Editor's note: The Myanmar peace process maybe is young but the Bangsamoro has much to learn from it. Myanmar-based independent consultant and analyst Dr. Ashley South spoke on the similarities and contrasts between the two peace processes. The following are extracts from his presentation at the IAG roundtable in Cotabato City on May 20. This has been edited for clarity and brevity.

 

Myanmar has a population of about 50 or 60 million people. But in fact, nobody really knows how many people live in Myanmar. So many years of armed conflict… it means that even the basic population data is not well known. But it’s between 50 and 60 million people. About 30 percent of the population of Myanmar come from different ethnic minority communities.

 

Myanmar achieved independence in 1949, three years after the Philippines. From the beginning of the independent Myanmar, at that time it was called Burma, the country was plunged into armed conflict. Right through 1950s to 1980s, many dozens of different armed groups were fighting against the military government. There was a big communist insurgency in Myanmar, which I know is also the case in the Philippines.

 

The communist insurgency mostly collapsed around 1989, so it is not such a big issue in Myanmar. But still, there are about 20 major armed ethnic groups that have been fighting against the government, and over the history, there have been hundreds of different groups if we look back until 1949.

 

Very generally, I think we can say that armed ethnic groups in Myanmar have been fighting for self-determination, and I can say this is a similarity with Mindanao. In the past some armed groups were fighting for complete independence from Burma. They wanted to establish their own country. For the last 20 years, however, most of the armed groups were talking about federal Myanmar, not complete independence but high level of decentralization and autonomy.

 

I think there is a main demand of ethnic groups and the concerns that people talk about are massive human rights abuses. Half of the country for more than half a century has been affected by the armed conflict, and because of the long history of armed conflict, there have been very widespread, serious and systematic human rights abuses throughout the national ethnic populated parts of the country. I think all of the different parties in the conflict have been involved in human rights abuses. But there is a lot of documentation to show that the Myanmar army, the state armed forces, has been more systematically involved in human rights abuses and ethnic minority communities have been the main victims.

 

It is in this context that over the years hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled into neighboring Thailand, some to China and India. At least half a million people are internally displaced inside the country. There are maybe five million people from Myanmar living outside of the country, in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, nobody knows, maybe three to five million people. Many of those people are migrant workers outside of Myanmar, but the reason they have to leave Myanmar is very similar to the reason the refugees have to leave Myanmar. It’s just that these migrant workers are not living in refugee camps.

 

In 1962 there was a military coup d’état. Since then, the country has been ruled by a military government.

 

There was a massive democratic uprising in 1988. We can say that the 1988 democratic uprising was successful in some ways because it put the idea of freedom in the hearts of many people but it was crushed by the military. Thousands of people were killed and the military government under a new name continued to rule the country.

 

In 2008, a new constitution was granted and implemented. The 2010 elections were held but the elections were not free and fair. The National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, boycotted the 2010 elections. The new government after 2010 led by the retired general U Thein Sein is a military-backed government.

 

Many people thought of the new government as not so much different really from the previous government. But in fact, as I’m sure you know well, the last two years in Myanmar have seen a very wide ranging reform process in the country led by U Thein Sein, a retired general. Many people have been really surprised by the scale of change by the last two years. Most political prisoners have been released. Freedom of speech is certainly much better than it used to be. There are reforms underway in a number of different sectors. It’s a positive story but there are still many questions about the direction the country is heading to. Is the reform process in Myanmar just a way for the military and the vested economic interests to reposition themselves in a new global Southeast Asia or are we really seeing something that is profound and a genuine emergence of the real democracy in Myanmar? I think those questions are uncertain to most people.

 

That’s the context that we see the Myanmar peace process emerging. Since 2011 under the new government, 15 of the 18 major armed ethnic groups in the country have agreed ceasefires with government and the other three main armed ethnic groups are in negotiations with the government. Some of those groups did have ceasefires before 2011 but they were very unstable or unsatisfactory. All of the old ceasefire groups have renegotiated ceasefires. Many of the groups which never agreed ceasefire in the past have also made ceasefire. So we can see that there really is a positive dimension. But there is a long way to go. From your experience in Mindanao, I’m sure you will understand that in just two years, to move from a history of more than 50 years of armed conflict towards real peace is impossible. There are still many challenges and obstacles.

 

I think one set of problems in Myanmar is about making the ceasefire work. There are challenges about monitoring, about agreeing the behavior of government forces and the behavior of armed ethnic groups. Indeed in some parts of Myanmar, although ceasefires have been agreed, armed conflict is continuing. In the north of the country – in Chin State and in Shan State, there is a continuing armed conflict. Across the southeast, the ceasefires are more or less holding but in the north of the country, there has been very serious fighting in the last two years, with more than one thousand people displaced. Some fled to China but most of them are internally displaced. I think this raises a lot of serious concerns if the ceasefires in Myanmar are real.

 

One problem is the role of the Myanmar government and the role of the Myanmar military. The ceasefires so far have been negotiated by the Myanmar government, by Minister Aung Min, the president’s personal peace envoy. He also has a secretary at the Myanmar Peace Center. I have met Minister Aung Min a few times. I have had a few conversations with him and I believe personally that the prime minister and the president of Myanmar are serious in making the peace process work. But: (1) The leaders of the Myanmar government are mostly retired Bama generals. They come from the majority community and I think, as retired generals, they have very limited understanding about the reality of ethnic people. Even if they are sincere, it’s difficult for them to understand the suffering of ethnic communities and the demands of the ethnic communities, and (2) The other problem maybe more serious is that the Myanmar army, until recently, has been sitting in the negotiations but not very high level – at the level of colonels, brigadier generals. So the question is, does the Myanmar army follow the same agenda as the Myanmar government or is the Myanmar army happy for the Myanmar government to make ceasefires, but if the army wants to do its own thing then they will attack the armed groups even if the government already made a ceasefire. This is the kind of question that people are asking in Myanmar.

 

There is also the idea of good cop, bad cop. The government would say, yes, we’ve agreed to a ceasefire, the army at the same time would be more aggressive in its strategy. This is a big problem for the peace process in Myanmar. The other problem is, so far in Myanmar, there are ceasefires to agree to stop fighting, and in some places like in the southeast, the ceasefires are working okay, in other places the ceasefires are not working.

 

What has not happened yet in Myanmar is proper political dialogue because the armed ethnic groups and other actors in Myanmar – ethnic political parties, ethnic civil society groups, are not interested only to stop fighting; they have political demands. They want more self-determination, they want decentralization, and they want more control for ethnic communities over their own lives. In principle the president of Myanmar has agreed to have a discussion to resolve these issues. That I think is very important. Never before in the history of the country did the president acknowledge the demands of the ethnic communities and promise to find the solution. I personally think that’s a massive historical breakthrough. But of course words are easy but the difficult thing is to start negotiations.

 

The next step in Myanmar is to make the ceasefire work and also to start real political dialogue. In fact since the end of last year, the Myanmar army (the army before was a little bit sitting on the sidelines waiting to see), has been very closely involved in the negotiations for a settlement. This is very positive, because it’s very important for the peace process to have the army involved in the negotiations. It’s difficult to see an outcome which is sustainable if the army is not involved. But the army is quite hardline. Many of the demands of the ethnic groups that are agreed in principle by the president, the Myanmar army is not so willing to agree to this when it comes to the time of concrete settlement of the peace process. There is a kind of a deadlock at the elite level, between the armed groups and the Myanmar army. The army seems not willing to accept many of the demands of the armed groups. I think that’s not surprising. In the Philippines, the first agreement was reached in 1976… and now, 40 years later, a comprehensive agreement is achieved finally. In Myanmar, after two years, I think it is not surprising that things are still a long way to go. But the clock is ticking because there will be elections in Myanmar at the end of next year. In that context, there are questions about how can the current government really deliver at this process. Even if an agreement is achieved, will the new government next year really honor the commitment of the present government? That raises many interesting questions about who will be the future government of Myanmar. Now it is a military-backed government. After the 2015 elections, if the elections are free and fair, probably the government will be led by or have strong participation from the National League for Democracy, Aung Suu Kyi’s political party and so many people are asking whether this current military government can really deliver any settlement after 2015. At the same time the present government I believe, wants to find a settlement to the peace process. After 2015, if the government by then is led by Aung San Suu Kyi, she will have a long list of issues that she needs to address. She will have a very high level domestic and international legitimacy. It’s not clear though if her priority will be the peace process. In some ways, the ethnic groups want to get what they can now before 2015.

 

The other main point about Myanmar peace process that is very interesting for me is the peace process on the ground. What I have been discussing so far is the elite level negotiations. I am very privileged that because I did this for a long time, many of the armed groups that I knew for many years… the leaders of those groups are now negotiating with the government, with the army. I am privileged to have access to those discussions. But my work really is more on the ground because I think that there are at least two levels in the peace process. There is the elite level. There is also the reality of the peace process on the ground for conflict affected communities. For Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI), our work is not so much with the political negotiations but working with the armed groups and communities on the ground. I think that if the elite level negotiations are beginning to be deadlocked for reasons I just described, the peace process on the ground is even more important. One of the things I am working in Myanmar is how to support the government, the armed groups, and the communities to find projects that can make the peace process work locally in the ground, even if at the elite level, things are still deadlocked. That’s one of the aspects of the peace process in Myanmar that I would like to start a discussion today in relations to the Mindanao peace process.

 

The plight of Rohingya Muslims

It’s interesting nobody knows how many Muslims there are in Myanmar. Officially, three percent of the population of Myanmar is Muslim. I think the reality is much more than that, maybe ten percent. The politics of numbers is very important. There was a census conducted last month that hopefully will give some idea about the actual number of people that live in the country. But it can be explosive because probably the number of Muslims as I’ve said is around ten percent, that’s just a guess, but it’s more than three percent. When that information is released, it can really cause some backlash in Myanmar. The reason is because there is a very widespread prejudice against the Muslim community across Myanmar. I think we can say there are different Muslim communities in the country, particularly in urban areas. There are Muslim communities, many of whom came to Myanmar before the British colonial period but certainly during the British colonial period. In most towns and cities, there are traders in particular and others whose families 100 years ago or 200 years ago came from India, because at that time Burma was part of the British Empire.

 

In the northern states, there is a population of more than one million of Rohingya and really the Rohingya people in Myanmar have a very tough time. I have been to many conflict affected areas in Myanmar but the worst situation is the Muslim community of Rohingya because they are not recognized as citizens of the country. There is a big historical debate about where do the Rohingya come from, and when did they come. Did they already live in Burma before the British period? I think many of their ancestors came to live in Burma during the period of British Empire, some have come more recently. For me, that is interesting historically but kind of irrelevant. I think the one million Rohingya people living in Myanmar most of them or nearly all of them were born there, if their parents or grandparents came from Bangladesh or India, is not really relevant. To be consistent, and from a liberal position, I think people and communities must have the right to self-declare their name and identity and to have an ethnonym. We have Muslim community in northern Rakhine; the rest of the state has different ethnic groups, but mostly Rakhine ethnic groups. The Rakhine are Buddhist people, and many of their leaders are very much against recognizing the legitimacy of the Rohingya identity. To be honest, that kind of prejudice against the Rohingya and prejudice against Muslims is very widespread in Myanmar. Not everyone in Myanmar is violently against the Muslim communities. Of course, that is too simplistic. But there is a strong trend of Buddhist nationalist populist anti-Muslim violence. This was mostly suppressed during the military rule, but sometimes for the military government in the past, it was useful to allow some anti-Muslim violence to distract from the misgovernance of the country. Now in the two years of more open reforming government of Myanmar, this anti-Muslim violence has spread very widely. It’s very, very worrying. I think it’s the single biggest challenge facing Myanmar.

 

Similarities

We try to look at some of the similarities between the Myanmar and Mindanao peace processes and then some of the differences. We look at the similarities first:

 

In both countries, there is a struggle for self-determination by minority groups. In Myanmar, there is some religious aspect especially for Muslims as I’ve mentioned. But I know in Mindanao the Muslim identity of the Moro people is particularly important. In both countries, the majority – the Bama majority in Myanmar, and the Filipino majority in the Philippines – is associated by minority communities as being a dominate majority that is trying to assimilate minority groups. I think there are real similarities in the struggle for self-determination and the grievances of minority communities in Myanmar and Mindanao.

 

The second one is more of a question. In Myanmar, armed ethnic groups have strong economic agendas. I think for each of those 17 or 18 groups that I’ve mentioned, has legitimate and strong political agendas, real grievances, and strong support in the communities. But there is also personal, financial involvement. Many of the leaders of the armed groups have logging interests. In northern Myanmar, some of them are involved in drug business as well. It’s simple to say they are warlords. But it’s also too simple to say they are freedom fighters only. It’s a mixture of motivations. And it’s not surprising after 50 years of armed conflict to find that mixture of motivations.

 

In Myanmar, there were ceasefires between the government and many armed groups in the 1990s. These ceasefires gave some rest and some room for recovery to conflict affected communities which is very important to give a breathing space. But the previous government in Myanmar was not interested in negotiating a real political settlement and so the previous ceasefires in Myanmar were not successful. I know in Mindanao that there have previous attempts at settlement through the creation of the ARMM and the Tripoli Agreement. I’m not an expert on this but I understand these are not completely successful so I think there are some parallels there.

 

In Myanmar, armed groups get very limited international backing – a little bit from Thailand, a little bit from China historically, but low profile. Mostly, armed groups have to find their own source of income. That is why there are leaders of armed groups who are often involved in logging, in drugs, etc. More than that, the strength of the communities in Myanmar is really inspiring. And I can see that already after decades of conflict, with so many troubles the people faced, the resilience of communities, the love they have for each other, the strength that they have, it’s really an inspiring thing in Myanmar. I can see that’s also the case here.

 

Another similarity is the key that unlocked the peace process. In Myanmar, U Thein Sein, the new president who was elected in 2010 surprised many people by leading a reform process. I know the situation here is complex. I know the peace process in Mindanao started before the new president but I understand the current president of the Philippines has played quite a role in unlocking the way forward to achieve peace.

 

The ethnic nationalities areas in Myanmar are rich in natural resources. That’s also the case in Mindanao.

 

Many ethnic communities in Myanmar have lost land in Myanmar. Land grabbing is very common in the country. In the past, the Myanmar army confiscated land from villagers. In more recent years, agricultural, mining, gas and oil companies have been taking land from the villagers. Land as an issue of settlement is also key to the conflict in the Philippines.

 

In Myanmar, one of the things that is very inspiring in the last two years are communities recovering from conflict. In the southeast of the country where the ceasefires are working, many people tell me that their lives have been transformed. Many communities are much, much better than before the ceasefire. The freedom from fear, freedom to travel, and the space to start rebuilding their communities... it’s a very positive thing. I believe that this will be the case in Mindanao, that many communities will be experiencing the many benefits of peace.

 

But many things have not changed in Myanmar. Yes, they have peace, but still the livelihood is a huge challenge, how they can feed their families. There are still many examples of discrimination and prejudice among the majority community in relation to minority groups. The issue of drugs is becoming more serious in many ethnic areas with young people using amphetamine and heroin becoming more and more a problem after the ceasefire. With ceasefire people can travel more easily, so can drug dealers. Land issues are again and again coming up. There are many positive but there are also many worrying aspects of the peace process.

 

Another big similarity I think is the risk that the majority community will not understand and will not accept the peace process. In Myanmar, the government I think is sincere but there are many people in the Bama majority community who were never exposed to the realities of ethnic groups. They do not understand the suffering of ethnic groups. They do not understand the demands of ethnic groups. There is a danger that members of the majority community will reject the peace process. This happened before with the previous settlement in the Philippines. It’s different in many ways, but I understand the previous ancestral domain settlement [MOA-AD] was undermined. There is a risk again in the Philippines whether the agreement on the Bangsamoro will be finally agreed by [Congress] or the people of the Philippines.

 

In Myanmar, there is a lot of info about communities suffering from the armed conflict. But there are many ethnic minority people who are living in government controlled areas. The Myanmar government includes ethnic minority people in the government. I believe this is also the case in the Philippines. There are Moro people who are not part of the armed self-determination movement who have been in different ways involved in government over years. So it’s not black and white in terms of the position and identity of ethnic minorities.

 

In Myanmar, one of the big concerns is disarmament. For the government of Myanmar and for many international donors, they assume that after the political settlement is reached, the armed groups will disarm. In that case there is a need to find jobs for young men with guns. What will be the role of these armed actors after the political settlement? More than that, for many of the armed groups, they consider that they are legitimate representatives of their communities; they are not going away. The bigger armed groups in Myanmar consider that they will not disarm; they will continue to represent their community. They want to be included in a federal army of Myanmar. The donors and the government, I think, have not really understood this properly. This can be a problem later if there is a political settlement. The government and the donors will tell the armed groups, now you must disarm, the armed groups will say, no, you need to reform the Myanmar army to include the armed groups as part of the army. That is not being discussed at present. I think if the armed groups are not given some role in the future they can become criminal groups or they can go back to fighting in some areas.

 

There are also challenges faced by armed groups when they are transitioning into being local governments. In Myanmar, the armed groups are experts at guerilla fighting. They do have some departments like health, education, so they have some government structure but they do not have much experience really of governance. If the peace process is successful, if the armed groups are given a continued ongoing role as maybe local governments in ethnic areas, that will be a huge challenge for them because they do not have the experience of government, they do not have the skills of government. They will need capacity building; they will need support to transform their organizations from basically guerilla armies into local governance authorities. I believe this will be a challenge for the MILF in the Philippines as well.

 

Some contrasts

In the Philippines, the peace process is historically complex, but there is the idea of a Bangsamoro nation as one people but with different subgroups. In Myanmar it’s not so clear. There are many different ethnic groups in Myanmar, having different languages, different religions, living in different parts of the country. In the Philippines, the Bangsamoro people have been able to negotiate as one with the government. Of course I know there are complications, and there is some group that split from the MILF, but in principle the Bangsamoro is one. In Myanmar, many different groups find it very difficult to coordinate their activities. Related to that, the government of the Philippines is recognizing the Bangsamoro, the legitimate autonomous political demands of the Moro people. It’s a huge achievement. In Myanmar, we are not yet at that stage. The Myanmar government and army are willing to negotiate with the armed groups, but I think there is no recognition of the legitimate political authority of armed ethnic administrations. That’s a big difference.

 

This, you can say, is a hypothesis. This has something to do to with political culture. The Philippines has been a country historically open to international engagement.  In Myanmar, after more than 50 years of military rule, the government has a very narrow mindset, very suspicious of outside involvement – from China, India, from Britain which was the colonial power before. The Myanmar government has been very reluctant to allow any international involvement in the peace process, whereas in the Philippines, with the International Contact Group for example, there is much greater level of international involvement. In Myanmar for many centuries, the government has been very careful to defend itself against neighboring countries. This means of course that Myanmar armed groups are often based in neighboring countries. Several of the biggest Myanmar armed ethnic groups have bases in Thailand – at least historically they did have offices in Thailand – so they can go across the border into the neighboring country and get a little bit of escape from the conflict. Being in an island, that is not easy on the Philippines.

 

The armed ethnic groups in Myanmar have called very strongly for international involvement in the peace process. The armed groups would really like to have international mediation in the peace process but the government of Myanmar has refused. There is some advice maybe and some projects on the ground to support the peace process but there is no international involvement in negotiations, very different to the situation in the Philippines.

 

The International Monitoring Team (IMT), the civilian protection component… it seems to me that these are really important breakthroughs. There is nothing like this in Myanmar. Even the idea of allowing autonomy for ethnic communities is still in the early stages of negotiations. Here, there are a lot of discussions on the details of autonomy for the Bangsamoro, including revenue and wealth sharing arrangement.

 

This is again more like of a hypothesis. In Myanmar, armed ethnic groups control some parts of the country. In the past, they used to control more than 50 percent of the country, but they have been losing the civil war for many decades. Now, they have areas still under control, they have areas where they can control but they do not really control. My understanding, but this is something I have to research and get feedback, for the MILF it’s more interspersed with government areas. There are maybe less areas directly controlled and administered by the MILF, but MILF is present in many areas where the government is also present.

 

The last one is something we would like to discuss with you and something we would like to research: what is the role of foreign aid in the two different peace processes. In Myanmar, I think there are some positive examples of foreign aid, but to be honest I think there is a lot of bad aid in Myanmar. It seems to me there are examples of unhelpful support to the peace process and in Myanmar it’s only just starting so I think in the Philippines you will have more successful examples. I think you will be more useful to compare the two.

 

I hope there can be some learning that is useful for Mindanao from this comparison. I think the peace process in Mindanao is further down the track than the peace process in Myanmar so I’m sure there will be things to learn from Mindanao that will be useful for Myanmar. At the same there will be things to learn in Myanmar that will be useful for Mindanao and the Bangsamoro.