Transcript: Episode #286: Breaking Burma
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Host 0:10
Welcome to the Insight Myanmar podcast. Before we get into today's show, I wanted to let you know that we have a lot more written and video content on our website. If you haven't visited it yet, we invite you to take a look at WWW dot insight, myanmar.org, in addition to complete information about all of our past episodes, there's also a variety of blogs, books and videos to check out, and you can also sign up for our regular newsletter. But for now, enjoy what follows And remember sharing is caring and oh. For this episode of insight Myanmar podcast. We're with David Mathieson, and we'll be exploring his long time advocacy, activism, scholarship of human rights and many other things in Burma. So we'd like to welcome you to taking the time to chat with us. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so I'd like to begin by looking at where your trajectory first intersected with Burma. Where did it first get on the map for you?
David Mathieson 2:05
I studied international relations at university, specializing especially in Asian studies. And in the early 90s, it always struck me that Burma, Myanmar, was just never taught. No one ever really mentioned it. And, you know, there was a lot of classes on East Asia and Southeast Asia, and lots of people talking about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and and I started reading a lot of the forest and Economic Review, and coming across the works of Bertha lintner. And then I saw the cover of Martin Smith's book, Burma insurgency and the politics of ethnicity with those current soldiers and upon the elephant and and, and I was hooked. And I read the book, I was absolutely thoroughly confused, because the book is, is brilliant, but it's, it's also very detailed and dense, and Bertel in Burma and revolt both did, I think, a brilliant job of taking that complexity. And so, you know, from that I just started reading a lot and and I had somehow missed the 88 uprising, and which had been overshadowed a year later by Tiananmen Square on the fall of the the Berlin Wall, of course, and reading more and more about it, especially through Bertels coverage in the forest and Economic Review and and just finding out this absolutely fascinating history of the country. And I've always been quite obsessive about World War Two history and and started reading about the experiences in Burma during the Second World War, but what really gripped me was the contemporary insurgency and how complicated it was and how very few people really talked about it. And of course, like a lot of people of that generation, I was quite mesmerized by Aung San Suu Kyi and her defiance against this thug ocracy. And so then decided to do an M Phil. You know, when I graduated from the Honors year, I didn't want to jump straight into a PhD, because I just thought I was too ignorant and and inexperienced to do something like that. So I did an MPhil in South Australia, and I saw that as a as an extended period of trying to educate myself about Burma. And went to the country for the first time in 1996 on kind of field work, I guess. But it was really just a visit. I traveled to lots of different places, and then came to Thailand soon after that, and and just really wanted to go back to Burma. So I did. I went back, actually, met Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour and a half or so, and then went back to Australia, and, you know, toiled away at it from a very from. A distance, trying to follow complicated events. But it coincided, I think, with, you know, the internet kind of opening up. And there was a lot of innovation in terms of international activism. You know, Burma net and all of these, these, these news groups and and there was small but quite intensive interest in Australia, and some of the, you know, scholars like Andrew self were based in Australia, and the Australian National University started hosting the annual Burma updates, and so that's when I first met Professor David Steinberg, my late professor Desmond ball, who I worked with for many years, also met Christina Fink and Mary Callahan and all of these great kind of international scholars of Myanmar. So, yeah, it was really that kind of, you know, I kind of just took my time trying to understand a very complicated place from, usually from afar, and tried to read everlink I possibly could at the time, and one thing I would reflect on over the past 30 years is there's just so much more fantastic stuff to read now. I think the quality of scholarship, especially Myanmar scholars, and the media and civil society and think tanks, the quality of stuff coming out now, just didn't exist 30 years ago, yeah, there was really good stuff. I'm not diminishing that at all. But you look at just how rich and complicated and accomplished a lot of stuff is now, it's really, there really is, I think, an amazing community of not just scholars, but kind of intersectional scholars, people work in the media and activism fields and and many others. So I think that's the one thing that I would say, over the past 30 years has really been quite a dramatic positive change.
Host 6:51
That's great. So when you were starting out in trying to and being hooked and trying to understand this, more reading, talking to people, if you put yourself back at that time, could you describe or remember, what were some of like, the burning questions you have, what was the quest for? Like, I just don't get how these things fit together. What's going on with this part of it? What was really driving some of that early interest?
David Mathieson 7:13
That a regime like the state law and order restoration Council could just hold on and being so unpopular, and it's always been an obsession with very few adequate answers of why such a regime and a military mentality of impoverishing a whole country and making everyone live in fear, is their approach to statecraft that that Why would, why would they have to do it that way? And so it's, to me, it's always been the character of the military that I've never really understood. And why this? I mean the level of cruelty, the level of mismanagement, the level of self defeatism, the fact that they do things that are against their own self interest, or what we would consider rational. It's not just a Western rationality. I asked. I asked Burmese friends, why do they act that way? And it sits like I have no idea.
Host 8:12
Can you give an example of some of those things that are acting against their own interests?
David Mathieson 8:18
The Khin in 2021, I mean, it was quite a common observation in the weeks leading up to the coup d'etat, that people like they won't stage a coup because it's against their interests. And I remember talking to people after the coup, and I was like, hold on, that still holds true. The coup was against their own interests, but they did it anyway, and we have to try and understand why. And at various points over the last three years, they've had times, I think, where they could have kind of diverted or done something to have taken the sting out of it, but instead, it's like, no, we're going to murder our way out of this. It makes absolutely no sense.
Host 8:55
So this was one of the initial guiding questions you had, delving into the interests of Myanmar. You've been at this question for decades. You've spoken to hundreds if not 1000s of people, you've read hundreds if not 1000s of articles and books. Have you made any headway on trying to answer this basic question?
David Mathieson 9:10
I think there's, there's a lot of incredibly complicated and contradictory elements to it, but I think fundamentally it comes down to bloody mindedness and an arrogant sense of entitlement that we own this place and we're not sharing it with anyone else. I think that there really is that corporate mentality that you can read the propaganda, you can try and understand the compulsion. It's not just greed, it's not just praetorian entitlement. It's something deeper. It's it's like, no, we this is our place. We own it, and if we can't have it, then no one else can. And there's a Burmese expression that a friend taught me a couple of years ago that basically means you're throwing sand on the beef and I. Getting to explain that to me, and he said, Look, Min Aung, Lai, basically, he would throw sand on the beef if he had to share it, or if you were going to get it all. And that's the way He sees things. And and when you see their behavior in places like si San and and pop tour, when they're driven out of a place by the by the Brotherhood Alliance up in San state, and by the Arakan army in Rakhine. And then they just flatten the whole town. They destroy the market. And it's, it's, it's still got that mentality, and I've seen the military do that as an institution for many years. And, you know, several years ago I was reflecting on this, and it was actually something that I heard from from Christopher Hitchens, that I think applies probably even more in Myanmar to the Myanmar military, which is a culture of recreational sadism, and I got in trouble some people during the so called transition, people in Yangon were like, Why do you keep saying things like that? The military is changing. I'm like, No, they're not like, you know, they're changing the way they talk to you, to elites and nap, but they're not changing on the ground. And if you've spent as much time speaking to survivors of military violence, you'll notice that they torture and kill basically for sport. There's no logic behind it, other than we can get away with this. And I think that cruelty is really at the heart of the military as an institution, this, this blend of of entitlement that we own this place, and we can be as cruel as we want, and you must capitulate. You. You have to kneel down. And in lots of other conflict settings. It's like, you know, winning hearts and minds is just a necessary, you know, part of this. And to me, the Myanmar military never been interested in classical counter insurgency or state building. It's like, you will capitulate and we will just keep going until you surrender. So, yeah, I think that's an imperfect conclusion that I've come to, but I still think there's, I still think as an institution, there's still so much that work that needs to be done, primarily by Myanmar scholars. I think it has to be a national project, and that international scholars. There's been some great stuff by Japanese scholars on the Nakanishi book, I think is brilliant, as well as Mary Callahan and Andrew self's stuff, and Moe Aung Mir, a Myanmar scholar as well. But I think that moving forward, there needs to be this memorization of the military as an institution, as an institution of governance, as an institution of coercion, of the economy, and a big part of that's got to be, you know, why were they as brutal as they have been consistently for seven decades? And I do think that's quite an urgent project, and something that was almost completely ignored over that decade of the transition. I think that there was way too much optimism about how they were changing, and not about what their culture.
Host 13:02
Internal culture really was one of when people try to understand the military, and certainly when they look at the historical background, one of the things, the rationales, that's often brought up. Sometimes it could be more of an apologist bent, and sometimes which is more insidious, and sometimes it can be more of a genuine understanding, just a genuine attempt, just to understand why. How do they look at the world? How do they think of the world? And that's the this idea of they are the strong man that's the only one capable of bringing people together in even if it's imperfect, a sense of national unity, it would all fall apart and disintegrate without them. They're going about it sometimes a clumsy, wrong way, but this is at least some rationale explaining what they're doing from their side and so and I hear that, and then I also hear what you said of and see countless examples of them behaving like a terrorist organization, a mafia organization that just happens to be in charge of an entire country and is doing nothing but exploitation and illicit Trade and trading different domains and industries within each other and and so sometimes I wonder, to what extent was there perhaps a transition from one intent to another? To what extent are these two things balanced is, how do you reconcile the the explanation or the rationale that they're whether they're effective or not, whether they're clumsy, brutal or not, the fact that they're at least trying, that they at least have a sense of themselves as being a protector of the nation, that somewhere in their minds, they hold that this is an entitlement or authority they have versus The or balanced with the sense of just pure exploitation, terror, brutal violence at every turn.
David Mathieson 14:45
I think that that really gets to the heart of it, that they believe their own myths, and their myths are that, you know, without us, the country will disintegrate, and we're the indispensable institution. I. Arm. And don't necessarily think that, you know, well, one way to kind of approach State Building is to build other strong institutions, of courts, of justice, of education, of administration. And yet they purposely weakened most arms of the state. And is, and as Mary Callahan, I think, very astutely noticed years ago, making enemies was really their approach to state building, and it's whenever you revisit that formulation, you realize that they've continued to do that. You know, you could write a sequel to Mary's fantastic book and call it still making enemies and but I do think that there's a part of it that and again, getting back to how shocking it is of how little we really understand about the military, and there's always been, I think, an approach to try and understand them from an elite level, to try and look at, you know, the generals and and, and The intrigues of napidor and, and I've always been more interested in trying to understand the compulsion of soldiers on the ground and why they keep going. And I've interviewed, you know, quite a few Burmese Army soldiers over the years and and it's interesting some of them I've met who are like, you know, if I'm retired, I'm in my late 60s, and but if it was up to me, I would wear that uniform for the rest of my life. It's to me, it's we are the country. And, you know, people I met this guy up in Khin state, who was incredibly tough. You know, he was 20 years older than me, and we were arm wrestling, and he was just beating the hell out of him. And asked him where he served. And he was all over his and Chan state, he was in Khin state, Rakhine and, and, you know, he spoke about the institution. He was a sergeant, and he was like, you know, we, we're the ones that keep the country together, and he said it without a hint of iron. He said it without any kind of Sly, kind of double entendre. He really believed it. And he'd, you know, he was from, I think he said he was from Sagan, and he'd retired up in in Dorjee, and was still incredibly loyal to the institution and and you see that, I think you know for a lot of activists and even scholars, and that it's almost like, no, no, the military is weak. And you know that they're just being kind of holding together. And there was a lot of predictions in 2021 that the military was about to fall apart, and I just didn't believe that. I think that there's an internal kind of group logic and a cohesion to this very class based institution. It's almost like a caste system. The generals are up at the Brahmin level, and then there's the untouchables, who are the foot soldiers. But yet somehow that translates not into resentment, but to loyalty. And whenever people talk about massive surrender rates and defections, and I do have to say, I think there's some confusion out there about desertions and defections, because they're very different things, but there's always enough people who stay loyal to the institution and keep fighting, and that's what I think, is something that that needs to be explored more. Where does that loyalty come from? And it's not just brainwashing, it's not just fear. It's not just that they've got your families, their families locked back at the base. There's something more to it, that there is actually a commitment to the institution that keeps a lot of people loyal and continuing to fight. And I don't really understand that, and it's something that I would like to know better, and that that really means talking to as many members of the military and their families as one possibly can. So I do think that is a very urgent project.
Host 19:00
But still, when you look at just the level of terror, sheer brutality, exploitation that is has been taking place continuously for as long as it has, it's it's hard to understand how these acts are happening, while there's also a sense of protector of the nation and loyal to the institution, and not just the blind greed, sheer violence, racism, destruction and devastation. It's and maybe this is one of those unanswerable questions. Maybe this is the thing that you were pointing to. That is, this is what doesn't make sense to me, either. Because I, I, I struggle with understanding where reading one shade of description, understanding rationale and another one, where these two things fit in. How could you continue to believe in an institution that is also so front loaded with acting against its own interests and making enemies and and just taking as much as you can for as long as you can, and doing it while harming the most people? It's hard to see where, where this rationale and loyalty. Go with that level of violence and exploitation.
David Mathieson 20:03
I think there's certainly that, and I think that you've you've got to approach looking at the Myanmar military while keeping multiple contradictions kind of arrayed around and and I think that their ability to live with those contradictions and not see them as contradictions so much as just accepting the fact that, yeah, we're the force that's keeping the country together, while we're also selling out to the Chinese or the natural resources and enriching just one class of officer. And it doesn't really come down to the working class soldier. And yet the working class soldiers like, well, I'm loyal to this institution because we keeping the country together, even though I see all around me corruption, avarice and incompetence and and complete contradictions and, and it's, it's like, well, you know, that's for someone else to decide. It's not really to me, and that that level of patriotism and keeping the country together while selling out, I find it astonishing, but, but then, is it a form of just being very comfortable with living with hypocrisy, or is it a level of self delusion that that is like, well, we that's necessary, you know, for us to protect the country, we need to kind of get rich. And I remember years ago when u than San came in as president, and there was a lot of quite unfortunate, I think, hagiography around U than San. And I remember people saying, Oh, he's, he's, he's Mr. Clean. And, you know, I was like, he was the commander of the Golden Triangle command. Like, by definition, you can't be clean if you were running that command. It's the center of the drug trade. And speaking to a Shan friend who was like, Look, comparatively, he is clean because he never asked for anything. He just accepts the bribes and says, you know, give it to my wife, whereas previous commanders, like, I want that and I want that. And I said, that's, that's the definition of clean. Is that you don't ask for more than what what you get. And but again, I think it's just compulsion to try and find goodness in an institution and in and in and try and find the one that you can deal with. And I think that was the mistake of trying to find the good general. And of course, a lot of them were deeply corrupt, hypocritical figures who were seen as facilitators of international engagement. But since the coup of all pledged loyalty to the SEC or have actually joined the regime. So I think we need to understand. We need to ask ourselves, are we really looking into the looking into the institution, and seeing its contradictions and trying to uncover its manifold dark sides as multiple factors of inquiry instead of projecting our own. You know, there's got to be good ones in the system. There's I remember someone who worked on military engagement saying, you know, but you've got to understand they love their country. Well, it's a really bizarre kind of love. When you're burning it down.
Host 23:16
I don't, I'm often hesitant to bring up contrast, but as you're talking and I've never made this contrast to my mind before, I mind before, I can't help but somehow think of what Trump has done to the base in America in terms of and many people have pointed out since the beginning that you have someone who is is his own life and policies are often against the interests of his biggest fan bases, as well as you could Look at the patriotism and what he's doing to America, or the kind of America they say they want to live in, that I think if it comes to pass, few people would actually want to live in, but it's, I think, is so opposed to the values that most Americans have, and yet there is a certain kind of patriotism and loyalty and us against them, and populism that he has stirred up in my country, that there has been this rabid base that it sometimes have been working against and arguing against their own interest to want to support an institution that I think in our country, scholarship and journalism is still trying to uncover why this mass appeal, and why a mass appeal that actually doesn't make too much sense From the voting bloc that is going to support him.
David Mathieson 24:23
The compulsion of people to work against their own self interest is just staggering in so many different settings. And I think, you know, in line with with trying to understand the military compulsion, I think we also have to try and understand the civilian support to the military. And, you know, I come from a military family. My father was, was a military policeman, and, and I have an inkling of that, that it's, it's people who are proud to serve, and they see professionalism, and that's, that's what my father was like, and, and I think that there's got to be an element of that military. As an institution attract those kind of people who, who like the discipline, who like the the mission of, you know, serving the country and and and everything. But there's, there's also, I think, similar to what you were saying about Trump supporters, it's people you know, within Myanmar who, I think, perceived the military is keeping things together and feeling proud to be from a family, whether it's officer class or NCOs, they feel that there's a certain nationalism that the military represents, a very ba Mar Buddhist nationalism. But then again, the contradictions, why are there so many chin Christians who join the military and are very proud to have joined the military, even though the structural discrimination against their religion means that they can't move beyond Colonel. That's something that I've never really understood, and the idea that a lot of Myanmar friends of mine, male friends, over the past few decades, have said, you know, before 88 you know, I was a teenager, and I wanted to join the military, and going to the defense services Academy and in maymia was, was my dream. And one friend actually said he had a an uncle who was a colonel in the military who talked him out of it and said, Look, don't believe all of these myths about the Tamago. They're not true. When we leave the base and we go out there in the mountains, we burn and kill everyone, and it's just this is not for you, and don't believe these myths. And he said he was really shocked, and and I've heard that from from many other friends of that kind of 88 generation who were like, Yeah, we really wanted to go to the DSA at the time because of the isolationism of Ne Win. It was the one institution in the country that you could socially advance. But there was a lot of perception that this is an institution holding the country together. And then, I think during the Nawa Tai spicy period, some of that probably went down, even though the military was expanding. And then during the transition, so called transition, I think there are a lot of people going, well, things are open now, the military sidelined itself. We don't really need to engage with it, even though it was doing terrible things in Khin state and khuren state, and definitely in Rakhine. And since the coup, I think that there has been, I think the military only has itself to blame. I think there has been this de Nue where it's like everyone in the country, their eyes are now open to this institution, because you're, you know, you're attacking everyone and and I think now is the time to kind of have this inquiry about, what is this institution really, and what is its grip on society. And most importantly, I think, is to then go, you know, how do we live beyond the Tamago? And that's something that I'm really intrigued with, and bothering a lot of my friends of mine, asking too many questions about it, that what, what's it going to look like? You know, what? What will be left after an eventual victory? And we don't know when that's going to be or what it's going to look like, but, yeah, that's that, that, to me, is what's going to happen to the institution, but what's going to happen to its civilian support base, and when their eyes going to be open, or, you know, kind of a reckoning with, you know, our support has kind of led to this institution staying in power longer than it really needed to. And I think for any society going through that kind of violent transition, it's going to be very painful, and it's going to be very contradictory. I don't think it's going to be this neat, glorious victory that so many people seem to be predicting. It's going to be a very painful reckoning with Myanmar's past.
Host 29:00
Yeah, and when you talk about that civilian support, that and some of the contradictions that have been held over the years, I'm just thinking of the trajectory of, you know, before the so called transition, the really widespread distaste and lack of support among ba Mars, as well as ethnics, of course, but among many ba Mars that was just something they saw oppressing them, even before they knew what democracy was. And then all of a sudden, when you had this so called transition period, you had these, these expressions on social media, signs that were billboards that were appearing, we stand with the military. We stand with the Tamara and this proud and fierce alignment with seeing the military as their protector, and then a matter of years later, seeing them again as their oppressor. So this extraordinary seesaw of seeing going from protector to oppressor to protector. To oppress her. It's almost like this abused partner or something, in terms of how you look at this. And so it at previous iterations. I never could have predicted that it would tilt all the way to the other side again as well.
David Mathieson 30:12
During that period of the transition, whenever there was, because there was far more intensive international engagement. And there was this initial narrative of, you know, Myanmar the final frontier, and you know, democracy is coming and, and I think that there was a fair amount of Western triumphalism that they had had, you know, a large part to do with that which I think, you know, should be seriously questioned. This was a managed transition. It was a packed transition. And that whenever there was that, that that narrative kind of was was derailed with, you know, violence in Rakhine in 2012 the rise of the mava thar and and we're through, and that incredibly unfortunate Time Magazine front cover of the face of Buddhist terror. Yeah, I think people naturally kind of reverted back into a nationalist stance, of like, How dare you criticize the country? And it's like, well, you know, the criticism was really directed against extremists in the military or or the Sangha, but yeah, to me, it was very interesting how people kind of went back into this kind of patriotic defensive stance. And again, after 2016 and 2017 that was, and I think it was probably the most worrying element to me about the dehumanization of the Rohingya was that there were people protecting or lauding the institution that had perpetrated those mass atrocity crimes. And again, that kind of being able to carry contradictory thoughts in your head. I think there was a lot of people that just didn't really see that there was major contradictions there. And by the time of 2019 and dorong San Suu Kyi is lamentable, quite contemptible, going to the the ICJ to defend the military. And regardless of what anyone says, she wasn't going to defend Myanmar, she was, in effect, defending the military. And if you read the full testimony that she came out with and that ludicrous International Commission of Inquiry Report that the NLD put on. And I think that appeal to patriotism, you know, the military reaped some dividends from that, and then squandered it completely with staging a coup and but I do think that, given the the downward spiral of the economy, the way that Myanmar has gone back into me, all of the progress that was made is just being reversed now, as well as mass murder in in Anya and in so many other places around the country, I think that it's that anger about the reversal of the transition and the economic hardships and the military service law, you know, put all these elements together. But there's something there too that I think so many people in the country have seen the military collapse in humiliating ways, from ko Khan to to both in Aung to to Karen state to Khin state and sigai and places and kind of thinking, My God, this, this really that, you know, they're not finished yet, but there's been a lot of humiliating surrenders. And, you know, I think a lot of people in the country are fully aware of that. And, and it's almost as like, Yeah, this is a military that can be defeated. And, and, you know, I think operation 1027, was really quite a major factor in that. But, yeah, I do think that for a lot of people, it's like, you know, there's still going to be a lot of destruction. The Killing is not over, unfortunately, but this military is possible to defeat, and I think in the long run that that I don't think that, that even if the military holds on for some years, I don't think it can ever, it can never come back from that, that that loss of prestige.
Joah 34:30
Do you think the military realizes that?
David Mathieson 34:33
They must look if you've if you've been at a unit and you've been moved around the country several times, and you realize, you know, everyone in the country, almost everyone in the country, from one state up to Khin Northern San, it's really only the Delta and Eastern San state that hasn't, hasn't seen large scale violence. But if you're in the military, be like, Look the. Just everywhere. And if you're in the Air Force, must be like, Well, every day we're going up two or three times a day to murder people from the air. But I take off, and I could go north, south, east, west, and there's enemies everywhere. They they definitely not. And I think again, it's, it's the resilience of their self delusion that partly explains why they're moving forward. I think that I'm lying and many of the other gangsters at the top, just like robotics the wrong term, because I think that lets them off the hook in some way, but they've convinced themselves of their own importance to such an extent that being delusional is reality.
Host 35:42
But if they're so delusional, do they realize that the that they're in a different place than they've ever been, things aren't just going to be the same as they've always been for them.
David Mathieson 35:54
They really must, because they've taken a pasting unlike anything in 70 years. And I think that there's probably a belief in their purpose, in in their mission, their self worth, but also increasingly a belief in overwhelming firepower. And I think we're seeing that that, you know, when they murder, you know, scores of civilians with airstrikes and artillery strikes. You know, I've heard this for the past two years, that this is, you know, this is the the saka sa being desperate. I don't think it's desperation at all. I think it's, it's, it's a tactic of war. I think it's, it's them going, Oh, you want to, you know, you want to resist us. We'll kill under and 50 of you. We don't care. You know, murdering civilians is something we've done for decades, and we'll continue to do it, and our strategy is as much as we can understand it. One element of their strategy of survival is murdering their way out of it, and that's a deplorable, disgusting realization, but, but you see the evidence for it every diet you do.
Host 37:00
But why? One of the things that's been asked is that this is, this has been their tactic, that they they're a hammer, and everything they see your nails. Why are they so incapable of innovating and realizing that this strategy is not as much as they might like to do it, as much as it might make them feel powerful, that it's not actually working, and that there could be something else they could do, equally insidious, that could work more for them. And this is a question I've seen asked for years now, is, why are they not innovating and they're just doing the same thing over and over and having worse and worse results with it?
David Mathieson 37:33
I think because they don't want to admit to themselves that it's a failing strategy. And you know, if you know the famous definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, that that's their approach to counter insurgency. And I think that there's been periods in which and bertolittner writes very well about this, about the 1963 peace parlay, and, and, and the post 1989 stand fast agreements. There was only one cease fire sign with the Kachin. But all of these arrangements that were made, which were were really stop gap methods, they weren't about peace and stability. And you know, instead of, of, of having, you know, multiple peace processes where you sit down with the Rakhine, you sit down with with various San factions and and, and definitely the National Union, and the karenian say, Look, you know what's at the heart of your resistance? And because I don't think they've ever genuinely tried to understand the roots of grievances, of ethnic insurgencies and and, you know, doing field work along the border and doing human rights work for many years, it's interesting how a lot of Western scholars and think tankers would subtly shift the blame onto ethnic communities and ethnic armed organizations, that it was their continued resistance that was causing all of this. And I would always push back on that and say, No, you've got the wrong end of the stick here. It's that the nawata, the SBDC, they're not state building. This is a counter insurgency. This is punishment to get them to capitulate. And what you don't understand is that, and I read this fascinating CAA document from the early 1970s that talked about what drove kah chin resistance, and it's like burning down villages, raping women and stealing chickens drives recruits into the kitchen army. And I remember reading that years ago and thinking, you know, that kind of murder, grotesque, sexual violence, looting and just the culture of impunity has driven armed resistance and civilian support. For that arm of resistance for decades. Yeah. And I would tell people, it's like, Look, don't go thinking, because I'm a human rights person, that I'm being human rights determinist here. This is the fundamentals of why. When you speak to civilians, why do you support the KNU? It's like they protect me from that abusive military. And if that abusive military wasn't around, things would not be perfect, but they would be a damn sight better. And that's what I don't think people really understood that, that the military just did not want to change. From, you know, we don't want to understand your grievances, let alone truly address them. And that was the insidious thing about the peace process. From 2012 is that I don't think they were serious about fully understanding grievances then and and I still don't think they are. Otherwise they would act in a very different way. They would that there would be some calculation of like, maybe obliterating a village and displacing 10s of 1000s of people. Isn't the way to kind of get them to stop fighting. And I think the sad thing is they still they seriously just don't think that it's like, no, you need to surrender. You need to get down on your knees. That's not a very sophisticated approach. But then, neither is their approach to counterinsurgency. There's no sophistication at all. It's a battering run.
Host 41:21
It is. One of the things you talked about earlier was looking at the type of scholarship that even though scholarship has grown over the years from when you first started, there's so much available now in so many different forms that you could read and learn, and yet you also talk about certain categories of analysis that you would like to see more of. But then you mentioned it's not just the subject matters that you would like to see a change in scholarship. It's also the perspective and the backgrounds of the scholars themselves. And this has been a hot topic of late, Burma studies, the quote, unquote archetype of the Burma expert. And looking at what representation means among scholars in Burma studies.
David Mathieson 42:04
I have to first start out by saying that the concept of a Burma expert is is absurd. And, you know, there's, there's literally no scope to be an expert on something that constantly confuses you. And so I do think people should be a bit more circumspect about some of the assertions that they make. And I think that there's a difference between, you know, being a talking head like me and being part of the commentariat as opposed to being a scholar. And I think that there's a lot of great scholarship out there that really tries to to dig deeper. But I think what I'm thinking of is is the ability to have conversations with your classically trained scholars who are in universities and of you know and have done all the hard work to get where they are, but also people who do perhaps one way of saying a more applied work on the mixes, I think I kind of traverse between being a hopeless scholar, dabbling in journalism, even though I'm not a journalist, and kind of feeling relatively safe calling myself An analyst, because it's broad enough to kind of encompass different perspectives, and as someone who reads a lot of academic work, because I think it's fantastic, but also a lot of journalism and a lot of great Think Tank perspectives, because I do think it needs to be a multi discipline approach, because things are so complicated, and we know so little about, about, about so much. So, yeah, I do think that there, you know, I'm particularly obsessed, I think, with this deeper understanding of the coercive side of Myanmar society and the institutions of coercion, whether it's the Sita or whether it's the eaos. And I would actually say a lot of things that we say about the Myanmar military being this kind of big question mark about its internal logic. And I would say the same thing about the ethnic armed organizations, that there's a lot of misunderstanding about what drives their membership, their leadership, and how they're perceived within their own society. And I think anyone that thinks that all of the Aeos are absolutely lionized and venerated in their own societies is just not that's just not the case. I remember being in michiner and 10 years ago now, and and speaking with with a good friend, a great Khin intellectual. And he said, Hey, next time you're a naked or telltain Saint, you know, thank you for attacking us, because you've united the Kachin people. Nothing before. And mean, he was being glib, but he basically says, you know, before the ceasefire was broken, we would yell insults to kitchen independence army officers we'd see walking down the street and then getting attacked. And it did kind of unify not all parts of Kitchen Kitchen society, because I think it's a lot more atomized and divided than than the people often think. But there is that sense of like, well, when there is a lot more group cohesion, when when you are attacked, and people often heard this from people who who live in cortolay that they have a very sophisticated understanding of the Korean national union, and they see it in a multi dimensional way. It's a protector, but it's also can be a tyrant. At times it can be and some leaders are, you know, a lot of leaders are good and some leaders are bad, but and, and what I've noticed over the years is like, you know, people within these communities want to talk in their own way about these institutions that shape their lives. They don't necessarily want outsiders and foreigners knowing too much about it, which, which I can fully understand. But it's always fascinating when you do get those, those insights into group cohesion and loyalty towards different armed groups, because I think it mirrors, you know, ba Mar Buddhist perceptions of of the military that it's like, well, it's kind of A benevolent, you know, element, but you know that it's, it's also problematic and, and, yeah, an agenda that tries to unpack some of those social relations within within highly militarized societies, I think, is, is one approach of one of many approaches.
Host 46:57
And looking at the Burma studies field and the scholarship that's been coming out and that will continue to come out. How important do you feel it is to have more of a focus and emphasis on local representation? What is it that a scholar coming from the country can do to with a topic that an outside observer may be challenged with and then going off on the that logic of that question, what sorts of kind of continued assumptions or misunderstandings or or misses Have you seen the international community or scholarship Coming from international observers that that has been a result of this lack of representation.
David Mathieson 47:44
What I've noticed, of and maybe this is just because of a few academic articles that I've read in the past several weeks, is this very admirable challenging of international assumptions and international ways of doing things. There was a great article that a PhD student from the University of Melbourne was the lead author, called seeing like a donor and and I find that a very important piece of you know challenging Western donors ways of making civil society legible and the negative consequences sometimes that that can be there's also been great scholarship on challenging international engagement with Myanmar and some International approaches that have been either hypocritical, flawed or completely contradictory. And I think one there was a report that came out and about women peace and security, and just how dreadful a lot of the international support for that that was, and how the peace process excluded a lot of women's voices, and which should have been at the core of the peace process. And so I do like that there are a lot of Myanmar scholars that are pushing back on the kind of the imperialist mindset that often comes through international engagement, and that's partly because I'm very critical of Western engagement. So you know, when I see Myanmar scholars do the same thing, I'm encouraged. But there's also a lot of other fantastic work that's being done, from, from, from what I hear from, from Myanmar friends, is, is it? It's their design. It's their ideas. They're not trying to to be molded in in the shape of Western scholarship. They're trying to find their own questions and and ways to come to their own answers and. And that, to me, is really exciting stuff, because it's it's stuff that there's a lot of stuff that that we as foreigners, we just don't see, we don't fully understand. And, and I'm always up to being corrected, and it's amazing how often that that needs to happen. And, and I do have to pay huge respects to my me and my friends for having a great deal of patience when they deal with me on this, but that that, to me, is what really needs to be done, instead of kind of going well, I'd like to know about this, this and this. No, I actually want my musculos to go No, actually I I'm choosing what to look at, sure and then take it or leave it. And, you know, I'll definitely take it, because that, to me, is the interesting term. But also I think that there's a lot of other international scholars that are kind of doing similar things, kind of asking different questions and and trying to, you know, David Brenner wrote a fantastic piece several months ago, on on, you know, looking at the transition through the lens of democracy. And it was being very critical. And I know lots of me and my friends really appreciated that article, because it was very kind of current with with the way that they were kind of looking at the modes of international engagement. And I do think it's interesting. It's important to have that kind of multi disciplinary approach. Now, in a time of revolution, I think it is important to reflect on these things, because there will come a time when that critical thinking and those multiple perspectives from academia, from development work and and from civil society work, when, when they start? Mean, if this is an intersectional revolution, then I think knowledge should be intersection, and it's got to come from, you know, think tanks like ISP and Mosaic and sawween, you know, doing absolutely brilliant work. And then all of these great scholars that, and a lot of these people are friends. They all know each other. It's networks of friendship and work that I think is incredibly positive. And I think great work comes from that. And I think there's ample evidence out there.
Host 52:13
I think that's especially true at a time or in a place where history just keeps repeating itself, you know, and it's really stunning to I've had this experience myself in the last few years. I've talked to guests who've reported the same things that they're in the middle of whatever is happening in Myanmar. They happen to pick up a book talking about 1988 or even some iteration before that, and they're reading it, and suddenly feel like, wait a second, is this? Am I reading about something contemporary? Reading about something before? The more that knowledge is coming from, the contours of what worked, what didn't, what the challenges were, what the responses were, that will inform what we know about going forward as well. And I think that also, when we're looking at the direction of scholarship, and you're talking about the agency of taking up new not just in how topics are approached, but in how topics are chosen, and that agency, and not just looking at things in a different way, but looking at choosing what it is you want to look at, and the networks going forward, I also want to go back and look at where we came from, and I've often felt this is one of the rationales of why inside me and my podcast exists, even though it started more and exploring spiritual journeys and more with the Buddhism perspective and background. But the sense that that, that I found Myanmar always put in kind of reductionist terms, that it was very much there. There were certain overriding ideas that were put out there, whether in journalism or more, so I found in journalism, or even in my case, in Buddhism, just hearing, just talking to different Buddhist teachers and seeing how the country is represented in kind of mythological Orientalist Buddhist lens. And certainly you see that with policy as well. It's always been international policy foreign countries have towards Myanmar. It's always been my feeling that bad information leads to bad policies and two hour inform, long form sit down interview with someone bring just brings out much more nuance and details and colors than you get and just the headlines that you then try to fill the content with, but going back and looking at those previous iterations and years of scholarship, because you've been someone who has just read so exhaustively, different different scholars, different eras, different eras, different types of publications, you've talked about where it's going forward, but I wonder if you've talked about where it's been, and if you could talk about some of the problems that you've seen in previous decades, of how, of how you might define a limited scope or unexamined assumptions, or just A narrow, narrowing of perspectives and unimaginative kind of the lack of imagination that some of the scholars and academics were bringing to it that then started to shape the understanding of wider outsiders, whether they were casual readers or journalists or academics or people in policy and government, whoever diplomats, whoever it was that were. Breaking out of but how you would describe some of that narrowing scope in previous decades, and then the consequences of whatever that narrow scope was,
David Mathieson 55:10
it's fascinating to look back at that, that during the 1990s Burma became this relatively minor example of the post cold war, end of history, Triumph of democracy and human rights, and usually through The lens of jorong San Suu Kyi, but this very neatly packaged narrative formed in the 90s that, you know, here's this exotic Asian woman and this kind of caricatured evil military regime, you know, with an Incredibly sinister sounding acronym that the the economist once called, like, the name of some nasty alien planet and and from then, I think, in a lot of international narratives, Burma was not allowed to be complicated. And it was like, No, I don't want right? She's great, they're bad.
Host 56:23
And then you got Buddhist monks, and they're fantastic, completely infallible.
David Mathieson 56:24
Yeah, well, you know, you might want to spend more time kind of being there and actually speaking to different people and and by I think, association, a lot of the ethnic armed organizations were kind of exonerated in some way, or really quite marginalized. Actually, it was something about the Civil War, because it wasn't raging to the the the intensity as it had been in different areas during the 1990s and the 2000s you know, was really just Karen state and khurini and and a couple of other places where there was still ongoing fighting. But also, I think the way that international activism perceived Myanmar, which really had an oversized impact on policy making and an oversized impact on journalism. And you know, a lot of the that the Myanmar exiled opposition complex was not a democracy and human rights movement. It was a solidarity movement. It downplayed some some unfortunate realities and front loaded other features. And you know, the National Coalition Government of the union of Burma was not very effective, and we're seeing kind of shades of that it's interesting to reflect on 30 years ago, and seeing some of the compulsions of people in exile that they believe narratives that kind of fit where they are, in Buffalo, New York or in Europe, whereas on the ground people like no things are a lot more complicated. It's not clear at all what's going on, and there's lots of incredibly difficult decisions to make. And I think that there are parallels. I think the the the era, is completely different. And, you know, large parts of Burma could be considered to be, you know, basically a black hole back then it's like, well, not to the people who were there. They they saw it as, you know, lives, yeah. And one thing that always struck me about traveling around Myanmar when I first went to 96 and then 97 and then subsequent trips, is that, you know, it was an incredibly vibrant place, yeah. And people could not like the military could be really bitter about about how living standards and educational standards have been degraded under under military rule, but also get on with life. You know, I found that really quite inspiring. I didn't really know what I was expecting, but I was heartened to see that. And I, you know, that was something that I'll always remember, that, yeah, there was incredibly crushing poverty and and if you were a journalist or, you know, a poet, and you know, you tried to speak out, you'd be tortured and sent to prison. It was a police state, and there was coercion everywhere. And yet, there were people kind of just trying to navigate around that and still having a great sense of humor and, and, and, you know, taking care of their families and getting along. And I, I think that that would still hold true. Now, you know, having not been back in the country since the coup, I can't imagine that it's. Is that it's any different. So looking back, I think the way that the world understood Myanmar was very simplistic and and then it was like, well, the military aren't changing. Let's sanction the hell out of them. Is that really the only thing to do, and you can't talk to them? Well, you should be talking to them. You don't trust them, but you should actually be finding a way. And this is, you know, 1015, years ago. And I think what resulted from that, which is really unfortunate. And you know, when I was doing human rights advocacy in Washington, some of the the other people doing it could, could conjure up the most outrageous exaggeration, and you would get sophisticated policy makers and and people believing it. And I remember thinking, No, that's not that's not happening. What were you talking about? So you could basically say, I remember walking into a meeting with a US official in the National Security Council, and he said, You know, I went and saw that Rambo four film last night with my wife because I knew I was going to be seen. Wow, you have to live through that. And I was like, No sir, I think it's the bad things happening in current state. But state, but not, not to that extent to kind of, he just hadn't really read anything on Myanmar. There was no sophisticated intelligence coming through. So we had to go see Sylvester Stallone, you know, duking it out in the in the mountains of Chiang Mai goodness, with a former absdf guy playing the evil Tama DAW commander. So, yeah, the level, I mean, I think that there was a lot of deep concern. And it's interesting reading. Scott marciels, the former ambassador. Scott marcielles Fantastic book where he talked about, when he was in East Asia and the Pacific Bureau, just how much time they spent on Bournemouth that surprised you.
I knew it at the time, because I knew Ambassador Marcio back then and would go to the State Department. I knew that there was a lot of attention, and that was coming from the White House, you know, Barbara Bush, the First Lady was, was very interested at the time, and lots of people in Congress, from Mitch McConnell to others, there was a huge amount of concern, yeah, and a lot of passion, and not necessarily the sophisticated information to back it up, to buttress it, yeah, and, and I'm not ever going to doubt The genuine concern people like Senator McCain, yeah. I think so and, and many others really had a bipartisan concern. Bipartisan, yeah, and, and, you know, a lot of US officials who would go to Burma in the 1990s would would really give the slurk leaders a really hard time, which was good, but then it wasn't necessarily followed up with a more sophisticated set of measures that balance sanctions which, you know, which were always going to be there regardless of their efficacy. And you know, I do think a rather unhealthy relationship developed then between the State Department and Congress, and I've never really believed in that level of activism, of where you know you go and demand that the State Department does something, knowing that they're not really capable of doing everything that you're demanding, and then you run to daddy in Congress and and get someone in Congress to write A nasty note to the White House to keep to me, that kind of confrontational approach is not necessarily healthy, and it's more about trying to inform people and and persuade them with evidence and with with clear logic. And unfortunately, evidence and clear logic have been largely absent in international activism on Myanmar, and I think post coup, it has been been better. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as it was 20 years ago or more, but I still think that there are flashes of, you know, you know you're exaggerating that for effect, knowing that you're kind of, you're jazzing it up a bit. That's not necessarily true. And I just never think that that's that's a commendable approach, because I think people decision makers, then if they realize they're being hoodwinked in some way, they're not, they're not going to trust you. And I think trust is, is the core strength of the human rights movement, and unfortunately, you see kind of people cutting corners and kind of exaggerating things, taking them out of context. And I've always been very frustrated that that seems to be acceptable when you're working on Myanmar and and I know it frustrates the hell out of lots of Burmese friends. It's like you miss cut. Casting my society is casting the conflict that I'm caught up in that you have that doesn't impact you. You're just a Western interloper coming in. So, yeah, I do think, you know, three decades ago, there were lots of people just, it was, it was the opportunity to kind of make Burma this, this, this poster child for for international human rights advancement. But that necessitated, you know, downplaying a lot of things. And I think 2007 and the demonstrations. And you know, to my, lot of people get angry when I say this, but it wasn't a Saffron Revolution. It was neither a revolution nor many people wearing saffron. And that kind of was conjured up by some activists I've never kind of really understood if the members of the SAN are of that movement. Came up with it themselves, but also in me and lots of colleagues at Human Rights Watch worked really hard on this report that we did on and the group of us did a lot of interviews. And what really came through was how the the pongi that were involved in these this was all about social distress. This was all about saying the people are suffering. You've got to do something, and we're in the vanguard of alerting the authorities to what you're doing to society. And we found that a far more compelling argument than this is a democracy and rights movement, which, you know we never I think it was wrapped up in that in some way. But this is really about No, the people are suffering and and and you've got to do something about it. And, and then this kind of veneration for the SAN are as an institution. And I remember thinking at the time, there's always going to be dark sides to any kind of and it was a very west coast hippie kind of thing. And people at Human Rights Watch loved it. Bertol Lindner actually did a really good report for Human Rights Watch on the resistance of the monks, which was really interesting to work with him on that. But bertle, I think, nailed it when he said, you know, don't go looking at a religious institution like this as an instrument of social change. It's, it's not the right one. You've got to actually build up stronger institutions. And this is, you know, the Sangha came out to to create space for the people to come in afterwards. They weren't going to lead a revolution. And I think that that was all kind of lost, and, and, and, and again, it was like, you know, the monks are kind of, you know, leading the charge. And it's like, no, it's kind of not really like that. And again, it was kind of this misstep, misstep in analysis that unfortunately happens from time to time when you're looking at Burma.
Host 1:07:53
It's such a compelling story. The visuals, the the way that Buddhism has, for you know, half a century has been portrayed in the West, and the way that we've understood or misunderstood it, and the the way that was crafted was really, it hit its mark. It hit every metric you could want in Western society, to, you know, to to send chills up and give goosebumps for, and, you know, good on them for being able to know how to how to impart and communicate a message to a foreign audience that had it struck. But then it did also leave a lot of questions in terms of, well, you know, the Sangha is, I often like to say that I believe the Burmese Sangha is so misunderstood because they all wear the same clothes, and they all have the same hairstyle. And so because of that, we tend to think that they're this kind of boring monolith organization that hasn't changed over time. And that's their internal message as well. We're following the 2500 years of the history of the Buddha and vinia and his regulations. And you know, it's actually when, and because this has been my own primary interest and passion in Myanmar for so long, and my own exploration being coming to the country, being someone actively engaged in meditation and wanting to learn the roots of that that you you do learn how dynamic this institution is, and how many different voices there are, and how and the struggles and the inner conflicts that they've had, to try to understand who they are and How they are living, and what their impact is with Burmese society, with lay society, and the different ideas and formulations of what that can mean, whether it's, you know, different meditation methods and who gets to practice and how those methods are verified by either your progress or by looking at the suttas and scholarship and you know, and so much else. And so I think that that, in and of itself, is, is something that causes something of a conundrum. Is these it looks like this boring, patriarchal, religious, traditional organization. It's, well, I was gonna say it's anything, but it is that, and it's also anything but at the same time. And you talk about contradictions as someone like me. Coming from this background, one of the things that I've tried to impart, it took me years, if not decades, to get to the point that I could even recognize what this fundamental contradiction was, because I myself was so confused, because I was coming, I was coming from a meditator background, more than a political background, and then started to encompass those views and coming from a meditator background, where many of my peers were meditators, meditation teachers, Westerners who become monks or nuns, who were dedicating their life to a spiritual practice, were suing the material world and et cetera, et cetera. That to me early, my early engagement with Myanmar, especially with the Sangha and Burmese Buddhism, was based on, this is a living embodiment of the foremost experts of mindfulness anywhere in the world. This is where the rest of the world comes to learn about mindfulness. And that is true. That is a true statement. We can get into. The other things about it that are complicated, but that itself is true, that there is that those people that are on a path of general spiritual wisdom, but in particular Theravada Buddhism, that they want to be able to discover and explore. You know, it's Myanmar. Is the golden land. It is the it is the place where you come and where you gain that and so it, and it's also the, if you read Eric Brown's book on lady Sayadaw, or some of the scholarship that's that's coming out on the Goenka movement, or Mahasi this, this is the birthplace of, and there's still a lot of and there's still a lot of scholarship left to be done to really understand this properly, but this is the birthplace of the worldwide mindfulness movement, you know, in a way that has taken different forms and has taken many different forms. But seeds were planted in 19th and 20th century Burma. And so, you know, the Sangha does represent this extraordinary call to mindfulness of all peoples, of all ages, of all backgrounds, being able to move beyond a Buddhist label and definition. And this is this is true. This is inspiring. This is wonderful. At the same time, the Sangha also represents a nationalist and anti Islam and racist and patriarchal. And there are those elements there as well. And I think for me, I struggled so much to understand and contemplate how to hold both those truths. I just didn't I didn't know how to live with one and deny the other, or to see where they came together. And it seems like such a simple formulation, but I finally, it took me, I don't know how, long, to be able to realize well, both are involved, and when we're saying the Sangha is like this or like that, we're not doing it justice. We're not doing we're not being accurate in our in trying to properly describe what an institution, what an institution is. Because all of those things are there. There are and it's not just those things. Those are it's not just that. There's these two polarities. There's so many more. Of course, there's the idea of it being a the social service, the immense social services it provides, of education and orphans and filling in the gaps and community arbiters and and food and now refugee centers and medical clinics and so much else that it's able to do in there as well. It's also a place where all the problems that have happened with the Myanmar economy, when someone doesn't have much of a place to go, they fall there. They become a monk or a caretaker or nun, or, you know, whether they're a child or an elderly person, or someone just down on their luck that they know they can always stop in there. And so I think this, there's, I think, as it's natural for the mind when it uncovers something new to want to give it a label or a definition to understand it and say, Okay, well, this is like this. And I think so it's natural that we would want to understand the San as either this is the source of the mindfulness movement and it's gone around the world, or this is this hateful, patriarchal institution that was really giving some kind of justification to the murderous regime and doing it in return for money and certificates and property and whatever else. But, you know, at the end of day, all these things are true, and we somehow, as it is with Myanmar, as it is with the AOS, with the military, with everything else as it is with the Sangha, we somehow have to be able to hold this, at times, incredibly uncomfortable, nuance and uncomfortable because it depends on which background you're coming from. If you're coming from the background of the meditator, let me tell you, it is very uncomfortable to be able to hold your gratitude and really hold it, while also acknowledging that this institution has done these terrible, hateful things. It is equally uncomfortable. And I can tell you, I've seen this from experience of conversations I've had someone coming from a human's right, human rights background or political background, and being able to hear or acknowledge the role that it's played in this mindfulness movement and in this education. And yet we somehow have to be broad enough to admit that this institution is doing both and doing a lot of other things as well. It's like Myanmar. It's really complicated.
David Mathieson 1:14:40
It definitely is, and it's, I think, going using that as an example of holding those two contradictions that you know from 2007 2008 when the Sangha was seen International, is this, you know, amazing force for social change. You. And staring down a brutal military dictatorship. And then six years later, this shock of Webu and yeah and the mother and and, and, and, you know, lurching, you know, into like all monks are evil. Yes, exactly No. Wait, yeah, and, and it was, you know, I had to approach the mava thar and that kind of extremism and nationalism from a human rights and political perspective. But I'll always be be thankful to friends who are scholars that you know were able and could speak Pali and Burmese was amazing, and actually spent time in in in researching the religious dimension of of the country, and who, who wouldn't, were really, I'll always be grateful for how they kind of talked me through a lot of, a lot of this complexity for me personally. But what I found was that trying to translate that complexity back to the Human Rights world and to journalism and to international advocacy was really difficult. Part of it was a and I saw this with perspectives around dorong San Suu Kyi as well. Like, how could you do this to me? And this sense of betrayal, I'm like, Well, you need to get over yourself, because it's not about you, it's it's about the country and the society. And there was this sense of like, Oh, damn. They always like, look, not all monks are raving psychopaths. Now, you can't lurch from one overblown narrative to the opposite. It went so fast, and it went so fast, and, and I remember engaging with the mabothar. I went up to in San sayaw and met some of the lay supporters. And they showed me all the piles of the the full race and religion petitions that they got all the signatures on and I remember some diplomats going, why did you do that? You need to understand the phenomena, and you do that by going and speaking to people. And I'm a human rights activist advocate that do I just speak to people that I know will agree with that's not how it works. It shouldn't be how it works. And I stayed in touch with them, and I went to the celebration event of the four race and religion laws with a Myanmar scholar who just happens to be a Muslim, which I thought was pretty interesting, but you know, he was incredibly good at explaining what was going on so many dimensions of this that that, given his research on this, and he had a very open minded, sophisticated approach to what was going on. And it struck me that there were, there were a handful of journalists, Western journalists there, there are a lot more Myanmar journalists, which makes sense, because they actually can understand what's going on around them and can process it so much better. But it struck me as, as you know, a lot of Western entities just were so like burnt from this lurch from, you know, 2007 to 2003 that we just don't want to understand the avatar, they're all screaming racist, yeah. And there was some very good work done by Western scholars and and Myanmar scholars, trying to unpack the avatar and just go look, this is not necessarily anti Islamic. It's pro Buddhist. And there's a lot of social dimensions to this that makes sense if you understand Anya society, if you understand their role, especially the role of women. You know, lay women supporters of the mapath are in and then this, this whole and then this, this whole and it was amazing how, how many people internationally, like in journalism and others were, I was like, I don't think the mapath is necessarily welcome in Rakhine, like they've got their own kind of Rakhine conservative outlook on this and, and, and there were marvatha chapters up in northern chan state that we would See, but they're basically there for for they're looking after IDPs and looking after poor people in in towns and things. It's they're not like they've probably got pretty odious views about Muslims and minorities. But where's the violence that you see around you? It didn't spark this kind of nationwide pogrom that a lot of people internationally were predicting, and that's the other thing that there's always this tendency to to jump into, into problems of in Myanmar, whether it's Facebook, or, you know, the marbuta or of other things, and kind of predict what it's going to look like. I'd say. You don't necessarily, you haven't assembled the evidence. You know to make that conclusion, yet, you know you've got to do your research and and that that was always a very frustrating thing to try in when when you're there as an individual, trying to understand it yourself, and recognizing that it's incredibly complicated, and yet you're being assailed with all of these international narratives of it's one thing or another, and realizing that there's people who just kind of, you know, and I think Twitter is an absolutely terrible invention, but you know, people see one thing, and then they assume that they know, and it's and again, something I alluded to before. It was incredibly frustrating. All these people have been to Burma, never really understood Analyt. Never really read Analyt, but consider themselves an expert. I remember the board of directors for Human Rights Watch came in 2014 and there's a big group about 80 people. And we, we all jumped on the busses, and we were going for Traders Hotel down around sulay PR, to to make a left hand turn, and then we're going around the city for meetings and and I remember some of the the higher ranking people there were like, Oh, David, is that, you know, there's a mosque on the on the the right hand corner of sulay PR? Is that the central mosque, and I was like, There's moss all the way up and down that street. Like, what? And I said, This is downtown. Is a Muslim quarter. And they were absolutely shocked. They assume that in 2014 the MAR ba thar would have burnt every mosque. And I was like, No. And I was like, you like, Okay, I'm taking you for a walk later. Like, you've got to walk around. You can walk into those mosques. I said, the synagogues right there, yeah. And they were like, what? And I said, Look, I think you've just been completely misinformed about I said, Look, there's a lot of tension and a lot of concerns, but there's also, this is a multicultural city, yeah. And there's a lot more religious tolerance than than you would think, not necessarily religious understanding, but people just getting on with things. And so, yeah, I was always struck by by how during that that transition, so called transition period, there was just a lot of misunderstanding about the state and society, not just the military, but also about religion and inter ethnic relations as well.
Host 1:22:24
It is. It's incredible how the macro could have certain kind of stories and narratives, but the Micro has kind of a different life, and not that one negates the other, but that you have to again. You have to encompass this view and recognize where it's hold this nuance of where things don't really line up, and somehow you have to just hold that. And I was telling someone the story the other day that I hadn't thought about this for a while, but it was, it goes in line with what you were saying about this diversity. At one time the the Israel I met the Israeli ambassador, and he wanted to take me to an old Jewish cemetery and show it to me. And so we, we got in a car, and his driver and bodyguard of the car was was Roman Catholic Burmese. Roman Catholic Burmese. We arrive at the gates of the cemetery, and the gatekeeper is Hindu, Hindu woman. That's that's overseeing the cemetery. We walk in, he shows me and the graves are very unusual. And he explains, these are in Iraqi Jewish style. So as 100 year old Iraqi Jewish style grave. And while we're there, I hear coming from one corner, the Muslim call the prayer. But then all around there are Buddhist monasteries with novices chanting. And I think, where else in the world at a single moment, a single moment in time? I've just counted what six major religions that are all happening simultaneously and coming from different cultural backgrounds. And so it really is remarkable, the the that depth of diversity, cultural and religious, ethnic diversity, that you experience and but then also going, just going back to some of your observations about the way that these narratives come about, scrolling on Twitter, getting a quick headline, I'm recalling a conversation we had here at a podcast with a Shin COVID. Really recommend listeners to check that out if they haven't. It was one of the ones that really stayed with me as a host and really taught me a lot in many, many ways. But one of the things is he talked about when the journalist started descending during the so called transition, and speaking wanting to talk to monks about the rise of MABA. He reached out while they were in town talking to Ratu. He was saying, hey, talk to me and talk to us. We don't agree with what they're doing. We don't like it. We're fighting against it. We're another another. We're positioning our monks in the Sangha in a different way. And talk to him and talk to many others, not a monk like he's not. He's not a Buddhist monk at all. He's a charlatan in robes and in in COVID is telling none of them. No one would talk to him. The way he put it was that a tiger attacking a man is not a story, but a man attacking a tiger is and so a again, going back to. This kind of trope of a peace loving Buddhist faith that is being violent. This is, this is something that attracts, and you reference that Time magazine cover the face of Buddhist terror. You know, I remember exactly the moment in time when I saw it. I was not engaged when that came out. I was not so much in the doing, so much with training, which is my background of the political I was. I'd spent years at that point at different monasteries in rural areas, so I was coming from very much of a meditative kind of monastic standpoint. And the cover of that, the cover and the title and everything, it just it shocked and it floored me. Later I came to know Hannah beach the right the author of that article. And over time, I started to ask her about the nature of that article and kind of gently share the my, my reaction to that cover and to which was not a positive reaction. It was It would take a long time to kind of flesh out coming from my, my coming from this monastic background for several years, and kind of knowing the colonial past and how and and in what ways the experience of colonialism had straightened this Buddhist faith and the fear that that they that, that it was at risk, and kind of the the fears that I felt this cover playing into and as I talked to her, you know, Talk to Hannah beach about it. She floored me and saying, Oh, I hated that cover. That was the last thing I wanted. She said that was, wasn't even what the article was about. Absolutely, I had no I pleaded with them not to do it. And she said that. I was like, and she started to tell me what the article is about. I started to think, and I was like, oh, you know, I actually never read the article.
David Mathieson 1:26:37
I actually never even read the article is actually quite good. It's actually really interesting. Hannah is fantastic. Neither. There was a huge disconnect between and I would say to people, read the article, just rip off the front cover, try and ignore it, even though it's impossible. And read the article because it's comparing Thailand and Burma, and it's, you know, I thought she did a pretty good job. I've heard some people criticize the article, but I actually really liked it, because she was really trying to get into something deeper. And I think that's the unfortunate thing that was missed, is that Hannah was actually trying to to address these contradictions, but it was so sensationalist.
Host 1:27:16
Yes, absolutely, that cover, and the way that it called out another thing we talked about, how fast these things shifted, and it reminds me that I was some years ago. I was reading a fiction book about Burma. I don't remember what it was, but somehow I thought I hadn't heard of it until some time. So I had this idea that I think this was like, you know, mid 2010s this book came out, and so I'm reading it. And there's a scene in the book, where some in the first chapter, where some monks are kind of in the shadows in this building. And so, because I think the book is written in a transition, I'm kind of in my mind thinking, Oh, these are kind of sinister monks, and they're doing some insidious action. And instead, the monk, just the monk plays this noble role of, kind of taking in someone from the street that's in danger, and protecting them, and speaking some words of wisdom and protecting that. And I'm just reading this thinking like, what is going on? There's some disconnect in my mind what's happening. I can't really figure out what it is. And then I go to the copyright page, and I check and it's like, you know, published 22,008 or whatever it was. And I was like, oh, that's, that's what's going on. The monks are in the 2008 mold, not the 2015 mold. And it was so fascinating to see how these narratives had changed so fast. And then they went into, you know, popular fiction, non fiction, journalism, scholarship, policy, everything, because it was just that, that huge shift from one of the other.
David Mathieson 1:28:38
Yeah, definitely. And I think that there was also that time I was, I was involved with a religious study group that one of the Western donors put on, and it was Buddhist monks, a Muslim woman, Hindu Catholic, I think that was, it was a really interesting group. And it was, you know, I was doing seminars on like the citizenship law and list of under 35 national races and and challenging some basic assumptions. And it was, it was fascinating to hear from them about about their perspectives, but also quite, quite shocking how, you know, I, I there's this very western compulsion. You know, religions for peace and you know, if we all get together and everything will be great. I'm very skeptical of that, because I think when you try and force that, it becomes labored and probably creates more friction than it does peace. And so I'm always very skeptical in in in Myanmar kind of trying to use religious definitely use religious figures for for trying to call for calm and and everything. But, you know, and we've seen that with with Cardinal BA. Yeah, you know, disappointing a lot of Catholics, although some of my friends who are Catholics, like, No, we never liked him to start with. And so trying to reflect on, you know, maybe, you know, using, maybe you should try and understand all of these religious institutions better, try and use them. And I do think there was a lot of donors going, No, this will work and and in the same way that that when I speak to young people from kitchen, there's not an overwhelming veneration of the kitchen Baptist Convention. You know, a lot of them, especially women, see it as a as a controlling institution, as a coercive institution. And, you know, and I think even a lot of I remember speaking to the man Suu saya door in LA show several years ago, and asking him, you know, are you speaking to all of these different armed groups, the restoration Council of Shan, state, Shan State, Progress Party, San state, I mean north and and others, because, you know, there's a lot of suffering up here and people. And he was telling me and colleagues when we went to visit him, he said, I just had like, several 100 IDPs here from Nam to and I sent them back this morning because, you know, the fighting stopped. But he said, drive to Nam Tun and speak to them, and and, and we asked him about what role him and other members of the Sangha were playing in kind of conflict mediation. And he said, it's, it's gone too far for that. And he said, you know, we went to this religious ceremony, and a few of us got together like, you know, senior saya doors, that got together and said, look, the people are really suffering, and there's lots of human rights violations that these ethnic armed organizations are perpetrating. And he said he approached with four or five of these, these sayadaws approached some of the armed group leaders and said, Look, we really want to talk to you about this and try and engage you and and they said, You beggars have come. You've got your gifts now, go away. I was like, what? He goes, Yeah, they were really disrespectful. And he said, they just look, they're stuck into these cycles of conflict, and they're all fighting each other for territory and everything. And he said, there's just no role for us to play at this time. And he said, I don't think there's anything that could be done. It's like this, this period of desperate fighting between all of these groups that you've got to get through. And so, yeah, I don't think, I think that that like a lot of things, during that transition, there was a lot of assumptions about what we think we know, and not a lot of deeper understanding, and a lot of international systems bought in and imposed on structures that that that the people spending the money didn't necessarily fully understand.
Host 1:32:53
Can you give an example of that, social cohesion?
David Mathieson 1:32:54
It was a buzzword you go to, you know, different offices and embassies and around Yangon, everyone was like, social cohesion will win the day. And I just, you know, I speak to friends from Rakhine, they're like, you know, social cohesion was an absolute joke.
Host 1:33:13
Do you mean the way they went about it, or the very idea,
David Mathieson 1:33:17
the way that they went about it? And I think the idea of it was very different from a Myanmar, and I'm thinking of Rakhine here, moreover, that people I would speak to when Rakhine was like, Why can't you Westerners, let us reconnect in an organic way between Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim and other communities and that were involved in Christians and and others. You're constantly coming up here with a timetable and a workshop kind of thing, writing your reports. Maybe if you weren't involved, we would be getting back together. And I remember an official, an official of the Myanmar state. So not someone that I would, I would fully trust. But, you know, he said, you know, after the floods in 2015 which were particularly bad in many parts, and he said the community started that had been divided by the violence of 2012 it's like, you know, they're, they're starting to come back together and kind of share things. And he said, just you guys stay out of it, because if you turn up with all your programs, you're going to mess it up. It's their communities. Let them come back. And of course, that that's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be fraught with with and given the imbalance in the rights that the two communities had, it was always going to be very difficult. But I did see a lot of people kind of, you know, we need to do social cohesion, and it's like you you're casting the society as sick before you've even done a proper diagnosis. And who are you? And I'm not saying that I understand the social relations between different ethnic groups, but I understand. They exist and And yet, there was a lot of programming that was just like, well, I've got two years to make everyone be nice and happy. And it's like, You're doing this to make large scale development projects more palatable, and peace processes kind of stick, but you kind of Yeah, I thought there was a lot of flawed approaches, and I think it, it, it, it, it frustrated a lot of communities. From what, what I was hearing, it was just like, Oh, God, these foreigners come in and tell us how we are and how we should be. And like, how would you feel if I came to your country and did that?
Host 1:35:37
Hmm, there's so much money and ego on the line, though, from these it's hard to imagine a foreign approach being able to change course when, as we mentioned, Myanmar, is this last final frontier that's at that stage. And to think of the the ego that's on the line, the reputations that are on the line, that that were just, you know, flying such hyper speed at the time of different individuals, personalities, organizations that were just in full belief that they were the ones that were going to save the day and lead the way and the money that's there for it, it's hard to imagine ever trying to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
David Mathieson 1:36:14
Absolutely not. Yeah, once, once it it started, and everyone predicted that it was going to be a gold rush when it started. Mm, started, or even before it started. And it was even worse than, than than I feared. And there was just so much folly, ego, competition, yeah, you know, competition between western states, even before we get into competition between the West and Japan and China. And I remember, think it was about 2013 and this very senior American official was was coming through town, and I was at a briefing with with other colleagues, quite diverse colleagues, and this American official came through and was like, Yes, what's going on? And we started telling her about, you know, Aung San Suu Kyi is not the beacon of democracy and and rights and and Buddhist nationalism was on the rise, but it's been kind of miscast in some ways, and, and, and we were just from my briefing, I said, look, the military hasn't changed. It's just as abusive. Abusive as ever, and and some of the reforms are genuine, absolutely, but I think that there's, there's just way too much optimism. And she was furious. She was like, I've got to go to an apron drawing San Suu Kyi for lunch on the weekend. What are you telling me? And this other American Fisher was like, Look, we're just finding out that this country is more complicated than we thought. Finally, and, and there was a lot of that, I think in 2013 there was a lot of Wait, hold on. We'd cast, this is success story. What do you mean? There's racist Burmese people who don't like Muslims? Yeah, it's like, Well, come on. And what I didn't like from that was this kind of dramatic overreaction, or Burmese or racist, like, well, that's a racist thing to say, Yeah. And, and I think there was, there was, you can still see this happening now. There was this tendency to kind of cast the Rohingya in a light that I think, kind of canceled out lots of other perspectives. And I think it's only right and just to address the the immense suffering of the Rohingya population, statelessness. But I do think, in a way that that you know from human rights journalism and even a lot of political actors, and you could see this in Washington as well, that somehow the Rohingya would replace dorsu In the Western imagination. And it was almost like, okay, we're tempering our perspectives on Burma now because of what you're treating that that minority, and on the one hand, it's like, yes, it's minority that's been living under apartheid conditions for for many years and faces horrific structural and and armed violence, but there are other people in the country too, and you've got to kind of balance that out with a With a deeper understanding. And yes, they're probably the the community treated the worst in the country, but there's lots of other communities treated incredibly badly as well, from current state and even to Sagan like you know, people living in crushing poverty. So again, I think that there was a misstep on the part of the international community would lurch to a kind of a major narrative, instead of, you know, trying to have multiple narratives and and, and again, it was like, Okay, we've come in in 2012 and there's going to be elections in 2015 the idea that Western countries weren't involved in. In rigging that election to get Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD in powers is ludicrous. Everyone was doing that. That had to be part of the script. And I'm not suggesting that there was corruption, but there was certainly a lot of we need the NLD to win in order to unleash the really big aid that we're coming in. And we're going to shape Burma into into our image, and there'll be a peace process and massive development and everything. So yeah, it was, it was fascinating to see that that was that kind of master narrative that the West was, was was pushing, and part of it was that Suu Kyi is now flawed because she's not speaking up for the Rohingya. So we've got to lift the Rohingya up to kind of shame her into kind of doing something better, which backfired quite dramatically, in my view. But yeah, I think that the history of the transition. I know mafi de San Chong has written a new book, which I haven't read yet, but I've heard it's fantastic, and I do think a retrospective on that decade is necessary if you're going to be moving forward and for the West to admit its mistakes and try their best not to repeat them. Right?
Host 1:41:12
Absolutely, you've been talking about narratives. We've been talking about narratives a lot, and I want to go deeper into what a narrative is, as well as how it's played out in Burma, we talked about the narratives of the military, of the Sangha, of Aung San Suu Kyi that morphed into the Rohingya. And I want to go back to something you said earlier, which I had bookmarked, which was this, this reference how sometimes when in Washington, when there was a tendency to want to exaggerate certain things to fit a narrative, and then that became problematic in and of itself. And one of the things I was thinking, as you said that is, yes, that's true, it's but it's also challenging to be able to tell incredibly nuanced and incomplete and confusing and complex information to someone watching. We know watching works, to be able to tell that to someone and have them grapple with a lack of answers with a complexity that doesn't lend itself to easy solutions with a contrasting histories that are not really matching or lining up. And so the way the mind works, and we know this with political campaigns across the world, is that we you need to be able to fit something into a narrative. I think that Burma has been an example of of even the reductionism that's happened in Burma has exceeded even what narratives elsewhere can be. I think narratives are by definition reductionist, and that's a necessary thing. We have to understand the world by telling ourselves a story about it, and then we have to learn facts which break that story. And we have to, if we're mature enough and strong enough and courageous enough and vulnerable enough we have to be because sometimes those those narratives we tell are pleasant for ourselves. We whether they're personal or national or ethnic or whatnot, we have to break those narratives to be able to properly form new ones and and so on, this subject of, of the question of of where we are with our narrative building in Burma and and one of the things that I've heard is how difficult it's been in this current environment to tell any kind of narrative at all, that no one has really that I've seen, no one has really figured out to say what, what is the, what are the facts that we're constructing into a story to tell that narrative. And I think the initial, if there's one narrative, I can say that came out, and this was soon after the coup, was this very unfortunate narrative that, well, this is a Buddhist country. Now they're getting their Buddhist karma, because these were the people that did this thing with Rohingya, yeah. And that was and, and then there was but, but there was also this sense, we talked a number of people on the podcast that were in various American western circles that there was just simply no one wanting to touch Burma. Just it was it was dead. It was gone. And that hasn't really changed. There has not been, we have not seen from any quarter of any, anyone that's marching in the streets for Gaza or raising money for Ukraine or talking about Syria, or whatever else it's, Burma is just not, is just barely even poked, because there's so much fear and betrayal is the word I've been used you talked about that in reference to Aung San Suu Kyi. Why would she betray us, as if she owed us something? But, but, but that itself stemmed from a flawed narrative of incomplete information, of what we wanted to believe rather than what's there, which then we can go back and have a little bit of sympathy for, because it's extremely complex and we need to fit something into a narrative. All narratives are, by definition, flawed.
David Mathieson 1:44:29
I think that there's been attempts at creating narratives, but they were artificial and exaggerated, I think, in especially when it comes to some of the stuff around effective control and territorialization and what I call township determinism, that, you know, the resistance has taken over this number of townships, therefore winning. And it's like that. You know, I can understand why some people might want to use that as a as an advocacy tool, but I, I just don't think it landed. Um. Them well, because I just don't think people had the attention span to really fully understand it, and then kind of, and I think that led into a narrative of imminent victory, yeah, I thought was a very damaging narrative, yeah, and that especially when you know you can't be calling for imminent victory repeatedly, and you know, it's exhausting and being wrong, and eventually you become the boy who cried wolf. Yeah, and I think that's really been part of the narrative over the past few years, the people in Washington and Western capitals have been told, we're, you know, we're, we're beating the hell out of the saka San and we're about to win. It's like, okay, well, you said that a year ago, and where are we? And I think one disruption to that narrative really was Operation 1027, and I, I remember in the couple of weeks after that, spending more time chatting with Western journalists than I had probably in the past year. There was this real sense of like, what is this? And at the time, I was still processing, I still still trying to process operation 1027, there's so much that we don't know. And, and, and I said, Look, you've got to be careful in not fueling, further fueling a narrative of imminent victory, because that's just not fair. And also, there's immense suffering going on around the country, and it's there's some of that we're winning narrative I find incredibly distasteful, because it's dehumanizing that you're sitting far away from Myanmar and you're not getting your village Moe town and sitag or being displaced in Rakhine. And so I do think you know that I was saying to people you've got to if you're going to create this narrative of like, yeah, the resistance is winning. Yes, in that part of the country, they are. But there's also parts of the country where they're winning, but they're being really quite circumspect about it. In kuthule and in Khin state, there's lots of gains, but those groups are just keeping it really quiet and I do think that kind of, Wow, the resistance can win, became a narrative after Operation 1027, yeah. And then, like, a lot of narratives, as you said, you know, the constructed, there was a lot of exaggeration, and I think that's where the narrative was lost. It's like you had this, this opportunity, I think, to kind of go, okay, the military is diminished, but it's not defeated. And so what does it take? And also, if your imminent narrative, if your imminent victory narrative, holds together, what's the plan for the eventual collapse? The nudie doesn't have one. I think some of the EOS do, but, and that's where it was, like, you should have anticipated that in speaking to Western policymakers, because that's what they're going to ask. What comes next? Who's going to take over? Ah, it'll be, it'll be, you know, the you know, it'll be the Garden of Earthly Delights, it'll be fantastic. No, like the end of most wars come with more wars. And so I think that was a missed opportunity to kind of shape a narrative. And it's not just the national unity government that I think missed that opportunity, because they were being they were part of that imminent narrative, imminent victory narrative, which unfortunately, I think, has served to discredit them even further in Washington and other places. And a lot of the armed resistance don't do advocacy in Washington. I mean, the k 3c kind of does in regional states, and they speak to to Western diplomats. And so I think that that was a missed opportunity. I think that there was some some very good journalism around it. I think that it was good to see that kind of spiking in interest and now that. But that was several months ago in operation 1027, part two, over the past month, not much interest at all, even though they just took over last year. And that, to me is, I'm telling journalists, this is unprecedented, yeah, yeah, they took over the North East command, yeah. And, you know, having driven past that, that horrible command base, you know, hundreds of times, you know, I used to think, what would it take to actually get rid of them from here? And I just thought, there's no way that you're going to be able to do this and bang. The Brotherhood's done it with their Mandalay, PDF and and, and BP, LA and other allies. And you know, it's, I'm really astonished that there hasn't been more international attention, because in many ways, it's more stunning than the first phase, I think, since operation 1027, but I do think one element and you, you, you approach this head on, which is, you know, there is no interest in in Burma. I think we really need to start inquiring why that is, and addressing it. Because one thing. That one narrative that was attempted, I think, was that this is a different Myanmar society. Since the coup, we've all seen the error of our ways, and we recognize the suffering of the Rohingya, and we're all one big happy family now, and there's unprecedented cooperation. I don't necessarily think that that resonated in the international community, because there was very little proof. And I do think that there are a lot of younger people who are thinking about things in a more complicated, open minded way, and are seeking more cooperative approaches to toppling the regime. But I do think there's a sedentary kind of perspective from a lot of older people, just like, No, we don't really need to change. We just will win eventually, and then we go back to being the NLD and and I think that's frustrating the development of a more positive international narrative, because it's just confusing to people. But I do think looking at that, why is it that there is just no and, you know, I've noticed over the past year or two that that the first year or two after the coup was down the United Nations and down the international community and and we're being betrayed and, and I do think it's a more positive spin that I hear from from especially younger me and my friends are like, well, we need to get over that. Yeah, realize that it's not coming. So when we win, we get to say we did it ourselves. Yeah? And I find that an incredibly confident and and positive approach, that instead of getting angry at the United Nations and the Americans for not coming to bail you out, realize they were never going to do it anyway, and you're on your own, and there's there's a liberation in that. There is yeah, and there's enough recognition of some of the good humanitarian assistance it's being furnished by the West and some other support. But that when it comes to the arm wing and the and the civil disobedience movement, they're on their own. And that, to me, is a pretty good narrative, like, we don't need you, and we are self sufficient, and that's the kind of thing that is going to get more people wanting to come and help you. Yeah, you look at the all the massive attention on the Karenni Interim Executive Council, which is, in my view, in danger of being smothered by too much foreign assistance and too many people wanting to come in and find a success story, but that resulted in them getting their act together. And then people kind of go, oh, that's a positive narrative. Look at that. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's people from different political factions, from different generations. It's older and younger, their their gender representation is fantastic. And it's their ideas that they're coming up with that is good. I think the narrative really should be one of self sufficiency and success. And like, we don't necessarily need you great and one, because it's true, and two, because it's a forceful kind of narrative that I think was sparked by Operation 1027, and its initial successes. So yeah, I think that's the don't wait. I think if there's any lesson, don't wait for the West to come up with a narrative on you which probably be wrong. Come up with it yourself, right and and propagate that. And I think that's where you generate interest from a very disinterested, depressed world hurtling towards a probably quite destructive US presidential election and bad news, kind of everywhere else.
Host 1:53:40
You talk about your interest and scene and question you've been asking so many of your Myanmar friends, of, what do you think comes next, and what kind of what are those next stages? How is it going to be built, and the uncertainty around that, which no one really has the answers for. But the angle I want to ask you is about in this so called transition period, you talked about the mess of the egos, the money, the infighting, the competition for this last frontier of Myanmar during those 2010s and so when? And I also want to ask you this, because you're so tapped into this international community in the way that they engage and also misunderstand in their engagement, their presence and interaction in Myanmar, and so looking at this international community and knowing them, and knowing their background, knowing the kind of global context, and what Myanmar represents in that, do you see a kind of repeat of if there, if there does come stability, if the military is defeated, if There is this kind of messy period where we're trying to get things back on track, do you see a kind of repeat of these western donors and agencies coming in, being territorial, doing just the same thing they did again, and not learning anything? Or do you see any different kind of engagement?
David Mathieson 1:54:57
I remember calling. On U min tain in the the MPs village in Naypyidaw in 2016 and he gave me this sly look, and he said, Myanmar is the final frontier. The Final Frontier is a meat market. And he, he kind of meant, he basically said, this is just you guys are all weird and and he went on to be kind of critical, but resigned to the fact that, you know, there were all these people coming in and, you know, the short answer would have to be yes. I don't think the international community knows any other way of doing it. Then, messy, competitive, wasteful, arrogant and stupid. It's it's just the way that they do things. I think the only difference would be that that that there'd be more open acknowledgement that there were lots of mistakes made during during that period. But whether they learn from those mistakes, I'm afraid I don't have much hope, because you can see a lot of the mistakes, speaking of various friends about this over the past year, and it's like, you know that period of the peace process when it's clear that things weren't going very well, but no one wanted to rock the boat or whatever. The cliche comes out, there'll be a spoiler that was, that was the one thing I heard quite a lot of. And I can see the same thing. There's a lot of really stupid decisions that donors are making that are wasteful of money. And you seen now, oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Millions of dollars is going to waste. Is there examples you can give the joint Peace Fund, which has been an emesis of mine for quite some time, I just think, is an abomination that shouldn't exist. It's a it's a gangster cabal of of several donors who, you know there is no peace to actually support, and they've made some incredibly bad decisions about where some of that money goes. They've also made some good decisions and are supporting some really good Myanmar organizations. But that, to me, is when, when donors actually just, it's the Sleep of Reason, of International Development, and instead of, and I've said this in print, and I've said it to two people involved, I've said it to diplomats like you should all just the waste of millions of dollars in your self importance is just abominable. You should be giving that money to the Myanmar media, which is starving, and give it to Myanmar organization, but you're hiring a large number of foreigners who having no effect, and I saw this during the peace process and doing the same thing now. And yet, the capacity of foreigners, usually foreign white males, to exaggerate their importance. I wouldn't say exaggerate. I would say construct and make believe that their own self importance. And I just I find some people who are involved in the peace process still getting paid by the Joint Peace Fund that made mistakes that they should be in prison for, in my view. And that sounds, you know, like very strong language, but, you know, you look at that, I think there's a lot of people acting as if there is not a nationwide war going on inside the country. Yes, yeah, for sure. And the number of sleep walkers and shape shifters wandering around that don't have any sense of urgency or let alone compassion, let alone humanity. It's just like, No, this is a technical fix for something that's not a technical fix. So, you know, I do think that there's some some good things when it comes to international aid. You and I think that there's been this, like post coup realignment of international assistance, especially cross border assistance, that took some time to shape, and I think now is actually paying off, and there's more resources going cross border that and going to communities. But that that, that took some time and again. It was the evidence that, that that led to it. But then there's, I mean, the absurdity of the international development approach is, you know, they make stupid mistakes everywhere they go, and a very reluctant to reform in ways that that they should. And localization is a big is a big thing. I think that they can do a lot more about that. But there's also a lot of international presence that just doesn't need to be here. Yeah, there's a lot of what da. Of a graver called bullshit jobs, and there's a lot of of waste and and I seeing increasingly a lot of Myanmar friends get resentful as as resources become more scarce and competition becomes more fierce, the resentment towards foreigners who are just achieving, contributing nothing but getting paid a fortune is, is, is unforgivable. But unfortunately, I don't. I think that there's just so many snouts in the trough that that that reforming that to any positive degree is almost impossible, right?
Host 2:00:33
Yeah, the last question I want to ask you comes back to this question of narrative, and the centerpiece of the Burma narrative for so long was Aung San Suu Kyi. And you yourself even said that in your one of the early hooks and interests that you have was in her figure, what she represented and how, and I think many of us fell in love with the image of of this pure goodness in such fighting against such tyranny and for a better reality that we all hoped could have, and that was a love affair that many fell out of in painful and difficult ways. And so I wonder if you can describe your in your own words, your your early perception of Aung San Suu Kyi as a person, as the ideals that she represented. You mentioned meeting her and the what you sensed from that interaction, and then in as your interconnection and relationship with Myanmar, as a country and a people strengthened, and as you did more of your own reading and travels and everything else, and Aung San Suu Kyi, as she was released from prison, started to be able to to speak for herself, instead of letting I think when, when, when one can't speak for oneself, you can write whatever story you want. And I think that's what did happen for some time when she didn't have her own voice, people gave her the voice that they wanted her to have. And so I imagine it was also a long come, long process in coming out of that love affair as well for yourself. And if you can describe that disillusionment or journey you went on.
David Mathieson 2:02:09
Yeah, I mean, in 1995 when she got out of house arrest, it was, you know, front page news around the world. And I think she caught the imagination of a lot of people, and she was really the figurehead of Burma for for most of the world. And, yeah, it was, it was a real privilege to meet her in 1996 and we had a very wide ranging chapter. I mean, I was a young just starting out graduate student from Australia who had smuggled her first laptop in a few weeks before. So she wanted to meet to say, thank you very gracious. And we talked about, I asked her why it was the military had all of these nasty red and white billboards crush all internal and external. And I said, What? Why are they in English? And she said something that I always thought was was interesting. She goes, in their mind, they probably don't think it's important if it's not in English. I said, But Ultra nationalists and, you know, people don't like the West. And she was, yeah, you know, there are massive contradictions. And then, you know, there were things that that happened over those years. She was released again in 2002 then the military tried to murder her and Depa yen, and in 2003 I was still very supportive, partly because of her as a figurehead, but also because the scenes of her traveling around in 2012 when she went on these tours and the crowds that came out, I was like, this is vindication that she is wildly popular, and she does represent this, this movement to stare down the military and and I, I still do think that that was something really quite remarkable during those years. And yet I could also see that there was, I think it was taking a toll. I think whenever she came out and she kind of spoke, she was still very determined, but there was a steeliness, I think that started developing. And then with the big, you know, transition, I thought she made some, some really quite deplorable missteps. I thought becoming the head of the investigative commission over the leopard Aung, I remember seeing the footage of the the community from lepton yelling at her, yeah. And I was like, yeah, the Crown has certainly slipped. And I thought it was a political miscalculation. And then we we had. The when the Human Rights Watch board and the executive director at the time, Ken Roth, traveled to naked or we met. We had an hour with U San and you know, we met other ministers, including the Deputy Minister defensun and many others. But when we went to Parliament to see the head of the Rule of Law Committee, she just didn't want to meet us and and that, to me, was a level of churliness Like, you know, you know, not expecting a pat on the back, but you know, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty had been doing a lot of work for lots of different people, and taking half an hour out of your busy schedule, you know, just basically to acknowledge it. And some of her Western advisors actually were horrified and said to me, you know, we're really sorry. We just couldn't convince her, yeah, and that's when I was I was like, Okay, this is, this is done. She's, she's not going to be a friend to human rights promotion. And then I went to the the press conference in 2015 at the compound in takeado la and she just had it all wrong. And I, you know, I'd come to this conclusion before, but it really kind of hammered at home. It's, it's like, look, it's not just that you're a disappointment ethically. You're just not a very good politician. And so you had to kind of balance that realization with the reality that she was also incredibly popular, and that 2015 and also in 2020 in those elections, they were a vote as much for her as they were against the military. And I think that was the powerful combination that she was like, yeah, it's not just me. You're voting for you're voting to keep you know this, you know this mafia and khaki out of the country's critical affairs and but I do think there's, there's some things that she did that probably need to be better understood. I think the way she dealt with the marvatha was either very skillfully done or a bit of good fortune. I'm not, I'm not sure, but I think that was quite effective. And then other things she did that were absolutely disastrous and and I think her, her reputation is always going to be mixed up, I think, for two reasons. One, going to the Hague was it for a lot of people. And then two, messing up the negotiations with the military head of the coup. I think was that. That's what I hear from a lot of people, that everything else she might have done before that that was, that was one of her greatest failings. And I think it's, I don't know, I I think the international community has lost so much interest in in her, and there's no recovery, I think, I mean, if she was released, yeah, there's definitely going to be a lot of of interest, but it's going to be tempered with a lot of ill feeling, I think, towards her. And I think that that's quite tragic, because her and 20,000 other people do not deserve to be in prison. And I think sometimes Western criticism of her misses that point, that they've all been unfairly incarcerated under completely bogus charges. And so yeah, unfortunately, she's, she's been an agent of tarnishing her own legacy, I think. And that's that's really sad for her and for the country. But I also think trying to think positively about all of these realities is that I hate it, and again, it's one of these western narratives. So who's the next Aung? San Suu Kyi. It's like you don't want the next song, San Suu Kyi, you want a thin Zhang Li You want Bo taser, you know you want new people that are that are you know you want Maui from, from the K, N, D, F. You want people doing amazing stuff in civil society and and in lots of different fields, to be leaders. I mean, Myanmar needs multiple leaders. They don't need one figurehead that that's that's been proven to just not work. And I think if there's any lesson, that positive lesson to learn from from door Suu, basically, to have younger, more open minded and diverse leadership that is befitting of the country, I think, and not necessarily this wintry, austere kind of person who kind of, I thought that Dorsey kind of looked down her nose. I. I think at a lot of people, in some of her speeches, it's really like, oh yeah, that's just a little bit yeah, tone deaf. I would say, yeah. I so yeah. I don't think she should be in prison. But also, I think there should be a more realistic assessment of her legacy, and there's a lot of unfairness. I actually thought that Wendy lorien's book on Aung San Suu Kyi was absolutely fantastic, and I think captured so much depth, even though it's a very short book, and Wendy, Wendy just put together the best kind of vignettes and crafted it in such a way that you really kind of got to the heart of dorsu contradictions. And I think it's a quietly powerful book that everyone should read. And I think that that not these huge, big kind of biographies that wrapped up. I think Wendy really captured her, and that that would be the book I recommend to anyone to read to try and understand Aung San Suu Kyi.
Host 2:11:02
So you talked a bit about her legacy and describing the ups and downs and trajectory of that. I'm also wondering about your own personal sentiment and emotions, because this was someone that you personally invested a lot of hope in, and that drew you into the struggle and conflict. So just from an emotional standpoint. It as you as you started to parse the tea leaves and realize that things were not the way you thought they were originally. I wonder what effect that had on you, given the hope that you had placed on her and the hope that she had for the country as well.
David Mathieson 2:11:37
I think you got a tempered disappointment with remember people asking me this, like, you know, Are you disappointed? I said, Yeah, but it's not about me. It's about 54 million people in the country. And you know, sometimes as foreigners, is all about I think Burma excites so much emotion in lots of foreigners who feel probably a lot stronger about it than they really need to at times. And I feel that way about drawing San Suu Kyi. It's not about me or my emotions. I can be disappointed, but it's really what's best for the country moving forward. And I would much rather sit down and listen to Burmese friends what they think about Doron San Suu Kyi, because I think that there's a lot more sophistication and and and varied emotions than you know, a foreigner who was complicit in projecting our kind of values onto her without asking her permission first. And so, yeah, I mean, I, think that whenever that kind of disappointment comes in, you've got to avert your disappointment, to look for something positive and look at who's doing really good work. You find that there's a lot of people doing great work, so, yeah, try and dwell on it, because it's there's a lot of really positive things going on, and I think that's where people's energy should be directed, not into kind of any kind of bitter recriminations of a me, Suu, disappointing you. I just think Don't wallow in that and move forward and try and learn some practical lessons about various approaches to very difficult circumstances and also how to deal with the West, because she, you know, I think again, Ambassador Marcy ELS book, I think, is fantastic for that that period. Also Erin Murphy's fantastic book, Burmese haze, I think does a real service to kind of uncovering how, how DORS Suu was negotiating with the Americans, and sanctions and things. And I would highly recommend both those books to to have that understanding and and a better kind of insight into how she wasn't necessarily the skillful of negotiators and but also how American kind of interests were colliding with with, her relative indecision and competing American interests, it's you know. So, yeah, I still think you know, up until I think that there's got to be a more critical kind of in depth understanding of how the West constructed her. You know, it's always about her, yeah, and it's like, I think we should turn the gaze on ourselves and see. I'm sure you and listeners to the podcast have seen these horrible videos that came out, like 15 or so years ago, that it was us campaign for Burma that did. It was all these celebrities, and it was like, Woody, Woody Harrelson not coming out of his trailer until Burma was free. And Jennifer Aniston was like, Okay, well, let's get that done. And Tila Tequila is like a teacher who's like, doing like a strip. Over who general Tantra. I mean, they were really, really terrible. And Jim Carrey does one, and can't pronounce Aung San Suu Kyi very well. And it was just that. And then there was this other thing that, that, and I've been trying to write something on this for quite some time about the rise and fall of I call it the rise and fall of studio 54 that, you know, so many people in the West Saw Suu Kyi and and, you know, 54 take it away and is like this, this redoubt of resistance. And yet a lot of it was just projection, and some of it kind of creepy, like at the u2 concert, when everyone had the dorsu mask, I find there was a lot of Western activism on Suu Kyi that that was really quite ridiculous and and unsettling, and having absolutely no idea, having never been to the country and have having absolutely no idea what, what what it was about, or any kind of thought about what positive impact all of that activism was going to have, and the result was very little. Yeah, so yeah, I do think it's important that we reflect on our own perceptions of and our own failures and and try to learn from that, and maybe some more positive narratives can emerge as a result.
Host 2:16:26
Well, I thank you so much for your time today and for talking on so many topics. It's, it's, it's been great to go into this kind of depth and detail.
Dave Mathieson 2:16:34
I think we could, we could be talking about this for hours and hours. It's just so much to talk about. But the one thing I would say is that even with all of the darkness in in Burma right now and the horrors of the military, I do think that that we've got to be positive about the future and that good things will come of it, and recognize that there's so many people doing incredibly brave and and and important things. And there's, there's a spirit, I think, that that that, in many respects, you don't need to worry about an international narrative and international sport, if you understand that there is all of this very positive responses to what's going on, and find a way as foreigners to in necessarily small ways, just to support that, and that's what I think a lot of people are trying to do.
Host 2:17:40
So yeah, as inspiring as today's guest was, I know from experience that when you're listening from so far away, there can also be a certain kind of helplessness in hearing about the people's dire struggles. Thankfully, our nonprofit offers a reliable way for interested listeners to provide financial assistance to those local communities who need it most. Your donations will be sent to support urgent humanitarian missions, as well as those vulnerable peoples being impacted by the military coup. By taking an active role in supporting the movement, you can help ensure that people like today's speaker have even a few more resources to draw on, and can manage just another week in continuing their efforts. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup. We welcome your contribution in a form, currency or transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need it most donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDM, families of deceased victims, internally displaced person, IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries, education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies, COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode, all of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission, Better Burma. Any donation you give on our Insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the Better Burma website, betterburma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites, except credit card. You can also give via PayPal, by going to paypal.me/betterburma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon, Venmo, GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search Better Burma on each platform, and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for. Specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info@betterburma.org, that's Better Burma, one word spelled B, E T, T, E R, B, U, R, M, A.org. If you would like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artisan communities across Myanmar, available at alokacrafts.com any purchase will not only support these artisan communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission that's Aloka Crafts spelled, A L O K A C R A F T S, one, word, alokacrafts.com thank You so much for your kind consideration and support.