CHAPTER THREE
BURMA: MILITARY INTERVENTION AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITARIAN DOMINATION


Introduction: The Politics of the State and the Military in Burma  
         Military rule began in Burma in 1962, and was dominated by Ne Win (Thakin Shu Maung[1]) until the "people’s power" uprising of 1988.  This was bloodily supp-ressed by the military, which has remained in power to the present.  In this chapter, because of the prolonged presence of the military in politics and the important role it has played in shaping the contours of state-society relations and the political land-scape, the examination of the phenomenon of military intervention will go beyond the conceptualization of it as a response to crises, implicitly connoting limitations to the intrusion of the military into politics.  Military intervention will be analyzed as one intertwined with the reorganization of power, the reconfiguration of state structures, and the re-ordering of state-society relations. 
         As mentioned in the preliminary chapters, military intervention occurs in complex, diverse historical, socio-economic, and political settings, and is triggered by diverse events and factors.  Soldiers are motivated to intervene by a mix of factors -- in addition to a situation of "praetorian" politics characterizing the politics of many Third World countries.  This is a situation where groups, including the military, participate directly in politics.  Although politics in Burma was (and is) praetorian, the military has not -- unlike its Thai counterpart -- intervened frequently.  It has intervened only three times -- indirectly in 1958, then in 1962, and 1988.  But, as will be discussed, it has dominated the political landscape and has been pivotal as the power base of its chief and ruler, Ne Win,  in establishing and maintaining a harsh military-authoritarian order for over two decades, and it still dominates politics and the state up to the present. 
         The military in Burma has its roots in the politics of a global war.  Its leaders, were politicians first and foremost.  They were "Thakins" -- members of a nationalist movement, the Dobama Asi-Ayone (or Dobama, "We Bama"[2] movement) -- who became leaders and officers in a series of nationalist armies created by the Japanese during World War II.  The world-view of these military leaders -- the military Thakins -- was shaped by their Dobama creed, with its highly statist and authoritarian ideals.[3]  The military Thakins have viewed themselves, for reasons which will be dis-cussed, as much more than armed servants of the state.  In their view, they fought almost singlehanded against both the British colonizers and the Japanese invaders and they won independence.  After independence, they did not intervene in politics until 1958, although they were extensively involved, as were their Indonesian counterparts, in non-military roles. 
         The military Thakins, like their counterparts in Indonesia, were not happy with the post-independence state, the Union of Burma, dominated by the AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League), a political front of the Thakins.  The new state was more or less democratically organized and comparatively inclusive from a polit-ical and ethnic standpoint.[4]  It was not in keeping with the Dobama creed which they adhered to.  Nonetheless, in the first decade of independence, the military Thakins, as officers of the armed forces, the Bama Tatmadaw,[5]  defended the AFPFL state and civilian Thakin power-holders against challengers, also armed (a legacy of major World War II campaigns fought in Burma) -- as will be discussed.[6]   In defending the state in a "internal war" situation, and undertaking "national security" tasks, the military in Burma, as in Indonesia, gained much political leverage and, in time, grew into a powerful, quite autonomous center within the state. 
         In 1957, when the AFPFL, ruling party, split into two camps and many cliques, the door was opened for soldiers to enter politics.  "Young Turk" Brigadiers in the military stepped in as "caretakers" in 1958, to "save" the country from splitting -- as had the ruling party -- into two, but returned to the barracks in 1960.  As will be examined, the first military's foray into politics was not led by the military’s chief, Ne Win, but by "Young Turk" Brigadiers who placed their chief, Ne Win, as head of a military caretaker government.  Quite uncharacteristically -- to judge from his later performance -- Ne Win chose to rule as a constitutional military caretaker.  Elections were promised for 1960.  Even though the AFPFL (Stable) faction favored by the military was humiliated in these elections, the military kept its pledge -- given by its chief, Ne Win -- to return to the barracks. 

         In 1962, the military, unified by Ne Win -- after the purge of most "Young Turks" Brigadiers prominent in the military-caretaking government -- stepped dramat-ically onto the political stage.  This time, it was led personally by Ne Win, now the undisputed leader, and he meant business.  As will be discussed, he proceded to re-organize political power in an authoritarian direction.  Like Sarit in 1958 (in Thai-land), he abrogated the 1947-1948 Constitution; abolished parliament; banned political parties; detained the Prime Minister, U Nu, cabinet members, the Chief Justice, Members of Parliament, leaders of non-Bama ethnic segments (especially of the Shan), politicians (both of the left and the right political spectrum), and so on; closed down papers and imposed censorship and, just three months after the coup, had a number of protesting Rangoon University students killed.  In contrast to Sarit and Indonesia's Suharto, Ne Win decreed a "socialist" economy, and set up a "socialist," one-party, military-authoritarian order around the BSPP, with himself as supreme leader. 
         Ne Win’s military-run Lanzin,[7] or BSPP (Burmese Socialist Program Party) state, was well in line with the authoritarian, nationalist-socialist Dobama creed.  He reorganized political power and the order of state and society in ways that shut out not only the population at large, but also most non-military (or civilian) elites, both bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic, from the political arena and limited their access to the state.  Laws instituted to promote and protect the "Burmese Way to Socialism" prohibited the masses from engaging in private economic activity, causing them enormous economic hardship -- again markedly unlike the economic paths chosen by military-authoritarian regimes in Indonesia and Thailand. 
         In 1988, owing in large part to the extreme hardships associated with "socialist" economic failures and the monopolization of political and economic resources by the military, Ne Win’s state "of soldiers, for soldiers, by soldiers" was confronted and challenged by popular forces in a country-wide, urban "people’s power" uprising.  Seemingly invulnerable, the BSPP state nonetheless collapsed almost overnight.  The power base of the "old" regime, the military, did not collapse, however.  It was still held together by Ne Win’s authority, or by fear of the leader.  This, together with fear of popular retribution that might await them, spurred the military to carry out a bloody coup to re-establish military-authoritarian rule, and restore the status-quo ante and with it, the military's dominant place.  This time, the military -- represented by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) -- claimed it would hold onto power only to restore law and order and promote free-market economic development.  Nearly a decade later, it still rules at gunpoint. 

State and Society in Burma: A Brief Overview 
         I stated in the theoretical framework that the military intervention in politics and the reconfiguration of the state-society order are closely linked.  As a point of departure in the examination of the military as an armed political actor involved in the politics of the state, a brief survey of the nature of state orders and state-society relations in Burma follows.  Because this inquiry focuses on military intervention in "modern" states, the older Burmese "kingdoms," though interesting in themselves, will not be considered.  Suffice it to say, with Renee Hagesteijn, that the "kingdoms" in what we now know as Burma, Indonesia, and Thailand -- and in Southeast Asia generally -- were non-territorial "states," where rule and dominance was articulated in a personalistic, non-institutionalized way.  These were systems based on shifting, unstable relations between supra-regional lords ("kings") and regional lords (tributaries), and among the "kings" themselves.[8]   Strictly speaking, there was no "state" in the modern sense – only structures of domination based on, and moderated by, patrimonial bonds.  The ruled -- "society" -- had no say in politics or the affairs of "state," nor much protection from the rulers and their officials and favourites.[9] 

         The genesis of the Burmese state in its modern form lies in the economic expansion of the West and its political by-product, colonialism.  It is a classic case of the flag inevitably following trade, as John Furnivall notes.[10]  Over time, "planting the flag" became a larger project involving the reorganization and restructuring of pre-capitalist, agrarian societies, and the erosion of their political and socio-cultural "superstructures."  This led to the "modernization" and "rationalization" of politics and governance to ensure a smooth ride for capitalism.  Furnivall’s comment that the tropics were "colonized with capital" might be reworded as " colonized with capital, for capital."[11]  The establishing of European colonies changed the colonized entities in two main ways.  Old "kingdoms" were transformed into "modern" territorial, political-administrative units along Western lines.  Also, colonial methods of man-agement founded on notions of market rationality, commercial efficiency, and so on, forcibly imposed on "native" societies a European-capitalist universalizing hegem-ony.[12]  Despite Robert Taylor’s view -- influenced by nationalist rhetoric, perhaps -- that Burma could have modernized without colonialism, British colonial rule did bring about modernization.[13]  
         British rule in Burma was relatively short, lasting from 1885 to 1942.[14]  But with the annexation of 1885, change was rapid and irreversible.  The British broke the cycle of "anarchy and conquest"[15] and installed a more or less modern state and structures.[16]  In keeping with the "modernity" of this enterprise, there was a gradual shift in Burma’s political status, until it became in the 1930s a distinct political entity -- Ministerial Burma -- albeit one still under the imperial flag.[17]  

         In the way the British reorganized political power in colonial Burma, we can discern some rather clear democratic features.  From the 1920s onwards, there exist-ed intermediary institutions, associations, and procedures that allowed societal forces to participate in politics and even to set themselves up in opposition to the state.  Those who participated in the open political arena in opposition to British colonial rule from the 1930s onwards, were the young Thakins.   
         Referring back to the discussion in the theoretical framework of the ways polit-ical power is organized to yield authoritarian or democratic outcomes, it can be said that the colonial state in Burma was authoritarian and quite autonomous from society, in that it was foreign-imposed and ultimately responsible to London.  The Governor, for example, was "above politics" and could not be removed by the legislature, introduced in Burma from the 1920s onwards.[18]  State officials likewise stood apart from society politically and socially, further insulating the state from society. 
         On the other hand, state officials were public servants in the real sense of the word.  They were forbidden to be closely involved (or interfere) in politics or to use their office to advance their personal preferences.  T

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he state, in other words, was gen-erally non-malleable vis-à-vis officials’ private agendas.  In this sense, the autonomy of the official class, from the Governor downwards, vis-à-vis both society and the state was moderated by legal-rational bureaucratic norms and the rule of law.  Also, the gradual introduction of a more or less open, somewhat democratic political arena and a representative-legislative sphere from the 1920s onward, as noted, meant that the autonomy of the colonial state -- and its officials -- was moderated by their malleability by societal forces. 

         The British may have been laying the foundation for Burma to emerge event-ually as a liberal-democratic polity -- a dominion of the empire over which the sun never sets.  As Taylor notes, the British "for reasons associated with imperial policy in India, had begun to transfer power and authority to Burmese politicians in a rather major way under the last pre-war constitution", based on a system of parliamentary rule and politics.[19]  The sunset in fact came quite rapidly, however.  The colonial state disappeared at the point of Japanese bayonets in 1942.  Nonetheless, when Burma gained its independence, the new rulers -- the moderate Thakins, led by Thakin Aung San -- chose to install a democratic state, based on the system of parl-iamentary politics and government.  Democracy lasted for a decade, until the AFPFL state was displaced in 1962 by the authoritarian order dominated by the military and its chief, General Ne Win. 

A Decade of Democracy: The State of the Moderate Thakins, 1948-1958 
         Power in post-war Burma did not devolve into the hands of the "old time" pol-iticians -- U Saw, Sir Paw Tun, U Ba Pe, U Pu, and so on -- who had been "trained" and were experienced in the ways of parliamentary politics and governance.[20]  It fell into the hands of the Thakins.  They were politicized young men who emerged in the 1930s as extreme and impatient nationalists.  They were the product of a time when the world was gripped by a severe economic depression; when anti-capitalist sentiments were as strong as nationalist ones, not only in the world’s peripheral regions but in Europe itself.  In Burma, the global depression resulted in the only peasant rebellion of any note in colonial Burma -- the rebellion of Saya San, now hailed as the foremost Bama national hero.[21] 
         The Thakins -- from whose ranks sprang the military Thakins -- were mostly from the "educated" (pyin-nya-tat) sub-stratum.  They were inspired by Saya San, by "past glories" of the Bama lu-myo (race),[22]  and as well by Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and other Western figures.  They were politicized, too, by the dismal prospect of employment in the lower ranks of the colonial bureaucracy, serving the imperial power as school-teachers and clerks.[23]  It was these men who shaped Burma’s destiny.  To name only the most prominent, they included Aung San (later, Bogyoke or General), Maung Nu, Than Tun, Soe, Ba Swe, Kyaw Nyein, Shu Maung (later General Ne Win), and Aung Gyi, Tin Pe, and Maung Maung (all top military brass in later years).

         They called themselves thakin ("lord" or "master," a form of address used towards Europeans).  They belonged to the Dobama Asi-Ayone, the Dobama, "We Bama," movement.[24]  Their platform was independence, and their version of nation-alism rested on negative sentiments -- anti-White, anti-foreign, anti-capitalist.  They rejected liberal democracy, espoused a foggy notion of "national" socialism, and held to a vague vision of a "golden past" that depicted the Bama as a conquering master race (lu-myo), which dominated and ruled over other lesser lu-myo, until it was defeated by the British, and its kingdom disembered. 
         As it was spelled out in 1941 by Aung San (then an obscure supplicant in Tokyo), the Dobama creed aspired to "a strong state ... [as] in Germany and Italy, [of] only one nation, one state, one party, one leader."  It would be a state without parliamentary opposition or the "nonsense of individualism".[25]  In Josef Silverstein’s view, Aung San later repudiated the authoritarian statism attributed to him.[26]  None-theless, like their nationalists counterparts in Indonesia, most Thakins retained the authoritarian, or non-democratic, notion of state-society order.  The Communist Thakins (Than Tun and Soe), for example, aspired to an authoritarian Leninist-Stalinist state.  The AFPFL itself, consisting mostly of moderate Thakins, aspired to rule for forty years.[27]  The military Thakins under Ne Win established a military-"socialist" authoritarian state between 1962 and 1988.  Ne Win’s successors are now attempting to establish an authoritarian "capitalist" state. 

         Despite its authoritarian, unitary orientation, the Dobama was actually a loose-ly structured political front, composed of shifting cliques and factions, headed by leaders with diverse and changing beliefs.[28]  Among its leaders, some in time became "moderate socialists," like Thakin, later General, Aung San, and Thakins Nu (later U Nu), Ba Swe, and Kyaw Nyein, to name a few.  Then there were staunch Marxists like Thakins Soe, Than Tun, Ba Hein, and Thein Pe Myint, along with rightwing nationalists such as Thakins Ba Sein, Tun Ok, and Shu Maung (Ne Win).  The result was much jockeying for dominance among Thakin groups and leaders. 
         The fortunes of war and politics determined that some became ministers, "national" leaders, and high officials, first in the Japanese-sponsored "independent state" during the war years (1943-1945), and later in post-independence Burma.  Leftist-communist Thakins, lost out in the power struggle on the eve of independen-ce.  They ended up in the jungle, fighting as rebels and revolutionaries.  The military Thakins commanded assorted "armies" during the war,[29] and some of them later became senior officers in the Tatmadaw, and some of them and their "successors", have been in command also of the state since 1962.  

         The AFPFL emerged after the war as a formidable force.  It was another broad nationalist front organized by Aung San against the Japanese, which he dominated.  Its members established themselves in the structures of power (left vacant after the British retreat from Burma).  At the time, Aung San also commanded the loyalty of military Thakins, some of whom the British had incorporated into the reformed Burma Army.  He also headed a militia grouping, the Pyithu-Yebaw (PVO: People’s Volunteers Organization), which was in effect the AFPFL’s private army.[30] 
         It was fortunate for the AFPFL that Japan delivered a death blow to British power and prestige in Asia.  When combined with the war’s realignment of global power, Britain’s parlous postwar condition, and the decision to quit India, there was virtually no possibility of the British reimposing their rule.  The years 1945 to 1947, then, were a time to choose a successor to the colonial power.[31]  Thanks to Aung San’s pragmatism and political acumen,[32] the war-weakened condition of other elite segments,[33] and the undesirability of the left-communist Thakin alternative, the transfer of power to Aung San and moderate Thakin forces was all but inevitable.  The transfer of power was orderly and peaceful, in contrast to events in Indonesia which will be discussed in the next chapter. 

         As "moderate socialists," AFPFL powerholders, like "socialists" counterparts in Indonesia, opted for democracy and parliamentary government, while retaining their socialist goals.  Beset by erstwhile comrades -- communist Thakins and their allies -- contesting their rule, and not strong enough to stand alone, they had no choice but to take the accommodative -- i.e., a more politically and ethnically inclus-ive -- path chosen by Aung San (assassinated in July 1947).  It was led this time by U Nu as Prime Minister.[34]  The AFPFL state was thus out of step with the more "revolutionary," ethnocentric, and authoritarian creed of the Dobama movement, to which the military Thakins (or Thakins in the armed forces) clung. 

         The state’s structure was decentralized to a degree in the wake of the 1947 Panglong Agreement signed by Aung San and the Yawnghwe chaofa (prince), Sao Shwe Thaike, and later the first Union President, along with other non-Bama leaders.  In keeping with the 1948 Constitution, based in part on the Panglong Agreement, non-Bama states enjoyed some political-administrative autonomy.  Each non-Bama state had its own government, legislature, and its own administrative setup.  In this sense, the AFPFL state was ethnically inclusive in that the rights and autonomy of larger non-Bama ethnic segment were recognized and respected, in principle at least. 
         The recognition of ethnic diversity, or ethnic inclusiveness, went against the military's notion of national unity which is one that is based on, as discussed in the theoretical chapters, the notion of "one-ness", or the absence of conflicts (and diss-ent, or even differences).  Likewise, the military in Burma subscribed to the Dobama's version of national unity premised upon the claimed historical dominance or hegemony of the Bama race ("nation"), or the submission of all non-Bama segments to the notion of nationhood based almost exclusively on Bama ethnicity.  
         However, although the non-Bama states were "autonomous", they were subordinated to the government of Bama Pri-Ma (the Bama mother-state), which was concurrently the government of the union:  there did not exist what one might describe as a federal government.  The quasi-federal/semi-unitary arrangement was a compromise that satisfied the moderate Thakins’ need to claim they had "recovered" all territories which were "lost" when the British administered the non-Bama areas as separate entities.[35]  On the down side, however, it did not satisfy in particular the military Thakin, who viewed the quasi-federal arrangement as detrimental to unity.  At the same time, many non-Bama saw the "union" as a Bama ploy to "Burmanize" them and destroy their "national" identity.[36] 

         On the whole, the AFPFL state was, in the way power was organized, democ-ratic in form and to a degree in content.  It sought the institutional separation of the state, government, and powerholders, and kept open the political arena.  There were many different and competing power centres, interest groups, and political parties, with one of the latter, the AFPFL, winning elections and exercising power.  The ability of AFPFL leaders, especially U Nu, to maintain this complex state-society configuration in a more or less democratic environment for about fourteen years, despite extreme praetorian conditions and regular rebellions, is impressive.[37] 

         To appreciate just how impressive, it should be noted that on assuming power, the AFPFL was everywhere challenged, and severely wounded by the loss of its most vital asset, Aung San.  His death weakened the AFPFL’s cohesion as his charisma had cemented it.  With Aung San went the AFPFL’s hold on the majority of the milit-ary Thakins, both in the armed forces and in the party’s private "army," the Pyithu Yebaw (PVO).  Thakin officers in three of the four Bama "class" battalions[38] defected to the communist Thakins, as did the PVOs.  An exception was Ne Win’s Fourth Burma Rifles, which included Maung Maung, Aung Gyi, Tin Pe, Sein Lwin, "Em-I" Tin Oo,[39] and others. 
         The AFPFL’s weakness emboldened communist Thakins to rebel soon after independence; their revolt lasted until the collapse of communism in the late 1980s.[40]  In turn, the many tasks which confronted AFPFL power-holders as rulers -- such as combating communism (or specifically, fending off communist Thakin rivals), keep-ing the country together, extending the reach of the state, repulsing foreign intruders, and so on -- resulted not only in their growing dependence on the military, but also in the expansion of the military's role and, correspondingly, its importance and political leverage.  It also reinforced the military's perception of itself as an indispensible guardian-protector and savior of the state.  This suggests the strengthening of factors that encourage, as discussed in the preliminary chapters, the military's propensity not only to intervene in politics, but also to "stay on", as theoretically discussed, to re-fashion the state and take on the task of ruling.  

         Next to the communist Thakins, the most serious challenge to the AFPFL state and power-holders was posed by the Karen.  In 1948, a year after independence, the fragile truce patched up with the Karen following the wartime BIA massacres of Karens dissolved into Karen-Bama clashes.  The "loyal" Karen who fought against the Japanese had, in a sense, won the war.  But in its aftermath, they were faced with the prospect of being ruled, from their standpoint, by "deceitful" Bama -- by those who had betrayed not only the British, but their own Japanese mentors as well.  Their position was desperate.  U Nu and Saw Ba U-Gyi, the top Karen leader, tried to defuse the tension, but they could not prevent the Karen rebellion, which continues at a reduced level still today.[41]  The Karen were joined in revolt by the Mon, Pa-O, and Kachin mutineers. 

         Compounding the AFPFL’s problems with internal challenges, Chiang Kai-Shek’s defeat in China brought KMT (Kuomintang) units flooding into Shan State.  There they laid the foundations for a multi-billion-dollar, global opium-heroin business which still flourishes.  Worse still, the military units dispatched into Shan State to counter the KMT ended up committing atrocities and sparking a Shan upris-ing in the late 1950s.[42] 

         Despite these many problems and internal wars, however, the AFPFL continued to respect the parameters of parliamentary politics.  They held and won elections in 1952 and 1956.  The 1956 vote was especially pivotal: the opposition, the National Unity Front (NUF, a moderate leftist front) won 45 percent of the popular vote and 47 seats.[43]  The NUF’s electoral gains convinced significant "underground" elements that parliament was a viable venue of politics.  In 1958, responding to U Nu’s "Arms for Democracy" program, they abandoned the armed struggle.[44]  By most indicators, it seemed democracy in Burma was well on the way to consolidation. 

         On the other hand, although the AFPFL Thakin were more or less able to main-tain a parliamentary, quasi-federal order until 1962, the commitment to democratic process that they displayed was rather ambiguous.  First, the AFPFL openly aspired to rule for forty years.  They stacked the administrative apparatus, the military, state agencies, and even municipal bodies with their supporters and clients.  This under-mined the state’s autonomy from key power-holders, undercut the institutional integ-rity of the bureaucracy, and eroded democratic norms. 
         Second, the AFPFL interfered in the politics of the non-Bama states.  Opposit-ion leaders and groups received help from the AFPFL, the military, or its intelligence services (MIS, the Military Intelligence Service).[45]  The military was particularly active not only in "mopping up" rebels, but in imposing its presence, via "pacificat-ion" marches into the rural areas to intimidate the non-Bama populace ("showing the flag", so to speak). 
         It also established garrisons, set up check-points, and in many areas took direct control of administrative functions.  For example, in areas put under martial law, the military set up a hierarchy of Security and Administrative Committees (SACs), head-ed by the local military commander.  The heads of the SACs, being military officers, held the balance of power vis-à-vis local civil officers, and reported to their superiors in the military chain of command.  Thus, in the non-Bama states, the power exercised by military commanders over-shadowed those vested in local officers, and even the constitutionally vested powers of the non-Bama state governments.[46]   Moreover, MIS personnel busied themselves with "rooting" out "secessionists", and terrorized the non-Bama populace, so as to dissuade them from even harboring the idea of secession.  The policy of "Burmanization" -- the central pillar of which was making Burmese (the Bama language) the official language -- predictably caused non-Bama much distress.  It gave rise to suspicions that the "Bama" government had a hidden agenda aimed at cultural genocide.  The apparent unwillingness or inability of the AFPFL to put a stop to atrocities by the Bama military further fuelled these suspicions. 

         Third, the AFPFL’s professed adherence to democracy was undermined by its socialist statism, as this was proclaimed in the 1947 Sorrento Villa Conference, enshrined in the 1948 Constitution, and reiterated in the 1952 Pyidawtha Plan.[47]  AFPFL socialism resulted in what one American analyst called a "socialist economy" based on grandiose, ideologically-driven planning.[48]  The implementation of some socialist policies, the rhetoric portraying capitalism and capitalists as evil, strength-ened the hegemony of this left-socialist world view.  It kept alive the Dobama’s creed of national-socialist authoritarianism, especially among military Thakins who, like soldiers in Indonesia and Thailand, were mistrustful of "disorderly" democratic politics.  The attitude of the military toward democratic politics in Burma reflects the observations made in the theoretical framework concerning the military's distrust of democratic politics, and its view of it as disruptive of national unity and encouraged social conflict.   

The First Military Foray Into Politics: The Military Caretakers, 1958-1960 
         Politics in any democratic polity are complex.  In a multi-ethnic state like Burma, it was all the more so.  Although the AFPFL Thakins were beset by armed rebellions from the start, they managed more or less to cope within the framework of parliamentary politics.  Democracy might have endured had they not split into the Stable (Swe-Nyein) and Clean (Nu-Tin) camps, with numerous additional cliques, in 1957-58. 

         The split stemmed from the fact that the AFPFL was a coalition of rival fact-ions led by AFPFL "bosses" like U Ba Swe, Kyaw Nyein, Thakins Tin, and Kyaw Tun.[49]  The split stemmed basically from competition between AFPFL factions (or party "empires" and party "czars") over the spoils of office and power, and jockeying among top leaders to get their respective loyalists appointed to strategic party posts.  Such intra-party conflicts are common to many political parties.  What made them deadly was that U Nu, regarded as standing above the factions, ended up joining the Clean camp.  The split paralyzed the government: all of the national and sub-national state machinery were filled by the AFPFL’s allies, clients, and supporters.  Anyone of importance was sucked into the fray: politicians, civil servants, mayors, editors, businessmen, even the third Union President – U Win Maung, a Karen.  With the ruling party and its member organizations split, the bureaucracy paralyzed, and even society-based institutions divided into Stable and Clean camps, it seemed the govern-ment and the state itself were in danger of splitting asunder. 

           In 1958, as the theoretical discussion of the previous chapters would predict, the military, feeling its privileged place in the state hierarchy threatened along with the state itself, intervened in the political sphere.  The military intrusion was led by "Young Turks" Brigadiers like Aung Gyi, Tin Pe, Maung Maung, Than Sein, Hla Myint, and others.  Well-informed Burmese with good military connections insist that the young Brigadiers who "persuaded" U Nu to hand power over to Ne Win -- did so without Ne Win's order or direct involvement.[50]  As such, the intervention took on the complexion of an "aid to civil power" operation by the military at the request of the Prime Minister, to restore stability and prevent the break-up of the country.  It did not lead to the reorganization of political power -- which is in agreement with the theoretical discussion where I stressed the importance of a military strongman-unifier, who must transform the military into a cohesive political instrument.  
        The official -- and U Nu's and the military's -- version is that U Nu, worried by the party split which affected the whole country, especially the elite segments in government, politics, even societal associations, made use of a clause in the const-itution allowing for the appointment of a non-MP to the government, to invite the armed forces chief, Ne Win, to assume temporary control.[51]  There was, officially, no "coup".  However, there were troops and armoured cars posted at strategic points in Rangoon for several weeks, and there were as well checkpoints manned by soldiers in full battle gear on the outskirts of the capital, again, for several weeks.[52]  The fact of the matter may lie in-between those who believe that the Brigadiers staged a coup, though indirectly, and the official version. 
        The situation was complicated by the struggle -- at its height then -- between two ruling factions, and Aung Gyi was close to U Ba Swe, the co-leader of the Stable faction that failed to oust U Nu from government.  Moreover, U Nu's decision to "invite" Ne Win in as a caretaker was made soon after a visit by Maung Maung and Aung Gyi -- but not much is known, up to now, about what was actually said and what transpired.  The decision to hand over power to the military was U Nu's, and his alone.  It came as a surprise to most cabinet members.[53]  According to Richard Butwell, U Nu had no choice but to agree to hand over power: the choice was between inviting the military to power, or "inviting" a coup.[54]  It was, as Dr. Ba Maw, a very prominent Burmese former mentor of the Thakins, put it, a "coup by consent".[55] 
        Soldiers ruled as caretakers for two years.  Compared with the second intervention in 1962, though, they performed well.[56]  Especially praised was the encouragement of capitalist development, as provided for in the 1959 Burma Investment Act.  It offered domestic and foreign investors a 20-year guarantee against nationalization; looser restrictions on the importation and repatriation of capital and earnings; and exemptions for new investors from custom duties and taxes for three years.  All of this was drastically reversed in 1962 -- when Ne Win gained undisputed control of the military and was able to reorganize the state in accordance with his "Burmese socialist" agenda.[57]  
        The soldiers-caretakers launched "annihilation" operations against insurgents, and as in Thailand after Sarit's takeover, soldiers cracked down on "subversives" (ethnic activists and "communists"), black marketeers, price-gougers, street-hawkers, slum-dwellers, squatters, and stray dogs.  They cleaned up the streets and gave build-ings a fresh coat of paint.  They also waged a relentless psychological war against leftist and communist philosophies via the National Solidarity Association (NSA),[58] a creation of the military’s psychological-warfare department.  The thrust of this initial military intrusion into politics was typical of the anti-communist, "can-do" mentality operative among Burmese soldiers, as in Thailand under Sarit, who seized power around the same time.[59]  The military appeared to be "getting the job done," building the state and the nation, and setting the stage for a free-market "take-off" by liberating the economy of the AFPFL’s "socialist" shackles.
        What is of particular theoretical relevance about this first military intervention is how different it was from the second.  It came more in the form of an "aid to the civil power," rather than a seizure of power.  Parliament was only suspended; political parties were not banned.  In fact, Ne Win insisted on obtaining a parliamentary mandate to rule as head of the caretaker regime.[60]  The administrative machinery of the state was neither seized nor subordinated to the military.  And, importantly, the military caretakers chose to recognise (in form at least) the autonomy of the non-Bama states, as constitutionally provided.  In the appointment of new heads for these states, for examples, they accepted candidates chosen by the state legislature.  Unlike in 1962, there was almost no change in ministerial-administrative personnel at the state level.[61] 
        Further, as promised, Ne Win held an election in 1960, and handed power over to U Nu and his Union Party (formerly the Clean AFPFL), which had won a landslide victory.  Ne Win thus gained fame as a "no-nonsense" statesman-soldier.  He so impressed the outside world with his competence and professionalism that he was nominated for the prestigious Magsaysay prize, which he declined.[62]  His image as a constitutional, professional soldier was further boosted when he dismissed the "Young Turks" who figured prominently as military caretakers -- Maung Maung, Kyi Win, Aung Shwe, Tun Sein, Chit Khaing, and others.  This also restored U Nu’s trust in Ne Win.[63]  Lulled by a sense that parliamentary democracy had been restored, legislators, politicians, and community-communal leaders went about their business as usual.  No one then realized the magnitude of the change in the balance of power at the heart of the state that the AFPFL split had brought in its train.  Surprise was thus the order of the day when, in the pre-dawn hours of March 2, 1962, the military seized power.  Soldiers have remained as "permanent" actors in politics ever since.
        An explanation of the differences between the first and second military inter-vention may lie in the actions that Ne Win took following the announced handover of power in 1958.  He insisted on being "elected" by the parliament in October 1958, to effect a legal transfer of power for a year.  Again in September 1959, parliament was convened to extend his tenure for a year further.  His concern for constitutional legal-ity can be interpreted as actions of a politically unambitious professional soldier, or alternatively as those of a military chief unprepared to try to run the country -- the former interpretation contradicts his later actions. 
        Knowledgable Burmese maintain that the Tatmadaw was then dominated by "Young Turk" Brigadiers, who were ambitious, capable, and did not hold Ne Win in awe, as would those who followed them.  They believe that had Ne Win been in undis-puted control in 1958, it is likely that military rule would have lasted much longer.[64]  That this is likely the case is reinforced by Ne Win's dismissal, before his 1962 coup, of the "Young Turks" who were prominent in the caretaker regime, and the dismissal soon after of Aung Gyi, one of the masterminds of the 1958 "handover", and leader of a strong Tatmadaw faction. 
        The analysis indicates support for the theoretical observation advanced earlier that effective, prolonged military intervention that results in the reorganization of political power depends to a large extent on the military being unified by a strongman; and if an undisputed strongman is lacking, the military will most likely restore civilian rule -- if only temporarily. 
        As shown, military intervention in 1958 did not lead -- as it would in 1962 -- to the reorganization of political power and the state.  Ne Win had not at the time become what he was to become two years later: the undisputed, military strongman-unifier.  Therefore, upon being handed power in 1958 by the "Young Turks", Ne Win -- most uncharacteristically -- played the role of a professional, constitutional leader and reluctant military ruler.  He saw to it that elections were held in 1960 as he promised, and led his soldiers back to the barracks. 

Ne Win’s Bama Tatmadaw: The Power Centre Within the State 
        Although the military seized complete control of the state only in 1962, its history is inextricably linked to politics.  In this context it is worth noting that the notion of the military as a specifically-organized coercive arm of the state, subordin-ated to the civil power and led by an apolitical officer corps, is quite novel in many Third World polities.  As Dorothy Guyot notes, the Tatmadaw was at its inception a "political movement in military garb": its founders and leaders -- the military Thakins -- were politicians first and foremost.[65]  
        The Tatmadaw’s history is shaped primarily by politics.  It originated in the plan of a Japanese intelligence officer, Colonel Keji Suzuki (Burma’s "Lawrence of Arabia"), to raise a guerrilla force that would disrupt traffic on the Burma Road, an important logistic life-line of the Nationalist Chinese government in Chungking.  It was with this in mind that his agents contacted Bama politicians such as Dr. Ba Maw, Thakins Tun Ok, Ba Sein, and even U Saw (Prime Minister of Ministerial Burma from 1940 to 1942).[66]  The irony is that Aung San, the "father of the Tatmadaw," was only vaguely aware of these links.  He and a companion were in fact fugitives, stranded in Amoy, their plans to seek the help of the famed Eighth Route Army getting nowhere.  When Suzuki learned of Aung San’s whereabouts, the latter was picked up and taken to Tokyo.  In 1941, he returned secretly to Burma, hastily recruiting some Thakins (now known in the nationalist myth as the "Thirty Comrades'') for military training on Hainan island.  Among these was Thakin Shu Maung (Ne Win).[67] 
        But the plan for a Burmese guerrilla force was shelved when Japan invaded Burma following its attack on Pearl Harbor.  Still, Suzuki managed to raise a motley armed band for his Thakin "officers".  Their first army, the Burma Independence Army (BIA), marched "victoriously" behind Japanese columns and "liberated" the country.[68]  In reality, though, the BIA fought only rarely; its chief Aung San admitted that he led no units, into combat or otherwise, but rather tagged along as Suzuki’s staff member.[69]  Some BIA units, however, did attack the Karen (loyal to the British), and committed various atrocities and massacres. 
        After a few months, the Japanese disbanded the BIA, now filled mostly with new Thakin recruits, many of whom were little more than drifters.  Thereafter, the Burma Defence Army (BDA) was formed from selected BIA members.  In 1945, when Aung San and the Thakins turned on their Japanese sponsors shortly before the Allied victory (after Upper Burma was recaptured), the army was renamed the Burma Nation-al Army (BNA).  The BNA was recognized by the British as an anti-Japanese guerrilla force, and again renamed as the Patriotic Burmese Force (PBF).[70]  This, too, was subsequently disbanded, with selected members and officers incorporated by the British into four Bama battalions of the re-formed Burma Army.
        The above account of the various "armies" shows that from 1942 to 1948, mil-itary Thakins commanded or served in four differently-composed and -organized forces.  Only a handful served in all of them; of these, only a few served in the post-1948 armed forces.  As such, the conventional view of the Tatmadaw as a direct descendant of the "armies that fought for independence" is inaccurate.  The current Tatmadaw is essentially the child of Ne Win and the Fourth Burma Rifles who stood by the AFPFL in 1948.  Nonetheless, the military has persisted with its claim that it expelled both the British and the Japanese, "winning" Burmese independence, and therefore it is the rightful guardian of the state and nation.[71]
        But there is no questioning the debt AFPFL power-holders owed to the military Thakins in the first fragile years of independence.  It was the Tatmadaw, its ranks reinforced by Chin, Kachin, and Shan recruits, that blunted the offensive capabilities of both the communist Thakins and the Karen.  In this it was assisted by friendly governments, including the United Kingdom, India, and the British Commonwealth.[72]  
        Even though the military quickly became an autonomous centre of power, one crucial to the survival of AFPFL Thakins prior to the 1958 AFPFL split, its chief and future strongman-ruler was apparently not very engaged politically.  Ne Win led the high life of wine, women, and pleasure.  He attended the races regularly; travelled abroad for the nightlife and horses; was involved in scandals with European callgirls and local starlets; broke up the marriage of Daw Khin May Than, a prominent social-ite, and then married her, though he was already married [73]  As such, he commanded little in the way of public esteem, and almost no Thakin superior – not U Nu, not Kyaw Nyein, not Ba Swe – thought of him as a threat or rival. 
        On the other hand, top brass such as Aung Gyi, Maung Maung, and Tin Pe, those who believed in the Dobama creed and the founding myths of the military, resented the civilian Thakins.  In their view, those who had not risked their necks in the independence struggle, civilian Thakins and others now enjoying the "fruits of independence", were necessarily less capable, less patriotic, and "unrevolutionary."[74]   As true believers, they were unhappy with two main features of the AFPFL state. 
        One was its underpinnings of parliamentary democracy, which they saw, like their Thai and Indonesian counterparts, as a dangerously unstable system that would only hamper the state’s ability to perform its tasks.[75]  Accordingly, the Burmese military hardly welcomed the outcome of the 1956 elections, which gave the moderate-left NUF a full 45 percent of the votes.  The military was also deeply suspicious of U Nu’s "Arms for Democracy" program, which included the 1958 surrender of a number of rebel armies and their embrace of parliamentary politics.  Soldiers (and analysts like Frank Trager) viewed this as "crypto-communist" subversion, and saw the need for the military to step in and "save" democracy and the nation.[76]  For the military, the years of democracy under the AFPFL were years of incompetence, corruption, and weakness that demonstrated the inability of the state to counter the communist threat. 
        The other aspect of the AFPFL state that fuelled military disgruntlement was the semi-federal arrangement between the centre, the Bama mother-country, and the non-Bama states.  This constitutional arrangement was seen as encouraging "narrow" non-Bama nationalism.  In Taylor’s view, reflecting the military’s, it was of Western derivation, the creation of colonial pseudo-scholars.[77]  Likewise, the military did not view the 1961-1962 "Federal" movement to reform the constitution as a reflection of non-Bama confidence in the Union and democracy.  The movement was initiated and led by the governments of non-Bama states.  Its aim was to re-negotiate the terms of incorporation in the Union, and gain a more equitable share of power, particularly in terms of taxation and defence.  Defence was a thorny issue since the military, under the central government, was not in the least accountable to state governments and regularly perpetrated grave atrocities.  In essence, the non-Bama leaders wanted the union of co-equal states that Aung San and AFPFL leaders promised at the Panglong conference a year before independence.[78]  Instead the military saw the movement as a secessionist scheme of Shan princes led by Sao Shwe Thaike, the first Union Pres-ident and regarded as the co-creator (with Aung San) of the Union in 1947.[79]   
        The military’s growing disenchantment with the AFPFL state, and its wider distaste for democratic politics, was matched by its growth as an autonomous centre of power, a "state within a state."  First, military officers had usurped administrative-political power while conducting military operations in "insecure" areas of the non-Bama states and the Bama hinterland itself.  They exercised wide administrative powers as heads of the SACs, and enjoyed authority over regular civilian administrat-ors.  Second, the MIS, responsible for rooting out "enemies of the state," had grown very powerful thanks to its key role in the internal war.  It was accountable to Ne Win alone; he personally supervised its staffing and operations.  Third, not only was the military well-funded, and its members and their families well cared-for by the state;[80] but it had also become, by the mid-1950s, an economic powerhouse.  Its Defence Service Industry (DSI), headed by Aung Gyi, enjoyed non-profit status and ready access to foreign currency and investment capital (both foreign and domestic).  It was also exempted from all fees and customs duties.  Over time, it became an econ-omic empire dominating the "modern" sector – shipping, banking, imports-exports, hotels and tourism, and so on.[81] 
        The first military intrusion into politics, from 1958 to 1960, was a sign of things to come.  However, although the AFPFL split and the "caretaker" interlude signified a radical shift, with power flowing from the hands of civilian power-holders into the hands of soldiers at the very core of the state, few seemed to grasp the deeper implications.  After the 1960 elections, political actors continued to participate in "normal" politics, unaware of the vulnerability of the democratic arena itself.  Non-Bama leaders, mistaking U Nu’s popularity for strength, came up with the Federal movement to redress imbalances between the centre and states.  Worse still -- and foolishly, in hindsight -- U Nu went ahead with his most divisive election promise: making Buddhism the state religion.  The non-Buddhist segments of society, including Christianized Chin, Kachin, and Karen, rallied in protest.
        In politics, it goes without saying that what is "normal" depends on who defines what is "normal" and how it is defined.  For soldiers, whose vision of a "normal" politics is a hierarchical order managed by those who know best (as Manuel Garreton notes[82]), parliamentary politics was abnormal and dangerous, and promoted and exacerbated social conflicts.  Democratic politics in 1960-62 was decidedly "overheated."  U Nu appeared directionless and often disengaged, his party wracked by internal squabbling.  Widespread political disorder -- as perceived by the military -- gave it an opening to spring its political surprise on a March morning in 1962. 
        The analysis, above, highlights the observation in the opening chapters that military intervention is bound up with the the military's role in the state and its affairs, and that it is connected to its vision of how state-society relations is to be ordered and political power organized.  The military in Burma viewed itself as the creator-guardian and protector of the state, and this self-image was reinforced by a wide range of non-military tasks that it performed.  The military "saved" the AFPFL state from assaults on it by leftist-communist Thakins, and also fought the Karen (and their allies) who resisted being included in what they regarded as a Bama-dominated state.  It also undertook the task of "planting the flag" in the non-Bama areas, i.e., imposing the Dobama's vision of "national unity".  Its role was expanded when it undertook administrative responsibilities in "insecure" zones throughout the country.  It further became an economic powerhouse that dominated the modern sector of the economy, thanks to the DSI and Aung Gyi's dynamic leadership. 
        The military's expanded role and dominance that resulted, reinforced not only the military Thakins' self-image as guardians and protectors of the state, but also their dislike and distrust of democratic politics.  Likewise, they viewed the "Federal" movement as a threat to "national unity" and an attempt to dismember the country.  U Nu's poor performance after the 1960 elections and the protests against making Buddhism the official state religion, convinced the military Thakins that it was time to re-configure state-society relations and re-arrange the way power was organized. 

Ne Win’s Military-Socialist Authoritarian State, 1962-1988  
        Ne Win’s coup ended fourteen years of parliamentary politics.  It also trans-formed the status of the non-Bama states, from co-dependent and theoretically coequal entities to tightly-controlled units of a centralist state.  The new state order was one in which political, administrative, and legislative bodies at all levels were occupied and controlled by military officers responsible only to their superiors in the chain of command.  A politically closed, ethnically exclusive, highly authoritarian "socialist" state was imposed.  The state-society arrangement was classically authoritarian, with power concentrated in the hands of officials (i.e., military officers, in particular), politics shut down, and dissent forbidden.
        This second military intervention was clearly different in scope and direction.  This time it was led by Ne Win, now the undisputed strongman.  He not only dominated the armed forces, but had won his political spurs (along with international accolades) as a stern, effective military "modernizer" -- a leader who had outperform-ed the politicians.  Ne Win was prepared, indeed determined, to take sole charge of the state.  As Aung Gyi (second in the hierarchy in 1962) put it, "the Bogyoke" -- Ne Win himself -- "planned, manoeuvred troops, gave commands, and everything else."[83]  
        It has been suggested in the theoretical discussion that after the military captures the state, political centre of gravity shifts towards the one who unifies the military under his command and becomes the head of state.  In keeping with this prediction, Ne Win set about reorganizing political power to conform to his own agenda, founded in part on the Dobama creed: a centralized, authoritarian "socialist" order, to be achieved by "Burmese methods" and cast in a "Burmese mode."[84]  Once Ne Win ordained a "uniquely Burmese" path to socialism, Aung Gyi’s rival, Tin Pe – advised by Ba Nyein, Chit Hlaing, and a monk, U Okkata – concocted the doctrine of Anya-Manya Th’bawtra (the System of Correlation of Man and his Environment, or SCME), on which ''Burmese socialism'' was to be built.  Although touted as based on a non-Marxian "objective dialectical realism," it was in Moshe Lissak’s words, a "hazy elaboration," whose uniqueness rested on oversimplified generalizations of both socialist and liberal principles, and Buddhist principles as well.[85]  
        During the first few years of military rule, Ne Win and the Revolutionary Council (RC) seemed amply aware of their lack of legitimacy.  Undoubtedly, the killing of protesting university students on July 7, 1962, three months after the coup, contributed to the regime’s unpopularity, as did the demolition of the historic Rang-oon University Students Union building the very next day.[86]  The coup-makers had alienated the AFPFL, the only political machine with a nationwide reach, first by deposing U Nu, and second by refusing to share power with the Ba Swe-Kyaw Nyein camp.[87]  
        In an effort to improve its image, the RC made periodic overtures to the armed opposition.  In 1963, it invited Thakin Soe’s Red Flag communists and Thakin Than Tun’s White Flag communists (the BCP, later the CPB) for "peace talks."  These proved unproductive when it became clear that Ne Win was interested only in the rebels’ surrender.[88]  In 1968, Ne Win released U Nu, Ba Swe, Kyaw Nyein and other prominent political prisoners, and asked thirty-three of them to share their suggest-ions on national unity.  The majority recommended a coalition government, the restoration of an open political arena, and negotiations with armed rebels.  But Ne Win ignored the advice he himself had solicited.[89]  General amnesties were pro-claimed in 1963, 1974, and 1980, but were largely ignored by the rebels.[90] 
        The alienation from the regime of AFPFL leaders, civilian elites, and "under-ground" forces tells only part of the story, however.  Another important consideration were Ne Win’s characteristics as personal ruler.  He was an autocrat and a tyrant, as these terms are deployed by Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg:[91] an autocrat because he dominated the state completely and was able to prevent the emergence of rivals, and a tyrant because in addition to unrestrained power he also controlled the only viable instrument of rule – the military.[92]  Ne Win’s vision was of soldiers leading a vanguard party of the "uniquely Burmese" socialist revolution.  The very idea of an apolitical, professional military was dismissed by the Vice-Chief of Staff, Sun Yu, as "most harmful to the people."[93]  
        Ne Win's "new" order was one where the political sphere was encapsulated with a single, military-run vanguard party.  Reflecting the military’s aversion to democratic politics -- as suggested in the theoretical chapters -- the goal was to create "orderly politics" that denied participation to "unruly, divisive" elements.  Justificat-ion for the military’s monopolization of power was found in the idea that, because of its "historic" role and "sacrifices," only the military could serve as the tried and tested guardian of the nation. 
        The Revolutionary Council (RC), employing the state’s coercive capacity, set out to exclude most of society from the political arena.  It outlawed all political parties and organized groups; nationalized or shut down newspapers; imposed con-trols and censorship over all manner of publications; and imprisoned activists and politicians from the political right and left alike.  After clearing the political decks in this fashion, the RC then established a ruling party, the Mranmah Sosheilit Lanzin party, or BSPP.[94]  Its function, in theory, was to control the articulation of interests and to aggregate demands deemed acceptable; to manage political participation; to mobilize the population; and to oversee the work of the organs of state.
        In 1974, a constitution to enshrine the single-party state order was adopted after a symbolic plebiscite.  In accordance with the theoretical premise advanced earlier, the constitution signified a shift in the centre of political gravity towards the military strongman-ruler.  In form, the new order was a one-party edifice.  In line with the principle of democratic centralism, the BSPP, claiming to represent the luptha-prithu (working people), penetrated and controlled all executive, administrat-ive, legislative, and judicial bodies right down to the level of the township councils.[95]   In reality, however, the BSPP was a hollow shell.  Unlike Indonesia’s Golkar in which civilian bureaucrats and some civilians had a voice -- as will be discussed --  the organs of the BSPP were entirely controlled by military officers, beholden in turn to their military superiors.  This meant in practice that the military chain of command was the only structure of command and control in the country.[96]  The BSPP party and the constitutional hierarchy of party and state, subordinating the latter to the former, was a fiction concealing the hard fact of military rule and personal autocracy. 
        To prevent the party from ever challenging the military and Ne Win, it was kept on edge by frequent purges.  For instance, in 1974, when the Taze town party branch in upper Burma defiantly put forward its own men for elections to the local people’s council and parliament (Prithu-Hluttaw), all of its candidates and key cadres were arrested and dismissed.  In 1976-77, over 50,000 party members were purged following the firing of Defence Minister Tin U, who had gained considerable stature within the armed forces.[97]  And in 1977-78, over 100 Central Committee members and over a thousand party members were expelled when San Yu and Kyaw Soe received more votes than Ne Win in a Central Committee election.  Other measures included the dismissal of a BSPP official whenever there were signs that s/he was gaining influence within the party or with the population at large.  The BSPP was certainly not a vehicle of upward mobility, or even of "getting things done."  Nor was it intended to be.  Disempowered, kept off-balance, it failed utterly to gain autonomy and institutional integrity; it decayed and atrophied.  The BSPP became little more than a make-work project for baungbee-khyot, ex-military men, or a holding tank for military "misfits" – those who had displeased superiors, or sided with patrons who had lost out in court intrigues, or aroused Ne Win's suspicion.[98]   
        An even worse fate was visited upon civil servants.  Instead of running the state administrative and regulatory machinery, they became the "errand boys" of under-qualified military placed above them.  In this respect, Ne Win differs significantly from the Thai strongman-rulers and Indonesia’s Suharto, all of whom appreciated the bureaucracy’s importance to some extent at least, seeing it as a counter-weight to the military.  In Burma, by contrast -- as Maung Maung Gyi notes -- Ne Win reduced state agencies to medieval fiefdoms.  Civil servants lived by the "Three Don’ts" dict-um -- "Don’t perform, Don’t get involved, Don’t get fired" -- and the "Three Rules": "Go if Summoned, Do as Told, Never question Orders."[99]  As a consequence, the bureaucracy, like the party, withered.  It responded less and less to rational-legal norms, and increasingly to the "logic" of opaque, patrimonial military politics and intrigues. 
        The legislative branch fared no better.  The Prithu Hluttaw (parliament) and a hierarchy of people’s councils were never really invigorated.  The top brass selected the candidates, mostly former military men.  Ne Win, of course, stood at the zenith of this selection process.  "Legislators" acted out their roles according to scripts written by the military men in control of the assemblies.  In exchange, they could take advan-tage of various perks, including access to scarce goods that could be converted into small fortunes on the black market.[100]   
        With reference to the theoretical chapters of the new patterns of autonomy relations in military-authoritarian orders, the above analysis suggests the emergence in Burma of, as discussed, a highly-insulated and non-malleable order.  With the military dominating all state structures and intermediary institutions, and with societal associations banned, the BSPP state exhibited, as theoretically observed and predicted, a very high degree of autonomy vis-à-vis society, and society's autonomy from the state was thus severely circumscribed.  This was true to the extent that the state was inaccessible even to civilian officials in the administrative or BSPP (political) bureaucracy.  The pattern of autonomy relations that resulted was one in which the state was unresponsive not only to social forces, but to non-military officials and other elites as well.
        On the other hand, the BSPP state was not insulated from Ne Win and the military – in the sense that the state's institutions were highly malleable by Ne Win, and after him, by subordinate military power-holders, and in varying degrees, by military officers holding party or state positions.  In other words, the BSPP state was almost solely responsive to the preferences of the ruler and the military.  And being narrowly-based in this fashion, it was cohesive, and strong in its coercive capacity. 

Ne Win: Personal Rule and the Politics of Authoritarianism
        The BSPP Order, as Mya Maung puts it, was one where "an all powerful milit-ary elite [occupied] the top social layer, [with] some lesser elites clinging onto the coat tails of the military commanders, [while] simple folks survive[d] in the base layer as subscribers to the capricious laws and dictates of the military rulers."[101]  Notwithstanding the green uniforms at the top of the hierarchy, though, the military was neither all-powerful nor fully autonomous.  Rather, it was highly submissive toward and dependent upon one man.
        Like successful personal rulers in Thailand and Indonesia, Ne Win was a master at keeping his subordinates divided and mutually suspicious, and controlling potential rivals through regular purges.  One of his first actions after the 1962 coup was the purging of Aung Gyi, an entrepreneurially-minded potential rival, with Tin Pe providing help.  Next to go was Tin Pe himself, purged in 1968 with the aid of San Yu’s faction.  In 1976, with San Yu again on side and joined by "Em-I" (MIS) Tin Oo’s factions, the popular defense minister, Tin U, was purged.  In 1983, "Em-I" Tin Oo himself,[102] as a rising star and likely successor, was expelled, this time with the help of Sein Lwin and Ne Win’s daughter, Sanda Win, a major in the medical corps.[103] 
        These purges at the top meant that hundreds in the patrimonial chain, at times a thousand or more, were also sacked and/or imprisoned.  In keeping with Ne Win’s reputed paranoid tendencies,[104] moreover, officers with "the right stuff" – those who foolishly showed signs of ambition or independence – were weeded out, sent to the various fronts as cannon-fodder.[105]  Those whom Ne Win trusted and liked were, just as arbitrarily, rewarded with high and lucrative posts in the BSPP state-party hierarchy.
        Ne Win’s style was replicated in the military chain of command: there, too, merit and performance mattered little.  The key to getting ahead, to avoiding frontline duty, to preserve oneself from being sidelined or dismissed, was to curry favour with patrons and superiors.  This meant providing them with regular cash payoffs or "tributes," obtained through the misappropriation of public funds, plunder, extortion, bribes, and blackmarket dealing in contraband goods or narcotics.  For example, those posted to Mogok and Hpa-kan, noted for rubies and jade respectively, were expected to provide gems and cash "tributes."[106]  Wives of officers were and are required to run errands for the wives of superiors, thereby promoting their husbands’ careers.  The tribute-based, patronage-oriented system regarded offices and ranks as opportunities to be fully exploited.  The notion that rank and position were not personally owned was an irrational one in the patrimonial environment of the BSPP and post-BSPP military.[107]
        Within this patrimonialized and de-institutionalized hierarchy of domination, Ne Win stood supreme.[108]  Like the kings of old, his every whim was law.  Ministers and generals trembled before him like children or personal retinues, and he treated them as such: insulting, assaulting, and dismissing them at will.  Cabinet meetings were rare.  Instead, ministers and high officials were summoned to join a circle of his tea-sipping, rustic cronies.  Direct instructions were seldom issued.  Rather, the acolytes had to guess Ne Win’s wishes from the meandering talks he delivered on every topic under the sun.[109]  Many decisions were, to say the least, idiosyncratic-ally arrived at – based on numerology or astrology, or personal whims.  These included the decisions to discontinue the teaching of English in schools, and then the abrupt reversal of the policy (in 1962 and 1980 respectively); the change of the traffic system from left-hand to right-hand drive, in 1972; and the demonetization of certain kyat notes and their replacement by odd-numbered denominates (kyat 15, 25, 35, 45, 75 notes -- and, the 90 kyat note, the number nine being a lucky number).  With such power at his command, Ne Win could have emulated Sarit and Suharto, and made a degree of positive contribution to his country’s well-being.  It is Burma’s misfortune that he did little with the near-absolute power he held so firmly and for so long, except ruin a potentially rich country.
        An important key to Ne Win’s control over both the military and the population at large was the MIS, accountable to him alone.  The agency was empowered to censor mail, tap phones, spy, conduct searches, make arrests on mere supicion, detain without warrant or charges laid, imprison without trial or formal sentencing, torture, maim, and kill with impunity.  
        No one was safe, not even the agency’s own personnel -- they were spied upon and frequently purged.[110]  The MIS kept tabs on prominent figures inside and outside the military, providing the strongman-ruler with a handy weapon against foes and challengers, real or imagined.  MIS spies were attached to military units, with the information obtained filed away for future use.  Thus, the MIS effectively paralyzed not just the military brass but the entire officer corps, prevent-ing the emergence of autonomous power centres.[111]  Owing to the untrammelled use of its arbitrary powers, the MIS gained the image of being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing.  That was enough to depoliticize the general population, causing them to fear and shun politics.[112]
        At least for the armed elites, however, servile loyalty generally had its compen-sations.  Prime among them was Ne Win’s "cradle to grave" welfare system.  He was generous with the state resources at his disposal, and his "generosity" earned him the status of Abha (Revered Father) among soldiers.  A small example of this generosity was the fact that the houses of current and former senior officers are his personal "gifts" to them.[113]  Loyal officers were made ministers, ambassadors, heads of party and state bodies, legislators, judges.  They received the usual perks – freehouses, cars, the best medical services, foreign travel, and imported luxuries.  Their power was constrained only by Ne Win.  Access to "special privileges and sanctioned corr-uption" put the armed elites at the mercy of the "Revered Father" and his MIS.[114]  
        For ordinary soldiers, standing above the law represented a huge upward leap for poor rural youths or unemployed urbanites.  They could swagger and throw their weight around without fear of disciplinary action.  Even for serious crimes like rape, looting, and assaults they were seldom disciplined.[115]  Victims, of course, had no avenues of redress: lodging complaints against a soldier was tantamount to suicide.  Moreover, in addition to these "in-house" benefits, common soldiers had access to scarce fuel (gasoline, kerosene), medicine, ammunition, and army-issue goods: uniforms, boots, blankets, rice, cooking oil, tinned milk, sugar.  These could then be sold on the blackmarket to middlemen, who would sometimes resell the same goods to the rebel opposition.[116] 
        Given Ne Win’s almost sole reliance on the military to consolidate authorit-arian rule and his personal dominance, and given too the use of state resources to preserve personal control, there occurred changes in the nature of the state and its institutions, as suggested in the theoretical framework.  The above analysis shows -- in line with the theoretical observation made concerning the state, its autonomy, and its insulation from society -- the emergence in Burma of a state-society order where  (a) both strongman-ruler and the military became so closely identified with the state that their interests (personal and corporate) could not easily be distinguished from the those of the state or its institutions;  (b) the military became a highly cohesive, but thoroughly patrimonialized stratum of armed officials, thereby effectively insulating the state from society;  (c) as a result, the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis the private preferences of the military and Ne Win was greatly eroded; and (d) although the state’s coercive-repressive capacity was considerably strengthened, its ability to implement its goals and resolve economic and social problems, or capacity to gain legitimacy through performance, was drastically weakened, thanks to its patrimonial and non-institutional mode of functioning. 
        The BSPP’s main goal, a socialist society, remained unattainable.  Instead, as will be shown, the socialist economy was penetrated by outside capital, and pervaded by the private interests and agendas of the officials (mainly military) who were responsible for making socialism work.  Furthermore, due to the state’s weak problem-solving capacity, only one ready instrument existed to meet challenges and opposition from societal forces below: brutal repression. 

The BSPP State, Socialism, and State-Society Problems
        Ne Win’s establishment of a closed and narrowly-based state-society order reduced politics to a single leader, a single ideology, a single party, a single path, and a single vanguard body – the military.  As noted, though, this posed problems of its own.  The state's insulation, coupled with the decay of its institutional capacity, made it less able to achieve its proclaimed goals.  The BSPP could only fail in its stated goal of uplifting the luptha-prithu ("working people"), the supposed foundation of its regime.  After promising the masses a greater political say in a series of highly-publicized peasant-worker rallied in the mid-1960s, the regime turned against them.  Workers in state enterprises were taught bloody lessons when they staged strikes in the Insein work-shops (1967), the Chauk Oilfields (1974), and the Sinmalaik dock-yards (1975).  In all cases, strikers were met with massed firepower.[117]  The peasant-ry was scarcely better off, as David Steinberg has argued.  "Socialist" agriculture turned out to mean the forced sale of prooduce at fixed prices.  In 1981, almost nine out of ten rural families were living below the poverty level (US $40 a month), and one in four had become landless. Far from being liberated from landlords, peasants were delivered into the hands of a more powerful one – the BSPP state.[118]  
        The regime also failed to end rebellions, despite thousands of annual skirmish-es and regular offers of amnesty.  Sporadic peace talks took place, but the demand for unconditional surrender proved futile.[119]  Moreover, a problem of truly global import -- the production and export of opium and heroin -- linked to the armed rebellion in Shan State, and remained unresolved.[120]  
        Most significantly, Ne Win’s state failed to keep its promise to create "a new world" of prosperity.  The coup-makers, alluding to a Bama-Buddhist spiritiual aspir-ation, promised a world without the social suffering that stems from human wants or the inability to meditate because of an empty stomach.[121]  The regime contented itself, instead, with passing laws: the Law to Protect the Construction of the Socialist Economy and the People’s Corporation Law, both in 1963; the 1964 Law to Protect the Construction of the Socialist Economy; and numerous others.  It also chose to decree all private economic actvity illegal.  All enterprises, shops, hospitals, schools, newspapers, printing presses, cinemas – even corner kiosks – were nationalized. 
        But because the state maintained only a low degree of autonomy from the priv-ate interests of the military-socialist personnel who staffed it, the agencies created to facilitate "socialism" – the people’s store and corporations and banks – scarcely functioned as they were intended to.  Everything produced, procured, or distributed by the state found its way into the "illegal" economy, where it was resold at a profit by military-socialists, their families and cronies.  Military socialism meant misman-agement, corruption, and severe shortages, together with the growth of an informal economy that overshadowed the formal (and formally socialist) one. 
        Ordinary people constituted the base of this economy, engaging in all manner of buying and selling of scarce goods and services.  Next up the ladder came the financiers, money lenders, currency dealers, providers of security at depots and on trade routes, transporters within and across the state’s boundaries.  Further up were the major financiers, often overseas Chinese with links to the local Chinese commun-ity; warlords of the Chinese KMT; and the commanders of rebel or homeguard "arm-ies" (the KKY/Ka-Kwe-Ye), who controlled trade routes and taxed passage along them.[122]  Then, there were the protectors to ensure that formally "illegal" transact-ions took place unmolested -- MIS and BSPP-military personnel who oversaw the "socialist" economy and at the same time profited from the "non-socialist" one; and, finally, the officials and entrepreneurs of adjacent countries involved in the cross-border trade in contraband and narcotics. 
        This dual economy – "socialist" and moribund on the one hand, and on the other, the informal and thriving "non-socialist", "illegal" economy -- greatly benefitt-ed external financial interests and those domestically who controlled the varied means of accumulation.  For the majority of the population the blackmarket was a blessing mixed with costly risks.  It offered some relief from chronic shortages of goods, but at inflated prices.  It provided many with jobs as hawkers of contraband wares and providers of illegal services, but also put them at risk as "economic insurgents."  Some earned income as poppy cultivators, but were at the mercy of the state and local loan sharks.  Many were forced into dangerous employ as soldiers in rebel or KKY armies, coolies on trade routes (which would take them through mine-fields and thick jungle), petty smugglers, drug pushers, or prostitutes in Thai brothels.  For the majority, then, the dual economy brought with it the worst excesses of socialism and capitalism. 
        Adding to the hardships and restrictions that pervaded the BSPP state,[123] was the exclusion of the ruled from the political sphere and all access to the state.  Armed struggle, together with the "unlawful" protests that occurred on an almost annual basis,[124] became the only ways of making demands and articulating interests.  Once again, violence was the only response on the state’s part to these societal demands and dissent. 
        The strength of Ne Win's BSPP state lay in the cohesion of its narrow, highly-militarized base; its high degree of insulation and non-malleability by society; and its control over the apparatus of coercion and repression.  Its very strength, however, resulted in an atrophying of its capacity to resolve problems in positive and constructive ways, and it became the kind of state which, as indicated in the theoret-ical framework, was not able to gain minimal legitimacy, or build a broader elite consensus -- one that extended beyond Ne Win's military power base.  Thus, as will be seen, when mass firepower failed to drive peaceful protesters from the streets of Rangoon and other cities in 1988, the regime collapsed -- in a large part because non-military elements deserted their posts.  

The Fall and Reconstruction of Authoritarianism in Burma 
        Prior to 1988, institutional decay and state-society dysfunction were obscured by a patina of austere strength and autocratic control.  Many were misled into think-ing that, despite, the familiar litany of woes, the BSPP order harmonized somehow with the cultural and political values of the Bama majority.[125]  In fact, though, popular resentment had been building under the seemingly stagnant, placid surface.
        The event that tipped the scales was a demonetization in 1987 (following one in 1985) which wiped out nearly all savings.  Protests erupted in Rangoon and some other towns in late 1987, continuing sporadically until early 1988.  A renewed round of protests then met with a harsh state response; but this time the protesters were not cowed.[126]   In the face of sustained popular opposition, Ne Win resigned as BSPP chairman in July and recommended a transition to a multi-party system.  Sein Lwin, nicknamed "The Butcher" for his role in suppressing demonstrators, was named President, only to be forced out in mid-August.[127]  Dr. Maung Maung, a crony and civilian advisor of Ne Win’s, stepped into the breach.  By then the BSPP state was in complete disarray.  Civil servants, including the police, were defecting or going into hiding en masse. 
        Students initiated the uprising, but by mid-1988 the protesters included people from all walks of life, former leaders (including ex-military brass),[128]  police and soldiers, and the surviving "Thirty Comrades," contemporaries of Aung San and Ne Win.  The military, it seemed, was beaten.  The spotlight now shone on Aung San Suukyi, daughter of Aung San, whose name the regime had long exploited as "father" of the Tatmadaw and the "socialist revolution." 
        Amidst the euphoria, Saw Maung and Khin Nyunt (head of the feared MIS) staged a bloody "coup."  Thousands were killed.  One scene, showing cowering teen-agers being picked off systematically by military snipers, was captured on video-tape and shown world-wide.[129]  To wash away the stain of violence that had shocked the world, the new junta, SLORC, promised multi-party elections and a transfer of power to civilians.  Elections were held in May 1990, under restrictive conditions.  Despite the constraints, despite the ample resources of the recycled BSPP (the National Unity Party, or NUP), and despite Aung San Suukyi’s detention under house arrest, her NLD (National League for Democracy) won 392 out of 485 seats.  Its ally, the SNLD (Shan National League for Democracy), claimed 23; the NUP won only 10 seats.  Most damning of all was that the NUP lost even in pre-dominantly military areas such as Dagon and Hmawbi townships and the Coco-Gyun naval base.
        But SLORC refused to step down.  It declared it would rule until a new constit-ution was promulgated.[130]  In early 1993, it called a "National Convention."  Elected MPs were coerced into participating, along with other handpicked delegates.  Judging from its frequent, unexplained postponements, however, things have not been going well for the regime.  Stiff opposition appears to exist to the junta’s overriding objective: the legitimation of the military’s role in politics along the lines of Indonesia’s "dual function" principle of military rule.  
        Burma is undergoing a grave crisis of political and economic transition.  The collapse of Ne Win’s brand of ''socialism'' has not been accompanied by a democratic transition along the lines of the Eastern European countries.  Burma is still ruled by soldiers.  Nearly all ministries are headed by active or retired military men, as are executive-administrative bodies such as divisional and state-level "Law and Order Restoration Committees" (LORCs).  Politics and relates processes are intra-military affairs, and hidden from view (and of course, from the public). 
        Still, there are differences from the previous era of military rule.  Because neither Than Swe nor Khin Nyunt really dominates, changes in the modus operandi have been evident within the military-cum-ruling stratum.  In the context of an "open" economy, the absence of the much-feared strongman has meant more freedom of action for bogyoke-wungyis (general ministers) and the top brass.[131]  Now they can enrich themselves without fear (of the "Old Man").[132]  The result has been an "open season for corruption" and the rise of what Burmese call "capital-less capitalists": children and kin of former BSPP and current military bosses.[133]  The patrimonialization of the state, or the relative non-autonomy of the state and its institutions from the private agendas of power-holders and high officials, seems even greater. 

The Military Junta and the Politics of Transition 
        The situation in Burma today is more complex than is conventionally perceiv-ed.  Actually, both the socialist one-party state and the socialist economy had long been political fictions.  The former was a façade that hid personal dictatorship; soc-ialism was stillborn.  The reality was a state where power was concentrated in the hands of one man alone.  The real economy, meanwhile, had long been penetrated informally by outside capital.  The 1988 uprising was a catalyst that compelled the military to abandon the political fictions it had clung to for a quarter of a century.  The uprising not only exposed the true nature of Ne Win’s "uniquely Burmese" political-economic order, but also forced the military to acknowledge the existence of a non-socialist economy that was already penetrated by the regional capitalist economy, and to exploit it in order to survive. 
        Despite the 1988 uprising and many changes, the Burmese state remains "of soldiers, for soldiers, by soldiers."  The SLORC generals who are now in control have three alternatives to choose from.  One is to restore the old authoritarian status-quo: a state order similar to the one Ne Win presided over, with political power monopolized by the military, with the state insulated from non-military elites and societal forces, but highly malleable with regard to the private agendas and personal interests of power-holders and their allies. 
        Another option is to widen the support base of the still-authoritarian state, by co-opting and selectively empowering civilian elites.  For example, bureaucrats, technocrats, and the more important economic and commercial figures could be brought into the ruling circle and made a part of decision-making processes.  This would entail counter-balancing, even subordinating, the military to some extent to a new ruling bloc that consists of a mixture of military and civilian power factions, all held in check by an astute and skilful strongman-ruler along the lines of Sarit or Suharto.  Yet a further option is for the military reach a compromise with what one diplomat called "an unmovable obstacle" -- Aung San Suukyi, whose nationalist pedigree is impeccable and whose personal safety seems quite assured, given that she is linked by blood to Aung San, mythic founder-hero of both modern Burma and "father" of the Tatmadaw. 
        The first alternative is one the junta has not yet abandoned.  The most central problem remains the absence of a clear strongman who can unify the military and prevent coups and counter-coups as armed factions compete for dominance.  As mentioned at a couple of points, the absence of such a unifier can lead to intense intra-military conflict, and possibly to the military’s withdrawal from politics, in orderly fashion or otherwise.  (Ne Win engineered an orderly withdrawal in 1960 when he believed his grip on the military was uncertain.). 
        At present, the military and SLORC generals are unified by the residual author-ity of Ne Win, and by the necessity of hanging together lest they hang separately.  Recently, with Ne Win (who is nearing ninety) declining physically, General Maung Aye is reported to be manoeuvring to become the next strongman.  He is currently third in the SLORC hierarchy after Khin Nyunt and Than Shwe.  Though it is uncon-firmed, he is also reported to have been behind the "mob attack" on Aung San Suu-kyi’s motorcade in November 1996.  He is also said to be in control of the most hard-line segment of the USDA (the Union Solidarity Development Association), a milit-ary-sponsored "mass organization" that is slated to become the military’s political party, as Golkar once was in Indonesia.[134]  Maung Aye has also recently taken over direct command of military operations along the Burmese-Thai border, which means he now controls the teak forests,  border trade routes, along with what opium fields and heroin refineries there are in the area.  Most important, he has gained the power to grant or revoke teak concessions, hitherto held by Khin Nyunt.[135] 
        If Maung Aye is successful, change is unlikely.  Like Ne Win, he can be expected to depend in large part on the military to maintain his power and personal control.  It is uncertain, though, whether his power-play will be successful.  Much depends on whether he is able to win over MIS cliques, factions close to SLORC chairman General Than Shwe, and the cliques of fence-sitting ''business generals,'' the bogyoke-wungyis (general-ministers). 
        The second alternative – widening the support base of authoritarian rule via selective inclusion – is apparently Khin Nyunt’s strategy.[136]  He has been primarily responsible for some of the SLORC’s successes in this area, and is well-regarded by SLORC’s newly-vigorous foreign patrons and defenders: the leaders of China, Sing-apore, Thailand, Malaysia, and other governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). 
        Among Khin Nyunt’s succcesses, two stand out as being of special strategic significance.  The first is that he has won for SLORC the acceptance of some moneyed elements of society by initiating the transformation of Burma's disasterous "socialism" to a capitalist economic system intent on economic development.  He is largely responsible for de-criminalizing those whom the BSPP regime had labelled "economic insurgents": namely, the trans-border ethnic-Chinese patron-client networks of black marketeers and drug traffickers who control the informal economic sector.  These moves have encouraged some previously deported Indian and Sino-Burmese entrepreneurs -- many of whom have prospered elsewhere -- to return as investors.[137]  Their return has triggered a scramble by investors anxious not to miss out on the opportunity to exploit Burma’s rich natural resources and "repressed consumer demand".[138] 
        Second, credit is due to Khin Nyunt for a move that enabled SLORC politically to outflank the DAB (Democratic Alliance of Burma) -- the opposition front led by the Karen and Dr. Sein Win (who is Aung San Suukyi’s cousin).  Khin Nyunt neutralized the non -Bama resistance "armies" in the alliance by co-opting their military leaders.  The move has weakened the DAB and simultaneously boosted SLORC’s image as a "peacemaker."  It has also allowed SLORC to concentrate on keeping the deeply-alienated Bama majority in line.[139]  Khin Nyunt’s success in this area, though, is largely due to a number of fortuitous circumstances.  After the BSPP’s sudden demise in 1988, its most formidable foe, the White Flag CPB, also collapsed in the wake of mutinies by non-Bama units.  The dissolution occurred just as SLORC was desperately seeking allies.  Fortunately for the junta, Chinese authorities stepped in and persuaded the junta and the CPB mutineers to agree to a cease-fire.  In exchange, the non-Bama, ex-CPB warlords were given a free hand to exploit border trade and "development."[140]  A similar deal was struck in 1993 with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), again with Chinese help.[141] 
        It seems that with Khin Nyunt's partial recognition of important economic-commercial elements and non-Bama military leaders, the groundwork is being laid for a "softer" and relatively more inclusive military-authoritarian order, so long as Khin Nyunt's views prevail.  The "National Convention", the body established to formulate a new constitution, could bring this order about by opening the political arena in a limited way, such as in Suharto's Indonesia.  To this end, SLORC has established a Golkar-like body, the USDA, which (like its predecessors, the NSA and the BSPP) is controlled and overseen by the military. 
        It is not clear, however, that the "Indonesian model" – a quasi-multiparty arrangement dominated by the government party, Golkar – is exportable, and it may not be possible for SLORC to establish a system that works in a similar fashion to that of Indonesia, or to emulate Suharto’s successes.  Moreover, there has not yet emerged in post-1988 Burma a military politician with skills equal to Suharto’s, or with Ne Win’s authority.  (Ne Win himself might have been able to establish such an order in the 1960s, had he chosen). 
        There are other obstacles.  For one thing, the domestic commercial class that benefits from SLORC’s "open economy" is at best a "fair weather" ally.  Many comprising this class are of dubious political value, being either former "economic insurgents", ex-communists, alleged drug kingpins, overseas Burmese investors with roots and interests elsewhere, or what local people call the "new Burmese" – Chinese from Yunnan.  It is doubtful whether the non-Bama military leaders and warlords who made cease-fire deals with SLORC would stand by the junta in a crisis.  The problems of center-state relations remain unsolved, and in non-Bama areas, local people are abused and exploited as before.[142]   Likewise, the  majority of "investors" would likely view Burma simply as a business venture, and, other than desiring stability, do not have any stake in Burma's political future.  The regime's only staunch supporters are the SLORC ministers, top military brass, some former BSPP ministers and ex-generals, and the "enterprising" children and relatives of Ne Win and the military.     
        The third obstacle is the emergence of a highly credible, popular, and internationally-respected challenger, Aung San Suukyi.[143]   She is the daughter of the fabled Bogyoke (General) Aung San, the father of independence and the Tatmadaw, whose name has been exploited by Ne Win and the military to bolster their own legitimacy.  She remains a formidable obstacle to the attainment of SLORC’s goal of prolonging the military’s monopoly of power, and, by extension, wealth.  

Burma’s Struggle for Democracy:    
        Burma is currently experiencing a protracted crisis of succession and transition to which, as suggested in the theoretical analysis, military-authoritarian regimes are vulnerable.  Foremostly, there is the problem of who will succeed Ne Win as the ruling strongman.  Such a figure must emerge to balance military factions and arbitrate between them and maintain military unity, or the current military-authorit-arian state will disintegrate.  From appearance, there will likely be a power struggle, perhaps a protracted and violent one.  
        In its attempt to resolve the problem of  succession and transition, the military has set in motion a process to legalize and institutionalize the role of the military in politics through a new constitution being slowly formulated by the "National Convention", which first convened in 1993.  From this exercise, SLORC has to accomplish two major interrelated tasks:  first, to organize power in such a way that the state will not only be strong in purely a coercive-repressive capacity, but also in terms of legitimacy based on the ability to solve problems and to remedy the country’s many ailments;  and second, to deal effectively, using a minimum of force, with challenges arising from society, particularly the aspirations for a democratic alternative being articulated by Aung San Suukyi.  Because of who she is, and what she represents, the challenge she poses to the military is the most difficult one for junta to overcome.  As such, the best possible option for the military would be to come to terms with the democratic opposition.  
        One important development is Aung San Suukyi’s "unconditional" release, granted in July 1995.  It is said this was ordered by SLORC chairman Than Swe and his trusted aid, Kyaw Sein, deputy head of the DDSI (Directorate of Defence Service Intelligence).[144]   This has led to hope that there will eventually be a dialogue between the junta and the democratic opposition in order to start addressing Burma's grave problems.  However, if the release has just been a ploy to bolster SLORC’s external legitimacy, as seems quite possible, it is unlikely that SLORC will engage in any real dialogue. 
        It is difficult to predict Burma's future.  Burma may become and remain, perhaps for quite some time, a lucrative back-water for extra-national entrepren-eurs.[145]  Tempting though it is, to think that despised, illegitimate rulers cannot last for long, soldiers who "own" the state and its resources -- and enjoy the support of neighboring governments (especially powerful ones like China)-- may be able to hold onto power for quite a while.  This will make the struggle for democracy long and difficult.  Life for the great mass of the population will remain sad and trying, as it has been in one form or another since 1962.   
        As I have shown in this chapter, the military in Burma is a formidable political force which has stayed on in politics to dominate the state-society order as the power base and political instrument of the military strongman-ruler Ne Win and his successors, the SLORC generals.  The military still rules -- at gunpoint, without even a fiction of constitutional legitimacy. 
        The Tatmadaw has always closely identified itself with the state and viewed itself as the creator, guardian, and savior of the state and national unity.  Mainly because  the new state was challenged by armed rebellions (communist, and ethnic) at independence, the role of the military, in both combat and non-military spheres, expanded rapidly.  This in turn reinforced the military's view of itself as indispensible to the existence of the state and nation.  
        The pattern of military intervention in Burma, indirectly in 1958, directly in 1962 and again in 1988, has been shown to be closely linked to concerns about the unity of the state, and as well to preserving the military's privileged place in, and identification with, the state.  It is also clear that the Tatmadaw's decision to "stay on" and reorganize political power, and its ability to stay on for a long period, has been contingent on the presence of a military strongman who has maintained military unity.  Ne Win is still in control, although his "Burmese socialist" BSPP state collapsed in 1988, and he does not now exercise power on a day-to-day basis.  
        In the military-authoritarian state set up by Ne Win, state-society relations have been characterized by a state that is highly autonomous from society.  The state in Burma appears highly authoritarian, as can be seen, with the military occupying a very dominant place in both the political and economic spheres.  At the same time, as predicted in the theoretical discussion, the state has had little autonomy from the strongman-ruler and the Tatmadaw.  There has been an erosion of the integrity of state institutions and apparatuses as the result of the state's low insulation from the personal agendas and preferences of the military power-holders and the personal rule of Ne Win. 


------------------------------------  E N D N O T E S  -------------------------------------
CHAPTER THREE:
BURMA: MILITARY INTERVENTION AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITARIAN DOMINATION  

 



[1]   Ne Win’s given name is Maung Shu Maung. He became "Thakin Shu Maung" when he joined the Thakin (Dobama) group. "Ne Win" or "Bo Ne Win" is the name he adopted while undergoing Japan-ese military training on Hainan Island with a group of Thakins and Aung San – a group now myth-ologized as the "Thirty Comrades."  "Bo" is a generic term for military leaders. Ne Win is believed still to be calling the shots and keeping the current crop of military rulers together as his figurative "sons and heirs".  Another factor uniting the military is fear of popular retribution and loss of their accumulated wealth. See Daniel Benjamin, "Burma: New Repression In A Country Under the Boot", Time, August 14, 1989; also Erskine McCullough, "Terror Continues Under Secret Rule of Ne Win", Bangkok Post, September 9, 1991. A flattering portrait of Ne Win is found in Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1969). The author, a doctor of law and crony of Ne Win, was president for one month in 1988 (August 19 to September 18). The latest word from a recent visitor is that the "Old Man" is still pulling the strings, and has been pivotal in keeping the military together, and has kept military factions from fighting openly for power and advantages. Ne Win has reportedly designated Maung Aye as chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). No official announcement in this regard has however been made thus far. 

 

[2]  "Bama" and "Myanmar or Mranma" are terms used by the majority ethnic group to identify itself. In English, and in most academic studies, the term "Burman" is used for this group. I will use the term "Bama", instead of "Burman", and the term "non-Bama" in general for other ethnic groups, such as the Mon, Rakhine, Shan, Karen, and so forth.  Note: the term "Bama" refers to ethnic Burmese, or Burman. "Burmese" is usually used to denote all ethnic groups in Burma.  There is, however, no consensus on the use of the term "Burmese" to denote a multicultural "nation". This is due in part of its use as a synonym for "Burman", in part because it connotes things Burman – the Burmese language, Burmese dress, Burmese food, etc.  The word "Burmese" is akin to "English", for example, as opposed to "British".  I therefore use the terms "Bama" and "non-Bama" for the sake of clarity.

 

[3]  The Thakins were young nationalists whose aim was total independence. Most were "educated" (that is, they had attended "modern" schools). A few were graduates of Rangoon University. They belonged, broadly speaking, to the Dobama (We Bama) organization – a loosely structured, almost informal, political front. The Thakin movement is covered in all standard works on modern Burma. For details see, Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1980); also Khin Yi, The Dobama Movement in Burma, 1930-1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). The latter is, so far, the best work on the Thakins and the Dobama, and includes an Appendix (in Burmese) containing the movement’s songs, manifestoes, its several constitutions, etc. Although brief, Khin Yi captures the movement’s ambiance, its amorphousness and organizational ambiguities, and contrasts sharply with Maung Maung’s later effort, Burmese Nationalist Movements 1940-1948 (Edinburgh: Kiscadale Publications, 1989). This is somewhat marred by a format which depicts nationalist parties, armies, etc., as discrete, institutionalized bodies. Maung Maung portrays the nationalist movement as following a progressive, linear trajectory, propelled by well-organized entities, led by wise, heroic leaders -- this being how Third World leaders wish the outside world to see them. However, Maung Maung’s earlier work, cited above, more accurately reflects the reality of the nationalist groups, factions, and leaders of the time.

 

[4]  The new state, the Union of Burma, was composed of Ministerial Burma (Burma Proper) and hitherto indirectly-ruled Excluded or Frontier Areas inhabited by the non-Bama peoples (the Rakhine, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen, etc.). These politically and administratively separate parts were brought together when the AFPFL (represented by its supreme leader, Aung San) signed the Panglong Agreement in 1947 (a year prior to independence).The co-signatories were non-Bama leaders organiz-ed by the Shan Yawnghwe prince, Sao Shwe Thaike, who became the Union’s first President. The "Independence Constitution" of 1948 granted the non-Bama states some autonomy, with each having its own government and legislature. However, the Union Government was not a federal one. The government of the Bama State was concurrently the Union Government, making it the "Mother country" (Pri-Ma), and consigning the other states to satellite status. For an analysis of the 1948 Con-stitution, see Alan Gledhill, "The Burmese Constitution", The Indian Yearbook in International Affairs (Madras: University of Madras Press, 1954), pp. 214-224 (for a discussion of relations between the centre and the states, see pp. 215-216, 218-219, 220, 221-222).

 

[5]   The full name of the armed forces in Burma is the Bama Tatmadaw, but it will be referred to here as the Tatmadaw, or simply as "the military". 

 

[6]  The earliest challenge to the AFPFL state, in 1948 (the year of independence), were in the form of armed rebellions by disaffected Thakins, mainly, communist-, and left-oriented Thakins (allied to army mutineers, and the AFPFL's own "private army", the PVO or People's Volunteers Organization) and the Rakhine ethnic group. They were followed by Karen dissidents in 1949 (and their allies, the Mon and PaO) who were joined in the late-1950s by the Shan and the Kachin. In the early 1950s, defeated Chaing-Kai-Shek's Kuomintang (KMT) units fled into Shan State and encamped there. As well, they developed a cross-border network of commerce based on opium and its derivate, heroin, which grew into a multi-billion dollars global industry. The above-mentioned will be discussed as relevant. Politics involving armed challenge to the state, not unnaturally, boosted the salience of the military Thakins vis-à-vis both the state and AFPFL power-holders. 

 

[7]   The full name of the Lanzin party is Mranmaah Sosheilit Lanzin Party. The first word is also spelt as "Myanmar." There is no standardized English spelling for Burmese words or names. For example, "Ne Win" is sometimes spelled, "Nay Win" (the first spelling is in the transliteration mode, and the second is somewhat phonetically). Except for names and words that are familiar and commonly used, I will use the transliteration mode of spelling (instead of phonetically, or rather, pseudo-phonetically).  

 

[8]  For a masterly analysis of pre-colonial Southeast Asian "kingdoms", see Renee Hagesteijn, Circles of Kings: Political Dynamics in Early Continental South-east Asia (Dordretch-Holland: Foris Public-ations, 1989), esp., Ch. 1, "Regional and Supra-regional Political Systems",  pp. 9-24, esp. pp. 14-15. For a more general discussion of the subject, see David J. Steinberg, et al., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1985), pp. 59-66 (The Buddhist Kings), pp. 66-67 (The Lao and Shan World), pp. 73-79 (The Malay Sultans), and pp. 80-86 (The Javanese Kings).  See also Anthony Reid and David Marr, eds., Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books, 1979). 

 

[9]  For analyses of "kingdoms" in the countries selected for this study, see Michael Aung-Thwin, Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1985);  Khin Maung Kyi & Daw Tin Tin, Administrative Patterns in Historical Burma (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1973);  E.R Leach, "The Frontiers of ‘Burma’", in John T. McAlister, ed., Southeast Asia: The Politics of National Integration (New York: Random House, 1973), pp.315-35;  V. Sangermano, The Burmese Empire (London: S. Gupta, 1966 edn.). For Indonesia, see Soemarsaid Moertono, The State and Statecraft in Old Java (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1968); and  Theodoor G.T. Pigeaud, Java in the Fourteenth Century (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1962).  For Thailand, see Charnvit Kasetsiri, The Rise of Ayudhya: A History of Siam in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976); Charnvit Kasetsri, "Thai Historiography from Ancient Times to the Modern Period", in Anthony Reid and David Marr, eds., Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, pp. 156-170.

 

[10]  John S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (New York: New York University Press, 1956; 1st edn., 1948), and Netherlands India: A Study of the Plural Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1939).

 

[11]  Furnivall, Colonial Policy, p. 1.

 

[12]  By European capitalist "universalism" is meant a set of orientations based on money and the profit rationale. Because a monetary profit-loss calculus has helped reduce human aspirations and needs to a common numerical calculus, it has become a universal "language". This "universalism", now taken for granted, was in fact imposed on societies where status and wealth were calculated according to non-monetary values.  This is not to say that "old" ideologies and cultures have disappeared. Some strands have persisted, and have been "grafted" onto "modern" structures, where they can be manipulated by elites and rulers to reinforce the sociopolitical status-quo. For an insightful exposition of the develop-ment of capitalism as applied to the Third World (Africa), see Thomas M.Callaghy, "The State and the Development of Capitalism in Africa: Theoretical, Historical, and Comparative Reflections", in Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan, eds., The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 67-99. An equally provocative discussion on the differences between Western and Non-Western societies with regard to economic activity is found in Hoselitz and Lambert, "Western Societies", in Richard D.Lambert & Bert Hoselitz, eds., The Role of Saving and Wealth in Southern Asia and the West (Paris: UNESCO, 1963), pp. 9-43. The title is misleading, since the chapter deals as well with Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and Vietnam.  Although published in 1963, it is still relevant.

 

[13]  Robert H. Taylor, The State in Burma (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1987), pp. 5-8, 24.  Taylor states that from the 17th century onward, Bama rulers had developed stable patterns of control and authority, and had created a homogeneous population along with an integrated, self-perpetuating social network. There had emerged a "nationalism" in the form of an attachment to the crown and Buddhism. Contradicting Taylor, Furnivall among others argues that the hold of Bama kings was tenuous, with constant conflicts among the Bama, Shans, and Mons (Furnivall, Colonial Policy, p.12). But he also maintains that "a national consciousness" under Burman rule was evolving: see Furnivall, The Governance of Modern Burma (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations,1960), p. 21. Taylor’s argument is also contradicted by Peter Kunstadter. He notes that the Bama kingdom was limited to the Irrawaddy valley at the time of annexation, in 1885-1886.  See P. Kunstadter, "Burma: Introduction",  in Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 75-91. Further, prior to the final annexation, Shan princes had rebelled, and even planned to place the Limbin prince on the throne. See Sao Saimong Mangrai, The Shan State and the British Annexation (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1965).

 

[14]  The years 1942-1948 (when independence was granted) are counted as transitional years. British rule was imposed only reluctantly. Had Bama kings, like their Siamese counterparts, recognized that European intrusions required adaptation rather than prideful resistance, outright annexation might have been avoided. Also see Oliver B.Pollak, Empires in Collusion (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1979), esp. pp. 3-8, 179-84. The annexations and related events are covered in standard works, e.g., John L. Christian, Burma and the Japanese Invaders (Bombay: Thacker & Co., Ltd., 1945); John F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); Frank N. Trager,  Burma: From Kingdom to Republic (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1966); and Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). See also Fred Riggs, Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity (Honolulu: East-West Center,1966), pp. 15-64, for a comparison of the Thai and Burmese kings to colonial powers, mainly Britain and France.

 

[15]  The phrase is borrowed from Victor Lieberman’s excellent work on the Restored Taungoo Dynasty. He argues that the dynastic cycle arises from the competition and conflict for resources between different segments of the administrative elites and, importantly, on the changing distribution of resources from the throne to the elites. As a result, the throne became more dependent on powerful elites, who in turn grew more independent or rebellious; eventually, a new "warrior-leader" arose and set up a new dynasty. See Victor Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c.1580-1760 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 3-14 (Introduction), 271-92 (Conclusions and Analogies).

 

[16]  In many respects the British did indeed modernize Burma: in terms of material improvements, more efficient organizational methods, and new technologies. They built cities and roads, railways, bridges, hospitals, and a modern educational system. They further introduced commercial infrastruct-ures (a unified monetary system, the banking-credit system, civil and commercial laws, tax regulat-ions) which created and sustained an integrated capitalist economy and market. On colonial modern-ization, see Christian’s brief but comprehensive Burma and the Japanese Invaders; Cady, A History, pp.125-424); Furnival, Colonial Policy; Pye, Politics, esp., pp. 81-92; and G.E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma, 1824-1942 (London: Faber & Faber, 1946).

 

[17]  For a comprehensive account of what might be called "political modernization" in Burma, see Cady, A History, pp. 242-281, 322-355. Steps to establish Burma as a separate entity (a "state-in-the-making") was initiated by British officers, according to Furnivall, and demanded by local British business interests after the 1890s (Colonial Policy, p. 166). Burma’s political evolution under the British -- being successively a part of Bengal (1824), a Governor’s province (1921), and a separate colonial entity or proto-national state (in 1937) -- was a convoluted, ad hoc affair. A case can perhaps be made that there was, in Burma and elsewhere, no British colonial policy per se; that it was a patch-work of bureaucratic or political inputs from multiple sources, in reaction to the events and/or policy trends of the moment).

 

[18]  Harvey in fact complained about the supra-political role of the English Governor (British Rule, p. 95).   

 

[19]  See Robert H.Taylor, "Politics in the Late Colonial Period: The Case of U Saw", in Modern Asian Studies, Vol.10., No.2, (1976), pp. 161-193; and "Party, Class and Power in British Burma", in Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol.10, No.1 (March 1981), pp. 44-61. 

 

[20]  Ibid. The two articles by Taylor, mentioned (n.#19), provides a brief, but quite comprehensive account and analysis of politics, personalities, and the environment of pre-war Burma. 

 

[21]  Prior to 1900, there was resistance from the Burmese peasantry. But from the turn of the century onwards, there was rural peace until the rebellion of Saya San, who has been glorified by SLORC as Burma’s greatest national hero. After 1988, banknotes which once bore the likeness of Aung San were adorned with Saya San’s image. This symbolizes SLORC’s effort to downgrade Aung San’s status in the light of the opposition to the military that his daughter, Aung San Suukyi, symbolizes. Before 1962, Saya San was only one national hero among others; his peers included the monks U Ottama and U Wizara, Bo Aung-gyaw (a student), and Bo Ba Htoo, a military Thakin.  Superhero status was reserved for Aung San alone; he was George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one.

 

[22]  In Burmese, no distinction exists among race, ethnic group, or nation – all are lu-myo (meaning, in rough translation, "humankind").

 

[23]  The colonial state was for them, as Taylor put it perhaps more elegantly years later, a "great utilitarian pile of Victorian brick", a bureaucratic-administrative state "justified by Western capitalist conceptions of justice, law and economic rationality". It was a state that ignored "indigenous social and status distinctions," diminished the social role of Buddhism, and did not constrain economic growth (or capitalism). See Taylor, The State, pp. 70-71.  Aung-Thwin echoes Taylor’s view: see Michael Aung-Thwin, “1948 and Burma’s Myth of Independence” in Josef Silverstein, ed., Independ-ent Burma at Forty Years: Six Assessments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 19-34; and "The British ‘Pacification’ of Burma: Order Without Meaning", Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 16: 2 (Sept. 1985), pp. 246-261. Such criticisms are not new. Both Furnivall and Harvey see British rule as the imposition on Burma of "ready-made" economic-political systems (see Furnivall, Colonial Policy; Harvey, British Rule). Furnivall argues that instead of introducing "the forms and machinery of western government", which granted supremacy to economic forces, the British should have utilized Bama nationalism as a tool for "modernizing" Burma (Colonial Policy, p. 158).

 

[24]  Accounts of the Thakin movement are found in all standard works on modern Burma. For details, see Khin Yi, The Dobama, and Maung Maung, From Sangha.

 

[25]  Aung San, "Blue Print for Burma" (written in 1941, in Tokyo); in Josef Silverstein, ed., The Pol-itical Legacy of Aung San (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1993), pp. 19-22. It is striking how similar the aspirations and mind-set of the Thakins are to "nationalists" in (for example) Ghana, Senegal, or Guinea.  See Aristide Zolberg, Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966).  On the Thakins, see Khin Yi, The Dobama; also Ba Maw, Break-through in Burma: Memories of a Revolutionary, 1939-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), esp. pp. 6, 54, 104. 

 

[26]  Silverstein, The Political Legacy, p. 8. The author even suggests that Aung San might have been overly influenced by the Japanese in writing "Blueprint for Burma": in essence, a manifesto for a one-party authoritarian state along classically fascist lines. But as Silverstein notes, Aung San was liberal in his view on national unity, and advocated equal rights and autonomy for the non-Bama segment of the population. He was also realistic and pragmatic (pp. 10-13, 17). Aung San’s speeches as a nation-al leader on the eve of independence more or less support Silverstein’s view. See The Political Legacy, esp. pp. 70-71 (speech at AFPFL Convention, May 1947); pp. 93-112 (Problems for Burma’s Free-dom, January 1946); pp. 142-148 (The Situation and Task, August 1946), and pp. 148-151 (An Address to the Anglo-Burmans, December 1946).

 

[27]  See Furnivall, The Governance, p. 116.

 

[28]  Khin Yi, The Dobama Movement, esp. pp.133-136.

 

[29]  These were the BIA (Burma Independence Army), the BDA (Burma Defence Army), and the BNA (Burma National Armies). The armies will be briefly discussed in the relevant sections. The Thakins' armies are well covered in early standard works on Burma such as Cady , A History; Trager, Burma; and Tinker, The Union of Burma.

 

[30]  PVO units were composed of veterans of the Thakins’ war-time "armies" who were rejected when the British re-formed the Burma Army in 1946. After Aung San’s assassination in July 1947, most PVO leaders switched their allegiance to the communist Thakins, and joined the leftist rebellion against the AFPFL state after independence. 

 

[31]  British decisions surrounding Burma’s independence were again shaped by expediency, by wider events (in India, for example), and by bureaucratic politics in London, New Delhi, Simla, Kandy, and Rangoon. The ad-hoc character of the decision-making is evident from Hugh Tinker’s work on the transition. See Tinker, ed., Burma: The Struggle for Independence, 1944-1948, Vols. I & II (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1983). For a comparison of the British position on the two colonies, see R.B. Smith, "Some Contrasts Between Burma and Malaya in British Policy Toward South-East Asia, 1942-1946", in R.B. Smith and A.J. Stockwell, eds., British Policy and the Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives (London: University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, 1988), pp. 30-76.

 

[32]  Many knowledgable Burmese surmise that Aung San, unlike other Thakins, clearly saw the waning of British power. He astutely calculated that the main British concern would be the question of to whom to transfer power. It must be noted that his closest advisor during the period of transition and negotiations with the British (1946-1947) was U Tin Tut, a senior member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS). During the war, U Tin Tut worked closely with Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith in Simla, the head-quarters of the Government of Burma-in-exile. 

 

[33]  Old time politicians such as Sir Paw Tun, U Ba Pe, U Pu, and others were all swept aside by the tide of global war that also destroyed the prewar economic elites. Burma was a "hot" theatre of war from 1942 to 1945, and there was much dislocation and destruction. As Everett Hagen puts it, the war "destroyed a larger share of the nation’s physical wealth than was destroyed in any other country [except] perhaps Greece". See Everett E. Hagen, The Economic Development of Burma (Washington, D.C.: National Planning Association, 1956), p. 31. War damage was estimated at kyat 19 to 50 billion (U.S.$3 billlion to $10 billion, at the official rate of the time), by an American consulting firm and the Foreign Ministry respectively. See Louis J.Walinski, Economic Development in Burma, 1951-1960 (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1956), p. 57. The political effect of such devastation was to ensure that no socioeconomic group strong enough to challenge the Thakins existed in 1946-1948, granting them a strategic position in postwar politics. Nonetheless, in 1946-47, Dorman-Smith, the last Governor, tried to form a coalition of old-time politicians (including those named above and U Saw) in an attempt to counter the Thakins. The latter commanded a private army, the PVO, and had also captured the “praetorian” mobs that the war had spawned in Rangoon. The Governor’s agenda to restore normalcy before independence -- to challenge the Thakins -- was thwarted by Lord Mountbatt-en, the most senior British officer in the Far East. The Governor’s plan was also at odds with the views of sympathetic Labour Members of Parliament and bureaucrats in London. For them, Burma, unlike Malaya, was not worth the effort or cost of involvement. See Cady, A History, esp. pp. 519-535.  See also Smith, "Some Contrasts Between Burma and Malaya".

 

[34]  U Saw’s assassination of Aung San, together with almost all members of the interim government, in July 1947 is covered by all standard early works. However, it is curious that Maung Maung – ex-Brigadier, a former military Thakin, and once a "Young Turk" – should mention that the assassins were dressed in the uniform of the 4th Burma Rifles (of which Ne Win was second in command under a British officer). He does not deny the implications of the report: that Ne Win might also have been involved. Reading Maung Maung’s statement in a very Burmese way, one could infer that the author had his suspicions. See Maung Maung, Burmese Nationalist, p. 317.  It is well-known that Ne Win at the time was on very good terms with U Saw. From interviews with knowledgable Burmese, I also learned that Ne Win personally looked after the well-being of U Saw’s children and family as late as the 1980s.

 

[35]  The prevailing view among Bama elites, especially military nationalists, is that the British partit-ioned a properly unified Burmese kingdom like the European kingdoms, and the fragments were then governed indirectly, through native rulers. As such, the "Burmese" nation fragmented, assuming separate identities as Bama, Shan, Mon, Rakhine, Karen, etc. In this view, post-independence Burma represented the restoration of ancient Burmese nationhood. This line has been pushed by successive Rangoon governments, leaders, politicians, the military, and some "nationalistic" intellectuals and quite a few Burma/Bama academics.

 

[36]  The problem of national unity could be managed only by wise leadership, meaningful dialogue, and frequent adjustments. This was not to be, however, as we will see. For a discussion of the Burmaniz-ation policy, see Josef Silverstein, Burmese Politics: The Dilemmas of National Unity (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1980), esp. pp. 220-229. There are two aspects to Burmanization. One is the replacement of "foreigners" by Bama in the bureaucracy and the economy. The second is the elevation of Bama culture, language, identity, and history as the official national culture. This touches on a contradiction that may be inherent in the Europeans’ creation of "nation-states" from weakly interconnected, largely disparate entities, each with its own history, experience, and culture. The contradiction is certainly evident in Burma. The Karens (at least the elites) were Christians, Western-oriented, and loyal to British (who "saved" them from oppressive Bama kings). The Bama are Buddhists, and they opposed the British. The Mon, Rakhine, and Shan (or Syam) -- mostly Buddhist peoples -- had their own kingdoms, and the Shan ruled "Burma" from the 13th to the 16th century.  There are also "stateless" ethnic groups such as the Kachin, Karenni, and Wa, which like the Kachin were influenced by the Shan political system (see Edmund Leach, The Political System of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure [London: G.W. Bell, 1964]). A comprehensive treatment of ethnic groups and problems in Burma is found in Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, esp. Part II on Burma, pp. 75-146. The cobbling-together of different ethnic communities under one flag raises the question of whether colonial powers were guilty of creating unworkable, artificial "nation-states", and also whether they deliberately fostered separate identities in order to "divide-and-rule" – that is, to prevent the emergence of unified nations that could oppose their rule. The latter view predominates.  However, it must be recalled that the system of indirect rule was often a matter of expediency or bureaucratic convenience. It is quite likely that colonial administrators did not give much thought either way to the "nationhood" of their colonial subjects; they did not expect their empires to disappear so swiftly.

 

[37]  The following brief account of rebellions is based on standard works (Cady, Tinker, Trager, etc., as cited). Also very useful is the government publication, Burma and the Insurrections (Rangoon: Government Printing Press, 1949). For a pro-BSPP analysis, see R.H. Taylor, "Government Respon-ses to Armed Communist and Separatist Movements: Burma", in G. Jeshurun, ed., Governments and Rebellions in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of S.E. Asian Studies, 1985), pp. 103-125. Other, more balanced works are Bertil Lintner, "The Shans and the Shan State of Burma", Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 5/4 (Mar. 1984), pp. 403-450; and The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1990). See also Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe, The Shan of Burma: Memoirs of a Shan Exile (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1987), so far the only firsthand account by a rebel leader; also Yawnghwe, "The Burman Military: Holding the Country Together?", in J. Silverstein, ed., Independent Burma at Forty Years: Six Assessments (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1989), pp. 81-101, and "Rebellions in Burma: An Over-view", B.C. Asian Review, No. 5 (1991), pp. 169-203. The most comprehensive work so far on the insurgencies is Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgents and the Politics of Ethnicity (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1991). For an attempt to theorize "ethnic" rebellions in Southeast Asia, see David Brown, The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 1994). For Burma, see pp. 33-65.

 

[38]  In British military parlance, a "class" battalion is one composed exclusively of one ethnic group. When the Burma Army was formed in 1945-1946, Aung San proposed its formation along "class" lines. One reason given (by Silverstein, in The Legacy, p. 11) was that Aung San wanted a multi-ethnic army so as to reflect a multi-ethnic union. However, the contrary could also be argued: that he feared the separation of Bama soldiers from Bama military Thakin officers, and wanted to keep them together for political reasons. Ironically, as it transpired, the majority of Bama soldiers and Bama Thakin officers in the "class" battalions mutined against the AFPFL, albeit after Aung San’s death.  As well, a majority of PVOs, along with many Thakin civil servants and peasant and labour leaders, were won over by the very able and charismatic communist leaders, Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe. 

 

[39]  "Em-I" stands for the MIS, or the Military Intelligence Service, regarded in terror by the Burmese as an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful entity.  

 

[40]  During the Communist rebellion, the AFPFL was able to fend off the Communists and other armed challenges, thanks to the support shown U Nu by Shan chaofa (princes), Karenni saw-phaya (lords), Kachin duwa (chiefs), and Chin leaders. This, in turn, greatly reinforced its external legitim-acy. At the height of the insurgencies, the AFPFL received aid from the United States, Britain, India, Pakistan, Australia, and other Commonwealth members. See Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington: U.S. State Department, 1975): Year 1949, Vol.9 , pp. 573-4; Year 1950, Vol.5 (p. 149); Year 1950, Vol.6 (pp. 12, 49, 70, 232-35, 240-44, 247-48, 751).

 

[41]  The Karen situation differed from that of the Kachin, Shan, and others, since they never had a sep-arate "home" territory and were not included in the negotiations leading up to the 1947 Panglong Agreement. Although the Karen rebellion has raged since 1949, it has been largely neglected by scholars. This may be due to the predominance, until recently, of the "military-as-modernizers" para-digm, whereby Karen and non-Bama rebels were dismissed as marginal, backward "tribal outlaws". Only after 1988 was the Karen question linked to the deeper state-society problem in Burma. One of the first serious treatments of the Karen rebellion is found in Smith, Insurgency.  For a still earlier study of “ethnic” rebellions, see Yawnghwe, "The Burman Military". An excellent work on the Karen from a sociological-political perspective is Jonathan Falla’s True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). The Karen have published some partisan "histories" of their own: see Mica Rolley with Saw Moo Troo, The Karens Fight for Peace (np. Karen National Union/KNU, 1980); M. Lonsdale, The Karen Revolution in Burma (np. KNU, nd.); Saw Moo Troo, Karen and Communism (np. KNU, 1981).  The postscript to the Karen story is that a split occurred in January 1995 between Buddhist and Christian Karens, resulting in the fall of the Karen headquarters, Manerplaw, in January 1995. The Karen leadership is now split between "hard-liners", led by General Bo Mya, and those who were unhappy with his hard-line stance. The "soft-liners" are led by General Shwe Saing, a powerful military leader whose earlier support was pivotal in Bo Mya's leadership of the Karen movement. The above information was obtained on a trip I made to the Karen areas in January 1997, and from recent letters from Karen activists. 

 

[42]  For accounts of the KMT in Shan State, the opium-heroin problem, and the Shan rebellion, see Bertil Lintner, Cross-Border Drug Trade in the Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia) – Territorial Brief-ing No.1 (Durham: Boundary Research Press, 1991); Yawnghwe, "The Political Economy of the Opium Trade: Implications for Shan State", Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vo.23/3 (1993), pp. 306-326, and "Shan Opium Politics: The Khun Sa Factor", Burma Debate, Vol. 2, No. 1 (February/Mar-ch 1995), pp. 22-28. See also Lintner, "The Shans and the Shan State"; Yawnghwe, The Shan; and Smith, Insurgency.

 

[43]  Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 139.

 

[44]  These rebel organizations were: U Seinda’s Rakine People’s Liberation Party; the Shan State Pa-O National Liberation Organization under Thaton Hla Pe; the Shan State Communist Party; the Mon People’s Front; the PVOs; and some Red and White Flag Communists. According to Smith, 5,500 in-surgents surrendered officially.  His view is that as many "simply returned home to their villages", see Smith, Insurgency, p. 168.  

 

[45]  In Shan State, for example, "anti-feudal, union-minded" opposition figures such as Namkham U Toon Aye, Tin Ko Ko, and Kyaw-zaw -- even Pa-O rebel bands -- were abetted and aided by AFPFL leaders and the Bama military.  On the other hand, as Prime Minister, U Nu cultivated good relations with non-Bama powerholders (for example, the Mongmit prince Chao Hkun Khio, leader of Shan State). This information and the account of the expansion of the military's role is based on interviews in Thailand and elsewhere with Shan leaders, politicians, and youth leaders through the years, and from personal experiences in politics. Those interviewed include: the Yawnghwe Mahadevi, the Keng-tung and Muang-pawn princes, Khun Kya Nu, Khun Kya Oo, Sai Tun Hlaing, Sai Sy-keow, Sai Win Oo, and Sai Myo Win.

 

[46]  Defence -- the responsiblity of the center -- was a thorny issue since the military, beholden to the central government, was not in the least accountable to state governments and regulations, and reg-ularly perpetrated grave atrocities. The most pressing problem for Shan and other non-Burman governments and leaders was the erosion of their autonomy by Bama military officers, who behaved as occupiers and tolerated or encouraged the atrocities their soldiers committed. The solution favoured by them was constitutional reform, making the central government a truly federal authority, rather than one dominated by the Bama "Mother-state". Non-Bama leaders and governments organized what is known as the "Federal" movement -- a move to redress the imbalance between centre and periphery, and defuse armed rebellion provoked by "Bama" military atrocities. See Memorandum, The Constitut-ion Revision Steering Committee, Shan States (Taunggyi, 22 February 1961, in Burmese), and Taunggyi Conference, Meeting Records (Shan State Government, Taunggyi, June 1961, in Burmese). 

 

[47]  Walinsky, Economic Development, pp. 61-68. The AFPFL’s aspirations and plans for "socialist" industrialization are covered in the standard works by Furnivall, Cady, Trager, Butwell, and others.  See also Frank Trager, Building a Welfare State in Burma, 1948-56 (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1958) and Frank Golay, et al., Underdevelopment and Economic Nationalism in Southeast Asia  (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969).

 

[48]  The AFPFL government pursued socialist strategies such as the nationalization of some private enterprises (mainly British, Indian, and Chinese); economic restrictions (including monopolies on imports and exports in some areas); programs to nationalize and redistribute land; and "socialist industrialization" projects. See Walinski, Economic Development, pp. 491-506.  To be fair, Burma under the AFPFL did by the 1950s stage a recovery from the damage caused by both the global and the internal wars. Damage from the internal wars was estimated at kyat 2 billion, or US $400 million at an exchange rate of 5:1. See Walinsky, Economic Development, p. 69. By the mid-1950s, Burma had become the world’s biggest rice exporter (falling only one ton short of the prewar harvest of 3 million tons per year). Its GDP mounted steadily, and stood at K5.6 billion ($1.1 billion) in 1959-60, up from K3.2 billion ($600 million) in 1948-49. Foreign exchange reserves were kyat 560 million, or $112 million. More significant was progress in private sector industry. By 1959-60, there were 2,500 local industrial enterprises employing ten or more workers, up from 1,350 in 1951; and 5,000 cottage-industry units (see Trager, Burma, pp. 151-165; also Walinsky, Economic Development, pp. 236).

 

[49]  The AFPFL split is dealt with in all standard works on Burma. A particularly detailed account is found in Sein Win, The Split Story (Rangoon: The Guardian Ltd., 1959). The clearest account of split is Furnivall’s, in The Governance, pp. 109-132. The AFPFL was a front, an umbrella body, made up of several, even competing, organizations -- the All-Burma Peasants Organization (ABPO), the Fed-eration of Trades Organization (FTO), the Trades Union Congress, Burma (TUCB), the United Karen Organization (UKL), and the Burmese Women Freedom League (BWFL). See Furnivall, op cit., pp. 114-115. As such, there was much competition between leaders of member organizations (which were also loosely organized, and linked to individual leaders by personal and patronage connections), to gain control of the party, and thus obtain more resource with which to strengthen their respective patronage-based support network (and of course, their own position within the party and the govern-ment).  

 

[50]  The following -- the views or convictions of knowledgable Burmese -- is obtained from 1993 interviews in Bangkok and Singapore with a number of Burmese who requested anonymity. They include former civil servants; academics; friends and relatives of ex-military brass (Aung Gyi, Hla Myint, MIS Tin Oo, Chit Myaing, Sein Mya); and friends of Dr. Maung Maung and General San Yu (both former Heads of State under Ne Win).

 

[51]  See the 1947-48 Union Constitution, article 116, which provided for the appointment of a non-Member of Parliament to the cabinet for six months. This article was suspended in parliament in 1959, to allow Ne Win to continue as head of the caretaker government for another year (instead of six months only). Also see, Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, pp. 258-260. This provision was once used in 1952, when Ne Win was appointed to the cabinet as one of the several deputy Prime Ministers, following the resignation of leaders of the Socialist faction -- led by U Kyaw Nyein --from the cabinet. This episode is covered by standard work on Burma. For example, see Maung Maung, op cit., p.214.  

 

[52]  The above is based on personal observation. I was in Rangoon, and on a trip to Pegu and back, I was stopped at several checkpoints. Each checkpoint was manned by at least a full company of battle-ready troops. At several checkpoints near Rangoon, I saw a number of armoured cars, and a couple of tanks. 

 

[53]  Most knowledgable Burmese agree that the 1958 intervention was an indirect coup, staged not by Ne Win, but "Young Turks" factions. The master-minds of the 1958 intervention reportedly were Maung Maung and Aung Gyi. 

 

[54]  Butwell, U Nu of Burma, pp. 206-207.

 

[55]  Ibid., p.206.

 

[56]  For a typical highly positive assessment of the caretakers, see Walinsky, Economic Development, esp. Ch. 15 (pp. 252-266). For a later, more balanced assessment of the caretakers’ performance and the post-1962 military-socialists by the same author, see Walinsky, "The Role of the Military in Dev-elopment Planning: Burma", The Philippines Economic Journal, No. 8, Second Semester 1965, Vol. IV, No.2: pp. 310-326. The caretaking interlude is assessed in all standard works on Burma, with the earlier ones tending to be more favorable, and works from the late 1970s onwards tending to be more critical.

 

[57]  Trager, Burma, p.158; see also Walinsky, Economic Development, esp. pp. 252-66. Four years later, all private economic activities were outlawed or criminalized, and the new military regime carried out an extensive nationalization program, as will be discussed. 

 

[58]  The bulk of NSA members were army veterans. Civil servants were also "encouraged" to join the NSA, and were compelled to attend its rallies. In a sense, the NSA was the forerunner of the BSPP party. The present junta has set up a similar body, the USDA (Union Solidarity Development Assoc-iation), which likely will be transformed into a government party once a new constitution is in place. 

 

[59]  Coincidentally, "democracy" (or parliamentary rule, of a sort) in Indonesia also fell at the same time. But in this case, it was dismantled by a civilian, more or less authoritarian leader, Sukarno, albeit with military backing.

 

[60]  See Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, pp. 251-52 (on parliamentary sanction), pp. 258-260 (on the extension of Ne Win’s term).

 

[61]   See John Seabury Thompson, "A Second Chance for Burma: The Interim Government and the 1960 Elections", (Supplement), in Furnivall, The Governance, pp. 133-154 (esp. pp.138, 140).

 

[62]  See Maureen Aung-Thwin, "Burmese Days", Foreign Affairs, Vol.68, No.2 (Spring 1989), pp. 143-161. The unofficial reason given for his declining the prize was that its acceptance might compromise Burma's neutrality. 

 

[63]   According to a family friend of U Kyaw Nyein, leader of the Stable AFPFL faction, U Nu was prepared to dismiss Ne Win and sent him into de facto exile as an ambassador. Ne Win is said to have appealed to U Kyaw Nyein for help, who was able to change U Nu’s mind. Perhaps this was weakness on U Nu’s part, but it must also be recalled that personal and social ties still linked AFPFL leaders even after the split. 

 

[64]  Interviews with Burmese academics in Singapore (in 1993) and a close accquaintance of Brigadier Aung Gyi, who masterminded the "transfer of power" in 1958. Although most Burmese interviewed (in Singapore and elsewhere) believe that the Young Turk Brigadiers acted without Ne Win's orders, some, however, assert that Ne Win encouraged Aung Gyi and Maung Maung, but did not commit himself, so that he, Ne Win, could deny involvement in the event of failure. If the plan failed, he could then claim ignorance and also dismiss Aung Gyi, whom Ne Win did not quite trust. Besides being quite competent and ambitious, Aung Gyi was very close to U Ba Swe (one time Defence Minister, Deputy Prime Minister in many cabinets, and co-leader of the Stable AFPFL). 

 

[65]  Dorothy Hess Guyot, "The Burma Independence Army: A Political Movement in Military Garb", in J. Silverstein, ed., Southeast Asia in World War II: Four Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 51-65.

 

[66]  U Saw is a godfather-like figure who served as Prime Minister of Ministerial Burma. He was on a foreign tour when the Japanese invaded in 1942, and was detained by the British, who consigned him to a camp in Uganda on a charge of secretly contacting Japanese diplomats while in Lisbon. When he returned to Burma after the war, U Saw found he had been eclipsed by Aung San. It was this, and an attempt to kill him, which pushed him to plot Aung San’s murder on 19 July 1947. He was tried and hanged on 8 May 1948. For a detailed account of U Saw and the assassination, see Kin Oung, Who Killed Aung San? (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1993).  

 

[67]  Ne Win was a university dropout and obscure postal clerk who did not even belong to Aung San’s Thakin faction, but to Thakin Ba Sein’s rightist-nationalist group.  Aung San and Ne Win were probably never acquainted previously. 

 

[68]  For a comprehensive account of the clandestine Japanese activities in Burma that led to the form-ation of the BIA (Burma Independence Army), see Cady, A History, pp. 432-442. This period is also covered in other standard works.

 

[69]  Aung San, "The Resistance",  pp. 77-93.  For an account of the BIA’s minor role in the fight against the British in 1942, see the firsthand account by Dr. Ba Maw, a major player and supreme leader of wartime Burma (Breakthrough, pp. 131-173). Bama individuals in their sixties often recall that the BIA merely marched in behind conquering Japanese columns, and that its members were prone to loot, steal, and boast about their "heroic exploits". 

 

[70]  The Thakins’ "resistance" to the Japanese occupiers, declared in March 1945, was largely a polit-ical gesture. Allied forces were already on their way to Rangoon, which fell in May 1945. Aung San himself conceded, at a meeting in Kandy with Lord Mountbatten and General William Slim, that the resistance played only a minor role. See R.H. Taylor, Marxism, p. 56; also Ba Maw, Breakthrough, pp. 389-400. As Lewis Allen, a military historian, has commented, the Bama military’s unsubstantiat-ed claim to have fought the Japanese is "now slotted firmly into the history of the period"; see Allen, "Leaving a Sinking Ship: A Comment on the End of Empire", in D.K. Basset and V.T. King, eds., Britain and South-East Asia (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1986), pp. 67-78.

 

[71]  The claim of military Thakins and the present military that nationalist armies fought both the Brit-ish and the Japanese has also become a "fact" through repetition, and has been repeated by those writing about Burma. For example, see Moshe Lissak, Military Roles in Modernization: Civil-Military Relations in Thailand and Burma (London: Sage Publication, 1976), pp. 155-156. Taylor also gives credence to the story that the Thakin resistance group killed nearly 800 Japanese, including two generals: see Taylor, Marxism, p. 35. The claim is disputed by Lewis Allen, who interviewed Japanese officers and examined their files. See Allen, "Leaving a Sinking Ship", p. 70. Those who actually fought the Japanese – the Rakhine, Karen, Kachin, Chin, Shan, and to some degree Bama communists – did not reap the fruits of victory. 

 

[72]  See Foreign Relations of the United States.

 

[73]  Ne Win’s weakness for women is well known, and is frowned upon by the somewhat prudish Bama.  In Thailand, he would have been admired, as Sarit Thanarat was for his many wives. Tales of Ne Win’s womanizing ways were related to me by one of his erstwhile "playboy" companions, the late Bo Setkya (one of the famed "Thirty Comrades"). It was recently confirmed by a well-known lawyer, a contemporary and former friend of the top military brass. Maung Maung claims that Ne Win’s hedonism was a strategy to "assure the people that all was well [!]". Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, p. 221.

 

[74]  See Richard Butwell, "Civilians and Soldiers in Burma",  in Robert K. Sakai, ed., Studies on Asia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. 74-85, esp. p. 74. Buttwell quotes Brigadier Maung Maung as saying, "[It is] irksome to find those who could not hold their own in the army becoming [our] superiors". Contempt for civilians and democratic politics is, as noted, a major characteristic of Third World soldiers.

 

[75]  F.R. von der Mehden, "The Burmese Way To Socialism",  Asian Survey, Vol. III, 3 (March 1963), pp. 129-35 (quote, p. 131).  See also Taylor, The State, p. 292; Maung Maung, Burma, p. 296.

 

[76]  The period when democracy was "taking root" has not been positively assessed, but rather smothered in anti-communist anxieties. Trager portrays it as a time of unruly politics, incompetence on the part of both U Nu and the AFPFL, and the infiltration of parliament by (in his words) "crypto-communists". Trager, Burma, pp. 173-75. Even Butwell, an admirer of U Nu, devotes only a para-graph to the 1956 elections, which were pivotal in persuading a significant number of rebels to give up the armed struggle (Butwell, U Nu, p. 139). Maung Maung also devotes only a short paragraph to the 1956 elections, portraying them as the “writing on the wall” for the AFPFL. Maung Maung, Burma p. 226. There is still no work on the democratic interlude in Burma comparable to Herbert Feith’s study of The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962). 

 

[77]  Taylor, "Government Response", p. 111, and Aung-Thwin, "The British ‘Pacification’",  pp. 248-249.

 

[78]  See Shan State Government, Memorandum,The Constitution Revision, and Shan State Govern-ment, Taunggyi Conference, Meeting Records.  

 

[79]  In the summer of 1961, I recall reading a Burmese language daily, Bama Khit, alleging with ref-erence to the Yawnghwe prince (my father) that someone "as prominent as the sun and the moon" was behind a plot to dismember the Union. The newspaper was shut down in the 1960s, and it is imposs-ible to trace the issue in question. However, many people I interviewed recalled those headlines.

 

[80]  See Moshe Lissak, Military Roles, p. 157; also American University, Area Handbook For Burma (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), pp.339-40; and Walinsky, Economic Development, p. 261.

 

[81]  The DSI began as a post-exchange cooperative, then expanded into books and stationery (the Ava House), government contracting (the International Trading House), and, with Japanese partners, pearl and fisheries (Burma Fisheries). In time, its subsidiaries dominated banking, the import business, trade in coal and coke, construction, shipping, consumer retailing, tourism and hotels, the service and sales of automobiles, and the assembly and manufacture of cars, radios, shoes and boots. Accounts of the DSI are found in all standard works on modern Burma and the military.

 

[82]  Manuel Antonio Garreton, The Chilean Political Process (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 68-72.

 

[83]  Aung Gyi made this statement 26 years after the coup in the now-famous Open Letter which fuell-ed the "people’s power" uprising in 1988. He claims that he refused to lead the coup and wept on the morning it began, because it meant "cremat[ing] the whole democratic system". Although the letter is self-serving, its value lies in the light it sheds on the personalities concerned (including, unwittingly, his own), as well as the inner workings of the military at the time of the coup. The letter reveals that after the coup, the majority of the top brass, though jubilant, did not know what to do next – every-thing was in Ne Win’s hands. See Aung Gyi, "The Truth Revealed: An Open Letter to Ne Win, May 9, 1988" (Falls Church, VA: Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma, 1988).

 

[84]  Aung Gyi, "The Truth Revealed", p. 4. It also did not fit in with his image, especially in Rangoon society, as a playboy and political lightweight. Noteworthy is that the socialist goal that Ne Win decreed was contrary to his caretaking image as an anti-leftist, pro-free market, development-oriented leader. There was also his personal disdain for socialism, which Aung Gyi says he once expressed after "studying and discussing it for about three days [!]". So low was public esteem of Ne Win that the general opinion at the time of the coup was that his military regime would not last. This skepticism survived well into the 1970s. 

 

[85]  Lissak, Military Roles, pp.166-67.  For a less skeptical, more mainstream analysis that sees the SCME doctrine as a synthesis of Buddhism and socialism, see F.R. von der Mehden, "The Burmese Way to Socialism", Asian Survey, Vol.III, 3 (March 1963), pp. 129-35.

 

[86]  Prior to the July 7th Massacre -- as it is now known -- many Burmese adopted a neutral, "wait-and-see" attitude. But after the killings, and especially after the demolition of the Students Union building (a "home away from home" for Aung San and other leaders who led the country to independ-ence), it became morally impossible for prominent figures to support the regime. The July 7th Massac-re was the first of many coercive responses from the regime and Ne Win, its strongman-ruler, to the disaffection and discontent of societal forces. For an excellent account of the July 7th massacre and other urban protests, including the largest and bloodiest ones in 1988, see Bertil Lintner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy (Hong Kong: Review Publishing Co., 1989). 

 

[87]  An alliance between the regime and the Stable AFPFL was out of the question, mainly because the latter was closely connected with Aung Gyi. Ne Win did not trust Aung Gyi, and had him sacked shortly after the coup. For details of intrigues leading to his expulsion, see Aung Gyi, “The Truth Revealed,” pp. 14-15, 17-21.

 

[88]  According to Karen and CPB sources, China (represented by Liu Shou-chih and Chen Yi) recom-mended an RC-CPB coalition. This is lent some credibility by the RC’s willingness to talk with CPB leaders who had been living in China for the previous seven or eight years (they actually flew in from Kunming). Source: Skawler-Htaw, a leftist Karen leader, and Sai Aung Win, onetime personal assistant to Thakin Than Tun and former alternate CPB Central Committee member. (Aung Win was Khin Nyunt’s classmate at Rangoon University, and was given a shop in a Rangoon mall when he defected after the CPB’s collapse.)

 

[89]  Josef Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 117-118.

 

[90]  The 1980 amnesty offer was the most successful, taken up by U Nu from his exile in India, and by his former followers in the PDP (Parliamentary Democracy Party) -- an anti-military armed movement which U Nu founded in 1971. It had no effect on non-Bama "armies" or the CPB, however.

 

[91]  Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 

 

[92]  Jackson and Rosberg, Personal Rule, pp.143-145, 234-240.

 

[93]  San Yu’s speech at the Hmawbi Officer Training School as reported in The Guardian (Rangoon), 18 Oct. 1964.  See also Union of Burma, Party Seminar: Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), February 1966, pp.132-138.

 

[94]  Mranmah is a variation of Mranmaa or Myanmar. They are all literary forms of Bama/Burman, a term denoting the "majority" ethnic group.

 

[95]  For a comprehensive analysis of the military’s Lanzin or BSPP establishment, its structures and formal power relationships, see Silverstein, Military Rule, esp. Chs. 4 and 5 (pp. 80-147).

 

[96]  On the SACs, see Silverstein, Military Rule, pp. 93-94. SACs were headed by military men, with civilian functionaries attached for gloss. The SAC formula was replicated in SLORC, in that Law and Order Restoration Committees (LORCs) at all levels are headed by military officers.

 

[97]  They were purged probably because they were his followers, or were seen by Ne Win and the military-BSPP leaders as insufficiently loyal. As in Thailand, Indonesia and other polities pervaded by patrimonial connections, it was not uncommon in Ne Win’s Burma for hundreds to be purged when a top military or political figure was dismissed. The official reason for Tin U’s dismissal was that he was aware of a plot by Captain Ohn Kyaw Myint to assassinate Ne Win, San Yu, and top BSPP leaders, but failed to inform on the plotters. He is now co-leader of the democratic movement, together with Aungsan Suukyi.

 

[98]  For accounts of the BSPP’s powerlessness and the various purges, see David I. Steinberg, Burma’s Road Towards Development: Growth and Ideology Under Military Rule (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 70 (on the Taze township purge), 74.  See also Jon Wiant, "The Political Symbolism of the Taw-hlan-ye-Khit", in F.K. Lehman, ed., Military Rule in Burma: A Kaleidoscope of Views (Sing-apore: Institute of S.E. Asian Studies, 1980), pp. 59-72;  John Badgley and Jon Wiant, "The Ne Win-BSPP Style of Bama-Lo";  J. Silverstein, "From Soldiers to Civilians", in Silverstein, ed., The Future of Burma, pp. 43-62 and 80-92, respectively; Bertil Lintner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy (Hong Kong: Review Publishing Co., 1989),  p. 79; Maung Maung Gyi, Burmese Politic-al Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism  (New York: Praeger, 1983). 

 

[99]  Maung Maung Gyi, Burmese Political Values, p. 194. For a good journalistic account of the decay of government bureaucracies and institutions, see "Masses in Revolt Against Stifling Authoritarian Grip", Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 25 August 1988. For analyses of the highly privileged and patrimonialized military, see Bruce Matthews, "Fortunes of Politics and Culture in Burma", Annual Meeting of Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS), Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 1988; and "Under the Light Infantry Yoke: Burma and its Destiny", Joint Conference of CCSEAS and Northwest Consortium of Southeast Asian Studies, Vancouver, B.C., November 1989.

 

[100]  Interviews in Chiangmai and Bangkok with former members of the Prithu-Hluttaw and state legislatures, both Shan and Bama, February-May 1993.

 

[101]  Mya Maung, "The Burma Road to Poverty: A Socio-political Analysis", Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Summer 1989), pp. 271-294.

 

[102] "Em-I" Tin Oo had grown so powerful by the late 1970s that he was regarded as the real power in the military hierarchy (and thought of as an annointed "heir").     

 

[103]  Lintner, Outrage, pp. 92-93.

 

[104]  Ne Win’s psychopathic behavior is common knowledge among the Burmese. For example, on Christmas night in 1975, in the presence of diplomats, he stormed into a hotel and beat up members of a rock band. He also assaulted an academic on a golf course who had accidentally touched Daw Khin May Than, the dictator’s wife, at a reception. Ne Win is also reported to have kicked a diplomat in a rage. 

 

[105]  This was the fate of "misfit" Bama officers. For non-Bama officers, however, it was the rule.  The highest rank the latter could aspire to was captain. A Shan officer who (in 1948) held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, and had been awarded the Military Cross, was never promot-ed, and was retired in 1963 with the same rank.

 

[106]  Interview with Bo Hla Tint, Member of Parliament and member of the government-in-exile; also, interviews with two former MIS-personnel-turned-gem-traders and other gem and jade traders in Chiangmai and Bangkok (March, 1993).

 

[107]  The institutional decay and corruption within the Tatmadaw is so widespread that it is common knowledge in Burma, and even regarded as "normal". Talks on this topic in Bangkok, Chiangmai, Singapore, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver with Khin Maung Nyunt, Zaw Oo, Zarni, Khin Than Nu, Sai Sai, Ko Aung, Bo Hla Tint, and a host of others who served (or have family members serving) in the Tatmadaw, have been informative and beneficial.  

 

[108]  Ne Win’s personal dominance of the military and the BSPP order is widely acknowledged.  In the early years of BSPP rule, he was often portrayed as an austere, Cromwellian, "warrior-king" type (see Maung Maung,  Burma and General Ne Win). For a more balanced and adequate analysis of his leadership role, see John Badgley, "Burmese Ideology: A Comment", in Silverstein, ed., Independent Burma, pp. 63-79.

 

[109]  These passages are based on conversations in Washington, D.C. in 1989 with U Kyaw Win, a Burma-born American officer of the USAID agency, and with the son and nephew of former BSPP ministers. Information was also gleaned from an interview with a former civil servant once close to Ne Win (Bangkok, 1993).

 

[110]  For example, Major Charlie Thein Shwe, a former No. 2 man in the MIS, was so badly tortured in prison that he lost his sight. The son of Bo Ba-Htoo (a BIA/BDA martyr) was similarly tortured and blinded. Sources: communication from Tin Maung Win, a prominent opposition figure.

 

[111]  Interview with a relative of the present head of the Northern Command, General Saw Lwin (who was made SLORC’s Minister of Labor in mid-1996). According to this source, during the BSPP years the general lived in constant fear of the MIS. Often, he would communicate with trusted family memb-ers only on paper, which he destroyed immediately afterwards.

 

[112]  So powerful was this image that Burmese in Canada, beyond the practical reach of the MIS, were and are fearful of talking politics, even among themselves.

 

[113]  They include houses belonging to current top military bosses (Khin Nyunt, Abel, Tun Kyi, Kyaw Ba, etc.), former top brass (Tin Pe, San Yu, Kyaw Htin, Aye Ko, Saw Maung), and even the disgrac-ed (for example, "Em-I" Tin Oo was given a plot of land and a "loan" to build a house, after his release from jail in 1989). Needless to say, the houses and land were not Ne Win’s to give away: they were either state-owned or "nationalized" property.

 

[114]  Burma Watcher, "Burma in 1988: There Came a Whirlwind", Asian Survey, Vol. XXIV, No. 2 (February 1989), pp. 174-80.

 

[115]  Atrocities, primarily by Bama soldiers, have been endemic in non-Bama areas since 1948. How-ever, they tended to be dismissed as rebel propaganda until Amnesty International’s report on Burma in 1988. See Burma: Extrajudicial Execution and Torture of Members of Ethnic Minorities (London: Amnesty International, May 1988). Also see, Marc Weller, ed., Democracy and Politics in Burma (Manerplaw: NCGUB Printing Office, 1993), esp., pp. 280-281, 350-361, 374-384 (Interviews with victims and reports on atrocities by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and NCGUB/the Government-in-Exile of Burma). It is quite likely that Bama soldiers have committed atrocities against the Bama population as well, but these do not seem to have been systematic until 1988. The most widespread atrocity is the coercion of civilians to serve as frontline "porters". Victims are used as beasts of burden, human shields, and human mine-detectors; women porters are often the victims of gang rape. On forced labor, see "Burma’s Road of Shame", Asia Inc., Vol.2/10 (October 1993), pp. 36-43.

 

[116]  From personal experience while serving with the Shan State Army/SSA, 1963-1977. Medical items such as drugs, needles, morphine, and bandages, along with ammunition, uniforms, ponchos, and boots, were all obtained from black-market middlemen.

 

[117]  Silverstein, Military Rule, pp. 49, 141.

 

[118]  Steinberg, Burma’s Road, pp. 79, 128. Also, Nobuyoshi Nishizawa and Mya Than, "Agricultur-al Policy Reforms and Agricultural Development in Myanmar", in Mya Than and Joseph L.H. Tan, eds., Myanmar Dilemma and Options: The Challenge of Economic Transition in the 1990 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990).

 

[119]  In this respect, SLORC’s ceasefire offer can be seen as a slight improvement.  However, it is at best a stopgap measure. Such issues as the military’s monopolization of administrative and political power, military atrocities, and the shape of future relations between centre and states have yet to be resolved.

 

[120]  From the mid-1970s to 1988, however, the regime did successfully exploit the opium-heroin problem, enabling it to buttress its external legitimacy and obtain aid, loans, and grants. Despite anti-narcotics aid from the U.S. and others, opium production increased from 400 to almost 2000 tons, according to the estimates of international anti-narcotics authorities. See United States General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Enforcement Efforts in Burma are Not Effective (Washington D.C., 1989).  Martin Smith argues that there has been no reduction in opium output despite U.S. anti-narcotics aid (to the tune of US $18 million a year) and cooperation between the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) and the current junta (worth US $4.1 million). See Martin Smith, "Recurrent Trends in Burma’s Ethnic Drug History", paper at the U.S.State Department Conference on Narcotics in Burma, Washington D.C., 17 September 1993.

 

[121]  The Revolutionary Council, The Burmese Way to Socialism: The Proclamation of the Revolut-ionary Council (in Burmese).  Rangoon: Ministry of Information, 30 April 1962.

 

[122]  The KKY, or homeguards, were local militias led by an ethnic Chinese leader like Lo Hsing-han, the "heroin king" of the 1970s. They were usually backed by mafia-like, pan-Asian, ethnic-Chinese drug and trade "syndicates". The KKY supported the regime in exchange for a free hand in cross-border trade, military protection for heroin refineries and opium convoys, and use of military vehicles for transport. At one time (until 1971), Khun Sa was the unofficial head of all KKYs in Shan State.  The KKY program was scrapped in the mid-1970s, when the regime secured U.S. anti-narcotics aid.  But after 1988, ex-CPB warlord armies, again led or backed by Chinese drug and trade groups, came to enjoy the same status as the KKY armies under the ceasefire agreements. For a well-researched account of the pan-Asian, ethnic-Chinese drug and trade network, its key personalities and dealings with local power-holders, see Sterling Seagrave, Lords of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Over-seas Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995).

 

[123]  Besides restrictions on foreign travel and censorship, including a ban on foreign publications, regime actions against the people included frequent harassment by MIS agents, soldiers, and party officials. In addition, citizens were required to carry identity cards wherever they went, obtain permits even for domestic travel, submit to searches at numerous checkpoints, report overnight visitors to authorities, and fill out forms at party and government offices (to buy a tin or two of condensed milk from the people’s stores, for instance). Except for the last, these restrictions remain in place.  

 

[124]  Unarmed protests occurred in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1987, and 1988. They are familiar to those who follow events in Burma, and are mentioned in all works on the country’s post-1962 history. For brief but comprehensive accounts of various uprisings, see Lintner, Outrage.

 

[125]  For typical analyses that record the familiar woes inflicted by the regime, but underestimate the depth of resentment and ignore the pressure then building, see Hugh C. MacDougall and Jon A. Wiant, "Burma in 1984: Political Stasis or Political Renewal?", Asian Survey, Vol. XXV, No. 2 (February 1985), pp. 241-248, and "Burma in 1985: Consolidation Triumphs Over Innovation", Asian Survey, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (February 1986), pp. 186-195; Robert O. Tilman, "Burma in 1986: The Process of Involution Continues", Asian Survey, Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (February 1987), pp. 254-63.

 

[126]  For accounts of the March-July protests and the brutality of Sein Lwin’s riot squad (lon-htein), see Aung Gyi’s second Open Letter. His exposure of the atrocities outraged the people of Rangoon, and made them more determined to overthrow the BSPP regime.  Aung Gyi, "The Day the Blood Flowed on the Inya Embankment: The Second Letter, 6 June 1988" (Falls Church, VA: Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma [CRDB], 1988).   

 

[127]  According to a few Burmese with inside contacts, Sein Lwin, as head of a "hardcore" faction, opposed Ne Win’s multi-party proposals. This led to the latter withdrawing in a huff from the BSPP, and taking his men with him -- including San Yu and his cabinet. Thus Sein Lwin was left "holding the bag", and became President for about a month. According to some Burmese interviewed, they believe that Sein Lwin is, like Ne Win, still influential behind the scenes and quite powerful. He is believed to be the "patron-godfather" of hardliners and the USDA -- an outfit nicknamed by a Rangoon wit as "SLORC generals' private street-mobs". 

 

[128]  These were U Nu, Mahn Win Maung (third Union President), Bohmu Aung, Thakin Soe (Red Flag leader), Aung Gyi (former No. 2 in the military brass), Tin U (ex-defence minister), and other former top brass (including Kyi Maung, Maung Shwe, Aung Shwe, Chit Khaing, and Sein Mya).

 

[129]  For an excellent journalistic account of the “coup” and its bloody aftermath, see Stan Sesser, "A Rich Country Gone Wrong", The New Yorker (9 October 1989),  pp.55-64, 96. The "coup" was well covered by regional newsmagazines such as FEER and Asiaweek, and also by global ones like Time and Newsweek. An example is Melinda Liu, "Inside Bloody Burma", Newsweek (3 October 1988), pp. 30-32. For an account of the 1988 uprising, based on interviews with participants and witnesses, see Bertil Lintner, Outrage.

 

[130]  The core of SLORC’s argument is contained in its Announcement No. 1/90,  July 27, 1990.  See also International Human Rights Law Group, Post-Election Myanmar: Popular Mandate Withheld, Washington, D.C., 31 October 1990, pp. 7-10.

 

[131]  This does not mean that Ne Win is now irrelevant. Like Singapore’s "Senior Minister", Lee Kuan Yew, his influence is still pivotal. He is the main factor cementing the military together. SLORC’s top two leaders, Than Shwe and Khin Nyunt, are both Ne Win’s "sons", figuratively speaking. As far as can be ascertained, they are tolerated by other general-ministers and regional commanders mainly because they enjoy Ne Win’s support, and also because of Than Swe’s and Khin Nyunt’s tolerance of the economic independence (that is, corruption) of regional commanders and LORC heads. Source: U Rewata, the British-based Burmese monk who arranged a series of informal talks between Aung San Suukyi and the Than Swe-Khin Nyunt team in early 1995.

 

[132]  To name just a prominent few "generals-entreprenuers": Kyaw Ba (former head of the Northern Command), Tun Kyi (former head of the Central Command), and Maung Aye (current army comm-ander and aspiring strongman) have all reportedly accumulated fortunes. The usual avenues include deals with foreign partners and local investors for natural resource extraction ventures (teak, mineral ores, gems, precious metals, fish, etc.), along with rice exports, hotels, tourism, heavy construction (roads, airports, seaports), real estate development, and commercial projects (shopping malls, depart-ment stores, and so on).

 

[133]  For example, Ne Win’s daughter, Sanda Win, and her husband, Aye Zaw Win, are among the top "entrepreneurs". His other daughters, Kyemon and Thawda, along with their husbands and in-laws, are thriving by brokering foreign deals. SLORC chairman Than Shwe’s son and wife are likewise occupied. These individuals have been labelled by local wags "capitalists without capital", since their only capital is their famous fathers and uncles, and their links with the top military brass.

 

[134]  The point that USDA may be transformed into a future Golkar-like party is also discussed by David I. Steinberg, "The Union Solidarity Development Association: Mobilization and Orthodoxy", Burma Debate, Vol.IV, No.1 January/February 1997, pp. 4-11.

 

[135]  The particulars about Maung Aye were obtained from talks in Bangkok in January 1997 with Burmese businessmen connected to the military. I am also indebted to several Burmese academics and friends in Singapore; Dr. Mya Maung, Zaw Oo, and Zarni in the United States; Karen leaders and activists in Maesot and Mae Ta Raw Hta; Shan monks and activists in Bangkok and Chiangmai.

 

[136]  Khin Nyunt is officially the No. 2 man in the SLORC hierarchy. But as the "Old Man’s" protege, formal head of  the MIS, and often SLORC’s prime spokesman, he is in many respects No. 1.

 

[137]  Some of the early and influential overseas "Burmese" entrepreneurs include: Kyan Kin (ethnic Chinese, based in Hong Kong and Singapore); Motiwallah (Bama-Muslim, Singapore); B.P. Win (Chinese, Hong Kong); Sein Tun and Sappan (Chinese, Bangkok); Kyaw Zin (Chinese, Singapore); Zaw Win (Chinese, USA); Tin Tut (Chinese, USA); R. Tun Maung (Rakine, Canada); Michael Myo Nyunt (Bama, Australia).

 

[138]  For example, China and Singapore have taken a "hands-on" role in supporting SLORC.  They have encouraged their businessmen to become major investors in Burma.  The volume of Burma-China trade was at US $800 million, and while Singapore’s investments in Burma totalled US $500 million in late 1995. All figures are in U.S. dollars. See Lee Kim Chew, "Changes in Myanmar’s Policies Spell New Openings for Investors", The Straits Times (Singapore), 19 September 1995; and John Stackhouse, "Investment Boom Strikes Burma", The Globe and Mail (10 April 1995). Firms doing business with SLORC are monitored by Burma Alert, a publication of the Canada-based ADDB (Associates to Develop Democratic Burma). It also publishes and periodically updates a list of foreign firms that invest or do business in Burma. In early 1997, SLORC's Directorate of Investment and Company Administration claimed that foreign investment in Burma has increased (from $1.4 billion in 1993). It reported that there were 226 foreign projects worth $5.27 billion. Of these, $1.5 billion was, it was claimed, in Oil and Gas, $1 billion in manufacturing, $731 million in Hotel and Tourism, and $500 million in Mining -- totalling $3.8 billion only (no account was given of the remainder). Major investors were, reportedly: Singapore, with $1.17 billion; the United Kingdom, $1 billion, and Thai-land, $960 million. Burma Alert, Vol.8, No.2 (February 1997), p. 7.  

 

[139]  Only in 1988, it seems, did the military realize that the real threat to its power resided in the Bama majority. Before that, its attention had been focused almost entirely on the non-Bama. The military was for a long time able to sow confusion among the Bama majority with allegations that, for example, Shan princes and Karen rebels were plotting to dismember the union.

 

[140]  Source: communications with KIA chairman Brang Seng, now deceased (1992); with E.M. Marta of the Karen External Affairs office in Bangkok (1993); and with Aung Tet, a CPB cadre now in exile in Yunnan (1994).

 

[141]  Source: Brang Seng, Kachin (KIO) chairman, and M. Jala, a Kachin activist and confidential aide to Brang Seng (Interview in 1993).

 

[142]  The abuses and atrocities suffered by the vast majority of people, especially the non-Bama, are dealt with in Martin Smith and Annie Allsebrook, Ethnic Groups in Burma: Development, Democ-racy, and Human Rights (London: Anti-Slavery International, 1994).

 

[143]  Her image among the Bama is that of a refined, beloved daughter or younger sister of high moral calibre and intellect. From this perspective, it can be said that support for Aung San Suukyi, and revulsion towards SLORC, is emotionally entrenched, and hence difficult to counter. Her popularity and legitimacy have been boosted by the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and other international awards. Other awards she has received include: the Thorolf Rafto Award (Norway, 1990), the Sakharov prize (European Parliament, 1991), the Humanistas Human Rights Award (United States, 1991), the Marisa Bellisario prize (Italy, 1992), the Simon Bolívar prize (UNESCO, 1992), Les Nouveaux Droits award (France, 1992), the Premio Mujer Progresista award (Spain, 1993), and the Victor Jara International Human Rights Award (United States, 1993). See Burma Affairs, Vol. 3/1, January-March 1993, p. 10. For some of her own thoughts, see Aung San Suukyi, Freedom From Fear and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1991). How deep her democratic convictions run remains to be seen, however, especially if and when she attains power.

 

[144]  It is also alleged that the release took place without Khin Nyunt’s knowledge. Source: Confident-ial communication (August 1995) from a person with links to SLORC higher-ups, especially Kyaw Sein, the DDSI’s No.2 man. According to this source and others, the military is divided at the time of writing (1997) into three major factions. One consists of Khin Nyunt and his allies, which enjoys the blessings of Ne Win or his daughter, Sanda Win. Another is led by Maung Aye, an ambitious hard-liner, under the patronage of Sein Lwin, "The Butcher of Rangoon". A third revolves around Than Shwe, SLORC’s chairman. In addition, there are a number of "floating" or "fence-sitting" cliques, including several military-intelligence cliques; cliques of general-ministers (the "business generals"); cliques in the navy and the airforce; and smaller cliques of officers, formed for self-protection, which attach themselves to major factions as expediency or circumstances dictate.

 

[145]  In addition to problems associated with the grave state-society dysfunction, additional problems that discourage long-term development include widespread corruption; unsettled politics; the lack of physical and other infrastructure; an overvalued kyat; and the flood of cheap outside manufactures, especially from Yunnan, which have undercut the viability of local industries.  See Mary P. Callahan, "Myanmar in 1994: New Dragon or Still Dragging?," Asian Survey, Vol. XXXV, No. 2 (February 1995), pp. 201-208. See also Khin Maung Kyi, "Mynanmar: Will Forever Flow the Ayeyawaddy?" Southeast Asian Affairs 1994, pp. 209-230; and Mya Maung, "The Burmese Approach to Develop-ment: Economic Growth without Democratization," Economics and Politics Series, No. 7, July 1995, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. Almost all economists analyzing SLORC’s policies and actions agree that its "open-market" economic strategy is not geared towards real growth, and benefits only a few at the top, along with their families and investment "bed-fellows".