TheEconomistAugust 22nd 2020 311S
uspended in theair, several feet above
Aung San Suu Kyi’s head, was an image
of a dove with an olive branch in its beak.
Ms Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leader, was deliver-
ing her opening remarks at the “21st Cen-
tury Panglong Conference”, a series of talks
designed to end the numerous ethnic in-
surgencies that have ravaged her country
since its founding in 1948. The poster of the
dove gestures towards the hope Ms Suu Kyi
inspired when she was elected in 2015 that
she might one day silence the guns.
That day, alas, is nowhere close. Sporad-
ic clashes continue to occur in Kachin,
Kayin and Shan states. A new conflict has
since 2018 erupted in Rakhine and neigh-
bouring Chin states, where nearly 1,000 ci-
vilians have died and at least 80,000 people
been displaced. On August 19th, 230 dele-
gates from the government, the army and
ten ethnic-minority groups gathered in
Naypyidaw, the capital since 2006, for a
three-day peace pow-wow before a general
election in November. They may have won-dered, seeing that paper dove, when they
will see the flesh-and-blood version.
It was never going to be easy. Ms Suu Kyi
inherited the world’s longest-running civil
war. Her peace process was named after the
first “Panglong Conference”, convened by
her father, Burma’s independence leader,
in 1947. Ever since, conflict between the
army and a plethora of ethnic-based forces
has spluttered on in many of the country’s
border regions. The peace process that Ms
Suu Kyi inherited from Myanmar’s previ-
ous leader is “one of the most labyrinthine”
ever, according to the Transnational Insti-
tute (ti), an international research outfit.Thein Sein, her de facto predecessor,
had drawn up a Nationwide Ceasefire
Agreement (nca), which promised a feder-
al system. Those who signed it would grad-
uate to the next phase: political dialogue.
But the army angered the most powerful re-
bel outfits when it declared in 2015 that six
of their number would not be permitted to
sign the nca. As a result just eight armed
groups, representing 20% of Myanmar’s
guerrillas, signed up. This created a com-
plicated, two-track peace process: dialogue
with nca signatories; and bilateral cease-
fire talks with non-signatories. Since Ms
Suu Kyi’s ascent to power, she has been able
to convince just two piffling non-signato-
ries to commit themselves to the nca, and
has made no real progress in peace talks.
The army is not helping. She cannot
force it to extend an olive branch to its foes.
The constitution gives the army, or Tatma-
daw, control of the ministries of defence,
home and border affairs, and a quarter of
the seats in parliament, so in effect it has a
veto on constitutional reform. It “has not
made any commitments or any real con-
cessions to ethnic groups during the peace
process,” says Tom Kramer of ti. In fact it
has deliberately sabotaged peace, adds Da-
vid Mathieson, an analyst, for instance by
clashing with the two beefiest nca signato-
ries, the Karen National Union (knu), an
ethnic-Karen (or Kayin) group, and the Res-
toration Council of Shan State (rcss), anMyanmar’s forever warWill it ever stop?
SINGAPORE
Aung San Suu Kyi has brought Myanmar peace talks, but no peaceAsia
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