The Economist UK - 31.08.2019

48 Asia The EconomistAugust 31st 2019

2

Banyan Wars without end

T

wo yearsago ethnic cleansing by the

army forced 700,000 Muslim Ro-

hingyas to flee Rakhine state, in western

Myanmar, and seek sanctuary across the

border in Bangladesh. On August 22nd,

outside dismal refugee camps near Cox’s

Bazar, buses and lorries lined up for the

first of many envisaged repatriations

taking Rohingyas back home. But there

was a hitch: not a single Rohingya came

forward.

Nor will many change their minds

soon. Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar

denies citizenship to the persecuted

Rohingyas. The word means people from

Rakhine, yet the government claims they

are not Burmese but “Bengali” impos-

tors. Having been refused formal id

cards, it is impossible for many Ro-

hingyas to prove that they used to live in

Myanmar, one of the government’s con-

ditions for repatriation. Besides, what is

there to go back to? Their former villages

have been razed. Rohingyas who remain

in Rakhine now live in camps, too.

The plight of the Rohingyas has

gained notoriety, though with compas-

sion for refugees at an international ebb,

they could be stuck in the camps for

years. The risk is that youngsters will be

radicalised by a (so far) tiny Rohingya

group committed to armed insurgency.

Would that the displacement of the

Rohingyas was Myanmar’s only source of

ethnic conflict. Even in Rakhine state a

far more violent insurgency is being

fought by a group which claims to have

little in common with the central govern-

ment apart from a shared hatred for

Rohingyas. The Arakan Army (aa) is

fighting to defend the interests of the

Buddhist Rakhine (the ethnic group that

gave the state its name) in a country so

often run on behalf of its Burman major-

ity. This year the aahas launched attacks

on police posts, killing their occupants

and making off with weapons. The armed

forces have responded with ground offen-

sives and even warplanes. The conflict has

entered towns and cut important roads

and waterways. Few international aid

groups are allowed into northern Rakhine

to help civilians. For months the authori-

ties have imposed an information black-

out by shutting down the internet.

As for the unruly states of Kachin in the

north and Shan in the north-east, where

ethnic insurgencies have rumbled on for

decades, last December the army chief,

General Min Aung Hlaing, declared a

temporary “ceasefire for eternal peace”. If

it was a gambit to deal with the Rakhine

insurgency, it has miscarried. In August a

bunch of insurgent groups calling itself

the Northern Alliance Brotherhood

launched bold and bloody attacks on

police posts and bridges in Shan state and

even an elite military academy in Myan-

mar’s heartland near Mandalay. Among

the groups taking part was the aa, operat-

ing far from its home base.

The lessons for a “peace process” that

has become an industry, sucking in

millions of dollars from international

donors and involving no end of foreign

experts, are not salutary. The efforts of

the country’s putative leader, Aung San

Suu Kyi, have been undermined both by

the army and by distrust among ethnic

groups of her National League for De-

mocracy. Meanwhile, the army’s own

Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement of 2015

excludes the biggest militias. Years of

broken promises to ethnic groups have

not helped.

It is a hugely complex mosaic. Ethnic

groups with grievances towards an over-

weening army and state live in overlap-

ping territories. Ethnicities and identi-

ties often commingle and change, a

process spurred by social media, migra-

tion and urbanisation. The economic

rackets in both army- and rebel-held

areas are predatory and extractive, in-

volving drugs, jade, timber and human-

trafficking. The dynamics, as Thant

Myint-U, a historian, has put it, are less

like Syria today than Chicago in 1926.

Persuading Myanmar’s myriad ethnic

groups to lay down arms with promises

of equitable development will be fiend-

ishly hard. Yet now comes a new dimen-

sion: pressure from China to hasten

plans, stretching from Shan state to

Rakhine, for a China-Myanmar Eco-

nomic Corridor of roads, railways, pipe-

lines and a port. China wants an outlet to

the Bay of Bengal. It claims the invest-

ment will be a boon for Myanmar, in-

centivising peace and development. Yet

the corridor runs right through the coun-

try’s most restive—and inequitable—

areas. And so the northern group’s Au-

gust attacks may prove a harbinger. Far

from helping extinguish Myanmar’s

conflicts, Chinese money may simply

spray fuel on the fire.

A Chinese development scheme adds an extra dimension to long-running conflicts

and activists have since been locked up.

Estranged allies of the bjphave come

under the cosh, too, including two promi-

nent figures in Hindu nationalist politics

in the state of Maharashtra. But the Con-

gress party has received the most atten-

tion. The cbijust arrested a nephew of Ka-

mal Nath, the chief minister of the state of

Madhya Pradesh, on charges of money-

laundering. The edfiled similar charges

against two former Congress chief minis-

ters on August 27th.

Congress is certainly not squeaky clean:

a long “season of scams” marred its most

recent period in power and was one of the

main reasons for its drubbing in 2014. But

aggrieved Congress workers point out that

the police do not seem to be chasing any

current bjpleaders. In several instances,

the legal troubles of Congress members

seemed to evaporate after they defected to

the ruling party. Mr Modi, claims Praveen

Chakravarty, a Congress official, is not real-

ly interested in stamping out corruption,

nor even in persecuting individual politi-

cians. Instead, Mr Chakravarty insists, he is

“creating a climate of fear” in an attempt to

quell all criticism.

Mr Chakravarty alleges a second malign

motive behind the anti-corruption cam-

paign. He maintains that the government

is ginning up a “moral crusade” to distract

attention from the ailing economy. Growth

has fallen to its lowest level since the Con-

gress party’s last year in office. The current

finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has

just overhauled her first budget in an ap-

parent panic (see Finance section). But Mr

Modi won a second five-year term just

months ago. He has plenty of time to repair

the economy—and to fight corruption,

whether selectively or not. 7