A Make Or Break Year For Myanmar

By Hunter Marston

Image Credit: REUTERS/Lynn Bo Bo/Pool

On his recent trip to Myanmar, U.S. President Barack Obama embraced opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, signaling strong U.S. support for continued reforms in a nation that has long been under military rule. Since Myanmar’s political opening following elections in 2010, tentative reforms have stalled, and bursts of ethnic conflict have raised fears that Myanmar’s democracy is on fragile ground. The next year will thus be a critical test for Myanmar: the government will need to finalize ceasefire negotiations with a number of armed ethnic groups; prepare for the first nationwide, multiparty elections since parliament convened for the first time in 2010; and decide on hotly contested constitutional measures.

In her memoirs, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton points to Myanmar’s democratic transition as one of her crowning achievements. In her view, the change in U.S. policy toward Myanmar around her visit in 2011, engagement with the former junta leaders, and the suspension of sanctions, represents “America at our best.�? Less sanguine analysts bemoan America’s re-engagement with Myanmar’s repressive government, pointing to the generals’ past war crimes and the dire state of human rights in the country today.

For decades, Myanmar was run by military generals who oversaw economic mismanagement, harsh political repression, and human rights abuses, as the national army fought ethnic rebel forces across the country in conflicts that still simmer today. The country now finds itself at a historic crossroads and, despite massive setbacks, the administration of reformist President Thein Sein may have an opportunity to finally resolve numerous grievances with embattled ethnic minorities. Thein Sein has empowered a small cadre of progressives who may be able to keep reforms on track, if they are able to check the influence of the military quarter. Thetatmadaw, as the Myanmar army is known, nominally falls under control of the civilian government, after decades during which it held a stranglehold over society as the only political institution with a legal mandate under the old constitution.

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