7/11 in Burma: the shelves are bare

Comment on the Burmese elections by Garry Woodard

The Burmese people, despite four massacres in 48 years of harsh, inept military rule, retain their sense of humor. They refer to Sunday’s  general election, the first in 20 years and the second in 50, as the “generals’ election”, for the result is preordained and will entrench military control.

One would like you to be able to share the optimists’ prognostications[1]  that good will come out of the elections  but history suggests that they are just another replay in a long-running traditional shadow-play,  in which there is an intruder who may or may not be permitted a brief appearance after the curtain comes down.

I was Australian ambassador in Burma in 1974 when the military, having drawn up a new constitution, first civilianised themselves in order to rule through the façade of a Cabinet, a People’s Assembly (Pyithu Hluttaw), and a rash of subsidiary bodies, just as now. As a US historian, David Steinberg, has written, the ‘mufti was a camouflage for continued military rule’.

It survived recurring workers and students revolts, a plot by young officers in which dictator Ne Win chose to implicate his loyal army chief, Tin Oo,  Ne Win himself finishing third in his own party poll, and other mirages of change.

Some army officers turned civilian ministers desired rational economic policies (and, like Tin Oo, over the last 20 years have been democratic leader Aung San Suu Ky’s devoted and courageous associates). But Ne Win’s credo, as he put it to me, that ‘all the Burman wants is enough rice in his belly and two longyi lengths a year’, prevailed, so health and education are starved. His successors are meaner men, obscenely rich, and made more secure by a $6 billion-dollar treasure chest from oil and gas.

‘Continued military rule’ is the Burmese junta’s aim, and it has been cunning in achieving it, abroad and at home. When it had to have an election as a safety valve in 1990, it had a contingency plan to negate the result. The election would be only for an assembly to draft a new constitution. When this was leaked to the Western press in May 1989, and Aung San Suu Kyi sought public discussion, she was quickly locked up and made incommunicado. Suu Kyi has been so most of the last 20 years, while an unrepresentative body discussed a constitution consolidating military control. Watching democracies could only wring their hands.

Now ASEAN countries can only do likewise. The junta, deaf to their appeals, does things its way. It has its constitution which is being endorsed by an election, and that is that. A Filipino comments that the constitution and elections are a studied affront, because their deficiencies are the mirror image, writ large, of the democratic shortcomings of all ASEAN countries.

Is there no point of pressure? As early as 1992 (and confirmed many times including by section 443 of the constitution) Burma’s leaders’ fear of international retribution was noted by Philippines Foreign Minister Raul Manglapus. Since then there have been giant bounds in international law, UN endorsement of States’ responsibility to protect and an International Criminal Court to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes, but action against Burma’s leaders looks no nearer.

However, they do have a case to answer. UN officials (led by the recommendations of  UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana), with firsthand knowledge of Burma’s transgressions of human rights and rejection of 19 General Assembly resolutions, have felt strongly enough to back a commission of enquiry into whether crimes have been committed. That would seem fair enough. Australia’s ‘Doc’ Evatt always insisted that there should be an enquiry into the facts before UN action was considered.

What is holding things back? The main block is China. As the US magazine Foreign Policy has observed, China’s strong and unambiguous message to UN members and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is up for re-election next year, has resembled the America of old. This may reflect China’s sense of changing power relations as much as the relative importance it gives to remaining the predominant influence on Burma.

American diplomacy has so far been a failure, despite the opportunities presented by a rogue state developing a provocative relationship with another, North Korea. The Obama administration leaked to The Washington Post that it would push for a UN commission of enquiry into Burma instead of quietly laying the groundwork by establishing a core group of supporters, which might have included Indonesia and Japan, who could argue that the UN should be given a chance and that this seemed to be the only option left to edge junta towards national reconciliation and dialogue. It is now being called a three-year project.

Aung San Suu Kyi, not coincidentally, is due for release next week. If offered (for the junta fears Lazarus rising) it would be in character for her to refuse unless all political prisoners are released. Nelson Mandela adopted that course, successfully. However, antipathy to South Africa’s apartheid fell into a unique category of internationalpressure.

Garry Woodard is a former ambassador to Burma and China

[1]AIIA policy commentary, Democracy and Discontent: The 2010 Elections in Myanmar

 

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[1]AIIA policy commentary, Democracy and Discontent: The 2010 Elections in Myanmar

Israel: tough-minded commentary from within

The 29 October 2010 edition of the moderate (some say left-leaning) Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz carried two opinion pieces that make some very direct and tough minded commentary about Israel and where it is heading.

The first, by Ha’aretz commentator and columnist Yossi Sarid, who served as a Knesset Member for 32 years, including service as Education Minister, Environment Minister and Leader of the Opposition, appears under the headline Why did Peres advocate for Netanyahu’s deceit?

The President’s disappointment is not surprising, writes Sarid, what was surprising was the earlier hope:

On what basis did Peres have faith in Netanyahu and help him deceive the entire world? On the basis of his character, his past, or the camaraderie of people traveling together in an Audi A8?

You can put your trust in solid ground, but not in shifting sands. And Peres is no naif, to be taken in by anything Netanyahu tells him. So what happened here? Why did he decide to serve as an advocate for dishonesty?

There is more, much more – read the full piece here.

In the second piece, Three Cheers for Israel’s Right, Carlo Strenger, Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program of the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, writes of three great achievements of Israel’s right:

It is the great achievement of Israel's right to have made Israel's fears utterly unbelievable to the world. Its other great achievement is that it has managed to confuse a large part of Israel's constituency. It is therefore of the essence to celebrate this immortal achievement, because Israel's right is about to score a further, valuable victory: After 62 years, Israel may soon cease to be a democracy, and finally be a Jewish state without excuses.

Strenger goes on to unpack these three propositions in some detail – read the full piece here.

MDB Guide: how not to handle public policy

There is bound to be near-universal agreement that establishing a comprehensive plan for the management of the Murray Darling Basin is a very complex and challenging piece of public policy, the implementation of which would require political leadership of a high order.  The Murray Darling Basin is the third largest river basin in the world, and by far the driest. Its waters have been substantially over-allocated, a fact that has been recognised since the early 1990s, and it has outstanding conservation values, some of which we have international obligations to protect.  It plays a central role in Australian production of food and fibre, and some townships depend to an important extent upon irrigated agriculture and the maintenance and management of irrigation assets.

On a matter of such complexity and importance one might expect the responsible Minister, who at the end of the day has to take the Basin Plan to Parliament, to take a leading role in managing the politics of the issue.

Au contraire, the Murray Darling Basin Authority unveils it to a startled world late one Friday afternoon, all hell breaks loose, and The Weekend Australian for 23-24 October, under the headline Minister distances himself from Murray-Darling Basin report, quotes the Minister for Water etc., Tony Burke, as saying (see report here):

The guide is not government policy, it is not my document, I have deliberately made sure I did not launch it.

And just in case you were still in any doubt as to whether the Minister was up to the task he rushed off and sought legal advice from the Solicitor-General as to whether the Authority was giving effect to its onerous duties on a sound legal basis or whether he might have grounds to instruct the Authority to listen harder to the people making the most noise.

A Minister made of sterner stuff might have seen handling an issue of such pith and moment as a wonderful opportunity – the best opportunity he will ever get to demonstrate that he is able to deliver major reform.  As it is, Tony Burke has made the Commission’s task immeasurably more difficult and signaled to the opponents of reform that the Government does not have the stomach for this fight, thereby encouraging them to mount an even more vociferous campaign, confident that it will work.

Had I been advising the Minister, I would have advised him, far from disowning the Authority’s Guide, to launch it at the opening of the business day and to set the rules of engagement for the consultation process that it is designed to set up.  I would have suggested that he use the following talking points at the launch:

-  We are here today to launch the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

-  This Guide has been developed by the Murray Darling Basin Authority pursuant to the Water Act 2007, legislation which was introduced into Federal Parliament by the Howard Government and passed with the support of the Australian Labor Party.

-  It has been developed to expose for public comment the Authority’s thinking about how it should go about its task of balancing environmental, economic and social requirements, subject to making certain necessary provision for the health of the river and its ecosystems.

-  This is a very ambitious and challenging exercise.  No-one has ever attempted anything like it on this scale. The Murray Darling Basin is the third largest river basin in the world, and by far the driest.  It is host to unique, world class ecosystems, some of which we have international obligations to protect.  At the same time, it is the source of the livelihood of many enterprises, industries and communities built around irrigated agriculture.

-  It has been recognised since the early 1990s, and by many commentators before that, that the waters of the rivers in the Basin have been substantially over-allocated and that these allocations must be wound back. Winding these over-allocations back will take time  and will need to be handled with sensitivity because the over-allocations have themselves been in existence for long enough to become embedded in the social and economic fabric of the Basin, and to an extent the wider Australian community.

-  The Government recognises these issues but none of them can be allowed to distract the Government or the Australian public from the fact that we have to make the changes that will protect the health of the river systems upon which everyone in the Basin relies. Without healthy rivers no-one in the Basin has a long-term future.

-  The Authority estimates that in order to protect the health of the river and its high value ecosystems it is necessary to reduce diversions from the river by between 3,000 and 7,600GL per annum.

-  On the basis of the social and economic analysis that has already been undertaken, the Authority has assessed that any reduction of diversions greater than 4,000GL per annum would involve social and economic costs that would outweigh the additional environmental gains, and so the real focus of our attention is where in the range 3,000-4,000GL per annum the line should be drawn, the trajectory by which we get ourselves to the desired point, and the adjustment mechanisms which need to be brought into play.

-  The Guide makes clear that as well as the global cuts to diversions it is necessary to distribute the reductions geographically so that additional water is available for the environmental assets at the places where it is needed. Much of this additional water has a cumulative environmental effect – the waters of the Basin have done a lot of work by the time they reach the Murray Mouth and the Coorong.

-  The Authority itself recognises in the Guide that further work on the social and economic impacts needs to be undertaken, and it has already commissioned some of this. The consultation process will lead to further information and insights.

-  For its part, the Government has guaranteed, and I reaffirm today, that there will be no cuts to anyone’s water entitlements – the Government will achieve the necessary reductions only by purchasing water from willing sellers.  The purchases that have already taken place represent a good start on what is required.

-  It is important for all participants in the consultation process to recognise that this Guide I am releasing today is not the Basin Plan, nor is it a draft of the Basin Plan. It simply sets out for public comment the current state of the Authority’s thinking about how it should go about framing the Draft Plan.

-  In framing your comments, I would ask all participants to work on the basis that the feedback that will be of most interest to both the Authority and to me will be the potential impacts on the respondent of what is set out here. We want to hear from irrigators and irrigation managers how the proposals will affect them, from local government and community organizations how the proposals will affect their communities, and from other regional business people how the proposals might affect their businesses.

-  If you think we have got the science wrong or the socio-economic analysis is deficient or incomplete, we will welcome your comments and take your concerns seriously, but in the interests of a constructive and civilised debate I would ask you in making your comments to bring forward the scientific evidence or socio-economic data or analysis that you find more compelling.

-  I would also ask participants to remember that at the end of the day we must achieve a substantial reduction in allocations, with an appropriate geographic distribution, so please bear in mind that if you seek a lesser reduction for your enterprise or community, that may come at the cost of a greater reduction elsewhere.

-  I now ask the Chairman of the Murray Darling Basin Authority to make a few remarks about the consultation processes that the Authority proposes to undertake over the weeks and months ahead.

My guess is that if the Minister had adopted something like the above approach he would now be running a manageable political process, one from which he would have prospects of emerging looking like someone who can get things done.

He chose not to go that way, and sadly my current expectation is that the failure of Murray Darling Basin reform will take its place alongside the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Mineral Resource Super Profits Tax and the Home Insulation Program as a case study in how not to do public policy.  

John Hewson on Defence

In his regular op-ed column in the Australian Financial Review on Friday 22 October former Opposition Leader John Hewson takes a substantial swipe at the Department of Defence.

So much of his commentary is ill-informed, unjustified or attacking the wrong target that it cannot be allowed to pass without comment.

To start with a point on which we are agreed, Hewson criticises Chief of the Defence Force Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston for expressing a view about the appointment of Stephen Smith as Defence Minister. I don’t know exactly what he said, but my position is that no serving military officer should express an opinion about the Minister for Defence. The role of the Australian Defence Force is to conduct military operations as directed by the government of the day, and the only appropriate comment for a CDF, service chief or other military officer should make about the Minister or the Government is that he has no comment.

Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for public servants.

To turn now to the key points of disagreement, the core of Hewson’s attack is his assertion that:

... the Department of Defence, and the defence forces, have been increasingly seen as “different” or “special”, and not subjected to the same degree of scrutiny, transparency and accountability as other departments.

To deal with the second part of this proposition first, it is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant nonsense. What is the evidence for Hewson's claim? The departmental functions of the Department of Defence (as distinct from military training and operational functions of the armed forces) are the responsibility of the Secretary, Department of Defence in exactly the same way as those of any other department head. The Secretary is employed under, and exercises powers and functions under, the Public Service Act, and is bound by the Financial Management and Accountability Act, in exactly the same way as all other Department Secretaries. The Secretary is the custodian of, and is accountable for, the Department’s funds and all of its assets including the military equipment used by the Defence Force. The Secretary and other senior Departmental officers attend Senate Estimates hearings in exactly the same way as officers of other departments.  Its accounts and performance are audited by the Australian National Audit Office in exactly the same manner as those of other Departments, and because of the amounts of money involved it comes in for a great deal of ANAO, Parliamentary and media attention.

Aside from these standard accountability provisions, I would argue that Defence is subject to more scrutiny than other Departments. To take just one example, Department of Finance and Administration officers work inside the Defence Materiel Organisation, and Defence’s expenditure proposals cannot even get onto the Cabinet agenda unless the Finance Department has been through its costings with a fine tooth comb and agreed with them.

And the Department is always crawling with business improvement consultants imposed upon it by governments of whatever persuasion. It is actually the statutory function of the Secretary to make the place run smoothly, but there are always politicians who want to impose management initiatives on the hapless Secretary – and then make him accountable for the debacles that follow.  If we could actually leave the place alone for long enough to let the Secretary get on with his statutory responsibilities, then we be in a position to hold him to account.

As for regarding Defence as “different” or “special”, it is.  Defence is the only organisation that expects its employees to face death or injury as an intrinsic part of going about their duties. That makes it pretty special. 

There are other organisations (police, fire brigade, emergency services, rescue services) whose employees take risks, and come to harm, in the course of their duties, but if you ask any one of those organisations they will tell you that the safety of their employees is paramount and that their employees are not expected to put their lives at risk.

This unique characteristic of the ADF imposes a high duty upon the government to ensure that those it asks to go into harm’s way have the best possible chance of winning, and it imposes a duty upon both the Department and the military specialists to advise the government on what equipment meets the necessary criteria. This is the context in which to view Mr Hewson’s comment that:

...”more is always preferred to less” when you seek the advice of the defence heavies on expenditure, be they bureaucrats or in the forces.

 As an old supervisor of mine, who had been a bomber pilot in New Guinea, used to say, “I have been to war in the second best aircraft in the sky, and it is not a lot of fun”.

The need to ensure that when we fight we win makes Defence special in other ways. It means that for front line equipment it is always looking to acquire next generation materiel – equipment that has not yet been designed, built and tested, equipment that performs in ways that have never been achieved before. This means that the technical, schedule and cost risks are high, and the lead-times are long. Introduction of complex equipment into service can easily take twenty years from the time the proposal first goes to Cabinet. In order to commit to (i.e. sign contracts for) such projects, Defence needs a certain predictability of funding – predictability which some commentators seem to see as conferring some kind of privileged status on the Department.

As for John Hewson’s allegation that the military leadership would redefine the objectives of our involvement in war in order “to ensure the continuity of our involvement”, that is both unworthy and at variance with the facts of our recent wars.

Our commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq were not occasioned by the urgings of bellicose military chiefs, who as Hewson observes at the start of his article simply work for the government of the day.  We became, and remained, involved in these wars because John Winston Howard wanted us to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with our glorious ally. As far as I am aware the service chiefs were never asked whether these wars were a good idea; as John Howard comments in his memoir which is previewed in The Weekend Australian today, he regarded it as “inconceivable” that Australia would not join the United States in its invasion of Iraq.

None of the CDFs and service chiefs with whom I was privileged to serve would have adopted such a cavalier approach to the nation’s security interests or the lives of their people as to seek to prolong our involvement for the fun of it. Regarding warfare as a game seems to be the specialty of people who have never been near one and are never likely to.

One of the service chiefs in my time was then Chief of Air Force Air Marshall Errol McCormack, who is now Chairman of the Board of the Williams Foundation (www.williamsfoundation.org.au), an independent defence and national security think tank named for Sir Richard Williams, who in 1921 became the first chief of the newly formed Royal Australian Air Force following distinguished combat  service in World War I.

In its paper “A Defence Strategy for the 21st Century” (downloadable from here), the Williams Foundation begins:

For more than one hundred years Australian defence strategy has been based on so-called ‘expeditionary’ operations – that is, on wars of invasion. If we are going to learn anything from the disasters of the last fifty years in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it should be that that model has become untenable. It has failed politically, socially, and militarily; and it has become ethically unacceptable.

Simply put, the era has gone in which predominantly white, predominantly European, predominantly Christian armies could stampede around the world invading countries their governments either don’t like or want to change.

Australia needs a new national defence strategy that recognises those realities, and that reflects the changing nature of international relations in the 21st century.

The Board of the Foundation contains a number of very senior military officers who have been in the ADF during the time of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, some of whom certainly saw service in Vietnam. They don’t sound like a particularly belligerent lot to judge by the views they express here.

Talks with the Taliban getting serious

The opening paragraphs of Taliban’s Elite, Aided by NATO, Join Talks for Afghan Peace, an article in the 19 October edition of The New York Times, sets an interesting context for the declarations by our Prime Minister and Opposition Leader that Australia is definitely in Afghanistan for the long haul:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say.  

The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Taliban war effort inside Afghanistan. Afghan leaders have also held discussions with leaders of the Haqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerrilla factions fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban leaders coming into Afghanistan for talks have left their havens in Pakistan on the explicit assurance that they will not be attacked or arrested by NATO forces, Afghans familiar with the talks say. Many top Taliban leaders reside in Pakistan, where they are believed to enjoy at least some official protection.

It is amazing how evil incarnate – the end of civilization as we know it – can become an acceptable negotiating proposition once the public begins to tire of the war. A war of choice indeed.

Interesting too how the Prime Minister was silent on this aspect – apart from a reference to political reconciliation – in her statement to Parliament yesterday. Is the Australian Government not quite up with the game, or is this one area where the sunlight of the new paradigm has not yet been allowed to shine?

The above reference to the Haqqani network is particularly interesting, as it has had much to do with assassination attempts within Kabul. In a post on 25 August 2009 I explained how  Jalaluddin Haqqani was once the golden-haired boy of the Americans and the Pakistani ISI, but turned against the Americans after a few months of fence-sitting following the US-led invasion, following a series of US bombing raids that killed members of his family, after which he threw his lot in with the Taliban. While allied with the Taliban, he is not of the Taliban, and has substantial financial backing from Arab and other non-Afghan jihadist groups. While Prime Minister Gillard says we are in partnership with Pakistan against Islamic extremism, the Pakistani Inters-Services Intelligence Directorate(ISI) still assists him and he operates with impunity out of Pakistan; the Pakistanis are not sure whether they can handle him in any case.  For a more detailed story on this, with some interesting links, see New York Times on Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: Another reason the deck is stacked against us

An article from the 16 October 2010 edition of The New York Times presents another graphic example of why it is so difficult to win a war in which the goodwill of the local people is of fundamental importance: when you are fighting amongst the locals, you will almost inevitably bound to cause crippling resentment.

Consider the opening paragraphs of In Afghan South, U.S. Faces Frustrated Residents (full story here):

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — As American troops mount a critical operation this weekend in the campaign to regain control in Kandahar, they face not only the Taliban but also a frustrated and disillusioned population whose land has been devastated by five years of fighting.

While most villagers have fled the area, those who remain complain that they are trapped between insurgents and the foreign forces, often suffering damages for which they remain uncompensated.

One of those who left is Abdul Hamid, once a prosperous grape farmer and the owner of two houses, a raisin barn and 900 vines. He lived in a hamlet called Lora in Panjwai, a fertile farming district southwest of Kandahar where others who recently left say there has been heavy shooting and bombardment.

Three years ago, Canadian troops built a temporary post near Lora. When they immediately came under fire from insurgents, they bulldozed much of the hamlet, flattening houses, water pumps and surrounding orchards, the villagers and local elders say ...

The article goes on to describe other miseries, and how difficult it is for local farmers to make a case for compensation (available in principle) and how unlikely it is that they will ever see the money even if compensation is awarded.

When will they ever learn?

The opening paragraphs of an article in the 7 October edition of The New York Times (see Afghans Linked to the Taliban Guard U.S. Bases, accessible here) make interesting reading on the eve of our first Parliamentary debate about what we are doing in Afghanistan, and our prospects of achieving an acceptable outcome.  They beg the question of whether our major ally is conducting this war in a manner conducive to success:

WASHINGTON — Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found...

It gets worse – read the full article here.

This is yet further evidence of the problems with using military contractors to do the work of soldiers – of which there is abundant evidence from the Iraq experience. Contractors do not have the same motivations, they are not under military command, they are often operating in a legal limbo –indemnified against local law but somehow not subject to US law. Military units are supposedly in the area of operations to fight and win; contractors are explicitly in the area of operations to make a profit.

The extensive use of contractors is driven by cost considerations – soldiers are expensive. But can a nation that wishes to deal effectively with the sensitivities of counter-insurgency operations, where having the locals on side is of fundamental importance, afford to employ contractors?  There is nothing quite so expensive as losing a war.