Thai ties bind Myanmar cyclone relief

By Brian McCartan CHIANG MAI, Thailand - As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bids to play a front-line role in the relief efforts in cyclone-hit Myanmar, members' respective bilateral policies towards the military regime promise to complicate and potentially undermine a collective and coherent group response.

Nowhere is that more clear than with Thailand, which has long maintained strong commercial ties with Myanmar's military government. Bangkok was notably the first capital to order the shipment relief supplies just days after the disaster first struck on May 2 and 3. Bangkok is now serving as willing host to a logistics

center for the United Nations and international humanitarian aid agencies responding to the cyclone.

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon's request on May 19 to use Bangkok's former Don Muang international airport as a logistical hub for relief efforts was readily agreed to by the Thai government, although use had already begun a day earlier. Airport hangars have been provided to the UN's World Food Program to store supplies set for shipment to Myanmar, while the United States has used the large military airfield at U Tapao for its relief flights into Yangon.

Relief supplies are also being sent in convoys from the Thai border town of Mae Sot, sometimes in Thai Army trucks, and earlier this week a Thai medical team was the first foreign emergency team to gain access to the country. They have even been allowed to work in the Irrawaddy Delta region, the worst-hit area to which the junta has restricted foreign aid worker access.

Thailand has served as interlocutor between Myanmar's government and the UN and US to persuade the ruling junta to open its doors to international relief efforts. The reclusive government had earlier refused to allow in Western aid and still has not allowed Western aid workers into the disaster hit areas. While the Thai Air Force was able to broker a deal to let US Air Force relief flights in, other efforts have not been as successful.

But even while sending emergency supplies, providing support for relief efforts and acting as a liaison between the reclusive generals and the outside world, Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundarvej's government has simultaneously been busy cementing business deals and drawing up policies that threaten a harder line against the various exile opposition groups based in Thailand.

Samak eventually traveled to Myanmar on May 14, in a diplomatic bid to gain wider access for relief aid. During the visit, Myanmar state-run television showed clips of Samak being led around relief centers outside Yangon filled with blue tents, where he greeted refugees, checked out relief supplies and even watched television and joked with refugee children.

These spic-and-span camps have since been derided by opposition groups and critics of the junta's relief efforts as show pieces, while the great majority of the estimated two million people affected by the cyclone fight for their lives amid insufficient shelter, food and medicine. The World Food Program has estimated that only 30% of those affected by the disaster have been reached with any relief supplies.

Amid reports of theft of aid supplies, movement restrictions, and a general official neglect, Samak surprised many with his appraisal of the junta's relief efforts when he said on May 14 that "from what I have seen I am impressed with their management". He went on to say that the generals had given him a "guarantee" that there had been no outbreaks of disease or any starvation among cyclone survivors.

He notably failed to gain more access to disaster areas for the UN and other international relief organizations and said he was satisfied that the junta "have their own team to cope with the situation" and did not need foreign experts. Samak's counterintuitive remarks are hardly surprising given the commercial results of his previous trip to Myanmar in March 14 and a reciprocal official visit by Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein to Thailand on April 29, just days before the cyclone hit.

During his visit in March, Samak controversially agreed to disperse the remaining funds from a 4 billion baht ($125 million) EX-IM Bank of Thailand soft loan for communications equipment first initiated by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government. Thaksin is currently under investigation for alleged irregularities surrounding the government-to-government loan, which critics have said benefited his then family-owned company, the Shin Corporation.

The two governments also agreed to move ahead with the controversial Ta Sang dam project on the Salween River. Human rights and environmental organizations allege widespread abuses have clouded the project's development. Other infrastructure projects were also agreed, including the development of a deep sea port at Tavoy on the Andaman Sea in the Tenasserim Division of southeastern Myanmar.

During the April meeting, the port was further discussed as were agreements for Thai-invested contract farming of rubber and palm oil plantations in Myanmar. Thein Sein announced that around 100,000 rai (16 hectare) near Tavoy would be set aside as an industrial zone for energy related industries including petrochemicals and refineries.

Thailand is currently Myanmar's third-largest trading partner and largest energy importer and as of 2007 had paid-up investments of US$1.3 billion in the neighboring country, according to statistics from Thai Foreign Trade Department. Some contend, however, that those budding commercial deals have compromised Thailand's ability to play the role of honest broker between the junta and outside world in the wake of the cyclone crisis.

While on one hand playing an active role in providing relief to cyclone survivors, on the other Bangkok has made almost no public statements denouncing the regime's widely condemned, including by the UN and US, closed-door approach to accepting international aid and foreign relief workers. Instead, Samak's government took the rather tactless opportunity of an emergency cyclone-related meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the military regime for the Tavoy port and a separate road link project. The MoU was signed on May 19 by Thai foreign minister Noppadon Pattama and his Myanmar counterpart Nyan Win.

The big-ticket infrastructure project envisions expanding the current port at Tavoy and building a road linking it with Thailand's main port Laem Chabang outside of Bangkok. The expanded port will be able to accommodate larger vessels and cut days off the travel time of current shipments which must navigate around the Malay peninsula. Thai Transportation Minister Santi Prompat has said the port project will cost between 40 and 50 billion baht ($1.2-1.6 billion) and that another 100 billion baht ($3.1 billion) will be invested to develop the industrial zone.

According to the minister, PTT Plc, the Thai oil company has expressed interest in setting up an oil refinery in Myanmar and the construction of a pipeline to pump oil products to Thailand. Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama says the project will take five to six years to complete, while a construction survey is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Once built, Pattama said private Thai firms will be granted a concession to manage the port on an initial five year extendable contract.

The MoU also covers the construction of a 130-kilometer road to connect Myanmar's Tenasserim Division with and Thailand's western Kanchanburi province.

The cyclone may have by default brought a temporary reprieve for Myanmar's ethnic and political opposition groups, refugees, internally displaced persons and the nongovernmental organizations which assist them, while the junta redirects its military focus on maintaining stability in cyclone-hit areas. That could change soon, however, if reports hold true that Samak agreed to Thein Sein to step up monitoring of opposition groups active in Thailand in exchange for closer commercial ties.

According to people familiar with the policy shift, Thai authorities will be tasked with cracking down on the insurgent Karen National Union, which operates in remote border areas. Meanwhile known political opposition group leaders are to be closely monitored and their movements severely restricted.

Exile-run media groups long based in Thailand would also be monitored to determine whether their coverage was harmful to relations between the two countries. Cross-border movements would also be severely curtailed under the new hard-line policy, including the flow of food, medicine and other supplies sent by local and international relief organizations to villagers displaced by the ongoing armed conflict between the junta and rebel groups.

With the huge international attention now drawn to Myanmar and the region in the wake of the cyclone, the policy has not yet come into force. Already a planned forced repatriation of newly arrived Karen refugees in Thailand's Mae Hong Son province was averted by the UNHCR, who alerted the Thai government to the likely bad press coverage that would result if it forced back refugees during a time of crisis. Several NGO workers noted, however, that this could all change once attention shifts elsewhere, which is already starting to happen with the earthquake disaster in China.

Thailand's Myanmar policy will certainly benefit from ASEAN's now assumed front-line role in dealing with the cyclone disaster. Each ASEAN member has agreed to provide 30 medical personnel, of which the Thai medical team was the first to arrive. The UN, however, says this international response is still not enough to stave off disease outbreaks and that the country's doors need to be opened to all foreign experts to avert a wider humanitarian crisis.

Critics say ASEAN's intervention will only allow Myanmar's military regime to hide behind the group's long held non-interference policy in member states' internal affairs. Myanmar's intransigence has in the past tried the 10-member group's patience, but with this recent agreement ASEAN has once again provided Myanmar a buffer from international criticism.

That's clearly the preference of Thailand and a benefit to Bangkok's business interests.

Brian McCartan is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.
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