Myanmar's civil war rages on despite 'whack-a-mole' sanctions, scant aid. What more can be done?
The growing weakness of Myanmar's military junta has created opportunities for international actors to bring about lasting stability, according to a new report, despite global responses to the civil war being ineffective so far.
"Outrage is not a policy: coming to terms with Myanmar's fragmented state", published on Sunday by the Lowy Institute think tank, argues that while the combination of sanctions and humanitarian assistance used by foreign governments so far was a reasonable starting point, "neither tool holds any real prospect of significantly influencing the course of the conflict".
"Western governments have struggled to respond adequately to the 2021 military coup and resultant civil war, relying too heavily on a few traditional tools that simply do not match the dynamics or significance of these epochal events," said Morten Pedersen, the report's author and a senior international-politics lecturer specialising in Myanmar at the University of New South Wales Canberra.
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"It is understandable that governments are reluctant to provide military assistance to the resistance, which would risk drawing the West and China into a proxy war in Myanmar," Pedersen said.
"Still, it is hard not to conclude that there is also a lack of imagination in some policy circles, or at least insufficient will to try new things."
Sanctions and aid have been the main international responses to the Myanmar crisis so far, as no government wants to risk escalating tensions between China and the United States - both stakeholders in Myanmar - by providing direct military support, which experts said would be logistically difficult to provide anyway.
Even then, the global response has been tepid, the report notes, with many governments distracted by other conflicts such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
The latest update last week from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-profit group run by Myanmar exiles, estimates that 5,000 people have been killed since the coup began, with more than 26,000 people being arrested and over 20,000 held in detention.
Sanctions on the junta, such as blocking access to international markets, had largely been ineffective and were akin to "playing whack-a-mole", Pedersen said, adding that while some of the junta's financial transactions had been blocked, the generals could counter these efforts by simply restructuring their banking practices.
Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington specialising in Southeast Asian politics and security, told This Week in Asia that sanctions had been ineffective because of insufficient international support. He suggested that a more strategic approach, particularly targeting jet fuel imports, could prove more successful.
However, similar to those that had been imposed on Russia for its war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Myanmar were proving difficult to enforce due to the presence of unscrupulous exporters, he said.
Rather than relying solely on sanctions, Pedersen advocated for more innovative approaches. He recommended supporting "parallel state-building" by aiding emerging local governance structures in regions not under junta control.
"While discussions about international assistance to the resistance have perhaps naturally focused on supporting the armed struggle, there are ample, largely unexplored opportunities for supporting rebel governance - and fewer risks involved," he said.
The resistance against Myanmar's military spans the National Unity Government - a shadow government formed with the aim of ending military rule - people's militias and the country's ethnic armed organisations. Three ethnic armed groups led successful surprise attacks on the military last year.
These groups are now forming new "parallel" political authorities in Myanmar, but are under-resourced and could benefit from international support, according to Pedersen. Global assistance could also be effective in delivering social services to resistance groups and supporting dialogue among them, he said.
Abuza said the National Unity Government and ethnic armed groups needed ways of communicating and the international community could consider funding more Starlink or satellite internet terminals, for example.
These groups also require access to education and medicine to out-govern the military, he added.
Andrew Hudson, chief executive for the Centre for Policy Development, a Sydney-based public policy think tank, argued that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had a greater chance of providing effective support for Myanmar than the international community at large - especially for the more than 1 million Myanmar refugees living elsewhere in the region and those who were vulnerable to ethnic cleansing.
"Effective action from Asean is key as other parts of the world are less likely to intervene," he said.
Henrick Tsjeng, a political and security relations associate at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, agreed that the regional bloc could be a crucial actor given Myanmar's membership in the organisation.
Asean would need to engage China, India and Japan and possibly other regional countries - albeit carefully - to broker a ceasefire in Myanmar, he added.
China, given its influence in Myanmar and involvement in arranging previous ceasefires, should continue to encourage dialogue between the warring factions and work with Asean, he said.
"Many in the West believe that supporting the rebels in toppling the junta is the best way forward," he said.
"Such action will only drag both Myanmar - which also happens to be a close partner of Russia - and the Southeast Asian region deeper into the wider major power rivalry, and possibly undermine Asean centrality in the process."
Additional reporting by Maria Siow
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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