Myanmar

This past week, reports from Myanmar police have emerged that a group of men were planning to launch bomb attacks at mosques across the country. The suspects, all Buddhist, all allegedly came from Rakhine/Arakan state, the site of the country’s worst Buddhist-Muslim violence over the past two years. Meanwhile, this week the Myanmar government publicly rejected calls by the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee to grant Myanmar citizenship to Rohingya Muslims. Instead, Naypyidaw declared that it does not admit the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in the country. Naypyidaw spokespeople further declared, according to the Irrawaddy, that: The government would consider granting Burmese citizenship to ‘Bengalis’ who are eligible under the 1982 Citizenship Law—a piece of legislation that has been condemned by international human rights groups as discriminatory towards the [Rohingya] Muslim group. Indeed, the disastrous 1982 law is one of the pieces of legislation that basically legalized discrimination against the Rohingya in the first place, and set the stage for the last two years of pogroms by Buddhist Arakanese against Rohingya in western Myanmar. The past two years of violence already have left over 140,000 people—mostly Rohingya internally displaced, living in the jungle or in horrid IDP camps. The threat of new mosque bombings, the government announcement, and wild rumors in western Myanmar that Buddhist paramilitary groups are gearing up again to attack Muslims has led to fears that violence on the scale of 2012 is coming again to Rakhine/Arakan State and even other parts of the country with significant religious mixes. In the past few days, thousands of Rohingya have tried to flee western Myanmar on horrendously built boats, while reports suggest many more are heading into the hills again, leaving towns where they might be attacked. Myanmar’s slide into instability continues.

Last week, a string of bombings rocked Myanmar, killing at least one person and hitting targets ranging from the northeast to downtown Yangon. So far, the government has arrested eight men in conjunction with the bombings and alleged that the perpetrators are ethnic Karen who want to deter foreign investment and are unhappy that the main Karen organizations are negotiating for peace. But as political scientist Yola Verbruggen notes on New Mandala, the specifics of who planted the bombs obscures a broader point: the bombings only add to an overall feeling of insecurity among the public in Myanmar that has been building for more than a year. This feeling of insecurity among the public stems from several factors. In part, it is the result of rising inter-religious violence across the country, but it is also the result of disappointment that the transition to democracy, launched in 2010, has not thus far led to significant, broad-based development.  She writes: Many people, from taxi drivers to shop attendants, voice disappointment over the current democratization process. Nothing has changed, they say, they still struggle to provide for their families and opportunities are limited. Everybody who has taken a taxi in Yangon has probably had a graduate engineer, former school teacher or certified lawyer as their driver; they cannot get a job in their own field or get paid too badly to stick with it. Attention is focused on creating a ‘peace dividend’ in the ethnic areas, but because there is no fighting in the cities, similar policies do not seem to be implemented in central Myanmar. People do not understand why their livelihoods have not yet improved. They thought the magic of the word “democracy” would change their country,  but now they are becoming impatient. Like Verbruggen, I also have found many people expressing the sentiment (at least in Yangon) that the reform process that has been in place since 2010 should already have brought wider development. As I write in my book Democracy in Retreat, this expectation that democratization will quickly bring rapid growth, growth that lifts all boats, has been common in developing nations going back at least to the early 1990s. Throughout the massive wave of post-Cold War democratization, across Eastern Europe and parts of Africa and Latin America and Asia, both leaders of developing nations and many leaders of Western democracies aggressively touted the idea that political change would foster rapid and equitable growth. (Only a rare leader like Nelson Mandela had the courage to tell his people that democracy, while a good in itself, would not miraculously produce economic change.) Yet while democracy tends to produce a better quality of life over the long-term—one prominent study linked democracy with lower child mortality—in the immediate post-authoritarian period, democracy does not necessarily lead to higher growth. The chaos of a transition period actually can depress growth. It seems the lessons of the 1990s and early 2000s have not been learned in Myanmar, as local leaders, from the president’s office to the NLD, and foreign consultants and donors have been overselling Myanmar’s reforms. Myanmar’s political reforms have, since 2010, been extremely impressive. But constantly suggesting that the political reform process is going to produce a massive economic dividend, in a country that is still very challenging for investors, is only fostering this uneasy, angry mood.

Over the past week, a string of unexplained bombings across Myanmar has received considerable media attention, featured prominently in the New York Times, the Guardian, and many Western news wires. In part, this coverage came because one of the devices apparently exploded at the Traders Hotel, a high-end business hotel in the center of Yangon where many Westerners (including myself) often stay, since even during the years of military rule, the Traders always had reliable electricity and comforts. One American apparently was injured in the Traders bombing, and there were bomb blasts, which appeared to be from crude homemade bombs, at many other sites around Yangon. There also this week were several similar explosions in Mandalay. Today, more bombs exploded in northeastern Myanmar, killing at least one person, according to Global Post. Many Yangon residents almost immediately blamed the bombings on Myanmar radical Muslim groups, acting in response for two years of attacks by Buddhists on Muslims in western Myanmar and, increasingly, in Yangon and other cities in central Myanmar.  (No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, as of yet.) It is possible that extremist Muslim groups are behind these bombings. One of the most vocal and notorious anti-Muslim Buddhist monks, Wirathu, escaped a bombing this summer that was likely intended for him. The Myanmar security forces have said that the bombings are the work of a terrorist group targeting tourist sites, although some of the places where bombs have exploded are hardly common places for visitors. But I’m not sure I buy this prevailing theory. Since 2012, few Myanmar Muslims have retaliated for what has already been nearly two years of violent attacks, which have displaced over 100,000 people and destroyed Muslim sections of many towns across Myanmar. Many Myanmar Muslims also still see outside actors, including the UN, Persian Gulf states, and the United States as possible saviors, even though evidence suggests none of these actors are likely to do much to stop Myanmar’s inter-religious violence. Still, this perception remains, making it less likely that Muslim groups would be attacking the Traders Hotel.  The attacks also seem designed simply to stir up trouble and cause panic, without even specifically targeting Buddhist nationalist groups.  In addition, these current attacks bear many similarities to small bombs that often went off across Myanmar before the end of military rule three years ago. Those bombings usually were the result of splits in the military, tensions between the army and ethnic militias, or attempts by the military to foster havoc to create a reason for its existence. My bet is that this new wave of bombs has more to do with the security forces than with Muslim extremist groups.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that, despite the rapid warming of ties between the United States and Myanmar, the former military dictatorship would not get any American military assistance in the fiscal year 2014. (Of course, as it stands now, there will be no U.S. budget in the fiscal year 2014!) As the Irrawaddy reports, the administration has taken this step because the Myanmar military allegedly still uses child soldiers, which makes it ineligible for U.S. military aid. There are many advocates within the Obama administration for moving faster on military-military ties with Myanmar, and indeed several other democracies, like former colonial power Britain, are moving faster than the United States on military-military ties. Yet the use of child soldiers is hardly the only reason why this decision to hold off on military aid is warranted. As an excellent recent Associated Press report notes, one of the major arguments for closer military- military ties does not hold up to scrutiny. Advocates of quickly boosting military-military ties argue that the interaction will help inculcate in the Myanmar military a culture of respect for rights and for the rule of law. This can be accomplished, so the theory goes, by sponsoring leading Myanmar officers to attend training through the U.S. International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. Yet the AP report notes: “The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, concluded in an October 2011 report that IMET training plans did not place a priority on human rights. Because of weak monitoring of the careers of IMET graduates, the report said, it was not possible to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness ‘in building professionalism and respect for human rights within foreign military forces.’” Given the weaknesses of IMET, and the fact that Myanmar’s inter-ethnic and inter-religious violence, some of which is linked to the security forces, shows no signs of abetting—in just the past two weeks there have been multiple attacks on Muslims in several parts of the country—the Obama administration has made the right decision on military-military ties, even if it is a decision that administration officials were forced to make by Congress and by Myanmar activist groups.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Obama cancels Asia trip. U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a four-country tour of Asia, including Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines, in which he would have attended meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Brunei. The travel was canceled because of the U.S. government shutdown. Analysts say that canceling the Asia trip, after Obama had previously committed to attending these summits every year, could deal a blow to the administration’s pivot to Asia. Secretary of State John Kerry will lead the U.S. delegation instead. 2. Hagel tries to reaffirm ties during trip to Asia. After only seven months as secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel traveled to Asia for the third time, hoping to prove that the administration’s rebalance towards Asia is a priority. Hagel first spent four days in South Korea, the longest visit by a U.S. defense minister in decades, where he discussed plans for a South Korean takeover of operational command of its own troops by 2015. On Wednesday, Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Japan to sign an agreement calling for construction of a new missile-defense radar system, deployment of drone aircraft, and joint efforts to combat cyber threats in Japan on Thursday. Leaders of the two countries also discussed possible responses to China sending Coast Guard ships to contest Japan’s control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain in the South China Sea. While the United States does not officially take a position on the issue, Hagel repeated that the islands were covered by the security treaty that obligates the United States to defend Japan if it is attacked. 3. Shanghai Free Trade (and Free Speech?) Zone opens. China opened a new free trade zone in Shanghai on Sunday, which will allow banks and other businesses within the city to experiment with loosened regulations. An article in the South China Morning Post claimed that certain banned websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, will be accessible within the zone. Chinese state media summarily denied this claim [Chinese], but later admitted that certain foreign websites will be granted “special permissions.” Few details have been released about the specifics of the zone, but real estate values in Shanghai have already skyrocketed as a result of the announcement in July. Many analysts have drawn comparisons to Deng Xiaoping’s creation of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which first brought capitalism to China thirty-three years ago. 4. Asian Development Bank cuts growth forecasts. Estimates of slowed growth in India and China and concerns over the possible reduction of U.S. stimulus measures led the ADB to cut its 2013 growth forecast for developing Asia. The bank has lowered its estimate to 6 percent, down from its April estimate of 6.6 percent. Predictions for growth in China and India dropped to 7.6 percent and 4.7 percent in 2013, respectively, from 7.7 percent and 6 percent. The ADB stated that the slowing growth in regional economies “highlights the need to push ahead with overdue reforms in areas like foreign direct investment, infrastructure development, fiscal consolidation and social protection programs.” 5. Riots return to Burma’s troubled Rakhine state. Burmese president Thein Sein travelled to the western state of Rakhine this week, following the death of an elderly Muslim woman and the burning of scores of homes in a fresh spate of sectarian violence. The incident in Thandwe reportedly started over an argument between a Buddhist and a Muslim over a parking space for a motorcycle. Clashes have been ongoing since June 2012; and more than 240 people have been killed and 140,000 have been forced from their homes, most of them Muslims. Bonus: “A Touch of Sin” opens in New York. Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s latest film, “A Touch of Sin,” will open in New York on Friday. The film follows four narratives, each of them dealing with a working-class character forced to the brink of violence by unjust circumstances. It won best screenplay at Cannes and has been shown this week at the New York Film Festival.

A short piece by Agence France-Presse (AFP) run in the Straits Times yesterday, buried amidst the big international stories on Syria and the stand-off in the Philippines and others, caught my attention. The short piece, titled “Poor and Homeless in Costly Yangon” discussed how, because of Myanmar’s political and economic opening, and the lack of quality office and apartment and factory space in Yangon, rents for any decent property have soared through the roof. AFP estimates that land prices in Yangon have risen since 2010, the beginning of Myanmar’s opening, to as much as $700 per square foot now, far more than the price per square foot in Bangkok, which is vastly richer and has twenty-four hour electricity water, and all other modern conveniences. Other articles have suggested that some properties in central Yangon are renting for more than $1000 per square foot, more than rentals in Manhattan. Conversations over the past three weeks with several executives from American and Japanese companies that have considered investing in Myanmar or are indeed investing confirmed for me the unreality of property prices in Yangon, an unreality I had seen myself too on recent visits. Some of these properties that are attracting London-type rental prices are not much more than bare metal and brick buildings that do not even have regular utilities; much of Yangon remains without electricity, water, or decent roads. But what is much more disturbing, and what the article raises, is that the skyrocketing rent is not only deterring investment and hitting the pockets of expatriate managers moving into Yangon; the rents are forcing thousands of families out of their simple places in Yangon, as landlords realize they can rent even the most basic apartments or buildings out to new investors for huge sums. How many people are being pushed out of their homes in Yangon—where GDP per capita is still only around $1,300—is impossible to estimate, although the government has become so concerned about the skyrocketing rents, and the impact on ordinary Burmese, that it is considering imposing new property taxes. Although many advisors to the president’s office are not in favor of this idea, at such an early stage of trying to attract investment, Myanmar already is running a serious risk of becoming like Cambodia in the 1990s, where massive investment and inflows of expatriates created such high inflation for rentals and, ultimately, even everyday essentials, that huge numbers of average Cambodians were driven out of the capital.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Beijing goes to war against a former security tsar. Investigations of multiple senior executives at state-owned oil producer PetroChina seem to link back to a corruption case against domestic security tsar and former senior oil executive Zhou Yongkang. Zhou was in charge of the police and domestic security apparatus and was also a member of the Politburo’s standing committee until 2012. Zhou is not officially under investigation himself, though there are rumors that he is under house arrest. Officials under investigation include Li Chuncheng, deputy party secretary of Sichuan province, where Zhou was party chief for three years; Wu Yongwen, a secretary in charge of labor camps run by Zhou, and Jiang Jiemin, the minister responsible for overseeing Chinese state-owned assets and a protégé of Zhou. 2. U.S. considering restarting military ties with Myanmar. The Obama administration is considered restarting non-lethal military assistance for Myanmar for the first time in twenty-five years. Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with a former Burmese junta member in the first bilateral meeting between defense chiefs in twenty years. Military ties were cut in 1988 when the Burmese government gunned down protestors at a popular uprising. One possible reason for the proposed military aid is as an incentive for Myanmar to sever ties with North Korea. Some U.S. lawmakers are uncomfortable with giving military aid considering the government’s continued harsh treatment of minority groups such as Rohingya Muslims. 3. Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Central Asia to build economic, energy ties. Xi began his first tour of Central Asia since becoming president in March, traveling through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Energy policy has been the top concern on the tour, as China competes with Russia to import a significant amount of oil and natural gas from Central Asia. State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation signed a deal with Russian Gazprom to supply at least 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to China annually, and the next day Xi inaugurated a gas processing facility in Turkmenistan that China lent $8 billion to build. The tour will end on September 13 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group that includes four Central Asian nations, China, and Russia. 4. South Korea bans fish imports from Japan’s Fukushima region. South Korea has instituted a total ban on fish from Fukushima and seven other Japanese prefectures due to new evidence that the waters may still be contaminated with nuclear waste after the 2011 nuclear facility meltdown. South Korea imported 5,000 tons of fish from the affected region last year. China has also maintained a ban on seafood, dairy, and vegetable imports since 2011. Earlier this week, the Japanese government announced the creation of a 50 billion yen emergency fund to build a barrier to prevent groundwater from leaking into nuclear reactor basements. The Japanese government emphasized that its seafood is safe and rigorously tested. 5. Millions prepare to vote in Australia’s general election. Australians are preparing to vote this week in an election that is expected to end six years of rule by the Labor Party. The Liberal-National coalition’s leader, Tony Abbott, is expected to oust Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Labor strategists have focused on reminding voters on Rudd’s mostly successful record in the economic crisis during his first term as prime minister. Australia took over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council this month in the middle of the debate over the Syrian civil war; Rudd accused Abbott as being too cautious in his approach to Syria, saying that the conflict is “baddies versus baddies.” Bonus: 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin. More than 400 million Chinese nationals are not able to speak China’s national language, and millions more speak it poorly, according to Xinhua. There are hundreds of dialects of Chinese, including Cantonese and Hokkien, and many more languages in the country that are not in the same language family, such as Uighur, Tibetan, and Mongolian.

Since Myanmar’s reform process began in earnest in 2010, Myanmar civil society activists seem to have won one victory after the next. Indeed, the apparent change in the power of civil society, from before 2010 to today, has been probably the most striking aspect of Myanmar’s transition. Although the political system has opened up, there has not yet been a national general election since 2010; although the military is not as omnipresent as it was before 2010, it remains the central institution in the country, its role as a political actor untouched in many respects; although the business climate undoubtedly has improved, many Western and Japanese investors who have come to Myanmar in the past two years have returned home disappointed that, in reality, graft, poor infrastructure, uncertain regulations, and poor quality labor remain huge impediments to doing business. But civil society seems to have changed dramatically, in a way resembling Cambodia, which twenty years after the end of its civil war remains stuck with thuggish, pseudo-authoritarian politics yet has a wide range of powerful, vocal nonprofits and media outlets. Four years ago, leading protests of any type in Myanmar could easily get one a long jail sentence, or worse; the domestic media was mostly limited to state newspapers and broadcasters. Now, the media environment has been thrown totally open, with broadsheets, online sites, and the (transformed) old state media all competing for readers and viewership, with the kinds of open, investigative stories that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Unions, aid organizations, groups designed to help former political prisoners, and many other NGOs have sprung up in Yangon in the last year or two, coming up so quickly that every time I go to the city it becomes harder and harder to find the offices of nonprofits I am looking to meet. Meanwhile, protests have erupted around the country over many different issues, including environmental issues. These protests seemed to have made a significant impact on the Myanmar government’s thinking. Most notably, massive protests over the proposed Myitsone Dam—partly because of concerns that the Chinese companies involved would be environmentally destructive—led the government to suspend the dam. This suspension was taken, by many Myanmar activists, as the most important sign to date that the country was changing—that the government was becoming increasingly responsible to the public, that politicians were developing a democratic mindset, one of having to cater to public opinion and get public support for actions they take. But maybe civil society in Myanmar, like politics, business, and the military, has not changed as much as it seems. This week The Irrawaddy reports that the suspended Myitsone dam is likely to be restarted. It reports that, despite the Myanmar government’s suspension—which many civil society activists believed was a prelude to killing the dam altogether—the Chinese investors in the project already have spent more than half the funds allocated for the dam construction, according to what Chinese managers of the project told an energy investment conference. This was the first actually transparent revelation of how much money has already been spent on the dam. The fact that so much of the funds have already been spent strongly suggests the dam construction will be re-started – if it has not already been, since there have been persistent reports of quiet construction activity at the site.

Amidst the din of Syrian intervention talk and Fed picks, the Obama administration is pushing forward quietly, but determinedly, to flesh out the pivot to Asia. While most of the critical attention on the pivot or rebalance is paid to what is transpiring on the security front, there is real, albeit slow, progress on the trade front and the potential for significant advances in other areas such as environmental protection. Washington is pushing hardest to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which if successful could be one of the signal achievements of the Obama administration’s second term. The high-end trade agreement involves negotiations among twelve countries over twenty-one widely disparate areas, such as government procurement and fishing subsidies. A meeting of the chief trade negotiators in Washington is scheduled for mid-September, and there is a continuous stream of thorny issues such as intellectual property on medicine and tariffs that must be waded through before a final agreement can be achieved. Washington is putting significant energy behind its efforts to get an agreement by the end of the year, but by most accounts this is overly ambitious. The administration’s efforts to promote regional security are also moving forward. Secretary of Defense Hagel recently traveled to Brunei for a meeting of the ASEAN defense ministers and along the way visited the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In the Philippines, there were further discussions of a framework agreement that would promote closer cooperation between the Philippine and U.S. armed forces and allow for a rotational presence of U.S. troops, much in the same way as there is in Singapore and Australia. Finally, Congress held hearings over the summer to explore ways in which the United States could enhance the rebalance through stronger U.S. action in areas such as environmental protection. The United States is already engaged in a number of cooperative efforts with the Lower Mekong Delta region and a particular area of new focus in this environmental partnership could well be Burma/Myanmar, where biodiversity and timber resources are under severe threat and could benefit significantly from U.S. assistance. Critics of the U.S. rebalance nonetheless continue to abound. The TPP comes under fire for the opaque nature of the negotiations as well as its exclusion—not deliberate or permanent—of China. Washington’s efforts on the security front—which are often mistaken as the sole element of the rebalance—have been blamed for sparking “an Asian arms race” and accelerating the “militarization of states.” Some also criticize the unstated focus on China as misplaced. Amitai Etzioni argues, for example, that the Obama administration’s decision to plan for Air-Sea Battle is an over-reaction to China’s development of its anti-access/area denial capabilities; moreover, in Etzioni’s view, China has used legitimate channels to resolve more recent trade and territorial disputes, so why is the United States creating a problem where none exists? It remains far from clear that Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Japan would agree with such an assessment. Whether or not the rebalance is in fact part of a U.S. “imperial pivot,” as some suggest, these critics miss the most salient point. There is no rebalance without the rest of Asia. If Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and others don’t buy into the brand of partnership or leadership that the United States is selling, the rebalance will die a very quick death. To assume otherwise ignores the vigorous debates ongoing in many of these countries, and ultimately demeans these countries’ ability to recognize and pursue their own political, security, and trade interests.

The visit on Wednesday by the United Nations’ special envoy to Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, to Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization, is a positive sign that the conflict in Kachin state might really be over. [Asia Times has a fine summary of Nambiar’s visit.] The peace deal between the KIO and the Myanmar government, signed in the spring, was obviously a major step forward to ending the decades-long conflict, but it did not provide real closure—it was not a final ceasefire. Among many Kachin leaders, there remained even after the peace deal signing a high degree of mistrust of both the central government and regional army commanders, who frequently, during past ceasefires, had gone over the government’s orders and launched their own attacks in Kachin state. The Kachin’s armed wing has not put down its weapons, and many Kachin desire a high degree of autonomy from the central government, a type of autonomy hard to imagine for many ethnic Burmans, including those in the National League for Democracy. The fact that Kachin state contains massive natural resources will make this autonomy debate even harder, when it is picked up at the next round of peace discussions in September. Still, both the Kachin news service and several prominent Kachin leaders say that, since the most recent peace deal, the level of violence in Kachin state has dropped dramatically, suggesting that the central government—with the assistance of China—has gotten a handle on regional commanders and increasingly can prevent them from making policy on the ground.  The fact that the central government allowed Nambiar to visit Laiza, even after the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, recently infuriated Naypyidaw by charging that during a visit to Myanmar he was left unprotected and attacked by a Buddhist mob, shows that President Thein Sein’s government is increasingly confident that the level of violence in Kachin state is dropping and is unlikely to spike again. Thein Sein’s approach to the UN also reflects the government’s growing confidence that its narrative of peaceful reconciliation and reform is playing extremely well in the international community, drowning out worries about Kachin state and even the inter-religious violence that continues on in Myanmar, leading to the gutting of another town by Buddhist mobs just last week. This sunny narrative has elements of truth in it, but there is still no clear future plan for a federal Myanmar, a federation that would offer the kind of autonomy that the Kachin and many other ethnic minorities desperately want. But Thein Sein is right: the government has gained the upper hand in international approval, as compared to the KIO and other ethnic rebels. Will this force the KIO to make even more concessions at the September round of peace negotiations?

Over the past week, several violent incidents have erupted again in Rakhine (or Arakan) State in western Myanmar, including riots last Friday in which police shot at crowds of Rohingya men and women, killing at least one person, although the death toll remains unclear. This is the at least the third time in the past two months that police have used live fire on crowds of Rohingya in Rakhine State. Although conflict in the Rakhine State never totally ebbed after the eruption of clashes between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya last year, which led to over 140,000 people—mostly Muslim Rohingya—fleeing to become refugees or IDPs, it seemed to have calmed down somewhat earlier this summer. However, that peace was illusory, for several reasons, and more serious conflict is likely to erupt in Rakhine State. For one, despite winning global praise as a reformer—and despite his own moderate and reasonable comments on how to address citizenship and ethnicity claims in Rakhine State—the government of President Thein Sein created a resettlement plan for internally displaced people from Rakhine State that perpetuates discrimination against Muslim Rohingya by refusing to allow them Myanmar citizenship and forcing them to identify as migrants from another country. The resettlement plan, perhaps more than any other action by the government in the past year, has infuriated Rohingya, who have lashed out with violence. Last year, it was primarily Buddhists in Rakhine State initiating the violence; now both Buddhists and Muslims are launching episodes of violence, leading to the possibility of more pitched clashes this year. The Myanmar government also has not disciplined police officers who have repeatedly used excessive force, including live ammunition, on Rohingya, and who also repeatedly have looked the other way when Buddhists have attacked Muslims in the Rakhine State. In addition, swirling rumors and reports of enormous possible mineral resources in Rakhine State are adding to land grabs and refusals to allow Rohingya to remain in the state and return to their homes. The exact extent of resources in Rakhine State remains unclear, but it has vast virgin forests, a major oil and gas pipeline, significant offshore and onshore petroleum resources, and many other resources. The whirlwind of mineral resources rumors in Myanmar, including in Rakhine State, is captured well in a new Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation report, Creating a Future: Using Natural Resources for New Federalism and Unity. Longtime Myanmar expert David Dapice, in the report, notes that natural resources do, and will continue to, play an outsized role in the Myanmar economy, as compared to many of its neighbors. Without any federal structure to apportion the monies made from resources, there will continue to be enormous local anger at the federal government, which currently is making major decisions about resources development, as well as increasingly intense land grabs in places like Rakhine State where there is no locally-accepted solution to resources that cuts locals into the money being made off their resources. And so the situation only gets more dangerous as summer drags on in Western Myanmar.

As Myanmar opens up, at least 100,000 Muslims have been made homeless in the past two years by violent attacks, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed, along with a much smaller number of Buddhists. Left unchecked, rising ethnic hatred and increasing attacks could push the country into a terrible period of ethnic cleansing, similar to what happened in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Myanmarhas had a long history of xenophobia and inter-ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the army’s oppressive five-decade rule over the country. Outside North Korea, Myanmar was until 2010 probably the most closed nation in the world. In that year, the army began a transition to a civilian government, holding elections that helped create a civilian parliament and formally renouncing its control of the presidency. Still, Myanmar has witnessed enormous change in the past three years and, whatever his past, President Thein Sein has been genuinely interested in promoting reform. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) swept last year’s by-elections, the first truly fair elections in two decades. Parliament has become more than just a rubber stamp for the army and in the 2015 elections the NLD may well win a majority, which could theoretically put them in a position to run the country. But this rapid shift has, as in other former autocratic and diverse states, also unleashed severe tensions. The inter-religious violence began last year in Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh. The exact cause of the fighting remains unclear, but after rumors spread that several Muslim men had attacked Buddhist women, crowds of Buddhists began attacking areas of the state populated by Muslim Rohingya. Now the Myanmar government faces far broader unrest, killings that threaten to tear the country apart and completely undermine the recent economic and political reforms. Emboldened by the lack of action taken against marauders last year, Buddhist extremists have launched a national anti-Muslim campaign, led by nationalist monks. The campaign, called the 969 Movement (the name comes from Buddhist numerology), calls on Buddhists to avoid Muslim shops and properties and tacitly encourages evictions and even attacks. The movement’s followers encourage Buddhist shop-owners to put 969 stickers on their stores, identifying them as Buddhist-run, and have at times reportedly attacked Buddhist merchants for doing business with Muslims. One 969 leader, nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, has given numerous interviews calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the country or worse. When he gives sermons, Wirathu now draws thousands of followers, like a nationalist rock star. In a much-covered speech in February, Wirathu told followers: "Once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practice our religion … If you buy from Muslim shops, your money doesn’t just stop there. It will eventually go towards destroying your race and religion." Some liberal commentators have compared the movement to neo-Nazis, and in March militant monks in the town of Meiktila carried swords and knives, watching over Muslims being force-marched out of the area. Violence has exploded across the country. Mobs of Buddhists, some with ties to the 969 Movement, have struck in the towns of Meiktila, Nay Pyi Taw, Bago and now outside Yangon, the largest city. Earlier this year in Meiktila, groups of men burnt Muslims’ homes and then attacked survivors, killing at least 40 people, including schoolchildren. Wirathu publicly praised these actions. Many of the mobs also appear to have ties to several long-standing paramilitary organizations that previously worked with the army to enforce military rule, according to several Myanmar rights activists. Police provide protection for U Wirathu as he travels, as if he were a state leader. Read more here.  

Over the past six months, the Buddhist-Muslim violence in Myanmar, which last year seemed confined to the western Rakhine (or Arakan) State, has exploded all over the country. The violence has spread to places in central Myanmar, like Okkan and Mktila, to the outskirts of Yangon, and even to towns in the northeast, like Lashio, with little history of inter-religious tension. The nationalist, xenophobic, fascistesque 969 Movement of the monk Ashin Wirathu appears to be gaining followers. The New York Times  recently reported that Wirathu’s sermons now are attracting thousands of followers, and that it is planning to set up school for Buddhist children across the country. In a further unsettling sign, the Myanmar government appears unwilling to back up its tough talk about the violence with any action that would honestly apportion blame to the people causing the unrest. This week, the security forces announced that they were arresting two Muslim women for supposedly creating the unrest in Okkan earlier this year, in which mobs of Buddhists attacked Muslim shops and homes. The Muslim women allegedly argued with a Buddhist monks in Okkan, setting of violence. Yet observers on the scene in Okkan and other sites of violence like Mktila noted that many of the Buddhist gangs appeared to be prepared in advance for any altercation, with plenty of arms, earth-moving machinery to dislodge Muslim homes, and petrol bombs for burning. In addition, human rights groups and Burmese activists have noted that many of the Buddhist mobs appear to have links to longstanding paramilitary groups in Myanmar, which in past worked with the army to maintain order and military rule. In Okkan, Lashio, and other towns, the authorities still have many Buddhist suspects in custody for their alleged roles in the violence. Yet as of now, almost no Buddhists have been charged, a situation similar to what happened last year, when only a tiny handful of Buddhists were charged for the massive violence against Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine State. The government needs to demonstrate even-handed behavior in its prosecutions in Okkan, Lashio, and Mktila, to avoid appearing that it is actually condoning the violence – and thus encouraging more attacks.

For decades, during the rule of the military junta, Myanmar’s numerous internal problems spilled over its borders, sewing chaos along the frontiers with India,Thailand,China, and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s narcotics producers flooded Thailand and other countries with methamphetamines and heroin, Myanmar’s numerous civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling into Thailand and Bangladesh and created a profitable cross-border illegal arms trade in India, and Myanmar’s combination of rape as a weapon of war and massive migration created some of the most virulent strains of HIV/AIDS in Asia, which then spread into China and Thailand. With the reforms in Myanmar since 2010, there has been considerable hope among the country’s neighbors that political change also would reduce the burdens Myanmar’s serious domestic problems placed on them. Thailand hopes to send back thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrants, and to be able to better cooperate with the Myanmar government in shutting down drug production in Myanmar’s wild northeast.  China hopes that the cease-fire between the Kachin Independence Army and the Myanmar government – seemingly the most stable cease-fire with the KIA in decades – will decrease migration into China and keep China from having to play a larger role in the KIA-Myanmar dispute. Overall, the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has hoped that, with Myanmar no longer a pariah, it will be easier for the group to reach consensus on regional issues, and ASEAN will be able to punch at a higher weight internationally. Yet in some ways, the reverse of these aspirations is happening. The cease-fire in Kachin State is a clear step forward. But Myanmar’s inter-religious violence, which seemed confined to Rakhine State last year, now is spreading across the country, even to places, such as Lashio in Shan State, in which there have been few Muslim-Buddhist clashes in modern history and where there are few Muslims living anyway. And now the violence is spreading to other countries in the region, sucking them into Myanmar’s battles; they already are being sucked in by the outflow of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State. In the past two weeks, at least eight people have been killed in Malaysia. Buddhist and Muslims from Myanmar have begun attacking each other in Kuala Lumpur. (There are hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar living in Malaysia, mostly doing low-paying labor.) This comes just after violence between Myanmar Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Indonesia resulted in several deaths. Yet, just as on the issue of how to handle Rohingya refugees, on the broader problem ofMyanmar’s spiraling inter-religious conflict, ASEAN is almost nowhere to be seen. Other than Indonesia, most ASEAN members have not been proactive in trying to help Myanmar tamp down tensions, and the region has no coherent plan for addressing the Rohingya “boat people” turning up in Thailand, Malaysia, and elsewhere.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Chinese buy into America’s pork market. Chinese meat giant Shuanghui Group announced that it plans to acquire Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, for $4.7 billion. Both companies would benefit from the deal: Shuanghui would gain a steady and safe supply of pork while Smithfield would gain entry into the expansive Chinese market. If approved—the deal still needs to face the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) process, which assesses national security risks—it would be the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date. The deal is driven by higher demand for pork in China, where a burgeoning middle-class is spending more on meat products. Some American critics are concerned about Shuanghui’s poor food safety record; in 2011, the company was found to have sold pork laced with clenbuterol, a banned veterinary drug. The deal is expected to pass the CFIUS review, though it may face additional scrutiny from Congress and the American public—recall that public pressure forced Chinese oil giant CNOOC to withdraw an $18 billion bid for Unocal in 2005. 2. Donilon visits China. White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon visited China two weeks ahead of a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama in California. Donilon met with several senior Chinese leaders, including President Xi and Vice Premier Wang Yang. He also met with Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong to discuss closer military-to-military ties between the two countries, especially in international peacekeeping, fighting piracy, and disaster relief. The informal two-day summit between the two presidents will begin on June 7; this ChinaFile discussion, which includes CFR’s Elizabeth Economy, gives a good indication of what to expect (hint: trust, not treaties). 3. Hagel makes his first trip to Asia as Pentagon chief. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel traveled to Singapore on Friday to attend the Shangri-la Dialogue, an annual Asia-Pacific security conference. In his first trip to the region, Secretary Hagel reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the pivot to Asia despite severe budget cuts and is expected to address cybersecurity in his speech on Saturday. The secretary will meet informally with Chinese officials over the weekend as well, though Beijing only sent mid-level military officials to the conference to express its displeasure at Washington’s robust security presence in the region. 4. Violence continues in Myanmar. The northern city of Lashio was the site of more religious clashes between Muslims and Buddhists this week. The latest violence began when a Buddhist woman was set on fire by a Muslim man at a gas station, sparking riots. One Muslim man was killed, a mosque and other buildings were burned down, and five Buddhists were wounded. Authorities quickly deployed security forces to stem the violence. Myanmar’s government has been ridiculed in the recent past for its inability or unwillingness to confront Buddhist mobs. 5. China expresses interest in TPP. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman stated that China “will analyze the pros and cons as well as the possibility of joining” the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In the past, the United States has welcomed interest from other countries, including China. The other eleven nations of the TPP approved Japan’s entry into negotiations in April, hoping to conclude talks by the end of 2013. ASEAN, with support from China, recently began a separate trade agreement with fifteen other Asian countries, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Negotiations for RCEP are slated to conclude by the end of 2015. Bonus: Graffiti outrage leads to soul-searching for Chinese tourists. Chinese netizens were outraged after seeing a photo of graffiti scrawled on the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple in Egypt. The graffiti read “Ding Jinhao was here” in Chinese; the perpetrator was a fifteen-year-old Chinese tourist.