This basic outline of Burma's recent history might be helpful if we are interested in understanding its contemporary political developments. UN, US and UK, predictably, have questioned the validity of this coming round of polls, arguing that the continuing oppressive rule of the military means there will be "no level playing field" for opposition candidates. Denouncing elections in Myanmar as "not free and fair", while undeniably true, sounds today almost like criticizing wrestling matches for being rigged. After all, Myanmar hasn't been a democracy for nearly 50 years; it's a country where political activists are routinely harassed by the army or its hired thugs, and where the most prominent opposition politician, Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent 16 years out of the past 21 in confinement. Even if the ruling junta did not put restrictions on parties and candidates eligible for elections—which they did—we would be hard-pressed to find reasons for calling these elections "free". What to do then? Should we boycott the new civilian government, which will very likely be full of former members of the armed forces? Well, we could do that, and that's what Aung San Suu Kyi has been calling on the foreign community to do. Indeed, she's been asking to isolate Burma for most of her active political life, arguing that sanctions will help topple the regime. While I do respect her position and courageous resistance to the junta, I think this strategy is ultimately self-defeating. Heresy? Let's see.

A Burmese army officer once said "I would like to tell my American friends that sanctions will hurt you more than us. After all, we virtually imposed sanctions on ourselves for 30 years, and we are still here." These words were recorded on paper for the first time (in a Christian Science Monitor article by Yves Cohen) on 28 January 1998. Now, over twelve years later, Myanmar is still stuck with sanctions. And, sure enough, the junta is still here. The point is that a regime that feeds on a nationalism that has often bordered on xenophobia and eyes suspiciously not only foreigners, but even local people with foreign contacts or education, will never be swayed by speeches made by foreign diplomats calling for a release of political prisoners (especially if, like Suu Kyi, they went to Oxford and were married to a Brit). Or by sanctions that fail—as usual—to hurt its elites. Add to this the fact that most neighbors of the country in question don't wish to isolate it at all, and you have the net result of twenty years of UN, EU and US Burma policies: zilch. While there are political reasons why many Western governments have held this sort of attitude towards Myanmar (appearing to close eyes to the junta's egregious human rights violations would be a tough sell for the public in most democracies), I have the feeling that some of this resistance to apply options that are not the cookie-cutter sanctions-and-speeches mixture stems from a fundamental ignorance of the country's history. The EU's Special Envoy to Myanmar (you will be forgiven for not realizing there is one), Piero Fassino, declared over two years ago in a press conference "I am not interested in history, I'm a politician". If you are reading this website you will probably agree with me when I say that with this sort of thinking our chances of having an impact on Myanmar are close to zero. It's hard, but let's try again with engagement, because isolation is exactly what the ruling junta is comfortable with.

The elections in Myanmar will not be perfect. The new government will not be a democracy. But after twenty years of political stagnation, the country might finally have some civilian institutions and a national assembly including some opposition parties and representatives of minority groups. This might not seem much but it is better than more of the same.

This post was first published at http://www.understoodbackwards.net/2010/09/02/whats-going-on-in-myanmar/