From Hope to Despair in Myanmar

In the years since we began publishing The Diplomat Magazine in December 2014, few countries in Asia have seen as dramatic a reversal of fortunes as Myanmar.

In Issue 12 (November 2015), Jurgen Haacke described then then-upcoming elections as “a critical step into a somewhat uncertain future.” A little more than a year later, Christina Fink reflected in Issue 28 (March 2017) on the first year in power for the National League for Democracy (NLD) with Aung San Suu Kyi at its head, noting the huge challenges the civilian government was wrestling with, from the economy to ethnic violence and a stalled peace process, to finding a new balance between civilian and military leaders.

In the years that followed, we tracked myriad developments in Myanmar, from its evolving relations with China and, of course, the seemingly never-ending Rohingya crisis. And then in February 2021 what political progress had been made in Myanmar dissipated as the military reasserted itself, again arresting Aung San Suu Kyi and pushing civilian leadership to the sideline once more.

In the following article, Zachary Abuza charts the path Myanmar has taken over the last decade, following a road from hope and nascent progress back to despair.

– Catherine Putz

The Hope

In 2008, a devastating cyclone hit Myanmar leading to the death of over 138,000 people. The military government that had been in power almost continuously since 1962 was preoccupied with running a referendum for their handwritten constitution.

Most people at the time were highly dismissive of the generals’ new charter, which was designed to keep them in power. The constitution gave the military 25 percent of the seats in both chambers of parliament, awarded them a vice presidency, and granted them control over three key ministries: Defense, Interior and Border Affairs. There was no civilian oversight over the military, whether for personnel decisions or budgetary allocations. There were ample provisions and low bars for declaring a state of emergency. The military had a veto on any constitutional amendments, which required 75 percent approval.

Nonetheless, even this small, gradual move toward democracy led to significant economic growth, as foreign investment entered the country and telecommunications became widespread. The economy stabilized after years of high inflation, which had led to the mass demonstrations in 2007, known as the Saffron Revolution. Millions of people were lifted out of poverty in the process. According to the World Bank, GDP grew from around $30 billion in 2008 to $70 billion by the time elections were held in 2015.

In 2010, the National League for Democracy – which had never been banned, but was highly constrained with its senior leaders arrested or in exile –  boycotted the elections, convinced that not enough had changed. And yet, two years later, the NLD was convinced enough of the political reforms that it ran candidates in a by-election, winning 37 of 46 contested seats.

By 2014, there was palpable excitement that the military was serious about its commitment to hold open elections: A widely shared photograph of President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, the long imprisoned but recently freed Nobel Prize laureate, posing beneath a portrait of Aung San, the country and military’s founder and her father, was a symbol that was lost on no one.

The 2015 polls were Myanmar’s first free election in decades. They marked a thorough rejection of military rule and a clear manifestation of the desire for civilian rule. The NLD thrashed the military’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), winning 135 of 220 upper house seats and 255 of the 440 lower house seats. If one discounted the military’s guaranteed 25 percent block representation, the NLD won 77 percent of all contested seats.

And importantly, Thein Sein handed over power to the NLD. Aung San Suu Kyi took on a created role, state counselor, a clear end-run around the military’s prohibition on her assuming the presidency.

The NLD’s rule led to a period of spectacular growth. The economy grew at nearly 6.5 percent in 2016 and then between 7.5 to 8 percent in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The international community took notice and foreign investment poured in.

To put this growth and investment into context, from 2012-13, Myanmar only attracted $1.4 billion in foreign investment. Confidence in the elections saw FDI climb to $8 billion in 2014-15 and then $9.4 billion in 2015-16. Although it declined afterward, it still averaged $5.5 billion a year between 2016 and 2020. In 2017, FDI accounted for more than 7 percent of GDP.

Exports surged from $6 billion in 2010 to $19 billion in 2020. And while Myanmar remained the least developed country in ASEAN when it came to per capita GDP, that was changing: GDP grew from $37.8 billion in 2010 to $79 billion in 2020. The population living above the national poverty line jumped from 57.8 percent in 2010 to 75.2 percent in 2020. An urban middle class with disposable income, connected to the world, emerged.

The delivery of social services under the NLD’s leadership improved, too. There were investments in public health and new hospitals were built. Life expectancy increased by 3.4 years in that decade, while secondary school enrollment increased from 48.1 percent to 68.4 percent.

Although Aung San Suu Kyi was ineligible to become prime minister due to a specific provision in the constitution, a new position of “state counselor” was created for her.

The 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with eight ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) generated space for formal peace talks. And while a formal peace process didn’t emerge, the number of active armed engagements fell.

But not for all.

The military began to work with radical Buddhist monks, many of whom had been recruited by the military after the Saffron Revolution, and helped them fan the flames of religious intolerance on the country’s burgeoning social media. Pogroms against ethnic Rohingya began in 2014, and by 2015 there was a major humanitarian crisis with the exodus of thousands of people by boat. Those who fled overland were subject to rapacious human traffickers in Thailand and Malaysia, including members of those countries’ security forces.

In a very ominous sign, Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal lawyer and adviser, U Ko Nyi, himself an ethnic Rohingya, was assassinated on January 29, 2017, apparently by members of the security forces. Aung San Suu Kyi said nothing and didn’t attend the funeral, only emboldening the military.

In 2017, in the face of continued attacks, the Arakan Resistance Salvation Army, a small group of poorly armed Rohingya militants, raided a number of remote border posts to seize weapons and ammunition. That was the casus belli for the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar army is known, to launch an all-out and premeditated offensive against them. Thousands of Rohingya men and boys were executed, thousands of women were raped, and over 300 villages were burned to the ground. More than 1 million Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where they continue to live in squalid refugee camps.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s government said nothing, imprisoning journalists who reported on the ethnic cleansing. Indeed her minister of information, a former Reuters journalist and political prisoner, led the charge. Fellow Nobel Prize laureates called on Aung San Suu Kyi to condemn the attacks, but she defended her military instead. She is a Burmese nationalist, and her father founded the Tatmadaw. By 2017, she was also a retail politician, and the Bamar majority not only looked the other way but supported the military’s justifications, if not its actions. She also had other priorities vis-a-vis the generals.  

The NLD made many other mistakes. The party remained a vehicle for Aung San Suu Kyi, and power was concentrated in the hands of senior party leaders. In a political culture that shows too much deference to elders, the NLD failed to hand over power and train a new generation.

As the economy grew and things stabilized, the NLD government began to push for political change. In 2019, the NLD proposed 114 separate constitutional amendments that attempted to reduce the number of military members in parliament, curb the military’s autonomy, diminish its direct role in government, remove its ability to veto constitutional amendments. None of these efforts succeeded, despite garnering between 62 and 64 percent of the vote.

But in the November 2020 polls, the NLD gained even more seats at the USDP’s expense. In the lower house, the NLD won 396 out of 476 seats (86 percent) of the contested seats; the USDP was humiliated, winning only 7 percent. It was no different in the upper house. The election was as thorough a rejection of military rule as could have been delivered.

While the Tatmadaw’s block representation made any constitutional amendments unlikely, it was getting nervous and explicitly warned the NLD’s leadership not to convene the new parliament, citing, without any evidence, voter fraud and threatening to “take action.”

When the NLD ignored them, army chief Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup on February 1, 2021.

Only a few months prior, Aung San Suu Kyi had been in the Hague defending the country’s bloodthirsty military against charges of genocide. Now she was back under house arrest, with three-quarters of the NLD’s senior leadership incarcerated along with her. Yet the bloom was off the Nobel Laureate’s rose following her defense of the military. Her incarceration, eventual convictions, and over 30 years in jail sentences, elicited little international sympathy.

There were many other reasons for the coup. The military clearly feared the loss of their political and economic power and their privileged status in society. They bristled at calls for greater transparency and held flat out contempt for civilians. The military, fueled by its own propaganda and insularity, truly believed that only they could hold the country together, against rebellions that the Tatmadaw fueled, and defend against nonexistent invaders hellbent on dividing the country.

Old fashioned greed was a major factor, too. Min Aung Hlaing was soon to reach mandatory retirement and wanted to remain in power to continue his and his family’s self-enrichment.