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BANGKOK As Burma's neighbors continue to vie for influence in the one-time 'breadbasket of Southeast Asia,' a curious duplicity is emerging as foreign powers weigh up the financial gain of buttering up the regime against acting in good conscience.
While Burma is the region's mine for oil, gas, gemstones and hydropower rather than rice and teak, these modern concerns are enough to encourage Asian governments to neglect their greater responsibilities by dealing with the repressive regime.
Eager to acquire some of these resources to bolster its growing economy, India is consciously anxious about the influence wielded by China in Burma, according to newly-released US diplomatic cables on Wikileaks. The country routinely described as the world's largest democracy seems to be copying the world's second largest economy with military and strategic inducements of its own. China recently overtook Thailand to become the largest investor in Burma and, although exact numbers are not available, China's investment in and military sales to Burma seem to far outweigh India's.
Nonetheless, US embassy staff are described in some of the leaked cables as questioning Indian officials about arms sales to Burma. In one document, dated May 30, 2007, and released on Tuesday, the Director of Indias Ministry of External Affairs claimed that military assistance to the junta was of the non-lethal variety. He added that bilateral military relations revolved around attacking a variety of Indian insurgent groups who have long been using remote ethnic minority regions of Burma as a retreat.
According to another cable, dated Feb. 20, 2007, one of India's main officials working on the Burma portfolio told the Americans that Burma's junta was needed to help quell the insurgencies, partly due to apparent willful indifference on the part of Bangladesh, whose geographic location makes it pivotal to India's counterinsurgency planning. The ULFA [United Liberation Front for Assam] guys hiding in Burma are screwing the hell out of us, the official said, adding that Burma is the only one helping us to tackle the group. Tell Bangladesh to co-operate and I am happy to say bye-bye to Myanmar, he said.
In the cable accounts, the US seems dubious about explanations provided by Indian officials, and, most likely referring to its own intelligence gathering, said that numerous sources continued to report ongoing sales of military equipment.
Siemon Wezeman is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which produces a highly-regarded annual survey of global arms deals. He said, in Oct. 2006, 75mm guns had already been delivered and 105mm guns were being delivered, while also T-55 tanks, armored vehicles, mortars, helicopters were being delivered or were to be delivered.
Howeveras is often the case with arms deals in general and commercial dealings involving the Burmese regimeprecise details of what was eventually transferred remain elusive. Wezeman told The Irrawaddy: The only delivery we know for sure happened was two BN-2 light transport aircraft (with a possible two more). The SIPRI database estimates that the Burmese army received 10 T-55 tanks, 10 105mm guns and 10 MPV light armored vehicles from India, but SIPRI acknowledges that these details cannot be verified.
SIPRI's latest arms survey, released earlier this week, ranked India as the world's leading arms importerahead of China, which has a growing domestic arms industry. India gets most of its weapons from Russia, and it is thought that these constitute the bulk of the transfers onward to Burma. The US remains the world's largest arms exporter, accounting for 30 percent of the world's sales, followed by Russia and Germany.
The transition to an elected parliament in Burma has been widely criticized by many countries, mostly in the West. However, the election and formation of a new national parliament has been welcomed by the Indian Government, as well as Indian strategic analysts at various military-linked think tanks. A number of these were contacted for their assessment of the India-Burma military relationship, but have none have responded to The Irrawaddy at the time of writing.
The transition, deemed as a mere legitimization of continued army rule in Burma in most quarters, has possibly oiled the wheels of more military transfers from India to Burma, or at least spurred a revival of dormant older arrangements. According to Mr Wezeman: In late 2010 it seems another India-Myanmarese agreement was signed on Indian military equipment as assistance, including rifles, armored vehicles and patrol craft.
Burma's rulers source weaponry from a variety of countries including China, former Soviet states and, most controversially, North Korea.
In context, India's military assistance therefore comes across more like a strategic inducement or goodwill gesture, aimed at currying favor with the Burmese government. That said, there are some in Burma who would prefer that India offer help of a different kind to Burma's people. In a Dec. 7, 2010, interview with the Press Trust of India, Aung San Suu Kyi said, We would like India to play a more active role in trying to help in the process of democratization of Burma and I would like the Indian government to engage more with us who are working more with democracy.
However, India's zeal to invest in Burma memorably extended to deals being struck during Burma's most recent uprising against military rule. On Sept. 24, 2007, the country's Oil Minister signed a deal with the Burmese military government allowing the state-run Overseas Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to collaborate on gas exploration off the Arakan State coast. The agreement was signed right in the middle of monk-led peaceful demonstrations against military rule in Burma, and came just days before the Burmese army attacked and dispersed the protestors, leading to an unknown death toll.
India has long-dismissed Suu Kyi as a viable or relevant player in Burma, dating back to a visit to India by Burma's military dictator Sen-Gen Than Shwe in 2004. According to accounts contained in another leaked US diplomatic cable, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh discussed democratic reform in Burma with Than Shwe in a much more intense way than could be expressed in the media, despite the potential for a negative fallout on the bilateral relationship. The official added that New Delhi had battled for the inclusion of a paragraph in the joint statement that expressed India's support for national reconciliation and an early transition to democracy in Myanmar, and described it as a coup for India.
However, the same official said that the world had conflated democracy in Burma with Suu Kyi, a stance that could backfire, and described the Nobel laureate as someone whose day has come and gone. Perhaps a poor choice of words, given that in 2003 Suu Kyi narrowly survived an attack by a mob on her convoy at Depayin in Burma, which left scores of her supporters dead. The incident is widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Burmese military rulers.
Overall, the Americans seem dubious about India's account of the bilateral relationship with Burma, with one cable remarking that hesitance to be forthcoming on Burma is consistent with the GOI [Government of India] approach to discussing Burma.
However, the US credits India with playing a role in persuading Burma's rulers to allow international emergency relief aid to enter the country after the May, 2008, Cyclone Nargis disaster, which left an estimated 147,000 dead in the Irrawaddy Delta. In the days following the disaster, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke to junta counterpart Nyan Win, and said that India was willing to transport aid from the international community to Burma, if this would be more acceptable than direct assistance from Western governments. Nyan Win replied that Burma was, by that stage, allowing countries to give aid directly, and that any country was welcome to provide disaster relief. However, the Burmese foreign minister added that the junta was not willing to allow foreigners into the country to distribute aid.
How far the US is willing to push India on Burma issues is unclear, but seems likely to be constrained by the same China factor that drives New Delhi's relationship with the Burmese government. The US has made India a nuclear partner and sees India as a regional counterweight to a rising China, which recently announced a 12.7 percent hike in military spending.
India, for its part, can point to the US-Pakistan relationship, with Washington now providing around US $1.5 billion per annum in civilian and military aid to a country that India sees as complicit in numerous recent terrorist attacks on Indian soil and on Indian representatives in Afghanistan.
China too has growing interests in Pakistan, refurbishing the port of Gwadar as part of a so-called string of pearls strategy encompassing Burma and Sri Lanka. This is aimed at projecting its naval and commercial strength into the Indian Ocean, greatly alarming New Delhi and hardly going unnoticed in the US.
In a cable leaked in December, a US official wrote that India could act as a pull factor drawing Burma away from China's growing regional sphere of influence, after being told by an Indian official that the junta hates China and welcomes India's engagement as an alternative. In visiting India from July 25-29, 2010before his official trip to ChinaThan Shwe hinted to China that he has an India option, should Beijing's influence become overbearing to Burma's rulers.
Wikileaks Cables Reveal Burma Arms Deals
While Burma is the region's mine for oil, gas, gemstones and hydropower rather than rice and teak, these modern concerns are enough to encourage Asian governments to neglect their greater responsibilities by dealing with the repressive regime.
Eager to acquire some of these resources to bolster its growing economy, India is consciously anxious about the influence wielded by China in Burma, according to newly-released US diplomatic cables on Wikileaks. The country routinely described as the world's largest democracy seems to be copying the world's second largest economy with military and strategic inducements of its own. China recently overtook Thailand to become the largest investor in Burma and, although exact numbers are not available, China's investment in and military sales to Burma seem to far outweigh India's.
Nonetheless, US embassy staff are described in some of the leaked cables as questioning Indian officials about arms sales to Burma. In one document, dated May 30, 2007, and released on Tuesday, the Director of Indias Ministry of External Affairs claimed that military assistance to the junta was of the non-lethal variety. He added that bilateral military relations revolved around attacking a variety of Indian insurgent groups who have long been using remote ethnic minority regions of Burma as a retreat.
According to another cable, dated Feb. 20, 2007, one of India's main officials working on the Burma portfolio told the Americans that Burma's junta was needed to help quell the insurgencies, partly due to apparent willful indifference on the part of Bangladesh, whose geographic location makes it pivotal to India's counterinsurgency planning. The ULFA [United Liberation Front for Assam] guys hiding in Burma are screwing the hell out of us, the official said, adding that Burma is the only one helping us to tackle the group. Tell Bangladesh to co-operate and I am happy to say bye-bye to Myanmar, he said.
In the cable accounts, the US seems dubious about explanations provided by Indian officials, and, most likely referring to its own intelligence gathering, said that numerous sources continued to report ongoing sales of military equipment.
Siemon Wezeman is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which produces a highly-regarded annual survey of global arms deals. He said, in Oct. 2006, 75mm guns had already been delivered and 105mm guns were being delivered, while also T-55 tanks, armored vehicles, mortars, helicopters were being delivered or were to be delivered.
Howeveras is often the case with arms deals in general and commercial dealings involving the Burmese regimeprecise details of what was eventually transferred remain elusive. Wezeman told The Irrawaddy: The only delivery we know for sure happened was two BN-2 light transport aircraft (with a possible two more). The SIPRI database estimates that the Burmese army received 10 T-55 tanks, 10 105mm guns and 10 MPV light armored vehicles from India, but SIPRI acknowledges that these details cannot be verified.
SIPRI's latest arms survey, released earlier this week, ranked India as the world's leading arms importerahead of China, which has a growing domestic arms industry. India gets most of its weapons from Russia, and it is thought that these constitute the bulk of the transfers onward to Burma. The US remains the world's largest arms exporter, accounting for 30 percent of the world's sales, followed by Russia and Germany.
The transition to an elected parliament in Burma has been widely criticized by many countries, mostly in the West. However, the election and formation of a new national parliament has been welcomed by the Indian Government, as well as Indian strategic analysts at various military-linked think tanks. A number of these were contacted for their assessment of the India-Burma military relationship, but have none have responded to The Irrawaddy at the time of writing.
The transition, deemed as a mere legitimization of continued army rule in Burma in most quarters, has possibly oiled the wheels of more military transfers from India to Burma, or at least spurred a revival of dormant older arrangements. According to Mr Wezeman: In late 2010 it seems another India-Myanmarese agreement was signed on Indian military equipment as assistance, including rifles, armored vehicles and patrol craft.
Burma's rulers source weaponry from a variety of countries including China, former Soviet states and, most controversially, North Korea.
In context, India's military assistance therefore comes across more like a strategic inducement or goodwill gesture, aimed at currying favor with the Burmese government. That said, there are some in Burma who would prefer that India offer help of a different kind to Burma's people. In a Dec. 7, 2010, interview with the Press Trust of India, Aung San Suu Kyi said, We would like India to play a more active role in trying to help in the process of democratization of Burma and I would like the Indian government to engage more with us who are working more with democracy.
However, India's zeal to invest in Burma memorably extended to deals being struck during Burma's most recent uprising against military rule. On Sept. 24, 2007, the country's Oil Minister signed a deal with the Burmese military government allowing the state-run Overseas Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to collaborate on gas exploration off the Arakan State coast. The agreement was signed right in the middle of monk-led peaceful demonstrations against military rule in Burma, and came just days before the Burmese army attacked and dispersed the protestors, leading to an unknown death toll.
India has long-dismissed Suu Kyi as a viable or relevant player in Burma, dating back to a visit to India by Burma's military dictator Sen-Gen Than Shwe in 2004. According to accounts contained in another leaked US diplomatic cable, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh discussed democratic reform in Burma with Than Shwe in a much more intense way than could be expressed in the media, despite the potential for a negative fallout on the bilateral relationship. The official added that New Delhi had battled for the inclusion of a paragraph in the joint statement that expressed India's support for national reconciliation and an early transition to democracy in Myanmar, and described it as a coup for India.
However, the same official said that the world had conflated democracy in Burma with Suu Kyi, a stance that could backfire, and described the Nobel laureate as someone whose day has come and gone. Perhaps a poor choice of words, given that in 2003 Suu Kyi narrowly survived an attack by a mob on her convoy at Depayin in Burma, which left scores of her supporters dead. The incident is widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Burmese military rulers.
Overall, the Americans seem dubious about India's account of the bilateral relationship with Burma, with one cable remarking that hesitance to be forthcoming on Burma is consistent with the GOI [Government of India] approach to discussing Burma.
However, the US credits India with playing a role in persuading Burma's rulers to allow international emergency relief aid to enter the country after the May, 2008, Cyclone Nargis disaster, which left an estimated 147,000 dead in the Irrawaddy Delta. In the days following the disaster, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke to junta counterpart Nyan Win, and said that India was willing to transport aid from the international community to Burma, if this would be more acceptable than direct assistance from Western governments. Nyan Win replied that Burma was, by that stage, allowing countries to give aid directly, and that any country was welcome to provide disaster relief. However, the Burmese foreign minister added that the junta was not willing to allow foreigners into the country to distribute aid.
How far the US is willing to push India on Burma issues is unclear, but seems likely to be constrained by the same China factor that drives New Delhi's relationship with the Burmese government. The US has made India a nuclear partner and sees India as a regional counterweight to a rising China, which recently announced a 12.7 percent hike in military spending.
India, for its part, can point to the US-Pakistan relationship, with Washington now providing around US $1.5 billion per annum in civilian and military aid to a country that India sees as complicit in numerous recent terrorist attacks on Indian soil and on Indian representatives in Afghanistan.
China too has growing interests in Pakistan, refurbishing the port of Gwadar as part of a so-called string of pearls strategy encompassing Burma and Sri Lanka. This is aimed at projecting its naval and commercial strength into the Indian Ocean, greatly alarming New Delhi and hardly going unnoticed in the US.
In a cable leaked in December, a US official wrote that India could act as a pull factor drawing Burma away from China's growing regional sphere of influence, after being told by an Indian official that the junta hates China and welcomes India's engagement as an alternative. In visiting India from July 25-29, 2010before his official trip to ChinaThan Shwe hinted to China that he has an India option, should Beijing's influence become overbearing to Burma's rulers.
Wikileaks Cables Reveal Burma Arms Deals
