Myanmar

Read Part 1 here.  Part 2 After Jakarta’s initial successes against militants such as those from Jemaah Islamiah, a new generation of Islamists began to emerge in Southeast Asia in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Some had been students in schools set up, in the 1990s and 2000s, by earlier generations of radicals, while others had taken part in plots and attacks in the 1990s and 2000s and had survived the region-wide crackdown on Jemaah Islamiah and other militants. As Indonesian militancy expert Sidney Jones notes, many of these survivors lacked the discipline and organizing principles that had been characteristic of Jemaah Islamiah in the late 1990s and 2000s. Jones notes that the Indonesian authorities were saved in January 2016 primarily by the militants “incompetence,” but if radical groups continue to grow and train in Syria, they may eventually perfect more deadly bombing and shooting plots in Southeast Asia. The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State has provided new inspiration for the younger radicals and, for some willing to travel to Syria and Iraq, a new place for young Southeast Asian militants to train and meet fellow militants from around the world. In some ways, for Southeast Asian radicals the Islamic State’s wars in Syria and Iraq were a kind of modern version of the Afghanistan of the 1980s, a place for foreigners to come, learn how to fight, and mingle with other radicals. However, it was far easier for Southeast Asians to make the journey to Islamic State territory than it had been to join the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Social media, for one, made it far easier for young Southeast Asians to learn about life in Islamic State territory and plan trips to Islamic State-controlled regions than it had been for radicals who wanted to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In addition, the Islamic State’s theatrical brutality, tailored to social media, seemed designed to inspire radicals in other countries to adopt more brutal tactics. Some Islamic State leaders apparently see the value in recruiting and training Southeast Asians. After all, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, and Indonesia and Malaysia are two of the most prominent moderate Muslim-majority states in the world, countries with close relations with the United States, France, China, and other countries either involved in the battle against Islamic State or targeted for attacks by Islamic State leaders. In the past four years, the Islamic State has not only created a brigade of its fighters for Indonesians and Malaysians, who speak a common language, but also released video messages, shared on social media, targeted at Southeast Asian recruits and including efforts to Southeast Asian women to travel to Islamic State territory and potentially marry fighters. Jones’s Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict estimates that as many as forty percent of Indonesians who have traveled to join the Islamic State are women and children. At the same time as the Islamic State is spreading its message into the region, Southeast Asian states are struggling with other factors that could spark radicalism. These factors include: The expansion of social media and Internet access, and the growing use of apps like WhatsApp and Zello that are harder for the authorities to track; the growth in foreign-funded religious schools in Southeast Asia; and, incompetent Southeast Asian prison systems, which tend to group Islamists together and often brutalize them; and, some Southeast Asian leaders’ response to the growth of the Islamic State, a response that has too often morphed into outright Islamophobia. In Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and other countries in the region, a lack of political freedom has been probably the biggest driver of militancy. Once touted as a democratic beacon for other developing regions, since the late 2000s, much of Southeast Asia has witnessed a democratic retrenchment. In its report on global freedom in 2009, Freedom House ranked the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Timor-Leste as “partly free” nations, and ranked Indonesia as “free.” Twenty years earlier, only the Philippines ranked as “partly free” in the region; the rest of these countries were graded “not free,” while Timor-Leste did not even exist as an independent nation. In Thailand, for instance, throughout the 1990s and much of the 2000s, Thailand appeared to have left its era of military interventions behind; Thai army commanders insisted the era of coups had passed and that the armed forces would become a normal military, run by elected civilian ministers. Thailand passed a progressive constitution in 1997, and in the 1990s and 2000s the country held multiple free elections. Malaysia, meanwhile, seemed poised to develop a competitive two-party system in the 2000s and early 2010s. In Cambodia, unexpected gains by the opposition coalition in 2014 national elections led to a brief period of compromise between opposition politicians and longtime prime minister Hun Sen. Today, few people are touting democracy in Southeast Asia as an example of political freedoms. Since the 2000s, Thailand has suffered more than a decade of political turmoil capped by a military coup in May 2014, the second coup in the kingdom in less than a decade. The country is still ruled by a junta, and even if elections are held in 2017, Thailand’s new constitution, written under junta rule, will dramatically restrict democratic freedoms and undermine democratic institutions. In 2015 Hun Sen’s government ended the rapprochement with the opposition. The Cambodian government pursued criminal charges against opposition leader Sam Rainsy, forcing him into exile, and Cambodian police did nothing as a mob of people, potentially organized by the ruling party, attacked opposition lawmakers just outside the parliament building. In Malaysia, the story is similar. After the 2013 general election, which the ruling coalition narrowly won, relying on gerrymandering and alleged vote fraud, the government jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, and used a new law to crack down on other opposition politicians and civil society activists. In Myanmar, since the end of junta rule in 2010-11, Muslims have been the targets of brutal violence. Gangs and paramilitary organizations, apparently tolerated by the state, have launched waves of attacks on Muslim communities in western Myanmar and other parts of the country; over 130,000 Muslim Rohingya, an ethnic minority, fled their homes, and often wound up in camps for the internally displaced that seemed more like internment camps than centers designed to aid refugees. In southern Thailand, meanwhile, increasingly autocratic rule has added to popular alienation from the Thai state and made it easier for militant cells to recruit, according to a study of recruiting by Don Pathan, an expert on the southern Thai conflict who writes for The Nation newspaper. The government of former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the last popularly elected leader before the May 2014 coup, had attempted to launch peace negotiations with the southern militants. But after the coup the Thai army essentially jettisoned the talks. In late 2015 and early 2016, several representatives of the southern insurgents held informal meetings with army negotiators in an attempt to restart the talks, but these informal meetings have yet to produce any tangible results. In Malaysia, the government’s increasing repressiveness and desire to burnish its Islamic credentials have combined to fuel radicalism. Malaysia’s government has not only passed legislation that could suppress opposition voices, but also used its powers to entrench economic and political preferences for ethnic Malays, disempowering ethnic Indians and ethnic Chinese. Malaysian leaders also have used speeches to increasingly try to portray Malaysia a state for Malay Muslims, and tarred opposition leaders by portraying them as stooges of non-Muslim ethnic minorities. As a result, although Malaysian Prime Minister Najib tun Razak has been vocal, on the international stage, about the need for moderate Muslim voices to combat militancy, his government has allowed Malay Muslim nationalist voices to dominate the governing coalition and to wield extensive power over public discourse. At the same time, the government’s crackdown on public protests, nonprofits’ operations, and independent media have limited the means by which Malaysians, including Islamists, could participate peacefully in public discourse. Religion has become central to Malaysians’ identities, as economic and social policies entrench the linkage of faith and identity. “More and more Malays identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims. In a poll carried out [in 2015], Merdeka Center found that 60 per cent of Malays consider themselves as Muslims first, 27 per cent as Malaysians first, and only a peculiarly low 6 per cent saw themselves as Malays first,” writes Penang Institute analyst Kok-Hin Ooi in an analysis for New Mandala. Of course, the extremism that has bloomed in Southeast Asia from failed democratization does not only entail Islamism. Southeast Asia’s failed democratization has sparked many forms of extremist groups, all of which pay little heed to legal, constitutional means of resolving political conflicts. In Thailand, the stalled democratization has fostered a rise in militant Buddhist organizations, some of which have pushed to make Buddhism the state religion. It also has sparked the growth of hardline, conservative, royalist street demonstrations. These royalist street demonstrators, some of whom also belong to militant Buddhist groups, paralyzed Bangkok with protests in late 2013 and early 2014, disrupted planned parliamentary elections, and ultimately set the stage for the May 2014 coup. (During the 2013 and 2014 protests, many of these royalist groups openly called for an end to the franchise for poor Thais and/or a restoration of the absolute monarchy.) In Myanmar, incomplete democratization, and the vacuum of political power left by the end of authoritarian rule, has also allowed radical Buddhist nationalist groups to gain power. Some of the new Buddhist nationalist groups have alleged links to hardline, anti-Muslim political parties; others allegedly are linked to the gangs and paramilitaries that have terrorized the Rohingya and other Myanmar Muslims. These empowered extremist groups are not necessarily fueled primarily by economic grievances. The three provinces of southern Thailand are not the poorest in the country, and are far from the poorest areas of Southeast Asia. In fact, the southernmost provinces are far richer than some areas of Thailand’s rural, drought-hit northeast. The extremist royalist groups that helped topple the Yingluck government and pave the way for the coup were led by middle class and upper class Thais, including some of the richest people in the kingdom. In Malaysia, meanwhile, the most hardline Malay Muslim groups, and the militant Islamist cells that have been uncovered, do not usually attract the poorest in Malaysian society, but rather middle-class and lower-middle class Malays, especially those who apparently fear that urbanization and more open politics might mean a dilution of state privileges for Malays. Indonesia, by contrast, has not regressed politically over the past decade, and its continued democratic transition has blunted the appeal of radicalism. Along with the Philippines, it is the only Southeast Asian nation to be consistently ranked among the freest nations in the developing world by Freedom House. In his first two years in office, President Joko Widodo has helped further entrench democratic culture and institutions, even if he has been less aggressive in pushing on long-term political and economic reforms than some of his supporters had hoped. (In particular, Jokowi has tended to fall back into statist, economic nationalist policy prescriptions.) Still, as President Jokowi has maintained the system of regional and local elections, installed prominent anticorruption activists at the center of his cabinet, and transformed the style and image of the presidency from that of a remote, almost monarchical figure to that of a public servant listening to public concerns. Meanwhile, by the middle of the 2010s, Indonesia’s massive decentralization of legislative authority and government budgets had greatly empowered local politicians and local populaces. Decentralization allowed for a degree of differentiation in how localities handled issues like the selling of alcohol, the regulation of gambling, and other issues that Islamic parties and Islamist militant groups tended to emphasize. (Occasionally, these local laws catered to devout Christians, such as in predominantly Christian areas of Papua, rather than to Muslims.) And decentralization and democratic consolidation have greatly helped Indonesia’s battle against a new generation of militants. Decentralization, for one, helps reduce the appeal of Islamic parties and militant groups on the national level. Devout voters can obtain many of their demands through local legislation, reducing the appeal of national Islamic parties---or of militant groups who pledge to force change through violence. Freedom of expression means that Indonesians can openly advocate for the imposition of harsher Islamic laws or other goals of militant groups; the state does not stifle their voices. Confidence in Indonesia’s political system, and the impact of Indonesian presidents’ public speeches against militants, has clearly had an impact on the Indonesian population. In a poll released in November 2015 by the Pew Research Center, nearly 80 percent of Indonesians had an unfavorable view of the Islamic State, a much higher unfavorable figure than in Malaysia, Turkey, and Pakistan, among other countries. In Malaysia, for instance, only about sixty percent of the population in the same poll, had an unfavorable view of the Islamic State. It helps that the largest Indonesian religious organizations have added their weight to the countermilitancy campaign. Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian religious movement with some 50 million members, has developed a sophisticated public campaign promoting a tolerant version of Islam. The campaign also emphasizes to Indonesians how alien the Islamic State’s form of Islam is to Indonesia’s Islamic traditions. These national campaigns have helped the Indonesian security forces, who rely on tips from the populace. Although militants were able to strike in Jakarta in January, in December 2015 Indonesian security forces made a string of arrests in five cities of people allegedly linked to Islamic State and planning a larger attack. To be sure, Indonesia has not eradicated militant groups. Terrorist attacks are always a possibility in Indonesia, even if the government has shifted public opinion against Islamists and destroyed many militant cells. The archipelago’s porous borders, notoriously corrupt immigration checkpoints, and open society all allow militant groups to come and go with impunity. Yet Indonesia’s open society has helped inoculate the country against the possibility that militant groups inspired by the Islamic State will gain large numbers of followers.

Read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.  Part 1 On January 14, militants struck in one of Jakarta’s busiest shopping and office districts. At around 11 am, one attacker blew up a suicide bomb at a Starbucks. Then, a group of attackers grabbed foreigners from the area, started firing wildly into the street, and drove a motorcycle toward a nearby police station and attacked that. The surviving militants then engaged in a running gun and bomb battle with Indonesian police, leaving a total of eight people dead, including five of the attackers. After the attacks, it quickly emerged that the purported ringleader, an Indonesian man named Bahrun Naim, had been living in the Islamic State’s “capital,” Raqqa, where he had reportedly organized the Jakarta violence. Although the brazenness of the attack shocked some Indonesians, the fact that militants inspired by ISIS committed violence in Jakarta was not particularly surprising. Since the previous autumn, Indonesian police and intelligence had been receiving reports of ISIS-linked militant cells organizing on Java and other islands; a month before the attack, Indonesian police had made a string of arrests, across the archipelago, of militants allegedly linked to the Islamic State. One of Indonesia’s leading specialists on militant groups, Sidney Jones of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, had warned that ISIS has “transformed the terrorism threat [in Indonesia] after years of mostly foiled [terrorism] plots” in the archipelago. And the Indonesian government had estimated that hundreds Indonesians had traveled to Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq and then returned home. So many Indonesians and Malaysians had traveled to Islamic State territory that IS had started a brigade of fighters just for visiting Indonesians and Malaysians. Indonesia was not alone in facing the threat of militants linked to or inspired by the Islamic State. Some Southeast Asian intelligence organizations place the total number of Southeast Asians who have made the trip to ISIS territory as between 1,200 and 1,800. Even in Singapore, a city-state with an extremely effective intelligence service, radicals inspired in part by the Islamic State have returned to the island, according to public speeches by Singapore’s prime minister. In addition, several veteran militant groups in Southeast Asia whose existence predated the rise of the Islamic State, such as those fighting in the southern Philippines, have publicly pledged their allegiance to IS in 2014 and 2015. Whether these pledges are designed to bring more notoriety to the veteran groups, or actually constitute real linkages with IS, remains unclear, but their impact is to strengthen Islamic State’s image as a group with real global appeal. Yet of all the Southeast Asian nations facing rising militancy---the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Brunei, and Indonesia---Indonesia is actually the best equipped to combat the challenge of radicalism. The Indonesian government confronted an earlier rise of militancy, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time when many Indonesian militants were inspired by al-Qaeda; Indonesian security forces effectively penetrated the earlier militants’ cells and broke up many terrorism plots, without comprising Indonesia’s democratic transition. To be sure, as Jones notes, that earlier decade of militant activities left some radical networks in place, networks that IS sympathizers now may try to activate in the archipelago. The Islamic State’s powerful social media messaging may help militants regroup in Indonesia. But these militants will have a difficult time seriously threatening Indonesia’s social fabric, or upsetting the political gains Indonesia has made since the end of the Suharto dictatorship. Indeed, while much of Southeast Asia backslides into authoritarian or semi-authoritarian politics, highlighted most notably by Thailand’s harsh military rule, Indonesia’s political system has continued to mature, becoming a consolidated and essentially federal democracy. This maturation, and the maturation of Indonesia’s religious establishment, has created many ways to co-opt radicals through the political process, undermining the appeal of militant groups to the broader public---and making it easier for police to identify and arrest the small number of extremists planning violent attacks. I will examine why democratic regression facilitates militancy in other Southeast Asian nations in my next post.

Over the past three weeks, several events have dramatically highlighted the growing appeal of the Islamic State based in Southeast Asia. First, on January 14, a group of militants reportedly run by an Indonesian man who had traveled to Syria carried out an attack in a busy neighborhood in Jakarta, leading to at least seven deaths. Several weeks before the attack, the Indonesian police had made a string of arrests of other Indonesian cells linked to the Islamic State. Then, last week, Singaporean authorities made a major announcement. The city-state announced that it was using its Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without charge, to hold 27 Bangladeshis who it claimed had become radicalized, and were considering launching terrorist attacks. It was the Singaporean authorities’ broadest use of the Internal Security Act in three decades. According to several news reports, the Singapore police claimed that some of the Bangladeshis were planning to return to Bangladesh to carry out terrorist attacks. Most of the Bangladeshi laborers were quickly deported from Singapore. Do these events add up to a serious threat from the Islamic State to Southeast Asia , either by Islamic State recruiting and funding of Southeast Asian militant cells or simply by Islamic State inspiration for Southeast Asians? As I mentioned in a previous post, IS created a brigade in Syria for visiting Southeast Asians, including Indonesian fighters. IS also may be providing a small amount of seed money to some militant groups in Southeast Asia, and the Islamic State clearly hopes to spread its ideology more widely. Its propaganda arm has produced videos, shared online, in Indonesian/Malay and targeted at Indonesian and Malay youths. Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippine, and Thai authorities believe between 600 and 1,200 Southeast Asians have traveled to Syria and Iraq in recent years to fight with the Islamic State and then have returned to Southeast Asia. In addition, several existing militant groups in Southeast Asia have taken public oaths of loyalty to the Islamic State in the past two years, probably both because they share beliefs with the Islamic State and because the loyalty oaths bring them greater media attention. What’s more, as Zachary Abuza of the National War College has noted, the growing influence of Islamic State in Southeast Asia may be leading to a kind of competition among Southeast Asian militant groups to see who can carry out the most brutal attacks, following in Islamic State’s use of extremely brutal, well-publicized tactics. Such brutal tactics, Abuza notes, are easily spread through social media. But overall, the level of threat to Southeast Asian nations varies widely. It is true that Indonesians have traveled to Syria to fight, and even taken part in their own brigade, but Indonesia also is one of the most open societies in the region, with a government and a religious establishment that has a record of effectiveness at combating militancy. Indonesia’s biggest religious organizations have launched campaigns to combat the influence of IS and other groups. Indonesia’s decentralized, free politics filter Islamists through the political process. In the Philippines, the Aquino government is close to completing a landmark peace agreement that could end much of the fighting that has plagued Mindanao for decades. Although there are holdouts unwilling to accept the deal, the completion of the peace process, combined with a flow of investment and aid to Mindanao, could dramatically undercut any public support for militants in the southern Philippines. In contrast, Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar have political environments that could be conducive to growing militancy. All three are either outright authoritarian regimes or are currently somewhere between democracy and autocracy; the lack of political freedom means there are few legitimate avenues for Islamists to engage in politics. In Thailand, harsh army rule in the three southern provinces has added to southerners’ anger, made it harder to gain cooperation with army units hunting for militant cells, and potentially has fostered radicalization of young men and women. In Myanmar, there has been little violent reaction so far from Muslim populations that have been terrorized for four years now, particularly in Arakan State; many Muslims are so battered that they are focusing all their energy on survival. Still, it is not hard to imagine that years of attacks on Myanmar Muslims might eventually lead to the emergence of militant Myanmar Muslim groups, perhaps with inspiration or even training from Islamic State. And in Malaysia, the environment is perhaps even more favorable for militants inspired by the Islamic State. Since the 2013 Malaysian general election, the Malaysian government has “been competing...to show the Malay heartland” its Islamic credentials, according to Murray Hunter, a business consultant with thirty years of experience in Southeast Asia. Hunter notes that the ruling coalition also has been publicly burnishing its Islamic credentials in an attempt to tar the opposition as dominated by ethnic Chinese. Such strategies are fostering religious and ethnic divisions in Malaysia. “This is a perfect environment for Islamic State dogma…to breed,” Hunter notes.

Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party will control Myanmar’s next parliament, participated for the first time in the government’s ongoing peace negotiations with ethnic minority insurgencies. As the Associated Press reported, Suu Kyi declared that she would push for a complete peace accord, one that includes the insurgent groups that did not sign an initial peace framework last autumn. The National League for Democracy (NLD)’s leader’s participation in the peace negotiations has raised hopes that the government can reach a final, permanent resolution with the holdout militias. Some of the holdout insurgent groups may trust Suu Kyi and the NLD more than the previous government, which was dominated by former military men, including some who had led firefights against the ethnic armies. Suu Kyi now could take other steps to reassure ethnic minorities that their interests will be represented in an NLD-led government, and to promote peace deals with the holdout groups. The NLD swept an overwhelming majority of seats in the November general elections, leaving ethnic minority parties with few seats in parliament; most of the incoming NLD MPs, even those representing minority-dominated areas, will be ethnic Burmans (Bamars.) Suu Kyi and the NLD could assure ethnic minorities that the NLD will listen to their concerns by appointing ethnic minority politicians to positions in the incoming administration and the new Cabinet. Suu Kyi also could make clearer her vision of a future federal Myanmar. The ethnically and religiously diverse country can only be governed successfully under some form of federalism, as politicians from nearly every Myanmar party now recognize. As Kachin leader Tu Ja told The Irrawaddy last week, “We are heading toward a federal union. The president [Thein Sein] said it in his Independence Day speech recently. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has also mentioned this. The only question is what kind of federalism this is going to be.” Suu Kyi understandably wants to focus on achieving permanent peace deals first, since the most basic job of any government is to control its territory and have a monopoly on the use of force. But as Tu Ja notes, Suu Kyi and the NLD need to simultaneously offer some clearer hints about how a federal Myanmar would operate under their government. Yet a final, comprehensive peace deal may remain elusive. Some of the challenges to a nationwide, permanent peace deal remain so intractable that it is hard to understand how even a popular, popularly elected leader could address them. The United Wa State Amy (UWSA), the most powerful holdout group, has an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 men under arms, heavy weaponry, a powerful friendship with Chinese leaders in Yunnan province, and control of a de facto autonomous mini-state in northern Myanmar. According to many reports, the primarily ethnic Wa organization also has under its control one of the biggest opium and methamphetamine operations in the world. The UWSA has basically been let alone by the Myanmar army for two decades, and it runs most of the functions of a state in Wa-controlled areas in the north. If the UWSA were to sign a permanent peace deal, it probably would eventually have to give up its total control over the functions of a state, and it likely would eventually have to wean the area off of production of drugs, by far the biggest industry in Wa country. What financial incentives could the national government, and international donors, give the UWSA to eventually hand over control of Wa regions and give up its drug business? Even a gusher of foreign aid, and the promises of investment in Wa areas, probably would not bring as much revenue into the Wa region as drugs currently do. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United Wa State Army’s representatives did not attend the meeting with Suu Kyi.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. North Korea announces its “H-bomb of justice.” Jaws dropped around the world as news of North Korea’s fourth nuclear test lit up phones, tablets, and televisions on Tuesday. Those in South Korea and China reported tremors caused by the detonation, which registered as a 5.1-magnitude earthquake--almost identical to North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2013. North Korea’s official news agency released a statement claiming a successful test of a hydrogen bomb. Although the seismic evidence is consistent with a nuclear explosion, many doubt that North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb. Still, the test has renewed the call for action, and many are looking to China to toughen its stance toward North Korea. The UN Security Council is expected to layer on the sanctions, which so far have been ineffective in curbing North Korea’s nuclear program. Despite international isolation, Pyongyang appears bent on boosting the Kim Jong-un regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens through its display of nuclear capability, and on pursuing the unattainable goal of gaining the world’s recognition as a legitimate nuclear weapons state. 2. Literary disappearances rattle Hong Kong. Over the past week, anxieties have been mounting in Hong Kong over the mysterious disappearance of publisher Lee Bo and four of his colleagues. Mr. Lee, a British citizen, is the editor of a Hong Kong–based publishing house and a major shareholder in a bookstore that specializes in reading material critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Many suspect that the mainland Chinese government was involved in the disappearances, calling into question its respect for freedom of speech in Hong Kong and its agreement with Britain to allow Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” doctrine to persist until 2047. In early 2014, another Hong Kong publisher was arrested while crossing into the mainland, but Mr. Lee’s case, if mainland authorities were indeed involved, might signal that Chinese security forces are becoming more brazen. CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Jerome Cohen stated that such actions reflect “not only the extending reach of Chinese law, but the extending reach of Chinese lawlessness.” 3. Myanmar sets first meeting date for new parliament. Two months after historic elections, Myanmar’s new parliament led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) will begin meeting on February 1. Though the NLD captured approximately 80 percent of votes in the election, one quarter of parliamentary seats still remain allocated to the military. Many of the incoming members of parliament lack experience in the legislature, and thus the NLD has decided to offer a series of classes to prepare incoming politicians. Among the first orders of business for the parliament will be for the upper house, lower house, and the military to each put forward a candidate for president, who will then be selected by the vote of the entire legislature. The new president will take power after March 31 when the sitting president steps down. NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi is ineligible for the presidency due to a provision barring those with close foreign relatives from serving in the position, but she has indicated that she will serve “above” whomever is chosen as president. 4. Delhi institutes odd-even traffic control program. Starting Monday, the Delhi government instituted traffic restrictions that limit private cars on the road depending on their license plate numbers. These restrictions are aimed at curbing dangerous air pollution levels in Delhi; the city’s air was ranked the most polluted of 1600 cities studied by the World Health Organization. Monday was the start of a two-week experimental period for the odd-even rules and the city has seen noticeably reduced traffic. The city government deployed thousands of traffic personnel to enforce the restrictions. Over one hundred violators were caught and fined in the first hour of the first day.  Furthermore, an additional three thousand buses were deployed to help transport those who were on their prohibited driving day. Promisingly, unlike on a typical day when the packed buses would be stopped in traffic, the buses this week were able to complete their routes. Proponents of the plan hope that experiences like the faster bus rides will help garner support for the program. 5. Chinese court to hear same-sex marriage case. A district court in the central Chinese city of Changsha has agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by a gay man named Sun Wenlin against the district’s civil affairs bureau for refusing to register Sun and his partner for marriage. Sun argues that China’s marriage law only specifies marriage as being between a husband and wife, not between a man and a woman. This is the first time a case on same-sex marriage has been heard by a court in China, making it the latest indication that attitudes about homosexuality are changing in the country. Until the mid-90s, China criminalized homosexuality and continued to officially label it a mental illness until 2001. Last year, a college student brought a court case against the Chinese Ministry of Education challenging anti-gay bias in the country’s textbooks and gay right activists claimed victory in a fight over a documentary on mothers of gay children that was censored by video-hosting sites. Bonus: China goes to Hollywood. In a historic deal, a Chinese real estate firm has agreed to purchase a majority stake in Legendary Entertainment, the producer of popular films like Inception and The Dark Knight, valuing the movie studio between $3 and $4 billion. The Dalian Wanda Group, China’s largest property developer founded with just $80,000 of borrowed money by Wang Jianlin, now China’s richest person, will be the first Chinese company to control a Hollywood studio. The move is no surprise given Wanda’s aggressive acquisition strategy, in areas ranging from healthcare to ecommerce, and the fact that movies are a big business in China. The purchase is also part of a broader trend of increasing foreign direct investment in the U.S. by Chinese companies, which grew from just $2.5 to $57 billion over the past decade.

Having won a decisive victory in last week’s national elections, Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which will have an absolute majority in the next parliament, now will have to set its priorities for the next few months. The next months could be an extremely turbulent time in Myanmar, as the party proposes a compromise choice for president, the current USDP ruling party comes to terms with its massive loss, the military tries to ensure that it remains the most powerful force in the country, and the NLD negotiates with various ethnic minority leaders to ensure the next government is broadly representative of Myanmar’s people. Aung San Suu Kyi and her advisors should focus on several priorities in the coming months. For one, they need to be in constant contact with senior military leaders, and they need to identify high-ranking, influential military leaders who could potentially protect a civilian government if, in the future, the armed forces tried to intervene in politics. Finding a trusted coterie of top military leaders is essential for a young civilian government to survive in a country with a history of coups. After the fall of Suharto, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie found generals willing to support his government; after the end of Francisco Franco’s rule in Spain, the Socialists running the democratically elected government had to rely on King Juan Carlos to find senior military leaders to turn back a coup attempt. Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra thought that, in the early 2000s, he had purged the Thai army of its most politically-minded generals and surrounded himself with officers loyal to him. He was wrong: In 2006, the Thai army deposed him in a coup. The new Myanmar government also will have to choose a president acceptable to the NLD rank-and-file, ethnic minority leaders, the military, and foreign countries. I will discuss the presidential choice in a separate post. Just as important, it will have to retain many of the capable officials and advisors who worked for the previous government, particularly on ceasefire deals with the ethnic insurgencies. Many of these advisors are former Burmese exiles who returned to the country after Thein Sein launched the reform process. Their expertise on the insurgencies and on economic policy, among other areas, will be critically needed in the next Myanmar government. In addition, in the coming months the NLD-led government will have to formulate some kind of policy regarding the ethnic insurgent groups that have not signed the national peace deal. Already, conflict has intensified in Shan State between the Myanmar military and the Shan State Army-North. More important, the government will need a strategy for the United Wa State Army (UWSA), by far the largest holdout group. The UWSA’s relations with the previous government and the Myanmar military have been deteriorating for several years, and the UWSA are not a force to be taken lightly. As Southeast Asia security analyst Anthony Davis notes, the UWSA is the largest non- state military force in Asia, and it has under its command armored vehicles, heavy artillery, anti-tank missiles, and surface-to-air missiles. The UWSA does not want to give up its de facto statelet in northeastern Myanmar, which operates like a separate country. Yet Suu Kyi and the NLD cannot be seen as simply allowing the Wa to secede, since the idea of actual secession will infuriate the Myanmar military.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Afghans protest beheadings. Thousands of protesters gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday following the beheading of seven Afghans in the southern state of Zabul. The individuals were taken hostage in the central city of Ghazni and relocated as many as fifty-six times before being killed with razor wire. An affiliate of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan is believed to have conducted the beheadings, although it has not yet taken responsibility. The demonstrators carried with them the coffins of the slain civilians who were all Hazaras, a predominately Shia ethnic minority that makes up approximately 15 percent of the Afghan population and had previously been persecuted by the Taliban. Now the group appears to be targeted by other Sunni fundamentalists as well. While the Islamic State group in Afghanistan is only loosely affiliated with the group of the same name in Iraq and Syria, it is estimated to have between one thousand and three thousand fighters now in Afghanistan. The largely peaceful protesters criticized Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s ability to handle the current security situation, and some called for his resignation. The president responded to the protests in a national address in which he pledged to find and punish the responsible parties. 2. Myanmar takes a step towards “democracy.” On November 8, Myanmar held the first national elections for its legislature since the country began its transition from military to civilian rule in 2011. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has won approximately 80 percent of the contested seats, more or less handing her party a safe majority in parliament and the ability to choose the country’s next president. Both Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, and army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, have endorsed the results. The military, however, still appoints 25 percent of the seats in both the upper and lower houses of Myanmar’s parliament, effectively giving the military power to block any constitutional amendment, which requires at least 75 percent of the votes. Based on the 2008 constitution, the military also controls Myanmar’s defense, home affairs, and border affairs ministries and could seize power at any moment by declaring “a state of emergency.” Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD will be left dealing with high expectations and numerous difficult problems, which include social, economic, and ethnic issues, and the question of how Myanmar should scale back its ties with China and build more constructive relations with the West. Overall, the election was a positive development for the country, but the world may find Aung San Suu Kyi far less inspiring over time as she now has to govern and not simply inspire. 3. Nepal’s border blockade results in shortages of food and medicine. Nepal is quickly running low on medicine, fuel, and other essential goods due to a blockade caused by protestors on its border with India. Nepal, a landlocked country, relies heavily on imports from India to sustain its core functions. The leadership at Nepal’s largest public medical facility in Kathmandu predicted that the current supply of medicine will run out within a week. Nepalese leadership blames India for encouraging the protests by Nepal’s ethnic minorities, the Madhesi and Tharu, in the country’s southern plains of Terai. These groups are protesting against the new Nepalese constitution, demanding they retain significant control over the regions in which they live. India denies playing an active role in the behavior of Nepal’s southern ethnic minority groups but has expressed concern over their treatment at the hands of the Nepalese government. Meanwhile, the situation threatens to become a major humanitarian disaster and has provoked commentary by human rights activists as well as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. 4. Democratic Party of Japan begins to dissolve. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Japan’s largest opposition party that ruled the country from 2009 to 2012, appears to be falling apart. On Wednesday, core members of the DPJ, current Policy Chief Goshi Hosono and former President Seiji Maehara held a talk with Kenji Eda, former president of the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), and agreed to work for the dissolution of the two parties by the end of 2015. The move is to form a new opposition force powerful enough to challenge the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition and Komeito in next summer’s Upper House election. The DPJ has been suffering from low support ever since it lost office, and the most recent polls by Japan’s major newspapers show that while support for the LDP hovers between 34 and 40 percent, that for the DPJ only remains between 7 and 8 percent. The conservative force within DPJ has been critical of the current leadership’s pursuit to align with the Japanese Communist Party and its failure to deepen the Diet debate over security legislation bills that passed in September. 5. Congressional delegation visits Tibet. During a legislative exchange trip to China last week, seven members of the U.S. Congress, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, visited Tibet. In the past, Pelosi has been an outspoken critic of rights abuses by the Chinese government in the province, saying that ignoring the plight of Tibetans would mean losing “all moral authority” on human rights. The Congressional trip was significant because Tibet has been largely closed to journalists since anti-government protests in 2008 in which hundreds of Tibetans were imprisoned or shot dead by the government. Pelosi and friends weren’t the only U.S. officials in China this week: Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was in Beijing meeting with Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun to plan a December 1–2 meeting between officials from the two countries to discuss cybersecurity. Bonus: Former Chinese taxi driver buys $170 million painting. On Monday, billionaire Liu Yiqian won a heated auction at Christie’s in New York City for an oil painting by Amedeo Modigliani for a whopping $170.4 million—the second-highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction. Growing up in Shanghai, Liu dropped out of middle school and drove a taxi before striking it rich through stock trading, real estate, and pharmaceutical sales during the 1980s and 1990s. Now worth an estimated $1.5 billion, Liu and his wife are avid art collectors and in the past few years have opened two art museums in Shanghai filled with pieces from their collection. One art-world figure gibed Liu for just buying “the most expensive things,” and last year Liu was criticized for sipping tea from a $36 million Ming dynasty cup soon after winning it at auction. Although forgeries abound in the Chinese art market, in recent years fine art has been seen as a relatively safe investment compared to real estate or stocks.

This past Sunday, Myanmar men and women voted in their first true national elections in twenty-five years. On Election Day, the mood in many towns and cities was exuberant. The 1990 elections, the last national elections, were essentially annulled by the armed forces, which continued to govern until launching a transition to civilian rule in 2011. Unlike in 1990, this time many Myanmar people believed that the election would be upheld, leading to the country’s first democratically elected government in five decades. On the campaign trail, the National League for Democracy (NLD) and other parties drew huge rallies, and just before Election Day, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the NLD, held a press conference that drew a massive mob of foreign and domestic reporters. On Election Day, Myanmar voters came to the polls in huge numbers. Some six thousand candidates, representing over ninety parties, ran in the election. According to one estimate by Myanmar election officials, some eighty percent of eligible voters voted on Election Day, a huge turnout given the remoteness of some areas of the country. After the polls closed, people flocked to the NLD’s headquarters in Yangon, to cheer and watch results coming in on large screens. Election Day proceeded, overall, with what appeared to be minimal irregularities and no significant episodes of violence. The NLD appears to be heading toward a large victory, one that would give it a huge majority of seats in the 664-person Parliament.  Several leading members of the government’s Union Solidarity and Development Party already have conceded, although final tallies are not due until  later this week. Now, however, the NLD and Suu Kyi still face an extremely difficult task in governing the country. For more on my analysis of Myanmar’s elections, read my latest piece in World Politics Review. 

On November 8, Myanmar held general elections, a milestone in the promised process of democratization and political reform. Early results indicate a landslide victory for the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party led by former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi. Read my interview with The Diplomat about what to expect from Myanmar’s new government.

Myanmar’s election last Sunday has been hailed, by the world, as a major step forward for the country’s young democracy. The excitement on the ground in Myanmar in the days leading up to the election, and on Election Day, was intense---Myanmar residents reported a kind of giddy feeling in many cities and towns, as people thrilled to the idea of voting in a real national election for the first time in twenty-five years. On the campaign trail, Aung San Suu Kyi and other National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders drew enormous and often jubilant crowds, similar to the situation before the 1990 national elections. When Suu Kyi gave a press conference at her home in Yangon, just before Election Day, reporters scrambled to get inside as if they were in a rugby scrum. But in western Myanmar, in Rakhine State, the mood was far more ominous. The situation in Rakhine State remains extremely tense; many aid workers believe that large-scale outflows of refugees from western Myanmar are about to begin again, potentially leading to another high seas crisis. Many Muslim Rohingya could not vote, since they had been removed from voter rolls months ago, in what Rohingya experts believe was a clear effort to disenfranchise Rohingya voters. (In August, the New York Times reported, “Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who cast votes in elections five years ago have been struck from the electoral rolls, election commission officials have confirmed.”) Those who could still vote could make little impact on the election, since they were isolated in small communities, in camps for displaced persons, and in remote locations. Few political parties attempted to woo the Rohingya vote. Meanwhile, parties that tried to run Muslim candidates anywhere in Myanmar often found their candidates rejected by national election commission. As Thailand’s Khao Sod reported, “Of the more than 6,000 candidates running in the elections, the overwhelming majority of them are Buddhist, and only 28 are Muslim, representing just 0.5 percent of candidates, according to the final list of candidates released by the Union Election Commission.” What’s more, a hard-line, Buddhist, ethnic Rakhine party seemed to have little problem registering candidates, and campaigned vigorously throughout western Myanmar. The party’s rallies frequently drew large crowds, and it seemed to enjoy more support throughout western Myanmar than even the National League for Democracy did. In the run-up to Election Day, neither the ruling party nor the NLD provided much hope for the Rohingya. Apparently fearful of efforts by hard-line Buddhist monks to tar the NLD as pro-Muslim, in the days before Election Day Suu Kyi carefully distanced herself and her party from the Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar. (The same monks had, in September, pushed through apparently anti-Muslim legislation at the national level.) At the press conference before Election Day, Suu Kyi cautioned reporters and the world not to “exaggerate” the challenges faced by the Rohingya, even though a recent report by Yale Law School’s human rights clinic suggests a genocide against the Muslim minority group may be underway.

Since 2011, when Myanmar’s political reforms began, launching a stuttering process of democratization, attacks on Muslim Rohingya in western Myanmar have become common. The violence often has been abetted by paramilitary groups, hard-line Buddhist monks, and Buddhist civilian groups affiliated with the hard-line monks. Since the violence worsened in 2012, neither the government nor the leaders of the National League for Democracy have taken any effective steps to stop anti-Rohingya discrimination, provide suitable accommodations for Rohingya who have left their homes, help Rohingya who were stripped of their Myanmar citizenship regain it, or halt the activities of paramilitary organizations. The anti-Rohingya violence is a major reason why, in the past five years, Rohingya have not only become internally displaced people in Myanmar but also have left the country in large numbers. Since 2012, at least 140,000 Rohingya have fled their homes. If they stay in Myanmar, Rohingya migrants often are shunted into what research and advocacy group Fortify Rights calls “dozens of internment camps.” Fortify Rights adds that these are “not typical internally displaced person camps. They are beginning to look more like permanent concentration camps, complete with barracks-style housing and barbed-wire fencing. Residents can’t leave.” Many Rohingya have tried desperately to leave Myanmar on rickety boats with little food and water on board; the boats often are managed by human trafficking networks, and boat captains sometimes have abandoned the ships when they feared being caught by a foreign naval patrol. Although the stream of migrants onto boats bound for Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia lessened this summer, after a spike in boat people last spring, aid workers in Myanmar who closely follow migration patterns expect the outflow of refugees to increase in the coming months once again. As summer monsoons die down and it becomes (slightly) easier to put out to sea, several aid workers say, levels of outmigration from Myanmar easily could approach the number of outflows last spring. Now, a new report by Yale Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and Fortify Rights suggests that the violence in western Myanmar goes beyond brutal ethnic and religious attacks. Although the Clinic does not say for certain that genocide has occurred in western Myanmar, it concludes that there is “strong evidence that genocide is being committed against Rohingya.” The Rohingya comprise a protected group under the international Genocide Convention adopted in 1951, and acts committed against them rise to the level enumerated in the Genocide Convention, the report concludes. However, the report notes, it remains unclear whether the acts committed against the Rohingya are designed “with intent to destroy the group, in part or in whole,” the third component of the definition of genocide. (As the report notes, “the crime of genocide consists of three essential elements: the existence of a protected group, the commission of one or more prohibited acts, and the requisite intent.”) Thus, to analyze whether genocide has been, or is being, committed, one must consider whether all three of these components of definition are met. The only way to tell for certain whether the attacks and killings in western Myanmar are being conducted with intent to destroy the Rohingya in part or in whole, the Yale Clinic concludes, is for an independent institution (e.g. a United Nations commission of inquiry) to complete a full and free investigation into the events that have taken place in western Myanmar since 2012. Among the evidence that the report cites in suggesting that genocide is taking place, it notes that the Myanmar government has limited many Rohingyas’ freedom of movement, attempted to pass population control policies, and set up the dire camps in western Myanmar---camps that are essentially now functioning as internment centers and that lack basic amenities. The government may be attempting to reduce the Rohingya population and, potentially, to isolate and destroy portions of the Rohingya population, the report suggests. As Shawn Crispin notes in The Diplomat, if the violence in western Myanmar qualifies as genocide, it puts the United States, Japan, the European Union, and other democracies that have pursued rapprochement with Myanmar in a difficult position. If “the Yale Clinic and Fortify Rights’ findings have legal merit, then [Myanmar President] Thein Sein would be a prime candidate for prosecution,” notes Crispin. Yet Thein Sein has been hailed as one of the architects of Myanmar’s reforms, celebrated in the capitals of many democracies. A conclusion that Myanmar was suffering genocide also would undermine the portrayal of Myanmar’s reforms as a major success story of the Obama administration---and a success story for the current Democratic Party front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Gabriel Walker is a research associate in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. In late October, Global Witness released an important report that systematically explored Myanmar’s jade industry, calling it the “biggest natural resource heist in modern history.” The mining and trade of the gem have been catalogued by journalists, photographers, and authors in the past, but most accounts only mention China’s economic role in driving demand for jade. In reality, a wider range of Chinese actors are directly connected to Myanmar’s jade, some benefiting at the expense of miners and traders, and others suffering from the industry’s unintended consequences. Because of these close, but often overlooked, connections, China has a shared responsibility to take action and advocate for reform of Myanmar’s jade industry. The jade trade is rife with corruption, conflict, and disease. According to the report, jade production in Myanmar was worth nearly $31 billion in 2014, of which as much as 80 percent was smuggled directly into China, bypassing taxation and border controls in both countries. Companies in Myanmar linked to politically influential tycoons and senior government officials, including the former dictator Than Shwe, hold multiple mining concessions and reap millions as a result. Jade also funds both sides of the ongoing armed conflict in Kachin State, the center of jade production, underwriting the activities of both Myanmar’s military and the Kachin Independence Army/Kachin Independence Organization. An HIV/AIDS crisis also travels hand-in-hand with the gem: Myanmar’s illegally produced heroin flows freely into the main jade-mining town of Hpakant, a place to which tens of thousands of migrants flock hoping to find valuable stones on the margins of the mines. Drug use and prostitution are almost institutionalized there, with a heroin injection offered widely for the same price as a small piece of jade. Payoffs to authorities mean that both dealers and prostitutes operate with impunity. Unsafe practices result in an extraordinarily high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, with reportedly nine out of ten drug-using miners HIV positive. Chinese players participate on at least three levels of the jade trade: First, Chinese companies have underwritten the jade trade for decades, beginning with early investments in the 1980s. In Hpakant, it is an “open secret” that most of the twenty largest mining operators are owned by Chinese companies or their proxies, and one individual interviewed by Global Witness estimated that the biggest jade players received as much as 70 percent of their financing from Chinese sources. Although even an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative report may not reveal the true source of a jade company’s funding streams, it seems likely that certain individuals within China may be deeply integrated within jade’s shady payout structure. If transparency measures aim for complete disclosure, Chinese actors must be unmasked. Second, in recent years rising prices and growing demand by wealthy Chinese buyers for Myanmar’s jade, in addition to the record-breaking sale of a $27 million jade necklace, have increased the stone’s market value and entrenched its mystique in the popular imagination. Because the vast majority of Myanmar’s jade ends up in China, a policy like the JADE Act—a U.S. import ban on all jade products from Myanmar—becomes largely symbolic and essentially ineffective in fighting the rising tide of demand. If any country should take the lead in restricting the free movement of jade in the worldwide economy, it should be China. Third, China’s neighboring Yunnan province also struggles with HIV/AIDS. Ruili county, the “world’s biggest market for unfinished jade,” has one of the highest risk profiles for HIV/AIDS in Yunnan—making it and a neighboring county essentially the worst place for the disease in all of China. As one case study pointed out, Ruili is a clear example of how HIV epidemics “cannot be dealt with solely at a local level.” And CFR expert Laurie Garrett has written that Myanmar’s HIV contribution to the rest of Asia poses a “clear security threat to the region.” If China is truly committed to solving its own HIV/AIDS crisis in Yunnan, it must work towards a cooperative solution that addresses the unchecked practices that ravage the jade trade. Beijing is in a position to advance critical improvements in the jade industry by engaging with Chinese stakeholders on multiple levels. The Chinese government in fact has already released conflict-mineral guidelines for Chinese mining companies working abroad, suggesting that it can at least nominally encourage responsible practices on the world stage. But for Beijing to have a real impact in Myanmar, it must stanch illegal smuggling, uncover jade industry–related corruption, and push for greater financial and operational transparency. It would be an encouraging sign for China to step forward to reform the jade trade—if only for this one stone, a symbol of China’s own prosperity—and take responsibility for protecting the welfare of its ailing citizens and regional neighbors.  

On November 8, Myanmar will hold its first free national elections in twenty-five years. If the vote goes smoothly and the results are respected by all actors in the country, Myanmar could have its first democratically elected government since the early 1960s. Yet despite the excitement building over the election, and the vibrant campaigning going on across the country (itself a sign of the freedoms unleashed in Myanmar), the past few weeks have caused some Myanmar politicians and international observers to worry that this election will be fraudulent, and that a large proportion of voters will be denied the chance to call ballots. In one worrying sign, some early votes already have been cast by Myanmar citizens living overseas, though the advance voting process has been filled with apparent flaws, from a lack of paper ballots to incomplete voter rolls that could prevent some overseas Myanmar nationals from voting.) Within Myanmar itself, the last weeks before Election Day have witnessed several disturbing trends. Much of Myanmar’s media market remains dominated by state-controlled newspapers and websites. In the weeks before the election, these publications have been running long articles touting the current Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government’s achievements, and seemingly dropping any pretense of objectivity. Meanwhile, activists for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) have been assaulted on the campaign trail, most recently in an incident in the Irrawaddy Delta region. Radical Buddhist monks and their supporters, who have already allegedly played a central role in driving many Muslims out of western Myanmar and into internally displaced peoples’ camps, have traveled the country, trying to intimidate Muslims into not voting, and attempting to push candidates toward more hard-line anti-Muslim policies. Meanwhile, many of the voting rolls for people inside Myanmar seem as full of irregularities as those for Myanmar nationals living overseas, and in some conflict-torn areas, the lack of polling booths will make it very hard for most citizens to vote. In Kachin State, in the northeast, where the ethnic insurgency has not joined the nationwide ceasefire signed between the government and several insurgencies earlier this month, voting booths will be extremely scarce on the ground. Do all of these trends add up to an unfair, potentially spoiled election? While the growing campaign-related violence, the slanted media coverage, and the questions about voter rolls certainly suggest this election could be fairer, the actual Election Day has the potential to go relatively smoothly, and to lead to a sizable opposition victory. In other words, Myanmar’s first free election in twenty-five years would ultimately be troubled but not unfree---a situation similar to elections held in other young democracies plagued by civil conflict, like Nigeria or Indonesia. The level of disturbances during the campaign period, while indicating that the military and the USDP have ambitions to retain a great deal of power, do not suggest that the military and/or the USDP will try to completely defraud voters on Election Day. The disturbances rather suggest that the USDP is trying to use all the advantages of incumbency, and decades of military rule, to best help the army’s favored party. The irregularities with voter registration and voter rolls are worrying, but these irregularities probably have not prevented enough Myanmar citizens from voting to seriously damage the NLD’s election prospects. The media landscape is tilted, but it was much more tilted the last time Myanmar held real national elections, in 1990, and the NLD and its allies still triumphed on that Election Day. Meanwhile, election observers from the European Union and other organizations are going to be allowed to travel throughout the country, observing polling sites. Still, just because the actual Election Day will probably go relatively smoothly does not mean outside actors should abandon concerns about the electoral process. The United States, Japan, Norway, and other important actors in Myanmar need to continue emphasizing to Naypyidaw that a free election is crucial to further restoring military relations and to continued large-scale foreign investment in the country.

CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy (CSMD) Program highlights noteworthy events and articles each Friday in “This Week in Markets and Democracy.”    U.S. Acts on Honduran Corruption Honduras faces widening corruption scandals. Troubles started last summer over allegations that public officials skimmed more than $200 million from the federal social  security program. President Juan Orlando Hernandez resisted civil society demands for his resignation, despite evidence linking the stolen funds to his political party. Last week the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted former Honduran vice president Jaime Rosenthal, as well as his son and nephew (both former government ministers), accusing all three of  laundering drug trafficking proceeds through U.S. financial institutions. The U.S. Department of Treasury announced sanctions against the family’s significant private sector holdings, including Banco Continental—one of Honduras’ largest banks. This is the first time the Department of Treasury has used the Narcotics Kingpin Act (typically invoked against drug traffickers and their businesses) to sanction a bank outside the U.S. Honduran regulators have forced Banco Continental’s liquidation and seized control of the family’s companies. Authorities have yet to announce their own investigation into the Rosenthals, one of the country’s wealthiest and most politically connected families. This contrasts to developments in Guatemala, where corruption investigations by the attorney general and UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) led to the fall of the president and vice president, among others. Honduras has refused the creation of its own CICIG, acquiescing only to an Organization of American States (OAS) mission to “advise and support” Honduran corruption investigations. This choice may take corruption investigations and prosecutions out of the hands of local authorities altogether, augmenting the role of the U.S. DOJ in enforcing Honduran justice. Election Timeline Four upcoming elections will have significant implications for political transitions and fragile democracies. Argentina—October 25 On Sunday, Argentines will vote for their next president, ending twelve years of Kirchners in the Casa Rosada. Daniel Scioli, governor of the province of Buenos Aires and establishment candidate could win in the first round if he can both garner 40 percent of the votes and beat his nearest rival, Mauricio Macri of the Republican Proposal (PRO) by 10 percentage points (polls show him close). If he falls short, the final two candidates will compete again on November 22; each wooing the third contender, Sergio Massa, a former friend now foe of President Cristina Kirchner. International observers and many Argentines hope for economic change; whoever wins, reform will come slowly. Tanzania, October 25 Unlike the elections unfolding in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in Tanzania President Jakaya Kikiwete will step down when his constitutionally mandated term ends on October 25. The two leading candidates are John Magufuli of the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and Edward Lowassa of opposition party Chadema. A clear difference between the two is their legacy on corruption: Magufuli is known for sacking officials guilty of bribery, while Lowassa resigned from his post as prime minister due to corruption accusations (he denies the charges). This week’s elections are tightly contested. Citizens’ concerns include high poverty and unemployment rates (at 65.6 percent and 11.7 percent, respectively), and overwhelming bureaucracy (Tanzania earned one of the lowest rankings in the 2015 World Bank’s Doing Business Report for its complex and costly regulations). Still Tanzania remains a bright spot in sub-Saharan Africa, as the opposition has a solid chance of ending thirty-five years of one-party rule. Turkey—November 1 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called next week’s snap parliamentary elections last August to try and recover his Justice and Development (AKP) Party’s June lost parliamentary majority. In the run-up he has catered to anti-Kurdish and nationalist sentiment,  launching airstrikes against Kurds in Syria and deepening ethnic tensions. Slowing growth, political instability, and rising ISIS-related violence has scared investors – some $6.6. billion fled Turkey’s equity markets since the start of the election cycle in March 2014, and many Western allies and investors hope that the election forces Erdogan to form a coalition, checking his power and reigniting the economy. Myanmar—November 8 In three weeks Myanmar is expected to hold its first free election in over twenty-five years. The country officially adopted a nominally civilian government in 2011, though military vote rigging brought in former commander Thein Sein as president. In next month’s parliamentary election, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi, hopes to gain enough seats to lead the coalition that will choose the next president. Pushing back, the military-led Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has proposed to postpone the election date, disenfranchised millions of Myanmar nationals living outside the country from early voting, and effectively barred the Rohingya Muslim minority from the polls. With campaigns mired in religious discrimination and fraud allegations, Myanmar’s elections are only a first step toward democracy.