The major
actors
The tragedy of Burma, whose
land area is about the size of George W. Bush’s Texas, is that its
population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama which has
been scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and
Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset
used to spark “non-violent” regime change around the world on
behalf of the US strategic agenda.
Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,”
like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose
Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent
years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a
well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to
the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of
Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between
protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and
reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of
mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in
Myanmar.
In fact the US State
Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in
Myanmar. The NED is a US Government-funded “private” entity whose
activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives,
doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well the NED
funds Soros’ Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in
Myanmar. In an October 30 2003 Press Release the State Department
admitted, “The United States also supports organizations such as
the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute
and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad
range of democracy promotion activities.” It all sounds very
self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State
Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from
numerous anti-government organizations. It has poured the
relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million
annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar
since at least 2003. The US regime change, its Saffron Revolution,
is being largely run according to informed reports, out of the US
Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There
activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the
USA, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The USA’s
NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New
Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma
radio.
The concert-master of the
tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene
Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution
in Cambridge Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to
foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world.
Sharp’s institute has been active in Burma since 1989, just after
the regime massacred some 3000 protestors to silence the
opposition. CIA special operative and former US Military Attache in
Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations,
introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition there in
non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two
weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.
Why Myanmar
now?
A relevant question is why
the US Government has such a keen interest in fostering regime
change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly
the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human
rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are
sufficient testimony to the fact Washington’s paean to Democacy is
propaganda cover for another agenda.
The question is what would
lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar?
Geopolitical control seems to
be the answer. Control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from
the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar
provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world’s most
strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship
passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Pentagon has been trying
to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument
of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed
to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air
Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments
of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused
US efforts to militarize the region. A glance at a map will confirm
the strategic importance of Myanmar.
The Strait of Malacca,
linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the shortest sea route
between the Persian Gulf and China. It is the key chokepoint in
Asia. More than 80% of all China’s oil imports are shipped by
tankers passing the Malacca Strait. The narrowest point is the
Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, only 1.5 miles wide at
its narrowest. Daily more than 12 million barrels in oil
supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the
world’s fastest-growing energy market, China or to Japan.
If the strait were closed, nearly half of the world's
tanker fleet would be required to sail further. Closure would
immediately raise freight rates worldwide. More than 50,000 vessels
per year transit the Strait of Malacca. The region from Maynmar to
Banda Aceh in Indonesia is fast becoming one of the world’s most
strategic chokepoints. Who controls those waters controls China’s
energy supplies.
That strategic importance of Myanmar has not been lost
on Beijing.
Since it became clear to
China that the US was hell-bent on a unilateral militarization of
the Middle East oil fields in 2003, Beijing has stepped up its
engagement in Myanmar. Chinese energy and military security, not
human rights concerns drive their policy.
In recent years Beijing has
poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Myanmar,
including fighter, ground-attack and transport aircraft; tanks and
armored personnel carriers; naval vessels and surface-to-air
missiles. China has built up Myanmar railroads and roads and won
permission to station its troops in Myanmar. China, according to
Indian defense sources, has also built a large electronic
surveillance facility on Myanmar’s Coco Islands and is building
naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.
In fact Myanmar is an
integral part of what China terms its “string of pearls,” its
strategic design of establishing military bases in Myanmar,
Thailand and Cambodia in order to counter US control over the
Strait of Malacca chokepoint. There is also energy on and offshore
of Myanmar, and lots of it.
The gas fields of
Myanmar
Oil and gas have been
produced in Myanmar since the British set up the Rangoon Oil
Company in 1871, later renamed Burmah Oil Co. The country has
produced natural gas since the 1970’s, and in the 1990’s it granted
gas concessions to the foreign companies ElfTotal of France and
Premier Oil of the UK in the Gulf of Martaban. Later Texaco and
Unocal (now Chevron) won concessions at Yadana and Yetagun as well.
Alone Yadana has an estimated gas reserve of more than 5 trillion
cubic feet with an expected life of at least 30 years. Yetagun is
estimated to have about a third the gas of the Yadana field.
In 2004 a large new gas
field, Shwe field, off the coast of Arakan was discovered.
By 2002 both Texaco and
Premier Oil withdrew from the Yetagun project following UK
government and NGO pressure. Malaysia’s Petronas bought Premier’s
27% stake. By 2004 Myanmar was exporting Yadana gas via pipeline to
Thailand worth annually $1 billion to the Myanmar regime.
In 2005 China, Thailand and
South Korea invested in expanding the Myanmar oil and gas sector,
with export of gas to Thailand rising 50%. Gas export today is
Myanmar’s most important source of income. Yadana was developed
jointly by ElfTotal, Unocal, PTT-EP of Thailand and Myanmar’s state
MOGE, operated by the French ElfTotal. Yadana supplies some 20% of
Thai natural gas needs.
Today the Yetagun field is
operated by Malaysia’s Petronas along with MOGE and Japan’s Nippon
Oil and PTT-EP. The gas is piped onshore where it links to the
Yadana pipeline. Gas from the Shwe field is to come online
beginning 2009. China and India have been in strong contention over
the Shwe gas field reserves.
India loses, China
wins
This past summer Myanmar
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PetroChina to supply
large volumes of natural gas from reserves of the Shwe gasfield in
the Bay of Bengal. The contract runs for 30 years. India was the
main loser. Myanmar had earlier given India a major stake in two
offshore blocks to develop gas to have been transmitted via
pipeline through Bangladesh to India’s energy-hungry economy.
Political bickering between India and Bangladesh brought the Indian
plans to a standstill.
China took advantage of the
stalemate. China simply trumped India with an offer to invest
billions in building a strategic China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline
across Myanmar from Myanmar’s deepwater port at Sittwe in the Bay
of Bengal to Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province, a stretch of more
than 2,300 kilometers. China plans an oil refinery in Kumming as
well.
What the Myanmar-China
pipelines will allow is routing of oil and gas from Africa (Sudan
among other sources) and the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia)
independent of dependence on the vulnerable chokepoint of the
Malacca Strait. Myanmar becomes China’s “bridge” linking Bangladesh
and countries westward to the China mainland independent of any
possible future moves by Washington to control the strait...
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