[Kabar-indonesia] WSJ: Military Thais [incl: Indonesia] (+IHT: Myanmar's Familiar Dance)

[Joyo at aol.com]

also: IHT: In Myanmar, a military regime's familiar dance

excerpt from WSJ: Inviting foreign army officers to train in American 
military academies doesn't automatically transform them into democrats, 
as last month's coup shows. But it does expose them to democratic 
values that can change how such officers look at the world. Take, for 
instance, retired Lt. Gen. Junus Jusfiah, who became Indonesia's minister 
of information in 1999 shortly after the end of Suharto's three decades
of authoritarian rule. Citing his experience of the virtues of press
freedom while studying at the U.S. Army Command and General 
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Gen. Jusfiah swiftly 
ended press censorship in Indonesia. Cutting Bangkok out of the 
IMET program only makes it more difficult to educate future 
generations of Thai army officers in such values.

The Wall Street Journal Asia
Monday, October 9, 2006

Commentary

Military Thais

By John Haseman and Eduardo Lachica

There has to be a better way. In trying to nudge a power-grabbing
military back to the barracks, the U.S. has opted to freeze most forms
of assistance to the Thai armed forces. That undermines America's
ability to work with a crucial ally in the war on terror. And it risks
backfiring by halting Thai participation in programs that promote
democratic values and professionalism.

Altogether, Washington has frozen nearly $24 million in assistance to
the Thai military since the Sept. 19 coup. U.S. military training of
Thais in how to fight terrorism has been put on hold, as well as
financial and technial assistance in purchasing American weaponry. So
too has a program to prepare Thai soldiers for peacekeeping operations
in conflict zones overseas.

That's just the start. The Pentagon is currently considering if next
year's Cobra Gold multilateral exercise should go ahead in the light
of the coup. This is the U.S. Pacific Command's signature event, which
brings together more than 20,000 American and Thai personnel and
participants from other Asian countries for joint annual maneuvers.
Putting this showpiece event on hold would raise doubts about the U.S.
commitment toward regional security at a time of rising regional
tensions.

Equally serious is the suspension of Thai participation in the
International Military Education and Training program. By bringing
some of Thailand's best and brightest officers to the U.S. for short
spells of training at top military schools, IMET has created soldierly
bonds between the two militaries that can prove vital in the event of
a crisis.

That was evident after the December 2004 tsunami, when the armed
forces of both countries worked closely together in providing disaster
relief. And it didn't hurt, in seeking to understand the motives of
the coup leaders, that several had trained in the U.S. For instance,
Gen. Boonsrang Niampradith, who last week took over as supreme
commander of the Thai armed forces, is a West Point graduate. And the
coup's leader, Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, also had U.S. military
training.

Inviting foreign army officers to train in American military academies
doesn't automatically transform them into democrats, as last month's
coup shows. But it does expose them to democratic values that can
change how such officers look at the world. Take, for instance,
retired Lt. Gen. Junus Jusfiah, who became Indonesia's minister of
information in 1999 shortly after the end of Suharto's three decades
of authoritarian rule. Citing his experience of the virtues of press
freedom while studying at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff
College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Gen. Jusfiah swiftly ended
press censorship in Indonesia. Cutting Bangkok out of the IMET program
only makes it more difficult to educate future generations of Thai
army officers in such values.

The problem is that the Bush administration is boxed in by Section 508
of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act -- a Democrat-sponsored
provision introduced in 1984 amidst a heated debate over the Reagan
administration's request for increased military aid to El Salvador.
The provision requires the suspension of such assistance to any
government whose duly-elected leader is overthrown by a military coup
or decree. This lasts until the U.S. president certifies there has
been a return to democratic rule.

Whatever its intentions, the inflexibility of such congressionally
mandated provisions can be disastrous to U.S. national interests.
We've seen this happen before in Indonesia, where similar restrictions
forced Washington to cut back military assistance to Indonesia in the
aftermath of military-sponsored violence in East Timor in 1991.
Further restrictions followed as a result of the bloodshed that marred
the province's bid for independence in 1999. The result was more than
a decade in which U.S. influence with the Indonesian military was
almost nonexistent, and the opportunity was lost to motivate an entire
generation of Indonesian officers.

It took the 2004 tsunami to jolt Washington into resuming normal
military ties with Indonesia. After that, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice finally waived congressional sanctions, allowing a
resumption of the IMET and military-financing programs. Indonesia has
since made further progress toward democracy and reforming its armed
forces under the leadership of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
also a graduate of the IMET program.

The consequences in Thailand could be equally serious. Like Indonesia,
it is on the front-line in the war on terror, with al Qaeda operatives
active in the country. To an observer unschooled in Washington's
lawyerly complexity, it seems absurd to take counterterrorism funds
away from a country that bagged Southeast Asia's most notorious
terrorist, Hambali, and handed him over to the U.S.

Waiving congressionally mandated sanctions against Thailand would be a
controversial step so soon after the coup. Some in Washington worry it
would send the wrong message to the armed forces in other democracies
like the Philippines, where there has also been repeated speculation
about a possible coup.

The administration has sought to minimize the effects of the sanctions
by allowing programs not covered by Section 508 to continue. These
include $9.77 million in civilian counterterrorism training programs
that are not conducted by the U.S. military, and other forms of
security and humanitarian assistance. The International Law
Enforcement Academy in Bangkok -- one of four such U.S.-supported
institutes around the world -- is also unaffected by the suspension,
and will continue to train Thai and other Asian law enforcers.

More could be done. The most pressing is a decision to allow Cobra
Gold to go ahead as planned. In addition, the sanctions, announced on
Sept. 28, so far only affect funds for the 2006 fiscal year. The U.S.
Congress now has to decide on funding for these programs for the 2007
fiscal year, and that provides an opportunity for a thorough review of
the damage done by applying Section 508 too rigidly.

What is needed is a more flexible approach that allows the
administration to take into account other vital national interests,
such as Thailand's cooperation in the war on terror. There have been
precedents. During the Cold War, the U.S. didn't cut off military
assistance to Thailand despite numerous coups because the kingdom was
a vital bulwark in the battle against communism.

No one is talking about condoning the Sept. 19 coup. But cutting
America's contacts with the Thai military is hardly the best way to
promote an early return to democracy.

Mr. Haseman is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served more than 
11 years in Jakarta and Bangkok. Mr. Lachica is a former staff member 
of The Wall Street Journal.

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International Herald Tribune
October 8, 2006

In Myanmar, a military regime's familiar dance

By Seth Mydans International Herald Tribune

BANGKOK -- This is a moment of bold gestures from the generals who
rule Myanmar and from their critics in the United States, but the
gestures only underscore the state of suspended animation that has
engulfed that broken country.

In Myanmar this week, the generals are reconvening a seemingly endless
convention that has been working, on and off, for 13 years to draw up
a constitution. They are starting up the engines, they say, on their
"road map to democracy."

In New York, the United States succeeded in September, after months of
lobbying, in placing Myanmar's human- rights record on the agenda of
the United Nations Security Council. American diplomats call Myanmar a
"threat to international peace and security."

The claims by Myanmar and America should not be taken literally. A
consensus among experts on Myanmar's years of stagnation and
repression is that the isolated Southeast Asian nation is neither
heading toward democracy nor threatening world peace.

"Things may be happening," said David Steinberg, a professor at
Georgetown University who is a leading expert on Myanmar, "but I don't
think much is really happening."

Instead, the nation once known as Burma is staying pretty much where
it has been since the military quashed a pro-democracy uprising by
force in 1988 - one of the poorest and most repressed nations in Asia.

Its rulers feint and promise and hunker down. Its critics recite its
transgressions and impose economic sanctions. Very little changes.

It has become a familiar dance of arrests, releases and re-arrests; of
the opening and closing of diplomatic doors; and of broken promises to
free the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest,
where she has spent 11 of the past 17 years.

Myanmar's official press reported this weekend that the first of 1,000
delegates had begun to gather from around the country for the opening
of the convention Tuesday after an eight-month hiatus.

It is part of a process that would eventually put a civilian face on
military rule, but not, according to experts, mean any change in power
or lead necessarily to any relaxation of repressive measures or easing
of human rights abuses.

The draft constitution, as presented online, contains several clauses
that ensure continued control by the military, requiring the president
to have 15 years of military service, allowing the military to declare
a state of emergency and placing its budget outside civilian control.

One third of parliamentary seats would be reserved as a bloc for
active members of the armed forces.

"The National Convention, as you know, is heavily scripted," Steinberg
said. "The government will get whatever it wants, it will finish
whenever it wants to and at some point in the future they'll hold a
referendum that they'll win and an election which they'll also win and
the military will still be in control."

Or as some exiles from Myanmar like to say, "General elections means
elections of generals."

The military has a grip on power that nothing seems to shake. It has
controlled Myanmar since 1962, closing itself off from the outside
world and killing thousands of people when it crushed the democracy
uprising in 1988.

When it suffered an overwhelming loss to Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the
National League for Democracy, in elections in 1990, it ignored the
results and stayed in control.

Instead, it organized the constitutional convention in 1993 as a
gesture toward forming a civilian government. It was not long before
delegates representing the National League for Democracy walked out of
the convention, calling it a sham.

In response to this political manipulation and to abuses of human
rights, the United States has led escalating international economic
sanctions that have deepened Myanmar's self-imposed isolation.

Washington halted new investments in 1997 and imposed bans on
financial transactions and imports in 2003. Officials tied to the
military junta have been denied visas to the United States.

Myanmar's neighbors in Southeast Asia have taken an opposite tack,
trying gently to influence the junta through a policy of friendly
"noninterference," until their patience ran out last year.

Through it all, the generals have hardly moved.

"I don't think practically it is easy for an outsider to cause Myanmar
to change a political system," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of
Singapore said last month. "In the case of Myanmar, they want to close
themselves off from the world. So if you impose sanctions on them,
they say 'Thank you very much, I am very happy to live by myself.'"

If and when change does come, Steinberg said, it is likely to come
from within the military, which holds a monopoly on power and controls
all institutions.

The hope in exerting international pressure, analysts said, is that it
might accelerate any internal dynamic for change within the armed
forces.

And so the inclusion of Myanmar on the agenda of the security council
might be seen as what some countries call a "noise barrage," a public
outcry that can force a reaction by those in power.

The move allows the United States and others to air their criticisms
at the highest level, but it is unlikely that the council will take
concrete action.

Myanmar has a powerful patron and shield in its neighbor China, which,
with Russia and India, have provided the trade and assistance that
have insulated it from international sanctions and criticisms.

America's UN ambassador, John Bolton, has argued that drug
trafficking, a flood of refugees, human-rights abuses and the spread
of HIV have made Myanmar a threat to international peace.

He cited a UN report that 1,147 political prisoners were being held,
that 240 villages of minorities had been destroyed in the past four
years, that AIDS cases and drug trafficking were widespread, and that
UN agencies were assisting 140,000 refugees along the border with
Thailand.

A series of high-profile political arrests in the past two weeks has
coincided with the opening of the national congress and with the
American actions at the United Nations.

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, said that
it was "preposterous" to claim that any of this posed a threat to
international peace and security.

"To force the Security Council intervention is not only inappropriate
but will further complicate the situation," he said.

The Myanmar foreign minister, Nyan Win, protested that his country was
the one being threatened. The United Nations, he said, is no place for
big and powerful countries to "gang up against a member state."

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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