Feb. 19, 2013

This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition. (photo: The International News)

everal years before President Obama signaled the "opening" of Myanmar (Burma) with his six-hour visit to Yagon (Rangoon) in November 2012, the Chinese started building oil and gas pipelines from the Myanmar coast to the Chinese interior. Now they've almost completed phase one.

Sometime in the spring of 2013, the first section of a 1700-mile natural gas pipeline will begin pumping gas from Myanmar's Shwe field offshore reserves beneath the Bay of Bengal, across the middle of Myanmar, and into Yunnan province in southwest China, according to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which started building the $2.6 billion project in late 2009.

Longstanding local opposition to the project has had little impact, from peaceful protest in the coastal state of Arakan to armed resistance in the Shan and Kachin states in the mountainous region along the Chinese border, has had little impact. The Shwe Gas Movement, based in Thailand, objected in 2012 to the Myanmar government's plan to export most Burmese natural gas to China:

"Nearly 80 per cent of the Burmese population lives without electricity. Against this backdrop, it's irresponsible of the government to announce that they will be exporting most of the gas to China without serving domestic needs."

In a global sense this project could be considered worthwhile, since it is designed to help China use less coal, thus making a small contribution to the slowing of climate change. But locally, it comes at the cost of leaving Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in the world, just as impoverished as it ever was.

Most Burmese Pipeline Exists to Serve China

The China-Myanmar pipeline began with talks between the two countries in 2004, with China agreeing the next year to buy Burmese natural gas over a 30-year span.

The Chinese brought in the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo International in 2008. The CNPC owns 50.9% of the project. The balance belongs to Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, a wholly state-owned enterprise within the Ministry of Energy that has some 10,000 employees and manages 101 "blocks for business cooperation with foreign oil companies," with 48 of those blocks of oil and gas fields offshore.

The 1,700 miles of China-Myanmar's natural gas pipeline will, when completed, represent about 500 miles more pipeline than exists in all the rest of Myanmar. The completed China-Myanmar project will also include an oil pipeline 479 miles long, as well as 80 miles of railroad, 41 bridges, 36 tunnels, and seven stations.

Myanmar, which called itself Burma until the ruling generals changed the name by decree in 1989, has been a military dictatorship for more than 50 years, although some softening began in 2009. While the country has adopted some democratic reforms, the military still runs Myanmar, widely considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world, along with North Korea, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

With a 1500-mile shared border, the Chinese have maintained an active relationship with Myanmar while much of the rest of world, especially the U.S. and Europe, were imposing a wide range of economic and diplomatic sanctions on the country. These sanctions have had little impact on a military government willing to pass on the pain to its 55 million people. Like the military oligarchy in Egypt, the Burmese generals have spent decades appropriating government wealth to their personal control on a vast scale, as the Wall Street Journal noted on November 30:

"Myanmar's armed forces seized control of the country in a coup in 1962 and for decades dominated the country's economy. More recently [sic] transferred many of its interests to two holding companies, Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, a joint venture partner in the Monywa copper mine, and Myanmar Economic Corp.

"Economists say it is difficult to determine the proportion of the country's wealth these firms control; until recently they weren't required to pay tax and still keep many aspects of their operations under wraps. Their interests range from heavy industries such as providing steel and construction materials, to running bus companies and trading in timber and precious minerals such as jade."

Transition Away from Military Dictatorship, But to What?

As the Journal sees it, the military is creating a more open society as a means of retaining most of its own wealth and power, while making token sacrifices:

"The military shed some of its businesses through a series of privatizations shortly before the elections that brought the reform-minded Mr. Thein Sein to power 2010.

"The armed forces, which control 25% of the country's Parliament, also agreed to receive a smaller-than-usual share of the national budget in January this year [2013], down to 14% in fiscal 2012-13 from 24% in the previous period. The armed forces' two holding companies were also required to start paying taxes."

The current national budget provides the military with about $2 billion (1.8.trillion kyat), almost a quarter of all government spending. The Myanmar Army is the world's 11th largest, with about 500,000 troops under arms - about the same as Egypt or Viet-Nam, fewer than France, Germany, or Britain, but about a third as many as the United States and a fifth as many as China, both of whom have all-volunteer forces. Unlike the other military forces, Myanmar's army has been fighting continuous counter-insurgency warfare for 65 years, since it won independence in 1948.

For the Chinese until recently, there has seemed to be enough to gain from Myanmar to make it worthwhile to ignore the difficulties. In particular, the new oil pipeline is expected to help China strategically, since 80 per cent of China's oil imports come through the Strait of Malacca, a choke-point effectively controlled by the U.S. Navy, which could close it off for reasons beyond China's control, including piracy, terrorism, or military conflict.

With the China-Myanmar pipeline in operation, there will be a shorter route to Middle East and African oil and the capacity could be about ten percent of China's total imports. China is Myanmar's largest trading partner.

In Myanmar, Nothing Is Uncomplicated

Myanmar's internal contradictions, in addition to 65 years of guerrilla war and 50 years of dictatorship, continue to threaten its stability, giving China and other investors pause.

Separatist groups have waged sporadic guerrilla war against the central government since before the Union of Burma was created in 1948. In Kachin State, along the Chinese border, the army's recent responses to Kachin rebels has resulted in some shelling that ended up hitting China. There are no reports of rebels attacking the Kachin section of the China-Myanmar pipeline.

In Arakan State, where the pipeline begins, the past year has seen outbreaks of vicious Buddhist-against-Muslim violence that has led to the destruction of 4,700 Muslim homes and businesses, as well as 140 Muslim dead and more than 100,000 homeless.

In the central part of Kachin State, the Chinese had started building a $3.6 billion Myitsone hydro-electric dam that would have sent most of its electricity to China, while flooding some 63 nearby Burmese villages, displacing 15,000 people along the Irawaddy river. Building resistance led the Myanmar president to suspend the project in September 2011, reportedly infuriating the Chinese.

Despite suspending construction of the dam, the government has prevented some 2000 displaced villagers from returning to their homes. Instead, the developers have "turned much of the Myitsone area into a toxic large-scale gold project," according to researchers with the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG):

"Only staffs from Burma's state-owned Mining Enterprise No. 2, its partner on the Myitsone gold project Hka Ka Bo Mining and the Chinese power firm behind the project are allowed to enter the Myitsone area. Signs have been erected throughout the area indicating that trespassers will be arrested.

"Rawang Jung, speaker of the Kachin State legislature and a member of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is the owner of the Hka Ka Bo Mining firm."

State Violence Brings State Scrutiny, Maybe

Myanmar's biggest copper mine, Letpadaung in Monywa, is jointly owned by a Chinese company and the Myanmar military. Protest against plans announced two years ago to expand the mine led to a June encampment there, where monks, activists, and farmers threatened with eviction from their land maintained a protest vigil. In November, government forces attacked and burned the camp, wounding and burning dozens of people, including 20 monks who were hospitalized. Protests continue, as does the expansion of the mine.

At the time, a Myanmar government official met with some of the mine's opponents and explained his view of the difficulties of his country's relationship with China:

"If China asks for compensation, even the Myitsone Dam shutdown would cost US $3 billion…. But China still hasn't said a word about it. We are afraid of China….

"So we don't dare to have a row with China. If they feel annoyed with the shutdown of their projects and resume their support to the communists, the economy in border areas would backslide. So you'd better think seriously."

A week later, Myanmar's President Thein Sein, a retired general, announced a commission to investigate the violence at the copper mine. To lead the investigation, the president chose perhaps the best known person in Myanmar, who is also the leader of the political opposition - member of parliament Aung Sun Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, in the midst of 15 years of house arrest imposed by the military junta of which Thein Sein was a member.

Before her appointment, Aung Sun Suu Kyi had condemned the violence at the mine and called on the police to apologize, which they did. But the protests continue, with groups of 100 or monks marching in both Yagon and Mandalay, Myanmar's two largest cities.

Will There Be a "Burmese Spring?"

So the "Burmese Spring" hasn't happened yet.

More accurately, a Burmese Spring happened in 1988 and lasted until the army had killed more than 3,000 people. Another Burmese Spring threatened to happen in 2007, but the army crushed it again, more slowly, with fewer dead and more imprisoned or expatriated. Now the military has initiated an odd parody of a spring, in which the authorities are allowing something like freedom without giving up anything like control, apparently in order to open the country to the gold-rush mentality of globalization and let the good times roll.

In January, Myanmar's peace laureate illustrated Burmese cognitive dissonance when she spoke favorably of the army that has committed the worst atrocities, including the recruiting of child soldiers, arbitrary arrest and torture, and the systematic raping of ethnic minority women. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung Sun, a national hero who led Burma to independence, helping to found both the Burmese army and the Burmese Communist Party in the process, before he was assassinated at the age of 32 when his daughter was two.

Although his 67-year-old daughter wasn't discussing the ongoing Burmese army violence, she caused a stir with an interview in which she said,

"I am fond of the army. People don't like me for saying that.

"There are many who have criticised me for being what they call a poster girl for the army, but I think the truth is that I am very fond of the army, but it's flattering to be seen as a poster girl for anything at this time of life, but I think the truth is that I am very fond of the army because I always thought of it as my father's army….

"I was taught that my father was the father of the army and that all soldiers were his sons - and they were part of my family….

"You look forward to a time when the people you love will redeem themselves."

Whatever progress Myanmar has made, it is still a country of 55 million people with unknown thousands of political prisoners in 43 prisons and 100 labor camps, not all of which have doctors. Myanmar is still a country that is two thirds Buddhist, with the other third comprising some 130 minorities, almost all of whom feel oppressed, socially, economically, and militarily, by the majority. Myanmar is still a country of hundreds of thousands of pagodas and thousands of activist Buddhist monks already marching in sandals and barefoot against the state's injustices.

Meanwhile, the United States welcomes the release of 700 political prisoners over the past 18 months, sends best wishes on Burma Independence Day (January 4), holds nuclear security workshops, and provides $7.28 million for humanitarian assistance for an estimated 115,000 Muslims in Rakhine State.

---

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News

http://everal years before President Obama signaled the "opening" of Myanmar (Burma) with his six-hour visit to Yagon (Rangoon) in November 2012, the Chinese started building oil and gas pipelines from the Myanmar coast to the Chinese interior. Now they've almost completed phase one. Sometime in the spring of 2013, the first section of a 1700-mile natural gas pipeline will begin pumping gas from Myanmar's Shwe field offshore reserves beneath the Bay of Bengal, across the middle of Myanmar, and into Yunnan province in southwest China, according to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which started building the $2.6 billion project in late 2009. Longstanding local opposition to the project has had little impact, from peaceful protest in the coastal state of Arakan to armed resistance in the Shan and Kachin states in the mountainous region along the Chinese border, has had little impact. The Shwe Gas Movement, based in Thailand, objected in 2012 to the Myanmar government's plan to export most Burmese natural gas to China: "Nearly 80 per cent of the Burmese population lives without electricity. Against this backdrop, it's irresponsible of the government to announce that they will be exporting most of the gas to China without serving domestic needs." In a global sense this project could be considered worthwhile, since it is designed to help China use less coal, thus making a small contribution to the slowing of climate change. But locally, it comes at the cost of leaving Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in the world, just as impoverished as it ever was. Most Burmese Pipeline Exists to Serve China The China-Myanmar pipeline began with talks between the two countries in 2004, with China agreeing the next year to buy Burmese natural gas over a 30-year span. The Chinese brought in the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo International in 2008. The CNPC owns 50.9% of the project. The balance belongs to Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, a wholly state-owned enterprise within the Ministry of Energy that has some 10,000 employees and manages 101 "blocks for business cooperation with foreign oil companies," with 48 of those blocks of oil and gas fields offshore. The 1,700 miles of China-Myanmar's natural gas pipeline will, when completed, represent about 500 miles more pipeline than exists in all the rest of Myanmar. The completed China-Myanmar project will also include an oil pipeline 479 miles long, as well as 80 miles of railroad, 41 bridges, 36 tunnels, and seven stations. Myanmar, which called itself Burma until the ruling generals changed the name by decree in 1989, has been a military dictatorship for more than 50 years, although some softening began in 2009. While the country has adopted some democratic reforms, the military still runs Myanmar, widely considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world, along with North Korea, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan. With a 1500-mile shared border, the Chinese have maintained an active relationship with Myanmar while much of the rest of world, especially the U.S. and Europe, were imposing a wide range of economic and diplomatic sanctions on the country. These sanctions have had little impact on a military government willing to pass on the pain to its 55 million people. Like the military oligarchy in Egypt, the Burmese generals have spent decades appropriating government wealth to their personal control on a vast scale, as the Wall Street Journal noted on November 30: "Myanmar's armed forces seized control of the country in a coup in 1962 and for decades dominated the country's economy. More recently [sic] transferred many of its interests to two holding companies, Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, a joint venture partner in the Monywa copper mine, and Myanmar Economic Corp. "Economists say it is difficult to determine the proportion of the country's wealth these firms control; until recently they weren't required to pay tax and still keep many aspects of their operations under wraps. Their interests range from heavy industries such as providing steel and construction materials, to running bus companies and trading in timber and precious minerals such as jade." Transition Away from Military Dictatorship, But to What? As the Journal sees it, the military is creating a more open society as a means of retaining most of its own wealth and power, while making token sacrifices: "The military shed some of its businesses through a series of privatizations shortly before the elections that brought the reform-minded Mr. Thein Sein to power 2010. "The armed forces, which control 25% of the country's Parliament, also agreed to receive a smaller-than-usual share of the national budget in January this year [2013], down to 14% in fiscal 2012-13 from 24% in the previous period. The armed forces' two holding companies were also required to start paying taxes." The current national budget provides the military with about $2 billion (1.8.trillion kyat), almost a quarter of all government spending. The Myanmar Army is the world's 11th largest, with about 500,000 troops under arms - about the same as Egypt or Viet-Nam, fewer than France, Germany, or Britain, but about a third as many as the United States and a fifth as many as China, both of whom have all-volunteer forces. Unlike the other military forces, Myanmar's army has been fighting continuous counter-insurgency warfare for 65 years, since it won independence in 1948. For the Chinese until recently, there has seemed to be enough to gain from Myanmar to make it worthwhile to ignore the difficulties. In particular, the new oil pipeline is expected to help China strategically, since 80 per cent of China's oil imports come through the Strait of Malacca, a choke-point effectively controlled by the U.S. Navy, which could close it off for reasons beyond China's control, including piracy, terrorism, or military conflict. With the China-Myanmar pipeline in operation, there will be a shorter route to Middle East and African oil and the capacity could be about ten percent of China's total imports. China is Myanmar's largest trading partner. In Myanmar, Nothing Is Uncomplicated Myanmar's internal contradictions, in addition to 65 years of guerrilla war and 50 years of dictatorship, continue to threaten its stability, giving China and other investors pause. Separatist groups have waged sporadic guerrilla war against the central government since before the Union of Burma was created in 1948. In Kachin State, along the Chinese border, the army's recent responses to Kachin rebels has resulted in some shelling that ended up hitting China. There are no reports of rebels attacking the Kachin section of the China-Myanmar pipeline. In Arakan State, where the pipeline begins, the past year has seen outbreaks of vicious Buddhist-against-Muslim violence that has led to the destruction of 4,700 Muslim homes and businesses, as well as 140 Muslim dead and more than 100,000 homeless. In the central part of Kachin State, the Chinese had started building a $3.6 billion Myitsone hydro-electric dam that would have sent most of its electricity to China, while flooding some 63 nearby Burmese villages, displacing 15,000 people along the Irawaddy river. Building resistance led the Myanmar president to suspend the project in September 2011, reportedly infuriating the Chinese. Despite suspending construction of the dam, the government has prevented some 2000 displaced villagers from returning to their homes. Instead, the developers have "turned much of the Myitsone area into a toxic large-scale gold project," according to researchers with the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG): "Only staffs from Burma's state-owned Mining Enterprise No. 2, its partner on the Myitsone gold project Hka Ka Bo Mining and the Chinese power firm behind the project are allowed to enter the Myitsone area. Signs have been erected throughout the area indicating that trespassers will be arrested. "Rawang Jung, speaker of the Kachin State legislature and a member of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is the owner of the Hka Ka Bo Mining firm." State Violence Brings State Scrutiny, Maybe Myanmar's biggest copper mine, Letpadaung in Monywa, is jointly owned by a Chinese company and the Myanmar military. Protest against plans announced two years ago to expand the mine led to a June encampment there, where monks, activists, and farmers threatened with eviction from their land maintained a protest vigil. In November, government forces attacked and burned the camp, wounding and burning dozens of people, including 20 monks who were hospitalized. Protests continue, as does the expansion of the mine. At the time, a Myanmar government official met with some of the mine's opponents and explained his view of the difficulties of his country's relationship with China: "If China asks for compensation, even the Myitsone Dam shutdown would cost US $3 billion…. But China still hasn't said a word about it. We are afraid of China…. "So we don't dare to have a row with China. If they feel annoyed with the shutdown of their projects and resume their support to the communists, the economy in border areas would backslide. So you'd better think seriously." A week later, Myanmar's President Thein Sein, a retired general, announced a commission to investigate the violence at the copper mine. To lead the investigation, the president chose perhaps the best known person in Myanmar, who is also the leader of the political opposition - member of parliament Aung Sun Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, in the midst of 15 years of house arrest imposed by the military junta of which Thein Sein was a member. Before her appointment, Aung Sun Suu Kyi had condemned the violence at the mine and called on the police to apologize, which they did. But the protests continue, with groups of 100 or monks marching in both Yagon and Mandalay, Myanmar's two largest cities. Will There Be a "Burmese Spring?" So the "Burmese Spring" hasn't happened yet. More accurately, a Burmese Spring happened in 1988 and lasted until the army had killed more than 3,000 people. Another Burmese Spring threatened to happen in 2007, but the army crushed it again, more slowly, with fewer dead and more imprisoned or expatriated. Now the military has initiated an odd parody of a spring, in which the authorities are allowing something like freedom without giving up anything like control, apparently in order to open the country to the gold-rush mentality of globalization and let the good times roll. In January, Myanmar's peace laureate illustrated Burmese cognitive dissonance when she spoke favorably of the army that has committed the worst atrocities, including the recruiting of child soldiers, arbitrary arrest and torture, and the systematic raping of ethnic minority women. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung Sun, a national hero who led Burma to independence, helping to found both the Burmese army and the Burmese Communist Party in the process, before he was assassinated at the age of 32 when his daughter was two. Although his 67-year-old daughter wasn't discussing the ongoing Burmese army violence, she caused a stir with an interview in which she said, "I am fond of the army. People don't like me for saying that. "There are many who have criticised me for being what they call a poster girl for the army, but I think the truth is that I am very fond of the army, but it's flattering to be seen as a poster girl for anything at this time of life, but I think the truth is that I am very fond of the army because I always thought of it as my father's army…. "I was taught that my father was the father of the army and that all soldiers were his sons - and they were part of my family…. "You look forward to a time when the people you love will redeem themselves." Whatever progress Myanmar has made, it is still a country of 55 million people with unknown thousands of political prisoners in 43 prisons and 100 labor camps, not all of which have doctors. Myanmar is still a country that is two thirds Buddhist, with the other third comprising some 130 minorities, almost all of whom feel oppressed, socially, economically, and militarily, by the majority. Myanmar is still a country of hundreds of thousands of pagodas and thousands of activist Buddhist monks already marching in sandals and barefoot against the state's injustices. Meanwhile, the United States welcomes the release of 700 political prisoners over the past 18 months, sends best wishes on Burma Independence Day (January 4), holds nuclear security workshops, and provides $7.28 million for humanitarian assistance for an estimated 115,000 Muslims in Rakhine State. William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News