Pakistan’s Shifting Approach to Myanmar

One of Asia’s lesser known bilateral relationships is between Pakistan and Myanmar. While neither country privileges the bilateral to the extent that they do relations with their immediate neighbors, it is still a relationship with some depth beyond the usual exchange of ambassadors and minor trade. Pakistan-Myanmar relations have been shaped by a common history and regional concerns that bring the two countries together more closely than observers of the region may expect. Their relations are a strange mixture of cooperation and tension. The cooperation between the two is a function of the need of both states to balance against India, preventing it from becoming too dominant in South Asia. Meanwhile, the tensions mostly revolve around issues of Islamic militancy in Myanmar.

Today’s Pakistan and Myanmar were both part of British India until Myanmar (then known as Burma) was separated from this unit in 1937. Upon Pakistan’s independence in 1947, it shared a border with Burma (which itself became independent in 1948), as the new Pakistani state included East Bengal, or what is today Bangladesh. While Pakistan did not maintain the same level of closeness with Myanmar as it did with some Arab countries and China, relations were still cordial and the two countries established normal diplomatic relations in 1948, and formal military relations in 1952. At the same time, relations between India and Myanmar deteriorated after the 1962 coup by General Ne Win in Myanmar led to the expulsion of thousands of ethnic Indians from the country.

During the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, which led to the independence of Bangladesh, several Pakistani army and air force personnel were given safe passage by Myanmar. The Pakistani officers who escaped to Myanmar during the war included Eastern Command Army Aviation squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Liaquat Bokhari and GOC 39th Ad Hoc Division Major General Rahim Khan.

However, relations between Myanmar and Pakistan quickly became tense because Myanmar recognized Bangladesh soon after it was founded, on January 13, 1972. This made Myanmar one of the first countries to recognize its neighbor, which necessitated sending a special envoy to Pakistan to explain its decision. However, General Ne Win wanted to be on good terms with his new neighbors and also open up channels to deal with the refugees that had fled to Arakan during the war; although not nearly as many Bengalis fled to Myanmar as to India, a significant number nonetheless did.

Relations between Myanmar and Pakistan improved significantly in 1988, when they established embassies in each other’s countries. At that time, both were international pariahs due to their military regimes. Pakistan provided some interesting services to Myanmar in this period. For example, Pakistan, and not neighboring India or Bangladesh, provided chartered flights from Yangon for Myanmar’s Muslims to get to Mecca for the hajj pilgrimage.

Modern ties between the two countries focus mostly on defense, and to a lesser extent trade. Myanmar and Pakistan flirt with each other with an eye toward sending India a message that it should not become too overbearing in the region. Additionally, both countries have improved ties over the past few years because of their wariness about being too dependent on U.S. policies. General Ashraf Kayani, chief of staff of the Pakistan Army from 2007 to 2013, encouraged his military to look east, wary of being at the mercy of the United States. Since then, ties between the two countries’ militaries have grown enormously.

Around 20 officers from the Myanmar Navy visited Karachi at the end of April 2013 to begin basic submarine training with the Pakistan Navy at PNS Bahadur. According to Pakistan Insider, it was around this time that “Major General Soe Shein, then head of Military Affairs Security (Myanmar’s primary intelligence service), visited Pakistan with a delegation of 22 senior officials for discussions on a range of issues.” The group was received in Lahore by Pakistani Corps Commander Lt. General Maqsood Ahmad. Further contact took place in August 2014, when Pakistan’s Air Chief Marshal Tahir Rafique Butt became the first-ever sitting PAF chief to visit Myanmar. While there, he met his counterpart General Khin Aung Myint.

In May 2015, Myanmar’s commander-in-chief of defense services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, visited Pakistan to discuss further military cooperation, particularly between the navies and air forces of the two countries. It looks likely that Myanmar will become the first buyer of the Sino-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder multi-role fighter. While India has been able to pull Sri Lanka away from buying the aircraft, it seems as though the Pakistani sale of these planes to Myanmar is still underway. In all likelihood, orders for the JF-17 were placed at the time of the May 2015 visit. Talks at this time between the two countries included discussions on various regional and local issues, including relations with India and the Rohingya issue.

However, despite improved relations between the two countries, there are underlying tensions due to Pakistan’s habitual support for Islamic militant groups throughout the region. Myanmar is not immune to Pakistan-supported militancy; many Pakistanis and Pakistani-based militant groups see their country as the protector and spokesman for Muslims in and near South Asia, including within Myanmar.

Notably, Pakistan has a long history of interfering in Arakan, the province of western Myanmar where most of that country’s Muslims live. When Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan, the Pakistani government allegedly supported a movement based in Chittagong led by a local noble, Kassem Raja, that tried to foment separatist tendencies among Arakan Muslims. Pakistan was alleged to have provided arms to Arakanese rebels through its consulate in Sittwe.

Today, there are demands by militant groups that operate in Pakistan for Myanmar to stop persecuting the Rohingya. These groups could push the Pakistani government to adopt harsher policies to pressure Myanmar on its treatment of the Rohingya, particularly given the Pakistani government’s tendency to try and divert militancy from its country by highlighting issues in other places.

In July 2012, the Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) threatened to attack Myanmar over the Rohingya, saying, “We will take revenge of your blood.” The group demanded the severing of ties between Pakistan and Myanmar. “Otherwise we will not only attack Burmese interests anywhere but will also attack the Pakistani fellows of Burma one by one,” it warned, according to a spokesman for the group. Pakistan’s government took note, and in 2015, Pakistan sponsored a United Nations resolution expressing “serious concern” over the “plight” of the Rohingya in Myanmar, to which the Myanmar government obviously objected.

India, along with Myanmar, has expressed its concern that militant groups based in Pakistan, especially the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), are setting up training camps for Rohingya militants along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. If there are major attacks by Islamic radicals in Myanmar in the future, they will most probably be traced back, in part, to Pakistan.

Pakistan continues to improve relations with Myanmar on the governmental level. Therefore, it is short-sighted to antagonize Myanmar over low-level issues by looking the other way at best and at worst providing support to militant groups in Myanmar. Unlike India, Pakistan has good relations and no territorial disputes with Myanmar, so it cannot even argue that it may need to support military groups for asymmetric purposes or for leverage. It will be interesting to see if Pakistan will prioritize its geopolitical strategy of balancing India by improving military relations with Myanmar over its pan-religious strategy of emerging as a hub for Islam in southern, and even parts of southeastern, Asia. The latter course could poison relations with Myanmar and indefinitely align Myanmar and India against Pakistan.