US embassy cable - 05RANGOON901

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 RANGOON 000901 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/BCLTV; PACOM FOR FPA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/19/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, PREL, ECON, SNAR, BM 
SUBJECT: PARTING THOUGHTS ON BURMA 
 
 
Classified By: COM Carmen Martinez for Reasons 1.4 (b,d) 
 
1. (C) After three years as Chief of Mission in Rangoon, I 
offer a few parting perspectives on the feared and reclusive 
generals who rule Burma; our continuing efforts to mitigate 
the threats posed by the military regime to our national 
interests, to regional stability, and to the people of Burma; 
and the necessity of continuing support for the Burmese 
people in their desperate quest for democracy, human rights, 
and a better standard of living - denied to them for over 
forty years. 
 
2. (C) There is no happy tale of progress achieved during 
these past three years and no portents of short-term positive 
change.  My realistic assessment is that the prospect for 
meaningful improvement in the near future is extremely low. 
The overall political situation has progressively 
deteriorated, over the past two years in particular, and 
recent signs indicate that a further deterioration is likely. 
 
 
THE GENERALS 
------------- 
 
3. (C) The twelve generals who comprise the SPDC are 
retreating into their collective shell, recalling former 
dictator New Win's experiment with self-imposed isolation.  I 
see this trend partially as a response to international 
pressure, but the retreat also reflects the regime's renewed 
attention to unfinished domestic business, namely dealing 
with the question of power sharing with the country's ethnic 
minorities that has lingered unresolved since independence. 
 
4. (C) Ironically, the generals have erected new barriers at 
precisely the same time that former adversaries - namely 
Thailand, India, and China - have embraced engagement with 
the regime for their own perceived national interests.  These 
relationships provide a significant boost to the regime's 
quest for legitimacy and also counter the effects of 
increased U.S.-led sanctions.  However, we see very few signs 
that the SPDC has much to offer in return to those who court 
them.  An abundant flow of natural resources and an uneasy 
calm along common borders are strong "rewards" for 
engagement, but the neighboring states are not finding that 
engagement and access guarantees any influence on the 
behavior of the brutally illogical generals. 
 
5. (C) As the SPDC retreats, the regime's disregard and open 
disdain for the UN system and the international community 
grows.  It has been a year and a half since the SPDC allowed 
the UNSYG's Special Envoy Razali to visit and nearly two 
years since UN human rights Rapporteur Pinheiro was allowed 
to enter the country.  In the interim, world leaders and 
international organizations such as the UNSYG, the UNGA, the 
UNCHR, the ILO, FATF, and even the UNSC have continued to 
press the SPDC, unsuccessfully, for significant political and 
economic change. 
 
6. (C) The regime responds to the pressures by stonewalling 
or with vitriol, threatening retaliation, decrying 
interference, blaming "superpowers" and "foreign destructive 
elements," and, increasingly, just simply digging in and 
affecting disinterest. The top SPDC leaders earlier this year 
snubbed the ILO's senior delegation and there are growing 
signs that the regime may either boot the ILO out altogether, 
or simply quit the organization.  And few here have forgotten 
that UN human rights Rapporteur Pinheiro was treated to an 
electronic eavesdropping while he interviewed a political 
prisoner during one of his last visits.  Like the ILO 
delegation, Pinheiro cut short his visit and left thoroughly 
disgusted with the regime. 
 
7. (C) The regime is also tightening the noose around UN 
agencies and international NGOs, imposing new restrictions on 
travel, programs, and staffing.  Surveillance of diplomats is 
becoming ever more blatant, especially on those who have any 
contact with opposition figures, and foreign missions and 
visitors are facing increasing delays and difficulties in 
obtaining entry visas and resident permits. 
 
8. (C) Many observers point to the October 2004 ouster of 
former military intelligence czar (and original member of the 
1988 junta), Khin Nyunt, as the source of the current 
retreat.  The hypothesis being that the disgraced Prime 
Minister was a moderate or a reformer who lost out to the 
hard-liners in a power struggle. 
 
9.  (C) We disagree.  General Khin Nyunt was a hard-liner, 
albeit a more polished and approachable one.  He was a 
pragmatist who cultivated foreign countries and a purported 
dialogue with the opposition simply as a means to mollify the 
international community and perpetuate the regime's absolute 
control.  His ouster was a consolidation, not simply of 
hard-liners, but of the top generals who time and again 
demonstrate a remarkable ability to eat their own in order to 
preserve a carefully constructed system of patronage and 
power sharing.  Khin Nyunt made himself a tempting morsel - 
fattening on his patronage network and the power of his 
intelligence apparatus - and the SPDC maw swallowed him up 
just as it has others before him. 
THE OPPOSITION 
--------------- 
 
10. (C) The main thrust of our work here has been supporting 
a legitimate democracy movement, one that has a historical 
claim to govern and a national following.  Nobel Laureate 
Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters have for years 
represented Burma's only hopes for a brighter future. 
Indeed, my first year in Rangoon included dozens of meetings 
and discussions with ASSK and her senior advisors and I had 
every hope that she could achieve a meaningful dialogue with 
the regime and edge Burma closer to national reconciliation. 
 
11. (C) Sadly, the regime finally figured out how to rid 
itself of its most vexing problem, the National League for 
Democracy and the pro-democracy movement:  detain and isolate 
its courageous leaders; harass and repress the rank and file 
membership to such a degree that thousands of people are 
consumed, and cowed, by pure fear; and then simply ignore the 
politically beleaguered and economically desperate 
individuals that remain. 
 
12. (C) If ASSK were to gain her freedom in the next few 
months and was allowed some modicum of freedom to operate as 
an active political player, she could re-energize her 
movement and use her popularity to get a partial grip on the 
reigns of political power.  However, the region's muted 
response to the SPDC's May 2003 attack on ASSK and her 
subsequent detention, coupled with the lack of internal 
protest or unrest by the population, encouraged the generals 
to step up their campaign against the democracy movement. 
The opposition leaders who remain are elderly and infirm, 
governed by Burmese traditions of strict hierarchical 
decision-making, dismissive of empowering the movement's 
youth, and lack the ability to formulate a political strategy 
based on changing conditions.  They are remarkably courageous 
- but the little that they are able or willing to do makes 
almost no difference to the regime or to the dreams and lives 
of their supporters. 
 
13. (C) That the SPDC now ignores (in the NLD's own words) 
ASSK and the NLD is significant.  The generals have always 
lambasted their enemies - real or conjured - as a means of 
justifying their own existence and policies: "Only the 
Tatmadaw (the armed forces) is capable of keeping Burma from 
imploding."   For years, the regime devoted considerable 
energy to depicting the NLD and other pro-democrats as 
treacherous villains and to launching vicious personal 
attacks, verbal and physical, against ASSK and other 
opposition leaders.  The ironic result was that such 
attention made ASSK and the NLD important political players 
with whom the generals had to contend. 
 
14. (C) The generals, however, have moved on to other 
"enemies" (ethnic minorities, exiled activists, and the 
United States are the prime targets lately).  The regime 
(while continuing intense monitoring and harassment of NLD 
members and supporters as well as pro-democracy ethnic 
groups) has taken a public posture that treats the 
pro-democracy movement as a non-entity and therefore of no 
real threat.  What remains after two years of systematically 
persecuting pro-democracy forces is a drab, ramshackle NLD 
party office in Rangoon and a once vibrant nationwide 
movement forced so far underground that there are only a few 
overt signs it still exists. 
 
WHAT WE NEED TO DO HERE 
----------------------- 
 
15. (C) Following the dismantling of Khin Nyunt's MI network, 
the GOB has placed on the back burner our annual (since 1993) 
joint opium yield survey and our WWII remains recovery 
operations.  The indefinite lapse in these activities (which 
we do not view as an anti-American gesture, per se, but 
rather another indication of the regime's "retreat") not only 
creates more obstacles to our counternarcotics and 
humanitarian policy objectives, but also reduces considerably 
our exposure to senior military leaders and our access to 
sensitive locations in Burma's isolated interior. 
16. (C) We also have little authority to conduct many 
USG-funded programs inside Burma.  There is a perception on 
the part of exile groups and their supporters that democracy 
and human rights programming is not worthy or feasible in 
this country.  I disagree.  There is a phenomenal thirst 
among Burma's diverse populations for what the United States 
has to offer.  In close consultation with a variety of 
opposition groups (and at their specific behest), this post 
has repeatedly proposed creative public diplomacy initiatives 
to support this thirst for information on human rights and 
transitional democracy, but we have been unable to obtain 
substantial funding support for these proposals. 
 
17. (C) Our modest public diplomacy programs and 
publications, for example, continue to be wildly popular. 
Our American Center in Rangoon (which houses the best, and 
one of the only, libraries in the country) draws up to 1,000 
visitors a week and has 10,000 members on its rolls.  This is 
the kind of old-fashioned outreach that helped turn the tide 
in Eastern Europe and it could make a difference here if the 
Department was willing (at very low cost), to expand the 
program via an American Center branch in Mandalay as post has 
repeatedly proposed for almost three years.  Over recent 
years tens of millions of ESF and HA funds have been expended 
on Burmese refugees and exiles in Thailand, a tiny percentage 
of the Burmese population that has very low prospects for 
returning to Burma anytime soon.  Their cause is noble and 
our support for them is laudatory, but the heart of the 
matter lies with the 55 million Burmese who remain under the 
direct yoke of the SPDC. 
 
WE'RE HERE TO STAY 
------------------- 
 
18. (C) The presence of an active U.S. mission in Rangoon is 
essential.  Having an embassy here allows us to monitor the 
abuses and misdeeds of the opaque and isolated military 
regime.  Our presence, coupled with our extensive bilateral 
sanctions, our support of UN and INGO programs, and our 
ability to garner support from the EU and other countries, 
may discourage even more egregious behavior on the part of 
the generals or at least make sure someone shines a light on 
their evil deeds. 
 
19. (C) Without the presence of the U.S. and other key 
missions, and in the continued absence of a free press, the 
regime could quite possibly cause or allow the death of ASSK; 
"disappear" all political prisoners; revive wholesale, rather 
than more localized, use of state-sanctioned forced labor; 
"neutralize" several minority groups, including the Rohingya 
Muslims; more actively pursue even cozier relationships with 
other pariah states such as North Korea; more aggressively 
seek acquisition of high-tech and perhaps nuclear weapons; 
and increasingly ignore UN conventions and international 
standards. 
 
20. (C) The United States, supported by a significant 
presence in Burma, is also in a sound position (though not 
necessarily a position of influence with the regime) to lead 
the international community (most of which would prefer to 
ignore the "Burma problem"), in pursuit of democracy and 
respect for human rights and to elicit a minimum of 
responsible behavior from the GOB on some regional security 
issues related to terrorism, narcotics, and HIV/AIDs. 
 
21. (C) Perhaps most importantly, the United States provides 
a voice and a source of hope to the vast majority of the 
Burmese population who oppose authoritarian rule and are 
inspired by core U.S. values of good governance and respect 
for the rule of law.  They gain strength from the presence of 
our mission, which helps to fuel their patient optimism and 
endurance.  We should be under no illusion that USG policies 
alone will effect short-term regime change.  However, 
although the military regime is becoming more impenetrable 
and reclusive than ever, their grip on power is not 
sustainable forever.  The United States needs to be here, on 
the ground, when changes come. 
 
22. (C)  "No American interests here, be they anti-narcotics, 
economic or human rights can be satisfied for as long as the 
present regime rules.  Within understandable limits, i.e., 
nothing smacking of direct intervention, our policy should be 
directed at promoting political change.  For as long as the 
situation remains volatile, United States behavior toward 
Burma should be geared at strengthening the morale and 
perseverance of pro-democracy forces."  These words were 
penned upon the departure in 1990 of the last Chief of 
Mission to bear the title of U.S. Ambassador to Burma. 
Fifteen years later there is nothing to gainsay his 
assessment. 
Martinez