Mohan Guruswamy
Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com)
New Delhi, June 13, 2003:

India exists in probably the most unenviable neighborhood in the world.
The countries that surround it are least governed, but that’s not
because they are in an advanced stage of Marxist development. All around us
the institution of State is withering away, in varying degrees, under
the weight of ethnic and religious strife, and competing aspirations
further exacerbated by the avariciousness and ambitions of leaders. But
not all of them are in similar straits. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka might be
closer to India in terms of standards of governance, though that may
not be saying too much for them given what is prevalent here. Nepal,
Bhutan, Tibet and Pakistan are also caught up in their internal struggles,
with few of the institutions that characterize a modern state. But even
by such poor standards Burma would be in a class by itself. It seldom
makes the news, but when it does, it is usually for all the wrong
reasons.

In recent days it has been once again in the news because of the
renewed incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League
for Democracy and winner Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. The Burmese
military junta has taken her into “protective custody” after a violent
incident on May 30 when her motorcade was ambushed in a northern town by
as yet “unknown” miscreants, and in which she is also said to have
suffered injuries. The Burmese military intelligence chief, Lt.Gen. Khin
Nyunt has on the other hand accused her of “provoking the untoward
events.” Suu Kyi has been under arrest for about half the time since returned
to Burma 15 years ago. After her last arrest lasting twenty months she
was released in May 2002.

India shares a 1400 kms long border with Burma that runs arbitrarily
across forested ridges from Arunachal Pradesh to Mizoram. It’s an open
border and the tribal people are free to move up to twenty kms. on either
side. Both countries have made a virtue of a situation over which they
have little control, as the political border is made irrelevant by
geography and history. Though the majority of the Nagas live in India, a
large section lives in Burma. Ditto for the Kukis and Mizos who claim a
close relationship with the Chin peoples of Burma. Historically and
culturally the relationship between northeast India and Burma is a
particularly close one. The Burmese script derives from Pali, the ancient
Indian language before the advent of Sanskrit, and went to them from South
India. Buddhism is the principal religion of the dominant Burmans who
migrated from Yunnan in China after AD 850 and called their new land
their “Suvannabhumi” or golden land.

Like the rest of South Asia with the exception of Nepal and Bhutan,
Burma too was a part of the British Empire and till 1 April 1937 was a
part of British India, when the Government of Burma Act separating it from
India came into effect. The Burmese interaction with the British began
with the conquest of Assam and Manipur by King Alaungpaya (1752-60).
For about 70 years Burmese power in the region was unchallenged and
blinded by their successes they took on the British in India. The First
Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26) ended with the Treaty of Yandabo (1826) by
which the Burmese were forced to renounce their claims over Assam and
Manipur. After the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852-53) that followed the
repudiation of the Treaty of Yandabo by King Pagan, Britain annexed Lower
Burma and made it a province of India. Upper Burma came under British
control when King Thibaw, tacitly encouraged by the French, led his
country into the Third Anglo-Burmese War (Nov 1885), which ended in just two
weeks with the capture of all of Upper Burma.

What followed is a tragic tale of how fate deals with losers on the
high stakes table. King Thibaw, Queen Supayalat and four princesses were
exiled to India, where they were lodged in a dilapidated building on a
hill overlooking the Arabian Sea called Outram House in the coastal town
of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. After Thibaw died in 1915, the family’s
fortunes dwindled and soon they were reduced to penury. His last
daughter, Princess Phaya, died in Ratnagiri in 1956. Phaya bore a child, Tu Tu,
fathered by the family driver, Gopal. Tu Tu who married a local motor
mechanic still lives in Ratnagiri where she ekes out a selling making
paper flowers. Her children and their children live in various parts of
Maharashtra doing odd jobs. One daughter Jayu Kule lives in Bombay as a
domestic servant. Her daughter Prachi is said to bear an uncanny
resemblance to King Thibaw!

Burma, now called Myanmar by the military regime, with a population of
about 49.5 million is a land of great diversity. It is made up of 19
major ethnic groups. The dominant Burmans (69%) occupy the rich lands
along the Chindwin and Irrawady Rivers that join near Mandalay and flows
downwards part Rangoon (now Yangon) into the Bay of Bengal. The other
significant groups are the Shan (8.5%) who live in the eastern territory
abutting Thailand, Laos and Yunnan province of China, the Kachin (1.4%)
who control the northern territory abutting southern China, the Karen
(6.2%) who dominate the southern territory alongside Thailand, and the
Chin (2.2%) and Rakhine (4.5%) who have common borders with Manipur,
Mizoram and Bangladesh. Besides these there are other powerful tribes
(5.8%) like the Wa, Karenni and Mon. Most of Burma is densely forested and
rich in natural resources, not just jade, rubies, pearls and sapphires,
but oil and natural gas. Burma is the world’s largest exporter of teak.

The traditional rivalries between the dominant Burmans with the other
groups has been the root of all ethnic tensions and has fuelled the
country’s many separatist rebellions. This tension along ethnic lines is
further delineated by the fact that most of the non-Burman ethnic groups
have adopted Christianity, while the Burmans still remain largely
Buddhist. Since 1951, the production of narcotics has become a major
occupation in the tribal regions abutting China and Thailand, and like
elsewhere in the world, the development of narcotics as an industry coincided
with the arrival of the CIA in eternal pursuit of its phantom wars.
Burma’s first drug warlords were these Kuomintang (KMT) Chinese generals,
whose forces the CIA was arming and training to “retake” China. The
drug business then passed into the hands of the tribal warlords like Khun
Sha. This is a high growth business and the military regime derives
“taxes” from it by allowing safe havens for their manufacture. Khun Sha
now runs his business from Rangoon. Drugs are easily Burma’s principal
export, though it is not reflected in the national income accounting.
Today Burma produces 84% of the opium in Southeast Asia and most of it in
Shan State where the warlord Khun Sha’s Mong Tai Army now calls the
shots. On 19 June 2002, Mathew Paley, Dy. Asst. Secretary for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs in the US State Department testified to a
Congressional Committee that Burma now also produced 800 million
metha-amphetamine tablets. It’s not without irony that the Americans now spend a fortune trying to break the stranglehold of the drug lords and in
interdicting the drug supply chain.
The Americans are great exponents of self-help and like to have their
wars financed and fought by others. Drugs have often been the means of
self-finance. Most of the stuff produced in what has now come to be
called the Golden Triangle ends up in the USA, where its main consumers are
the black underclass. If there was any moral dilemma about this it
seems it was only within the Italian mafia in the USA. This dilemma is
depicted in “The Godfather” in the struggle between Vito Corleone and
Socorro. In real life this gang war was fought between Luciano and Maranzano
families and was called the Castellmarese War, which was the Sicilian
region from which both the gangs hailed. But here in Burma there were no
such dilemmas and the CIA decided that drugs should finance the war
against Mao’s China. But as it so happened by 1971, according to the New
York Times (16 May 1971), 10-14% OF US soldiers in Vietnam and 7% of all
US factory workers tested were addicts.

Ever since the Arabs introduced opium to India in the initial years of
the last millennium, the use of opium and its derivatives has driven
economies and history with an intensity that proselytizers of religions
and ideologies would envy. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese
introduced it to indentured Chinese labor in Java. It then spread to China.
The East India Company stole the business from the Portuguese and by
1838 Bengal was exporting 2400 tons annually to China. When China
attempted to close the trade, the British waged the First Opium War (1839-41)
to defend the principles of “free trade” and “diplomatic equality”.
China then tried to beat imports by allowing opium to be grown in Yunnan.
It succeeded. But when the Communists came to power in 1949, production
moved to Burma with the KMT generals driven out of southern China. In
1950 the CIA began regrouping the KMT forces in Shan State for a
projected invasion of South China. This trade then expanded to include the
generals in Thailand. Drugs, CIA arms and the dense forests have spawned
many insurgencies in Burma. Out of the 387 known terrorist and insurgent
groups in the world Burma accounts for over 40.

Suu Kyi’s father Aung San was one of the founding fathers of the
Burmese nationalist movement as well as the Burmese Communist Party. Like
Subhas Chandra Bose, Aung San went over to the Japanese side during their
occupation of Southeast Asia, including Burma. When Field Marshal
Slim’s Third Army turned the Japanese back at Imphal and followed
triumphantly down the road to Mandalay and then on to Rangoon, Aung San with great alacrity switched over to the British side. With Indian independence
looming, the British exit from Burma became inevitable. He then became
the leading figure in the newly formed Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom
League that negotiated Britain’s exit from Burma on 4 January 1948. But
Aung San did not live to see freedom for he was mysteriously
assassinated on 19 July 1947 as he was presiding over a meeting of the executive council of the Interim Burmese Government. Interestingly in 1997 on the fiftieth anniversary of Aung San’s death the BBC2 broadcast a program
“Who Really Killed Aung San?” which strongly hinted a British hand in
it. If it was indeed so, it would be a great irony since the British
Government and the BBC in particular are the greatest proponents of Aung
San Suu Kyi.

Since 1962, after U Nu was overthrown, Burma has been under a military
government, whose rapacity and cruelty has been matched by a quirky
sense of economic nationalism, This economic nationalism which has an
uncanny similarity to the ideas of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s original
Swadeshi ideologue, Murli Manohar Joshi, is a mish-mash of xenophobia
with a good bit of mumbo-jumbo like astrology, palmistry and numerology
thrown in. (Note from Editor: The present Indian government is a
coalition government led by Bharatiya Janata Party.) In September 1987 Ne Win
demonetized currency notes in already quixotic 75, 35 and 25 kyat units
and replaced them with 90 kyat and 45 kyat notes, currency units
divisible by nine, his lucky number! Nine didn’t prove lucky after all for
this demonetization triggered off violent protests led by enraged
students. The stage was set for the entry of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi’s mother, Daw Khin Kyi was made Burma’s Ambassador to India in
1960 and Suu Kyi who was 15 years old continued her education in New
Delhi where her circle of friends included Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi and
other many others at Lady Shriram College. She went on to Oxford
University where she took a PPE. Here she met her future husband, Michael Aris,
an Oxford don. Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to visit her
critically ill mother, but the events sparked off by Ne Win’s obsession with the
number nine swept her up and soon she was leading the struggle for
democracy in Burma. On 26 August 1988 she told a cheering audience of
thousands of students, office workers and monks in Rangoon: “I could not, as
my fathers daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on. This
is Burma’s second struggle for independence!” Bowing to the pressure the
generals agreed to elections in May 1990. The National League for
Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi won 392 of the 495 seats it contested
while the military backed National Unity Party won just 10. The military
refused to hand over power and she continues to fight for democracy, with
a little help from her friends.

Some years ago I crossed over into Burmese town of Tamu from Moreh in
Manipur. Tamil traders dominate the business in Tamu, but the really big
business is in the hands of Chinese businessmen. Tamu is like a Wild
West town with more guns in it than people. It may mostly be a shantytown
but it has some really good Chinese restaurants where the fiery fare
can de dowsed down by plenty of Heineken beer. The trade across
Tamu/Moreh now exceeds more than Rs.1000 crores and the exports from India, by head loads, consists of light engineering goods and machinery, durables
like pressure cookers, suitcases, pharmaceuticals, garments and lots of
acetic anhydride needed to process heroin from opium base. Most of the
goods go into southern China. On the reverse side there is a flow of
scotch whiskey and other fine liquors, silks from China, teak logs and
lots of drugs on their way to Calcutta and Chittagong for export to the
USA, to feed the unending appetite of the American underclass. But this
is not without collateral damage in India. According to Manchen
Hangzou, originally from Manipur and an AIDS researcher now working in New
Delhi, over 40% of the Manipur youth are addicted to heroin and other
drugs, and because of indiscriminate needle usage over 50% of addicts are
HIV positive. This is no longer a time bomb. The bomb has exploded in
northeastern India and the fallout is traveling westward. This has not
even left the security forces untouched. A few years ago a CRPF
(para-military force) convoy was intercepted by the Bihar Police to find that it
was carrying over seven truckloads of drugs. Investigations revealed
that an IGP of the CRPF was the mastermind, but the matter has got lost
in judicial processes and lethargic prosecution and the officer runs
about Delhi, quite freely.

In 1978 Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Foreign
Minister visited Burma. In Rangoon he promised that the body of King Thibaw
lying in an obscure grave in Ratnagiri would be returned to Burma where
it could be interred with honors befitting a king. Likewise the body of
Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Moghul, who was buried in Rangoon, would
be returned to India for similarly befitting interment. He also promised
a pension to King Thibaw’s granddaughter Tu Tu. A princely sum of
Rs.250 per mensem was sanctioned, but the Burmese royalty in India is yet to
see a paisa of it! Our failure to do even this much tells a great deal
about our Burma policy.

(Mr. Mohan Guruswamy is a policy analyst and columnist in India. He was
former advisor to the Finance Minister of India. He contributed this
article to Mizzima News.)