out against injustices being inflicted on citizens, including the Rohingya in western Rakhine state. There, judging by some accounts, genocide is in the making.
As happened in the Northeast last weekend, the military is ostensibly hunting down gunmen who killed soldiers, but their savage sweep through Rakhine has pushed hundreds of innocent people across the border into Bangladesh.
Leading the attacks along the Chinese border were the powerful Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and smaller Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (Kokang Chinese), Ta’ang National Liberation Army and Arakan Army. They issued a joint statement accusing government forces of “assaulting to destroy” the ethnic minorities’ political and military efforts “because they have no will to solve [the problem] by politically peaceful negotiation”.
By aiming directly at the military, the four groups were asserting to the world that the armed forces alone block a political solution to the crisis. Yet part of the blame also lies with the peace initiative endorsed by Suu Kyi. It offers the ethnic militants little of substance. 
The best that can be said of what the government is attempting is that the situation is better than what Thailand faces in the deep South. Myanmar authorities at least know the identities of their insurgents’ commanders. In Thailand, debate continues as to who is actually leading the Barisan Revolusi Nasional, which controls the great majority of the southern fighters.
But Myanmar’s generals have in common with their Thai counterparts the irrational notion that unconditional victory is possible. They refuse to make meaningful concessions to the rebels and pay lip service to options for political peace. The Thai leadership won’t even talk about the root causes of the conflict here.
The armed ethnic groups in Myanmar meanwhile suffer from a lack of strong, capable leaders who can maintain the respect and trust of their own people and the world community. This is despite the Shan groups – split into factions since opium warlord Khun Sa surrendered in the mid-1990s – having leaders in exile who have managed to muster international support and apply pressure on the government. Much the same could be said about the Karen since the death of General Bo Mya 10 years ago.
Amid scapegoats and suffering, reprisals and recriminations, the Myanmar generals carry on their bloody war, unwilling to surrender their wasteful all-or-nothing mentality. There will be no peace in the country until that mindset undergoes radical change.