[Myanmar] In New Tact, US Hopes To Reform Myanmar Military

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In new tact, US hopes to reform Myanmar military

by Shaun Tandon

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2012 (AFP) - After rewarding Myanmar for elections, the United States is shifting focus to pressuring the nation's powerful military to bring an end to decades of ethnic conflict and abuses, officials and analysts say.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday that the United States would ease selected sanctions including restrictions on investment to Myanmar, praising "dramatic" changes after the opposition swept by-elections.

It was the largest set of steps taken yet by President Barack Obama's administration as part of its push to encourage reform in Myanmar, where President Thein Sein has reached out to the opposition and ethnic minorities.

But a senior administration official said that the military appeared to be an outlier in the reform process as troops defied orders by Thein Sein in December to cease fighting in northern Kachin state.

"I think there is reason to reach out to the military and bring them in and make sure they see they have a stake in reform," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Despite a peace plan agreed Friday in Karen state, the official said abuses persisted in a number of minority areas including "credible reports" in Kachin of rape used as a weapon of war, child soldiers and forced labor.

The United States has asked Myanmar at high levels to allow aid into Kachin, he said. While two UN convoys recently made it, at least 50,000 to 60,000 internally displaced people closer to the border with China still need assistance, the official said.

"We're talking about the need for massive assistance urgently now," he said.

Myanmar, earlier known as Burma, has been torn by some of the world's longest-running conflicts. Parts of the ethnically diverse country have been gripped by virtually incessant war since independence in 1948.

Clinton, announcing the new US incentives, warned that sanctions would stay in place against "individuals and institutions that remain on the wrong side of these historic reform efforts."

She also called for Myanmar to sever any military cooperation with North Korea, amid questions over the depth of the two countries' ties before the Southeast Asian nation started its reforms.

Tom Malinowski, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch, noted that tough US sanctions remained on lucrative sectors such as gems, natural gas and timber that have historically funded the military.

By contrast, the areas that could benefit from the US easing of restrictions -- telecommunications, agriculture and tourism -- involve the private sector and could have a larger impact on ordinary people.

"The idea here is that we want the armed forces in Burma to become increasingly dependent and ultimately subservient to civilian authority," Malinowski said.

"We see sanctions are now being used to achieve a slightly different purpose. Rather than simply using them to leverage changes of policy from the Burmese government, they are now being used to favor one set of actors in an evolving political drama," he said.

Malinowski said that the real test would be whether the military allows free and fair elections in 2015, which would bring a true change of power in a country dominated by the military since 1962.

In Sunday's by-elections, Nobel laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in parliament for the first time. But her National League for Democracy will only have 37 members in the 440-seat lower house, posing no threat to the military.

Myanmar has been a major focus for the Obama administration as it arguably shows the most visible success of its initial policy -- derided by the rival Republican Party in the cases of Iran and Syria -- of engaging US foes.

But the administration official said that one concern was "expectation management" in Myanmar -- not creating hopes that "some magic wand will make all the deep problems go away."

He said that the United States would not "throw money around" as Myanmar has little capacity to absorb it and "the default position is corruption."

"The business conditions on the ground are not sufficient -- otherwise you would have most of the world rushing in there already," he said. "I think we have to be careful about an irrational exuberance in terms of the immediate possibilities."

-- (c) Copyright AFP 2012-04-09