Word: shwe
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...gentler side, it was personified by General Khin Nyunt. No one would call him a liberal in the Western sense?he headed the dictatorship's military intelligence service?but diplomats from the outside world considered him more pragmatic and less xenophobic than the country's paramount leader, General Than Shwe. Khin Nyunt steered the country into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997. (Burma is set to chair the regional grouping in 2006.) He succeeded in brokering cease-fires with 17 of Burma's armed, rebellious tribes. And when he was elevated to Prime Minister 14 months...
...release in 2002 from her second stint under house arrest. She was detained again in May 2003?following an attack by government-sponsored goons on her convoy, in which scores of people were reported injured and killed?and is back under house arrest. Last week, Than Shwe replaced Khin Nyunt with Lieut. General Soe Win, a known hard-liner believed to have ordered the brutal attack on Suu Kyi's followers in May. "The removal of Khin Nyunt demonstrates that Than Shwe wasn't interested in 99% of power," says a senior Western diplomat in Bangkok. "He wanted...
...Than Shwe's power play is unlikely to please Burma's neighbors. While the U.S. and many other Western countries have persisted with economic sanctions, Japan, China, India and Thailand have actively pursued a policy of engagement with Burma, encouraging closer economic ties and increased trade in the hope that the generals would gradually ease their grip on society. Khin Nyunt traveled frequently, and appeared to accept that Burma needed to reduce its diplomatic isolation to avoid economic collapse. He was admired abroad for granting regional autonomy to the armed rebel groups that live along Burma's borders with...
...Friday, Than Shwe announced that Khin Nyunt had also been sacked as head of military intelligence and its operations closed down. Several hundred intelligence officers were also detained throughout the country, and businesses under military-intelligence control, including the lucrative black markets on the borders, have been shuttered or taken over by the junta. The power struggle barely registered among average Burmese. Life in Rangoon was normal, except for a slightly higher number of troops on the streets. "Nothing really changed in Burma," says a Western diplomat. "The reforms were only ever cosmetic, and done for an international audience." What...
...hard-liners and moderates, a wishful hypothesis that essentially boils down to two people. The so-called moderate is the ageless, reptilian Khin Nyunt, the newly fashioned "Prime Minister General," who is always conspicuously equipped with a sidearm during official visits, even to kindergartens. His rival is Than Shwe, the top general and archetypal hard-liner. To encourage unity, the Burmese military has always promoted loyalty before brains, and Than Shwe is the result. He is even the thinly disguised butt of a joke in a popular Burmese magazine in which three students are boasting about their uncles. The first...