Interview: Myanmar’s Military Junta Faces A “No-Win” Game
While largely overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year later, the 2021 coup d’etat by Myanmar’s military has resulted in a national civil war, with the military resorting to increasingly brutal atrocities as retaliation for steady losses of territory to opposition forces.
Overt Defense was able to speak with Marzuki Darusman, the former Chair of the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, on his observations of the conflict and the prospects for the warring sides. Following the conclusion of the Mission’s activities and the coup, Marzuki became a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, providing advice to Myanmar’s opposition and advocating for international support for the movement.
How closely have you followed developments in Myanmar following the end of the fact-finding mission’s activities in 2019?
Especially after the coup d’etat on 1 February 2021, up until now. We had, I think, a very productive collaboration with people on the ground during the fact finding mission period, and we couldn’t just walk away after what happened. And so we set up this platform, the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar.
There are three of us, Professor Yanghee Lee from Korea, Professor Chris Sidoti from Australia and myself. We’ve been following this as a reciprocal gesture to all those who helped us, and who are now in a very difficult situation. We lead flows of information from inside Myanmar to outside Myanmar to gain an understanding of how the international community responds, push along support for the democracy movement, put pressure on the junta to step aside, let the democratic movement come out and take over.
What is the current focus of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar’s work?
Right now, our focus would be to catch up on lost time. The two years that have passed have not brought any changes at all, and the situation is falling back further in terms of suffering and atrocities committed by the junta. The economic downslide is severe, and there seems to be no prospect of a settlement unless both sides come to terms with each other.
The problem, of course, is that this requires a fundamental change in attitude. In two years, no one side has been able to overcome the other one. It’s a stalemate, we feel that there is a difficult step to take, and that is to seek a political solution. We are now trying to open up this path for a political solution, which means that all parties to the conflict will have to be part of the solution.
The question is, are they ready for that?
Over the past year, anti-junta forces have been documented using increasingly sophisticated tactics like drone-dropped munitions and 3D printing firearms. Are there any concerns that other non-state actors in the region may adopt these tactics as well?
Inevitably, the resistance movement will have to “even up” their capacities to confront the junta. We have been advocating an arms embargo that applies to both sides, but we cannot ignore the fact that the market for arms is a thriving enterprise. Around the border, there are very sophisticated methods of transactions, and these are readily available equipment that could fall into the hands of any side. The fact that this is being acquired by the democracy movement means that they are also getting support from sources that enable them to purchase these equipment.
You can’t draw the line here in that sense, and therefore to your question, this would then be a practice that could be followed by other movements in the region. But it only came about due to the protracted period of conflict that has now taken place. If this situation had been able to be resolved a year ago, it wouldn’t have reached this point where lethal weapons are now being used on both sides to accomplish their objectives. It depends on how soon or how quickly the conflict is resolved. That is the role ASEAN used to play, and ASEAN is falling short of its obligations here.
In response to these sophisticated attacks, the junta has resorted to increasingly indiscriminate means of collective punishment or retribution. How do you see this affecting any political settlement or reconciliation process after the conflict?
The junta resorting to escalating atrocities means they have lost the capacity to subdue the opposition by continuing on the political track, rather than taking these extreme measures. These extreme measures indicate that the junta is in a state of desperation. And so if that is the case, then a political solution may be the way out for both sides, in the sense that this will then allow the junta to recognize that killing more people, executing more activists, escalating cruelty and atrocities is getting them nowhere. It’s only going to make the junta much more atrocious in the eyes of the international community.
It’s a no-win game for the junta to resort to these techniques and tactics, and it is self defeating.
Has the Council managed to develop any contacts with the leadership of the anti-junta movements that have emerged since the coup?
Yes, we are working very closely with the National Unity Government (NUG), the National Unity Consultative Council, the National League for Democracy, the ethnic revolutionary organizations, the civil disobedience movement, and with the People’s Defence Forces. We conduct meetings with them every now and then, we are engaging the acting president and are fully involved in discussions on issues that may require expert advice from a variety of sources. We are fully engaged with the so-called opposition, which we see not as the opposition but as the legitimate government of Myanmar, because at the moment the junta only holds 17 percent of the whole country. The remainder is under effective control of the democracy movement, and in that sense the legitimate government of the people of Myanmar is the NUG. And we’re pushing for recognition of the NUG by the international community by engaging the international community on this issue. We are getting closer to the point where, I think, the world eventually recognizes that the junta is on its way out.
This junta – the Tatmadaw is a different thing, it is the armed forces of the country. But it needs to be greatly reformed and put under civilian oversight.
In your communications with the opposition movement, what have their sentiments been like? Are they confident that they can win, or that they can get a political settlement that restores democratic rule to Myanmar?
Yes, they are certainly confident that they will prevail in the end. This is a different kind of uprising than in the past, this is a national groundswell of opposition against the Tatmadaw, and there is no precedent in Myanmar’s history of such a scale of movement, which certainly took the military by surprise. They thought they could settle this in a matter of weeks, and now we are entering a third year of conflict. This can only reinforce the opposition’s belief that having been able to survive for two years plus, they are headed for eventual victory over the Tatmadaw, and they will certainly then be able to create a new generation of leadership and a new federal democracy for Myanmar.
Seeing researchers and activists share details about the increasing sophistication of the opposition’s tactics gave me the impression that they would not give up – they wouldn’t be trying these if they were just going to give up, right?
Exactly. The sacrifice has been too much for the political leadership of the opposition to abandon this struggle. It would be a great injustice to those who have sacrificed their lives for this cause. There’s no way back for the opposition, there’s only a way forward.
The author would like to express their gratitude to the Malaysian Institute of Strategic and International Studies and the Global Leadership Foundation for their invaluable assistance in facilitating this interview.