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Ashley South (Independent Analyst, Research Associate at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University)
发布时间:2014年10月13日  来源:察哈尔学会  作者:Ashley South  阅读:208

Thank you to the organizers for this very interesting symposium and particularly to professor Li Chengyang who has done so much work to bring us together with his team. Very difficult in 15 minutes to provide an update on the peace process, to frame the peace process, and to indulgence some analysis, but I’ll try to deal with this.

I think taking off from where we left this morning. I guess the first thing to say is that I do believe peace process in Myanmar represents the best opportunity in many decades to address some of the key social, political, economical issues which have structured state society conflicting in Myanmar for decades. And indeed great advances have already been made in peace building since 2011 when the peace process, nevertheless many challenges remain.

Starting with the positive. I think I will want to begin by saying a little about the impacts as I understand them on conflict-affected communities. I’ve been privileged working with Myanmar Peace Support Initiative over the last two and half years to visit a number of conflict-affected parts of the country, particularly in the south-east and also in the western north, talking to villages in conflict-affected areas. And it’s obvious that many people’s lives have been transformed in a very positive manner. It’s not uncommon to meet people who are much betteroff and very much welcome the changes of the peace process. I think it’s really important to note. And many of these individuals are villages, IDPs even, who don’t have access to media, they’re often communities without voice, and their benefit expressed to the media is often not appreciated in the wide discourse. And freedom from fear, freedom to travel, in fact, in many areas villages cannot go to their fields without having to buy a pass from the Myanmar army, without having to fear human right abuses. And I think there is some evidence beginning to show these improved registration are actually having some impacts on improving life in some conflict-affected areas. Nevertheless in many cases on conflict-affected communities fear the resumption about the armed conflict. I think that’s why even the very grass roots have the desire for a political settlement in Myanmar’s decades long state society armed conflicts, because I think it’s, for no other reason, I think it’s a widespread desire for a political settlement can guarantee that a breakout won’t happen in the future.

And come to the elite level, we consider the positive, for the first time the government is talking to an alliance of ethnic groups, the nation-wide cease fire coordinating team. And this is actually a fairly new development since October, November last year. And of course the ethnic armed groups have long demanded multilateral negotiations with the Myanmar government and until last year the government was still settle negotiation groups by groups. So this is an important breakthrough. There are others I want to include in my paper, but I have to move on because of the constraint of time. Like we have discussed in the morning, there many stakeholders in the peace process, but I think that at least at the outset it has been a government driven peace process. I think much of the credits for a peacetaking initiative should go to president and his chief peace envoy and the team around them.

I think I’ll skip, I have some notes for other positive developments in terms of the broader concern for ethnic communities in Myanmar, for example access to ethnic language schooling. I’m talking a quite new positive recent story.

Let’s turn to the challenges, though. I won’t say too much about this, I hope we’ll come back to it later on in the panel. But of course the resumption of armed conflict in Kachin in 2011 and then the very significant fighting in part of Kachin and northern Shansbay associated with quite widespread human right abuses have caused great humanitarian sufferings, displacement and greatly undermined confidence of peace process among many ethnic communities. There is much to be said on why and what has been happening in northern Myanmar in terms of resumption over the last couple of years. But I think I couldn’t make a presentation on the peace process without looking into this.

And of course the resumption in Kachin raises the key question of the role of the Myanmar army in the peace process. For the first couple of years, 2012 through 2013, observers and experts were concerned that the Myanmar army was not fully engaged in peace process. And I was privileged to the couple of occasions to be the observer of the talks between government and ethnic groups. And clearly this was conducted by Myanmar Peace Center team with the army having a figure as an observer role. Since late last year, particularly in November 2013, the Myanmar army is closely involved and I think unsurprisingly the positions demonstrated by senior Myanmar army leaders in the talks has so far been less flexible and less accommodating into ethnic demands than government negotiators in the peace process. So I think this is one of the many significant challenges facing peace process.

It’s for Myanmar army leaders to go through the same learning process, the same transformation that I think is apparent in the government side which having been involved in the negotiation now for three years. And part of the problem, I think it’s hugely important, only have time to just touch it, I’m happy to return to this issue in questions, is whether the government—I think the answer is yes—whether the Myanmar army and key elements of the political establishment in Myanmar are really willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the political demands articulated by ethnic groups. This the second question which I’ll try to touch on later which is to what extent do armed ethnic groups legitimately represent ethnic communities, that’s important. It’s a slightly different question. What I’m talking now is the extent to which the political demands articulated by armed groups and other ethnic stakeholders are really acknowledged as being legitimate, not meaning they’re going to be automatically accepted, but at least to be legitimate subject to political discussion of Myanmar. I think this set of questions, partly about whether there is time for the Myanmar army senior leadership to spend time in peace talk with ethnic groups and other stakeholders in order to get through this period of socialization. And of course there are many identities and interests, long standing economic factors play, but I think this brings another challenge: the constraint timing and the electoral cycle. As most people here will know, the NCCT and some other ethnic stakeholders are currently gathering at the headquarters. And I think the formal meeting finished yesterday or maybe today, deciding a response and a position in order to have next round of negotiations with the Myanmar government and army. Of course another positive factor is that the two sides now are working for a common tact, rather than one side making proposals the other side coming up to object the proposals. There is a common tact most of the low hanging agree about 60 to 70% in black, 30 to 40% is still being brackets. For those ethnic political leaders, I think in order to reach an agreement which can make incredible with their own ethnic communities, it’ll be necessarily for the NCCT to negotiate and deal some of their key demands and concerns. And particularly I think they need to be exclusive recognition the need of a federal solution to Myanmar’s protracted political crisis. And also there is a whole range of issues around government and security sectors.

On the other hand, the clock is ticking. The window of opportunity to achieve incredible agreement may be closing. A couple of speakers this morning talked about timing, short-, mid- and long-term possibilities. There are various models of how constitutional reform and political change may proceed in Myanmar. And there is debates regarding the possibility of constitutional change. There are plans being advised by Myanmar party, and there is a road map being negotiated between the NCCT and Myanmar government. To certain extent, I think that’s probably one reason to be concerned for exactly the links between these different processes and stakeholders. And important to recognize that there is real political will I think in many quarters to reach at least an settlement in the peace process.

However, I think, we’re realistic. And we have responsibility to be realistic. It’s increasingly difficult to say how the current negotiations between the NCCT and government union peace working group can actually resolved in an nation wide cease fire agreement, which at some point needs to be rectified by the government, by the 16 groups. I’ve mentioned a draft prescribed a 60 or 90 day-period during which key stakeholder groups and this include government, the parliament, civil society agree a framework of political dialogue. There is at least four models of what that framework might look like. So 60 days is going to be a challenge. And the discussion is necessary to decide what kind of country Myanmar should and could be. Then to reach a political agreement and have that tied off to have it endorsed. To get all of these done in the next 12 months, probably less than 12 months is a huge challenge. I say less than 12 months because the chances are as we get into 2014, the election season gets on the way, many of these issues are going to be hijacked or at least subject to the political pressures of electioneering. So the window of the opportunity to get these staff done is closing rapidly. So it’s certainly going to be impossible to reach a comprehensible agreement before the elections. The question is whether and how it’s possible to continue negotiations post-2014. I think there is a question whether the next government which is likely to be dominated by the National League for Democracy, that is not inevitable at all of course we need a whole conference about what the election might look like, what outcome might be. I think it’s unlikely a future government in Myanmar, if it is substantially in make-up of the current government, is going to be interested in carrying on with the process initiated by the present government. To put it frankly, I mean the future government will log onto this government’s old carry. At present, the political dialogue which is hopeful to come out of negotiations will be a product of talks between the NCCT and the government. This will give ethnic armed groups a central role as key stakeholders in the political dialogue and how they move forward.

Since the election of the present government, ethnic issues have been at the heart of politics in the Myanmar probably for the first time since Independence, and now seem to be time when ethnic leaders should making progress in issues concerning to their communities. There is a risk after 2014 will the ethnic issue be marginalized with increasing challenges legitimacy of ethnic groups represented their communities. I think particularly for some armed groups it’s quite reasonable to challenge whether ethnic armed groups really represent the communities they seek to articulate the concerns. Nevertheless, I think some of the larger ethnic groups do have right talking of their communities and are credible political if they remain so in the longer term. I think there is a risk for future political dialogue come out of the process which ethnic armed groups are marginalized, this is like to fuel the positions of insurgent hot liners and undermine the visionary ethnic leaders who are trying to move to the peace process forward with the government. So one option being considered which may help to some way address these concerns is to begin a process political dialogue right now,  rather than wait until a nation wide cease fire agreement. In the mean time, concerns are widespread among many communities, I think there is a number of issues. I think livelihood, but also particularly access to land, land grabbing and land security, are very widespread. And they’re topics need to be addressed later today and tomorrow, so I won’t say to much about it now. The states are high, I think there is a great deal of political will, but the outcome of its process is still highly uncertain.

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