 Good morning everyone. I'd like to encourage everybody to grab your beverage, have a seat, and please join us in these marvelous front-row seats that are available here. And I want to welcome everybody who made it through our epic snow day. Thank you for being able to rejoin us as we rescheduled for today. And I know that we'll be having people joining us throughout the day. Welcome. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace and I'm delighted that everybody could join us here today for an important opportunity to really examine and discuss and share together a conversation about a year into a very historic transition in Burma. How are we doing? I want to give special thanks to our USIP team Andrew Wilder of Vanessa Johansson and the entire Burma team for putting this day together. I also want to just take a quick moment to acknowledge, especially for those of you who may have known and worked with my predecessor, the president of USIP for 19 years, Dick Solomon, that we lost Dick earlier this week and we mourn his loss and we very much celebrate the great legacy that Dick has left, not just USIP where he served as 19 years for president, but really this region. He was an Asia scholar and a diplomat at State Department and we will miss him greatly. Some of you may have known and worked with him quite closely. We will be having a memorial service later in April and we hope you'll be able to join us then. For those who are not familiar with US Institute of Peace, we were founded just about 30 years ago by Congress as an independent federal institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is a very practical undertaking and that it's absolutely essential for our national security and that it's very possible to achieve. And so as an independent federal institute, USIP works on the ground in countries affected by conflict, working with local partners, communities and governments on what are the tools, what's the knowledge, what are the approaches that can help them manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and to resolve it when it does. I have just returned from a trip to Burma with Ambassador Mitchell, who you'll be hearing from later today, our senior advisor here and Andrew Wilder and our team members and we were able to meet with a broad cross-section of Burmese civil society leaders, religious leaders, State Councilor Anson Su-Chi, Chief Senior General Min Ong Lai. It was a broad set of conversations that more than anything I think left all of us with a deep appreciation for the complexities that face this transition, this new leadership under Anson Su-Chi just one year into this new era with very complicated conflicts, both with the ethnic groups as well as in Rakhine State and intercommunal conflicts. This is an important set of situations to understand more deeply and one of the reasons that we're gathered here today is to have a chance to take stock of how the transition is going. How can we in the United States further support it? These are conflicts with deep roots, highly complex and not easy solutions. We, for example, in recent weeks, we had gone to Burma with the hope and the idea that we would be there for the Union Peace Conference or the 21st century Panglong Conference, which unfortunately was delayed. We are, however, seeing ethnic groups such as the Koran are now holding a national dialogue, which is a part of the peace process after signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement, but at the same time we're seeing renewed conflict in Kachin and Sean States and fresh clashes that you all have seen with Kokong, sending tens of thousands across the Chinese border. So again, the complexity continues. In Rakhine State, UN Special Rapporteur Yanhee Lee just called for a high-level probe into the abuses against the Rohingya Muslims, and just in the last few days, many of you have maybe seen the Kofi and non-advisory Commission preliminary recommendations on what are the longer term pathways out of that very difficult conflict. So as all of these events unfold, it's critically important that Washington remain engaged all too often after a successful election of the kind that occurred just a year ago. We consider that success and time to walk away. When what we're seeing is this will be a long-term effort in Burma to ensure that there is a successful transition. USIP has been active in Burma since 2012, and we work to support the security sector reform that's so critical for a successful transition. We work with religious leaders on interfaith dialogue. We have provided support for the peace process through skills training and education, and we're committed to providing this kind of forum here in Washington, D.C. to ensure that we're able to help engage and inform a broader community of people who are concerned about these issues, and today will be an excellent opportunity to do that. So to get us started, I'm delighted to be able to introduce Ambassador Oolong Lin. Ambassador Oolong Lin arrived in Washington in September after being appointed by the new Burmese government in July 2016. He is the first career member of the foreign ministry to hold this post in decades. In fact, Ambassador Oolong Lin gave his first public speech as an ambassador in the U.S. here at USIP in November, so I'm particularly delighted to have him back. Where did you go, Ambassador? Oh, there you are. He previously served as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as director general of the Director Ocean Affairs Department and head of the Department of Political Affairs. He's also had held posts in Hong Kong, South Africa, and elsewhere, so we're particularly lucky to have such a seasoned diplomat here at this time, and please join me in welcoming Ambassador Oolong Lin to the podium. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much, Nancy Limburg, president of the United States Institute of Peace for your opening remarks. I do believe that your recent visit to Myanmar was truly fruitful, and I'm very happy to see all of you in good shape after the heavy snowstorm that we had in Washington D.C. a few days ago. Furthermore, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Uaongi, the advisory committee of the Peace Center, Ambassador Derek Mitchell, Priscilla Clapp, Dr. David Steinberg, Andrew Wilder, country coordinator Vanessa Jones Johansson, and my fellow citizens, Dr. Choyan Lai, Ms. Janan Lataw, and moderators, discussants, and all of you who are present today for your great interest in Myanmar. I also wish to express my deep appreciation and sincere thanks to the United States Institute of Peace for coordinating this important and timely event. This event is the second in one year that USIP has organized following the first event held at the same place in November last year. During the event, participants actively discussed on pressing issues in Myanmar. I'm confident that this event will continue to contribute towards better understanding on critical issues in Myanmar and facilitate all parties in resolving these issues. Without peace and stability, the country will not be able to move forward to a genuine democracy. Based on this firm belief, the government has made national reconciliation and peace as one of the country's most important priorities in the conduct of its domestic policy. To move forward in peace process, the government has established a regular timetable for negotiation through the Union Peace Conferences and opening to dialogues to all ethnic armed groups. In this connection, the first session of the Union Peace Conference, also known as the 21st Century Pan-Long, was held on August 31st last year in Nebido. Representatives of almost all ethnic armed groups attended the conference and presented diverse views freely and openly. The Peace Commission has studied all papers submitted to the Pan-Long Conference to identify key issues for negotiation. The Union Government and all the key players in the peace process are working very hard to convene the second session at present. The conference is slated to bring together 700 participants from across the government, military, parliament, political parties, ethnic armed groups and ethnic national groups. Non-signatory groups of nationwide ceasefire agreement NCA are also encouraged to attend the conference. Delays and postponements of the dates and the serious dialogue between the two sides show the importance and the will of the people to make the second session of the 21st Century Pan-Long most meaningful and successful. There are notable developments in peace process since our last meeting. State Councillor Do Aung San Suu Kyi and the chair of the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee in her address at the committee's meeting on February 6th stated that difference views and visions not only exist between our organization and the government but also exist in different forms across the nation. Different varies deepening on political outlooks, racial, religious and social attitudes and visions. She added that if the country really wanted democracy, people need to believe and consider that different visions can be solved in a peaceful way. The Union Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee, JMCU, commenced the demarcation discussion on February 9 starting from the state-level Joint Ceasefire Monitoring, JMCS and approved the rules of the JMC's offices. Subsequently, on February 23, the Joint Coordinating Body JCB for peace process funding reached consensus on issues that includes the reformation of the JCB, fund allowance for the national reconciliation and peace center and signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. On March, the Union Government held a coordination meeting with the delegation for political negotiation of the Union United Nationalities Federal Council, UNFC and good results were obtained where the Union Government favorably considered the nine points proposed by the UNFC. I learned the meetings at the National Reconciliation and Peace Center are still in progress at this time. Now may I change to the topic to the situation in Rakhine State? Those who know the history of our country know how complex and challenging the situation is. The two communities, the Buddhist and the Muslim, are having a very hard time in Rakhine State. Muslim community is suffering because of being isolated and the Buddhist community for the fear of becoming a minority in their own homeland. But no one can deny the fact that both communities are the casualties of the development in the region. This is the reason the Union Government is trying hard to find a lasting solution to promote the livelihood of the people and develop economy in the Rakhine State. Within weeks of taking office, the State Council have formed the Central Committee on Implementation of the Peace, Stability and Development of the Rakhine State. That is responsible for coordinating with government ministries and international partners to provide long-term support. An independent commission headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Anand was formed last October to assist the government in finding long-term solutions. The commission members include Muslim and Buddhist members as well as international representatives. The commission's interim report is now published today and the government is thoroughly studying this report. Situation in the northern Rakhine State started to stabilize before the most recent attack on the border guards on 9 October last year. It was a well-planned, well-coordinated attack that killed nine officers with several others wounded, including in the subsequent attacks that followed. These attacks are challenges to the sovereignty of the nation. There are evidence that external actors are involved and they are seeking to incite violence, providing weapons and terror training to the extremists. The situation was made worse by propaganda and misinformation. We are also aware of the allegations contained in the recent report of the UN and others. We are deeply concerned and taking them extremely seriously. The State Councilor made it very clear in a telephone conversation with the UN Office of the High Commissioner of the Human Rights that where there is a clear evidence in law-breaking, we will take all necessary action. There is also an investigation led by the Vice President and the military has also launched an investigation led by senior members of the armed forces. In this respect, there will be no excuse for those committed excessive use of force beyond the code of conduct. The situation in the northern Rakhine State is now stable. The government is working closely with the international donors, the United Nations, and the ASEAN to provide emergency relief to the affected areas. In addition to providing immediate relief, the government is also working hard for a real and lasting solution to the situation in the Rakhine State. Changing the situation to the northern border region, there has been violent armed clashes erupted in recent days. These commissions reaffirmed and underscored the need and the urgency to achieve peace in the country. The USIP delegation visited Myanmar recently. I do believe that the delegation after meeting with all stakeholders was able to deepen understanding and make assessment more on the crucial issues in Myanmar. There are root causes, complexities, and the importance and the need to resolve them in building a democratic nation. You must also have witnessed the strong desire of the Myanmar people to see peace prevail and flourish in the entire country. In conclusion, I wish to see your active participation in this event. Please share and exchange your vast knowledge and experience with goodwill to help the parties in addressing the pressing issues and finding a lasting solution. I wish you a successful event. Thank you very much. We have a lot of ground to cover today, so I think I will invite our panelists for the first panel to come join me up here on the stage. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Ambassador, for your comments. Again, we did have a very, very productive and useful visit, and thanks for the ambassador's help and also helping arrange some of the meetings for us while we were in Myanmar. USIP's mission is to make peace possible. I have to say the week we spent in Myanmar, which is my fourth visit, I am not an expert on the country, though certainly left me further confused by the complexities of the situation. Nevertheless, I think, as Nancy mentioned, the very critical need to remain engaged. And as part of USIP's work, Nancy outlined some of the work we do in Myanmar, but the research and analytical work we do, also bringing, trying to inform audiences international and national, but also back here in Washington at this critical time, is a very important piece of what we do. And today's event, again, is a good example of that. This first panel is on Burma's political and international affairs. A broad panel is to provide an overview of some of the main issues Burma is facing today. One year after the NLD party headed by Aung San Suu Kyi came to power. We're hoping that this first panel, again, will help frame some of the issues we'll be addressing during the course of the day. In particular, we do want to focus on the conflict and peace efforts in Burma, given USIP's mission of helping to provide ways to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. So, again, we'll be painting the overview, also providing a bit of the historical context for much of what we see today. A lot of these issues, again, have very long-standing root causes, but then also very much trying to focus on identifying possible ways forward. And again, I hope that that's a theme throughout the course of the day. The issues are complex. We don't just want to talk about the problems. We want to understand those, but very much with the idea of trying to identify ways to move forward. We are very pleased to have a very capable and experienced group of panelists today, but also looking out in the audience, many participants who have vast experience working in Burma or have expertise and have studied the issues there deeply and for a long time. Our first speaker will be Ambassador Derrick Mitchell, who we're very fortunate to have here as a senior advisor at USIP's Asia Center. Ambassador Mitchell served from 2012 to 2016 as the first US ambassador to Myanmar in 22 years. In 2011, Ambassador Mitchell has appointed the State Department's first special representative and policy coordinator for Burma with the rank of ambassador. And I will not go into the full bio. You have more detail bios with you, but just before that, he had again a long and distinguished career, including as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs and as a senior fellow at CSIS where he founded the CSIS Southeast Asia Initiative. Our second speaker will be Professor David Steinberg, who's a distinguished professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, my alma mater. David is a specialist on Burma, Myanmar, the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, and US Policy Asia, and I'm sure much, much more. Previously, he was a representative of the Asia Foundation in Korea, Hong Kong, Burma, and Washington, D.C., and prior to that served as a member of the Senior Foreign Service and State Department. And we had the opportunity to discuss yesterday a little bit, and I learned that David's first trip to Burma occurred four years before I was born. So just to give a little bit of a sense of, and I won't tell you how old I am, but lots of experience. Last but not least, Priscilla Klapp, who's also a senior advisor here at USIP's Asia Center and as well as at the Asia Society. Priscilla is a retired minister-counselor in the US Foreign Service and also had a long and distinguished career with the US government in a number of assignments, including serving as the chief of mission and permanent charged affairs at the US Embassy in Burma from 1999 to 2002. And from as far as I can see, Priscilla has dedicated pretty much the rest of her life to Burma after that assignment. So again, a great panel. I will turn it over now to Ambassador Mitchell for the first remain seated. I think each speaker, I've asked to speak for maybe 10 minutes or so, and then we'll open it up for question and answer and discussion with all of you. So thank you again very much. Well, thank you, Andrew, and thank you, everybody out there for coming and for changing your schedules to come out on a Thursday. I want to single out a couple people who have come here. First of course, my good friend, Ambassador Ong Lin, who was a great partner when I was ambassador in Yangon, but who was a tremendous advocate for Burma-US Myanmar relations here in Washington. Your country really is lucky to have you here. Second is we have several of my predecessors here. Priscilla is one of them. Another is Larry Dinger, who I haven't seen in a while, who did an absolutely outstanding job. Usually, if there's any success, you're standing on the shoulders of others who have laid the groundwork. And whatever success that I may have had, I always say I stood on the shoulders of the great work of Larry Dinger and Priscilla and many other people that preceded me. This topic title is political and international affairs. I'm going to stick to the political side of things, the domestic side of things. I'll let Dr. Steinberg perhaps address some of the international context and precarious geopolitics of Burma-Myanmar as the tender gourd among the cacti and as many of you may have heard, and the friends to all policy. But as suggested, it's almost a year now since the establishment of the NLD government. And if we had this meeting on Tuesday, it would have been exactly a year since I returned from Myanmar as ambassador. I just finished my first trip back a couple weeks ago with USIP. And I used to say as ambassador that if you are confused after you visit the country, I've done my job. And in fact, as Andrew suggested, and I would have to echo returning from Myanmar now, it is a highly complex and confusing environment. And it reminds, visiting there is always a reminder that there is no one issue that defines this country, that there are multiple layers of complexity and you have to see everything in context altogether to get a feel for what is happening there. The 2015 election in the transition, of course, was a moment of hope and promise. One of the few good news stories around the world in 2015-2016. But as ambassador and as a keen observer, I never had any illusions about the challenges ahead, that it was not a full democratic transition, that we are only, as Churchill may have said, at the end of the beginning of an extended work in progress. The election didn't solve any long-standing national problems, it just meant the NLD now inherits them. And those problems include profound economic underdevelopment, lack of government capacity, inter-religious tensions, unresolved inter-religious tensions, most notably, of course, in Rakhine State, but not just in Rakhine State. And of course, a lack of national peace, the defining challenge of the country that has bedeviled this place virtually since independence. The remains widespread corruption, social mistrust, and old non-democratic mindsets. It also didn't change the fundamental structure of the country. You can change ministers, but everything below is not changed. Managing your bureaucracy is hugely difficult. The NLD had to not only take over the government, but had to reinvent it, and one that had been highly inefficient, often corrupt, and largely driven by personal relationships among military colleagues. The Constitution has not changed. The military still controls the security-related ministries, 25% of the parliament, much of the economy, and the civilian leadership has virtually no power over the military by law. The administration of the country is essentially controlled by the old guard, i.e., the military, down to the local level through the general administration department. And therefore, civilian orders can easily be subverted as you go down that administrative chain. And because of all this, suspicion about the military's role continues. Does the Commander-in-Chief, as we heard a few weeks ago, does the Commander-in-Chief have political ambitions himself? Does the military truly want peace? Will they find ways to subvert reform to ensure their privileged position as protectors of security and stability? These are questions out there that people still ask because of mistrust, because of the structure of the society and the country remains the same as do the mindsets. You all, I'm sure, read about the brazen assassination of a good friend, the NLD lawyer and Muslim leader, Uconi. And it's aftermath. That only heightened suspicions and gave, given the connection to a former military officer, the murder sent a chill through society, through the NLD, through Muslims alike, raising fresh questions about the prospects of real change in the society. But the NLD presumably knew that this would be the situation they would inherit. This is what they bought in for when they said they will engage in this election and this political process. Their task, therefore, was to navigate the situation shrewdly and effectively to ensure success of their tenure and meet the expectations, even minimal expectations of the Myanmar people. I would argue that the most important dynamic after the election is a relationship between Aung San Suu Kyi and the Commander-in-Chief. Much of politics is personal, after all. If they establish a working relationship, a trusting relationship, everything does become much easier. A year later, it seems that they have perhaps a cordial relationship, if not close. It's not a matter of assigning blame or fault, but it's not where one would have hoped it would be, which may be inevitable, given their differences on some fundamental issues like constitutional change. But this relationship in particular, between Aung San Suu Kyi and the Commander-in-Chief, between the civilian leadership and the military leadership, still remains the key element for the success of reform. Now, overall, there is still tremendous support for Aung San Suu Kyi nationally as the embodiment of hope and promise for the country. She has made nascent progress on health, on education, anti-corruption, infrastructure development as proceeding apace with assistance large part from the international community, international financial institutions. Rural development shows early signs of following the successful Asian development model, and the NLD has handled those who seek to divide according to religion carefully but decisively. While I would say, if we're talking about the politics, that the former ruling party, USDP, touts its commitment to defending race and religion, which is not a difficult slogan to decode, I would say. So politically there are still some divisions and still folks who are setting their differences. The April 1 by-elections are coming up, and I remember in April 1 of 2012 when I was envoy, this was a huge deal. The NLD had just registered, and of course the NLD won the landslide. This is a big deal, these by-elections. The by-elections coming up, I imagine very few here know anything about. It's no big deal. There may even be a low turnout, which one may say is somewhat remarkable and may be encouraging to some degree when by-elections, when elections are not something huge and remarkable, but we should also be to follow the quality of the election electoral process. Nonetheless, with all this progress, or all this still hope in DOSU and the NLD, one does hear a growing sense of disappointment and resignation among both elite observers and average citizens alike about the trajectory of the NLD's tenure at the end of its first year. Arguably, this is to be expected, given heightened expectations of a transition and the difficulties of moving from being a political opposition to the responsibilities of governance, but we should not underestimate some of these, some of this disappointment, and I'll let me go through a few of the complaints that we hear commonly. First, that there is limited Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD communication, with the media, with the public, about its policy goals and its vision. We hear that oftentimes even from ethnic populations, not a lot of outreach, personal diplomacy, quiet diplomacy necessary to build trust and provide a vision, very important for a government. Lack of a clear and detailed economic policy or apparent priority attention to economic issues. Maintenance of legacy laws such as the 66D, the telecommunications law, telecommunications act that limits free speech. Tense relations with civil society. Lack of progress on land rights. Presence of ineffective ministers in key ministries. Bureaucratic confusion and tension. Gridlock in decision-making, given that all decisions, as it was with her party, have to go up to the state councilor. So, gridlock in decision-making and frustration over the slow pace in the overall state of the peace process, particularly in light of the expansion of violence in the North. Now, of course, the lack of success in peace is not entirely her responsibility. And later today, there will be a discussion of all of that. And of course, much of the international community, as you all know, is dissatisfied with what is going on with the oppression of the Rohingya in Northern Rakhine State. It is a highly complex situation, as will be discussed, but that has the potential to become a more profound security threat to the country. And it should be noted that when you go to Myanmar, to Burma, you do not hear much about Rakhine State and is not high in the agenda of most in the country who are dealing with their everyday problems and other issues of development. Again, you can't blame the NLD for not solving these problems in the first year, given the structural constraints. But the first year of a new government in a democracy is usually the moment of its greatest power. It's the time to build on their electoral mandate, to set forth their vision, to build political alliances, and establish the course of their tenure. It is a reasonable question to ask whether Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD has taken full advantage of the momentum of their landslide historic victory, including building coalitions for change with its many allies inside and outside the country. In the end, again, they retain broad support. Patience is required. The patience should not mean complacency in the face of questions about the NLD's leadership to date. So it will be very interesting to see whether the NLD engages in hard self-reflection at the end of its first year and whether it will make course corrections as needed to reassure both domestic and international audiences alike about the prospects for its tenure going forward. So with that, I'll conclude my remarks and look forward to questions, and I'll turn it over to my friend David Sunberg. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. It's an honor to be here. I've been asked to talk about history. That's because I'm old, I guess. My text today is from Ambassador Scott Marshall, who was here last week, and he called for us to understand what he called the overhang of history. That is, I think, very important. Unfortunately, the American citizens in general have a very short memory, and this causes us to have great problems. When I first started to study Chinese at Harvard to get my master's, I was given very sage advice by a PhD student there. He said, the first sentence on any question at Harvard on Asia should be, in order to understand this problem, we have to go back to the origins of the Han dynasty. That was very good advice. It's good advice for policy makers as well, and we won't go back that far, but we'll go back a bit because I want to talk about basically six things that have historical importance. Minority issues, the role of the military, civil military relations, concepts of authority, mistrust, and nationalism. Very quickly, since I have a very short time, the real issue in the country to me is not democracy. The real issue is majority-minority relations. That has been the issue before independence, on independence. No government, the civilian governments did not solve it. Military governments made it worse. The things saying government has done made steps, and now we are on the process of trying to make that work better. But it is a very long, difficult process. Remember that the UK granted independence to Burma because of Aung San and the first Hong Kong conference on February 12, 1947. Otherwise, what might have happened was that independence would have been granted to the Burman areas, and the Hill areas would have been under some sort of British protectorate or independent, a separate independence. So this question goes back to the heart of the problem. The problem has been exacerbated over time. Remember, General Samang said, a million people have been killed in the civil wars in Myanmar. Maybe that's an overstatement, but certainly it has been the most bloody area in Southeast Asia, aside from the Vietnam War, which is a special one. The relationship has been bad because General Nguyen in 1963 said that federalism of granting authority, more authority to local governments, minority groups, was the first in the process of secession. And secession is the highest problem that the military is trying to face. National unity is their primary goal. They have said this consistently over the years. So this creates a problem that the government, under the same saying, began to realize and accepted the concept of federalism. But federalism is defined by each of the minorities in their own way. So we don't have a definition of federalism that is uniform for the whole society. Another problem related to this has been the foreign involvement. I'll come back to that later on. But foreign involvement with the British informally encouraging the Korean to believe they would have independence, the U.S. support for various minority groups, the Christian, the Chin, Chin and some Korean, which causes problems with the Berman majority. These are all kinds of issues. And we should not neglect Rakhang in this as well because, after all, Rakhang was only conquered by the Bermans in 1785. And they have been treated in the past as second class citizens in the country. So it's not just a question of the Muslims in the Rakhang area, but also the Buddhists in the Rakhang area. So this creates a very complex situation. Let's turn to the role of the military. The military government, the military governance in the country has been quite different from that in the United States. We like to think of civilian control over the military. But in fact, the military saved the country. I mean, if you can imagine that we used to say the Rangoon government, it would be, that was almost literally true because Korean rebels were in the equivalent of Rockville, Maryland in the early period of the 1950s. So there was an impression certainly created by the military or felt by the military that civilians were, politicians were corrupt and ineffective. And uniquely in Asia, the military controlled all the avenues of social mobility in that society. This is very different from any of the other countries where the military has had a prominent role. And yet the whole high echelon of the military is essentially Berman Buddhists, this beginning perhaps to change. But until that really changes, which would be a slow process, you will not get equity in that society through the military channel. Military channels have opened up now with economics, politics, NGOs, and so forth in the media. This is all very important, but this process is a slow process. So we see the continued role of the military and administration. This goes back again to the 50s and the KMT troops in the Shan state and the military administration of some of that area at that particular time. Let's turn to civilian military relations. There is this level of concern that there is a preoccupation with the U.S. in trying to have civilian control. But as I say, this is a slow, long process that is not likely to happen soon. Relations are, let's say, if not tense, at least very, very delicate. And there's been little to have seen that change. Turn to concepts of authority, which go back to the heart of the society. This is not only true of Burma, Myanmar, but of other societies as well. If you go look at basically the authoritarian nature of leadership in that society from the period of the Burmese kings, Ounu may have been a Democrat in terms of being anti-communist, but he certainly wasn't a Democrat in administration. Nae Win was, in fact, a dictator. Saumang, who didn't last very long, believed he was the incarnation, reincarnation of King John Sither. General Fan Shui certainly controlled everything. And Aung San Suu Kyi has inherited some of these tendencies. She runs a Democratic party, but the party is not a democracy itself. And I think we must understand that. We have a concept in that society of highly personalized authority. And this means that this is going to take time to change and it relates to the issue of democracy, which I'll get to in a moment. The issue of mistrust, to me, there has been very little alleviation of the mistrust, inherent mistrust between the civilian and military authorities. Aung San Suu Kyi under her house arrest, no doubt feels very concerned about the Democratic tendencies of the military. And the military feels that she is not to be trusted as well. The mistrust exists in the minorities against each other and against the Berman majority. The religious issues that we'll talk about later on are obviously terribly important in this. And the relationship, the mistrust between the center and periphery in general in that society. And then the question of nationalism. We talked about nationalism a lot when we talked about the country. With nationalism goes the question of vulnerability. The people in the society feel exceptionally vulnerable. The Bermans, because they were colonized, the smaller power among the great powers, as you say, the tend to go to the Cactus, which Unu said years ago. And each of the minorities feel vulnerable, and of course the Rohingya feel vulnerable, and the kind Buddhists feel vulnerable. So this vulnerability is terribly important, which creates problems in the hands of nationalism for foreigners. What will the foreigners play in this whole question of nationalism? Because when you are nationalistic, you have a tendency to become xenophobic. And I would expect that we will see a rise in anti-Western influence in society as Western popular culture and Western influence begins to grow. We've seen that with of course the Muslims, we've seen it with the Chinese, and of course in the colonial period. When we talk about transition, we talk about transition to what? A couple years ago, the State Department had a conference, unclassified but small, and the conference title was Burma Road to Democracy. And I gave a little talk at that, and I said I agree with two words of this, road to. We should be calling it Myanmar, because as the foreign ministry has told me many times, it's insulting not to use the term Myanmar, which is the term that they use, and it's a question of democracy. The Burmese, when they promised democracy, they called it discipline flourishing democracy, their term. Whenever you put an adjective before democracy, you, we define it, you lessen its impact. And that is whether it's guided democracy, people's democracy, or discipline flourishing democracy. So I think we have now is a representative pluralism, which is a very good thing indeed. And I can understand over time the development of more democracy in the society. But this is a long, long slow process. But we Americans are impatient to say we don't understand history, we're not prepared to wait. And I think we have to wait. The efforts we should make should be supportive of all sides. But let us realize that the solution to the problem is not a foreign issue. It is a Burma issue. Foreigners, because of the inherent suspicion of us, we can assist, we can suggest, but the solutions will come from the Burmese themselves. And we should encourage that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is this on? Is this working? Thank you very much, Derrick and David, for giving us such a rich array of ideas to think about. I'd like to go back at least to the time that I was there. Eighteen years ago, I arrived in Burma, Myanmar for the first time, 18 years ago, it was a very different place than it is today in many ways. In many ways, it was the same as it is today. It was the height of repressive military rule, but all of the problems that we see today existed then. They were under the surface, they were hidden, they were repressed, they were held down. The things that are happening in the country today are not new. They've existed in the country, in the society for generations, if not centuries. I think as we go through our discussions today, we should bear in mind the impact that the transition of the last five to seven years has had on that country. It's been major, I would say even massive. We sit here and think it's moving too slowly. It's not resolving the issues, the problems quickly enough that it should have been a much smoother, easier transition. I don't think we fully appreciate the complexities and the challenges that they're facing. During the years of repression and military rule, for us Americans, it was a simple equation of opposition to the military, democratic opposition to the military. It was a simple equation for Burmese as well, because it united them. It covered over many of their differences by uniting them in opposition to military government. We tended to incorporate that into our thinking about the country as being just two-sided, the opposition and the military. As we have seen in this transition, it's much more complicated than that. There are many, many differences underneath that veneer. The transition itself has opened enormous space for social and political dialogue in the country. People are discovering for the first time many of the differences and problems that they have in the society that were being masked earlier by the repression. This combined with the revolution in communications, the sudden freedom to speak out, to have a lively free press, and to begin to explore their issues in the context of the 21st century world outside them has created a very confusing cacophony of debate and dialogue in the country. It very often veers off into some very extreme directions. I think we have that same problem here to a certain extent, but we're more accustomed to managing it in our own society. They're not accustomed to managing this. What we're going to be talking about today in terms of peace process and seeking solutions to the communal differences, the communal tensions in Rakhine State is going to involve discussion of structures that the government, the first civilian government now in more than 55 years, is trying to put together to manage the discussion, the dialogue, and the solutions to these problems. The solutions are not a near-term proposition. It's going to take a long time, probably a generation or more, to resolve these. There's going to be a huge difference between the generation that is running the country today and the generation that's coming along behind it. It's going to be an enormous generation gap in experience, because the younger generation, many of the people in the younger generation don't even remember the repressive years, and they're pushing for change. The older generation tends to be more conservative and more fearful of some of the changes that are coming. So there's going to be tension between generations. There's going to be tension between the different ethnic groups. There are 135 official ethnic nationalities in the country, but many more are now emerging within the main ethnic nationalities. New identities are emerging and want to have their own official recognition. This permeates much of the debate that's going on, both in the peace process and in the tension in the Rakhine State. So I want us to, as we approach these questions today, to understand and to appreciate the complexity of the society itself. It's not a simple proposition. There are no simple answers and simple solutions. We can't simply wave a wand and say it is wrong to discriminate against a single minority group in the country and to treat them repressively and suddenly think that's going to make it go away. You have to get down on the ground and begin working with the people there to resolve these issues. You can't simply use rhetoric to make them go away. And I think too often we look at that as the solution to these problems. I hope that as we go through our discussions today, people, the discussions of the people who are making presentations on the podium and the people in the audience will try to think about solutions, think about constructive ways that one could approach some of these problems and bring this out. I'd like this meeting, we all like this meeting, to end up with a set of ideas about how we can bring fresh perspectives to the peace process, to the tensions in Rakhine State, and to the drivers of conflict in the country. Thank you. Thank you for three great presentations. To get the conversation going, let me start off with one question. Again, if I could just ask the panelists if some of them would like to comment a bit more again on the international context today. I mean we've heard historically the importance of the role of foreigners in contributing to some of today's problems. Also the sensitivities due to the nationalism of a foreign involvement. And so I'm wondering if we have a separate panel where I think we're going to engage a bit more in the details and some of the conflicts in the border regions in particular. But maybe speaking a little bit about China's role, ASEAN, the U.S., and both in terms of contributing to the problem, but also how to contribute to the solution. If you want to start off, Derek? Okay. Well again, it's a big issue and I want to just affirm, it's probably just a truism, the importance of context. I used to tell my folks in the embassy that facts without context is not truth. And if you don't understand context, if you don't understand the history, then you're not going to understand mindsets, you're not going to understand how you got to where you are and therefore you can't get at the core issues. And the context of Burma, of Myanmar's geography is absolutely essential to how they view their international situation. Just to affirm again what Dr. Steinberg said, there are 51.5 million people surrounded by 3 billion about. I mean there's no country like that that is so, you know, that sense of vulnerability that had been colonized as well, but vulnerable to large neighbors, whether they're Muslim neighbors in Bangladesh or Chinese or a fraught relationship with Thailand or of course India, which is enormous. This sense of vulnerability to outsiders affects their thinking. So their relationship with outsiders has traditionally been about protecting, about avoiding, about keeping folks out. And I would say, glibly in the past, that they were aided in this by mountains and malaria. They had this ring of mountains along their periphery, sort of a reverse horseshoe. And then if the Chinese would invade, they'd get malaria, then retreat, then they'd invade and get malaria, then retreat. I mean this is their way they preserved in some ways who they were. And like I would say like Korea, Korea for years used to define themselves as we are not X, we are not Japanese, we're not Chinese, and more and more now we are Korean. I think there's some of that in Myanmar, that sense of identity of what they are not. Then you get the sub-identities and that also gets wrapped up in international affairs. You have the tension between the central government wanting to ensure that external factors don't play in their internal affairs. Their memory of the British playing divide and rule with the ethnics. But then you talk to the ethnics and they desperately want international engagement because they feel they can't trust the central government. They're small and they need to feel the United States, the UK, perhaps China, some of them, the UN and others to be there. So that essential tension between the central government sense of we want to keep foreigners away from our sensitive internal issues. And then drawing in the special relationships that the Kachin have with the United States, many folks here may not realize, is American missionaries that change the nature of these societies. They consider us their spiritual fathers when I went to Chin states. America is our spiritual father. This tension I think affects the international affairs in that sense of needing to protect from the outside at the central level is also a problem. Now, in ASEAN, the government I think simply wants to be a member in good standing, wants to be a respected member, but I don't know what they want to play a strong role. They've used ASEAN members as partners perhaps in dealing with a Rakhine issue if they trust them. But I think they view ASEAN like they view everyone else, which is if you can't help, we don't want you here. Don't involve yourself in our internal affairs. There is increasing, I will say, and I'll turn over because we will talk much more about China and some of these other issues later. There is more sense, I think, in the foreign ministry of needing to play a role internationally as standing up for certain values and rights. So they may make statements on certain things that affirm their values. They don't want to stick their necks out too far, but they may end up speaking on occasion on human rights or international law affairs as they tiptoed in on the verdict over the South China Sea some months back. So this is again a work in progress, the relationship to the international community and this new environment, but you're seeing some signs. Let's look at one aspect of this international relations. The only people's ethnic group that is confined to the country are the Burmese. Every minority group spills over cross borders. So there are 400,000 Wah in Yunnan, there are 160,000 Kachin, there are 1.3 million Shah in Yunnan, there are Korean in Thailand, there are Nagas in India. What we have then is the sense of isolation from the center, but minorities have always had relations across the borders even when the country was most isolated under General Nehwin. This has created again a sense of frustration on the part of the Burmens I would argue. The other part of this question is how the international relations rivalries affect the country. China regards the USAID program and the Japanese aid program encouraged by the US as part of the containment policy against China. They have said so and many different academic meetings actually, and in fact they have linked the US support for Japan and the Senkaku Islands with the US support for Japan in Yunnan. Now this might seem far fetched, but I think it is important that we understand that. India's concern, we should not forget India because India's primary concern I used to argue was because of Chinese penetration, but I have been informed by an Indian retired general that really the issue is Northeast India, which had at least 11 different rebellions, and people flee across the border into Myanmar, and so there is a relationship there that is important to India, and India has the Kaladan multimodal transport project to try and deliver goods to Northeast India through Myanmar. So this becomes again a very important international element of the relationship. So if it wanted to avoid all of these things, you could not avoid it any longer. The Burmese government tried to avoid all of these problems for years, but international communications, the whole issue of ethnicity into a relationship of transport and trade all means that Myanmar is both is going to be at the center of this nexus in between South Asia and Southeast Asia as well as China. Yeah, so let me just add a couple of thoughts here. Resistance to external influence has been a defining theme of the post-colonial Burma, Myanmar. During the military years and within the population itself, it was a reaction to British colonialism, the impact of the British occupation of the country, and they have managed to isolate and immunize themselves against external influence very effectively. I don't think we appreciate that fully. We've seen resistance to our own policies and resistance to international efforts to try and resolve some of the problems. This is going to continue, and it's also going to manifest itself, I believe, in some of the ways that the population of the country reacts to external influences on them now, particularly from neighbors. You see it in resistance to some of the Chinese plans for the country. You see it in resistance to demographic pressures from the West, Bangladesh, India, so forth. When we talk about the tensions behind some of the conflicts we're looking at today, you're going to see that many of the drivers of these tensions are coming from outside. As David said, the minority groups in the country tend to spill across the borders and come and go. The borders have been very porous for many years. There are lots of influences under the surface coming in as much as they resist the larger influences of the outside world. There are other neighboring influences seeping in under the borders, and there are unexpected reactions to this. The outside world has a major impact on the country in spite of itself. I'm sorry to just one thing I want to add as well because we talk a lot about them protecting and their concern about external influence. Over the past five years, of course, they have opened themselves up to investment. They know they need international investment. They know they need international assistance, capacity building, other types of aid. They want to be part of the international community after having been isolated by the international community and isolating themselves for so long. I think we need to also extend on all this context to say that they're in an interesting moment now where they want to have relations with the international world, but they want to retain their sovereignty and they want to retain control as well. This is creating certain types of tension where they need to open up, they need to think differently about their place in the world, their place in the region, but they also are worried about still maintaining that control. What they don't want, of course, is they don't want great power competition to invade their sovereign space, which means they want to balance everyone off. They're not going to take sides or choose one country over another. They want, as any small country, we'll want good relations with everybody and not be thought of as a tool, which also means we have to be very careful how we do things. Let me just give you an anecdote. Years ago, I met with the director of tourism in Myanmar, and this is when foreigners began coming in. He said, we will not let Yangon become like Bangkok. Bangkok is seeing the destruction of Thai culture. We will not let that happen in our country, and yet it is beginning to happen, and that is a great danger in terms of this rise, possible rise of anti-foreign feeling, because it's not just the good investment, the trade that takes place. It's the collapse of traditional values. I think Burmese culture is very strong, but the Burmese sometimes do not feel it as strong as I think it is, and they do feel that it is being subverted unintentionally, but by foreigners. Thank you. Lots of questions and issues. We have about a half an hour now, opening it up for comments and questions from the audience. We do have mics. If I put up your hand, I'll call on you. Please identify yourself, because we have a lot of people here. Please try to keep your remarks and comments short. The gentleman up front. You said that democracy, many of democracy change whenever you put an adjective before it. What kind of adjective would you like to put in front of Burma, current democracy, or do you think it is not a kind of democracy at all? I'm sorry? Yes. What kind of adjective would you put before democracy, or what kind of democracy? I don't want any adjective before democracy. Excuse me, I'm Jozenda from Voice of my God. Characterizing it today, it's, if you will, as you can say, a democracy in process. It's got a long way to go. The steps are there. The mechanisms are there if they are employed. For example, one of the good elements of the 2008 Constitution are the state and regional legislatures. This is the possibility of this developing into really important local institutions to service their local peoples. This is not true now. They have no power. They have no authority. They're controlled by the whole ministry personnel who run these organizations at the bureaucratic level, but potentially it's there. So if these institutions are allowed to develop, this is a really good and important element for a future democratic society. Emerging but unfinished. In our recent visit, we met with one senior official who talked about we are marching towards the gates of democracy. Gentlemen in the back. Hi, thank you for all your remarks. My name is Adam Carroll with Burma Task Force. I wanted to ask, even though the Kofi Annan interim report came out, I understand that doesn't mention Rohingya by name, but it's about that issue. But that can be discussed later, I suppose. I just wanted to refer to it. But instead, I wanted to ask about the nature of the relationship. You all were working as diplomats mainly and you're building relationships through understanding, understanding the nuance and the complexities over a great deal of time. So I wanted to ask about the tension between trying to encourage investment on one hand and business opportunities, which is part of the role of an ambassador or a diplomat, but then also the crucial importance of protecting pluralism, which I think everyone has discussed, and the difficulty in Burma with the rising Islamophobia or xenophobia. So how do you manage that and with the military running industries and the widespread corruption and many things that have been touched on that are obstacles to transparency, but also to managing pluralism properly? I was just wondering, do you feel there's a tension, perhaps, creative in your work and how do you manage that yourselves? This is an interesting question, because it bears really significantly on the nature of the transition that's happening right now. You mentioned military industries, for example. The military industries are actually in the state of decline and many of them, the ones that are more successful are privatizing and getting out from under government and military control gradually. So we see great structural changes happening in the economy, particularly in the area in which foreign companies would be investing. And I think that it opens, unlike during the days when I was there, when you had really strict repressive military control and total control over the economy by the military, you have a very mixed picture today. The economy is changing really drastically and this doesn't, is not necessarily because of government management, it's just because they are opening the free market sectors of the economy very rapidly, and particularly in urban areas. And so foreign investment coming in, I think, particularly western and US investment, where the companies making the investment have to abide by our laws to a large extent, can have a very positive influence on the way that the economy develops and delivers to the people. And I mean all of the people. It can be a kind of leveling experience if it's done right. And I think that western investment in the country could have a very healthy political impact at this point. Yeah. I mean, first of all, there has been a tension, which is why there were sanctions for a long time. There are those who felt that the system was so corrupt and so oppressive that contributing to that in any way would be hostile to the values that we care about. And people will debate the success of that or the rightness of that for a long time and have at it, you know, as a historical matter. I do believe though, and I will extend what Priscilla said, you know, we had also a saying in the embassy, it's not what we do, it's how we do it that matters. It's the how that really does matter oftentimes. And when it comes to business, we believe very strongly, and I think it was borne out by how it's played out, that the right type of business, American business, Western business with high standards, high quality, can contribute to those principles that we have sought to promote that are consistent with our values. So we heard from NGOs and from labor activists that American companies involved in the garment industry were raising labor standards, that quality of and not just for, you know, those workers, but for the entire for the environment in general. And we charged our businesses when we eased our sanctions first and now they're essentially lifted on companies. We charged them with being partners in the reform and demonstrating high standards of corporate social responsibility, which is not building a hospital here or a road there, train people, invest in the communities where they're operating, be transparent. All these things, I think, contribute to reform if they are done right and if they're done thoughtfully. I think the reverse question can be asked is sitting back and watching where others will come in and invest and do things. Will that get us further along in addressing the challenges of the country? I think the final thing is the issue that we were talked about up here. You talked about context and nuance. We're talking about issues of Islamophobia, xenophobia, human rights, division, ethnic challenges. These aren't things that are necessarily even rising. They've always been there. These are some of the structural problems of the country and we should be thinking about how what we do contributes to these issues or helps alleviate. No doubt about that. Our company should be held to high standards, but it's not as if we are contributing or helping develop a situation that is not there in its foundation, in the country's foundation. We have to recognize the context in which we're operating and then make judgments about how American business can help or not. I should also say that in our kind state, we had heard that one of the American companies that was there used to hear from local folks saying, we'd like that you come to us and talk to us about things. That process of dialogue, of consultation, again, is modeling the type of democratic processes that we want to see broadly in the country and we ought to be thinking about how those things contribute to the success, the long-term success of reform. I want to follow up a little bit on this concept of international assistance as well as investment, but also the concept of isolation. Derek, you talked about how you do it. For those of us who've been there, traveling around the central corridor of the country, not as problematic. Moving beyond that, now we get into issues. To be honest, I could see for the ethnic armed organizations, their own regional isolation, their state isolation, is actually beneficial from a security front. That is to say, it makes it more difficult for the top to move in and to engage with them. The internal isolation of the country has a security military implication, but the investment more and likely is going to go in these core areas. That feeds into the dynamic between the ethnic communities, where the feeling is that the BAMAR are the beneficiaries of the opening up, but the ethnic states are less beneficiaries of it. Could you talk about the two aspects? One, the economic asymmetry, potential asymmetry of foreign direct investment or assistance to the country and how to address that. And then second, the security implications of it. For example, as an economist I could see, actually in terms of infrastructure, we should probably be building roads and highways and railway lines to reach out into the states, but there we might find the ethnic armed organizations resistant to that because of the security implications. Those are all because this is not one country, but multiple or like one identity or one jurisdiction, but multiple countries, multiple jurisdictions, it does complicate matters. So you have to make choices, you have to make decisions on all these things. When we were doing assistance work, and even when I was talking to companies, though they will make different judgments, I always said most important things, principle for our assistance is equity. And if we do anything in the center, we must do it in the periphery. We must think about how we provide some degree of balance because that is the challenge, as I say, the defining challenge of the country. David said the same thing. Dr. Steinberg, with the issue of peace of the balance of the ethnic rights and mutual respected sovereignty, how do you demonstrate through our programs that we are going to contribute to equity and contribute to equitable development, not equal, but equitable through our work. We're not going to solve the issue through the United States USAID program. We're not going to solve it through our businesses, but we can contribute to problems if we are not being thoughtful and principled. So that was a fundamental principle. We also said we should be organic. We should not be throwing our ideas at them. We should be listening to them and what they want and what they need. So if they say stay out, we stay out. If they say please come in and we talk to local communities, they say, you know what? We would like to have more assistance in these areas, it would be very, very helpful. Do it this way, do it that way, then we go more likely to do it that way. So the how was important. We consult, we coordinate, we think about how it looked as a balance, and we'd empower local communities to make decisions on their own. Now there are many communities that didn't want investment. For the reasons maybe you suggested, they didn't want folks to come in and exploit because there's no peace. And the big concern of many ethnic groups was the peace process is just to get a ceasefire, and then companies rush in, they take over, military takes the land, they make money, and we don't get what we've been fighting for for 70 years, which is justice, which is autonomy, which is, so development is not the answer. It has to be the right kind of development matched with a thoughtful process that takes account of the desires of these people. But you're going to see, as you suggest, this peace process, I think later in the day, you'll hear how fractured it is, the divisions between signatories and non-signatories, that it may end up that signatories like the Karen move forward quicker. And in Chin state may move forward quicker and say, look, we're not going to wait for the rest. We've gotten somewhat of what we want, and we want to start developing, which means they will invite foreign investors in, in a way they hadn't before, and roads and other things occurring. Now, it has to be thought through, is that going to then create resentment among folks like the Kachin or others who are holding back, or will be a good model for them to say, look, the government is producing for people here, the international community is able to produce for people here, therefore, there is a peace dividend. We don't know. We don't know if it's going to contribute to division or it's going to contribute to peace. But I think we have to try something different. I think people are waiting, as I say, everyone wants peace, the entire country, if you go all over, they want development, they want just like anybody anywhere. They want a job, they want education, they want peace, they want to go back to their homes. And the politics are politics. Stay, even the armed ethnic groups, you know, they don't want to tell the armed ethnic groups, you go fight over there, let's, we want to stop, we want to start our lives again. I think we can play a very constructive role in how we do this, but we also have to do it thoughtfully, given the context, given the history, that's very complex. It means three or four more steps, but that's the price of doing business in Myanmar. Before the 2008 Constitution was promulgated, individual minority groups wrote their own constitutions illegally, they wrote them outside the country, because they couldn't legally write them in the country. If you read the chin, the chin one, I'm sorry, the chin one was really quite beautiful. It said in the old days, the mountains protected us, but they're no longer protect us. I mean, so we have to have some way to protect ourselves. And this was really quite lovely, I thought. But the problem comes, how to do this? Let me tell you the story of the UNDP in the early 90s. The UNDP program in the early 90s was decided they would build roads in rural areas, minority areas, so farmers would have more chance to go to market, they would have more choices, places would go up for farmers, but, and it would be a good thing. Unknown to Rangoon at the time, UNDP in New York completely eliminated the program without informing the Burmese government. I have this from the Swarck member of the time. In other words, they, and they wanted the, the, the, the Burmese wanted to kick out the UNDP program, because this was done unilaterally in New York without any relevance to the situation there. Cooler heads prevail that it never happened. But the idea was that the UNDP felt that these roads, these development of rural areas would only mean that the military would have more access to these areas, and therefore there would be less of local authority rather than more local authority. It's a complex balance. Let me give you one story from Liberia. USAID decided farm to market roads were the really important thing to help the really poor people in the bush. So we built a lot of farm and market roads. What happened was the elite from Liberia, they went in and bought up all the land on these farm and market roads, pushing the people back into the bush even more poorly, and then you got the the coup in Liberia. So we have to be very careful about how this is balanced. We don't have an easy answer. Thank you. Priscilla, could you just identify your name? We're webcasting so just so people watching online can know who's speaking. Thank you. I'm Linda Yarra at George Washington University. Priscilla pointed to the divide between a rising generation that has a totally different experience and different mindset from predecessors. But what is being done in terms of improving higher education, in terms of access and quality, to be able to give those young people the tools to become leaders in turn? This is also an area of great concern to the current government and to the past government, I might add. There is a new law on educational reform that is going to change the system ultimately, but it's going to be a very slow process. During the military years, the education system, particularly in the last 10 to 20 years of military rule, the education system was very badly neglected and higher education was seen as a source of opposition to the government, so it was largely dismantled as we knew it earlier. This had a terrible impact on education all the way through because they weren't creating, they weren't producing, capable teachers. So if you start with the really early pre-K years and kindergarten years and primary education, you simply don't have the teaching staff to begin introducing educational reform in a very rapid way. It's going to probably come from top down. It will be, we'll see it first in the universities and it will seep down into lower education as capable teachers are produced by the system. So I would say that within a generation we're going to see a revolution in the educational system, but in the meantime, a lot of private educational institutions have emerged and they're starting to fill in the gap with tutorials and the introduction of critical thinking and so forth into the educational, you know, the mentality of the educational system. So there is a quiet revolution going on there, but it's slow. You know at one time, Rangoon University was the premier university in Southeast Asia. This is really important. If you got a doctor's degree from a medical degree from the University of Rangoon, you could practice in London without an exam. If you graduated from an Indian university, you couldn't do that. So the standards were exceedingly high. That, of course, collapsed because, as Priscilla said, students, the incipient literati, if you will, were viewed as the enemy of the regime, of a series of regimes and the result was a fall in status and standards, corruption inside the educational system itself in terms of buying exams. No jobs so people didn't want to study for things that didn't make any sense. And so the whole system, the complex of education and the economy didn't work. That is being changed. It is a very slow process and we should be, in fact, investing in this younger generation. Of course, they're the leaders. They will be the leaders. And this should be a concerted effort on the part of foreigners in terms of scholarships that might be available, professors who might go there, and on the part of the government making sure that the standards that they have will be respected throughout the world. I think we'll take about two or three questions and then come back to the panel as we're running short on time. But we have two in the back there. Is this on? Yeah. My name's Murray Hebert from CSIS. We don't know yet a lot about what the new administration's policy is going to be toward lots of the world, including Southeast Asia and Myanmar. But if the president, the head of the NSC, or the new secretary of state invited you to ride in an elevator and tell them what they should do vis-a-vis Myanmar in the next four years, what would be, what would you suggest in terms of, you know, political ties, dealing with Rakhine, dealing with the peace process? You've already dealt a little bit with investment. Thanks. I'd suggest a long elevator ride. But yes. Hello. I'm Gideon Lazar of CAHPS Consulting. And I can tell from my perspective of looking at global events is that the US doesn't necessarily have the best history of bringing in democracy to the world. For example, we could look at Chile with bringing in Pinochet, or in Iraq, the top one in the Saddam regime, ultimately brought in ISIS. And so ultimately thinking, in Myanmar here, is our involvement in bringing in democracy ultimately going to do good in the long run? And how can we get the people of Myanmar to understand our goals are good for them and wanting to bring in democracy? And as we were talking about at the end there, is they feel like foreign people are trying to overtake their culture and bring stuff in? So how do we essentially let them deal with their culture while still bringing in democracy so they can keep their traditional culture if they want to while still having a democracy? Thanks. And we had the two gentlemen here will take two quick questions and then go back to the panel for concluding answering the questions and concluding remarks. Yeah. Paul Randolph. David, you mentioned that they're currently within the Constitution. There is the option of region and state governments to have potentially in the future more authorities and decentralization devolution of powers. What's the current state of play within the NLD government and do they have an agenda for this in their first year or has that been discussed? Thank you very much. I'm Vikram Nehru from Johns Hopkins Sice and Carnegie. Ambassador Mitchell, the international community has been providing a huge amount of resources from international institutions, from bilateral programs, a huge amount of technical assistance across all sectors, education, health, transport, you name it. In fact, we have in the audience Lex Riefel who wrote a monograph saying about a couple of years ago arguing that when referring to Myanmar aid he was saying there's too much too soon. And there's a grave danger that this has literally swamped the minimal capacity that exists in Myanmar. First of all, do you agree with that point? And secondly, if you do agree with it, what recommendations would you have for the international community as to what they should do less of rather than more of? Thank you. Thank you. I'll ask our panelists to try to address all four of those questions, starting with Pamela Priscilla and working our way to there. I see one theme running through all the questions and it is a theme that we somehow have an outsized influence on all of these countries in the world. We don't. And we need to keep a perspective on our own ability to influence things either towards democracy or investment or development. We're never going to be a big investor in Burma. It's going to be Asian countries that will make the biggest difference there. And we're not going to be able to control how they invest there. The best we can do is focus on the fundamentals like environmental protection and equality of economic experience and so forth and hope that the governments in the country will adopt the right kinds of policies that will influence the way investment is managed in the country. We're not going to be able to do that from Washington half a world away. And similarly, I think with foreign aid, we're a drop in the bucket. We don't really have much aid to offer there and it's probably going to be less rather than more in the future. So I think that we have to we have to look at our influences as being more in the way of persuasion and setting an example and introducing ideas that they can then mull over and adapt to their own situation. Yes, in the elevator, treating people with dignity. This is the critical issue. The U.S. has a problem with that because we're too powerful and we don't even know when we're not treating people with dignity because we are so powerful that it's unconscious. And as Woody Allen said, 80 percent of succeeding is showing up. We should show up in Southeast Asia. We should go to ASEAN meetings. We should go to Myanmar. We should go to these other countries at a sufficiently high level to show them that we're serious. On questions of democracy, remember that in the Cold War era, we liked military regimes because they were anti-communist. And so the model, in the social science literature, the model was the Burmese military caretaker government of 1958 to 60, which was authoritarian, but very, very effective for what it did during that period. And it was not corrupt at that time. Later on, we were interested more in stability than democracy. Egypt Cassants is one you could mention. On the, I don't know what the NLD agenda is, what worries me about the NLD is not training younger people into leadership positions inside the party. I say, and I think that this is really something that is required. On the question of foreign aid, yes, there's probably too much for absorptive capacity going in there, but the U.S. is a small player. I like to quote a Chinese who told me that USA to Myanmar was like beautiful moonlight on the river. It is beautiful to look at, but there's nothing there. We made it look like it was there. No, it was. It was. Well, go down the list and get to that issue. The advice to the new administration, I guess, I don't know if it's up the elevator Trump Tower, which takes a lot more time. But first of all, we maintain, we have a very profound interest in the success of this country. I don't know how much this administration will care about values. I think certainly we, as Americans, care that when people are struggling for those things we cherish, whether it's democracy, human rights, justice, equity, all the rest, that it matters. And that they have started on this path, they are very interested in U.S. engagement, very eager for U.S. engagement as a people, as a government, appropriate engagement, respectful engagement, humble engagement, but engagement. And that we should continue to be engaged here. And as Nancy Lenberg said, the election doesn't mean this is over. We've all said this. Elections are only the beginning, and we should not lose interest. And this is at the crossroads of Asia. If we care about Asia, if we truly believe that Asia is a land or an area of tremendous opportunity for investment, for dealing with international challenges of health and all the rest, this is a very important place to keep engaged, and it doesn't come at a high cost. So let's not think that doing less here somehow, we can do something more elsewhere. The issue of bringing democracy is a very good one and impact on culture. It's an important question because I think it's misunderstood oftentimes when the United States promotes democracy or does democracy overseas, that we are bringing democracy. And I think in the past there have been times where it looked like we were bringing democracy, that maybe we invaded some place and then brought democracy. That's not typically, I think, and it's certainly not the way it works. It worked in Myanmar and Burma. We are supporting what the people have themselves called for. We are assisting their own desires, for greater sake, in their own affairs. As represented in the leader, who the people had essentially voted for, certainly her party in 1990, and therefore following her lead on supporting this value in this country. So we have to be careful anywhere we go that we are supporting, we are assisting, but we're not imposing or bringing or getting ahead of what the people themselves are calling for and asking for. I think there is a difference in this context that people want us there to assist them, and I saw that on a daily basis as ambassador. The issue of the local legislature, I think everyone who is avoiding because it's a difficult one. I think there's more interest in devolving power to localities. We hear more and more about giving state ministers more authority. We just heard the Myanmar Investment Commission say that they will, below a certain level of investment, the state ministers can decide on whether an investment goes through or not, doesn't have to go to the center. I think there's greater interest in devolving, but what their goal is, what their vision is, I don't know. I do believe that through USAID program that we are assisting, we were talking about it when I left, assisting more of the local legislatures and local government with the idea that this is where things are moving. I just don't know where that stands, but it would be very important to look at as the over-the-horizon vision for the country. Finally, the issue of aid, as suggested, I don't think that the issue of absorptive capacity is absolutely important. We knew there was a tsunami, I used to call it a tsunami of interest. Once things started to open, and that can overwhelm everybody in the country, we had to be careful, we had to coordinate our efforts. Aung San Suu Kyi now is sort of taking the lead herself on this. She has established an aid coordination operation where she sits at the head and she tells folks, I want this, I want that, I want the other. It doesn't go over very well with donors because we have our own folks that we answer to, the aid folks, but it is important that we do coordinate and we are following the lead of those inside the country. What we did as AID was health issues. We sort of focused on particular things, health system, maternal and child health, three diseases, the health system, rural development, agricultural development, very important and great work on coffee and other things and land rights, on democracy and human rights, and on humanitarian assistance, all of which I think are very much essential, very much welcome and had very good, had very important results. So I don't know if there's anything that we should be doing differently or not, I can't assess, but I'm very proud of what we've done to date, even if it may be to some, not the size of China or Japan, but I think very targeted and very effective. Thank you. USIP works in very difficult situations in Afghanistan and in South Sudan and Iraq and Syria in these contexts and so I have to say the opportunity to travel to Myanmar where there's lots of problems. It's incredibly complex and as Derek said, I came back incredibly confused. However, just putting it in the context of the tremendous progress that has been made and the opportunities to continue to move forward, again highlights again the importance of how to remain engaged in these problems because walking away from the problems is definitely, I think, not going to solve them. But thank you all again for coming. Please join me in thanking our panelists for a very good opening session. We'll have a 10-minute break and start up at 11 o'clock. Please help yourself to some coffee or tea or water. See you back here at 11 o'clock sharp. Was that your doing? It is actually, it's hot in there. Did you want me to say anything more than what's in the finals? You happy with that? Yeah. It's very short. You don't want me to say my previous life. Can't if you would mind. You have plenty of travel again. I want to go to Myanmar in April if I can escape all the duties here. Okay, what do you want to let me know? 11.15. As we get started, as people are all so excited. I want to regroup our people to life. Good morning once again. Welcome back. My name is Vanessa Johansson. I'm the country director for USIP's program in Burma, based in Yangon, visiting Washington for the week and have been living in Yangon for the last four years or so. Our second panel will focus on conflict in the borderlands between the government forces and ethnic armed organizations. As we know a ceasefire agreement was signed in October of 2015 with eight of roughly 21 significant ethnic armed organizations. But despite that fact and despite the fact that we've had an NLD government now for a year or so, there have been waves of escalation of conflict, particularly in the northeast of the country since that time. So what we'd like to do in this second panel is to untangle some of the dynamics, actors, incentives, international actors and motivations around the conflict in the northeast particularly. We'll also look at some of the armed groups shifting alliances and the impact of those shifting alliances on the negotiations and the implementation of the nationwide ceasefire agreement. And we'll also look at a little bit in a little bit more depth at the role of Burma's largest neighbour, China. Its interest in peace and conflict dynamics and also look at that within the context of the broader China-Miyama relationship. So it's my great pleasure to introduce our three panelists for this second panel. First of all we'll hear from David Matheson. Dave was a senior researcher on Myanmar for Human Rights Watch from 2006 to 2016, so for the last 10 years or so. And he's now working as an independent analyst based in Yangon. Our second panelist will be Janan Latour. Janan is a widely respected civil society leader and advocate for inclusive peace in Myanmar. She's been the director of the Nyen or Shalom Foundation since 2014, which is a leading peace support NGO based in Yangon. And Yun Sun, who is a senior associate based here in Washington with East Asia Pacific Programme at the Stimson Center. Her expertise focuses on Chinese foreign policy, US-China relations and China's relations with neighbouring countries and authoritarian regimes. She's recently published a paper supported by USIP on China and Myanmar's peace process. And with no further ado I'll hand over to David. Thank you. Thank you Vanessa and thanks everyone for coming. I'm just going to go through a very quick overview of renewed armed conflict up in Burma's north. And it's going to be a very kinetic focused analysis because the both the conflict itself, the armed conflict on the ground, is very complicated with multiple actors. And the impact that it's having on the peace process and the politics of the country is something that Janan is going to look at. First thing to say is that there is more active armed conflict, intense armed conflict in the country than at any time in the past 25-30 years. And that's something that I think is lost in the international community because of so much attention on Rakhine State and the transition. That this raging war up in the north is not getting the attention that it really deserves. It's also very important to note that the technology of counterinsurgency, the technology of the conflict has changed quite dramatically in the in the past couple of years as well. What we're seeing up in Northern Sharon State and Kichin State is the Burmese military using helicopter gunships, jets, heavy artillery in ways that they have never done in 70 years of civil war. And the impact that this is having both literally on the ground to the civilian population and the parties to the conflict is one thing. But also the use of technology on the trust and the reception amongst civilian populations to what's happening I think is really quite deep in this sense of like they're talking peace but we're being bombarded on an almost daily basis. So just to give a quick overview on Kichin State there has been almost continuous armed conflict since 2011 and it's important to put into context that the Kichin had a ceasefire, the only written ceasefire between them and the Kichin Independence Organization, Kichin Independence Army and the central government which broke down in 2011. Very important lessons to be learned from the breakdown of that process. That conflict in its first phase 2011-2013 took a very heavy toll. There are still 100,000 people internally displaced around Kichin State and Northern Sharon State where the fighting spilled over and the conditions in a lot of those camps are really quite dreadful. They're getting less international support and renewed fighting in the past couple of months has put a lot of the IDPs in even greater danger. There was very intense conflict in Kichin State over the past several months. From about August last year the Tatmador, the Burmese military decided to take a series of Kichin Independence Army posts including Ginnon Mountain. There was a lot of people who said this was on the outskirts of the KIA base at Leiser but when I spoke to the KIA about this I said no this base was about 30 miles north but it was subjected to intense almost daily airstrikes and then human wave assaults and even though the casualty figures haven't been released that battle took very heavy tolls on both sides the government and the Kichin side. It is now relatively calm in Kichin State but the militarisation that went along with that renewed fighting has really rattled the civilian population. People in Michiner could hear the artillery at times. There were jets screaming overhead almost on a daily basis. There was a curfew in the town. People wouldn't go outside after dark so the effect on the civilian population is really quite profound. Now Northern Charn State possibly one of the most complicated battlescapes in the world today. Multiple ethnic armed organisations most of which are not signatories to the nationwide ceasefire agreement although there is one signatory that is moving up into the area making it even more complicated. It's important to note that armed conflict in Northern Charn State has been ongoing since 2009 when the Burmese military moved into Laogai the capital of the Kokang enclave and then in 2015 when the vanquished faction of the MNDAA the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army essentially invaded Burma and sparked another round of the conflict driving about 30,000 civilians into China. But over the past year we've seen an escalation in various areas around Northern Charn State and most of the attention recently has been going towards the clashes on the China border in Musei, Mongkul and just last well a week or so ago in Laogai the capital of the MNDAA enclave. But last year there were numerous clashes in Sipor, Nam Tu and Chalcme townships west of Lasher which didn't get a lot of international attention but that characterised in many ways the dynamics of the conflict where you had fighting several thousand people displaced for a couple of weeks then they would go back then there was more fighting and they would be displaced. You would hear about it and by the time you got up there two weeks later they weren't in the monastery in Sipor they were back in their villages and very nervous about being displaced again. So there was that dynamic and then I think there was a major game changer on November 20 last year which is an attack on the key border trading town of Musei on the China border. An attack by what was then called the first statement was by the Brotherhood of the Northern Alliance which was the MNDAA the Kokang, the TNLA the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, the Arakhan Army and just in case you're getting confused about the geography I did say Arakhan Army. So Arakhanese soldiers formed a new army with the help of the Kichin several years ago and are based up in Liza and one part of their fighting force is actually fighting in Northern China State as part of this alliance. Then the fourth member is the Kichin Independence Army although the leader of one of the leaders of the Kichin Independence Army recently qualified their inclusion in this group by saying we are not a member of the four party Northern Alliance Brotherhood our fourth and sixth brigades are and they're based in Northern China State. It's a very strange quibble we're not a member they are even though they're part of our army. Janan can explain it it's it confuses me completely. Now this was a very rare attack and the the Brotherhood actually lobbed unguided munitions into Musay they attacked police stations killing a number of policemen killing a number of civilians and wounding them but also attacking trucking along the main highway in some cases actually pulling trucks over and executing the drivers. A very strange behaviour on the part of the some of the members of the Northern Alliance and then a week or so later and this is quite rare this hasn't happened in decades. The EAA has actually seized the border town of Mongkong not a very big town but they seized it took control and declared that they had control of this town. The resulting bombardment caused a lot of damage in the town reports of human rights violations perpetrated by all sides were coming out but very difficult to verify but it really showed an escalation and it also started a war of words between the Alliance and various statements they were putting out and it was at a time when the State Councilor and the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre issued its first statement denouncing the the Alliance and the atrocities that they perpetrated against the civilians. Last week on March the 6th was another stage in this very dramatic escalation in tactics. According to the Ministry of Defence statement a few days ago about 300 MNDAA troops dressed as Burmese policemen went into Laogai and attacked a police station and then other members of it attacked a hotel and if the MOD statement is to be believed abducted about 200 people and took them away. And these were Chinese nationals even though they weren't identified as Chinese nationals they were identified as people coming from a neighbouring country. Now the MOD said that these people were abducted and forced to actually join some of the armed groups. The armed groups have since come out and said no that's that's not true we took them so that they wouldn't be raped by the Burmese Army. So there's something very murky going on here and it really shows that there's a sense of desperation on the part of the non-state armed groups. Now they would say that they're doing this that taking the fight to urban areas because of the intense bombardment by air and by artillery that they're receiving out in the mountains. So it goes to show that a lot of this fighting is way out of sight and no one really gets to hear about it but off both sides of the main highway there is regular routine intense conflict on a regular basis. Now what does all this mean? There are several points that we have to consider. The first is that humanitarian assistance to the thousands of people internally displaced by this conflict is routinely blocked by the military on the ground and this has been happening over the past several months. Convoys have been turned back, travel authorisations have been denied and especially in the Kokang enclave they really don't have access to food and medical assistance from Lashaw. There have been some aid getting through but this has been controlled by the government and by the military. It's not the unfettered humanitarian access that is really needed and also keep in mind that IDP camps are peppered all the way throughout northern Charn State and they're relatively small. 500 people here, a couple of thousand people there, 400 there. It's a very difficult to have routine access. Second, the human rights violations that are being reported are pretty standard for this kind of conflict but there are reports that not just the Tatmador who are still perpetrating violations such as force portering, human shielding and execution which last year they were caught out and actually admitted to. A light infantry battalion killed five men in a town east of Lashaw and those men were caught, marshaled and sent to prison. But also the non-state armed groups, there's lots of reports of them actually perpetrating conflict, not perpetrating human rights violations, not just against other combatants but against civilians and it's starting to take on a very murky inter-communal tinge which I think should be worrying. In other words, Charn perpetrating violations against Ta'ang Palang and Palang perpetrated. Last year I was in Nam Tu and I visited a monastery for IDPs and they were mostly ethnic Charn that had been displaced because the Ta'ang army had come into the area and shot into the area and said, this is a Charn area now, this is a Ta'ang area you've got to leave. So we've got to keep in mind that this is not just the state or the government forces perpetrating this violence, it's also inter-communal. That inter-communal tension is also spreading not just from the EEOs but into the cities and in between communities and that is something that I think is really worrying. It adds another layer of complexity to the peace process when there's these inter-communal tensions. We also see that in Kuchin state as well between Kuchin communities and Red Charn, Charni communities as well, that there's increased tension and a feeling that they're being pitted against each other is one element of the conflict. Related to that is something we were talking about yesterday and that is this resurgence in nationalism and there's a tendency to look at just Burman nationalism, pro-military nationalism in this and that's certainly the case but as Joy and Lange pointed out yesterday, it's always been there but we're just seeing and hearing it more now as we see the hostilities spread but it's also important to recognize that there's rising nationalism within the EEO communities as well. Charn nationalism is incredibly virulent and is one driver of the conflict but also to ag nationalism in this feeling of deep grievances is a part of it as well. Another element in this murky conflict space is the drug trade. This is a major drug producing area, a major opium poppy growing area. You always see a seasonal spike when it's when it's opium harvest although it was relatively low this year. Last year it was incredibly intense and there was some talk that last year some of the the battles that were taking place were because the Kukai based Panshane militia was protecting its opium fields. The TNLA was coming in trying to to destroy them, getting into a pitch battle, Burmese army coming in to protect them, getting caught in escalating conflict and calling in airstrikes. So in other words, don't just look at it at a battle and assume it's a simplistic fight between two parties. There's often very complicated elements surrounding every report of a battle in in Charn State. Not one explanation can really fully explain it. Now related to that the drug trade is also a sense of grievance that many of these communities think that drug consumption is tearing their communities apart and they're blaming this on the government for being either complicit or being complicit in fueling the drug trade or not doing anything to actually stop it. So there's a rise in anti-narcotics, very brutal harm reduction. This kind of vigilanteism that you see in Kichin State with Pat Jassan, this Christian drug eradication vigilante group that's that's been formed in the past couple of years, but also some of the the EAOs, the Northern Alliance, actively engage in drug interdiction which is very punitive and very violent at times. So it's another driver of conflict there. Now just to conclude, one thing that I often hear about the conflict in Northern Charn State and the EAOs and the Northern Alliance Brotherhood is that these are either opportunists or they're gangsters that they're doing all this for money to protect their rackets and I think that's an ahistorical very limited view of what the grievances of these these groups are. The TNLA, for example the Tang National Liberation Army, is the modern incarnation of a Palau armed resistance that has been around since the 1960s early 1970s. I was recently in Lashowne spoke to some of the some of the founding members of the Palau State Liberation Army about this and it's important to note that the groups like the PSA, the TNLA, had a ceasefire. They signed a ceasefire with the the Nawatar, the Slaught Government in 1991 and then they were forced to disarm in 2005 and then they reformed several years later with the help of the Kichin Independence Army because of a whole host of grievances that the ceasefire had given them no development. They were being ravaged by massive drug consumption which said women's groups have done a great job in documenting and that they were being ignored in the political process and there's a huge amount of of communal support for the TNLA now even with all their abuses and their forced recruitment and and some of the bad things that they do. There's a lot of support within the Tang community for them so dismissing them as gangsters or opportunists I think is incredibly misleading and I think it keeps them away from the table and it plays into this very hard line that they're hearing from the government and from the military and they do really shape it that because the recent statement by Dorong Sansuqi following the attacks in Laokai on March the 6th where she referred to them as ethnic tribes which was a weird terminology in in my view but she reiterated that the only way for this to stop is for them to sign the nationwide ceasefire agreement and relinquish their weapons and come to the table and that's an unrealistic proposition and what is really propelling a lot of these groups to maintain their armed resistance and to take it to urban areas is almost like a cry for attention it's like you know we're here and you know we want to keep fighting until you give us a better deal like we want to talk but we don't want to talk we don't want to just sign the NCA and then turn up to the table so with that that's that's the kinetic conflict and I'll hand it over to you now to talk about the incredibly vexed political elements for this thank you thanks David for the contextual situation or ground contextual situation um I would like to start my presentation by supporting what David Steinberg said in the first panel that the the the real Myanmar that the real issue in Myanmar is it's not not democracy but it's the majority minority issue ethnic armed conflict issues which is based on the injustice and the minority not being treated equally throughout the history so this this has been the song that EEOs have been singing for the last 70 years so deal with the ethnic conflict first issue first and then democracy I remember in in a meeting I think a month ago or so uh state councillor Duong San Suu Kyi had uh made comments on this democracy first or ethnic conflict first but I think her comment is sort of like peacemaking through democratic process so but in reality at the moment the current like almost a year or democratic elect democratically elected government is dealing with two processes one is the current government is still transforming into democracy while at the same time working on making peace and building peace at the same time with our organization but I don't need to even highlight much in both processes building democracy and building peace or making peace in both processes we can all see that military is still institutionally very strong and institutionally strongly present in both processes so that also we can also testify that military at the current political landscape is still in the very strong position institutionally politically and also economically military is still well placed in this in this transition and sometimes we also see like Myanmar today is one country with two systems but in some places even three systems if you go further to the arm control area in some part in many parts of the country we have three administrative systems so this is just just to give you a few highlights of how we are at the moment I want to give you one example that just recently take place talking about this confusion of two systems within within one state for example in the in the kitchen steak as David had also highlighted for the last five six years we have intense conflict and intense fighting so the security is quite tight in in in the kitchen steak northern part and at some point as you all know kitchen steak is you know it's not non ceasefire area because kio hasn't signed nationwide ceasefire agreement so in one occasion in this in the place like a chin steak border affair ministry and the northern command commander has more well placed in terms of security concern so at some point in the letter writing to each other between military and the state kitchen state government and the letter addressed by border affair minister to the state chief minister referring kio as a terrorist organization so in that particular letter that border affair minister had referred kio as a terrorist organization but there was a correction made by the chief minister office saying this this kind of term terrorists being applied being used to address kio will interfere the peace process so so this is just one example of in one governing system we are dealing with two two two different ways in addressing or addressing this particular issues so in on the topic that i've been giving this morning the conflict in the border lands i would like to share my perspective from the two different perspectives one perspective looking at conflict in the border lands from the from the lands of geographical location so when we look at the conflict in in Myanmar when we look at first the conflict in the western border which is border to India and Bangladesh and there are three eos at the organization along the western borders and among the three eos two eos are the signatories to the nation vice-president agreement so to some extent we can reflect that the border and the western side of Myanmar border to India and Bangladesh in terms of military movement is we could say it's quite under control though government particular military has concern after ceasefire agreement being signed they are concerned that the the ceasefire group will increase the the increase their military increase their armed forces so this is the concern but we can say that in the western border the conflict the military action are being well controlled i would say and another aspect in the of the conflict is the southeastern border conflict which is the border to thailand mostly and particularly in the southeastern border conflict the main one of the largest group out of 21 ethnic organization which is karen knu is in that southeastern border so along with knu there are two other karen groups so there are three group three karen groups along that Thai border but as you may also heard sometime there are clashes along the border because karen groups all three karen groups have signed nca but those clashes were being able to were under control because all three karen groups have signed nationwide ceasefire agreement and through the ceasefire monitoring mechanism and they were able to dealt with the problems and issues arise from those small clashes so more or less we could say the conflict along the southeastern border are also under control but along that border there are two other non-signatory groups karen group and then new moon state party and just a couple months ago or so along that with new moon state party there are also some clashes i think it was last month but i think those were also able to manage and be able to control particularly with the non-signatories of the nationwide ceasefire agreement along that border both karen and kNPP and new moon state party were trying to trying to keep the bilateral agreement so that they can still make the make the conflict under control even though there are some small clashes that they were able to deal with the military directly on this but the main thing that i want to highlight is the northeastern border conflict which is the conflict along the china border and some part of the conflict will be close to the thailand but what i would like to highlight is along the china border and david also had already mentioned quite a lot on what's happening on the ground and as most of you might be aware in northern shan state and shan state and northern part of yama probably there are a larger i mean there are a larger number of eao am group exists so 12 eaos existed exists in northern northeastern border so out of out of 12 eos there are three militarily strongest eo present in the china border so the question is particularly i would like to highlight the two the two particularly strongest group one is usw a what uh what state army another one is k i o in northern in northern berma yama they are all along the china border and usw pd usw a what group is militarily strong and they are much close to the china and k i o to my view is militarily maybe not as strong as usw a but politically k i o is strong particularly after the resumption of war in 2011 there have been k i o have been gaining lots of people power from the kuchen community since after the resumption of war since 2011 so now it has been five years six six years now so this blessing in disguise the resumption of war have pushed the people power and to support the the k i o struggles for the for the protection of ethnic rights and as david also highlighted there are three other smaller groups in the in the china border which is tna kuchen and a and the question that we are also asking and people are also asking are those small groups how can they how can they survive as an organization for this for the last five six years how can they still survive as an organization and how can these how can they still be sustained militarily along the border for the last five six years so this is this is the ongoing question for us the smaller group like like this the northern brotherhood alliance keep going militarily and it's not militarily they are getting stronger so what is it behind so this is the question that we are all asking and we are all raising among ourselves and as as being mentioned by david and also here that the conflict in the northern part and eastern part of the miama is still intense and still very active in still nowadays the second perspective that i would like to share on the conflict in the border and from the lens of arm organization alliance because i also want to highlight this how complicated the process is this uh e a o alliance also create multi layers of negotiation multi multi peace processes that's also keep the government very busy because you are not dealing with government is not dealing with only one group or one alliance but there are multi alliance as multi we have a multi peace processes going on all at once and i would like to highlight uh very briefly since uday's in government probably right around towards the end of 2012 the negotiation between government of miama then and the eos have been gradually shifting from bilateral negotiations to the collective negotiations so currently you may also see the negotiations between government of miama and the eos arm organization is mostly in the collective way it's it's uh only on the specific case bilaterally government is dealing with the bilaterally with the organization so in the during the uday's in government time back in late 2012 and early 2000 early 2013 eos had formed up the political alliance for ceasefire negotiation and political negotiations so as a result of that collective efforts the ceasefire nationwide ceasefire agreement was signed by some of the groups was unfortunate that though nca which was the result of the collective efforts those who have put their effort very much in the early on of this collective negotiation are still not able to sign nca today so this is also a very unfortunate factor there are many factors behind it and here i would like to highlight that among throughout the course in the negotiation since 2013 and particularly after signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement in 2015 october there are multiple splits among the ethnic arm organizations so so before before the before the signing like at least 18 arm groups are working together but after signing of the nca in 2015 october very clear eight group had signed the nca so that eight groups that alliance is continue to be on the track of political negotiation which comes out of the nca agreement and then in terms of the military issue there is a joint ceasefire monitoring committee so therefore when it comes to the violation of the ceasefire agreement there is a joint joint monitoring body which has been monitoring on the clashes or violation of each agreement so this eight arm groups alliance is on the track of political negotiation and ceasefire monitoring been jointly done so that is one track while on the other hand the other seven members of eaos under the unfc are still negotiating with the government on the ceasefire negotiation on nca so that is another track that government is dealing with and another alliance has been said earlier also the three three groups tnla gokang and a government is also dealing with those three member alliance separately from time to time because those three smaller groups they also want to be part of the signing of the nca so when we talk about this alliance what i also what i pretty much like to highlight here is how the peace processes is being dealt with at the moment because government has current government has commissioned has formed a peace commission so these peace commission have been dealing with this three three groups or three alliance simultaneously so you can imagine the time that requires to deal with them and then the efforts the energy that have to be put in in order to solve the current current ethnic conflict issues in in yama and we haven't talked much about the current political dialogue process that that came out of the nca agreement but just want to highlight just one thing is the aim of the ongoing political dialogue is the ultimate aim is to negotiate on building genuine democracy a genuine federal democracy in the country so to build this genuine federal state by amending the constitution and existing law based on the results of this political negotiations so this is supposed to be taking place now and as somebody mentioned this morning that the next 21st century panglong is now postponed to early the first week of may so in between in between each panglong conference the union peace conference there's supposed to be the national dialogue process to take place in each state and divisions and in the region so that is also another security matter even though the signatory were been signatory have been signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement and supposed to be able to conduct the national dialogue process in the in their own state but due to the security reason for example in rakhine state the national dialogue were not able to convene by the by the rakhine ceasefire group so lastly very briefly another new development just last month on the February 25th there was a new development of the formation emergence of the political negotiation committee which is led by the uw sp united war state party and army so the aim of to to my understanding the aim of this newly emerged alliance led by war is to find alternatives alternative tracks for the political negotiation without needing to sign nca so this this is we are still waiting to see how this process is going to lead because currently as far as we understand the government policy is to negotiate on the nca and through nca but i'm not sure whether the government will open for another track to negotiate with the arm groups without signing nca whether they would be able to come to the political dialogue so this is still for us to wait and see so so lastly you know we are as i said in the beginning uh unless this ethnic armed conflict along the borders are not resolved transition and democracy will be slower and if the political dialogue is not going to carry forward as as design military will still be remain strong uh and some may still enjoy the state of school at the at the present situation and lastly don san su ji state councillor have been challenging everybody on the union day on the 12th that she's been highlighting all the groups who have been holding arms to come forward to the 21st century pandong let's let's talk at the table if you don't like you can go back to fighting so she's been challenging the groups who have been holding arms i suppose that she's challenging both military and the arm group as well so at the same time she is encouraging people to participate in this process so probably we should encourage people participation in the peace process that's one way to one way to keep the momentum going thank you thank you very much thank you mesas thanks to usip it's really an honor to be here and um i had my report on china and the miama's peace process right over there so it that report was generous generously supported by usip and pretty much listed all the foundations were the basics of china's position on the on the peace process it also talks about um also answers the question of the widespread perception of china supporting the eaos in northern miama so in my in my research i discovered there was such support but it's very difficult to to ties all support to chinese government um so the questions that i'm always asked about china and miama by my vermice friend there are two questions the first one is why doesn't china just deliver the ethnic groups in in in northern miama um and my first reaction is it's china capable of delivering those eaos in in northern miama and the answer i'm afraid is negative china is not able to um not capable of delivering them and the example that the chinese yearly website is back in 2009 in the um august coca instant when china literally worked with the military government to drive out peng jia sheng but then five years later peng jia sheng made a comeback and the quest second question is is china willing to deliver the eaos in northern miama and the answer there i'm afraid is also negative as for why there are complicated considerations of china's national interest um of relations with with the miama government and miama government's alignment choices so there are certain factors of national interest consideration in play here so david talked about the recent escalation of obtensions so starting from november 20th two things happened on the on the china friend the first issue the first development is the china's efforts of mediation has increased actually intensified significantly china and miama has already hosted two rounds of two plus two so defense um minister defense and um foreign ministry dialogues one was in november one was in uh in february the chinese special envoy on asian affairs has had has held three meetings with representatives of of northern alliance in quinming um one was in um in december one was in january and one was two days ago the chinese special envoy also had two meetings in nebida with uh with uh tatbando and um in one of those interesting plway visits to miama the commander of china's western theater command visited miama and demanded the bernie side to strengthen the control of the border and prevent bernie's loose cannons from falling into chinese territory so we can see that the chinese efforts in terms of the frequency of the mediation or the meetings have really have really intensified compared with with past experience the other interesting and perhaps more important development on this front is um the emerging so-called emerging leadership status of the uwsa among the eos in in northern miama um so uwsa just held hosted the third pangsang summit in um in pangsang which is the capital city of uwsa before the end of of of february and from the statement that came out of that third pangsang summit you really see that uwsa is trying to carry more of a leadership role within um among the groups in northern miama so one of the things that they agreed upon is that um so provided that the groups refused to sign nca and provided that they agreed to the political document that uwsa released last fall all these groups will support wa to become the leader to organize a new political organization to negotiate with negotiate with the government but of course the leadership status of uwsa has not been accepted by all the groups in in northern miama like k i o i think has some reservations about um about wa's leadership so china has maintained a rather close relationship with with uwsa but one change that has happened to china's perception of uwsa over the past year is that in the past china always saw uwsa as not having the political vision they are content they were content with their autonomous status within the northern shan state they're happy now to negotiate with the government and they're happy to maintain the status quo so the concern in china is uh do they really have the political wisdom and have the leadership to lead these groups but this has been um just totally changed since the release of the political document by uwsa in uh september you know fall last year i'm not sure if you have seen that political document it's surprisingly specific and surprisingly strategic so it covered almost 15 areas of issues that they see problems with with the with the central government including the armed force including the foreign policy authority of the local government including issues even like the education or the customs and inspections along the border trade so in that document uwsa raised the issue that the panlon spirit shall not be defined by the um by the nld government or by aung san su ji alone in fact they raised alternative definitions of the panlon spirit alternative um definition of political terms such as what is federalism what is equality what is uh genuine for example the genuine autonomy for the asking minorities so if you look at this political document you'll have to admire that uwsa's political um vision really has grown a lot in the past in the past several years so coming back to china's position what does china want so when nld government first inaugurated back in 2016 china's original hope was that um why we want to work with nld we want to work with dong san su ji to repair the bilateral relations that had been damaged in the previous five years and that um campaign also received some preliminary success when aung san su ji sent her goodwill by visiting china in august last year when aung san su ji established the misson commission to deal with the the issue of the misson dam and china also reciprocated that uh that goodwill by convincing the groups in northern miyema to join the um the first union peace conference and to ensure that a uwsa is a part of is is participating in that conference china also donated money to the peace process but what china found out later especially since the summer last year is that the armed conflict has intense had intensified since since nld in that nld government's inauguration so for china the question is who created this escalation so of course ostensibly what we would the chinese see is yes it is the uh ea o said are launching attacks against the government military but by the way are they doing that and like david pointed out the ea o say we're reacting to the attacks the perceived attack intensified attacks from tatamata on their traditional territory so the derivative question for china from that is um who really has a central role to play in the peace process is this a nld government or is it the tatamata or if the brahmese military really has seen um determining influence to undermine that process then should china work with nld government or should china work with tatamata and what is indeed the relationship on peace process between the nld government and the brahmese military are they working with each other is ansan suji against the military's attack in northern miyema so those questions do not uh do not have easy answers and that to a certain extent contributed to china's indecisiveness or china's ambiguity in in terms of china's position essentially china still sees that whether the peace process will succeed depends on the negotiation between the miyema central government and the asin minorities it's not china's internal affairs it's not china's role it's not china's issue to deliver so china cannot impose nca on the eos in northern miyema and china cannot just unilaterally help tatamata to wipe them out and literally it's impossible to to to wipe them out in the border region given the public opinion given the asin ties between the eos and the chinese asin minorities so china would like to be the coordinator but china cannot be the judge so as long as the two sides cannot reach an agreement either be it a ceasefire agreement or a peace agreement what china needs to prepare for is a long-term armed conflict or long term no peace and no no peace and no you no independence for these armed groups so china is preparing for that scenario at the same time a lot of chinese analysts see the inclusiveness issue as a key issue that's probably hindering the progress on the on the peace process and i have heard more than one chinese analyst saying that um the three groups tnlaa and mnda is they should be included they are already there and you cannot you cannot eliminate them so if you do not include them your nationwide ceasefire agreement is not going to be nationwide so you have to take those three groups into consideration somehow um i'll stop there and look forward to the to the qna but then again um a lot of these questions are discussed in my in my report with us ip so thank you thank you very much for three excellent presentations um we have about half an hour for questions and i just like to kick off with a question about the issue of trust um and particularly how that's changed over the past year um to all of our panelists um you know the the nld of course won a landslide victory and um and ethnic minorities largely voted for the nld in their areas um uh i wonder um what the sort of the status of a sense of trust between the um the ethnic minorities the ethnic armed organizations and the government is at the moment um how you think that impacts on the process and um and what are some of the ways perhaps of um of rescuing that arm if if there are such ways going forward maybe starting with janan um when the new administration was in place yeah the it was to build a trust from almost ground zero again uh but i think as gradually moving in the process the the trust has been uh developed for example uh as you as you see in the current uh current peace commission appointed by the state consulate on san sui ji and before the first pandong there was also a temporary subcommittee for the pandong pandong conference so in those committee and the current peace commission there were some members reappointed from the previous government so sometimes in early days in the negotiation uh with the current newly appointed team and the eos after the new administration it was quite quite difficult uh from the from the eosite non-signatory non-signatory side to trust the whole team because their expectation is they want to they want to see e wants to see brand new team you know that form up by the new government and they have very high hope from the state consulate and very high hope from the nld new government but in the beginning what they got is uh the the team was formed up with the member from the previous government uh in the in the negotiation team from the government so that was a bit disappointing matter from the from the from the eosite and but i think nowadays i do believe the trust has been built and eosite non-signatory have been dealing with the group being assigned by the new new administration to deal with the peace issue so it's a meeting each other for some time and you you walk the talks you know as you as you said at the table and then you you deliver what you have said at the table then that has gradually increased the trust between between the parties just quickly to i think there's a difference between um who you ask in in certain areas i mean if if you were to ask uh villagers in in northern charne state where there's been recent fighting that they would most of them aren't aware that there is a peace process um and and they simply just say look there's just no trust and when you ask if if you have any hope in in in ong san su chi they're just like it's just a world away from here um you know they're like we live from day to day we just want every man with a gun to go away and these are people that are being taxed several times from different ethnic armed groups and so i would say that there's not a lot of trust there but there is in in your last show when you speak to political elites from from different ethnic groups um mps people in civil society organizations and others um there's there's not a lot of trust but there is a lot of uh um energy to be involved in the process um there is a lot of commitment to actually resolve the armed conflict so i think there's there's two different things and you know do you have trust in the tap madore definitely not um do you have trust in the government no because what we're hearing is from doran san su chi pretty much what the tap madore is saying so there's no trust there but there is a willingness to engage in the process so i i think you've got to break it down and look at different communities and what they're enduring on the trust issue what i uh what i also want to want to highlight is a trust by the community on the peace process because particularly i want to highlight the case in gechin state gechin community believe that okay we have to find peace and we have to find different we have to use different ways to bring about peace so the kio leadership were also pressure had a pressure from the community as i mentioned in my presentation for the last five years the the kio had gained lots of people support from the community so the community also felt they they they have strong power to influence the the kio leadership and kio leadership vice versa also need to convince the community that okay let's let's try to work on this nca issues so trying to convince the community because community has little trust on the nca because the community would respond based on what they face day to day because what they are facing every day is heavy intense fighting and they have to move idps so based on that daily experience the community gechin community would uh perception on the peace process is how can we trust because it haven't shown in reality it haven't delivered what they said and what they do because when the kio leaderships go for the negotiation with the government the community begin to equalize that okay the kio leaderships going to the negotiation at the peace table going to nebido going to yang go equals to soon we will have more intense fighting so this is this is the the belief it becomes the perception of the people and therefore trusting on the current nca implementation nca negotiation trusting on those process was quite difficult because community responds on what they experience because of all this cases that uh done by the military on the ground was the testifying factor for the for them that we cannot trust this process that we cannot believe in this peace process so this is also another community issue nowadays that we have to pay high attention to the bringing community on board the peace process just two small external aspect of this trust building so i agree with with with david and with janand generating trust is very difficult especially when the trust is not there to begin with and they uh there are historical memories there are continued renewed examples of those historical memories but for the eos in northern miyema there are two two issues that they raised about about how to build trust the first one is so we have groups who have signed the nca they want to see the demonstration effect from those groups how how has nca pan out for those for those groups has it worked has it created peace has um has these these groups experience give them more confidence in the in the future that nca will actually generate peace and development as it promises the other external aspect is um groups ask for external guarantee for the nca since there is no there's no endogenous trust maybe trust can be created from exogenous factors so now of course then we'll get into the issue of whether china should or un should play the role of external guarantee of the peace process thank you let's turn it over to the floor for questions so let's take let's take three in a row and then come back so thank you good afternoon my name is chris murray from cats consulting student red think tank my question is about the hannah beach article in time magazine about the role jade plays and jade mining from the region um and on that does china have an invested interest in not seeing a piece because of their jade consumption and is that actually playing out in the peace process thank you and one more from i'm lisa misal with global witness and my question relates to jade as well but more broadly i would like to um ask you to comment on the role of natural resources both as a driver in this escalating conflict and um as a factor in the developing the prospects for peace so with regard to jade it's you know kuchen has the world's most valuable jade deposits and how does that play in uh and then on the flip side how can the interests and natural resources be brought into the peace process in a comprehensive way not just revenue sharing but more broadly to make sure that the local population benefits that their protections in place the licenses are allocated in a reasonable way to combat corruption and so forth how can this be integrated into a peace process in an effective way thank you and third question right in front of you i have a my name is an sweet sir um anthropologist i have a related thought uh i understand that there were two or three chinese burmese uh businessmen who have very very large mafias essentially they do a lot of trading and opium um wildlife their wildlife trafficking across the border so on and there must be people on the other side of the border in china who are benefiting greatly from from all of these movements so in addition to speaking about the chinese government policy in relation to the burmese government what about uh lower levels of chinese interest in perpetuating trade that may be counteractive to counter counterproductive to the peace process thank you three related questions um yun would you like to start on this sure i think all the three questions are are are essentially related so how china deals with the um the shan state and the kaching state on the other side of the border how china or certain chinese actors generate profits from from their local relationships so the first question is which china you're talking about like i'm pointing it out which china you're talking about one easy deniability um that offers the central government in china is uh well it's a local actors it's a local government it's a local businessman who have established these illicit trade relations with the asin minorities on the other side of the border and these are real economic relations that cannot just be stopped by one piece of paper by the central government there's some choose to it but that it also depends on how seriously that the beijing wants to pursue those policy given china's domestic politics today and how um how effective that shijin ping has been carrying out his domestic and foreign policy i would doubt that if shijin ping really sees the issue as detrimental to china's national interest and wants to stop this illicit trade and he can't i i don't i don't believe that is a realistic scenario in china's domestic politics today um so the issue of both jade uh well live poaching and drug trafficking and um illegal logging in norse miyama it relates to the war economy right of the conflict so throughout the years the chinese businesses and chinese local governments have established that these they're profitable relations with uh with the asin minorities in kecheng state and shan state swiss even tested approval from tatamadoa and local uh vermice military sometimes also take a cut out of this out of those illicit economic activities so that provides the momentum for this conflict to be on to to continue because the less managed or the less controlled that these areas are the easier it is for the illicit economic activities to to happen so i do reckon that um it is a serious issue for the undermining the peace process as for what to do about it david and jenem please well this is a very complicated issue and i'm sure global witness is also closely looking at this issue since cisfire uh since 1994 cisfire process in kecheng state and i want to highlight that when we look at the in the very early day on on the armed conflict with kio they were there to protect the kecheng state and they were there to protect the rights of the people and all the natural resources that come along with but after the cisfire agreement back in 1994 during the 17 years of cisfire period during the military regime and the conflict landscape has changed and the interest has changed and we can also see there are interests from the military government and interest from the individual in the military government and also at the same time for kio it's also become the survivor for the organization and of course in any organization there are people who have personal interests in all these natural resources and including jake and all this illegal logging issue so that become during the 17 years of cisfire period the natural resource become rather than you know both government and kio are to protect this natural resource for the people it becomes the self-interest of both government both kio and the government and the some individual leaders within within both both sites uh so the the landscape the landscape has changed and so if you look at for those who follow the resumption of war in kuchin state back in 2011 the small incidents become the big uh conflict that small incident could have been could have been dealt with but that small incident has to do with the hydropower security over hydropower dam so that could have been uh protected in the early on but i think i mean this is all our assumption i think there are individual interests from the government then individual within the government in those days uh had a interest in in that kind of business business so the conflict had escalated till today so this is uh this is one example so looking at this kind of protection of natural resource management and the the the the revenue sharing is it's a long term negotiation but we should not be only focusing on long term negotiation on the revenue sharing natural resource sharing but we have to find ways how to protect it now before every before before things goes worse than the situation so as Junsun said we don't have the answer but we we have to keep working on this as a high priority issue i definitely don't have any answers for this um on on the jade trade um the best place to go would actually be global witness and and Lisa's excellent colleagues who wrote the definitive report on the explosion of the jade trade in the past couple of years there's also a fantastic channel news asia documentary that um a good friend of mine worked on um and was uh screened in in yang on a few weeks ago um that gives a visual side to to um the trade that you don't often see and also the fantastic Burmese photographer um minzai who's been documenting um uh pukat the the um the jade mines in pukat there's a couple of things also to remember people tend to look at the money the jade you know the demand in china um but when you're in michina um on an almost weekly basis you hear about a landslide in which scores of people die and there was a period at the end of 2015 which hundreds of people were dying um because that you know the the big dump trucks dump um all the earth that they've gone through and people pick through it and it's very unstable and and lots of people die and i think we've got to recognize that that it's not just the wealth that's being pulled out of there and how it's it's it's going to uh into different people's pockets both inside miamara and and um and china uh but the human toll that it's taking on on people there um it's also is as a conflict driver people tend to think of the money but uh where did the arakan army get its recruits from when it formed several years ago it got them from ethnic rakhine who were working in the mines these are people who who were desperately poor um and really felt that there was nowhere to go it's because you know those people have to leave rakhine state go there and work in this incredibly dangerous trade and actually serving in in an eaio and fighting the tap madore seemed like a better option to them and this is this is real desperation um in terms of of all the other economic rents um i mean the chance state's an incredibly rich fertile place so there's there's um there's lots of opportunities i think for for eaos the the drug trade's probably the biggest one um there's been rapacious logging there for years and years and most of the trees are gone um we first heard me and me and colleagues first heard about a new logging road uh last year there's an excellent book by a burmese analyst called momong so who talked about this road coming from sigaing north of mogok and then into mung mit and um and i'm come up to the chinese border in which old growth teak was being taken from sigaing and there's this new logging road um that that some people are talking about and the eaos were actually putting up checkpoints and everyone was getting a slice of the pie as it were on this very isolated part and uh when we were talking about these these areas are so isolated that you hear word of firefights and and and clashes and people would say oh it's because rcss the one of the the signatories from the nation might ceasefire agreement had set up a checkpoint on this logging road to get a piece of the action and some of the other groups didn't like it and i mean you can't verify this it's so murky right but that is an element of the of the political economy of the conflict up there but also good old-fashioned extortion people tend to forget that uh when me and and colleagues were up in mousse one of our informants took us to an electronic store in which he said the tnla walk in here a tnla tax collector comes in here on a regular basis and basically says make your payment every single trucking company going up to mousse and there are lots of them um to give you an example there are sometimes three-day traffic jams on the highway going up to mousse so trucks basically and i got caught in one on the way to namkham and we ended up having to walk for a couple of hours um uh that's that takes the extent of the border trade and remember that that uh there was a senior tap metal press conference a couple of weeks ago in which the chief of staff pointed out that in the five days of fighting um around mousse last year 19 million u.s. dollars was lost in bilateral border trade okay so that that's the extent of of the border trade so there's the illicit rents there's also a legal trade which is thriving in that area and if if you just get kickbacks from a trucking company you know you're doing enough to keep your men um in in food and ammunition so you've got to think of the political economy of the conflict in much broader terms than extractive rents or natural resources thank you we've got time for a couple more quick questions before lunch so let's take one from here from here and the one here this is for david please introduce yourself oh gumsan from kachan lines um how could the burmese i guess greater community foster genuine national reconciliation or rebuilt trust um despite repeatedly you know shoving these atrocities under the rug by any armed men not just dot in the door because these are very community based and second question to miss janan you've been deeply involved in this uh not only the peace process but also the political transition process so the question is we had relative peace or calm last year to the first second quarter of the i guess 2016 so what caused this huge spike in conflict and what is the hurdle with unfc meeting with the government there are nine there are nine point proposal nine points i guess what's the sticking what's causing the uh impasse and for yun sun uwsa has the longest you know peace in among the eao and has the largest vested interest in burmese economy they have had some hiccups uh there had been some a few confrontation but never like a spillover like in the kio so what is this relative peace that they obtained what caused this thanks from the yard george washington university i appreciate the the excellent questions and responses about natural resource and other forms of extraction but again looking at the broader political economy of the of the conflict what about the arms procurement networks coming into the country uh what can you tell us perhaps david about um the key sources and networks for arms procurement hi michael martin again from crs i want to kind of build on um the gentleman over here's comment first off could you comment on reports that the top madal are actually using some of the nca signatory groups or previous militias who are now border guard forces as effectively a proxy in the fight in northern shan state in kinshine state and then second moving on to why the postponement of the pong long second pong long conference certainly the participation of the northern alliance three parties is one of the issues but could you comment on to what extent disagreements over the nine points or the six steps or the all the numbers that are floating around how much is the agenda and the sequencing of events towards peace is a barrier to moving forward one with the conference as well as uh ending the civil war three meeting questions on on achieving peace um i i think if i had any real ideas on that then it might have happened already and unfortunately um it's it's it's so complicated it's been going on for so long one one thing i would say which i don't think is getting the attention that that it really deserves is um an emphasis on youth participation um i mean a lot of generations that have gone through the conflict find it very hard to kind of get out of the conflict mentality even though they i think they genuinely want peace but they've gone through quite a lot and given that over the past several years me and my has really opened up there is far more access to information from the outside world people are able to have a conversation about peace and about conflict and about justice and about accountability in ways that they were too afraid to do um i think emphasizing the youth um and informing them about the conflict it's one of the the great things to come out of of one of the few great things to come out of the the escalation of conflict in the north is the role of to ang shan and other youth groups up in the north and these people are mobilizing they they staged a peace march um in in last year several months ago i mean i mean these are people that really want an end to this and they want to emphasize development and education um and have a spirit of togetherness and and wanting to avoid inter-communal tensions as as much as possible so that that to me is the really hopeful side to all of this is the youth quickly on on um there's a lot of weapons up in in the north um the kitchen um tend to be fairly self-reliant and in small arms um uh looking at the equipment that the mnda are holding that's pretty top shelf chinese weaponry and it can only come from one source which is china um who in china is selling it for what end is remains to be seen but also um i deferred to you on this but um i think the war is certainly um a major contributor to um to the arsenals of a lot of eaos in the area um and what's worrying is that as as i said the technology the conflict is increasing uh there is also talk of the eaos acquiring more and more sophisticated weaponry so it's just almost this kind of arms race um developing which is really worrying um uh at a time when they really should be talking peace are actually escalating the kind of weaponry that they're using thank you sure um first of all on why there has been relative peace in in the war area i think there are three reasons first one is uws a takes china's concern very seriously china doesn't want border instability china doesn't want to see armed conflict so that is at least one reason that uws a can tell the chinese service special envoy that we have we have taken uh your demand very seriously we are not starting armed conflict with uh with the government with with the government military the second reason is i think uws a is also relatively content with their with their current arrangement they have basically total autonomy in their two pieces of territory in the north and in the south they don't have a lot of national natural resources which could be one reason that they are not engaged in this in this this war economy per se and um they their administration of their own um affairs on their on their territory is it's fair it's fairly complete so you don't see this kind of overlapping presence between the government military and uws a on the same territory and the third reason is i think the uh time at all is also relatively reluctant to start an armed conflict with uh with uws a because uws a like david pointed out they have well rumor has it's 30 000 militias so they have a very strong armed force and they also have good weapons so if the titan model wants to start attacking uws a they have to be very careful about the consequences of the of that armed conflict the key sources of armed procurement i'm i'm not going to defend china um and actually we have seen different reports about the weapons weapons in the war area and held by cocan our chinese weapons i'm not going to defend china but it's just me in my research i have not obtained that evidence that these arms came from china uws a has his own factories to produce to produce their weapons and in my conversation with them that they do they do imitate the chinese models so that could explain the uh the appearance of the swarms but in terms of the the the larger arms arms um i have to say that the drug lords in that area are pretty creative in terms of their arms procurement and i'm not saying that these are not chinese weapons they could be chinese weapons but were they said were they sold to um eaos in northern miyama directly by chinese authority or by chinese government i think that's uh that's a question like in the in the research the uh the chinese financial company yuchang group back in 2015 when they were trying to protect their assets in in northern miyama when they were doing their money laundry um they arranged for those assets to be protected and how was they protected where did they get the weapon um that's a question to be answered okay so um i think in 2016's uh that was when the new government came into administration beginning of new government came into administration and at that time the state consular don san suji lay out a new plan like she started designing all inclusive trying to design all inclusive process to the political dialogue process so therefore she announced there will be 21st century pang long then the question came around when when she first mentioned about 21st century pang long there was a question from the signatory site according to the nca according to the framework that came out of nca we have a union peace conference so what is it different is this another another track or is it the same as union peace conference but in one meeting around may i think july uh she confirmed that 21st century pang long is the same as union peace conference and peace going to be implemented political dialogue will be implemented through nca agreement so stay on nca track and then political implementation 21st century pang long is same as union peace conference so at that time of course the position particularly the tamador position is without signing nca none signatory will not get official representation at the union peace conference but doang san suji is trying to create the space to bring everybody on board to the 21st century pang long so that's why the the temporary committee was formed to deal with the non signatories and one subcommittee is to deal with the signatory on the continued framework political dialogue framework review framework review then i think maybe that kind of process also gave some hopes to the non signatory okay now doang san suji is proposing 21st century pang long how is that going to be different so one different about the 21st century pang long first meeting which was taking place in end of august was it was designed out of the track of the nca because that conference was designed with the purpose of all inclusive and from this conference the first conference onward the political dialogue process will be all inclusive political dialogue process is to be designed so that was the idea so therefore regardless of signing of nca or non signing of nca both signatories and non signatory together with government damador and the political parties were able to form up the convening committee of the 21st century pang long first meeting so i think because of that hope you know we have sort of like relative peace around that time but after that uh there were ongoing negotiation with the un fcdpn on the nine point issues and i'm sure that topic won't you can reflect more in the last session on the peace process but i i could say the negotiating with the arm groups as i mentioned earlier you are not dealing with just one organization you are dealing with six seven different entities organizations so for ethnic arm organization for example dpn un fc to come to the table dpn has been mandated by un fc to go and negotiate nine point but they could not make the decision and they will always need to consult it back with un fc top leaders plus un fc members they have to consult it with your back with your mother organization so there's levels and levels of process that that need to that need to get the final decision so this eight points you know on the third march with dpn and peace commission they have in principle agreed particularly i want to highlight one thing is the role of international have been reflected more or less even though it was not the same expectation as dpn would like to see but there have been reflected some extent of the role of international in the political dialogue process in throughout the nce implementation process so those are some of the some of the example and if uang ji can reflect more in his session in the last session on the peace process on the last point on the 21st century you know the postponing of the the conference i think it is more about the sequencing matter to my view because in the negotiation meeting with dpn and peace commission on the third on the first first march dpn met with a state consular we believe that had produced good outcome and as a result the meeting on the third with dpn and peace commission have more concrete concrete concrete results came out of it so i think just observing this process of postponing the union peace second pang long conference to first week of may is maybe there might be a hope is still hoping the process the negotiation process with dpn and the and the peace commission will move forward and there might be some some agreement might come before that time so maybe that that's one factor and second is it's a practical issue because i'm i'm co-facilitating the meeting and i can see when it comes to the fixing the date for certain meetings and it's always fine challenging to find the time to work around the schedule of the government to work around the schedule of the unfc an individual organization i think there's also practical issue that just could not find the time you know to to fix the date for the next meeting and in between this official meeting there are also series of meeting going on uh i think ambassador direct metro mentioned about the joint coordination body which is the fund management body which is also joint non-signatory unfc is also part of that discussion so next week they will also be meeting with government and signatory and non-signatory to draw further on that joint coordination funding joint coordination body so there is so many parallel meetings going on not only the official meeting but framework review meeting on the political dialogue is also going on and at the same time looking at reflecting on the joint monitoring committee work to our has been working on it so there are like parallel parallel meetings along with the official meeting so that that's why one factor of postponing or moving to the first first may could also be the practical reason that long holiday in april and long now it's a changing you know holiday day is coming in april and there are different meetings scheduled so i think that's another practical reason might also be be the reason for postponing to the first week of may and probably the ultimate will be hoping that everybody might be able to join in the in the second problem to the first century problem thank you and what a good note to end on um in terms of inclusiveness of all the um the groups in the process hopefully um at some stage in the coming year um thank you once again to wonderful panelists um for helping us to unpack an incredibly complex conflict and some of the negotiations um around that um we do have another session as jan un mentioned this afternoon the last session this afternoon a ways forward will look more at the peace process um so there'll be another opportunity there to to speak more about this um now we have lunch and um we have an address from um from patrick murphy the deputy assistant secretary for southeast asia from the state department during lunch so we'd like to invite you to take um a lunchbox from over there and come and rejoin us at your table um for the next session thank you very much thank you thank you it sounds like beaming now on us now that was great that's good it's all right ladies and gentlemen uh i'd like to i'm sorry to break into the conversations hopefully there'll be a lot of time for conversation between sessions um but we're going to do a little talk and chew here as you eat we're going to have a little conversation um we are very very fortunate uh today to have as a lunch speaker uh the current deputy assistant secretary of state for southeast asian affairs and a very very good friend not only of mine but of berma itself um patrick murphy was a political econ chief in in berma in what years were those 2000 some time ago 10 years ago or so but he was one of those people like many of us who went there caught the bug it's a very special place for him he is uh though he has served in many places around around the world and in china iraq guinea and molly he's worked on on haydee he was recently the the dcm and charger de ferre in tai land during dicey periods of the last few years but we are extremely fortunate as americans frankly and i think it's good for for berma that he is now the deputy assistant secretary of state for southeast asian affairs and he'll probably want me to mention that he is a great fan of the boston redsox and the new england patriots and i have lost many a bet to him unfortunately and many a lunch i owe him a lunch based on on bets related to that love so anyway with that he will make some opening comments and then he will take questions and i will point out folks who can who can ask the questions with that please join me in welcoming patrick murphy nice to see you all really terrific to see already from this perch many familiar faces uh ambassador mitchell my good friend and colleague thank you very much both to you and to nancy limberg the entire team here at the us institute for peace a cherished institution greatly appreciated by me and my colleagues across the street at the state department it's just terrific i think to bring together all of this expertise from inside berma me and mar and from outside it's very timely to take pause and look at the situation with regards in particular to peace and conflict but especially because we are now approaching in a matter of days the one-year anniversary of the elected civilian government's assumption of authorities a little bit of a spoiler alert i am going to perhaps strike a tone of cautious optimism i'll say it right up front i've been through many decades of challenges with this particular country professionally and i'm very cognizant of some incredibly dark and difficult days in the past and i have i think good basis to be optimistic that could be in contrast to the views of some certainly in contrast to some current headlines which give a lot of attention to challenges they're real challenges berma in the post transition period is encountering a very predictably bumpy stretch many of these challenges most some would say were inherited but there are also some new challenges but it's early days as i said we're on the eve of the first year of a new government and the country is emerging from 50 plus years of authoritarian repressive rule i don't think therefore that we should lose sight in talking about challenges and difficulties some of them very serious of what's been remarkable a peaceful transition from military dictatorship to representative democracy somewhat unprecedented when you look around the region when you look around the world in some aspects are a real model it's been a long struggle and i dare say it will continue to be a struggle for the foreseeable future today the united states and me and mar have a partnership just one year ago uh in fact pretty close to the day we were here at usip talking about our position our policy which was poised to redeclare this country a national emergency and extend comprehensive sanctions which had been in place for decades and in fact we did do that we extended and renewed sanctions but now we have a partnership and the question is how did we get where we are today i know you're exploring a lot of the issues with your panels uh and and discussions but from our perspective i think we want to acknowledge first and foremost it's the resolve of the bermes people they've never given up hope for democracy for peace for prosperity i witnessed that at several junctures over recent decades inside the country and it's what's made the situation there so compelling for so long this is not a situation where the outside world wants something that the very people of this country don't want we see that elsewhere around the world there are questions about pursuit of democracy and peace and prosperity these have been the aspirations of the bermes people they've been committed they've been courageous they've made a lot of sacrifices from our perspective we believe we have been a good leader a committed leader for the better part in particular of the past three decades our congress successive presidents both sides of the aisle have worked with civil society and others and rallied the international community and we have done so in close cooperation with the diaspora with the pro-democracy movement which for years was an underground phenomenon inside the country to come up with a posture of pressure on successive military regimes there have been the well-known executive orders on investment creation of especially designated nationals and entities lists the berm of freedom and democracy act the jade act much more when the changing of the military guard a few years ago a few short years ago produced some signs of reform i think it's at that point we can say the united states again took a leadership role and made a bold move some engagement a process of action for action and i think those efforts helped yield a nascent electoral process the release early releases of a certain number of political prisoners some moves to reduce censorship a national ceasefire process with the ethnic armed groups and more at that time and we're talking now about five years ago six years ago we did our part to help support and encourage further reform we restored full diplomatic relations that's a term of art we had diplomatic relations with berma consistently without interruption from independence but we moved up to place an ambassador the good derrick mitchell in that role we re-established a us aid mission inside the country we supported the renewal of assistance from international financial institutions and we began some easing of our sanctions we think collectively working with many here in the room many around the world that that produced some good results the 2015 election an nld victory which for that movement that political party and its supporters achieved a result that had been denied for 25 years but never never lost the aspiration to see that dream realized so a year ago after or after ansan su chi president tin cha the national league for democracy took office we saw some early moves fulfilling campaign promises fulfilling expectations for many the release of many political prisoners the launch of new reforms the spearheading of a national reconciliation process and some early moves to tackle those fundamental inherited challenges rekind state a true national peace reconciliation process and really thorny things that had never been dealt with except in a negative way like land tenure and corruption from the u.s. perspective we wanted to recognize the scope of the changes the scope of the transition and we conducted some pretty intense consultations with our congress with the newly elected government in berma with other partners and we concluded collectively that sanctions had for the most part run their course they had been intended to provide incentives for a democratic reform process which had been taken had taken place in a very significant manner i think the other governments and organizations including some of you here today can take pride in those many decades of efforts to help the people of berma change their country that was a successful progress now we find ourselves in a position to use more traditional tools to support this government in meeting the expectations of its people especially with regards to economic growth and development now speaking of expectations they are sky high unbelievable expectations all of them genuine all of them heartfelt all of them were the basis of reality the population wants dividends from democracy wants to see results from decades of suffering and struggle to get to this point they want to see the alleviation of poverty some basic choices about their own destiny ethnic minorities of course want an end to discrimination some control over their resources a part a part of this pie the human rights community would obviously like to see many issues addressed would like to see the new leadership which includes a Nobel peace laureate govern like a Nobel peace laureate the Burmese military the tom adoe wants its traditions its practices its position protected and the international community would like to see its advice and counsel applied i just can't imagine governing with that set of expectations and i think the truth is it's literally impossible to meet all of them in one year and i dare say maybe impossible to meet them in a single term or even in a generation many burmese have had scant opportunity to govern or to gain public policy experience over these last couple of generations capacity is very low this is an untested government starting almost from scratch nonetheless we too in the united states have expectations we have hopes for this country well it has made notable remarkable progress we are not blind to many of the difficult issues that remain and must be addressed an election a democratic transition cannot alone solve all of the complex problems there are the macro level issues and challenges that you're all aware of you're discussing today national peace and reconciliation i've already cited economic prosperity consolidation of democracy it's not yet done establishment of a real true functioning government and society in addition to these from our perspective the new government must take steps to address continuing armed conflict kuchen state and shan state are the most notable at the the current time must address the allegations of sustained abuses against the rahinga minority address chronic underdevelopment in many places but in particular rakhine state chin state there are poor education and health care systems that have been broken for a long time and let's not lose sight of the fact that many burmese fled their country over the decades hundreds of thousands remain in refugee status or in other capacities and would like to return and contribute to their country but they need the right conditions to do so so this list is long and daunting and even though i point to high expectations i acknowledge that we contribute we have some expectations as well i think many of you can agree and thus the nature of your discussions today that among these challenge challenges perhaps the two greatest are the peace process and the situation in rakhine state which is not new those of you who know the country well know that this is a problem that's been around for decades if not more than a hundred years i referred earlier to some of the current headlines and violence in the country displacement allegations of abuses are fairly well covered i think what's less well addressed are both some encouraging steps and some other aspects to challenges there have been concrete steps taken towards a nationwide ceasefire agreement that's not yet done that remains a work in progress but there have been some bold steps the historic pan-long peace conference is in some regards unprecedented certainly has not been attempted since the 1940s and it's been more inclusive more substantive than anything in the interim and there have been early efforts in rakhine state on the tricky sensitive issues regarding citizenship and development for all of the populations that reside there as if berma did not have enough on its plate there are emergent new challenges and i referred earlier to a set of inherited thorny issues but there have been some new ones that have cropped up the coordinated deadly attacks in october and november on border security units in rakhine state we really haven't seen that before and that cost lives and created a increased environment of tension we know what the response has been in the allegations of abuses just a short while ago in january the brazen daytime assassination of a respected muslim rights attorney ukoni was a sad moment for this country and the nature of that deadly attack is a rare and poses a whole set of new questions and perhaps even challenges so that's the discouraging part i think the optimistic part that i previewed is that berma has the ingredients for success this really is the best opportunity in perhaps two generations to set the country on a successful track for the country to restore not only its own house but its rightful place in the asia pacific i am not forgetting that berma was once the rice bowl the intellectual heart and center of all of asia this country was a model that other countries aspired to achieve was a place to send sons and daughters to get a good education with its resources both human and natural berma deserves to restore that position and play a role in the region and in the world so i cited and let me just be brief about this part that we have a partnership now and many would question what are we doing to help what are we doing to address the challenges and help with the opportunities we literally now have a partnership the us-meanmar partnership that was announced by state counselor don san su chi and president obama last year was launched in november and i was pleased to lead a u.s. delegation from washington join our ambassador there scott marciel and conduct a series of consultations in discussions with 22 ministries civilian military everything was on the table we discussed collaborative ways to improve human rights promote economic growth encourage responsible investment business practices including in the complex jade and gemstone sectors and work together on a whole host of issues this was refreshing and again i want to refer to my personal perspective starting in this country almost three decades ago now this is a whole new chapter this is a new era where problems are not denied are not discussions are not shut down very frank very open and pretty widespread acknowledgement of what needs to be addressed going forward since 2012 we have committed some 500 million in assistance that's going from inside the country an incredibly low number in previous years for the peace process we are endeavoring to help achieve a legitimate inclusive peace building mechanism in rekind state us aid and others have committed over 60 million dollars for economic development food security health programs in rekind we're promoting development for communities affected by inter-communal violence in the past efforts to improve relations between the rekind and rohingya communities help with livelihoods and early recovery there are still some 45 000 persons that we are helping who have been affected by conflict displacement and extreme poverty in that part of the country since 2015 i'm not accounting for previous years but just in the last two years we have committed over 100 million dollars in humanitarian aid for members of vulnerable communities throughout the country and outside the country i think we have reason to be very proud about that ladder category because many donors have shifted all of their attention inside the country and as i mentioned there are still hundreds of thousands outside in need and we remain a very key leading donor we've been active in the rule of law sector helping with assistance to parliament justice institutions civil society to pro to conduct legal reforms give attention to rule of law and human rights such agencies as a u.s patent and trade office training judges government officials in protecting intellectual property rights complying with the requirements of international agreements that the berma now subscribes to our treasury department has provided technical assistance on money laundering tax collection support for public financial management reform and there's lots that we're doing on economic development we now have in place in country a foreign commercial service office which has increased trade by over 300 percent close to 400 percent that's all relative you'll know with our sanctions and the country's self-imposed isolation we're basically started close to zero so but nonetheless it's about trade it's also about american jobs as it is about bernie's jobs our overseas private investment corporation opic has extended the process for a a loan of over 200 million dollars for the construction of cellular towers berma's infrastructure is very very low our export import bank is now working in the in the realm of export credit insurance loan guarantees direct loans to improve trade flows and help berma enter the international economy and at the same time help our economy too there are other areas i won't list them all but a couple that we're quite proud of last september our first group of peace corps volunteers arrived in berma they're focusing on education they're off to a great start and i think as we had anticipated and hoped being very well received by their communities and i dare say that berma will be in a position soon to to plead for a doubling a tripling of the number of volunteers who've been started since last august we also have a u.s. department of agriculture office in rangoon and after the historic visit i referred to last september we have reinstated gsp trade benefits for berma a couple of things we've done with the bermes military now before there are shocks and gasps this is very nascent and there is a reason because the elected government hopes that we will have nascent engagement with the bermes armed forces the top medow why there's a desire to transform this institution which is very critical for the transition for the country success into a professional institution subordinate to elected government integrated into regional security structures respectful of human rights and international norms so we have had very low level contacts where there have been discussions on human rights standards professionalization some very low level participation in multilateral conferences this is not for the military leadership we're not yet at that stage it's very nascent but as i said it's important and it's recognized as important by the civilian elected government who has asked us to explore these kind of efforts a partnership between our two countries is about friendship but it doesn't mean we have no differences bermes a sovereign country with a sovereign independent government and so we raise our concerns about violence about displacement in rakhine state about human rights allegations of human rights violations by security forces we encourage the ending of conflict full humanitarian access we call on the military to support the civilian government and we work with others in the international community to address these areas of concern this week in janeva discussions are underway at the human rights council we hope in a collaborative productive way forward but nonetheless a lot of the concerns are on the table to be addressed so the bermes people have expectations we have expectations but i dare say that democracy is not only a work in progress but it's a hard work in progress safe to say after 240 years we still work on aspects of our own democracy and ultimately it's not for us to solve it's the bermes people it's their institutions their government their military to deliver on reforms consolidate democracy but our commitment is to work collaboratively with the democratic government civil society others around the world in a transition that we hope in every way succeeds the 55 million plus people of berma deserve it the country has a promising future as i said at the outset it is bumpy anyone who has been there spent time there knows how complicated it is 55 million people 55 million different stories and aspirations 125 130 plus different ethnic groups religions the diversity of this country is quite stunning we hope it finds strength in diversity and we hope it can do so with the help of its friends its neighbors and its partners and that's why i strike that tone of cautious optimism we hope there's no looking back those were very difficult days there's no comparison the climate of fear that the people lived in for such a long time has been diminished considerably and there is room for hope and that's why we hope it succeeds thank you very much i hope also to take some of your questions but it's a pleasure to be here with you all today jason jason somebody thank you ambassador patrick murphy as a fellow foreign service officer i congratulate you and my message for your statement is that thank you very much we take your statement as a testimony to united states commitment to me and your suggestions your view and how we work we will work together will be very taken very seriously and i i assure you that we will work together that the the path that we have laid down yes with regard to the optimist cautious optimism i agree with you because when you look at the people who are from Myanmar those who were uh uh mima said mima citizens uh before and and the folks who are the mima citizens now when you look at the history of our country all the people in our country pamaa the chim chim shim karen we all took challenges this is the this is i think it is in our blood that we take challenges we all are risk takers that is why we take the challenge i i liken this spirit as the spirit of your forefathers who for independence who took the challenge to bring the country independence from the rulers we will take this as a very good example and this is how we work together among the people who are diverse in our country this uh no one will disagree with what i say now there's a chin national and there there are billion nationals chin and rakhine national we all agree that we have we are diversified but we have our common goals this is how we work together and also uh uh with regards to what you have mentioned about the peace corps this is the very good beginning i will be having a uh meeting with the peace corps those who are going to mima in the near future those who have uh uh anagon training in the us and this is what i wish to do in our in in your country to promote people to people connectivity to promote people to people uh relationship friendship and so on so let us work together that will bring uh common good to both our country and also peoples of our two countries thank you very much thank you ambassador uang lin i think you create an opportunity for me to acknowledge the issuance today of the kofi anon commission report with a series of uh serious recommendations and the government of bermas immediate response accepting uh those recommendations this has been a good process the formation of the commission for anyone who knows the complexities inside the country i won't go into all the detail but it was a bold move to invite the formation of a commission with an international component to it and now expectations speaking of expectations will be high on on the implementation of the recommendations but it is a good start to acknowledge and accept them uh so a helpful step today but thank you ambassador i'm chosen that from voice of america uh could you elaborate a little bit more about the military to military relations with bermas and are you optimistic that you could successfully persuade the bomb military to respect the human rights and to become a professional thank you yeah thank you i think it's an important question about the military to military relationship first of all i think it's all relative the united states has such relationships throughout the region and in the majority of countries there are military military relationships that encompass military training defense sales uh contact exercises uh there's a whole range of activities that are considered standard and normal very few uh in fact almost none of what i've just described exists in the military to military relationship with the top medow what i'm referring to is very nascent contact and strictly limited to the topics that i noted professionalization human rights international standards the process of filling fulfilling the role that is subordinate to an elected civilian government this is new particularly for military uh that is used to ruling the roost and has been had been in control for over 50 years of every institution every aspect of governance and the economy so transitioning away from that uh is a process and we want to encourage it that's why i talk about very nascent limited engagement in terms of the hopes that you raise the question of what can we hope to achieve i think we have to try i think uh the bernie's people deserve a system a government where the military plays a more traditional supportive role focused on national defense right-sized professional adhering to standards and many would agree there's a lot of room for improvement in those categories i don't think we conclude that we exclusively are in a position to shape and influence entirely our modest efforts right now are extremely limited and nascent given the nature of the situation and the various constraints i think for the most part that are obvious some constraints are legislated uh and we're not looking to uh have our congress change those legislative restrictions right now it's too early these are early days part of the bigger challenge i referred to is the consolidation of democracy the country is not yet in a position to say the transition to democracy is complete and that process is going to require the participation and support of the tatmado the armed forces i think right now safe to say in some it's it's about exposure this is an armed forces that largely has been working internally and is unfamiliar with international standards is unfamiliar with the world view on how militaries should operate in the modern era and so it's a beginning i think of a long a long process to come thank you for your question patrick thanks for that overview us from our relations could i know it's a bit of a tough question but um it's wondering uh what you talked about was sort of the policy under the previous administration i'm wondering if you can give us some guidance on what the new administration is thinking about me and mar we had uh um ambassador scott marcia was here i know he was doing consultations year building the white house and congress is there um can you from based on what you've heard so far give us guidance on what might happen on the aid capacity building and other types of relationships thank you yeah thank you murray fair enough question and i think the way to answer it would to be for me the best position i meant to speak more broadly about the asia pacific region uh we haven't had a specific policy review on on berma me and mar but it does fit into the broader context and the new administration has reaffirmed the u.s. commitment to the asia pacific as an asia pacific nation and there are many components in that engagement in that relationship that remain consistent and important uh the trade and economic foundations security matters uh people the people contact uh and the like uh secretary of state tillerson is currently in asia uh reflecting uh the importance of this engagement going forward uh just uh a little less than a week ago last friday secretary of state tillerson met with the representatives of the azian member states here in washington uh seven ambassadors uh two chargers and a representative of a of a tenth embassy and reaffirmed for the azian missions and their countries and ambassador uh uwanglin was there representing uh me and mar reaffirmed that we are engaged we are committed we will be at the table the architecture in the region is important to us and berma me and mar is a member of this architecture by virtue of its azian membership and by that i refer to the azian regional forum the east asia summit the lower maykong initiative which is an american initiative uh and other groupings um our commitment will remain very sustained there and so i think all of these things are at play in our relationship with me and mar we are committed to this country's progress and its aspirations to achieve peace stability and prosperity thank you last two questions thank you ambassador for coming here to speak with us today my name is yvonne is camea my question is you have um talks about now the sort of uh cooperation and the the kinds of factors that we're cooperating with uh me and mar berma on several factors economic political and such but some of the uh speakers here today have also talked about perhaps giving me and mar me and mar berma the the chance to let it flourish on its own develop its own sort of democratic processes so i just want to know what your your insight on how you think the line between more us uh presence in me on me and mar versus letting it just giving letting it on its own devices be like where is the line do you think yeah thank you sure i'll take two questions my name is ron kray bill i've worked in peace processes throughout the world uh as mainly as a private consultant and also through un uh offices uh i wish i shared your optimism for me on mar uh right now i don't see it it is true that all peace processes are difficult and um but the thing that is required to make progress when things are difficult is some kind of a learning curve i spent six years in south africa doing the peace process there and that was also very difficult but at key points there were major crises and that facilitated then a shift and a a conversation and one saw adjustments in the process so there was an ongoing correction course which in in the end set up a process that worked i'm discouraged about me on mar right now because i don't see any learning curve whatsoever i see a situation in work in which from a standpoint of process design that is building trust around the process and making decisions in ways that actually get the key parties to trust and invest in that process i see terrible mistakes being made and i see no meaningful conversations anywhere about what those mistakes are and how those mistakes destroy trust and therefore it's very hard for me to see that things will be righted so um i guess my question is what are the ways in which the friends of me on mar can encourage a dynamic of learning from what has happened so far of of meaningful conversations that actually get to the heart of the concerns that particularly the ethnic peoples are feeling and are expressing in many different ways including armed response but certainly we know from history and from conversations with those people in those groups that armed response is not the only way to deal with those concerns a lot of it as was said earlier is about meaningful participation and i'm deeply concerned that i just don't see it happening and didn't the u.s government sort of throw away its last tool to create an incentive for such meaningful conversation by removing the sanctions a year ago if they had been there it seems to me there would have been at least some incentive for the tamadol and and the military to step back slow down and actually learn from from the process from the states thank you uh first the the question about you know berma and its own uh responsibility going forward i think to reiterate what i shared in my remarks is that ultimately it is up to the bermes people their government their institutions the tamadol the armed forces we can only hope to play a helpful productive role as a partner as a concerned member of the international community when i talk about our assistance uh in the bigger scheme of things these are modest amounts and who knows what the future portends for foreign assistance but 500 million dollars certainly a lot for our taxpayers but in the scheme of bermas needs it's a proverbial drop in the bucket i don't think ultimately if we had all the resources uh to bring to bear uh that we would ultimately be the only factor the institutions other donors and let's remember ultimately it's not governments from outside there needs to be a very heavy component uh for the private sector because as on sunsuchi said when she was here there are opportunities she welcomes business it's our position uh in our policy that such business should be responsible should have high standards should be contributing uh to the solutions not to the problems but private sector investment and trade is going to be a huge factor for how that country can succeed going forward so i don't disagree if there have been observations here that that berma needs to stand on its own two legs ultimately that is true in this fragile period though i think we can all recognize that that help is in order um the the daunting set of challenges are so enormous uh any one of the top 10 challenges could be the undoing of this transition i don't think any of us would aspire to see bermago backwards and i think that's a good transition to the question about about peace and conflict i will be the first to acknowledge from my experiences in some troubling parts of the world it is a difficult complex process i don't disagree that there are concerns with the steps taken or not taken over the last year in berma however i do think it bears repeating after 50 years of repressive military rule this is a difficult starting point for any new government after 70 years of conflict and violence without cessation you can't find one period where these longest running conflicts in the anywhere in the world have been interrupted that is a challenging starting point even if the previous military regime had decided we're going to do things differently we're going to open up and maintain power but we're going to solve peace that was never a priority a true priority until the reform period began so i look at what the the reason i'm optimistic um and i know that word sometimes comes with emotions for some but yet i can't help but be optimistic when i look at where the country has been in the past and the ingredients they have now to get some of these things right i don't disagree with you that um and say that it's not challenging that there could be setbacks that uh that threaten the transition but the early steps taken on assembling in a meaningful way in inclusive gathering of all of the the parties and ethnic armed groups you know is without precedent that was never attempted by the military regimes the early steps on economic development on dealing with land issues that are complicated corruption and the citizenship issues that are so sensitive in rakhine state none of these have been meaningfully attempted before and so i think the question the more fundamental question comes how can we help how can we help them right wrongs learn the lessons you're right they need to learn lessons early on and make the right steps going forward and i hope at a gathering like this is part of that process to advise and be productive the final thing i will say on that question and and i say this from having lived in the country and and been there like some of you for for many many years it is a complex place the more i know about berm of the less i know it is phenomenally the the woven web of of groups and personalities and issues and it just is not a place that can be fixed overnight and i i wish the best and i want to ensure that we are taking steps and i think that's a u.s. government position that are not counterproductive it is so complex there are moves and advice and pressure that we can apply that actually make the situation the situation even even worse than it is now yeah on that note please join me in thanking patrick murphy for joining me thank you all change your somebody so good afternoon everyone um we'd like to start the session soon so um i implore all of you to take your seats well good afternoon um we're about to start the third session on rekind state and in in a day of very difficult complicated topics this is definitely one of the most complicated and most vex i think everyone here is probably aware of the very um dire circumstances situation in rekind state especially since the october 9th attacks and what has been happening in in northern mong door um professor yang he lee released her her report to the human rights council on monday and today the coffee and an advisory commission on rekind state issued its recommendations which is a very important document in my view but with this panel instead of of just seizing on recent events in rekind state we're going to call on the three panellists to to provide a bigger picture of what's happening in rekind state not just on on the rehinja situation but also in in matthew alton's in oxford and he's going to skype in to look at at broader issues of religious tensions and islamophobia in the country um so to start off steve ross is a program manager for the center for humanitarian dialogue he's been doing excellent work on rekind state over the past couple of years dr joyan line is the director of the center for diversity and national harmony in yangon and on skype there should be dr matthew alton um who is one of the key there he is um uh good evening matt is is one of the the key um academics working on um religious issues um in contemporary me and ma steve's going to go first and then we're going to cut to uh to matt in oxford um and then the endure will will wrap up and we'll open up for questions so steve thank you dav and thank you usip for for hosting this this timely and important event uh as most of you are following the situation in rekind quite closely i will focus my my remarks uh less on the current dynamics on the ground and a bit more on some of the challenges and constraints uh towards progress as well as uh concluding with with a handful of of recommendations so first to echo some of the comments that ambassador mitchell made this morning uh one of the the key challenges is the that security actors retain control over administrative functions of state um and this is something that has long been the case uh in rekind and is especially uh a concern in northern rekind which is very heavily securitized uh and the the recent events have have resulted in a further securitization of of this situation particularly in northern rekind less so in central and southern rekind to compliment that civilian actors have uh somewhat limited role and are constrained in what they can do in terms of implementation so there are very significant implications for uh the ability of civilian actors to implement policy pronouncements on the ground um and this is compounded by by a number of other challenges um there's a secondary challenge which is that because of a limited civilian presence especially in in northern rekind there are challenges in accessing information and so a reliance on security actors for information about what is happening on the ground and that results in a feedback loop that has uh an effect on policy as well as uh how policy is implemented on the civilian side uh even when civilian officials are well intentioned uh they've faced challenges in creating an enabling environment through the processes by which they have tried to implement policy to build trust between uh communities at a local level uh one element of that is is very highly centralized decision making uh in napida which has uh resulted in a sense that communities are are not consulted or involved in decision making processes which is an element that came up as well in the the panel earlier this morning and there isn't an articulated strategy for how to deal with rekind um with decisions seeming largely ad hoc or reactive um and this creates a degree of uncertainty uh and a belief that uh there there isn't a plan among local communities that that can be acted upon uh and that they're aware of and and can be bought into uh compounding this challenge is weak communications internally there are challenges with information flows both up and down within the government so uh policy decision is not effectively communicated to officials at the local level on the one hand and on the other hand uh the consultations that are taking place at a local level when there is is information that is collected there that could be useful to influencing how policy is implemented that information is not carried up the chain in addition there are challenges in terms of how uh external commuter communications operate um the way in which local consultations are conducted by by government and the way in which meetings are conducted with local communities are not always effective and are seen by some of those communities as as paternalistic and providing information rather than a genuine dialogue process and some of the ways in which the the government has communicated after the October 9th attacks and the subsequent response have been very very narrow in their their scope and have not allowed for the possibility that some of the things that that we are now seeing to have occurred to have occurred um so while process has the potential to build trust between communities as well as between communities and government uh it has thus far uh it one year into to this administration it has not had that role um there have been some improvements in the way that uh the the government has communicated to external audiences uh there's uh renewed efforts to reach out to local communities in rakhine uh both rakhine and muslim and there's some opportunities for further engagement there a further challenge is that uh the the muslim community in in rakhine does not have a strong domestic constituency uh there's no one that is is really advocating on the behalf of this community and that creates challenges both because the uh the government isn't pushed by its domestic constituencies to to make progress on this issue and also because it's it's given or perceived as given outsized attention by the the international community relative to all of the other challenges that that me and mara is facing um i just want to dig in to to two issues in particular uh to highlight some of these challenges and and how they play out in practice one is is citizenship which is one of the most complex uh issues in rakhine and and one of the most fundamental challenges towards towards moving forward uh i think citizenship is often viewed as a a silver bullet to uh resolving the legitimacy of the the muslim population in rakhine to improving their their access to rights but in reality the situation is is much more complex there are those in in rakhine that do have citizenship documentation but for a number of reasons uh face difficulty in accessing rights and and freedom of movement um furthermore uh the rakhine community will not take a piece of paper in and of itself as a means to recognize this this community as as legitimate uh and so much more is needed uh to uh to to bring about sense that the the muslim community in rakhine belongs there among the ethnic rakhine community and that's something that is going to take a very long time uh to develop um that said i think that there is space within the current legal framework which is not ideal but i think there is space within the currently legal framework to um address the the citizenship issue and uh there's ways uh to to build trust in the process such that it can move forward um in terms of why there's mistrust um on the one hand there is instinctual mistrust in the muslim community because of a history of um of documents being canceled or revoked uh because of uh recent processes being stalled uh and because of the government's focus at this point on a national verification certificate as opposed to jumping straight to a full citizenship process and so all of these things have combined to create mistrust among the muslim community in this process on the rakhine side there's also a strong degree of mistrust uh because of some historical cases of corruption and perhaps those who are undeserving uh receiving citizenship documentation and there's a broader degree of skepticism about government intentions uh as to as to this process and so this creates mistrust among the rakhine as to the current process uh the the way that has been undertaken has not served to to build trust further the there's as as with rakhine as a whole there isn't an articulated strategy about uh what is going to happen what are the steps uh that will be taken what is the timeline uh and uh there are things happening on the ground but they seem to be happening in isolation as a part of um rather than a part of a broader plan a further challenge is is that policy pronouncements are not necessarily matched by implementation on the ground uh so one example of that is last year the central committee on peace stability and development in rakhine state announced that those holding trifold cards which is a prior form of of documentation uh before 1982 would automatically be given citizenship documents but this hasn't been something that's been followed through on another recent example is that there has been some willingness among a small part of the the muslim population to partake in this national verification certificate process but those that have participated have not yet been verified as citizens whether full or associate or some other form of citizenship so there hasn't been follow through um again poor information flows up and down and a lack of understanding about uh what's happening at a local level in napidaw and uh a gap between policy pronouncements in napidaw and the way that they're they're implemented on the ground um there's also an incredible amount of pressure on officials from the the rakhine community the ethnic rakhine community um and i think one of the the core challenges is that there is a lack of recognition about how important it is to do outreach not just to the muslim community but also to the rakhine community uh and we discussed earlier some of the grievances that the rakhine community have vis-a-vis the the central government and i think just taking a very brief step back it's worth thinking about the situation in rakhine as a trilateral conflict in a lot of ways there's the inter-communal dimension between rakhine and muslims which is one of the more prominent there's the the conflict and and grievances between the the muslim community and the the central government uh but there's also a significant set of grievances between the rakhine community and the central government and this is something that doesn't get as much detention as as it deserves and is is something that i think can open the door to success in the other elements of this this triangular conflict but in terms of the rakhine pressure on citizenship uh there's been a series of protests there protest plan for all of next week a police case has been opened uh against the the rakhine state immigration officer uh over one uh case of citizenship being granted and uh there's there's a very very strong and visceral reaction within the rakhine community to how this process is progressing and uh there's been a lack of engagement on the government side to explain the process to the rakhine and to try and get them bought in or at least to tacitly accept some of the elements of of this process um there's also i think an important distinction between what's happening in in urban areas and what's happening in rural areas uh at at a rural village level there's a strong desire by both rakhine and muslim communities to get access to livelihoods education healthcare the desires are basically the same with the situation somewhat more acute among muslim communities because of uh both social and and official restrictions on on movement the challenge is actually on the the urban side where most of the the rakhine political elites reside and where most of the opposition to these processes lays so if if a constituency can be uh brought up from from the rural communities where there is more support and there is a necessity to work and live together uh there there might be more opportunities for for these processes to go forward that said even if progress is made in citizenship processes themselves the ministry of immigration has only limited control over what happens after citizenship has been granted and the the security forces would need to be bought in to for example providing security in an active manner such that communities feel safe traveling from one place to another rather than in the passive manner in which it is is now provided and that transitions a bit to um to the issue of freedom of movement um it's a broad advocacy point that has been repeated over and over for the last several years that that freedom of movement should be improved for for muslim communities uh but the the situation is is much more complex than just saying that the the situation should be improved um first there's two different types of of restrictions on movement one is a relatively official restriction in terms of movement between townships or from rakhine state to to other areas in rakhine the other is a more social form of movement restrictions whereby local communities either rakhine or muslim do not feel safe to travel uh from village to village or from township to township and this uh requires security buy-in to to be able to address it effectively such that security actors are actively providing security to to all actors in in rakhine um a further challenge is that government actors and especially security actors in rakhine are highly risk averse and there's not perceived to be a benefit by taking risks and doing things that uh that necessarily improve the situation um and so they're uh this dynamic uh combined with short periods of time in a particular place to uh two-year stint uh at a local level in rakhine means there's a lack of incentives to to to move forward um before going into a handful of recommendations uh i want to caveat them by saying that i think that this is a process and the events in rakhine need to be led by the people in Myanmar and the people in rakhine state and that there are limitations to the influence that the international community can have and there's also uh as as was alluded to just a moment ago uh some concerns about the the way in which external actors engage being counterproductive uh one example i think of this is that in the immediate aftermath of of the election there was uh very high expectations and i think quite a lot of pressure on uh on the government to demonstrate and uh there was a rushed citizenship process at this time that wasn't particularly well thought out and it soared further mistrust so we need to very carefully calibrate uh advocacy and support for what uh what there's space for on the ground where there's room for policy implementation uh just some very very brief recommendations uh or or suggestions uh for for engagement further one is i think there's there's quite a lot of space and scope to support the efforts of things that have the the government's ear already uh one which Dave alluded to is in in his introduction is the the rakhine advisory commission led by kofi anan um and the the support for the recommendations that that they have made in their their interim report with a final report expected later this year in august and second is is further efforts and further support for the the quiet diplomacy efforts that are happening behind the scenes that are that are having a much more positive effect than uh some of the naming and shaming techniques that are are more traditionally associated with external engagement on the on the rakhine issue and in particular i think there are western governments that have played a positive role in this and uh in the region indonesia has played a quite positive role behind the scenes in encouraging the the government to to take a look at the issue from a regional perspective in terms of engagement with civilian actors i think there's a way that uh the international community can support civilian actors to play a more significant role in governance in rakhine and action policy policy advice must take into account uh how difficult the situation is on the ground and the constraints that the government actors are facing two further recommendations quickly and i'd be happy to go into more detail on these in the question and answer one is in terms of engagement with security actors it's one of the recommendations that comes through in the interim recommendations in the the rakhine advisory commission uh that there should be uh support for um security actors on this issue and that that support should come from the international community and finally and another recommendation that comes through in these these interim recommendations is the importance of looking at uh this situation from rakhine from a regional perspective and in particular uh the the mi and mar bangladesh relationship and seeing it as a a regional issue uh with uh the call in the the interim recommendations for a joint commission to look at some of the the bilateral issues that uh that could be addressed rather than viewing this as as conflict excellent thank you very much dear we're over to matthew walton i may not have mentioned in the introduction that matthew walton is the young sansa chief fellow in modern burmese studies at san antonys college at at oxford and he joins us from oxford um today matthew over to you great thanks so much dave can everybody hear me is this volume level okay that's perfect okay great so i should say um i'm i'm stepping in via skype to uh to replace uh my friend and colleague uh usip colleague susan hayward uh who was supposed to be talking on this panel and couldn't um couldn't today when it got rescheduled so i'm channeling not only my views but a few of hers as well most of you will know that we write together uh frequently so we have similar views on this so i want to make four uh broad points today um and the first one is that i think in general we need to start adopting a different approach to analyzing and engaging with mabatha um i think there's way too much generalizing in the way that media scholars analysts government officials everybody deals with mabatha i'm gonna pick on the irawati for just a second but this really could could be almost anybody's reporting just a few days ago they had an article entitled mabatha takes aim at the media um and this was about uh filing a 66d suit against soi win with miam arnau for something that he had written about uwarathu um so it's connected to uwarathu who's a mabatha member it was a suit filed by a mabatha member but at least thus far this does not look to be a kind of mabatha official mabatha initiative and i think it's kind of sloppy reporting that to say that that mabatha is doing it i think what this reflects is the tendency especially on behalf of of you know miamars uh media and the big media outlets that have this sort of pro democratic pro progressive um anti mabatha uh slant i think it's a tendency to to equate uwarathu or you know the loudest and most extreme voices with mabatha as a whole and to label the whole thing buddhist nationalism or buddhist extremism i think this is not accurate i also think it's potentially really counterproductive so it's counterproductive because we want to be able to make space here for alternative interpretations notions of protecting buddhism of propagating buddhism that might not be exclusionary to non buddhist that might not be anti muslim and we want to make space for the people that we know exist within mabatha to move it in those sorts of directions treating this organization as a monolithic anti muslim extremist group is not only inaccurate it's dangerous so demonizing mabatha doesn't help uh it doesn't help us open up that space uh because there are lots of people across the country who still see mabatha as doing important and useful things like buddhist education in rural areas even as they might be getting really tired of people like uwarathu and other prominent voices that say increasingly outlandish things so i want to make clear that i you know i what i'm what i'm asking for is a kind of recalibration of the way that we engage with groups like mabatha it doesn't mean we don't criticize them when it's appropriate or that we shouldn't put pressure on them to reject outlandish things like uwarathu praising the assassins of of ukuni um but we do i think as as as media as scholars as analysts as foreign governments as outside commenters have much more credibility when we don't paint them with broad brushstrokes and i would point out that especially at a time when we're sort of asking buddhist and mianmar not to generalize the entire muslim population based on the actions of a few people it's not really appropriate for us to be doing the same with regard to buddhist in the country so that's the first uh the first point i'd like to make secondly i think we need to to recalibrate our kind of view and expectations of the state sangha mahanayaka committee as well uh as i talk about it here i'm going to use the burmese acronym mahana for this group so you'll recall back in july there was this sort of moment this perfluffle where uh mabatha was kind of claiming a lineage with mahana and mahana came out with a statement saying that actually mabatha was not an officially sanctioned buddhist group and of course the media heralded this as as mahana disowning mabatha and all these things which um i wrote at the time with my colleague on tune we didn't really think was an accurate portrayal of that um we also thought that that the statement from mahana at that time was kind of the minimum that they could do to sort of wash their hands of mabatha and and associated monks without actually taking any more concerted action or taking a stand i think this was largely still accurate the same can be said in terms of their recent response to uwarathu's comments on facebook regarding ukwoni where just a few days ago they initiated a year-long teaching ban uh or sorry preaching ban for for uwarathu um i mean i think there's certainly a case to be said that this is again the minimum that they could have done there's a strong case for more discipline uh kosuewin got in trouble for quoting another more senior monk for saying that this actually could be grounds for disrobing uwarathu so while recognizing that there's a long history in the terabata world of monks condoning killing um you know that certainly it's not something that that is broadly accepted in public discourse and we have should have higher expectations for the sangha committee to do more about that i think increasingly people are trying to sort of think critically and creatively and in a different way about what mahana is and what it could be um the previous line that was always echoed is that this was just a monastic council that was created by the former military government that was just the puppet of the military government and i don't really think that that was ever completely accurate i think what was probably more accurate is to say that it was made up of deeply conservative figures who were interested primarily in protecting buddhism institutionally in yanmar and what that meant of course was you know opposing any sort of broad monastic demonstrations or you know monks criticizing the government or anything like that um but that didn't necessarily mean that mahana was automatically and completely the sort of tools of of the military or military governments so for what it's worth you know i should say that i don't think the monastic council should be the tool of any government whether previous military governments or the current nld government and it's likely that the sangha council is going to eventually have to to enact some sort of reform so we regularly hear about democratization internal democratization among amongst i think there's more pressure uh for that and i think that's probably a good thing that would result in more in a in a in a more diverse view of voices there at the top but i do want to suggest that i think we ignore mahana as a potential kind of ally in the fight for sort of interreligious peace and understanding i think we ignore them as a potential ally at our peril i think they should could be important and maybe really necessary in this as a prominent voice for religious pluralism and tolerance and so i think we need to think rather than talking about them as a you know as a group of irrelevant old monks who just support the military's line i think we need to think about how we could um urge them to to sort of become more active uh voices okay third point we obviously need to expect much more from the nld government uh so they miss i think much a big opportunity back in july 2016 where you had those moments where opium and thane was really publicly critical of mabatha and then they kind of started to take forward this hate speech law but that there really hasn't been much else that's that's happened from the nld government perspective on you know religious pluralism hate speech integration things like that and with no follow-up what really happens is is they miss the opportunity to effectively reinforce this change in culture from the permissive environment that i and others have argued took place under the former usdp government secondly um i want to be careful and how i state this um because ukunis assassination was really sort of tragic and awful but it was and could have been and should have been an opportunity for the nld government to kind of recalibrate its tone on religious violence and and hate speech and everything related there and of course as we know um the government including gonsan tuchi was virtually silent for for about a month um letting the military and the police and the security forces kind of take the lead as the public voices on that um and and it's really left people wondering well sort of what are what are they doing what were they doing about ukunis assassination what were they doing about or author's response on facebook it was just completely unacceptable i mean if the government is scared if they're cautious if they're just disinterested if they don't know what to do i mean whatever the reason it allows this permissive environment to continue where people can can continue to say extreme things and agitate for violence and discrimination so the government really needs to adopt a more nuanced approach as well something that lets them take a hard line on clearly unacceptable things while not at the same time just rejecting buddhist concerns or buddhist actions en masse and i think they're really struggling to find you know a voice on this where they were incredibly timid during the lead up to the 2015 elections on these issues maybe strategically um but they can no longer afford to do that and i think they really need to find find their voice there i think one of the ways they need to do that is um a number of us have said for a while that it's necessary to incorporate religious issues in Myanmar as part of the broader political dialogue process um not necessarily as part of the peace process but the the national reconciliation process this needs to be something that isn't just about ethnicity isn't just about conflict on the borders but that needs to be about inclusion more broadly in Myanmar and that means religious issues as well part of what they can also do is provide more official support for promising and challenging initiatives so almost everything that's being done on inter-religious issues or combating violence communal violence is happening in an NGO CBO space and this is you know good in some ways but it really needs more support it needs official support um at key moments and it also needs official support for kind of cross learning initiatives so that kind of stuff is happening we think about peace support funds inter-communal harmony group CDNH is doing a lot of this stuff to convene discussions i assume we'll hear some about that from Jo but this needs to happen more and in doing so i think it's incumbent upon the government to really play a role in facilitating this kind of learning sharing adapting lessons especially lessons learned about resilience and preventing conflict this is something that you know Steven mentioned that they're not doing a good job of really channeling those lessons the Myanmar media and society project that i work with issued a working paper back in january on what we call sort of success stories for case studies where we would have expected violence to break out but it did not apparently due to certain interventions from civil society groups or other things and i think it's it can be challenging to draw conclusions that might be universally accurate but really important that we have these conversations that can feed into already existing groups and already existing work and i know again hd and and and cdnh are among the groups doing this i think the government really needs to play a role in this as well so the final point that i'll make and this is particularly a strong point from from susan something i agree with as well is that the interreligious uh engagement that exists needs to really move to a much more challenging level that includes intro religious dialogue and engagement um because we've seen a lot of interfaith initiatives all of which are important and part of the picture um but but as susan uh was saying to me the in her recent trips to the country she's really feeling the kind of dialogue fatigue from people the same faces at the same kind of superficial conversations that take place in the same venues and what really needs to happen is the difficult conversations within groups um that some that some uh initiatives are starting to convene and and this is really where we get past the mutual appreciation of aspects of our religions that we all agree in peace and yada yada yada and really into the kind of more challenging um subjects education is absolutely going to be up there of critical importance for this education about each other's religions um you know about international norms uh on religious pluralism things like that so this is why we critically need to publicly and vocally defend initiatives like cdnh's curriculum that has been uh attacked by by a number of groups um and this is also where there might be an opportunity for some uh initiatives that that act as a kind of counter way to malata's dama school efforts something that would be parallel to kind of to to ensure that that um their voices are not the only voices that are out there teaching religious education we need to ensure that these kind of interreligious dialogue uh um efforts are explicitly starting to move towards policy initiatives community initiatives again moving just beyond the effects of the people in the room talking to each other but looking at what can be done and specifically um especially in places where there is an outright conflict at the moment to start to address these more structural issues of discrimination and inequality in the judiciary in policing in the media and all these other places these are the activities that can start they can be taking place right now actively with the collaboration of all of these NGOs and cbo's intergovernmental groups international groups and the miamar government we just need some some more effective kind of uh sharing and learning on this so i'll um stop there and look forward to the conversation afterwards thanks excellent matthews thank you very very much over to you joy online well not the best time to be giving my presentation like immediately after lunch but we'll try our best but thank you thank i would like to thank us impede for inviting me to this event especially for getting a chance to meet up with many of my old friends at this event and both steve and matt have touched on most of the issues i was initially planning to discuss so i will try to say something add something new to what they have already discussed but i will also be equating more or less similar things in my presentation so so let me start with some positive stories whenever we talk about rakhine like often we mainly talk about negative stories and then that often it's also true that we don't really have a lot of positive stories to talk about uh matt earlier mentioned in his presentation about these people from different communities working with each other in rakhine compared to 2015 and and then early 2016 i would say conflict prevention network has become much stronger people from both communities try to contact each other whenever there are rumors and the cdnh the organization i'm a part of we have organized what we call the reconciliation meetings since the middle of uh 2014 even though cdnh was officially formally established in late 2014 we started organizing these meetings early on and at the very beginning one derrick was ambassador a steel ambassador and then like he even came to one of the meetings and all these participants were very belligerent they didn't really want to talk to each other and they like to challenge especially and visit at mitchell like you know they i'm talking about rakhine community activists but over time uh they started meeting and then both sides tried to reach out on one condition uh they were not they didn't talk about reconciliation most names are more willing to talk about reconciliation rakhine most of them even today still are not prepared to discuss reconciliation uh uh in some detail but they are willing the rakhines are more willing to talk about conflict prevention so very recently uh in in boom made which is near the rakhine id become area in sitwe a large number of rakhine community members came out uh in in response to the rumor that a large group of muslims were on their way to their neighborhood and then they didn't know what these muslims were planning to do but what uh there's people rakhine leaders uh who who are part of this conflict prevention network call up their colleagues in the camp and then the muslim leaders didn't even know what was going on and then the rakhine leaders said we had a loud noise from your areas then they started checking what happened was a group of muslim workers who were working at a construction site near boom made they were shouting mainly because they were not allowed to take dinner break then one the rakhine leaders when they heard what was really going on on the ground uh from the muslim colleague they explained it to all these rakhines who were gathering there and then the crowd was dispersed very quickly so we have conducted a number of surveys in rakhine state and we have published two rakhine needs assessments in in both assessments what we found out was this um even though a large majority of rakhine students still want to talk about reconciliation they are willing to talk about conflict prevention and lately like in our interviews more and more rakhines are talking about the need to prevent violence so that i think is a good uh uh that sign and then after the october 9 incident in maundo there were a lot of rumors people like you know we we knew things when when they happened we talked about things when they happened and we didn't talk about things when they didn't happen how things were conflicts were prevented there was a there was a rumor in citri that a group of unknown muslim people were found in the muslim Muslim camp area the same rumor as like you know the muslims from the outside side of the border came into maundo area and then the some muslim rakhine community leaders expressed their concern and some some troublemakers especially troublemakers extremists were saying like you know we got to do something about this then the muslim leaders came together and i call out there but they are they are the rakhine colleagues and i told them look if we found people who didn't belong to our area we would be the first the very first people who will be informing the government and then they also call up security minister and explain to him so it's like interaction like that i mean they have prevented a lot of the conflicts in that area which i think it's something where we we need to we need to talk about to raise hope and optimism uh that for people living in that area and then in in in maundo uh they they now have a joint committee that is a committee the committee has 30 members 15 muslims and 15 rakhine and other ethnic nationalities like that and dinad and murro and muramaji they've been working together very like last week through our organization they organized a training for both muslim and rakhine women a training on how to make soap and then the shampoo and liquid soap i mean that training i think is that they found it really interesting but what that i found really gratifying was just to witness members of both communities like you know coming together at the very beginning they felt a little bit uncomfortable to even be talking to each other three hours later after listening to the two instructors the instructors are muslims from rakhijangong and then like you know they all work together and at one point about like after lunch you don't see the difference between muslims and rakhine animal like different groups like the groups were made out of both rakhine muslims and our group they are group and they're like muslims and rakhine working together to prove that they produce better soap so i mean what i'm trying to the message i'm trying to give here is we're not i mean the situation in rakhine is dire but at the same time not totally hopeless people on the ground of the the regular people they want they want to live move on with their life and then they want to they want peace and stability in their areas and then a couple more things steve talked about citizenship and then compared to the past but i'm not saying that this is that like in a dominant trend in rakhine state but more and more muslims have started to consider applying for the citizenship verification but more so now than before for a number of different conditions under the previous administrations citizenship a pilot project for citizenship verification was carried out in nabong township close to a thousand people were granted citizenship but they went they they couldn't really enjoy citizenship rights especially they couldn't move out of their idp camps and then they didn't know that they couldn't move out either last week and this week we invited muslims from idar muslims from nabong to yangong for a training but the the training for last week the something got round and then we couldn't get permission trouble authorization for muslims without a clear citizenship status but muslims from nabong they didn't need trouble authorization they could come to yangong and then move around like all the different areas and regions freely and then another thing is muslims with three full cuts not just a citizenship they can now apply for passports muslims from muslims from rakhine state can now travel to foreign countries legally the very first group of muslims with three full cuts and then we asked them whether they would try to apply for passports and they didn't they got it and then we sent them to shurilanka with a group of rakhines and then mad walden was absolutely right you can do but mabata is not monolithic you will be surprised to know that chairman of the go mabata and those muslims from rakhine state want to shurilanka together and then they they became really close friends and then it's not easy to bring muslims to the buddhist monks to to for i mean on a trip you need to you really need to serve them food and stuff and the person who took the responsibility of serving food to buddhist monks from baghou is muslim youth leader from baghou and then we we said to him like you know we will take care of the monk and then that this muslim youth leader said to me no no no he is my monk no you us i will take care of my monk and then all the way for about 10 days in shurilanka these muslims from rakhine state and then like you know buddhist monks from other parts of the country they were working together so the kind of even people have started to see the benefits of getting seated joining the citizenship verification process and then this positive development i think is also something we should discuss but further because i was both bros because steve and uh the medworld and uh mentioned it in their presentation like you know the the role the bigger role the government should play um in bringing the different communities together and then the we people civil society organizations and NGOs are talking about all these things at the grassroots level the government hasn't to talk about these things like you know in some detail however regardless of like you know i'm not condoning what happened in maundo and then human rights violations in rakhine state but i mean i've been going to rakhine state since 2012 but the the the big change i i noticed very recently was government officials are now very interested in trying to understand genocide and basic human rights and then also conflict sensitivity approach our organizations have given a number of trainings on those topics to to employees of the general administration department something we couldn't mention a few years ago but we can now discuss that i'm not saying that everyone everyone has endorsed these things but right now at this moment we can start we can open the discussions on these issues with all those people and then i know i don't really have a lot of time i've got like you know one more thing which is we talk about violence all the time whenever we talk about rakhine another thing to we should also pay attention to is maintaining community peace at the grassroots level in northern rakhine state in many other places there are a considerable number of villages that should have experienced violence but that they they have no experienced violence at all and then we have started doing some research and then talking to some others we found out four conditions one is one that a large number of members of both communities i'm talking about in mixed villages more than 50 percent if they if they have to rely on each other uh to make a living for their livelihood you tend to see community members working together to to to prevent conflicts and that that is also very important that mr this recommendations from the rakhine advisory commission one of which is establishing markets for both communities so that they can come together and work so the kind of if they can rely on each other for their livelihood then we tend to we are going to see more peace in that area the second factor we found out is like a social interaction in many communities small villages for instance if you ever get a chance to go to chow tau tau ship i go to a village called count out in count out muslim community leaders are very influential and then there are also rakhine school teachers who used to teach rakhine students and then these the muslim community leaders and the rakhine community leaders they interact with each other or the client peeped like in in in communities where muslims and rakhines interact with each other on daily basis you tend to see the more peace and stability in that area and then the thought factor is leaders village administrators and buddhist monks if they are respected and capable you need both no all buddhist monks are respected by community leaders not all village administrators are capable or respected but in villages where village administrators are respected and capable you tend to see peace in those villages that's why like it's really important for general administration department to pick the right people like for those positions but in the rakhine communities that they cannot elect but in the muslim communities all village administrators appointed on a temporary basis by the general administration department mainly because the law requires village administrators to be citizens of the country but in many muslims i mean their citizenship status is still unclear but because of that they cannot be village administrators legally so on temporary basis they are being appointed and then those capable village administrators can can make a difference and people don't talk about it we we definitely need to talk about it and that like you know whenever we talk about training for government officers we tend to exclude them we really need to provide more trainings for these village administrators and these are the people who are maintaining order and peace and stability in that area and two more factors which is like security officers need to be very careful about the locations of these different villages in in chauk shu where the the special economic zone is being to build one that in 2012 one of the violence took place it was in between the residents rakhine residents of chauk shu and muslims rakhine neck cases from other i shouldn't be saying it like you know some rakhines who live in excluded islands they came down to chauk shu and started attacking muslims and destroying and the chauk the rakhines from chauk shu town itself they tried to protect these muslims so the point i'm trying to make is there are areas with the the hardline rakhine people who are very who are not very educated and often they are also daily laborers they don't really have permanent jobs or they don't really have the the concrete way of making a living that if you have many people in their neighborhood you really need to be careful about good like controlling and containing these people one last thing is the presence of security forces like after what you what happened in mount or you would think both muslims and rakhine would not want the presence of military units and police units in their neighborhood but like you know in mount or areas and some villages that is the case but in the rest of rakhine state when you have the security units in your neighborhood especially the ones led by known rakhine military officers they tend to ensure peace in your area and then a number of challenges like you know most of which steve has already covered so right now there are a number of things we need to be very careful which the first thing is rakhine civil societies are highly mobilized not because of citizenship issue but because of the political ongoing 21st century painlo and political dialogue and they didn't want to be left behind so civil society organizations political parties and community organizations they all came together and are having meetings after meetings in rakhine state and they're terribly mobilized right now and then one more thing is the rise of ethnic nationalism rakhine nationalism in rakhine state so a combination of this high mobilization and the growth of ethnic nationalism a very bad combination so that basically strengthened the positions of hardliners many moderates are involved in these activities but they will not say a word because they could get into trouble when i have been to many of those meetings and then the the voices of the hardliners are much louder than the voices of the moderates so this is what the one worrying situation and i'm both maddened steve also mentioned it intra-communal tension is also growing when you when you talk to muslims they're afraid of rakhine that much they are more afraid of their own people the same form of rakhine people they are they are more afraid of their own rakhine hardliners so they can whenever they they they want to talk about conflict prevention whenever they want to talk about establishing joint committees they say like you know it's the government going to ensure like our safety that there will be the very first question and then like you know who are you afraid of our own people so that's our situation and two more points and i'll stop um the main thing is a lack of comprehensive strategy on the part of the government it might be that they're waiting for the recommendations and reports from the the commission led by mr harnan but right now is that there's no comprehensive strategy and then the government hasn't made it made it very clear how it would interpret the 1982 citizenship law and then the 98 like you know rakhine community leaders came out and protested against the granting of citizenship uh to to muslims and then they're saying that the the process was not done in accordance with 1982 citizenship law all immigration officials including the minister are saying we strictly follow the law but what is not clear is the interpretation there are a number of in a number of areas things are not clear and then we need to have a clear interpretation and the message was not conveyed clearly and then because of that there's still a lot of confusions and then also a lot of uncertainties and then when you have many rakhine civil servants at the township level and the because of the the growth of ethnic nationalism even if they want to do the right thing they did not do the right thing and then like you know the people both community leaders and government officials when they get into trouble for doing the right thing often they are not protected by their superiors so i mean i can go on so i'll just stop here that was excellent joe um thank you very much for all three of the speakers um that was a brilliant job gonna open the floor up to questions we should have about 25 minutes so i'll i'll take two questions i'll take three questions first you there and then at the back so uh she was behind you she was first sorry sorry sorry hi my name is chet said myokdan and i'm a um burmese student i've been studying in the states for eight years now and i'm currently in training at urasia center my question is do you think us should take a hands-off or hands-on approach when it comes to internal politics of miramar specifically uh in the case where the possibility of human right violations exist and if it is a hands-on approach um how can us act as a country that stand for human rights to bring the light to the issue where the members of burmese military raping rohingya woman and killing of the rohingya children and another issue about mr um the the issues that mr johan line talked about um about these rakhine citizens being able to get their passports and being able to travel abroad i'm actually a little bit like pessimistic about it because i don't think at least like a burmese citizen who go back every year um i don't think they're free enough to even travel around the country if you have south asian features if you look like me you're gonna be stopped at every state for looking like this because you're gonna look like they're gonna stereotype you as a muslim they're gonna ask you a series of questions you're gonna be fit into a category and i kind of want to um i kind of want you to talk about that thank you so much okay and uh thanks very much my name is tan luenton voice of america he's a kind of uh little observations and also quite curious question uh my observation is that i visited uh that uh your kind state a year and a half ago i visited maundo citri and a lot of refugee camps both uh defied that muslim and then um so aracan jakai uh it's very little people know that uh internally displaced person mean that they're not only about muslim he's also jakai aracan he is so i visited both but what i found is why these muslims live in the uh they are original place of the so-called refugee camp idp camps and uh various uh squalid situations and population growth and uh they are there so even after that uh what happened that the communal communal violence that's happened in 19 2012 is more than five years they are stay there and if the population is even grow but why then i saw that uh so idp aracan is the kind idp camps most of them are quite in the sense uh assimilated to the nearby uh jakai village or towns so this is my observation but i would just simply wonder that after five years it is not in the foreign country it is in our own country why these muslim idp are not placed in that uh a lot of i saw big muslim villages but quite well to do in especially in the mount or area so fortified muslim villages a lot of muslim area there why can't they be a resettler over there or being be assimilated and then what is in this sense a long-term plan of the government for the those idp camp well why can't they be allowed to in this sense like uh people claim the situation has become calm why can't they be allowed to go back to their original place good and just one more question then we'll ask the panelists to respond thanks uh adam carol again from from a task force yeah i liked the description of the grassroots work that civil society is doing and it points out the importance of communication working on communication and relationship building um and uh it also reminds me that the local leaders don't often get named in media reports that depict one group as victims and the other group perhaps not as victims but they they kind of dehumanize uh those in conflict situations and uh pointing out who the local leaders are even if it's on a very small level it's very important to give people agency so my question is uh there's there's uh the the race and religion laws not even mentioning the 1982 citizenship laws but race and religion that was passed in 2015 when you have such you have some momentum and some good models on the grassroots level then you have this this this void at the government level and so what is the what is needed to move the government forward on reforming and rescinding the race and religion laws and is it uh getting the international community involved as making this a regional issue since there are so many refugees hundreds of thousands everywhere and just the last thing the rohingya refugees as well as other ethnic groups i think it's important here to use their name and it's sad that some groups including the kofi anon report choose not to mention their names thank you thank you um matt perhaps i could ask you to um take the lead on that answering the the last question on the race and religion laws and then we can open it up for for all three of you to answer the other two yeah sure thanks thanks dave um before i do the race race and religion laws i'll just say really quickly that i that i i think we need to be really cautious about the benefits of recognizing agency of local leaders from all sides who are playing a role in conflict prevention um precisely for the reasons that uh gojayan line mentioned that like there are real risks to the people who are doing this stuff right and so we need to record i mean for for our um animal media and society report we we anonymize so much of our case studies precisely because we really felt the need to protect uh informants in in these very risky situations so well while wanting to recognize local agency i also want to throw that out there um so race and religion laws uh so these laws aren't good but i feel like i've been arguing for a while that they're kind of a red herring um they're they're not the primary thing that is being used to repress people on religious grounds i mean you know yes ultimately they ought to get off they need to get off the you know we need to get them off the books um and but but they're um the religious repression that's happening in the country is happening through other laws like the telecommunications law unlawful associations and and things like that and so um i'm i'm actually going to suggest that that the you know the efforts of different groups is is best oriented not towards those really prominent race and religion laws that are likely to um to to spark a real backlash from mabatha it's probably the one thing that will um create a lot of public sentiment uh for mabatha in the moment if if you really attack those laws and and suggest that actually we should go after the laws that that are still being used more often to repress people uh on on religious grounds not to say that they're not bad laws but i think we need to be kind of pragmatic about about that excellent thank you matt um steve would you like to talk about the the idps and and um from from both communities sure uh in terms of idps uh i think there's a couple of points here one is uh that in in 2015 actually under the prior government there there was some progress in resettling idps approximately 25 000 idps were resettled in central rakhine um and a related point to that is that the vast majority of those that are displaced are not from the northern part of rakhine state they're from central rakhine state and uh there was very little displacement in in northern rakhine state uh there would also i think be a concern among the rakhine community about trying to move displaced populations who may not want to go to northern rakhine in the first place to that part of the state because there's a concern about the potential that that part of rakhine could secede or could become its own enclave uh in a way that threatens uh buddhism and threatens the the rakhine control over over that territory um so i think that uh there there was some progress in in 2015 those were the much easier cases people who are not displaced far from their homes uh who could very easily be resettled in their places of origin uh the cases that remain are largely uh in sitway area and in neighboring pakta township and those cases are much much more difficult i will note however that in the the interim recommendations that came out this morning one of the recommendations is to close all idp camps in rakhine state uh and there are few uh camps in particular that are highlighted as ones that can be done quickly uh and and relatively easy easily one is kaman uh one is rakhine and and one is uh non kaman uh muslim um just on the the other point about uh u.s policy um i i think that uh as i said in my presentation it's it's a question of having the right calibrated approach between uh one that is advocacy oriented uh and ensuring that that advocacy does not lead to undue pressure such that decisions are taken somewhat hastily and and potentially in a counter productive fashion um i i think that i i would be one that that stands in the engagement camp that that uh u.s government and and other governments can be much more effective by having a seat at the table and engaging in in conversations with both the civilian and security actors uh in me and mara at a union level but also at a local level and through that type of engagement uh is is is how we gain trust and and influence i'll stop there and chat can i just just add one thing on the on the idp camps um you're right that the rakhine buddhist idp camps around sitwave were pretty bad just as as deplorable i would say is is um is the rakhine camps um outside just just one thing that you said um it would be against the un guiding principles on internal displacement to take the 95 000 people outside of sitway and move them say for example to mongor um i can't see a single international donor that would be a party to that um i mean any any relocation would have to be in safety and dignity and would have to be purely voluntary um and i don't think that's something i mean it's it's one thing that we've got to remind ourselves that the majority of the people living in that camp zone outside of sitway lived in in the town although there were farmers in in peri urban areas around sitway um and they want to stay as close to um to their homes of origin um as they can so i don't think that's a viable option to kind of take them that that far away um over the jaw okay i'll start with this i i i dp question uh the previous government came up with a plan relocation plan uh back then with that they asked me to develop an ashen plan for relocation gave me the information we put it together it wasn't a bad plan but in areas but if it is possible for muslims to go back to their original places according to the plan they should be allowed to go back to their original places if they cannot then the the government is supposed to find new places which are acceptable to these people but it was never implemented uh three things the first one is that the resistance from the rakhine community it's not that the rakhine we are totally the rakhine hated muslims that much many rakhine people they worry that if muslims come back to their neighborhood then like you know the the violence are more likely to occur without them uh like and it's it will be easier to to provide violence rightly or wrongly that is what they think and then the second second reason is resistance from some other from the from some muslims and then they like in in pautotonship the government said if you want to go back you can go back to your original villages the government allowed them to go back and then the the muslims refuse to go back on the on the ground that we go back to our villagers and then we will no longer be idps once we stop being idps we won't get any assistance from international organizations and then under the the like you know one things i know easy and we are not sure that we will be able to make a living we don't want to go back that is their resistance the third one is a leg of sufficient political will on the part of the government the government should have done a lot more than it had but like the previous government regardless of this ashen plan they developed they didn't really do enough to help out these displaced muslims they did a lot more for displaced rakanis than muslims that that's the thing and then i'd like this citizenship and passports and things for muslims i i fully understand your reservation but it's it's always better to have proper ids and then travel around the country or leave the country legally than trying to get to somewhere without a proper id and then that's the that's one thing six or seven years ago under the military government these muslims were more i mean they're more subjected to harassment and a lot of hustles but right now yes i'm not saying that they won't be subjected to it but that right now the situation has improved to to some extent but of course like you know they are citizens of this country and then we have to have this conversation this is really embarrassing as a citizen of the country like i'm not suggesting that the muslims won't be the muslim will be able to move around free as freely as i do i fully understand but at the same time like you know these days especially with passports with proper ids they are subjected subjected less to these arrestments that's why for me is i'm not i'm not saying that everything is hanky doory and they were free and then they could they will be able to enjoy citizenship rights uh i'm not i'm not i'm not i don't if i had if i had given you that impression i apologize i'm not that is not my intention but what i'm trying to say is here are opportunities depending upon the political well of the government the current administration these opportunities might improve the living conditions and the freedom of movement of muslims from rakhine state and then for the for uh local community leaders and stuff as mad has said alia it's really difficult like for us also we have undertaken really a thorough analysis of uh the state i'm a thorough stakeholder analysis we will never share it with people because we won't end up putting these people into trouble so we should recognize them under the circumstances like it's better for them to remain nameless and then focus on what they can do in their own community recent religion religion law trust me i'm with you i like and i want this law to be resented and that when i was in a position to talk about it i did but they did it anyway but one thing i can tell you is as mad has pointed out this law hasn't had much negative effect on the muslim community that much it has more negative effect on these the buddhist womanizers i mean i let like you know the more buddhist meant that the woman over to file your cases against they are the husbands using this law than most like you know muslims and uh that's the end and then the human rights violation if there are violations of people who violated must should be held accountable with no exception and i know just that international what the international community should do they will have to pressure the government to do that and then one more thing is not just asking or pressuring the government to do those things we also need to educate people like you know people have gone through this different socialization process and with these things are okay kind of thing but we really need to expose government officials to different type of socialization where they will learn to live like good citizens and then they will learn to accept that these things are not acceptable okay um we could go on for a very long time um but we might wrap it up um there and have a very quick break and then it'll be the final session um starting in about 10 15 minutes so um don't dawdle um Matthew Walton thank you very much for joining us and and filling in for Susan um that was an excellent panel thank you very much did you figure out your yeah okay and then yeah good right great so i think you are first speaker on this panel and then me and then finally Paul Groves so okay i think we'll start our next panel so if you can all grab your seats and come back hi i'm going to do well i'll start it for i'll bring it up i'm screaming you're ready to do your uh yes good afternoon Vanessa Johansson so the three of us are speaking and then Priscilla is moderating so okay just make sure we have you in the right spot there Paul is your name yes yeah it is okay here sorry because i want to organize this i'm like oh i understand control freak on the details it matters congratulate all of those of you who have made it through the full day to this point it's been a long day we will try to make this panel snappy um Paul does one question what time do you have to leave if uh what time is supposed to be over five then we'll do it till five and then we'll okay okay okay good um we have three stellar panelists uh on this panel and it's going to be the final panel in which we discuss way forward with the peace process rakhine and and other issues that we've been discussing today first we'll have uh uong ji who is uh advisor to the mamar government on the peace process and he's going to give us uh his wisdom on where the peace process stands today and then we will have Vanessa Johansson who is our usip representative in yangon and she will discuss her ideas about what the future of the peace process should look like and then we will have paul grove who is our esteemed colleague from capitol hill he um to put it bluntly controls budgets and so we have great a great deal of respect and awe of him and he's kindly agreed to participate in this panel today and give us his views he's he's a long time observer of southeast Asia, Cambodia and Myanmar and other places and so his views are always greatly valued so uong ji everybody for giving me the platform uh today my presentation will be about uh the development and challenges of Myanmar ongoing peace process i will first talk about historical perspective of conflict settlement arrangements and then i will explain uh to the ongoing peace process and i will conclude my presentation with the discussions on the opportunities and challenges of the current peace process now please allow me to explain historical perspective of the conflict settlement arrangement one of the fundamental reasons of the uh uh significant long ethnic conflict was due to the failure uh of addressing the contentious nature of federalism concept uh between the successive governments and the ethnic arms organizations as you can see from the chart uh there are three times uh that we have tried to attempt uh to settle internal conflicts uh it appears that there are three main andoline obstacles in the previous peace deals uh there being a weak state uh which refers to the unulet parliamentary government an extreme demand uh there was a demand of the successions of from the union and the militaries unfriendly to a concept of federalism of state legitimacy that is uh at the era of the military government which face both internal and domestic pressures ideologically uh unlike ceasefire truces uh under previous military governments which do not seek political dialogues with ethnic arms organizations building a federal union has become the visions of previous utensine government's ethnic policy strategically the government will be stock of a collective nature that accept ethnic political alliance groups uh as dialogue partners and lastly and importantly the new operational style for policy implementation is clearly unorthodox the usdp government rely on a resourceful technical institution made up of civilian experts to implement its policy agenda uh the government the military and the nation wide ceasefire coordination team and cct uh which was the collective alliance group formed by ethnic arms organizations eaos agree to the draft of nation wide ceasefire nca uh the documents includes provisions of uh farm political grand deed uh to resolve arms conflict through political means and establishing a union based on the principles of democracy and federalism out of 15 eos eight eos signs of final nca on october 2015 the most significant of this process is that the government and the eos met more than 3500 times at various levels during the three-year period of negotiations the current peace process still can be seen as a continuation of the peace process from the utensine government uh in our peace process uh mixed model consider the inclusions of wide range of stakeholders while allowing a representative and manageable senior committee to set the directions of the dialogue and conduct musical negotiations uh to enable to hold national level political dialogues uh it means the wide range of stakeholders and to include both signatories and non-signatory groups in the union political dialogue joint committee that is up djc uh which is a major decision making body of the peace process and to be able to hold a 21st century panel conference while inviting all the stakeholders portray that the current peace process adopts uh such approach during the first 21st century conference we receive 72 papers and as shown in the table four main positions uh can be seen pertaining to the current 2008 constitutions the discussions were free and open with the general public having the opportunity to observe the overall situation uh the following are the reflections of the will of the majority uh first uh to establish a democratic federal union second to amend the 2008 constitution third to exercise self-determination increasingly for ethnic nationals vote to enjoy equal rights among citizens and to establish a secular state current peace process possesses relatively better position uh than those in the past first the elected analytic government as weak as the first civilian government in 1958 second the demands of the most eos are in extreme positions such as uh sections from the union likewise the military is slowly accepting the concept of federalism although holding the position that 2008 constitution possesses such federal features lastly the democratically elected analytic government possesses highest legitimacy between uh inside and outside the country uh building a federal union in a country with such complex history of arms conflict one cannot hold on to a competitive attitude in the process of building a federal union through peace process compromising is necessary a collaborative attitude will be more rewarding than competitive one uh Myanmar's recent history portrays that the nature of arms conflict itself is competitive and aggressive even state consular Don San Suu Kyi Ha Sal who has been arguing repeatedly to make sacrifice in order to collaborate is yet to persuade the military and some eos to let go the competitive attitude so I think the main challenges uh for the government would be how to find ways to win the collaborations of these groups another challenge through our peace process is the stance and influence of our neighboring countries and other powerful governments outside the region will they favor groups that have always maintained competitive attitude or ally themselves with those who are ready to collaborate from another perspective one can see that the chances of arms groups gaining access to special economic privileges are getting slimmer and slimmer at the particular time because the analytic government is implementing democratic reforms and peace process in parallel it therefore limits the economic gains of some organizations let me conclude by mentioning that of all the challenges the analytic government is now facing the most crucial one is to embrace a clear and precise peace strategy to handle and overcome such challenges thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much and thinking about ways forward for Myanmar's peace process I wanted to make a brief argument that the the success and legitimacy of this process is linked to a broadening and deepening of the process that is that greater inclusiveness and participation in the process and much greater communication and includes including a much wider group of stakeholders is really necessary to make this process succeed presently Burma's peace process is dominated by and driven by male military elites this is commonly seen in peace processes around the world those who fought the war sit at the peace table however as we've also seen in peace processes around the world this approach is unsustainable inclusion of women inclusion of youth and inclusion of civil society organizations and buy-in by the public at large are key a recent study of 156 peace agreements around the world showed for example that including women in a peace process increased the likelihood by 20 percent of peace lasting at least two years and after that a 35 percent increase in the probability of an agreement lasting for at least 15 years so in the words of Mago Wolfstrom Sweden's top diplomat inclusion is not only the the right thing to do it's also the smart thing to do in a peace process in terms of civil society participation another study showed that that CSO civil society involvement in a peace process reduces the risk of a return to violence by up to 64 percent why is this the case I mean the reasons are complex but one of them of course is sadly that modern civil wars like bermas tend to impact and involve civilians to a large degree and tend to be protracted in a context like bermas therefore it's impossible to say who knows more about the realities of war is it an elite negotiator sitting at the negotiating table or is it for example a female village head in a town in northern shan state who is constantly negotiating with armed actors from different directions for the sake of her family and her community so those most affected by the conflict are an essential voice about what peace means and what will work and an eventual peace agreement needs as big as buying as big a buy-in as possible from the community let's take a brief look at the realities of inclusion and exclusion in bermas peace process at the moment in the the nlds launch relaunch of the peace process in august last year that the union peace conference panglong conference women made up just 12 percent of the attendees and they were observers not not full participants women make up only 18 percent of the members of the government's peace negotiating team and they and zero percent of the formal ceasefire monitoring structures the armed groups in fact do even worse on this score the both the negotiating team for the signatory side as well as a non-signatory side include zero women at the moment they have in the past but the moment they do not in terms of civil society participation the story is not all that bad but could be improved civil civil society particular sorry civil society organizations participate a little in both the military aspects of the implementation of the nationwide ceasefire agreement the ceasefire monitoring process and in the political aspects of the process through the political dialogue civilian members have six out of 26 seats on the at the top level ceasefire committee and two out of 12 seats at the state level and they are allowed to carry out a political dialogue process which is which runs parallel to but is not a part of the main political dialogue process so i guess more broadly there's good news and that the rollout of this long-awaited political dialogue process which just started in the past few months would likely provide an opportunity for more voices in many areas but at the moment that that is still quite a controlled and limited process as well for example civil society organizations in their dialogues are not allowed to discuss security issues political issues religious issues and so on without those issues what is there to discuss in my view so the the nationwide agreement explicitly mandates an inclusive political dialogue it uses the term an inclusive political dialogue so it's it's there is something that has been signed on to and needs to be moved further in terms of youth there's no in youth organizations there's no formal voice for young people in this process but there are a handful of young people involved throughout young people took the initiative to hold a large paying what they call the paying long multi-ethnic youth conference of their own in july of last year but unfortunately there was a strong an effort to cancel it from the government side and and the government's response to the the the youth conference was and i quote it might be a waste of time as the government will not take into account their recommendations because it already has plans for the participation of civil society groups in the peace process in other words participate in the process we control or don't participate so it's it's really a very controlled space still at the same time excuse me at the same time progress so far made in the peace process would have been impossible without these civilian actors let me give some examples a wide range of different examples women's the leadership of women's groups has been crucial in civilian ceasefire monitoring so women's groups have been going going out particularly in the southeast of the country and doing on the ground ceasefire monitoring which is not being done by any anybody else and it's small scale but it's provided much needed accountability to to ceasefires on the ground civilian actors serve as thought leaders some of them are here present today and many of the key peace process documents have in fact been drafted by NGOs women's alliances have advocated for gender inclusion which has led to gender inclusion as well as civilian protection which has led to specific clauses in the nationwide ceasefire agreement around those issues so above all in a fragile and protracted peace process like this these groups have created safety nets for dialogue and resources for advocacy when the formal process falters as it frequently and unfortunately does some would say this process is too complex already and we've heard today how very very complex it is over and over so why make it more complex by adding more stakeholders to the mix and more voices to that complexity and there's there are definitely that there are definitely valid arguments for a carefully managed and well constructed process a carefully planned process but that doesn't mean an exclusive one in my view indeed work on many tracks is needed to move forward for long term change just in conclusion having said all of that I'm not arguing here that we should focus on instrumentalising these civilian groups or instrumentalising these civil society organisations women and youth groups in support of one piece agenda in fact many civil society groups are very skeptical of the the formal peace process right now and they represent constituencies certain constituencies in that skepticism so these groups are not spoilers we shouldn't regard them as spoilers they have they have concerns they have valid concerns and the voices of those groups is just as crucial if not more crucial to long-term sustainable peace as is the role of those organisations who are fully on board with the main peace agenda one final word in terms of buy-in on the peace process while the elites are already engaged and the engagement of civil groups is slowly growing the broader population also needs to understand what is afoot Burma's peace process is not a popular one and by that I don't mean that the public dislike it but that the public don't know about it and it's not a high priority buy-in large particularly for the majority population it's a process a conflict and a and a peace process that essentially is happening in remote borderlands as far as the majority population are concerned so without popular support and understanding amongst the majority the far-reaching changes proposed through the federalism agenda will not succeed so once again inclusion participation and communication are key thank you thank you Vanessa oh you have lots of thank you very much let me make a few opening comments and then I will talk a little bit about Burma not so much about the peace and reconciliation process because I was listening to this on the internet while I was working this morning and throughout the day and I think nearly everything has been said about the peace process today not sure I can add to it but I'll provide my own perspectives the views expressed today are my own they do not reflect that of any member the subcommittee or the committee would appreciate that being reflected by all and a on a very sorry sorry note condolences to the usip family on the death of Richard Solomon and to his family as well he was a a great american those of us who are interested in southeast asia see him in all last time I saw him with several months ago at a book signing his son came out with a book and he happened to be there and I remember just looking at him across the room thinking there's somebody who knows how to negotiate and who is looking out for the best interests of the united states and finally it was an interesting morning given that we received the administration's budget skinny budget lean budget maybe and I very much look forward to hearing the justification by the administration for the funding elimination for usip be very interesting to hear what they have to say again I don't want to talk about the peace process too much except to say that it is complicated the trust factor is essential you cannot ask people to come to the table if the historical trust and animosity is there and conflict continues I think the point you made I entirely agree with it's occurring in in isolation and if you think about the other challenges the people of berma face it is fairly tremendous and I don't disagree with some who believe that significant progress is made but I also believe that additional progress needs to be made berma is not at the point where I would feel comfortable saying that it is across any line or reached any milestone one or two elections does not a democracy make it has a way to go to mature in its processes and frankly it has a way to go to mature in governance but it's hard to look at berma from where I sit without looking seeing what's happening in the kind state and what's happening with the Rohingya I know in some cases that might be in isolation for the people of berma doesn't affect all of them it's up there but the nightmare of further radicalization and violence or outside elements being introduced to it are very real from my perspective and has implications for the entire region not just berma it's hard to think of berma without wondering whether we are going to see more rapid economic opportunities and development particularly in rural areas it's easy to see change in the city in any southeast Asian country it's harder to see it in the countryside and I think the countryside is where proof of progress very often is seen drug and alcohol abuse among youth is a major problem it is one of those issues that doesn't know any ethnic nationality and the effects of it are substantial it affects everything all factors of berma's ability to move forward if you don't have youth or if you have youth that are disadvantaged by drug and alcohol and the community leaders know this it's not it's not shameful to talk about it but let's try and help them do something about it the NLD's governance track record is also of interest and concern in many respects they've had an opportunity that a lot of opposition parties in southeast Asia have not had and that is actually to govern difficulties with a partner who is dominant in a military that is not under sufficient control or obvious but the operations of the party itself for the NLD party as elections come up is also of interest how competitive will they be what do they run on what are their successes that they can point to when I tuned in at one point today people were talking about corruption natural resource management all of this factors into the trust view of trust and accountability by the government if they say sweet nothing's about a peace process while at their level corruption is rampant or other evidence that rule of law is not there it's very hard to believe that things go well in one sector but not in other sectors I agree with the condemnation of human rights abuses assassination killings and rapes that have occurred it is a problem the people of Burma need to speak out more forcefully and more aggressively when they occur radicalization of buddhism and the fear of the other that we're seeing feeds into the narrative that it's hard to cut deals boy I didn't mean to say that I don't like saying that it's hard to negotiate solutions to real problems and finally I would say geography China India are very interested in what happens in in Burma just as I said earlier radicalization further radicalization outside elements being introduced and into a kind changes the equation for me at least geography matters I think Patrick was the one who talked about managing expectations and to me that is also critical is not just the expectations of the people in Burma that might be high or our expectations that might be for quicker perhaps more linear reforms those of us who have spent a lot of time working in southeast Asia know that the shortest distance in southeast Asia very often is not a straight line as I was thinking about this this morning particularly after receiving the budget I found myself a bit perplexed because I could list out 10 problems that Burma has that we all agree I think most of us would agree with what I've said today these are predictable we've all studied them we've all many of you have worked on them for for decades then I thought to myself going forward what is our policy and if you look at the budget there are some things people need to think about the budget for the 150 account has fewer people and fewer programs countries will be zeroed out if you look at the cut of 29 percent being proposed without a doubt ships will sink with the tide I can't tell you what countries those are because the detail is not there the administration will have to provide us with congressional budget justification materials hopefully in the spring that will identify the winners and losers more clearly in this budget but with respect to Burma my fear is it doesn't rise to the level of interest or concern for this administration for the first time in a long time we have a white house that is not interested in what happens in Burma that personal connection that we've seen with previous administrations whether it be the aspirations for success of the people of Burma as they take steps forward in a new environment or for those who are there as the struggle continued while those who was under house arrest white house leadership and attention has made a big difference for some who have served there I'm sure it was a bit of a pain to have that high level interest in what what happens but I can tell you from the appropriations perspective it's a lot easier when the administration requests a certain level of funding and we can meet it rather than having to try and find that funding from other programs so if there is a decrease in interest and decrease assistance to Burma in the efforts of what the people of Burma are trying to achieve what are those consequences what are those consequences to the people of Burma what are those consequences to the united states in the region again geography matters there are a lot of countries in the region that will step up and exert influence in a manner that they see is in their best interests that I would argue is not in our interest let me close with my own view that the struggle for freedom for freedom in Burma is still being written and American engagement is important and we must remain engaged and I'll end it there Q&A's thank you very much that's kind of a sad note to end on so we won't end there we we still have an hour left and I'm going to invite questions and statements from the audience but I'd like to think of I I'd like to to give you first of all my the essence of my conclusions from the whole discussion we've had today I think that running through our discussions of both the peace process the the tension on the western border the tension the conflict on the western border the conflict on the eastern border the situation with the peace process there are a couple of general themes running through this of of things that need to be done first of all there's a deficit in communication there's not enough transparency there's not there's not effective communication from the top down and from the bottom up it's particularly acute in Rakhine but I think it applies also in other ways to the eastern side of the equation in Rakhine the government is quietly trying to make some some serious progress in normalizing the status of the of the Muslim population in the in the state not just Rohingya but also the come on and they're they're sending communications down through the system they're not getting to the people at the bottom on the ground on the on the ground level and and in turn things that are happening at the ground level are not funneling back up to the top there needs to be more attention to some kind of effective and regulated communication system this and on the side of the peace process there needs to be a lot more public communication and public education that will affect people's expectations of the process people for some reason tend to believe that it can produce results overnight and they need to be conditioned to see this as a very long-term process and not to have outsized expectations of how quickly things are going to be achieved and they need to to also be conditioned to understand the the concept of compromise as Wang Ji said that the success in in the the peace process is going to take a lot of compromise not only on the part of the armed ethnic groups but on the part of the civilian populations affected by it too um what's as I said earlier today one of the things that's happened in this transition is that the lid has come off the society itself and all of the the the differences and resentments and and fights over territory and resources are coming to the surface they're being exercised vocally through a relatively free press and and a transformed communications uh system with electronic communications and facebook and and internet and everything telephones and it's creating a cacophony of views and it's been very difficult to to to um channel the discussion the government probably needs to be a lot more proactive not just the government it probably involves society itself in in beginning to bring people more into this discussion in a in a very measured way um all of this relates to the deficit the huge deficit of trust that paul mentioned trust has run through all of our discussions it is missing trust between the civilians and the military trust between um civil society and the government trust between different ethnic groups different ethnic nationalities trust in religion and a lot of that relates to the communication problem so it's all sort of one big package but I think it can be reduced fairly simply to the true issue the two issues of communication and trust better communication and ultimately building trust that's my takeaway um so I would like to invite questions from the audience questions or thoughts I'm having trouble seeing because the sun is in my eyes and I can't do anything about it yes back here now we have microphones I think we have two questions back there so let's hi i'm nicole from csis um one of the things that hasn't been touched on today is the role or the place of the migrant community um in the peace process um I know that right after the elections aung sun 2t took quite an effort to connect with the migrant populations outside of the country um so what role or space do you see they can play kind of realizing that maybe the economic or the educational opportunities are not the same in country as they are receiving out of the country are you talking about a migrant population outside the country or inside the country um the population outside and how they could influence the peace process inside of the country or if they have a role or a space to do so shall we take two questions and then at a time is there a second question back there uh hi my name is holly i'm with the georgetown institute for women peace and security and um I wanted to thank miss johansson in particular for talking about uh the need for greater inclusiveness in the peace process and how that actually leads to more sustainable peace outcomes um what will it take for women to have a greater voice in the process given that the 30 quote alone will likely do nothing um what are the strategic access points for women uh to have meaningful participation okay and we'll take those two questions um should we start with the question of how the migrant community from outside can influence the peace process we've already seen a considerable example of that during the thane seniors and I think to a certain extent it continues today because many of the the experts in the in the peace center uh during during the thane sane government were returning exiles so you might have some thoughts on that jay what we need is uh to educate our people more about the peace process I think we have less making efforts on giving peace process through the media or by other means towards our people so that's why we need to promote educating the people on peace process what they understand about peace is very limited I think because most of our people are thinking about for the current situation in the villages or what is happening in the environment actually the government is making peace process through the whole populations not only on arms conflict but also on our communal conflicts and as well as on religious so all these dimensions should be taken into consider in the peace process I think thank you very much and it has just occurred to me that we actually have one of those participants here chion line came back to the country for specifically to work on the transition and has been there ever since ever since making extremely valuable contributions and many I have a number of friends in washington who have gone back to work in the peace process as well um char do you want to say anything about that at the beginning of the previous administration both president who thinks saying in a number of people who are around him talk about inviting people like myself back to the country um and then not just us we told them later the one we've like some of us formally became uh advisors to the government we told people in the government that like you know there are a number of uh members citizens who are part of the pro-democracy movement uh the non-living in other parts of the country so initially the president said we like we if they wish to come back and contribute by all means but the government didn't come up with a coordinated effort so if you if you know people like uh some reformist ministers like us so thing or our man with their endorsement so you will get the permission to come back home and then one people like motiz on like you know the one of the chairman of the AVSTF came back and when they started getting involved in some anti-government protests and the many in the government especially the then home minister couldn't take it so and then they were planning to arrest motiz on so we had to beg motiz on to leave the country so that it would not make us look really bad after that motiz on and many other people didn't get the visa to go back to the country the point I'm trying to make is they talk about it but at the same time they didn't really get to make it get conscious and coordinated effort to bring back these people but the current administration has invited back a number of people as well like I said like a number of people who got PhDs at some good universities here in the US they're now back in Nipidor helping the government but the good thing about those people under the current administration is other outsiders don't know about their role like you know having gone through the similar experience it's easier to do things if others don't know about what you are doing otherwise like you know a lot of jealousy a lot of attack and then like that you you end up spending a lot more time dealing with those accusations and rumors than doing the real job but all in all the country really needs younger people that like who can contribute do that like in a transition process in the country by that what I mean is including you thank you very much also I should add that there are many young people from Yama today studying here and so there is going to be a constant return of human capital into the country from the United States and many other countries in the west would you like to address the peace process question the women question yeah in terms of the question of what will it take to have a better general inclusion in the peace process I mean I think there's work needed on many tracks but I think I think more better leadership in this area is needed last week on International Women's Day Ongsansu she made a statement that that a 30% quota it's there is a there is a sort of general 30% quota aspirational quota that we will try to get 30% women in all of the committees the peace process committees she said a 30% quota is is not enough and that we should aim for 50% women's participation so I mean that kind of statement is positive of course she does lead the the peace committees for for the government side and so she she can also take leadership in in in appointing more women in her own structures so but it's good good at least that she's made that that kind of statement you know I mean ongoing advocacy the there was a slight increase from the the first Union peace conference in January last year to the one in August last year I think it was 5% women's participation the first one 12% in the second one largely I think due to advocacy from from alliances of of civil society and women's organizations so more of that more advocacy and more strategic advocacy I think you know better organization by gender advocates themselves you know we we've seen a very divided civil society in in Burma for a whole range of reasons some you know there's there's there's a very diverse civil society which in some ways is a healthy thing but I think yeah better coordination agreement on strategy I think is also really important and then as I mentioned earlier I mean the political dialogue really is just beginning and and hopefully that will be also be a space for greater inclusion not only of women and gender perspectives but also other sectors of society so thank you I have a question too for Paul may I do that there are many people in the audience who are probably not familiar with our budget process and I wonder if you could give us just a very general idea of of where it goes from here the White House has now presented its budget proposal to the Congress and a very complex process will now begin but I think Paul would be able to explain it to us briefly let me begin by saying we haven't finished fiscal year 17 so it's not as though we finished one fiscal year and we're starting to look at fiscal year 18 which is what this budget request was theoretically the process is the president uh submit recommendation or request to Congress to fund the government the Congress holds hearings the appropriations committee and the budget committees hold hearings budget committee sets a budget for that fiscal year talking theoretically now appropriations committees do their work various committees I'm on the state department foreign operations and related program subcommittee we get an allocation that's supposed to be based on the actions of the budget committee if that action is successful and agreed upon we mark up bills the house is following the same process there's supposed to be a conference committee there resolves differences between both bills and the bills then go to the president for signature that's the theoretical what is happening these days is the budget committee can't come up with the allocations agreements are made allocations are given to the various subcommittees the subcommittees mark up bills unfortunately we have we being the state foreign operations subcommittee have not been able to get to the floor since calendar year 2007 which means there's not an airing of issues and votes on issues which I would argue is essential to us foreign policy for the past several years there's been a mix of year long continuing resolutions which is essentially a extension of the prior year funding levels very disruptive for agencies especially if that comes after a series of smaller extensions if you will uh and very disruptive to congress in terms of the loss of of oversight in other instances we've been able to sit down with the house and create one big bill called an omnibus bill and that bill gets voted upon by the senate house and sent to the president it is a very big bill subcommittee is in charge of resolving differences between the bills introduced in the senate and the house process has been dysfunctional with fiscal year 18 it's very hard for me to say what will happen what we received is a skinny budget with not a lot of information page and a half roughly is devoted to the 150 account our account additional information is supposed to be forthcoming in may that will hopefully provide the detail in the budget justification materials that I seek to know what the winners and the losers are what exactly are they proposing but I fully expect that the committee will mark up a bill as the committee does the committee will do what the committee can do and then we will wait for direction for the full floor and leadership and that's about as far as I can predict so we could be on another continuing resolution I expect at least we'll be on a short-term continuing resolution for 18 yeah isn't there a date coming up when it has to April 20th is regarding fiscal year 2017 which we haven't finished we will either have to pass an omnibus or a continuing further resolution otherwise what happened a little while ago happens and the government shuts down because money is not available but throughout this process just to be very clear we are taking a look at the request request funding levels and policy for countries we typically get in congressional budget just for justification materials tables that list countries and amounts for economics support fund for military financing program for example based on those on that recommendation we put together a budget that reflects the priorities of congress in many cases endorsing what the administration may have proposed in other cases not providing it and providing a different a different funding level as I said when I spoke it is far easier when an administration supports a Burma for example and includes in its budget request sufficient resources to be able to conduct programs that are helpful either on the peace process or on democracy and governance or on meeting humanitarian crises disasters that arise then it is for us to go and find the money because we are then pulling from other programs that have been requested I think with this budget it has gotten infinitely more complicated um here comes here comes the in this case what would be the justification idea for the Burma for example like rather than the development of peace would it be about problem about a stream religious problem or countering the influence of China where we justification factor for bum that's that's a question for the administration in some cases we can't set policy as everybody in the room knows there are many people in congress who closely follow what happens in Burma and for some years going back uh you know two decades it has been congress that has set the policy toward Burma through various uh bills with respect to what this administration does you have to ask this administration the detail is not in the budget that we receive today in terms of any policy changes toward Burma but usually we can either get from the materials they submit or in discussions with the Department of State and USAID a sense of what the any program changes or policy changes are we do require in fiscal year 16 in current law that any significant changes we're informed about congress is informed about so that we can understand how money might shift with respect to the 2018 request the one from this administration we do not have any insights into any shift in policy also i think one has to take into consideration that the administration has not approved or or not appointed people to lower levels beyond below the secretary level the ministerial level in the department so you don't have the people there to fill out these justifications that are needed in the budget that's probably one reason that it's so skinny yes thanks and Priscilla thanks for filling that in in that for the congressional budget justification that paul will be receiving um you need that kind of middle tier over in state department that isn't there to figure out exactly how the numbers are going to add up programmatically so it'll be interesting to see how i move forward my question is actually for the panel in general but Vanessa and auntie in particular um to a certain extent i think there's actually two very separate peace processes that people are talking about one is the end of the civil war the low grade civil war that's been going on for a long period of time and then that's where you talk about ceasefires in the end of active conflict and that's one peace process and to a certain extent one could claim the critical agents involved in that's a smaller group then you've got this larger peace process of forming a federated union to resolve the internal problems of various sorts that we've heard during the day and if i can sort of steal from this woman's question about you have a quarter of a million refugees or displaced people in Bangladesh you have another quarter of a million in Thailand and a known number in Malaysia Indonesia even as far as wide as pakistan how are they going to fit into this larger community discussion of the future because if they come back that's a significant increase in the population where do they go what's their role how do they fit in one other comment about that they have in these camps that have been active sometimes for more than one generation their own leadership their own goals and objectives their own priorities how are they being going to be heard in this process just to interject my thought on that the state of the economy will have a lot to do with the rate at which people come back many of the people who left left for economic reasons i mean the millions of people that are in Thailand many of the people that are in southeast Asia and even in the middle east went in search of work as well as for political reasons so i think that until you have you know significant improvement economic growth as it were in in Burma, Myanmar it's you're not going to see waves of large waves of people coming back but do others have thoughts about that maybe just to start with your comment about the two separate peace processes i mean i would say there are more than two i mean you know i mean they're i mean it just in terms of ceasefire in negotiations and implementation there's a there's a there's a nationwide ceasefire agreement with eight groups and then there's at least three different sets of negotiations with three very different kind of groupings of of non-signatory groups with with different you know levels of arms and incentives and so on so i mean i think it's it's obviously yeah there's there's all that going on as well and then even when it comes to the implementation of the nationwide ceasefire agreement yes there's a 33 article document that you know some of which is a political document that talks about the long-term process and sort of fundamental change to the country and then some of that is is about ceasefire and stopping violence so you know there's definitely all of that happening um look in terms of those vast numbers of people um outside the country i i don't as far as i know there's been very little um outreach to them at all on any of the political transition issues including the peace process um and very little well i mean you know there are voices of the diaspora in various issues of course um in that very um diverse diaspora but um but in terms of some sort of um you know managed or or systematic engagement i'm not i'm not aware of it but perhaps on she would like to comment as well according to our program the peace process should be continued not only by the outside donors but we are also trying ourselves from our interior support that's why Dawang San Suu Kyi has also asked some businessmen uh to participate in peace process so uh did me give up some opportunities if we meet difficulties uh by solving our problems within ourselves yes let's take some more questions thanks lisa misal with global witness i wanted to ask uong ji to elaborate on the point he made about the political economy of the peace process and how the nld government um was making it harder for their armed ethnic groups to access the economic benefits they have experienced and make a comment that may be related um it was notable how the government actually took an important step to freeze licensing for jade mining um not allow not extend existing permits and not issue any new ones this was july last year and that created an opportunity to reform the whole gemstone sector but we haven't seen the government take advantage of that opportunity and what we see instead is um uh some efforts to push through premature legislation on gemstones that hasn't been subject to consultation and isn't getting to the core issues how can that process be advanced constructively um and help feed into this wider political economy of the peace process i think the question that she's posing is um whether there are any mechanisms in the peace process that can serve to improve the exploitation of resources such as jade in a way that the people who live in the area um will benefit from the economic uh dividends produced is that in the peace process yet i mean are there serious discussions of that resource question actually we have faced very serious uh problems with making uh negative peace within the era of previous government because you know that uh that negative peace have received by means of the cost of the resources uh because most of the uh ethnic organizations called economic privileges uh some maybe legal or semi maybe illegal they get anyhow they get much privileges uh from the economic sector by that means uh negative peace could uh stabilize uh under the previous gender uh government for more than 20 years nobody have problems nobody have questions and nobody is talking about uh political dialogue but they enjoy having such kinds of benefits but that costs much to the people much to the country much to the nation uh so uh by this time the economic government as it is transferring to the democratic means it cannot do like that so there may be some problems such as jade mining or gold mining or lodging or she can give such kinds of license or permissions as much as the previous government um i mean the gender government uh could provide them uh so according to some of the ethnic groups uh they are comparing uh with the current situation that they have lost their benefits that's why they are considering about the new uh peace process uh which may be uh mainly uh uh for the goals of federal unions uh they understand that uh the new government is uh solving this arms conflict uh to reach to the federal union because uh don san su ji has uh expressed in the last uh first uh meeting uh first melon conference that she is going to establish a genuine uh democratic federal union uh by means of a peace process by means of changing the 2008 constitution within this peace process so that may become uh certain uh obstacles or hindrance for going forward as it is stated in our heading title uh so uh we need to make more attachment with these eos that they may get more profit uh if we got uh a positive peace within our countries and that will let our whole people uh whole nation to become phosphorus uh in this way we need to discuss more about this but we have no means to compensate uh what the benefits they have got uh as in the previous uh government thank you very much do you you understand what he was saying about negative peace what he's talking about is the previous ceasefire agreements that were done by uh the military government in in the late in the 90s um because they provided for uh companies particularly military supported companies to come into these these uh ethnic areas with resources such as the jade and basically take over the economies and it's really hard as you know to turn that around so you've got a vacuum right now because they have try they're trying to move into a new dispensation as he said with a positive piece but it's also a question of capacity you know very well that the government doesn't have the capacity to suddenly turn the jade industry around that's why the on San Suu Kyi is always saying to sacrifice uh their benefits uh to get peace yeah yeah John I just want to add to what Uaungi was saying again in response to some of the question about uh whether role of the IDPs and refugees in terms of resettlement and also uh political economy issue linked to the political dialogue process um I just want to again highlight the broader process issue uh at the moment we could foresee or we are foreseeing there are two policy change processes a constitutional amending processes so one process is through the current uh parliament system through the door so that is one track it's ongoing track through the current system and then another system which is part of the political dialogue process is this political process coming out of the nca agreement is also one track for the constitutional amendment and the policy change so when we talk about policy change on the itb returns or social political uh political economy issues some of the things that the key stakeholder at the negotiation table will continue to look at what as what has been going on at the moment within the parliament on policy change and whether those policy policy change still need to be reviewed at the political dialogue process that come out of the 21st century program process so in terms of 21st century pangdong political dialogue process there are two levels in a process one is a big conference which is the final decision final policy decision will be made but before that there is another level of the political dialogue process which is more on the consultation process on the ground level and then according to the current political dialogue framework the agenda to be discussed at the political dialogues had been already generally has been already agreed there are five main thematic issues one is politics thematic and another one is security thematic that one is economy and then fourth is social and the fifth is land and then environment so within within each thematic topics there are sub sub topics been already identified but those sub topics at the moment it's not sequence yet but it's that is under discussion so in terms of resettlement and returns issue there is there will be consultation process that consultation process according to the framework agreement that consultation process can be led by ethnic armed groups and political parties on the on the refugee and resettlement issue so at the moment there is no design yet how the ethnic armed groups how the political parties will do the consultation with the IDPs and refugees in terms of the resettlement so this is still in the early stage but I want to assure you in the thinking of the stakeholders sitting at the negotiation table they have in mind that need to be consulted with the IDPs and refugees for the return and resettlement issue so this is still in the early stage and plus in the at the moment signatories and government is also talking about according to the nca agreement there is a big clause that talk about interim arrangement so during that interim arrangement this resettlement issue and also extractive industry issue is also part of that so all the all those issue during the interim interim is before the political settlement so during that interim period those issue will be jointly consulted before that gets implemented so I think the process is there but the issue the discussion of that issue is not there yet so I just hope that as the process goes on there will be proper consultation with the concern community and concern key stakeholders so that and then CSO who has expertise on those certain issues will be consulted so that we can we can frame and we can draft we can provide the policy recommendation to the 21st century bangno so that's that's a process and it is still early to say that this has been discussed and this will not be discussed but the process is there so I think what the international community should also encourage is continue to monitor and watch this process and push and encourage the key stakeholder to to do proper consultation thank you thank you Jenna Derek I know we just have a few more minutes but I'd like to push Paul just a little bit further as you mentioned Congress has played a prominent role on Burma policy for some time you now have a situation as you suggest where you may not have an executive branch that is as interested as we've had for a couple administrations so let me ask you and push you a little further besides the budget what do you think Congress's role Congress's perspective is on Burma and maybe in that process of answering what do you why does this matter maybe you can provide a sense of why does it still matter to congressman staff just members generally that makes this an important issue to us I have to preface again that I'm not speaking for anybody so I won't characterize the views of other members or staff I think Burma Burma matters for historical reasons there are people who have been working on this issue for decades and they would like to see Burma in a in a situation in a position where the trajectory is a little bit better known and people are confident that it's on the on the right path the significant challenges as I've outlined and a lot of people have outlined or reason enough to pay attention if you care about if you care about the country there are other reasons as well I mentioned geography China is would be very interested as we all know in having a stronger grip and control of Burma regardless of the Burmese people's views of China it has coastal lines it it doesn't take much to look at a map and see why this matters to us I think there was a discussion about the investment in terms of money I remember when assistance for Burma was 15 million dollars not so many years ago and it basically has increased significantly since then because of the opportunities that exist is it a place where us companies could do business of yes it it could be a better place it's not the place that it was in the beginning where only high-risk investors came in but it needs infrastructure it needs the rule of law it needs all of those elements where predictability for private sector investment come in which frankly is the future of Burma it's not foreign assistance foreign assistance will get them through the rough patch so I'm not going to speak for for any of the offices except to say that there are a lot of people who have been working on this issue forever they'll be there working on this issue for as long as they're up there and Congress will have a say but the challenge is at the highest levels if the attention is not there and the funding is not there it's very hard for us to come up with that money I will say as I look back over the past decade and a half there have been times when the White House has been distracted and Asia generally was not the focus of attention and we've been very fortunate to have very good people in the field of president's representatives as as you were one um really on a day-to-day basis and in some cases even more setting policy and implementing and making sure that our interests are preserved and protected I think that goes on to a certain extent today already but what is that policy we've had a transition um many of us on the hill are waiting to hear not just Burma tell us about Afghanistan tell us about Tunisia from the appropriators perspective this matters because it involves funding my own interest is about 20 plus years now for Asia and it's a challenge it's probably the most challenging time that I've faced as I look forward in terms of funding for the region in terms of ensuring policy but I take uh some comfort in um Ambassador Marcel who out there who I've known and everybody in this room probably has known for a very long time very good relationship you talk about communication we do communicate and communication between the operators at the State Department and at least my office uh on Burma has been has been fantastic does that answer your question yes um Adam Cinske from the Halo Trust um I have a rather specific question for Owang Ji um even from the incomplete data that we have at the moment we know that Myanmar has one of the highest landmine casualty rates in the world and we've seen from other countries such as Sri Lanka from from Colombia and elsewhere that demining is an integral part of a peace process in terms of facilitating returns allowing post-conflict reconstruction um you know allowing people to resume livelihood activities once they've returned what way do you see ahead of us now in overcoming the existing obstacles to actually begin a full large-scale humanitarian civilian demining operation that can address the needs of the people that are suffering daily casualties uh we have a very active uh team in our peace commission that is called or joint uh monitoring uh ceasefire monitoring uh committee uh uh it is initiating uh to demining uh some signatories areas and uh I hope uh within this year uh they could start uh demining at least in some signatories uh ethnic groups uh even uh those signatories uh ethnic groups also agreed to make uh demining in their areas so this process will go on uh especially uh with the uh systems of nor waiting uh such uh demining uh systems uh systematically by them so uh within a few years I hope uh this demining process will uh develop for the safety uh of the people in the remote area most of the remote area hi my name is Zhang Ai I'm currently a student at GW my question is about um Burmese community that has resettled in America and what you know possibly their role could be in advancing the peace process so I grew up in a Burmese immigrant community in Jacksonville Florida and in Jacksonville alone um there are hundreds if not thousands of us um people who immigrated from Burma um and so is there anything you know that we can do in order to make positive contribution to push the peace process forward thank you we would uh warmly welcome uh any uh persons uh to join in the peace process uh actually I myself is uh giving as volunteer in peace process uh you know I am uh a former minister and when I have resigned uh from the post then I try to make uh some volunteer service especially uh on peace or conflict management that's why I give volunteer service in this uh peace process uh so in the same way anybody who would like to participate in our peace process will be welcome I think but just uh let know the authorized chairperson of the peace commission I am just an advisor uh to this uh commission so the authorized persons may make certain kinds of arrangement for those who would to uh join together uh for the peace process for more development who would be the person to contact uh yes uh chairman of peace commission that is Dr Tim Eowyn Tim Eowyn Dr Tim Eowyn if I can just take take it from an American perspective I think it's important for the Burmese and other communities uh in the United States to communicate with their elected members if members don't know that they have a community that's interested in a certain issue if it's peace if it's something else positive negative and the communication isn't there very often that issue will fall between the cracks and the attention and support um for the issue you won't get so I I think you have a Burmese answer and I would say that my answer from an American perspective is is you know right to your elected officials make sure they understand your views on the issue it helps those of us who who are longtime watchers uh uh and actress on on Burma on the hill to have more voices more discussion more debate and frankly more support actually we need more human resources uh in our peace commission uh Ute Sein has used many civilian experts in his era but uh after uh NLD has uh when the elections uh NLD is just uh using very limited resources uh in the peace process so I think um more human resources will be needed for the future so both your congressman and your senator senators okay do we have more have we reached the end of the road we've reached the end of the road I'm getting a time signal thank you thank you all very much for bearing with us through a long day I appreciate your participation final words from Derek Mitchell it says 15 minutes I'm not going to inflict 15 minutes it's been a very long day um and it's been a I have to say it's as good and detailed a conversation about these issues of peace and reconciliation in Burma that I've ever heard in Washington this is exactly what we need more of so people understand both the usip and in washington generally and hopefully it people listening can also learn from this we want to be a center for that I just want to go over some of the the issues that I heard some of the themes very quickly we started on the issue of context of really being uh you know understanding the political the historic the cultural the geographic geopolitical and the social context of this country like any country if you're going to get this right whether it's a peace process or not you have to understand where it comes from it does not start five years ago 10 years ago even 20 years ago there's a long context we also talk as part of that context that the most important issue which is not understood and we talked a good bit today is this issue of majority minority relations it is what I've called the defining challenge the peace issue and we had a little bit of a conversation maybe a false dichotomy between whether peace is most important or democracy is most important and in fact you're not going to get peace without democracy and you probably won't have a real democracy without peace they go hand in hand peace is absolutely essential but unless you give people a voice and a stake in this process you are not going to get success and this is obviously an issue you cannot solve militarily they're very you know most of these issues you cannot solve military it has to be done through a political process on the peace process if you haven't figured out already this is probably the most complex peace process in the world maybe it's I can't think of any other process that is as complex with so many different groups by many orders of magnitude that is not though the complexities are not a recipe for inaction it's not a recipe for throwing up our hands there are lots of things that can be done we've heard about basic outlines that have come together that may be difficult to achieve ultimately or to implement but there is more of a discussion and more of an understanding of the principles by which this discussion needs to be had and that is progress as long as this process will take we also heard about the various sources of instability that will complicate this process whether it's drugs or guns or human trafficking refugees but you know this is an extremely important all these things kind of go together and have an influence on the stability of Asia and we're talking about a country that is at the crossroads of Asia this country matters whether you're interested in values of democracy or very basic issues of health or or other security related matters in Asia I do want to highlight one issue that I think was demonstrated by what Vanessa said when she talked about women and youth I've always said this is not simply a peace process this is nation building they are trying to figure out maybe for the first time in a peaceful way what is this identity of a new nation and that can't be done simply between people with guns it has to be done with the entire society talking about this bottom up not just top down so it is absolutely essential that this be an inclusive process to be sustainable and to be credible and that means consultation cooperation understanding as you go along we talked a bit about you know communal conflict about this being a very serious social challenge internal security challenge that there is a permissive environment that continues and needs to be addressed and what is very essential is that there needs to be a strategy to address these issues in a religious tensions vision leadership and institutionalization as well as communications at local levels as well as broader levels top down and and bottom up more public voices promoting diversity have to be out there have to be public it may have to be courageous in a certain environment but after all I mean this is in the constitution for those even in the country who are quite conservative and say we must stand by this 2008 constitution this is something that should be understood by all that constitutionally the the equality of religions and the diversity of the country is is central to the stability and security I think we talked a bit about being careful about treating maba thaw as a monolith there's a spectrum of perspective and also in looking at that issue and we're protecting buddhism is different than oppressing other religions and ensuring that we have an honest conversation of those who because of the identity in burma of fear of insecurity that we talked about in terms of context and geopolitics and geography I think also gets to their identity as buddhist potentially you hear a lot we're protecting buddhism we're under siege we may not believe it you may not see it from our from our perspective but they do see it so we need to be sensitive to that local that local perspective and find partnerships and find ways to have communication understanding the cross rakhine state there's a lot of attention on this internationally there are serious spoilers in rakhine state that are that can be blocking progress there there's enormous fear that is driving the issue of rakhine state but this again is something that requires as I said intra-religious dialogue not just inter-religious dialogue and there needs to be central government leadership and security on the ground to ensure that people's individual rights are respected and that livelihoods are protected this is going to take some time but it is essential for success finally you know no single issue is going to define this country if you notice from the day there are a lot of cross currents a lot of difficult and you have to take them all together if you're going to get this right this country is a beautiful country deserves the attention so I think as as paul suggested that people have worked on this for a long time who have been there understand that this is worth the effort the success though is not going to be the responsibility of the united states it's going to be up to the people of the country but we can help or we can hinder we can assist this process we can be supportive of a process it must be from within must be from the people of the country we can impose it we can't want it more than they do but there are ways that we if we're not careful we can exacerbate we can complicate we can hinder the process and we I think we should be assisting we put a lot of effort a lot of resources in for a long time as paul grove has suggested um we also of course must not fall in the trap of declaring success in moving on this is still in transition there's a long way to go we have come a long way I think from where we were five ten years ago but there is a long way to go um but I do believe I used to get the question all the time are you optimistic or pessimistic and I hated that question uh you have to be optimistic to some degree to do what we do to go in and try and create change you have to believe there is a path to change you have to believe that we can make a difference and we that we should try you have to be optimistic but you have to be realistic at the same time about the pace and the expectations for change and I do believe as as Patrick Murphy said that there is an opportunity this is a moment of opportunity that they have the icon of democracy the icon of hope and promise in a position not of complete authority no one has any illusions that she has complete authority and that she runs every aspect of this country there are constraints on her there are other things that have not changed in the country that need to be worked out over time but as a moment of opportunity we need to invest in we need to understand and and this is something as we heard earlier that there needs to be a learning curve on the ground and a learning curve out here to help keep up with the changes and that's frankly basically what we're trying to do here at USIP we're trying to learn we're trying to keep up with a learning curve keep up with what happens there I've been gone a year when I was gone for two weeks in the past I used to say I don't know what's going on there anymore that you do need to understand and I'm very very grateful let me just conclude by the people on this panel people that have come from afar that are honestly and deeply committed to bringing change uh on the ground inside the country and people here who care uh to do it from afar and I want to finally thank the two people that made this all possible Rachel Vandenbrink over here and Kay Spencer so please a round of applause for them for putting this all together they have brought the sun today they cannot help it on Tuesday I thank you all for coming and changing your schedules to come on a Thursday and we will continue this conversation so keep your eye on on the USIP website thank you all very much