Myanmar's Crackdown Reflects Core Military Beliefs

By JAMES HOOKWAY
September 29, 2007

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Myanmar government's blockage of public access to the Internet, nighttime roundup of demonstration leaders and ransacking of monasteries increased fears that the country's military rulers will go to any lengths to crush civil opposition. Much of the world has looked on with a mixture of revulsion and puzzlement at the reclusive regime's forceful tactics, which reduced the number of protesters in the streets of the main city of Yangon Friday to a few thousand at most. Troops sought to disperse those, beating them with clubs and firing warning shots and tear gas. But experts say the government's response to the unrest is in keeping with the two core beliefs that Myanmar's rulers have cultivated for the past 45 years: that only the army can keep the ethnically diverse country together and that if the generals don't act decisively, they may be ousted by their own army rivals.

The idea that the powerful, 400,000-strong military is the only institution that can stop the country, formerly known as Burma, from splintering and potentially ceding control of key natural resources to neighboring states is one that the head of state, Gen. Than Shwe, repeatedly has spread in the country's state-run media. The battle-hardened 74-year-old regularly blames foreigners, communists and separatist insurgents for trying to destroy the country. "This is the line the generals are pushing: They try to spread the fear that the country will disintegrate if the military isn't there to rule it," says Zin Linn, information director in Bangkok for Myanmar's self-styled government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. "To our way of thinking, there is no danger of the country splintering."

Myanmar was colonized by the British in the 1800s. With its mountainous borders and thick jungles, the whole territory didn't come under colonial rule until the final years of the 19th century. Its population of 53 million is 89% Buddhist, but the government recognizes 135 different ethnic groups. Burmans, who make up 68% of the population, are the dominant group in the center of the country.

Since taking power in 1962, the government often has responded to challenges with crushing force. In 1988, troops massacred 3,000 people to stamp out a growing pro-democracy movement in the country. Many others have been jailed, beaten or killed since then. And the government refused to recognize the validity of a 1990 democratic election won by the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who remains under house arrest.

So far, the government says at least 10 people have been killed in the recent violence. But Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he believed the loss of life in Myanmar was "far greater." Those killed still appear to be a fraction of the number gunned down in 1988, a difference some experts attribute to calls for restraint by key trading partners such as China.

But authorities also have learned how to manage crowds more effectively, letting protests develop until ringleaders can be identified and then tracked down and arrested after dark, says Sunait Chutinaranond, director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. Some of the Buddhist monks who were at the vanguard of the protests this past week were arrested at night. As of Friday, far fewer monks were on the street than in previous days.

Gen. Than Shwe is a psychological-war specialist, learning his trade fighting Karen rebels in the late 1940s and early 1950s, shortly after Burma became independent from Britain. He is a career soldier who rose through the ranks, becoming head of government in 1992 after his predecessor unexpectedly resigned for health reasons. His own power base strengthened after the military-intelligence chief, Khin Nyunt, was ousted as prime minister and arrested in 2004. Gen. Khin Nyunt, an ethnic Chinese, was seen as somewhat moderate compared with the other junta members. He was sentenced to 44 years in prison for alleged corruption.

The government's position relies on the army's willingness, if necessary, to battle its own citizens. Soldiers are recruited at a young age and kept separate from ordinary Burmese. Officers are educated in isolated military academies and are instilled with the belief that they are Myanmar's elite designated rulers. Army divisions are rotated around the country to prevent them from building ties to the local communities around them. Even the government has isolated itself from the governed in a new capital called Nyapidaw, about 200 miles north of Yangon, the former Rangoon. There, among new government buildings, a golf course and apartment buildings, the military elite live in comparative luxury at odds with the poverty that affects much of the rest of the country.