To celebrate the eighth anniversary of Myanmar’s manifestly moribund Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), the ruling military regime laid on a lavish celebration on October 15 in the gargoyle capitol of Naypyidaw.
VIP attendees included Chinese special envoy Deng Xijun, Indian Deputy National Security Advisor Vikram Misri and Thai Vice Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow. The State Administration Council (SAC) junta spared no expense and coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing even had a peace orb for the visiting dignitaries to marvel at.
Also present was central NCA architect, former general Aung Min, whose speech was upbeat but inwardly he must be dejected at the state of peace in Myanmar. The NCA had eight signatories in 2015 and two more very small ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) acceded three years later.
Yet the lopsided NCA excluded Myanmar’s largest armed groups. Missing, too, was deposed and imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had little interest in forging lasting peace or the suffering of the nation’s ethnic people during her five years in office.
Prominently present on October 15 were the elderly extras of Min Aung Hlaing’s monster’s ball, the “leaders” of ethnic armed organizations that still pretend the NCA is alive.
Former chairman of the Karen National Union (KNU), nonagenarian General Mutu Say Poe, the bumbling Pa-O official Khun Okkar, who exudes dishonesty like a foul odor, the Lahu, Rakhine and Kayin leaders of micro armed groups, Shan warlord Yawd Serk, leader of the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), and representatives from other groups such as the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF).
All of them are long-standing military appeasers who have sat out the post-2021 coup armed conflict even as thousands of civilians have been killed and two million displaced. For all of these “leaders” to attend such a dishonestly stage-managed spectacle after an air strike at a displaced persons camp in Kachin state just several days before, killing 29 civilians, including 13 children, speaks to their lack of morality.
At Sunday’s event, one installation was the “Pydaungsu Boat”, replete with cardboard cutouts of smiling “ethnic people.” That is precisely how the military regards EAO leaders: as cardboard cutouts to walk the plank of their bootless peace exercise.
The anniversary resembled less a ceremony as a seance, with Lieutenant General Yar Phyae as the medium. Shifted out of the formal leadership of the National Solidarity and Peacemaking Negotiation Committee (NSPNC) in the August cabinet reshuffle, Yar Phyae is now honing his war criminal credentials as minister for home affairs.
His replacement, Lieutenant-General Min Naing, is now the point man and to whom Western peace industrialists will inevitably pant over as a potential ingénue for engagement. The anniversary also exhumed flawed NCA committees such as the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) that were dysfunctional before the post-coup carnage and have no chance of being useful now.
But there was a pre-anniversary warmup. General Mutu visited Naypyidaw and literally embraced Senior General Min Aung Hlaing a week before the anniversary, infuriating many Kayin people. Mutu has always had the political acumen of an upended turtle, but the viral hug was beyond the pale.
He was accompanied by former KNU defense department official Saw Roger Khin, who is currently under investigation by the KNU for involvement in the criminal Chinese casino complex KK Park. Also implicated is current KNU chairman Kwe Htu Win, who signed the NCA in 2015 and still believes it has potential, underscoring that delusion springs eternal in Myanmar’s frontal lobbed scraped NCA process.
The KNU released statements condemning his visits and calling the NCA dead, but it only served to underline the absurd fragmentation of anti-military armed groups.
It was another indicator of the deep damage that insipid, arrogant, greedy old men have inflicted on Myanmar society over the years. The visit underscored the casual sellout of the Kayin people by many KNU leaders.
But it’s not simply the Kayin: senior leaders of most ethnic armed organizations (EAO) through the post-Independence period have made political treachery and personal greed a perennial feature of interaction with their mortal military enemy. They are less a nest of vipers than a wicker basket of scumbags.
In Myanmar, many of them are referred to as hsate-lazi: goat testicles, as befitting their pendulous loyalty: sometimes supposedly anti-military, other times in jovial embrace. But for many they are also, to reprise a previous military regime propaganda slogan, “treasonous minions and traitorous cohorts.”
Peace and conflict treachery as seen on Sunday is as old as Myanmar’s 75-year civil war. But it’s useful to break down three “ideal types” of minions and cohorts.
The first would be the Myanmar army’s close allies in the field such as Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and Pyithu Sit (People’s Militia). These guarantee the military’s local control and regulation of illicit rackets from narcotics to casinos and occasionally jump into actual fighting.
Many of them came from the world of ethnic insurgency, such as Chit Thu from the Kayin State Border Guard, a former KNU soldier who defected back in 1994. A revolutionary freedom fighter one day and a criminal SAC functionary the next. Yawd Serk and the RCSS may well be next.
The second ranking of treacherous actors includes all the EAO leaders still traipsing to Naypyidaw to demonstrate fealty to the SAC, and sundry other fringe players who firmly believe in their powers of mediation. They would also include opportunists such as the Rakhine politician Dr Aye Maung, who along with NLD turncoat Daw Sandar Min and pro-SAC “journalist” Kyaw Myo Min travelled to Japan recently to shovel SAC propaganda.
Representatives of 37 registered political parties are also second-tier minions, although politicians once celebrated as human rights champions turned SAC apologists such as Ko Ko Gyi of the 88 Generation Students must inhabit a unique category of traitor.
And then a third tier of treasonous minions: the foreign peace industrial complex operators who have promoted, plotted, funded and feted the EAO quislings across countless study tours, briefings, workshops and secret meetings over the past decade.
There was intense competition amongst foreign peace entrepreneurs, diplomats, donors and consultants for the prestigious “Win a Date with Khun Okkar” Prize: some called him the George Clooney of the NCA. How do many of these Western liberal peacebuilders see Khun Okkar’s current efforts as the SAC’s social secretary to cajole ethnic leaders to visit Naypyidaw?
When United Nations (UN) officials visit Naypyidaw there is uproar, accusations of appeasement and denunciations of tacit betrayal of Myanmar. Yet Hkun Okkar, Yawd Serk and Rakhine leader Mra Razar Lin go repeatedly, receive prizes, hugs and baubles, and the public may seethe but it is accepted with weary resignation.
Not just that, Western embassies encourage them and continue to fund these efforts, particularly favoring the untrustworthy Yangon-based Center for National Reconciliation (CPR), seeing some tenuous rope-line to a negotiated process. This is rank hypocrisy and the NCA was injected with dishonesty from even before it was signed.
One alternative to assessing the NCA legacy is to eschew dishonest “lessons learned” reports, which are blatant whitewashing exercises usually assembled with rudimentary instructions, like IKEA kits, by knavish foreign hirelings (FRIKÄNNA, Birch filing cabinet, mute yellow, $50K x 20 days, in the Western aid squandering catalog).
Many of these exculpatory products are being prepared in secret to cover dumb donor mistakes: but this should all be publicly exposed. Replace this bureaucratic absolution and commission a scrapbook of all the foreigners in grinning, gawking and gaping proximity to the SAC’s current minions and cohorts, or pro-SAC EAOs such as the RCSS.
For good measure, include all the past and current SAC goons, cronies, and spiritual apologists like Buddhist monk Sitagu Hsayadaw, who in May 2017 famously delivered a sermon to military family members that appeared to condone the killing of non-Buddhists at a time the military was launching scorched earth attacks on Rohingya Muslims.
That would be the real “hidden history of Burma” that should be exposed (the book of that title by historian Thant Myint U has an awfully naive and silly chapter on the peace process). The Kachin State Peace Talk Creation Group (PCG) already embraced this approach with its weighty scrapbook (Volume 1) handed out to all visitors to the office in Myitkyina: former UN Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar is a smirking standout.
It appears to be emulated by the SAC with their photo exhibition prepared for the anniversary: “Historic Milestone of Peace as Told by Newspapers.”
Many Western embassies, UN agencies and international aid agencies stayed away from the anniversary as expected, not wanting to risk inclusion in any “Photo Album of SAC Appeasement.” They all prefer more discreet and duplicitous approaches, in private, with clandestine workshops in Naypyidaw or Scandinavia where you can conceal collaborating with the Myanmar murder corporation. Appearances matter, as do non-appearances.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar