Myanmar’s military has issued a public call for its opponents to put down their weapons and return to the political fold in order to end the country’s conflict, the first such outreach since its coup d’état.
In a statement yesterday, the military State Administration Council (SAC) called on ethnic armed organizations and “terrorist insurgent groups” to “communicate with us to solve political problems politically.” It also urged them to join the stage-managed election it plans to hold sometime next year.
Due to the ongoing conflict, “the country’s human resources, basic infrastructure and many people’s lives have been lost, and the country’s stability and development have been blocked,” the SAC said in the statement, the AFP news agency reported.
“To work for eternal peace and development hand-in-hand with the people, the ethnic armed groups, terrorists and PDF terrorists who have been opposing the state should leave the armed terrorism route and we invite them to join the party politics and election route,” it added.
While there are serious doubts as to its sincerity, this is the first such call for dialogue that the military has made since its seizure of power in February 2021. Since then, it has deployed ruthless force against the many opponents to its rule, and resisted international calls, particularly from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to enter into dialogue with its opponents. Instead, it has anathematized resistance groups as “terrorists” bent on breaking up the union.
The statement follows a year of battlefield reverses that have seen the SAC’s effective authority contract across the country, particularly in Shan, Rakhine, Kayah (Karenni), and Kachin States, and in parts of the dry central plain, which the army had previously seen as a stronghold. Given the military’s fast-diminishing resources and manpower, its counteroffensives have failed to recover much ground.
Despite these reverses, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has stuck to his plans to hold an election as a means of initiating a transition back to a form of civilianized military rule. However, the timeline for the election has been repeatedly delayed due to the deteriorating political situation in the country, and is currently set for some time in 2025. The junta has announced that it will conduct a census on October 1-15 in order to compile voter lists.
Even if such an election can somehow be held – most experts have serious doubts that the junta can administer a peaceful election, even in the areas it controls – it is likely to be rejected as a sham by a majority of Myanmar’s population, as well many foreign governments. Dozens of parties – one count puts the total at around 40 – have been disbanded for refusing to register under a tough new party registration law, among them the dominant National League for Democracy (NLD) which won a landslide election victory in 2020, just three months before the military coup.
Resistance groups including the National Unity Government (NUG), which is coordinating the nationwide opposition to the SAC, yesterday rejected any suggestion of dialogue with the junta, which many of them have denounced as a “fascist” and “terrorist” organization. NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt told Reuters that the offer “was not worth considering, and the junta had no authority to hold an election,” in the news agency’s paraphrase.
Padoh Saw Taw Nee, a spokesperson for the Karen National Union, told AFP that talks were only possible if the military agreed to “common political objectives.” These included its permanent removal from politics and accountability for the military’s long catalogue of war crimes and atrocities, things that the Myanmar armed forces are unlikely ever to concede.
None of this is surprising. Since the coup, calls for the reversal of the coup and the restoration of the NLD government have evolved into revolutionary demands for the permanent extrication of the military from politics and the establishment of a federal democracy on that basis.
With this in mind, it is hard to imagine that the SAC’s call for “dialogue” was any more than a tactical ploy. If the election is the military’s attempt to rehabilitate its image in the region and further afield, it suits the junta to attempt to reach out to its enemies and invite them to join its “peace process.” When they inevitably refuse, it can then use this to cast them as wreckers opposed to its own peace efforts. Like the junta’s planned election itself, few are likely to be convinced by this, though it may give governments in the region the pretext to deepen their engagements with the military junta and whatever civilianized government “replaces” it.