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Thursday 4 December 2008

Business as usual with the Burmese generals

Elliot Wilson explains why international condemnation of Burma’s brutal military leaders is so ineffectual: because many other countries are eager to do deals with them

China has pumped billions of dollars of investment into Burma over the past decade. It is currently building a huge blue-water port in the Bay of Bengal — a potential docking facility for China’s increasingly powerful navy — and an oil and gas pipeline that will snake from offshore fields at Sittwe across the country to the Chinese province of Yunnan.

The big loser in all this has been India, which is even more conflicted over Burma than France. Democratic Delhi’s heart demands that it at least superficially condemns its despotic neighbour. But its head warns that it needs access to Burma’s energy reserves. India also fears the rising influence of China across South Asia. Beijing is in cahoots with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which is allowing China to build yet another blue-water port at Gwadar, west of Karachi. India’s fear of being surrounded by Chinese naval facilities protected by Beijing-friendly administrations means that the Indian urge to condemn Burma is severely circumscribed.

Other investors in Burma’s energy sector include corporations from Australia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia and — inevitably, for all its impotent sabre-rattling at the Burmese regime — the US. But the two nations most complicit in aiding Burma’s generals, and maintaining their lavish lifestyles, are Thailand and Singapore.

On the one hand, the Thai capital, Bangkok, is the key meeting point for expatriate and exiled Burmese as well as foreign journalists who cover Burma; and the Thais provide millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to their neighbour each year. Yet Thailand’s hugely powerful military — which basically runs the country — continues to line the pockets of senior Burmese officers. In September 2006, Thai commander-in-chief Sonthi Boonyaratkalin visited Burma with a view to strengthening military co-operation. By happy coincidence, the Thai government chose the same week to announce Burma’s largest ever inward ‘foreign direct investment’ deal — £3 billion for a hydroelectric dam on the remote Thanlwin river, to which China will contribute a further £1 billion. The dam, set for completion in 2009, will flood the homelands of the besieged Karen, Shan and Karenni minorities who are struggling for independence in the wild east of the country.

More articles from: Elliot Wilson | this section

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