Something new and unexpected is happening in Myanmar. No, not the most recent coup d’état. Few countries have had so many coups as Myanmar. The surprise is that, a year later, the military are still not in control. That is what has never happened before. On February 1, 2021, when a new parliament was due to convene, General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s army, known as the Tatmadaw, decided to act on his dislike of the result of the elections held in November 2020 and took over the government. Again, no other country has a history of coups to rival Myanmar’s, or has endured such long periods of military misrule. But this time it is different. This time the coup has been launched but it has not landed. The military are in government and they occupy the buildings of the state — but they are not in power. The government does not function, not even in the incompetent and brutal fashion in which it usually operates under the military. Resistance continues, and it is everywhere. For a military that has been in power on and off since 1958, this suggests that something has gone wrong. Or more precisely, gone right. No one explains Myanmar, from both personal experience and academic study, as well as Thant Myint-U, and in his book The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century he records an apposite question asked by Frank Smithuis, a Dutch doctor who worked in Myanmar since 1994: “Why is there severe malnutrition in this Garden of Eden?” The doctor’s image is not accurate: Myanmar is hardly the Garden of Eden. For decades it has been one of the poorest countries in the world. And yet, even on a short visit, you cannot escape the feeling that it ought to be the Garden of Eden. The country’s assets and its potential are visible even to the casual visitor. It is a big country, roughly the size of Ukraine; it has some of the most fertile soil in Asia; from the foothills of the Himalayas to the warm waters of the Andaman Sea it has every climate you could wish for. The mangoes are legendary, but climb a bit higher and you can create a first-class vineyard. The seas are full of fish; Myanmar’s great rivers have been the arteries of civilisation for a thousand years. The forests have a wonderful legacy of hardwoods, not to mention tigers and elephants. The teak inheritance has been pillaged, but the forests can be restored; and handled well they would be a unique asset. There are beaches, lakes, and wooded hills to please the most discerning tourist. In the hills you can find every mineral, every rare earth, every gemstone (including diamonds, it is said). There is oil and gas, too. Myanmar’s potential for looting and drug production has already been plentifully exploited, but in a well-governed country the prospects for development would be unlimited. Well-governed: there is the catch. Myanmar has never been well governed. That is not the fault of the people. According to Thant Myint-U, his country “ranks consistently as one of the most generous countries on earth.” Some ten years ago, in Myanmar on official business, and tired of meetings with government officials in air-conditioned offices, I stopped in a remote village to visit a small project, and to see how ordinary people lived. The head of the village organized a meeting, providing local peanuts and milk. Everyone came. One remark in particular, from the collective conversation, sticks in the memory: “The government doesn’t help us, so we help each other.” This spirit runs through the whole society: no matter how poor the people, they look after their children, and are proud of them; they keep themselves and their villages as clean as they can. They do not have many opportunities, but there is a respect for learning and a great desire of education. Nor is this just my own view of today’s Myanmar: Viscount William Slim, who commanded British forces in Burma in the war against Japan, described his impression of a Burmese village when he first
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