Opinion The junta in Myanmar is not the partner India needs
The actors that can deliver results on border security, counter-narcotics, and infrastructure protection increasingly sit within the resistance
India shares a 1,643-km border with Myanmar across four northeastern states, and it must be pragmatic. But legitimising the military junta is self-harm. By Ro Ding
New Delhi received General Min Aung Hlaing with the honours of a head of state. He came to New Delhi seeking legitimacy, and he left having made progress while giving almost nothing in return. The two sides signed no agreement of substance. He repeated the assurance that Myanmar’s territory would not be permitted to be used against India’s security interests. That is a promise the junta has already broken by making common cause with anti-India insurgents to fight the Myanmar people.
Min Aung Hlaing is not Myanmar’s legitimate leader in any sense that would survive scrutiny in India. The polling he organised earlier this year was held in less than half the country. The parties that won the 2020 election in a landslide were barred from contesting, and the leaders who won it, including Aung San Suu Kyi, remain in prison or have been killed by the regime. The military’s party won fewer than 7 per cent of the seats in 2020 and was only able to win 44 per cent of the vote in the recent election that it rigged in its favour. This is why the United Nations lists U Win Myint and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, not Min Aung Hlaing, as Myanmar’s Head of State and Foreign Minister.
Recent efforts by the junta regime to feign reform are hollow. Aung San Suu Kyi was reportedly moved from prison to “house arrest” last month, but the regime has done nothing to assuage concerns from her son that she is even alive. Just four days after the new “civilian” regime took power, it bombed a Buddhist monastery, killing about 80 people, including children and monks. This continues a trend of escalating air strikes on civilians. Min Aung Hlaing’s new “civilian” cabinet is composed of 24 former generals, and the coup leader hand-selected a weak and loyal Commander-in-Chief to replace him, ensuring he will maintain control of the military. These are not signs of reform.
India shares a 1,643-kilometre border with Myanmar across four north-eastern states, and it must be pragmatic. But legitimising the Myanmar military junta is not pragmatism; it is self-harm. The man India feted in New Delhi cannot further India’s interests because his interests are antithetical to India’s.
A government partner is only as useful to India as its ability to deliver, and the junta fails that test in three ways. It holds little public support and governs a small share of the country. Any arrangement reached with it rests on a weak foundation. Its conduct is the source of the problems India most wants solved. And its survival now depends on Beijing, which drives many of the junta’s choices. In New Delhi, the general pledged to do “everything” to finish the long-stalled Kaladan project and the Trilateral Highway. He cannot. As Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri acknowledged, both are frozen in territory the junta does not control.
The mass displacement that burdens India is a central objective of the Myanmar military’s Four Cuts strategy. Criminality, including scam centres, is a predictable by-product of the junta’s conflict management strategy of giving illicit concessions to acquiescent armed groups. And it is the junta, not the resistance, that has made common cause with anti-India insurgent groups, using them to fight Myanmar resistance groups.
It is the pro-democracy resistance forces whose interests overlap with India’s. Other countries have recognised this already. Recent US indictments of criminal scam networks and a major raid on a scam compound targeting Americans came through a partnership with the Karen National Union, not the Myanmar military.
Then there is the consideration that may weigh heaviest in New Delhi. China has shifted from being a hedged supporter of the junta to its active sponsor. A regime kept alive by Chinese funding, weapons and diplomatic cover is not an instrument with which India can balance China. It is the instrument of encirclement. To normalise China’s proxy in Naypyidaw now is to hand Beijing, at no cost, the outcome it has been working toward since the coup. To assume this junta can become a reliable long-term partner is dubious.
The resistance is more unified than it has been at any point since the coup, offering India its most coherent alternative to Naypyidaw. Major resistance forces and the National Unity Government recently established a single political and military body, the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF). The SCEF brings together forces fielding well over a hundred thousand fighters, and controls or contests close to half the country, including numerous international crossings. It is the strongest pro-democracy alliance in Myanmar’s 80 years of war. The SCEF is fast becoming the actor most likely to shape Myanmar’s future, and India’s interests are better served by engaging it now.
The NUG and its allies do not ask India to break relations with Naypyidaw. The distinction India should draw is between formal recognition and functional partnership. The actors able to deliver practical results on border security, counter-narcotics, and infrastructure protection increasingly sit within the resistance.
No policy toward Myanmar can hold over time if it is cut off from the aspirations of the Myanmar people. India has spent decades building goodwill among its neighbours. It should not spend that capital on a regime that the Myanmar people are determined to remove.
How long will India accept a military dictatorship on its eastern border, blocking progress on regional connectivity and Act East? Min Aung Hlaing’s military regime is the primary agent of instability in Myanmar, and India will struggle to further its interests as long as it holds power.
The writer is representative to India of Myanmar’s National Unity Government
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