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.   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.  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.  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.  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.  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