By IPS Correspondents
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Jun 6 2003 (IPS)

An assault on Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi by a pro-military mob. A dozen or more of her supporters killed and scores missing. Where is this last outpost of vintage military dictatorship in South-east Asia headed?

An assault on Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi by a pro-military mob. A dozen or more of her supporters killed and scores missing. Where is this last outpost of vintage military dictatorship in South-east Asia headed, one might ask.

Whichever be the immediate direction, the May 30 attack on Asia’s most well-known campaigner for democracy marks a turning point in Burma’s otherwise painfully slow and unchanging political scenario. Where it goes from here depends on domestic and global response to the violent incident.

Three possible scenarios are emerging now.

One is that the military junta manages to ride out, for the time being, the growing fury both in and outside Burma, over their attack on Suu Kyi. In the second scenario, the attack could become the spark for a nationwide movement of civil disobedience against the junta.

The third possibility is that if the true extent of injuries sustained by Suu Kyi come out, there might be growing calls by Burmese groups in exile for U.N. intervention in Burma to effect a change of regime, a la Iraq.

”Now that the war on Iraq is supposedly over, some say it is time for the U.S. military juggernaut to pay a visit to Burma. The unsavoury deeds committed by the regime of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein are abominable, and the atrocities committed under Burma’s military junta are no less disgusting. So why not come dislodge the generals before more abuses are committed?”

Over the last decade, Washington has ”justified violent regime changes” in places like Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan, citing the issue of human rights and democracy, but ”Burma fails to capture Washington’s interest”, it said. There are other similarities but ”with more urgent battles to wage, it is doubtful Washington will squander its political ammunition on Burma”, it added.

”Rather than outright invasion, the more likely scenario is more concrete and concerted pressure from the U.S., such as strengthened sanctions and diplomatic pressure,” the editorial said.

On one hand, such an invasion could be justified as yet another case of ‘humanitarian intervention’ similar to the one in Kosovo by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1998. On the other, for the United States, entering Burma militarily would be a strategic move to gain a foothold right at the doorstep of its only global economic and military rival -China.

If the first scenario materialises, it will be one more instance of how the Rangoon regime has managed to survive one crisis after the other since the late eighties.

The forces of the 1988 popular uprising that nearly unseated the military regime were brutally crushed, the ethnic minority rebellions tamed through ceasefires. The regime has clung on to power even after losing to Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) in general elections it organised in 1990.

In recent years, the opposition and Burma’s military rulers have been able to rope in Suu Kyi and her NLD party into a long drawn-out process of so called ‘dialogue’. The regular visits to the country by Razali Ismail, the U.N. special envoy who arrived in Rangoon Friday, has given rise to the belief that the military was serious about negotiating a transition to some kind of democracy.

“Razali’s current visit to Rangoon is a crucial test of whether or not the U.N.’s attempts at mediation between the junta and the pro-democracy camp is going anywhere or not,” said an Asian diplomat based in Thailand, who requested anonymity.

He says that if Razali’s mission fails, the way might open up for more drastic international measures against Burma’s rulers – including possible military intervention at some stage. The attack on Suu Kyi and her supporters comes after she criticised the military for not initiating direct talks with her since her release from house arrest in May 2002. But in the past six months there has been no real contact between the two sides.

The junta has been extremely unhappy about the political meetings that Suu Kyi has been having around the country.

The second scenario of a popular uprising breaking out in the days or even weeks ahead depends highly on how much opposition activists within Burma have been able to maintain their strength to mobilise people against the regime.

“There is a fire burning within each one of us and it will take just one bold show of public defiance against the regime for many of us to come out onto the streets,” said Suthin, a resident of Rangoon.

The third scenario of foreign intervention in Burma or at least much greater external pressure on the regime depends on the extent of physical harm sustained in the Friday attack by Aung San Suu Kyi, who reportedly has broken an arm and suffered head injuries.

Already, the United States and the European Union have called on the Burmese military regime to release Suu Kyi from detention and allow her to appear in public. U.S. lawmakers are reported to be weighing a number of actions to express their displeasure with Rangoon, from freezing assets belonging to the country’s leaders to prohibiting Burmese exports from entering the United States.

Given the precedent of the U.S. and Britain forcing regime change in Iraq without even a U.N. Security Council mandate, there has been some debate among Burma groups about the idea of a similar intervention in Burma.

While the Chinese government is considered close to Rangoon, nobody expects it to actively enter into a war with the United States to save its ally, unlike in the case of North Korea which is strategically far more important to China.

These are still early days for such speculation and Burmese pro-democracy groups in exile would prefer that the Burmese throw out their dictators on their own. However, they would not mind a strong reaction from the international community to help tell the Burmese that they are not entirely alone in their struggle.

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