From 19-21 August, Aung San Suu Kyi convened in Naypyidaw alongside army chief Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and representatives of ten ethnic armed groups for Myanmar’s fourth Union Peace Conference. The event – initially scheduled for April but pushed-back amid the COVID19 pandemic – marked the latest effort to revive the Panglong peace initiative, tasked with ending 70 years of conflict in Myanmar’s border regions.

The delayed summit – which took place after two years of frozen negotiations – offered a final chance for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) to claim that progress had been made in resolving ethnic strife – a key policy objective – since it came to power in October 2015. With the next general election set for November, does Naypyidaw’s positive rhetoric after the latest Panglong meeting stand up to scrutiny?

Myanmar’s Panglong Initiative

The 21^st Century Panglong initiative takes its name from a peace agreement signed in 1947 by Myanmar’s independence hero, and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San, promising autonomy for ethnic minorities.

The concept was revived after a dialogue process was initiated by the former military regime of Thein Sein in 2011, which resulted in the signing of a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with eight ethnic armies in October 2015. The NLD secured a landslide election win the following month, joining the army in power.

Upon assuming power, the NLD government pledged to hold a Union Peace Conference every six months, yet only four have been held during its five-year term. Progress has been slower than hoped, and only two additional ethnic armies have joined the accord since 2015, raising the total number of signatories to ten.

The process stalled in mid-2018, after the third summit was held. Yet informal talks gathered pace in early-2020 and the fourth summit was planned for April, before being moved to August due to the pandemic.

FPNCC alliance refuses to attend

The build-up to the rearranged conference was beset by problems. Organizers had hoped to persuade six non-signatory armed groups, all members of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC), to attend as observers. Yet they refused to attend after a seventh member of the FPNCC alliance, the Arakan Army (AA), was snubbed after being declared a ‘terrorist organization’ by Naypyidaw in March.

The FPNCC announced its members would not attend just six days before the summit began, after meeting on 13 August at the headquarters of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in Panghsang. The 30,000-strong UWSA is Myanmar’s most powerful and best-equipped armed group, while the alliance also contains the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and several other groups operating out of Shan state along the border with China.

Despite this setback, the Union Peace Conference went ahead as planned. Owing to COVID19 restrictions, the meeting took place over three days instead of the usual five, while delegates were limited to just 230. No major decisions were at stake, but negotiators looked to add to 51 previously-agreed basic principles with the aim of setting-the-stage for post-2020 dialogue and charting a path to forge a democratic federal union encompassing all ethnic nationalities; the envisioned end point of the NCA-centred Panglong talks.

What did the summit achieve?

The conference went smoothly. In all, 20 new principles were adopted, mostly related to implementation of the NCA and ambitions for future dialogue. In her closing remarks, Aung San Suu Kyi hailed ‘a new plan for building a democratic federal union beyond 2020’, adding that discussions were back-on-track and had ‘more substance’ than previous years. A senior military delegate, Lieut. Gen. Yar Pyae, praised the process for ‘reducing mistrust that has been deep-rooted on both sides’, and urged groups to stick with the NCA.

Among the new principles, it was agreed that the future federal system would be based on power-sharing between the Union and states. However, talks on allowing states to draft separate constitutions faltered amid a dispute over wording. Even among agreements inked, the language used was vague. For example, the forging of a single ‘union identity’ which respects the histories, traditions and cultures of minorities is open to interpretation, and minorities will likely be skeptical given their past treatment by the Bamar elite.

Aung San Suu Kyi strives to make a collective identity central to future talks, whilst presidential spokesman Zaw Htay recently voiced the need for a careful step-by-step process toward ‘national reconciliation’. Yet such inclusive language seems hollow given the mistreatment of Rohingya Muslims; denied citizenship for decades and forced to flee to Bangladesh after repeated army crackdowns since 2017. If talks go awry and violence ensues, other ethnic minorities fear the same scorched-earth tactics could be applied to them.

Longer-term barriers to peace

Many of the principles decided so-far are procedural, laying out approximate positions. Turning these into a final text, agreeable to all parties, will be difficult due to the scale and complexity of Myanmar’s conflicts.

Implementing a federal structure and drafting state constitutions may be relatively simple in states where just one or two armed groups are the dominant actors, such as in the southern states of Kayah, Kayin and Mon. In the larger Shan state to the north, home to multiple ethnic armies, often in competition with each other, such an outcome may be unworkable. This reflects a broader geographical divide in the peace talks.

The majority of the ten NCA signatories are based in Myanmar’s southern conflict zones where fighting is at a low level. The groups here are small and poorly-armed, accounting for less than 20% of rebel fighters in the country. The formation of a democratic federal union would likely boost the power of these groups, thus making it attractive for them to reach some kind of devolved settlement with the government.

In contrast, Myanmar’s northeastern conflict zones of Shan and Kachin are home to well-resourced ethnic armies, outside of the NCA process. Several groups, including the UWSA, already run their own relatively prosperous self-administered zones, while others control territories in which they are the main economic and security actor. If they join the NCA and accept state-based autonomy, they may stand to lose-out. 

Even before weighing-up such outcomes, the nature of the peace process itself is unpredictable in a nation where a broader civilian-military power contest still has a long way to run. The NLD has failed in its efforts to revise the 2008 constitution, which affords sweeping political powers to the Tatmadaw, via parliament. Aung San Suu Kyi suggested in her opening speech at August’s Panglong event that the constitution might yet need to be ‘amended’ to facilitate any future agreement that emerges out of the peace process.

In an apparent rebuttal, military chief Gen. Min Aung Hlaing warned-off approaching the peace talks with ‘ulterior motives’ and stated the NCA must be solely focused on Myanmar’s ‘national interests’. For now, the NLD and Tatmadaw have achieved a workable balance. Aung San Suu Kyi is satisfied with compromise and political maneuvering, rather than seeking radical reform. In the current system, 25% of parliamentary seats are reserved for the Tatmadaw, while it controls the defence and home affairs ministries. Aung San Suu Kyi meanwhile wields strong influence as State Counsellor and the NLD has remained broadly popular.

Whatever the outcome of November’s election, the quasi-civilian structure is likely to remain in place; yet the lingering potential of future political upheaval could derail or shift the direction of the Panglong talks.

A ‘one size fits all’ solution?

The central impediment to the Panglong process remains that Myanmar has so many active armed groups, each with distinct ambitions and varied levels of power, resources and degrees of leverage for bargaining. The peace process is already split in half: between the weaker signatories, and stronger non-signatories.

Yet even if more ethnic armies were to sign the NCA and partake in Union-level talks, division in non-state alliances, some with more to lose than others, may be inevitable as more contentious issues are discussed. The imagined end point, a democratic federal union, might not be enough to satisfy the strongest groups.

Yet what is the alternative? Bilateral talks between the government and non-signatories remain a possible path forward; yet at present, Naypyidaw insists such discussions would only be a pre-cursor to joining the NCA. After November’s election, giving the Panglong initiative another chance appears the safest option.

A version of this article was first published on Geopolitical Monitor.