Friday, August 4, 2017

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

Violence Follows Confrontation Between Villagers, Police in Rakhine

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 08:37 AM PDT

YANGON – Hundreds of people from Outt Nan village in Rakhine State's Rathedaung Township resisted security forces on Friday when policemen attempted to arrest men suspected of being militants, according to the State Counselor's Office and locals from the neighboring village of Zay Di Pyin.

According to U Maung Soe Win, an elder within the largely Buddhist Arakanese Zay Di Pyin village, four suspects were apprehended from Outt Nan while two managed to escape after hundreds of villagers surrounded a dozen policemen and fought back against the armed security forces with machetes, slingshots, and darts.

"Villagers witnessed a huge crowd chasing policemen into a large field," said another Zay Di Pyin resident U Maung Khin Win.

According to U Maung Khin Win, villagers from a third community, Chwat Pyin, reported the discovery of militant training camps in the Mayu mountain range of northern Rakhine State as they searched for a missing local in July. They then informed the border police, who, following an investigation, arrested a man named Anatulah from Ahtet Nan village on July 27 for allegedly attending a training in the camp months earlier, according to the State Counselor's Office Information Committee.

One of the darts allegedly used against police. (Photo: State Counsellor Office Information Committee / Facebook)

While detained, Anatulah reportedly revealed the names of other trainees, as well as camp leaders. This information led to a border police raid by Maj Okka Aung and 25 troops in the Muslim village of Outt Nan on Friday morning.

A statement by the State Counselor's Office said that police initially arrested six suspects but that nearly 300 villagers surrounded the policemen, who then fired 15 warning shots, but the crowd did not disperse. The statement said that the crowd then "attacked" police, leading to the escape of two suspects.

Villagers from Zay Di Pyin said that a local imam was among the escapees, but at the time of reporting, this could not be verified.

The government statement said that the police were followed by Outt Nan villagers until they left the area, and in total, shot around 50 rounds. It did not mention any injuries or casualties. However, both Buddhist and Muslim residents of Zay Di Pyin told The Irrawaddy over the phone on Friday that, from the scene that was witnessed, they believed some Outt Nan residents endured gunshot wounds which may have been fatal. The Irrawaddy could not independently verify these claims with the border police at the time of reporting.

Representatives from Rathedaung police station declined to comment on Friday's conflict, but authorities have reportedly been deployed to the area surrounding Outt Nan and Zay Di Pyin to search for the suspects.

The post Violence Follows Confrontation Between Villagers, Police in Rakhine appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

‘You Need to Show the Numbers’

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 07:53 AM PDT

As a young boy, Ko Yan Naung Oak wanted to be a scientist—he was interested in technology and his favorite subject was physics. He spent his childhood in Singapore and majored in economics in the US. "I was never able to choose one thing that I wanted to do," he said.

Now the 30-year-old is a senior adviser at Phandeeyar, an information technology innovation hub in downtown Yangon. His work mainly involves assisting civil society organizations, journalists, entrepreneurs and others to do their work better by using technology. He was among the first to introduce data journalism to Myanmar journalists covering the 2015 general election and continues to train local media representatives.

"What I am currently doing is kind of the combination of my interest in technology with my interest in different things combined together," he told The Irrawaddy recently.

Ko Yan Naung Oak said someone working at a think tank or in academia can do all the research in the world but they cannot bring that to the people's attention in the same way journalists can. "I think the ability of journalists is to tell a story that really resonates with people and also gives a bigger picture with the data. It is very important for a country like Myanmar," said he during a recent conversation with The Irrawaddy's Tin Htet Paing.

What is data journalism?

Data journalism has two sides. One is using data to find a story that is worth telling, so using data as a source to strengthen your story and to start looking for interesting things within the data that you can tell to your audience. The other side is presenting a story using data. So, that would be having nice graphics, visualization, maps and interactive elements—data as a source and data as visual casing for a story.

I think to simplify it even further, it would involve including quantitative elements in traditional storytelling. It's all about telling a story people relate to. Even if you put in a lot of quantitative analysis, you still have to bring it down to a level where people don't just look at it and think 'this is just a bunch of numbers.' Instead, it expands on something that they can already relate to. You can give an example about an individual person and their story, but putting that in a context of the larger number can give the bigger picture. For example, the individual person you are following in your story may be the tip of the iceberg, but to show everything hidden under the water, you need to show the numbers.

What do you think of the data literacy of Myanmar journalists?

People who became journalists did so because they are interested in reading books and writing, not working with spreadsheets and numbers, so there's that kind of foundation that you are working with. But at the same time, I think in Myanmar, in the past especially, people have learned to not trust official statistics and to not believe any official numbers that come out. That, I think, adds to the feeling that [people have]: this phobia of numbers. If something is in numbers, it's completely meaningless and anyone could have made that up. So you don't have trust in the numbers. You don't feel like you should invest any effort trying to understand what the numbers are all about.

Data journalism trainer Yan Naung Oak. (Photo: Thet Tun Naing / The Irrawaddy)

 Myanmar has very little data online. How can journalists gather data?

One, the government data landscape is changing. There are individual departments that are forthcoming with sharing data. For example, if you go to the YCDC [Yangon City Development Committee] website, there's a lot more data than most other government departments. If you go to the DICA [Directorate of Investment and Company Administration] website, you can get a lot of data on company registrations, and that database is definitely more complete than even our neighboring countries. But apart from government sources, there are also a lot of other organizations that are either producing data, doing country-wide surveys or collecting and taking datasets from global databases and just curating it for Myanmar. The organization that I work for, Open Development Myanmar, which is part of Phandeeyar, is one those organizations that takes data from various sources and puts it online in easily accessible forms.

The Myanmar Information Management Unit [MIMU] is another one. Several others, such as the Open Myanmar Initiative, work with data from Parliament. There's the Enlightened Myanmar Research Foundation which also works with political data. So there are a lot of different sources for data.

But also, I was talking about places: data coming from places that you don't expect. For example, private sector sources. You want to work on a story about housing in Yangon. There are so many websites now that are designed as places where people can post housing classified advertisements. Journalists working together with someone who knows technological tools to scrape data and get data from websites like that have a treasure trove of data that they can work with to dig into a lot of different stories. I see my role as being the bridge between people who have the skills and journalists to find that data and also being the bridge between civil society groups who have a lot of things that they are passionate about—they might have data that they have collected but not in a usable format, like written down in a book—and make that data accessible for journalists to be able to use it.

What about the "dataphobic" readers? Are they ready to be convinced by stories told through data?

That's a harder question for sure. I will use an example friends have told me about trying data journalism in other countries. I think this is a story about healthcare in Kenya. Journalists wanted to tell a data-driven story about how there is a problem throughout the country in the healthcare system. They used one person's story to show this problem in a way that people could follow and they specifically said the problem is not just this one person. But what ended up happening is that the story went viral and people really related to it and then they started sending donations to that one guy when the journalists specifically said this was just one example of a big problem and what you need to do is to change the system. But people still relate to the most to personal stories, and that happens all over the world I think.

There are a lot of problems with just using data to convey something to an audience that is not used to thinking with data, and there is a lot of inherent bias that people have. If you see something that is connotatively stated that confirms your bias and you are more likely to trust it. If you see something that someone said, proved with data but goes against what you believe in, you are likely to disregard it. You see that everywhere as well. And I think in Myanmar, that's going to be even more pronounced. I think one of the jobs or tasks that journalists have to deal with is making the data relatable but not simplifying it so much that people lose the point of it.

Can data be easily manipulated to mislead?

There are so many ways to mislead and misguide people. You can definitely see it in newsrooms that have inherent bias and agendas that they want to push. When people see numbers, like we said before, if they don't trust the source, no matter how good the numbers are, they will disregard it. But if someone who they already trust gives them something in kind of a neat and well-presented way with numbers, they will believe it even more just because the numbers are there. That just causes people's beliefs to be more polarized, I think.

What are the challenges you face training journalists?

One of the main difficulties is that a lot of newsrooms in Myanmar are tightly staffed. So journalists really don't have a lot of time to devote to learning. Even a five-day workshop is really a challenge. I understand that they are having to deal with a really big workload, but at the same time, I think it would be great if we have buy-in from the editors and the business side of things and also the journalists themselves that it will be a good thing to devote some time to really learn how to do these sorts of things. I think there's a lot of work to be done in order to get that buy-in. What I am hoping for is some journalists will see the value that they can add, not just to their professional skills but also to their newspapers as a business and something that creates an impact on the country.

The post ‘You Need to Show the Numbers' appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Gem Traders Blame Smuggling on Tax Rate

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 06:46 AM PDT

NAYPYITAW — The government is losing a large sum on gems and jewelry sales as gems traders smuggle them into China because of a steep trade tax, said U Myint Han, vice chairman of Myanmar Gems and Jewelry Entrepreneurs Association.

"[Gems and jewelry] merchants are smuggling not because they don't want to pay tax, but because they can't afford to pay," said the vice-chairman at a press conference on the first Myanmar Gems and Jewelry Day in Naypyitaw on Thursday.

The tax in question—the Special Commodities Tax Law—was introduced in 2016 for the sales of natural commodities such as teak, hardwood, log, processed wood, jade and gems, as well as fuel, alcohol, beer, and cigarettes.

In 2015, the commercial tax rate was set at 15 percent for raw gemstones such as jade, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds for foreign trading, but increased to 20 percent under the Special Commodities Tax Law, plus a 5 percent trading tax, and 3 percent service charge by Myanmar Gems Enterprise, meaning the total tax was 28 percent of the price of sold items.

However, it has since been lowered to an overall 18 percent after traders' protested.

"This tax rate is inconvenient for merchants. And it is also a loss for the country. In China, you can sell as much as you like for just 2 percent [tax]," said the vice-chairman.

Gems and jewelry sales at the jade and gems emporiums have fallen as a result, he said. The 51st emporium in 2014 garnered US$2.4 billion in sales, when the commercial tax was set at 10 percent.

The following year, in the 52nd emporium, sales dropped to $500 million after the tax was increased, and dropped again to $380 million at the 53rd emporium last year.

"I'm sure gems and jewelry can be had for good prices only at the emporium, but not in the outside market. They get the best prices at emporium compared to other places including China," said U Min Thu, deputy director-general of Resources and Environmental Conservation Ministry.

The tax on gems and jewelry sales has been reduced from 20 percent to 15 percent and the trading tax has been spiked recently following a request from merchants earlier this year, but the service charge remains unchanged. The total tax is now 18 percent, but smuggling persists, gems and jewelry merchants said.

"Some still smuggle even though the tax has been reduced, but not big stones, just small ones. Smuggling has existed for a long time in successive periods, but there is more smuggling now," a gems merchant told The Irrawaddy on the condition of anonymity.

Under the previous governments, gems and jewelry merchants had to show they had paid taxes once a year, but under the new government they must get tax clearances monthly, with harsh penalties for those who fail to do so.

Parliament is working to amend the Myanmar Gemstone Law for the third time, and jewelry merchants at the conference hoped that these amendments would help streamline tax procedures.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

The post Gem Traders Blame Smuggling on Tax Rate appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Voice Editor Released on Bail

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 03:07 AM PDT

YANGON — After being detained for two months, The Voice Daily chief editor U Kyaw Min Swe was granted bail by Bahan Township Court in Yangon for 22 million kyats (US$15,400) on Friday.

The chief editor was arrested on June 2 along with the publication's satirist Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing, also known by his pen name British Ko Ko Maung, for publishing an article which questioned Myanmar's peace process and armed struggle.

The Myanmar Army filed a lawsuit against the pair, who were charged under controversial Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law and then Article 25(b) of the Media Law for allegedly defaming the military in the satirical article. Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing was later released and acquitted of violating Article 66(d) on June 16.

The court accepted the bail request for the chief editor at the court hearing on Friday, with 20 million kyat for the Article 66(d) charge and 2 million kyats for the Media Law charge.

"I have done nothing wrong," U Kyaw Min Swe told reporters at a press conference held right after his release.

He said journalists—including three detained reporters in Hsipaw Prison, Shan State, who were charged under the colonial era Unlawful Association Act—should only be prosecuted under the Media Law if complaints are made against them, as they are just doing their jobs.

"The media law is not yet effective because even the authorities have not followed the law and just use laws which can put the journalists behind bars right away, as soon as the case is filed. It is unfitting for the democratic transition," said U Kyaw Min Swe.

"The judge has a fear when it comes to cases which involve the military, whether the army interrupts the case or not. They would take the side [of the army]—the safe side—which has less risk for them. I don't want to blame them," he added.

The post Voice Editor Released on Bail appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Detained Journalists Denied Bail

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 02:47 AM PDT

HSIPAW TOWNSHIP, Shan State — The Hsipaw Township Court judge rejected an appeal for bail from six men, including three journalists, charged under the Unlawful Associations Act on Friday morning, saying he did not yet know enough details of the case to make a judgment.

"The judge said he needs more time to understand the whole case as only one witness for the prosecution has so far been questioned, by their own lawyer," said Daw Khin Mi Mi, lawyer for defendant Irrawaddy reporter Lawi Weng.

Judge U Kyaw Thu Moe also cited the fact that the six defendants were not residents of Hsipaw as a reason behind the decision, saying it could cause delay to court proceedings, she added.

The defendants' lawyers plan to apply for bail again after a few court hearings.

Local army official Capt. Thet Naing Oo—a witness for the prosecution—was questioned by defense lawyers in court on Friday.

The three journalists—Irrawaddy reporter Lawi Wang (U Thein Zaw) and Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reporters U Aye Naing and Ko Pyae Phone Aung—appeared in good health and spirits as they arrived at their second hearing of the trial.

"The government always said they wanted to bring about change, why do they still use this outdated law?" Lawi Weng questioned as he arrived at court. "We rarely see attempts by the National League or Democracy-led government to amend or abolish this outdated law."

"The law suit against us is a law suit against every journalist—our experience shows we still have no freedom to report," said Ko Pyae Phone Aung, DVB reporter.

"Since other journalists facing trial were released on bail, we also want bail," said U Aye Naing, senior reporter of DVB, adding that their lawyers will handle the applications.

The reporters were arrested on June 26 in Namhsan on their way back from covering a drug-burning ceremony held by ethnic armed group the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) to mark the United Nations' International Day Against Drug Abuse.

The six men – three journalists, two drivers and a local man – were travelling in two vehicles near Phayagyi Village, and were arrested on the road between Namhsan and Lashio townships, on suspicion of connection with ethnic armed group the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which operates in the area.

The journalists and a local man were charged under Article 17(1) of the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act for contacting the TNLA, while the drivers received additional charges for the two unlicensed vehicles. They were placed in detention in Hsipaw Prison.

The post Detained Journalists Denied Bail appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Religion Ministry Hits Out at Protesting Monks

Posted: 04 Aug 2017 12:21 AM PDT

YANGON — Monks staging sit-in protests in Yangon and Mandalay against the National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government do not represent the majority of Buddhist monkhood in Myanmar, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture said in a statement released Thursday.

Nationalist monks and laypeople staging a protest since Wednesday near the eastern gate of Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon and near Maha Myat Muni Buddha Image in Mandalay's Chanmyathazi Township have been "taken advantage of by those who don't want stability and tranquility," suggested the ministry's statement.

Protesters have been shouting slogans such as "we don't want a government which downgrades race and [Buddhist] religion" and "we don't want a government which favors those who are not good at management."

There were banners stating "our cause is to overthrow the government which undermines Buddhism."

The Yangon and Mandalay Sangha Nayaka committees attempted to dissuade people from demonstrating, but protestors had refused to leave by Friday morning.

The Mandalay Region Sangha Authority sent a letter to nationalist protestors in Mandalay on Thursday evening, warning the protestors to end the protest as they were against the law.

It was strongly denounced by the organizing committee on the same day, which said protestors would respond to any attempts to forcibly suppress the protest camp.

The ministry's statement, quoting Buddhist scriptures, said that Buddhist monks could stage a protest only by refusing to accept the offerings and meals provided by laypeople and only inside their monastery compounds and only under eight circumstances.

The protests staged in Yangon and Mandalay did not conform, according to the statement.

Maj-Gen Aung Soe, deputy minister of the home affairs ministry, told reporters outside parliament on Friday that if the religion ministry files a complaint with authorities, there are laws and regulations in place to take action against the protestors.

The post Religion Ministry Hits Out at Protesting Monks appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Thailand Floods Kill 23, Cause $300M Damage

Posted: 03 Aug 2017 11:10 PM PDT

Bangkok, THAILAND — Floods have killed at least 23 people in Thailand's northeastern farming region, the interior ministry said on Thursday, causing damage estimated at US$300 million.

The Southeast Asian nation is the world's second-biggest exporter of rice, some grown in its northeast. It is in the middle of the annual rainy season and floods, which began on July 5, have been unusually heavy, authorities said.

Ten of Thailand's 77 provinces are disaster zones, the Interior Ministry said, adding that most of the 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) affected were rice-growing farmland.

“Losses from the floods are estimated at at least 10 billion baht,” or the equivalent of $300 million, Jirapan Assawathanakul, chief of the Thai General Insurance Association, told reporters.

The floods had not affected rice exports but it was too early to assess damage as the crop can survive short-term inundation, Chookiat Ophaswongse, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, has said.

In 2011, widespread floods killed more than 900 people and caused major industrial disruption, cutting economic growth to just 0.1 percent.

When Thailand's ruling junta took power in 2014, it proposed a 10-year water management plan to avoid a repeat of the 2011 floods, but it is still under review.

The post Thailand Floods Kill 23, Cause $300M Damage appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

China in Talks to Sell Electricity to Myanmar

Posted: 03 Aug 2017 09:32 PM PDT

YANGON—Energy-hungry Myanmar is in initial talks to buy electricity from China, according to officials and documents reviewed by Reuters, in the latest sign of warming ties with Beijing under leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Since taking office in April last year, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has sought to repair relations that were strained when a previous semi-civilian government in 2011 blocked a China-backed dam, which was supposed to send most of its electricity to China's Yunnan province.

China's appetite for the hydro project has waned in recent years, as a switch towards less energy-intensive industries amid an economic slowdown has left Yunnan province with a surplus of power.

Instead, Beijing has turned its attention to other projects that fit with its "Belt and Road" initiative, which aims to stimulate trade by investment in infrastructure throughout Asia and beyond.

Three Chinese state-owned companies have proposed separate plans to plug Myanmar's national power grid into Yunnan's electricity network, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and two people familiar with the talks.

Rural Yunnan, which generates around 85 percent of its electricity from hydropower, already sends surplus power to more developed eastern China, as well as Vietnam and Laos.

While China has been supplying power on a small scale to some remote Myanmar towns near their shared border, the talks are the first to discuss connecting the national grids of the two countries to meet Myanmar's urgent demand for electricity.

Blackouts

With only a third of Myanmar's population connected to the grid and major cities experiencing blackouts, buying electricity from Yunnan could be a short-term solution to boost its power supply, the two people familiar with the talks said.

"China welcomes the plan, but Myanmar is still reviewing the details," said one of the people, a senior Myanmar energy official. The "government-to-government talks" were still at an early stage, the official added, with details such as price and timing still to be worked out.

"It's one of the many options we are considering," the official said.

Htain Lwin, spokesman of Myanmar's ministry of electricity and energy, confirmed initial talks had taken place but declined to comment further.

Myanmar has been exploring a range of plans to solve its acute energy shortage, from building coal-powered generators to tapping its reserves of deep sea gas. Some international investors and analysts have criticized a lack of clarity in the country's energy policy.

"Myanmar needs electricity, and if China offers a compelling plan to provide more power, then it ought to be considered," said Jeremy Mullins, research director at Yangon-based consulting firm Myanmar Energy Monitor.

Memorandum of Understanding

One proposal is from state-owned China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Company Ltd, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Myanmar in March last year to build a high-voltage transmission line running for several hundred miles from the border town of Muse, in northeastern Myanmar, to Meiktila in the center of the country, the documents show.

The agreement was extended for six months in May this year and a feasibility study for the 500 kilovolt (thousand volts) transmission line is under way.

State-run China Southern Power Grid Company Ltd (CSG) proposed a similar plan in June to carry power from Yunnan via a high-voltage cable, according to the documents.

A third plan, proposed by CSG's subsidiary Yunnan International Company Ltd, would use an existing cable to carry power to Meiktila from Yunnan via Muse, according to the documents and the official familiar with the talks.

The World Bank's Yangon-based energy specialist, Myoe Myint, said such a project could take up to five years to complete, a quicker solution in comparison with hydropower in Myanmar, where it would take far longer to build and bring online a single dam.

He said rough terrain and instability along the border with China, however, could bring challenges to the power trade. Some 20,000 people in March fled Myanmar's northeast after fighting between the government and ethnic armed groups.

CSG and its subsidiary Yunnan International declined to comment. China Electric Power Equipment and Technology did not respond to requests for comment.

"Stupid Idea"

While the plan would be welcomed by many in Myanmar, where power consumption is among the lowest in the world, it could stoke concerns about China's growing economic clout.

Many officials in the Southeast Asian country have been wary of domination by its giant neighbor.

Beijing has been pushing for access to a strategically important port in Myanmar, and in April signed an agreement to pump oil through a pipeline from its western coast to landlocked Yunnan.

"What if China cut off the power trade after our grids are connected? We need to also consider the political situation and stability of the two countries," said the first Myanmar official.

Some argue that buying electricity from China would mean an outflow of dollars from a country with little reserves of hard currency.

"Myanmar has abundant hydropower resources for power generation," said a third senior Myanmar energy official, who is familiar with the plans but not directly involved in talks. "It's a stupid idea to buy it from China."

The post China in Talks to Sell Electricity to Myanmar appeared first on The Irrawaddy.

Will the Myanmar Army Wipe Out Ethnic Armed Groups?

Posted: 03 Aug 2017 07:28 PM PDT

The Myanmar Army has shown—evermore visibly and publicly—that it is strengthening its forces. Recently, Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing toured Japan, India, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and Europe—in many cases he was chasing arms deals.  It is clear that the Myanmar Army is seeking to replace its current outdated arsenal with modernized weaponry to beef up its military capability.

Several questions come from the recent moves of the Commander-in-Chief: What motivates the Myanmar Army to modernize its military capability when it's clearly time for reconciliation in Myanmar to end the country's decades-long civil war? Is the Tatmadaw seeking to wipe out ethnic armed organizations (EAOs)? If so, who will support the military? If not, what is their policy toward EAOs?

Only the commander-in-chief himself can answer these questions; we are forced observe the military's moves, and speculate.

The Tatmadaw's Strategies

Based on observations, one possible goal of the Myanmar Army is to wipe out all EAOs. The victory of the Sri Lankan army over the Tamil Tigers provided inspiration to the Myanmar Army—a prominent retired general "Bullet" Hla Swe highlighted the armed group's surrender when he was interviewed by the BBC in 2013.

If the Myanmar Army is to eliminate the EAOs, it will squeeze the different groups, one-by-one, step-by-step. The Myanmar Army has been implementing its infamous "Four Cuts" strategy (Phet Lay Phet in Burmese) by cutting off food, finance, recruits and information to weaken the EAOs.

The Tatmadaw have been targeting natural resources that support EAOs. The government military has launched serious offensives against areas where lucrative natural resources such as gold, amber, jade, and teak are extracted. The Tatmadaw's recent operations against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Tanai Township, Kachin State—in amber and gold mining areas—is a classic example of the military's "Four Cuts" strategy.

The Myanmar Army has been using Article 17(1) of the Unlawful Associations Act as a tool for weakening EAOs. The Army has charged many civilians, particularly ethnic minorities on suspicion of affiliating with EAOs. In doing so, communication between EAOs and the public has been hampered, weakening the organizations.

Less subtly, the Myanmar Army has launched large military offensives with combined ground forces, artillery fire, and airstrikes against EAOs. In the last five years, the KIA has lost most of their strategic outposts from these fierce attacks—Hka Ya Bum, a strategic peak just five miles from KIA headquarters in Laiza, Bum Tawng, Hpun-pyen Bum, Gideon, Lai Hpawng, and the No. 6 battalion in Hpakant and No. 8 Brigade in Indawgyi have both been displaced. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in the Kokang region has also lost a number of strategic outposts recently.

Looking East

The Myanmar Army realizes, however, that it could not fulfill a goal of wiping out EAOs without external support, particularly from China. The Myanmar Army increasingly ties itself with China—perhaps with this end in mind—particularly where groups straddle the Myanmar-China border.

China practices two notable policies towards Myanmar. The first policy is to protect the Myanmar Army from international punishment. China diplomatically shields the Myanmar Army from any scrutiny and punishment meted out at the UN Security Council (UNSC). On March 17, 2017, for instance, China and Russia blocked a short UNSC statement expressing concern with the situation of human rights in Myanmar after a 15-member body met to discuss the situation in Rakhine State. China also vetoed a UN draft resolution on Myanmar in January 2007.

The second policy is to drive out from China any potential supporters of EAOs. The central government in Beijing, following President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, has pressured officials in the southern province of Yunnan suspected to be involved with ethnic armed groups in businesses such as mining, logging, and other joint venture—often through intricate business ties.

According to Tengxun News, Beijing arrested and investigated eight senior officials—former Communist Party deputy secretary Qiu He, Kunming executive deputy mayor Li Xi, former Yunnan vice governor Shen Peiping, former Communist Party provincial secretaries Qin Guangrong and Bai Enpei, former Communist Party secretaries of Kunming city Gao Jinsong and Zhang Tianxin, and Kunming deputy mayor Xie Xinsong in Yunnan Province within the three years between 2013 and 2016. Beijing suspected that these people were affiliated with some EAOs such as the KIA, the MNDAA, and the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

In March 2017, a state-owned Chinese bank—the Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank)—suspended accounts being used to crowdfund the MNDAA. On June 15, 2017, Chinese authorities froze over 5,000 accounts in border areas in what they called a crackdown on money laundering, gambling, and crime, in an attempt to increase border trade stability.

The Myanmar Army does not want EAOs doing business with people in China because it fears that income from illicit trades will be laundered. Perhaps as a quid pro quo, the Myanmar Army allows China to pour huge investments into Myanmar in a number of different sectors. China is hungry for resources to implement its "One Belt, One Road" initiative. Thus, China is investing billions of dollars into an oil and gas pipeline starting from Kyaukphyu on the Bay of Bengal in Rakhine State as well as building hydropower facilities in Mong Ton in Shan State and the Myitsone Dam in Kachin State (which is currently suspended), and many more.

Looking West

The Myanmar Army, however, recently shifted towards India. Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing made an eight-day visit to India in July 2017 and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of Defense Arun Jaitley and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval

According to the Indian Military News, the Tatmadaw made a major deal with India in March 2017 to buy torpedoes for their Navy—a deal worth US$37.9 million. It is not the first such deal between the two countries—the Tatmadaw has received rocket launchers, mortars, radars, night-vision devices, bridges, and communication devices, as well as road construction equipment like bulldozers, tippertrucks, and soil compactors.

India is keen to supply Myanmar's naval revamp, previously dominated by China. India has largely disregarded China's expanding footprint in Myanmar—the only Asean country with whom it shares land and maritime boundaries. India wants further diplomatic, economic and military cooperation with Myanmar.

Close ties between the two nations may have several benefits, but the major reason for close cooperation for the Myanmar Army is as a bargaining chip. The Tatmadaw wants China to know that if the country supports EAOs on its borders, Myanmar can veer toward India for military sourcing and lucrative investment projects.

Undeniably, the Myanmar Army could probably wipe out some EAOs that lack the military capability to defend themselves, but it would fair less well with larger groups. Unlike Sri Lanka, Myanmar hosts several strong EAOs, particularly the UWSA, which boasts estimate troop numbers of 30,000. It would be a false presumption that the Myanmar Army could continue to wipe out all EAOs.

The Myanmar Army would do best to negotiate and settle an agreement with non-state armed groups to bring peace to the country. Further pushing, taunting, and bullying of EAOs will only disrupt the country's bid for peace and increase deaths. No citizen wants casualties to continue.

Joe Kumbun is the pseudonym of a Kachin State-based analyst.

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