Myanmar: Why do we engage with the machinery of atrocity?

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More than two years after Myanmar's military staged a coup d’etat and plunged the country into a new round of bloody civil war, Australia's policy towards the dictatorship is in the doldrums.

Diplomatic efforts, from the United Nations to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have failed to reach a breakthrough of any kind.

A record of atrocity: the Myanmar military commemorates the nation's 78th Armed Forces Day in March.Credit: AP

The junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), is responding to widespread resistance to the coup with increasing levels of violence against civilians – using air strikes, forced displacement, widespread arson, including over 60,000 houses torched – not seen since the atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in 2017. Thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and more than 17,000 dissidents arrested.

The Myanmar army has kept perpetrating the same playbook of abuses against the people since international human rights groups started documenting them in 1987.

There is no doubt this conflict has fallen off the international media scope, policy consideration, and the global conscience. Australia's Labor government has been notably unmotivated in its Myanmar policy. If Canberra believes the situation is stabilising, it is wrong.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured the release of economist Sean Turnell in November last year, ending the hostage diplomacy of the SAC. On the second anniversary of the coup on February 1, the government imposed sanctions on military officers and two military business entities. But Australia hasn't joined the United States, European Union and Canada in co-ordinating sanctions.

Australia spent a decade engaging with the Myanmar military, both "military to military" and in broader Australian aid to the nationwide peace process and governance reforms. How effective was that relationship?

A parliamentary inquiry could establish what has worked in Australia's approach, what has failed, and what was completely missed. This shouldn't be seen as a human rights investigation into the military. The inquiry should be designed around a key central question: why the persistence of military engagement given so much evidence of institutionalised atrocity? What were the envisaged gains and what progress was made? What is an evidence-based assessment of Australian influence over the military?

An inquiry would create the space not only for the usual assembly of activists and lobbyists but for all the defence attaches posted to Yangon over the past decade, ambassadors, key diplomats, aid workers, academics and specialists on the Myanmar military and how it acts, not only at an elite level in a workshop but during counter-insurgency operations.

One of the most ardent early exponents of engagement was Professor John Blaxland of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU, drawn from his experience as Australian defence attache to Thailand and Myanmar. A dedicated attache to Myanmar was resumed in 2013, the first since 1979.

Canberra included Myanmar in the Defence Co-operation Program with modest funding ($288,000 until 2017). From 2017 the military support included, somewhat incongruously, peacekeeping training and was estimated at $398,000.

The project continued, with more funding, and was defended by the Turnbull government and Professor Blaxland, even after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from August 2017. Some sanctions on Myanmar officers were introduced in October 2018. The program was suspended several weeks after the coup in March 2021.

A coup d’etat after a decade of democratic transition usually signals the end of that transition. How committed was the military to change? Professor Blaxland's proposals for engagement were all logical, constructive and, above all, principled. There is just little evidence they had the purported effect.

The Australian Federal Police will argue that maintaining ties with the Myanmar Police Force and military will preserve important intelligence links on transnational crime, especially narcotics trafficking. The massive growth in crystal methamphetamine production in Myanmar, operated by transnational criminal networks but under the protection of Myanmar army auxiliary militias, has made Australia a major end-user destination.

The aftermath of an airstrike in Pazigyi village that may have killed more than 100 people.Credit: AP

AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw claims 19 tonnes of illicit drugs were intercepted offshore until May in this financial year, which could have caused $5.7 billion of damage to Australian lives and property.

In recent Senate Estimate hearings, the AFP claimed to have exchanged with Myanmar security forces 296 pieces of narcotics trade intelligence.

A parliamentary investigation should encompass not only direct military-to-military engagement since 2010, but broader peace support, anti-drugs co-operation, and all forms of direct interaction with the Myanmar security establishment.

This is important not only to determine the strengths and failings, but to serve as a foundation for future engagement with the military when the time is right. An ancillary benefit would be to inform engagement efforts by ASEAN members, almost all of which have maintained military engagement and broader diplomatic efforts.

There must also be a financial component to any inquiry. The research group Justice for Myanmar released documents in late 2021 showing the Australian Future Fund continuing to invest $157 million in Myanmar military-linked companies. Options for further sanctions that target the Myanmar military and arms supplies must be included.

An inquiry won't end the atrocities in Myanmar. But it can reveal to the Australian public the extent of support for the military, and what it achieved. This places Australia on a firmer footing of contributing to Myanmar's future peace, liberated from this abusive institution.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict in Myanmar.