Transcript: Episode #340: Lost In Translation
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Host 00:09
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Tony Waters 02:39
Well, I was a American Peace Corps volunteer in Pratt in Northern Thailand in 1980 82 so it's a long time ago. And after I, after that, I was, you know, 22 to 24 when I was in the Peace Corps. And after that, I worked in refugee camps in Thailand for a little over a year. I really liked living in Thailand, I learned to speak Thai. Became very comfortable there. So after the Peace Corps, I worked in non Province, where they had some refugee camps for Laotian people, and then in perna nikom, in chongburi Province, where they had a big transit camp. And I mostly worked in project management. My background at that time, and was in biology of a master's in biology, which I had gotten just before I went to Thailand. And then from there I wanted to go to another country. I ended up going to Tanzania for a little over three years, and I worked with refugees there as well, but it was a settlement program in a remote area of Tanzania, and I had a great time there too. It's I learned to speak Swahili. I met my wife. We got married there. She's from Germany, which is where we are now. And then I She wanted me to go back to school and to get into academics. And so I went back and had hopes of studying anthropology, but I couldn't get to the anthropology program at UC Davis, and one of the deans there recommended I try sociology, and so that's what I did, and I spent six years studying sociology, writing a dissertation about Refugee Relief programs and how they work And don't work, and it's called bureaucratizing The Good Samaritan was, is the book that came out out about that subject 10 years later, and then back to Tanzania for a couple years with the Rwanda relief operation. While still kind of wanted to go back to Thailand at some point, and I wanted to show my wife what Thailand was like in the meantime, we had kids, and never quite got back to Thailand until 2000 Well, first, I had a career at as an academic in the Department of Sociology at California State University Chico. And then about 2010 my wife and I, we started going back to Thailand in the summers. First, we. Is we went to first go with students, but then the coup happened. One of the coups happened in Thailand in 2010 and that was when the department store downtown in Bangkok was burned and the program, the exchange student program, was canceled. My wife and I, we decided to go anyway. We hung out in Chiang Mai for about a month, and had a great time. And then we started coming back summer after summer, until the summer of 2015 I was asked to apply for a job. And it was a 2014 was I applied for a job at payap University. They were sitting up a Peace Studies program. And in 2000 January, 2016 I started teaching part time or full time and part time at the Peace Studies Program pay up in Chiang Mai, and I was there for most of six years. I was back in California, accumulating retirement points at points, but probably two thirds of the time I was in Chiang Mai, working mainly with students from Myanmar during the period when the NLD was the government, and they were very, very interested, of course, in their own country. And so I started talking with them and working with them on their PhD dissertations, and that's how I learned about Myanmar. I visited probably six or seven times during that time, usually with DC students, we hung out, hang out in Mandalay and Yangon. Others I would see in in massot, where the Karen camps are, and that's kind of how I got started. Unlike with Thai, I never learned to speak Myanmar language or Karen uh. But you know, I really like my students. They're very thoughtful insights, insightful people, and just getting to know them was a really wonderful experience, becoming interested in the issues they were interested in, and so forth.
Host 06:56
Thanks for that initial introduction. And so you're bringing a multi discipline, multi national background approach into where you start intersecting with issues relating to Myanmar. And certainly, anything we're looking at in the past number of decades in Myanmar history is going to be quite interesting, quite tumultuous, quite a draw on many people who start to get closer to the gravity of Myanmar and pulling you in and wanting to know more and do more and help more with the situation as it occurs. And so you mentioned how your initial interest and inquiry in to Myanmar was these graduate students that you were working with in Thailand. And then, so that's what starts to bring you into more of an interest in Myanmar. What, what parts of the Myanmar experience, or sectors did you then start to develop a further interest in inquiry and activities in
Tony Waters 07:58
Well, first of all, mainly, I'm a sociologist, so I'm not a historian, though I do tend towards social history. I don't go into archives very much. I do it once in a while, but, and I don't speak the Burmese language, like I mentioned, but I'm mainly a sociologist, and have a strong interest in Thailand. In many ways, I feel more comfortable in Thailand because I can speak the language, and I'm getting around there, but my students, they all had this, you know, intense interest in peace. They started, they had, many of them had worked with NGOs or with the Western press, and they were saying, you know, what is it that's wrong with our country? And as a sociologist, I started to wonder, why are they framing it that way? And learning more and more about how they saw things, and trying to help them express their views in ways that are more analytical and less, you know, less advocacy. But say, Okay, what is it about Myanmar, both inside the country but also in this place in the world, which has meant that it's had such a long history of fighting and war. Yet despite this, you know, my students, they had a very strong sense that what we're good people too. You know, I love my family. I love speaking the Burmese language, or the Karen language, or whatever language it is, San language. What is it that? Why is it that we have so many great problems? And each student my interest tended to go with what the students were interested in. So I had two students who are in from the Karen refugee community outside of Masson, one of them who worked very intensely with education services and so forth and so. In his case, he wrote his dissertation about how the Karen education system emerged, why it was important, and why it is an expression of Karen nationalism and and the other. One was more of a historic, more historical basis of what, who are the Korean people? Why do we have this sense of Karen nationalism? What does it mean for our future in Myanmar? What? Why? Why is it that we don't seem to, you know, mix well with a mean, with a Burmese military in particular, the both of them are mainly critical of the military, though they did feel like they had a separate sense of San nationalism. On the other hand, I had a third Karen student who was from Yangon, and he had grown up in the IR Awadhi River Delta before moving to Yangon as a boy, and he felt very strong. He was Karen, but he also felt very strong that he was Burmese. He says, You know, I love reading novels. He was, he's a big reader of novels. And he loved action books. You know, when he was a boy, I used to read those and devour those, and I could read better than my Myanmar Burmese classmates. And it was a wonderful and there was another student. She's a journalist living in Chiang Mai, now from Myanmar, and she was very interested in Aung San Suu Kyi and her role in trying to create a nation and creating, trying to understand her role and how it emerges from Burmese people see the world. And then there was another one who was an economist. She was interested in mass op business areas. And it would go on and on with people like that. So, you know, as a PhD advisor, you spend a lot of time sitting in coffee shops talking about dissertation proposals and ideas and trying to match it with broader literature from sociology and history. And I had a great time. And then, you know, also the trips to Myanmar. I took it probably five, six or seven times, and meeting with the students there, they showed me Mandalay, and I once went to napida, once the king Tun, several times to Yangon.
Host 12:04
That's great. And I really enjoy the experience you mentioned of talking, you know, talking dissertations, reading what people are writing, going through research. I think that's something that I really enjoy as well, that we do on the podcast, is to be able to take some of these more academic topics that are coming from scholars, and find a way to talk about them and treat them in a way that, without all the footnotes and the and the hardcore dry research, which has a more limited audience that's able to access that, but just really get into these topics that are coming from these dissertations, why Did they matter, and why and how are they relevant to just an ordinary person that is interested or living, or or or involved in these issues? Because I think that that's something that sometimes academia, more elite levels of academia, miss, is, is, is trying to get the core ideas of what that research is doing to then inform and engage and hear back from those that aren't in those academic circles. And so I think this is also a great chance to check in with you of you know, coming from being able to be in both worlds, both you know, the world of the academic research that's being undertaken, as well as the world of just sitting around a tea shop talking about stuff and trying to figure stuff out and trying to answer, you know, what essentially is this tragic question you frame this with, of, why is my country so broken? But then all the history that goes back into Karen identity and formation of can you and educational systems and identity and everything else, and so I wonder if you could just give us like a snapshot or a reflection for our listeners to digest and reflect upon about some of the interesting things that you would learn and discuss and engage with about your students as they were Doing these dissertations.
Tony Waters 13:58
Okay, I'll start first with I can go through each of the dissertations, but I'll start with the one. A book came out last year based on the dissertation of saw it too. And saw it too was one of the Khin student from Myanmar, and he had grown up during the Ne Win times, and then during the slork times, and then on into the as a military routine control. He was, he was someone who was a Korean Christian. Grew up in Yangon, got his master's degree in theology from Myanmar Institute of theology. But he was the one who also loved being a Burmese person. He's the one who had moved to the Yangon when he was, I don't know, 12 or 13. In 1988 had come along, and he kind of tagged along on the demonstrations at the edge. His father wanted to keep him back, and he felt like the problem was he he placed a problem at ne wins for. General ne Win's feed, and saying that what general Ne Win had done was attempt to quote, unquote, burmanize Myanmar and saw ETU, felt that that was the big mistake. That was the major problem. Then he went into the details of what burmanization meant to him as a Karen boy growing up in the system. You know, first of all, you know, going to school for the first time, not speaking Burmese until he was seven or eight, and learned it in school and was exposed only to Burmese at school, after having been to a church school, a Khin school for a couple years, and how difficult that was, and then entering into the culture in Yangon, where he learned that he was the enemy from his school lessons. That's the Quran, where the enemy, even though he knew the Karen side of the story, which his grandfather had told him when he was growing up, he was very he lived with his grandfather for some period in the irwadi Delta, and him trying to reconcile these stories. And on top that, his love for Burmese philosophy and literature, not so much the movies. Perhaps because, you know, the Karen are often they were often the enemy, and during the Ne Win period in the films that were produced, but you know, the richness of the Burmese culture, the philosophy. He knew a lot about Buddhism, and he had a great deal of appreciation for Buddhism. And so out of that, you know, came this idea that which he got from the ethnic minorities, that the problem was that we have been burmanized. The difference was, he said, you know, this was actually an explicit policy which came from the Ne Win regime starting in 1962 and what he found out from his research was that the wind's assistance had, in fact, you know, been prepared for this in a unit called the psychological warfare unit of Psy ops, psychological operations, which was sponsored In the 1950s and developed by Ne Win when he was the commanding general the Myanmar army. And he had developed his Psy ops operation by sending His people to the Philippines, where the Americans were trained them in psychological operations, which they had used extensively in the Philippines to clear villages, convince them that they should come over to the government side and so forth, and using anti insurgency doctrine to do so. And the anti insurgency doctrine they adopted, of course, when they came to power in 1962 would become the four cuts operations, the idea that you had to move the people, concentrate them, take away their old way of life, cut off all things that the insurgencies could possibly use. It was the four cuts of, I don't know them off the top of my head right at the moment, but you know they were you have to cut off, you know, all their supplies, their weapons. You have to cut off their access to the people and that these four cuts operations, which in many respects, are still the doctrine of the tatmadaw the Burmese army. It's what they use going into Rakhine right now, or into San state, or Karenni state, Karen state, they still use these doctrines to try to control the territory which have their basis in ne Win's military doctrines from the after from the 1950s and 1960s.
Host 18:30
Now just to clarify, you're mentioning how the four cut strategy was drawn on inspiration from what the Americans were doing in Philippines. I haven't heard that before, if memory serves me, right, I thought I'd heard that, that this was similar to what the British themselves had actually done during the Second Boer War of around, I think I was 1899, to 1902 that some of the strategies they were using there was borrowed from the military. So was it? Were they drawing from inspiration in different places? Did you find?
Tony Waters 19:04
Yeah, and my other student, Dr Moe Moe miat, who's now, who actually took my job at payap University. She's teaching there now, and she has, she's with the Democratic voice of Burma. She traces a lot of the Democratic philosophy that Aung San Suu Kyi brought back to that period as well before the British. The British had their passive they call them pacification programs, which were anti insurgency programs. The Japanese did it even more brutally. And of course, the Japanese trained the Myanmar Tama DAW in the during the World War Two, and many of their training doctrines come from the Japanese Psy ops. Was also similar to anti insurgency doctrine, which was also used by the Americans in Vietnam and probably in Laos, in Laos, Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea that, you know, the Army has to go. In there and control the territory, go through and get out the bad guys, and then set it back on whatever route the army wants. This kind of anti insurgency doctrine. The British probably started it. We're just working on was a book by Claire Claire Hammond, the book about the railways on the shadow tracks, she wrote about that very clearly, saying that the doctrine started with the British. It's near Myanmar, in my view, has been the victim of Great War politics since the 1800s and there still are, you know, there's a struggle in Myanmar over who's going to be the patron China, the United States and Thailand, or whether, in Myanmar, consistently, whether it was the military government, the NLD has always said, we want to stand on our own. We want to be separate. We want to be our own country. We don't like the Chinese, we don't want the involved. We like the Americas. Perhaps we we don't want the CIA. And that's kind of the problem as ISIL, but that's probably two thirds of the problem. Usually, the outsiders frame it as being, well, these people just can't get along. But they can't get along in an environment in which outsiders continually play a major role? Yeah,
Host 21:23
certainly. And even just the irony of constantly hearing a neighbor like China describing how they should that there shouldn't be so much outside interference in Myanmar's internal decisions, and yet they're some of the greatest outside interference that's been at play for decades, and as you're describing the military drawing, you know, this is just seems like kind of the worst and most sinister of the different past historical examples they could drop on, you know, British colonial oppression, the Imperial Japanese Army, the covert, undercover CIA operations, and so you're just describing in across each of these how they're pooling different aspects of really, their multi decade long trail of oppression and brutality towards their own people. And I know this also gets into another topic that you've become interested in, in researching, which we natural segue to, which is the CIA involvement in Burma. That's been something you've looked at. And so what would you like to share here, of how you got involved in that topic, and then what you've learned over the years of how the CIA has been involved in past decades in Burma?
Tony Waters 22:38
Well, I'm not really an expert on especially after I listened to Patrick Winn talk on your program last night. You know from the old interview that he really knows what he's talking about. There's some other authors who are like that as well. Bertolt lintner, it's interesting how journalists have played such a great role, a very positive role, in describing what happens in Myanmar, because academics don't have the same kind of access. Journalists are somehow more willing to go under the wire and do things semi legally in order to get the story. But, I mean, I'm American, so there's a natural interest, I think, probably and say, What is going on here? When I was in the Peace Corps, was at the time the Kun saw the big drug dealer. He had actually his headquarters at the time was actually in Thailand, I think was in 1981 or 82 the Thai government tried to, decided to put an end to that. First they tried to assassinate him the old fashioned way. And when that didn't work, they sent because they're the commandos who went in to kill Kun sa got killed themselves. Shortly after that, the Thai government just said, you're getting off our territory. And they sent about 1000 men, and they pushed him out of Chiang Rai and back into Myanmar, across the border. And at that time, I was living in pra and I had a buddy who was in the Peace Corps in Chiang Rai. And so he was evacuated to my house because the Thai didn't want him to be in the region while they're undergoing this operation, because they knew that him as an American, he would he could be a subject for kidnapping or they or so they thought. And so he was evacuated. We hung he hung out at my house for about a week. So that's how I became interested, I guess. And then just reading about it, Alfred Crosby is the classic book on that, you know, the politics of heroin in Southeast Asia. He makes the case that the Americans, he makes the case that the Americans were encouraging the production of opium in the 1950s and 1960s before they turned on the production of opium after 1972 when the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, was developed, that tension between DEA, this is again, Patrick Winn and others, DEA. And CIA continued on, probably up till today, but definitely in the 1990s where the CIA has had a long term interest in being anti communist and anti China, having operations and allies in Myanmar who will help and the role of the DEA who are law enforcement and want to arrest the bad guys, or whoever they define as the bad guys. So it's more of a side interest. I think my greater interest is actually in the sociology of the international politics, because it's not just the Americans who are doing this. It's also the Chinese. And I don't read Chinese, and so I don't have the same access to the whatever is being written in Chinese about the region, which would be interesting, because Chinese involvement there is ancient. They had the silver mines in Ba win in the 18th, 19th century, the lot of the silver of China came from there. They abandoned those. And then the mid 19th century, during the century when China had so much chaos, during the opium, post Opium War period. And I'm sure there's things written about that as well, you know. And then the Chinese later being involved, both as a merchant minority, and with the fall of the what? KMT, the Kuomintang government and the groups I listened to the podcast last night, and Patrick wins that they don't think of themselves as KMT, but the Chinese soldiers who retreated from southern China into into northern Myanmar and said, Look, instead of sudo states down there and develop the opium trade in the 1950s and 1960s 1970s 1980s and then the Burmese Communist Party, which was supported by China. So I'm sure there's a great story to be told by someone who can read Chinese or speak to Chinese people. It's just, it's amazing. You know, how involved outsiders have been and how unsuccess unsuccessful they've been in reaching their goals. The United States has not eradicated drugs. The Chinese have not been able to build their railway. And it's despite all the power that both have brought to those tasks.
Host 27:24
Interesting, though unsuccessful in reaching their goals, and yet perhaps successful in destabilizing the country.
Tony Waters 27:30
I don't think that was their goal, but that's what, certainly what happened on a certain level. You know, this is I'm working on another book right now about Highland, northern Burma and the politics of the region. And it strikes me as, you know, they're unsuccessful in reaching their goals. Their goal is to stabilize the region for their goals. You know, trade and dominance of trade in Burma by China, the United States has a concern about, you know, democracy and human rights and and controlling the drug trade. And certainly they have not been successful in reaching those goals. But you know, kun SA and Olive Young, what's her name, all of the opium Queen olive, she would say they were successful in reaching their own their goals, you know, kun San ended up retiring and going to Bangkok, but maybe that was his goal, you know, and he left behind, you know, military which had just kind of floated away from him, but they show up with was state their goal is. This is again, something because I listened to Patrick wind on your podcast. He said, You know, I try to avoid assigning good and evil, and I think there's a lot of reason to try not to do that, if you want to understand when I'm writing this book, I'm wondering what is why is it that mothers and fathers in northern Burma, year after year, time after time, send their sons off to join these little nasty army, or quote, unquote, armies. What do they see in the world that makes that so attractive? I don't think they're going there to I want to be the biggest drug dealer in the world. They go in and they say, Well, what are our alternatives? What is the context for what's going on here? And they see all these little armies floating around northern Burma, and they've been floating there for decades, if not centuries. You know, they were the K Kyi units that Kun saw first got started with in the 1950s there was all the little ethnic armies that come and go. They're very ephemeral. They they come, they go, what happened to them? And then West comes back to you signed a contract. You signed a peace treaty, a ceasefire. But then the group that signed the ceasefire is no longer in existence. There's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the. Groups that have signed ceasefires in northern Myanmar, most of which no longer exist. But they What does exist are these small armies. Kyi was one term, Border Guard forces is another. Tot was in the 1920s in Myanmar, the British tried to set up small armies and villages Those are called tot like in tatmadaw. Tatmadaw is the Royal Army. The tat are the small units that were set up in independent I mentioned bgfs, PDFs are in effect, homegrown military units, who can be very tough, very nasty. They can be warlords. That's another word. The quotes was the old British word. It goes on and on, how? Why are these units so important? Why are they so persistent? That's the real sociological question for me, not whether they're evil or whether they're good, is, Why are they always there?
Host 31:03
And when you say that these some of the covert activity that has been occurring in Burma in these past decades by foreign powers, that their goal might not have been destabilization, and yet that's what occurred, I think the point there is also that in looking at and trying to understand again, answer this question that you posed at the beginning of it coming from your students. Why is my country so broken? What? What? What are the causes of it, that if you're not looking at this covert foreign interference that has occurred for so long, then you're obscribing reasons and rationales to other things that are occurring outside of all of this influence that's been taking place, perhaps under the surface. And so that's, that's one of the reasons why that's, I think that's important to look at and in your own analysis and looking at and trying to understand what effect this has had, going back since the British days, and how and to what degree this destabilization has occurred, and to answer the question that you just asked now, or to respond to it this sense of, Why are all of these in all of these, ethnic regions, these small militias, why are so many joining these that, as you say, sometimes, not so long later, don't even exist? And so what answer did you find to that?
Tony Waters 32:36
I’m still working on that, but I think it is a product of the type of self defense unit you'll find all over the world before there was a modern bureaucratic rule that did not start with the Europeans, but was spread by the Europeans. The last 500 bureaucratic rules started and institutions of bureaucratic rule started with the Egyptians and the Chinese. And bureaucratic rule is impersonal, and the government is always there, and it was same government was yesterday and day before, and so forth. Northern Myanmar has never had a stable government, which were the people had some kind of national sense of, this is our government, and we are it's legitimate, and we're loyal to it, and we don't like it. I'm an American. It sounds like you are too. We don't like our government, but, yeah, it's our government, you know, we'll live with it. I know Thai people who feel the same way. They don't like the military government. They may love the king, but they get frustrated with the government, and that's why Thailand has so many coups, but they still view the civil service and the government decisions about land use and health and education as legitimate. And yeah, it's good that we have it. We don't like politicians, but we we don't like civil servants, but we're not going to go and revolt over it, because we have to have someone who organizes the country. And that level of consciousness has never been reached in Myanmar Highland, Myanmar, especially the idea that, okay, and they have reached the idea that, well, this military commander will protect us. They do organize some things that keep it protect us. Because if we don't have that military commander, the other military commander is going to cut off our head, or they're going to come attack. They're going to or the tatmadaw from the lowlands may come up here and capture our men and make them soldiers, steal our rice and take our women down to the palace. So we better have someone like Kun saw, because the alternative from their perspective, is anarchy. Now the other people view the Chinese and the Americans that tatmadaw All view what goes on in with Kun SA and Olive Young and the others as anarchy. But that's your choice. But those loyalties come and go. There's a great quote that from Kun SA. Picked out. You know, he says there's, there's no long term enemies or friends. You always can change, if you look at his personal history. Or Olive Young is they were with different groups across their life. They could they were fantastic leaders and so forth. But they went from one group to another group to another group. Sometimes they were friends with the Chinese or with a tatmadaw. Sometimes they were enemies, but they can let that go, and that's what bugs the bureaucrats, the ones who come from the CIA or the DEA or the Chinese, I'm sure, are bugged the same way. I will say something interesting, because if we're not making judgments about the CIA, they had some fantastic agents who had a very strong sense for how northern Highland Burma worked, and they were able to work in ways that are really quite amazing. And William Young is probably the best known of the CIA agents who worked across northern Myanmar and Laos for, 40 or 50 years. He was born there into a missionary family, Tony Poe. He worked mainly in Laos. He's also somebody had a very strong sense for how these places work and how alliances are make, and what they're good for and what they're not good for, and able to interface with the with the bureaucracies that paid for them, the CIA and the DEA or whoever.
Host 36:21
Those are interesting case studies, just to pause on a moment, especially your association or knowledge with these individuals in their career. What can you tell us about what they were doing in their CIA post and why you you suggest that they were What about their activities gave you the understanding that they kind of knew what they were doing and were well entrenched there.
Tony Waters 36:47
Well, like William Young is, again, probably the best known. There's a scholar, journalist, David lowitz, who's been studying his career for years and has written very, published, very little. He published one article in this journal, the Siam society, but he's done a mountain of research. And William young, you know, was born in, I think, in King Tun or Kun Ming, to a missionary family. He was third generation, living in in the area. He spoke the local languages. He had a native like, feel for the people. And he had the connections with his first the OSS, through his family, the OSS, which organized the Kachin and the others to oppose the Japanese during World War Two. And then when it became the CIA, he was associated with them. And he would travel around the highlands, going from, you know, village to village in ways that others were afraid to or could not because they didn't have the language skills, the cultural skills. And he would say, okay, look, you know, your future is probably is with the Americans. His grandfather had been a charismatic leader who was considered a prophet by the WA in southern China. I think again, that's in I keep returning to Patrick win because he wrote about that, that group that David William young organized, and he had this kind of feel for how it would work. Tony Poe was another I would probably put I haven't met him, but I've heard a lot about him. Is David you bank of the free Burma Rangers. He's capable of going into Burma as an American missionary, a missionary soldier, whatever it is, and setting up these free Burma Ranger units. He has a gut level feeling for that, and he has it for the American church world, which believes the Baptist you know, they have this Onward Christian Soldiers kind of ethic which is strong, and they have the personality for it. They have the feel for alliances. And you can agree or disagree about whether it's good or not, but they really knew what they're doing, the ones that CIA agents who are sitting down in the in Yangon at the embassy or some kind of front probably don't have that feel, you know, they're they're there to report on what's going on in Burma, and they send reports back to Washington, and they do their three years or five years posting, and then they're gone. But someone like William young, he was there for 50 years, and he actually broke with the CIA in the 1970s because he thought they were being too brutal with some of the military attacks in Northern Laos and the raids that they were organizing into southern China.
Host 39:37
A couple other names I would throw out there that may be lesser known. One from the 1950s John Coleman was a CIA agent in Thailand who left the agency on actually a spiritual quest to want to learn from the great spiritual teachers across Asia. And ended up learning from Sayagyi, Ube Khin, the passion of meditation in Burma. And was through his. Spiritual potential, as judged by who became was actually one of a handful of teachers who was licensed and John Coleman, ex CIA agent in Thailand, started to become, was one of the early carriers of the whole mindfulness meditation movement from Burma to the rest of the world, not so well known that story in the CIA annuals. Yeah. Another name I would throw out there is Wes Kingsley, who actually was a guest on this podcast, who married Sunda. Sunda Khin, who is the daughter of Bucha and Tun, who's the first Supreme Court Justice of Burma, and also wrote the Constitution and of Burma and the newly dependent Burma and and and Wes Kingsley was there. He was he was also involved in the Vietnam War, and was there. And I think it was in 1974 the controversy surrounding the funeral of U Thant. Another interesting perspective to bring on there and another guest I'd like to reference that is not so much from a CIA background, but from before that, from the British colonial period, is we had on historian Robert Lyman, and he has looked at the colonial period, especially in the Naga hills and some of the ethnic regions around the Indian border, and pushes back against some of The blanket thinking about the colonial experience in Burma, describing how there were some people in the administration, especially in the ethnic areas in there were British colonials that were very interested in preserving culture and equal rights and human rights and and that, and trying to understand these, these, these ethnic, local communities that hadn't had contact with the outside world, and help them protect their traditions. And so, you know, there's just, there's a bit of nuance there to to explore and to try to understand. It's not all one thing, really.
Tony Waters 41:55
Sometimes that's the advantage of saying, I'm not looking for good and evil, I'm looking for the story and try to understand the processes. The other one I would mention from the British was really interesting is James George Scott, who was there. There's a book the pants people, I believe it's called, written about 20 years ago about his story of he was in Myanmar as a journalist, like another journalist, starting the 1880s I believe, and went on to become a British colonial officer. He organized some of the sometimes brutal pacification campaigns. But he was always a writer as well. He did have a British point of view. Claire Hammond writes quite a bit about him on the shadow tracks as well, organizing. You know, he was someone who had a great cultural feeling. He also introduced, this is from the pants people soccer, or football, to the to the highlands, you know, they love football. There's that's great, you know. But he also organized the British government there, that period when they were almost constant revolt just after independence, I have met because, you know, the top of dog is so widely disliked and hated across the ethnic areas because of the forecast campaigns, which are like we were discussing British inspired in some ways. They talk about some with some warmth the British period. And it's all this nuance you know that you have to acknowledge, and which often doesn't get acknowledged in newspaper articles because to two new newspaper articles one thing, but they're not there for nuance. They're there for 1500 words and out and newspapers are incredibly important as communication tools, but they are all they are not nuanced. That's for books and for podcasts, especially podcast that last two hours.
Host 43:52
Right? Yeah, exactly. And speaking of books, you wrote an article in small wars journal, how memoirs by American officials leave the CA CIA out of us, policy in Burma, and you review a number of books on here, several of which we've actually had interviews with the authors of those books on our platform. And in your article, you critique how the as these books have looked at us, policy and US activity in Burma, they've left out the elephant in the room, which is DEA and especially CIA involvement. And so can you share a bit about some of the arguments you were making in that article, and the critiques you have of leaving out this information when talking about US policy in Burma?
Tony Waters 44:38
Well, the books are the ones by ones by Scott Marciel, the former ambassador to Burma. The other one is by Aaron Murphy, who was CIA desk officer for Burma from about 2008 to 2012 and then she was the one who organized from the State Department Hillary Clinton's quick visit to Myanmar in 2000 11 or 12. And the third one was by Amarillo Fox, who is now Amberlynn Fox Kennedy. And she has her she told her story of being a CIA agent for about 10 years, mostly not in Myanmar. Her Myanmar connection was, she says she went as an 18 year old to massot and then was snuck into Yangon, posing as a tourist and interviewed da Aung San Suu Kyi in about 2000 or 1999 so at a period when she was under some sort of detention, and made quite a dramatic story out of it for the book. And then the fourth one was Barry Broman, who was the CIA station chief in Yangon for in the in the 1990s working with the generals. He later he loved the you could tell from his writing. He really loved Myanmar. He became a travel writer, and he published some things through National Geographic and other types of human interest, stories about corners of Myanmar, which normal journalists didn't have access to, but he did, apparently, because of his connections, he established with the generals when he was with the CIA in Yangon. So those are the four, and there are people who have, or should have, great stories and great understandings about what the consequences of this long CIA involvement in Burma AR which all Myanmar people are well aware of. They know the CIA has been there. They know about the problems or the CIA has been was at the center of NE Win's propaganda films saying, we have to be careful. We have to lock down because the CIA is trying to destabilize us. And that went on, you know, as long as they win. Was around from 1962 onwards. Before that, you know, the OSS and the CIA were deeply involved. And all that history is left out of all the four of those books. And you know, as much as I'd like Erin Murphy's book, she tells some great stories of how the hurricane, hurricane, Typhoon, 2007 2008 how that typhoon operation was organized, and how frustrated the outsiders were, because the Myanmar generals were I agree with her cruel and not permitting relief goods to come in. But so what part of the problem was it the United States wanted to deliver relief goods with the Seventh Fleet. And the Seventh Fleet across Asia has a bad reputation for being the source of war. And so, you know, the US was the US ambassador at the time, and went to the President and said, Can you send the Seventh Fleet here to deliver relief goods? And he said, the President said, Sure, President Bush, that's a good idea. And the generals, of course, went, what? That's the Seventh Fleet, which supported the Pakistanis in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh revolution. That's the Seventh Fleet that supported the American bombings of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the Seventh Fleet that was more, even more recently, bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. It's like a tone deafness, you know. But these, some of these CIA officers who are not like William young, seem to have and so that's what my article in small wars journal was about. Was about why? How can you leave this out? It's a critique of that point. All four of the books were had their strengths, but that wasn't my point, because I think the CIA is perfectly capable of celebrating their strengths, and they do, and they send people to podcast into New York City and Washington think tank events. So this is my way of saying, hey, wait a minute. You know, these people maybe have a point to make, but they're also leaving out like the elephant in the room, which is that the United States has sponsored CIA in Myanmar since 1942 with the OSS and after the oddly enough, there's a statue in the at the US Embassy in Yangon, which is a huge, huge compound providing cons, supposedly for providing consular services and visas, which you can't get. But it's a huge compound, and you really don't know who works there. You're in Chiang Mai, right? You've seen the construction of the new US consulate there over the last four or five years. It's a huge building. There's 172 desks in there, and I could barely get a passport out of them, you know, as an American. So what are those 172 desks for? And then you never get a clear answer. And that's it. That's the bigger story. And, you know, and I did go once to when the American Consul General, they invited all Americans to come and meet the new Consul General. I went to that there's probably 60 or 70 people there, all them saying, why can't I get my Social Security checks more easily? Why can't I get a passport more easily? Why can't my Why does my wife. Have so much trouble getting a visa these kinds of questions, he couldn't deal with those because he said he had two spot on the staff. He only had six or seven actual consular staff. So what are the other 165? Doing, you know? And the answer is, you know that there's a lot of DEA chairs, probably there, military attaches and people like that, but those are kept under the table, and I think that is this bigger story that's left out of those books. That's my point. I was glad the small wars journal was willing to publish it, because they're focused on military issues. It's a very unusual essay for them.
Host 50:37
Right? I'm not sure to what degree you're looped in or have been paying attention post coup, from what I've heard, there are very limited, very there's very limited DEA presence in Myanmar, really just wanting to to survey and have some basic understanding of what's going on with the vast narcotics increase. And from people I've spoken to almost zero CIA presence and interest right now in Burma. Of course, this is just what I've heard through a couple sources I know that are tapped in. So take it for what you will. Have you heard anything or gleaned anything about current CIA or DEA involvement in Burma post coup?
Tony Waters 51:18
No, I wouldn't. I don't have any good contacts with the CIA or the DEA. I know mainly the literature that goes around it and putting it together as a sociologist, there's the Burma Act, which, what provided two or $300 million is probably being dispersed through some of those desks. You don't know exactly how it's being dispersed, because if you look at the State Department USAID website, it's redacted. The information is redacted about which NGO is mostly not 100% but you know, 90% of them are this good money goes to an international NGO. This one goes to an American NGO to do this task. And you're not quite sure where all the money is going. So there's a lot of I suspect that some of the officers working with that are there, but, I mean, probably your guess is better than mine about where those desks would go and what they're, what they're, what they're for, and what they're doing. I assume there's quite a bit of liaison with the Thai government and the military especially, you know, the Thai military is powerful still in Thailand, and there's been a long, long relationship between the Thai military and the American military.
Host 52:30
Right? Just to touch upon another feature of this kind of covert history going back in time, because it's a period I find so fascinating, is the 1950s in Burma, because this was a period of Cold War tensions that were heightened Burma, as they often say, Burma was so non aligned that it refused to even join the non aligned movement. And it became this hotbed of activity, of and this is what, you know, Vice President Nixon went. There were top Russian ballet troops that went. There were, there's Chinese opera, there were American athletes and jazz musicians and astronauts, all of this soft power that was pouring in. This is where the US is still the existing day The American Center first came that in this time, it was really a Cold War operation that one of the few places left in Burma that I worked at the American Center. I was a trainer there, when, when back some years ago. And I think, you know, there's just so much interesting intrigue in thinking about because it was one of, this was one of the countries in the world at that time that was very as geopolitical importance was obviously very high in terms of where it was located and what the potential was and which direction it could go. And it was, it was up for grabs. And so because of that, a lot of attention the 1950s through soft power, and probably a lot of other ways as well, that we're still finding out about, went in trying to influence Burma to lean on one side or the other. And of course, you don't just have Russian and and and Western, no American and British interests. And there you also have the Chinese, which are not exactly aligned with the Russians at the time, and just a lot of stuff going on in that parliamentary democracy period before the 1962 coup. And the book that really highlights this and comes to mind for me, which I just found absolutely enthralling and incredible. I'm not sure if you're if you've read it the believe it's called inside a Soviet embassy, and it's about the defection of a Soviet KGB officer to the Americans, and describing and the defection itself is interesting, but what's really fascinating is describing what it was like to be in Rangoon and Burma at that time, what it was like to be a KGB officer, and describing the Russian, British, Chinese, American influence, all happening simultaneous at that time. And so from whatever literature you've gleaned and whatever research you've done. This period, 1950s What? What? What's interested you or come out about that time?
Tony Waters 55:05
Well, I think some of those same issues, you know, that's the unu period, mostly, number one. The point you made at first is really important is that Myanmar has always been fiercely independent. Aung San general, Aung San would not joined the British Commonwealth. He said, we're done with the British you know, go have your Commonwealth. We're going to have our own country. And then he was killed. Then his his follower, unu was made president. And he was also fiercely independent. He was also dealing with the Cold War, and the balancing he was doing was, you know, a lot between China and the United States. Because, you know, the Chinese Revolution ended in 1949 some of the old Kuomintang groups retreated into Myanmar. Most of them went to Taiwan, but they maintained some connection. And the OSS and then the CIA supported them, because they were saying, Hey, we can go back to southern China. We can invade and take it back from the communist so that was all 1950s stuff, and Aung was balancing as a fairly from a fairly weak position where he didn't have complete control of the highlands, trying to tamp down some of the rebellion that had come from the Quran, especially, which he was doing fairly successfully as sought a two my student was explained he was a big unu fan. And meanwhile, the US is, you know, setting up their embassy and re establishing their connections, using William young among others and but, you know, Myanmar successfully said, I didn't realize they had to join the non aligned movement, because it was aligned. That's a good way to look at it. But they also put forward a candidate to be Secretary General the United Nations, and he was successful. That was U Tun. That's quite a position for they were, they were so non aligned that both the Americans the Chinese, well, the Americans the Chinese and Soviet Union could all agree. He could be Secretary General in 1961 1962 of course, Ne Win put a stop to all that, because he because unu in 1961 had permitted the communist the Chinese were the sworn enemy of the Americans and of Burma to come in, and they invaded northern Burma briefly in order to expel the old Kuomintang soldiers. And so there was a deal made that the KMT would take their soldiers back to Taiwan via Chiang Mai, and then they withdrew. And then, you know, Ne Win, which is epileptic, apparently, because he's saying, What are you doing? You're letting in red, you know, Communist Chinese. There are Chinese. We don't like Chinese. And so he held his coup in 1962 during the during the performance, ballet performance from the Chinese Embassy. And that was all the soft power you were talking about. The Chinese were there. The Americans were there. William Young was there. And that was he just closed down Burma. So we're going to move, remove ourselves from the world. We don't want any of these people involved. We're to try and expel them all. Saw a tu always talked about Sidney win had a military mindset, and that was big part of his problem. He says he expected military discipline from his people, and that's not how you run a country. So he commanded everybody to stop fighting and submit to the to the army, and they didn't do it, of course, and the insurgencies got worse in the north in the 1960s and 1970s and that hobby tooth is the big sociology where that hobbyists have revolt and dislike emerged and was reinforced and continues to be reinforced today.
Host 58:59
That's right. And I think that's a great segue into another main area of your interest in Burma, which we haven't mentioned yet. And that's the your critique of the way that aid is administered there in international actors and development. And so as you've just charted this history ahead of Ne Win, closing the country, becoming isolationists, kicking out all this international influence, and then having this disastrous economic plan, which just destroyed the country and every aspect destroyed the economy, the food security, the conflict went up. The education system was gutted, just on and on and on. It went from being this jewel of the Orient, this place in the 1950s which was, you know, Rangoon, was the hub of international flights that would go anywhere across Asia. And the university system was, along with Calcutta, was seen as one of the great places to send your kids to study and all. And it was the rice bowl of Asia, you know, producing food. All of these things just went to hell. With ne Win's reign, and then, especially after 1988 when it got back in the western eye, at least, regarding the human rights violations and the democracy movement, then you start to have the aid and development industry, which has been a mainstay till now, and you've been quite critical of the involvement in in aid workers and and development that has taken place there. So can you share some of your concerns and criticisms of how you think that can that the involvement has been somewhat self serving and not as effective as it can be.
Tony Waters 1:00:41
Yeah, that goes back to the what I mentioned. I was in Tanzania early on in the podcast, and I wrote a book called bureaucratizing The Good Samaritan. And I'm very supportive of humanitarian efforts and aid and things like that, but I'm also critical. That criticism was intensified by all the discussions I had with my students in Chiang Mai, because they would tell me these stories of the NGOs, the governments they had worked with, and their incapacity to see things from a Burmese perspective. But you know, these were Myanmar student students, people who had watched the Americans and the others do some incredibly stupid things, putting money in towards things, towards people, towards programs which may have been harmless or harmful, or may have even done some good, and they cannot be criticized. And then this, the students were often involved in the aid industry, where you're supposed to do evaluation reports. But on an evaluation report, the way the aid industry is structured is hard to be critical, because the evaluation report is supposed to lead to the next grant. So you and the grant has to address the needs of the donor. What does the donor want to fund? You know, the Americans are interested in security and anti drug stuff. The French are interested, I forget what they would say, but the Canadians are interested in Gender and Women's and issues. The British are interested in forestry, and Germans are interested in anything green and involving federalism, because they're a federal country. Canadians love federalism, and they all the aid agencies, start off with these assumptions, and that's really the wrong assumption. Nobody's asking, Well, what is the nature of Myanmar? What kind of government can they have that will be considered legitimate by Myanmar's people? Instead of saying, we have this, you know, these, these programs, and this is what we want. So because most of my writing about Myanmar, with this respect, has not been in books and sociology has been in the newspaper, the Irrawaddy. So I've written probably 20 or 30 columns for the Irrawaddy, mostly dealing with aid issues or books that have been published. And it's so easy to pick up something, you know, from a student say, why is it this way? There was a one of the first ones I wrote was a woman had gone on to an American woman had gone to an American women's magazine and written, what about the hard life of being an aid worker in Yangon on $48,000 a year? And it got into the press and got into the NGO culture. And everybody kind of said, Who is that? Well, that sounds weird. And so I actually that was one of the early ones. I wrote. Was a critique of her and her worldview, which involved, you know, going to the French Embassy to watch the vagina monologs, which was something that was appalled Myanmar people. But there was something very western to do, and her, she trying to preserve her way of life on her $48,000 a year, with trips to Singapore and all the cool stuff you can do with that kind of money and still not have any money in the end, because you're an aid worker. My favorite story is so it was slipped to me by a person who did a lot of consultancies is, you know, opium is produced legally in the world. There's three countries that have licenses to produce opium. They are Australia, Turkey and India, not Myanmar. And so, you know, the question came up, is it, if Australia really wants to help Myanmar, why don't they give them their license to produce opium? Opium is a great place to Myanmar is a great place to produce legal opium. Why not give it to them? But the Australians, of course, don't think about that. They want to keep their monopoly.
Host 1:04:36
Right. So you describe how the aid industry is bloated, how it's self serving, how it's, it's, it's not quite fulfilling its mission to want to ameliorate and do better. Do you do you see, would you characterize that as I know this is a general statement, so feel free to unpack and break this down. But to what extent do you think that they're just not doing as well? As they could be in being and there's room for a lot more effectiveness. Or to what degree do you think they're actually not quite the force for good that they think and they might, through their bias and misunderstanding and self serving needs and the amount of money that's being tossed around, that they might actually be doing more harm than good despite their stated intentions and mission.
Tony Waters 1:05:21
Yeah, it could be. The big problem is that, you know, USA ID, or UK aid, or the German aid, first, they represent American, UK and German interest, and they want to help on their terms, and because they have the money they can do that. They go into Myanmar or other countries, and they have off the shelf programs which they say, Well, you can do this peace building program. It worked in Sri Lanka, or it worked in Colombia or someplace like that. Do it that way, and you'll be good as a country without taking a deep look at what is Myanmar. Who are the people? How do they see the world? What does it mean to be have come from a Buddhist monarchy and then 60 or 80 years of British 60 years of British colonialism, actually was longer in some parts of the country. What does that mean for how people look at each other and they look at us, and those questions are never asked. You know, development is treated like it's a science, and it's not a science. It's an expression of political will and political nationalist, national identity, and all these things which are more humanity than than a science. But you know, they bring in an economist and sociologist and anthropologist who are able to look at get them information which they can then apply to their values back in Washington or Geneva, London or Berlin, Paris, wherever. And I think that is a basic problem of aid in general, and as a result, money which could be spent better is not spent well, a lot of it, you know, like the US, especially, there's in all the contracts you have to use US agencies and US companies wherever possible, even if they're far more expensive and far more and somehow inappropriate for Myanmar is a right hand drive country, so you can buy American cars and ship them there. So I would assume that in the American contracts, they're sending out a Ford and Chevys, which they can't send to East Africa or Thailand because they're left hand drive. But you know, first and foremost, the embassy serve their home countries, not Myanmar, and they would have to give up that mindset, which I don't know if they can do politically, to really make a success. They need to have people in there who are there for many years. Instead, you know, the rotation on international civil service contracts is three or four years usually. So they never learned the language very deeply. They go into the embassy circuit and they talk to each other and not to sitting around on uncomfortable trains and talking to people that book on the on the shadow tracks by Claire Hammond, which just came out. It's a wonderful story of her as a journalist, riding around on the trains of Myanmar, just talking to people, and I can't imagine embassy funding that those first of all, let's say there's a security problem, and in the end of the day, they don't do that. They don't get that insight that she has in her book for how Myanmar people view railways, which is not very positive. They view them as sites where we've been forced into labor with lots of forced labor was used to do it up until now, basically, the 1990s into early 2000s the new the her last chapter about how people were drafted to go and break stone in the mountains to Build dapi.is in like a real eye opener.
Host 1:09:02
Right? And so with all those anecdotes, and I'm also remembering some of my own when I was there, I remember at one point in Yangon, there was a walking tour of the city that was sponsored by the US Embassy. And I rarely went on those, but in this particular time, I thought, Okay, well, let's, let's see, maybe they have a good guide, and learn some things and get to to explore. And part of the walking tour involves stopping for at a tea shop and typical Burmese tea shop and having a cup of tea. And as we go to sit down, you know, for anyone who's been in Yangon or Myanmar, you know that they have those very small, kind of ridiculous, doll sized plastic chairs that you that that's that's typical for the Burmese tea shop. And as we go to sit down in these all of the people I'm around with the embassy staff, they all comment on how interesting these chairs are in such a way that it's apparent that they've never seen them or used them before. Which was just, you know, absolutely baffling and and shocking to me, that you would live in a country and not this, these ubiquitous tea shop, small plastic chairs that you would you would not take those in. You wouldn't take those in on a walk or, let alone sitting on and that would be a new experience after how many months and years in the country that was that really just floored me. And I'm thinking of another example where a certain program I was doing, some officials had wanted to come and see it, but we told them that they shouldn't come with their diplomatic plates, because they don't want to draw attention and locals. And so they'd have to take a taxi. And they kind of grumbled and but they went and took a taxi, and in order to see the program and they, they spent a bit of time reflecting out loud about the experience of riding the taxi and just across Yangon. And that was another moment of this, like, wait a second, how long? And this is, you know, riding a taxi in Yangon is not like writing a rural train somewhere out in the ethnic Hinterlands. And so, you know, just the experience of writing this taxi across town for someone who had been in the country for however long and however many visits, and this was a completely new experience to them. This also was something that was shocking to me, just the lack of engagement and interest and first hand experience with outside of this bubble in the country. And so one of the questions I was going to ask of you is, what if the way that they're approaching it, you've been quite critical of and it's not being as effective as it could I wanted to ask, well, what can they do differently? You've already somewhat provided that answer in terms of, you know, looking at talking to local people more, getting their concerns, seeing what's needed from on their side, rather than being self serving in in kind of knowing what the answers are before they do their reports. And you have articles where you talk about the the reports and analyzes that they prepare are really just self perpetuating cycles of what they already want to do and just serving justifications for it. So it's this whole kind of closed feedback loop that's taking place, but you've already identified the problem as being that these, while these might come in the guise of of doing good and providing important relief and support and engagement and empowerment to the people on the ground. The fact of the matter is, and has always been, and maybe always will be, that these have to be aligned and supportive of the embassy and the country, that in furthering their goals, they're not just looking at what are in all of their benevolence. What are the urgent needs and support the Burmese people can have, and how are we in a position to provide it? But where is there an alignment between the things that we care about in the world, and that's the more benevolent side, and the things that also further and help our interests and that, oh and also have also are able to help the people somewhat as well. And so if this is the fundamental thinking in not just in Burma, but the aid industry in general, and how it's approached, I guess one might be pessimistic and hoping for glimmers of change and and and positive improvement, if this is kind of already baked into the cake, so to speak.
Tony Waters 1:13:22
Yeah. Well, you know, they there are people who have done very well with that, and they were with the San CIA. You mentioned, you know, Robert Lyman, I mentioned William young and Tony Poe. And I don't completely agree with what they were doing, but those are people on the ground who have been there many, many years, who had a gut level feeling for the area. I wish they had been working on something besides drug eradication and anti communism, but those are the kinds of people there. The Americans or the foreigners who are living in the region for decades are viewed as almost like poisoned by some of these people, it seems to me, because they were considered, I would include myself, perhaps you as well. You've Been Gone native, or you know so much that you like the people, which of course I do, and that you can't represent American interest, because you're somehow kind of a poison Chalice, because you have interest in Myanmar people or Thai people and but what I think we have is a nuanced view, but again, that can be expressed in academics and on podcast. But to get a contract with the US Embassy, I don't even try. I don't think they'd be much interested in what I know. They're not much interested in what I have to say. Maybe they read what I write in the Irrawaddy I get nasty Twitter comments now and then back when Twitter was more popular. But you know, it is what it is. So I move on. I do my writing and try to enjoy it. I. Uh, again, you know, the the negative that being super critical and hopefully also a bit funny and poking fun at them, that's what newspapers are for. And I think it's important to do that, to quote the powerful. I mean, you've met some of these people. They wrote, they wrote good books. Aaron Murphy and Scott Marshall's books are about much, much more than things that they'd done over their lives and what they saw and what they understood. They just leave out the CAA problem. That's what I poke at. But you know, the other parts of their books are fine. They're great. I would like to meet Scott Marshall someday. We went to UC Davis at the same time in the mid 1970s and his experience as a diplomat in Philippines and North Korea, or, excuse me, in Vietnam, are really interesting. But again, he cannot write a book about American involvement in the Philippines without writing about the CIA. That's where the CIA got started with John blonsdale. John is it John Lansdale? He was a lieutenant colonel who organized the Philippine government on behalf of the CIA and into pose what they called the Huck rebellion. The 1950s 40s and 1950s then he was moved to Vietnam and set up the anti insurgency programs in South Vietnam in the 1960s so you can't write and he. You have to mention him if you're going to write about American involvement in Southeast Asia. The Ugly American is based on him, presumably, the Ugly American and the good American. By Graham Greene.
Host 1:16:43
Now staying on this development sector a little more. You also wrote a column in the Irrawaddy entitled Myanmar, civil society, burmanization and the bars and coffee shops of Thailand. And this is interesting, because it's pointing to this trajectory of how how, how people and agencies are trying to learn where money is going to different sectors of Myanmar, and if we back up by not just years, but decades, you know, it was really 1988 when this first got on the radar, and there was a lot of interest In the pro democracy movement and human rights. And at that time, because so many became exiled after 88 to 90, a lot of money was going through May sod and there was that was a real hub of activity, and those that were setting up in Mesa were making the argument later, some would say, critically and a bit pessimistically that they, in order to keep themselves funded in May sought that they started to that some groups started to amplify the importance of what they were doing and also dismiss the possibility of actually giving aid to Burma, saying that it wouldn't in country that is, saying that it wouldn't be effective. 2007 2008 saffron and Nargis. This started to change, and the and the primary importance of Mesa, relative to Yangon and Mandalay and throughout the country, started to aid missions. And where they could spend money started to shift, and started to see that all the money didn't need to go to Mesa. There were things they actually could be doing in the country, move to the transition period. And of course, that was the height of all of these different aid projects, to say nothing, with the economy opening up and sanctions coming down. And then after the 2021 coup, there's been a real, as it's been explained to me a real kind of paralysis and mystery among some of the donors. What do we support now? Like, look what happened to Aung San Suu Kyi, look what happened to NLD. And is the military is just going to take power, like they always do, right? And is may start, is may start. Still this, this hub happening, and this real question of, like, what? What is it that? Where is it that we should really be putting funds into? One of the things I've heard more recently, and I've heard with a critical, more pessimistic eye, again, is the focus on anything surrounding and involving the magical words of political dialog, and anything that you can say, that you're doing, that are trying to bring into the room the heads of the different communities and organizations and have them talk to each other. Never mind if this is actually effective, which I've been heard. It rarely is. But just to show that you're convening something of this top leadership to push them towards probably your own imposed resolution and hopes of where they come together, but this brief warp speed that I've shared of my understanding of 1988 to present and the post coup, I first want to ask if, if that aligns with how you've seen that development, or if you would push back against some of the characterization or go into more detail with it. And then to move to the post coup era, and particularly this article that you wrote in Irrawaddy that was referenced, where you talk about the conversation shifting from, you know, the new restaurants and malls of Yangon and Mandalay and and now, to use center your this, this think piece in Chiang Mai and the mascot counts too.
Tony Waters 1:20:22
Yeah, that was written with a former student who's now studying abroad. And it's his use as a pseudonym, and he was the one who talked about, you know, how the whole operation seemed to move out of Mandalay. It's the same people talking in the same they just moved coffee shops from Yangon to Chiang Mai. By going to Chiang Mai, they become more isolated, even more isolated than they were when they were at Yangon. And that's but and the agenda is still being set by the donors. Massot is a big operational center, as you were alluding to. I think Chiang Mai is where a lot of the negotiation is going on, under the table. The what used to be called Ethnic armed groups have their office officers living in Chiang Mai, and the Thai permit it and probably encourage it to a certain degree, as kind of the center for where we can all talk together. In my view, the central problem is, this is when you talked about, we have to have political dialog. The central the central problem in Myanmar is that the tatmadaw is in charge, and they are an army, and armies don't dialog with outsiders. That's the nature of armies. The armies are interested in security first, and safety for their soldiers. And as long as you have that mindset for people who are doing political tasks of governing and organizing people, you're not going to have a dialog armies don't do dialogs. You know, they they defend things, and they project power and they do other things, but they are not political except maybe in Thailand, they're not very good at having dialogs, and they never have been in Myanmar. It goes back, you know, Ne Win was a general, first and foremost, and when we were writing our book, saw it to his dissertation up it was, you know, he got, Ne Win got his start with the Japanese army and setting up the Japanese army, set up the training camps that are still in existence today, and came with the Japanese doctrine for how to run a country, how to run an army. And that's where a lot, some of the doc, not a lot of all of them, some of the doctrines that are still using the tatmadaw today, come from as long as the tatmadaw is there, and I think, actually incapable of having a dialog, you're going to have the continuing problem within the country, the tatmadaw, as long as there's a foreign threat, will be strong. They can make a strong argument. Look, the foreigners are coming. The foreigners are coming. And sure enough, you know, the Seventh Fleet is off the coast. Or, you know, the Chinese are coming down from Yunnan into northern China. They're supporting the kah chin and the WA and the other substantial armies that are in the in the north and making sure that they don't die. The Kyi are permitting the KNU and the Shan armies to be supplied, probably with American help, and there's a stalemate. And as long as the tatmadaw is in charge, they're not going to have a dialog. And as long as both the Chinese and the Americans just use it as a playground for their cold war or their big power rivalries, they're not going to provoke the other one enough to make it overthrow the tama DAW. So here we are right. The KNU, I understand is keeps asking for anti aircraft capabilities from the Thai and the Americans, and they don't get it. The WA state has it from the Chinese. The WA state is fairly stable because they can't top my dog can't bomb them as easily.
Host 1:24:04
So it sounds like you've seen this play out tragically quite a bit longer and continuing to be the kind of stalemate and protracted conflict that it's been Syria fell.
Tony Waters 1:24:16
There's a lot of rumblings in the Myanmar community that I was talking to about, Wow, this could be us, right? And I don't know, it's, you know? I wish that the Chinese and the Americans, I wrote an editor on the in the meat in the air body about this. I wish the Chinese and Americans would say to sit down and say, Look, both of us have an interest in a stable Myanmar, why don't we back off? Because Myanmar, whoever's been in power, whether it's NLD or Tama da or uno or Aung San, they want to be independent. They do not want foreign involvement. They've had foreign involvement for since the British arrived. And you. Doesn't work, and the way to do that is to back off and let the Burmese negotiate about dams and railways the other things the Chinese went from a position of strength. I saw a podcast with Scott Marcell. He talked about that the America is actually getting involved with the pipeline negotiations that the Chinese want so badly to the Indian Ocean and just making sure that they could have as strong a position as possible. So he was operating within the constraints of American policy. But you know, as long as there's a war and the top modalities the Chinese support, they're going to give the Chinese what they want, which and not strike a good deal for Myanmar. There's, in my mind, there's nothing inherently wrong with a railroad in a and a pipeline for commercial purposes operated at the benefit of the Myanmar people. That's not what the Chinese are looking for. So, you know, and the Americans are not willing to facilitate that. They're the other great power in the in the area, maybe the India could get involved, for Bangladesh. I don't know, the Rohingya problem, we haven't talked about, really, but, you know, every year for the irwadi, for the last six years, I've written a editorial saying, you know, look, the Rohingya problem is festering. It's going to create radicalization. You're going to get armies coming out of there who are going to be subject to recruitment by somebody, by Islamic extremists. Or, in the case, as it's working out, it seems to be they're being recruited by the tama da fight against the AA, and whose interest was that in you know, it's just, you know, and having that million person refugee camp down in Bangladesh's is a long term catastrophe. It's been that way in Africa. It's been that way everywhere they've had these huge refugee camps. They're initially, they're very important for humanitarian purposes, but they're not a long term future for a rapidly growing population, which the Rohingya are when they're in the refugee camp.
Host 1:27:04
You mentioning the possibility of China and us sitting down and talking and trying to find some way to work out stability in Myanmar reminds me what a past guest, Timothy McLaughlin, said when he was on that the way the coup was developed, there's probably no one that's happy about it, probably no one in the country, no one outside the country, maybe save Russia. That's not that just gets to benefit from the chaos and the arms sale without it at its doorstep. But pretty much everyone else is largely unhappy and continues to be unhappy with how it continues to churn out. And I think whatever possibilities that some outside powers might be able to talk and look at a some degree of common ground, even though Myanmar has never really been at the forefront of many of these international policies to prioritize that the way some other conflicts in the world are you mentioned? Political will there also playing into it?
Tony Waters 1:28:05
Yeah, I don't have a lot of hope for the Trump administrations. I don't think they're interested. They are. They are concerned with confronting China at some level. I haven't quite figured out what it is. I mean, the Biden administration did it too. You know, China has become the big enemy of the United States, and they tend to cast it in Cold War terms. I think America has another set of problems in the sense that, you know, they have they do one thing, one really, really big military. And so they tend to see problems around the world in military terms. Germany doesn't do that, you know. They look at Ukraine. Germany is threatened. More about Ukraine than the United States. United States, and they do see it as a military problem in Germany and that NATO problem. But it's not the only way they see it. I'm living in Germany now, so I tend to focus on that. They see the refugees coming in, they see the refugees going back. They start to talk about the subtleties that involved on in the press and on the TV in ways that Americans do not. And Americans, you know, they're dominated by a big military that somebody said once the American government is an insurance company with the military. It's all Social Security and Medicare and and the military, that's, you know, 80% of the US budget, federal budget, and so the until the Americans see that differently, I don't have a lot of hope for them. You know. Again, I liked it when I watched Scott Marcell on a podcast. And I think, but I don't think they're listening to him. He said something along the lines of, you know, why are the Americans lecturing the Southeast Asians about Southeast Asia, China? China? Southeast Asians have lived next to China forever. They know about China. They don't need advice from the Americans. And that was from a former American diplomat, and he knows it right
Host 1:29:57
Now, one of the things that might have put the whole country. Country in a better situation that you also have past columns that are writing about analyzing, again, critical, critically looking at this is the nationwide ceasefire agreement, which was attempted during the transition period. So what can you tell us about the way that the NCAA was conducted, and your criticisms and concerns with where it could have been more effective.
Tony Waters 1:30:23
Well, I think part of the problem with the NCAA and all the ceasefire agreements in Myanmar is that the some of the groups that they were negotiating with were ephemeral. They're here today, gone tomorrow. Some of them are pretty permanent. You know, the Kia and the KNU, maybe some of the San groups, those are institutionalized, and they are developing their own bureaucracies. I mentioned isa taco, who's one of my former students. He wrote about the current education systems that have been there for since the 80s. A lot of them had developed in the Thai refugee camps. Another student saw a one wrote about the role of history among the Quran that's being taught in those schools, and it's a very different history than this taught in those schools. And there has to be some respect that you know the KNU is a different than the DK BA or some of the other more ephemeral groups, and putting them all on equal footing, because they all represent groups that the West has defined as being is not effective. I don't think you can always find someone like the Kun Sawa would be one. You can sign an agreement with him. It's not going to be good, because he's not going to be in charge and his soldiers, they had that huge surrender ceremony in 1996 where everybody came out, and they laid down 7000 guns and 12,000 soldiers surrendered, and then they let them go, and they just reformed into was state. And therefore maybe some of them went to the Kia, or whatever. It was totally ineffective as a ceasefire. It wasn't a surrender. It was a show put on for the CIA, and the tatmadaw went along with it. And they took Kun sa down to Yangon, and he had a nice life down there until he died, you know, and his I guess his kids are, they received a lot of the money. And sing, what's his name? Moe sing. Moe sing. He was another one who managed to retire to Yangon, and his son is now one of the cronies of one. I think He's the richest man in Myanmar with legitimate businesses, but, you know, tied in with a military like anything, you know, and how that can be framed as a success in the war on drugs, I don't know, but the Americas seem to think so.
Host 1:32:49
Well, I really appreciate all of that conversation about such a wide range of topics that you've been able to share really covered a lot of decades and regions and different perspectives and analiese to look through. And so with that, I'd like to ask if you have any final comments or reflections you'd like to leave for our listeners as we wrap up here.
Tony Waters 1:33:13
Well, I really appreciate the in depth conversation we've had. It's really nice to talk to someone who knows about Myanmar history, maybe more than I do, and I really enjoyed it next time or another time, perhaps we can talk about philosophy. I understand you. You've worked with Buddhism a lot, which is a subject which is very central to Myanmar and the, you know, the Dharma and the ways of thinking, which is not just Buddhist, but it's also in Myanmar, Christianity has elements of habitus from Buddhism that comes into Christianity and shapes worldview that makes them one people, perhaps, but that's Probably for another time. It's been a great conversation.
Host 1:34:02
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