Myanmar's junta marks anniversary in power

By Joshua Kurlantzick

BANGKOK (AFP): Myanmar's military junta celebrates 12 years in power as it seeks to silence its last remaining political adversaries with no prospect of national reconciliation in sight at present.

Twelve years after the secretive junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), took power on Sept. 18, 1988, it has launched a fresh crackdown on opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

After Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders tried to attend a party meeting outside the capital, a move she knew would provoke a standoff with the SPDC, the Nobel laureate and other NLD chiefs were placed under virtual house arrest on Sept. 2.

Although the junta Thursday lifted Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest, analysts say she will not be allowed to leave the capital again.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero Gen. Aung San, Saturday vowed to defy the junta's ban by traveling outside Yangon within the next few days.

The military government arrested 18 party officials, including elected MP Naing Naing, even as it prepared to lift some of the restrictions on NLD leaders, a party official said.

The crackdown on the pro-democracy leader comes in the wake of the arrest of hundreds of NLD members and an alleged vow by the junta to "annihilate" the NLD by December.

The Yangon regime has "instructed all the senior police officers ... to annihilate the NLD by December 2000," the Bangkok-based All Burma Students' Democratic Front said in a statement earlier.

"The officers were instructed to use any possible means of force necessary to terminate the NLD," a policy that will "ruin the process of national reconciliation," the statement said.

Since 1988, the Yangon junta, which took over from aging dictator Ne Win and which groups 19 high-ranking military officers, has signed cease-fire agreements with most of the ethnic minority militias which used to wage war on the central government.

These deals have left the NLD, which won a landslide victory in free elections in 1990, as a lone voice of opposition in the tightly controlled country. The election result was annulled by the junta.

"The military is hoping to completely undermine the NLD, so that there is no one in the party still standing, and they have no organizational structure any more," said Aung Thu Nyein, a leader of the All Burma Students Democratic Front, a Myanmar opposition group in exile in Thailand.

"The junta has hurt the NLD. If they are successful, there will be no young people left in the NLD, they will all be too scared to participate," he said.

Myanmar analysts in Bangkok said the junta's stepped-up pressure on the NLD is a sign the hard-line faction of the military regime linked to army chief Maung Aye may be gaining the upper hand within the government.

"It appears that the most hard-line group in the SPDC is having its way. This (crackdown on Aung San Suu Kyi) reflects that," said Myanmar expert Chayachoke Chulasiriwongs of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

Although Senior Gen. Than Shwe is the titular head of the Yangon regime, Maung Aye had reportedly been wrangling within the junta with intelligence chief Khin Nyunt, described as more pragmatic.

"Even though Than Shwe has the final say, Maung Aye is behind most of the decisions on the economy," one Yangon-based diplomat had told AFP.

Maung Aye has been described by a member of the inner circle as a taciturn career soldier with years of combat experience who firmly believes in the power of the military above all else.

The junta's strategy has in some ways been effective. Though it has drawn criticism from the West for its treatment of the NLD, it has retained its key Asian allies.

U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair blasted Myanmar's junta at the recent UN Millennium Summit over the Aung San Suu Kyi affair.

Blair called Aung San Suu Kyi's treatment a "disgrace," while Clinton likened the situation in Myanmar -- formerly Burma -- to those in Serbia and Iraq, where human rights and democracy were also under siege.

But China, India, Pakistan and Japan -- Myanmar's most important allies, trading partners and sources of military hardware -- have said little about the crackdown on the NLD.

Observers warn that after Than Shwe retires or dies, Maung Aye could take over the reins of the country entirely, potentially making Myanmar even more of an international pariah than it is today.

Many observers see Than Shwe as a fulcrum between Maung Aye and Khin Nyunt, serving to maintain the balance of power between their competing aspirations.

Than Shwe is expected to remain in power a little longer, at least as long as his health permits.