FEATURESFull-blown guerrilla war takes shape in Myanmar

More and more young persons in Myanmar are heading for the jungles for military training for the urgent purpose of taking-up arms against the country’s military which came back to power in a brutal coup on February 1 last year which ousted the Aung San Suu Kyi administration. The minds of political commentators of the South ought to be going back to the mid decades of the last century when numerous guerrilla wars in the ‘Third World’ made dramatic history. These wars, among other things, focused on the key role popular support for socially emancipatory movements plays in the fomenting of progressive political change.

Current developments in Myanmar prove that the theories on guerrilla warfare that were articulated by the likes of Mao Tse- tung, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were right. Essentially, it is increasing repression of peoples by authoritarian governments that leads to popular armed revolts or revolutionary upheaval and this sets the stage for the eventual emergence of socialist-oriented ‘people’s governments.’ This is the course that events took basically, for example, in China, Cuba and Vietnam in the late fifties and sixties. It would be highly premature to predict revolutionary political change of this kind in Myanmar, but to date Myanmarese developments follow some of the patterns which manifested in the prospective communist states of those bygone times.

The information from Myanmar currently is that the people’s backlash against Myanmar’s military junta is continuing and that the latter is persisting in its repressive course with undiminished severity. However, the fact is stark that regime repression in the country is helping to increase the fighting cadres of the guerrilla group that is taking on the military and which is styling itself as the People’s Defense Force (PDF). Sections of the international media are focusing at present on rising youth rebelliousness, which takes the form, for instance, of students giving up their higher studies and heading for the bush, where they single-mindedly concentrate on military training.

Attacks by the PDF against state targets are said to be on the rise but the junta is not pulling back its punches. The repressive measures launched by the latter in response to the attacks are apparently increasingly brutal. Some 1,500 civilians have been reportedly killed over the past year. All in all, Myanmar’s suffering is bound to intensify in the days ahead, since neither side is bound to register any significant military gains in a hurry. However, if the junta believed that repression would pay, it is hugely mistaken.

If people in notable numbers are siding with the PDF, it is proof that right now sections of the Myanmarese people are going the way the Chinese and Vietnamese publics, for example, did in the fifties amid rising governmental repression, which was backed by the then imperial powers, including the US. Among other things, the observer needs to infer that the current ‘neo-liberal’ times are no bar to the development of guerrilla wars of the more classical kind. Besides Myanmar, wars of this kind are occurring in East Africa, for instance.

It would be relevant to point out that an epochal study on these mid-twentieth century guerrilla wars in the developing world was carried out by no less a person than renowned Western journalist Robert Taber, who covered many of these wars in person, ending up wounded as a result of fighting with defending forces in the Bay of Pigs invasion. His seminal work, ‘The War of the Flea – Guerrilla Warfare Theory and Practice’ (first published in 1970 by Paladin Frogmore) remains to date, the most authoritative and insightful study on the relevant guerilla wars.

If one needs to learn more on the ‘dynamics’ of these wars it is to ‘The War of the Flea..’ that one must go. Among other things, one is reminded by Taber that knowledge on these wars and conflicts could be communicated to interested readerships without resorting in the least to the jargon of Political Science specialists.

However, as mentioned, we are unlikely to see any change in the internal status quo in Myanmar any time soon. Groups such as the PDF are not militarily powerful enough to bring about drastic changes of this kind. In all probability it will be a wasting conflict, with neither side proving powerful enough to militarily neutralize the other in the short and medium terms. Moreover, the junta has the firm backing of Russia and China who would be going all out to ensure that the junta remains dominant.

However, as theorists on guerrilla warfare explain, even the world’s mightiest militaries cannot contend indefinitely against militant groups that enjoy the firm backing of the people. While military might will enable the junta to remain dominant in the foreseeable future, its grip on power is bound to weaken to the degree to which the people lend their support to the guerrillas. The US knows this best because it lost one stronghold of influence after another in the global South over the decades on account of the fact that the regimes it backed in the hemisphere lacked popular support.

However, the focus of the world at this juncture should ideally be on the suffering of the ordinary Myanmarese people. UN agencies could be depended on to go the extra mile to fend for the people of Myanmar but there needs to be a fair, final political solution to the agonies of the country. The cooperation of the UN Security Council is crucial for effecting a solution of this kind. But given the fact that the prime members of the UNSC are unlikely to be in agreement on the key terms of such a solution, considering that they would be backing rival sides to the conflict, a united political accord to the Myanmarese conflict among the UNSC membership is a remote possibility at present.

However, ASEAN could likely succeed where the UNSC fails. Considering that it is ASEAN that would prove the mightiest economic bloc in the world going forward, and since Myanmar is a valued member of ASEAN, the latter should consider it obligatory on its part to make concrete, decisive moves towards bringing peace to Myanmar. Its voice is bound to be respected worldwide since it has not courted serious controversy in world affairs thus far.