Burma: A Tiger by the Tail

The Burmese army is now an occupation force. It holds in power a brutal military regime which itself is the last bastion of the “Socialist” Party of Burma, the BSPP. Since the uprising began three months ago thousands have died and the country now teeters on the brink of a bloody civil war. How can we account for this sudden explosion after twenty six years of silence?

The Burma Socialist Programme Party seized power after a military coup in 1962. At its head stood General Ne Win, who proclaimed that he would follow “the Burmese Road to Socialism”. Needless to say, this had little to do with the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Instead, it meant State Capitalism in the Stalinist mould. The Party took direct control of all aspects of the economy and suppressed all opposition to its rule. Ne Win also imposed a policy of rigorous isolation from the world market –a direct analogue to Stalin’s untenable notion of “Socialism in One Country”. Foreign investment was ostentatiously shunned, and as late as 1986 foreign businessmen were being expelled for “importing corruption”.

The effects on the economy were catastrophic. Bad planning, fuel shortages, and a lack of foreign currency for spare parts and new equipment soon made a shambles of the distribution system. Despite an extremely fertile agriculture and good harvests, food was simply not getting through to the cities. In the first six months of this year the price of rice rose 400 per cent and growing numbers of people found it difficult to feed themselves and their families.

In July, popular anger finally spilled over into the streets. Mass demonstrations broke out throughout Burma, and a general strike paralysed the country. The state responded by letting the army loose. In the space of one week in August, 3000 unarmed demonstrators were killed. When even this failed to crush the uprising, a shaken Ne Win resigned. Shortly afterwards the army was withdrawn from the streets after several hundred soldiers had refused to fire on crowds. A civilian, Maung Maung, then took over with promises of reform.

It was too little and much too late. The opposition was now demanding not only economic reform, but the abolition of one party rule, freedom of expression and a return to multi-party democracy through free elections. Protests were stepped up and the remaining authority of the BSPP began to disintegrate. In Mandalay, central government ceased to function, and the city was run for several weeks by Buddhist monks.

Although the uprising appeared to be skilfully coordinated, there was no one national opposition group, and no central leadership. Local initiatives appear to have come from clandestine student groups and local committees of Buddhist monks, but the rising has otherwise been entirely spontaneous, taking in a broad cross-section of Burmese society.

With the survival of the Burmese ruling class now in jeopardy, the army stepped into take control on the 22nd of September The new leader was General Saw Maung, a close associate of the former ruler Ne Win. General Maung had already replaced his unreliable troops with soldiers from the minority Chins tribe. These hill people had been used by the British in the past for putting down the “Native” Burmese, and had few inhibitions about gunning down civilians.

Throughout the poorer quarters of true capital Rangoon, barricades went up and workers armed themselves with whatever was to hand –principally sharpened bicycle spokes fired by catapults. The result was never in doubt. According to eye witnesses thousands were killed in “an exercise in calculated brutality” (The Guardian. 23 September 88). On the third of October the general strike was broken after General Maung threatened the half starved workers with mass redundancies.

The Burmese uprising is now entering new and dangerous phase. The time for peaceful protest appears to have passed, and the talk now is of taking up arms. In Rangoon, a student group calling itself the Burma Revolutionary Force has been formed to strike at the military. Its 21 year old leader told a correspondent, “we will fight. We will all die ourselves rather than let the military government continue” (Observer, 2 October 88). And there is plenty of support to hand.

In the mountainous border regions, seven: secessionist groups have been fighting for over forty years. At least 3000 students have already fled the cities to join them, and attempts are being made to form some sort of alliance. The army is clearly over-extended, and already reports are circulating of major rebel victories in outlying provinces.

There is no shortage of weapons either Firearms can be freely bought on the border;AK47 rifles cost a mere $100 each and grenades are going for £10 a dozen. In the cities, hundreds of police stations have already been stripped of their arms, and these are now mostly in the hands of the monks.

The Burmese ruling class –those whose position in the Party entitles them to live off the labour of the majority –clearly have a tiger by the tail. On the one hand, they cannot give in to the oppositions’ demands for political power without threatening their own survival. On the other hand, the economy which supports them lies in ruins. From being a leading producer of rice, teak and jade, Burma is now the seventh poorest country in the world, with a per capita income of £100.

Economic recovery demands that the notoriously inefficient and rigid centralised economy be dismantled –and here lies the rub. As we have seen in Russia, economic modernisation requires political change to accommodate more flexible market mechanisms. In other words it demands (very limited) moves towards more representative forms of government.

General Sein Lwin, who ran the country for three short weeks in July, expressed these contradictions. The party should “widen the scope for private enterprise in agriculture, mining and transport”, he said, and “liberalise foreign trade to encourage foreign investment”. (Economist 20 July 1988). Yet the party is clearly not prepared to concede the more democratic structures which would allow such economic change to work. Thus General Maung has pledged to hold elections, but only under the “supervision”, of the BSPP and the army. The opposition parties have refused to participate until the BSPP is disbanded and a neutral transitional regime is in place.

There are other economic drawbacks to naked military control. Despite Ne Win’s rhetoric, no state can cut itself off from the world market for long without suffering rapid economic decline. The architect of the “Burmese Road to Socialism” bowed to this iron law when Burma’s huge foreign debt forced him to go cap in hand to the United Nations last year.

Burmawas than granted “Least Developed Nation” status, which entitled it to “soft” loans and development grants. This alone has kept the economy from total collapse. Now foreign governments are threatening to suspend their aid programmes until the army returns to barracks and an accommodation is reached with the opposition.

And what of the opposition? All their remarkable bravery cannot disguise the fact that it is senseless to take on the armed power of the state on the streets. Furthermore, a long drawn out and barbaric guerrilla war will simply result in the brutalisation of all the participants. The Burmese people can see examples in the world today. Even where the guerrillas are “successful”, as in Cambodia or Vietnam, the resulting regime is as likely to be even more brutal than the regime it replaced. Otherwise the prospect is of a bitter and protracted struggle such as that being fought with increasing savagery and little prospect of success by the Sendero Lumo in Peru or the NPA in the Phillippines.

According to latest reports, Burmese workers are waging a more covert form of struggle in their workplaces –go slows, sabotage, turning up to get paid then going straight home. No modern economy can function without at least the grudging support of its workforce, and while the present situation continues, the Burmese ruling class can expect only stagnation or collapse. Their only long term option/is to concede some measure of democratic control to the opposition. Economic imperatives may yet achieve what bullets and barricades cannot.