How To Steal A Country By Saneitha Nagani We Burmese, when we pray we prayed that we would be protected from calamities such

as natural disasters, forest fires, storms, tsunami; we prayed that we would be protected from evil government, thieves, in-humans and so on. Unfortunately, for us when we are not only ruled by an illegitimate and evil government, but also ruled by a government that is comprised of thieves and inhumane military thugs we should be thankful that we still exist as a nation. I was inspired to write this article after reading what Samantha Power wrote about Zimbabwe, How To Kill A Country. Like Burma was once a wealthy country in Asia, Zimbabwe was one of the southern African most prosperous countries. If Zimbabwe was the jewel of Africa, Burma was also the rice bowl of Asia. Now both of them are basket cases and begging bowls of their respective continents. Sad, isnt it? The white farmers of Zimbabwe expected the Good old Bob (thats how white farmers came to call Robert Mugabe) to keep the jewel of Africa as he has inherited from Ian Smith. U Ne Win took over state power by a military coup in 1962 making the excuse that the military Revolutionary Council would not let the Union disintegrate. He did not make the promise that he will make the country into a basket case. He promised us a socialist heaven on earth though, always reminding us that it was what our independence hero and the founder of the military wanted to take the country. However, like all those social experiment carried out by all dictators which cause immense human devastation, we did not even get half way to that heaven. According to Samantha Power Robert Mugabes actions which, deteriorated Zimbabwe from a breadbasket of Africa into the continents basket case, could be compiled something of a how-to manual for the destruction of a country. Ne Wins Burmas way to socialism and Than Shwes sevenstep road map to democracy do not fall that far behind Mugabes manual either. They are text book case on how one lunatic can brought about untold misery to millions in a short time. It reminded me of the joke that my friends and I make putting captions on the photos of Burmese and Japanese Prime Ministers in the newspapers. It goes like this; when U Maung Maung Kha, the then Prime Minister of Burma met Tanaka, the Prime Minister of Japan he was told by the Japanese Prime Minister that give him three years he could turned Burma into the stage where Japan was then. Not wanting to be outdone by his counterpart, the Burmese Prime Minister told Tanaka that, Give me three years and Ill turn Japan back to the Stone Age. Too bad for Al Qaeda and fortunate for the rest of the world, their leaders were not as much a destructionists as whom we have in Zimbabwe and Burma. While Robert Mugabe hid behind his fast-track land reform to steal white owned farms, Ne Wins socialist regime hid behind nationalising of land in Burma and deprived the former landowners of their land and the farm workers of their right to own land they worked on for their livelihood. Mugabe and his cronies are the only people who benefited from his fast-track land reform. With the help of formerly landless peasants white owned farms were raided and taken then the peasants themselves expelled. In Burma, Ne Win in the name of socialism and in the name of the peasants, who were the majority of the population naively, believed that they could freely work on the nationalised land. In the end those land and other state-owned properties were taken by Senior General Than Shwe and his cronies, in the name of privatisation. If some states are being blessed by their geo-strategic location, Burma sandwiched between China in the east and India in the west cannot say that it is the case. Hans Morgenthau said that, Political realism does not require nor does not condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible - between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place. Even though we might want China and India to be our good neighbours, it is only natural that they have to put their countries interest first.

The thirst and hunger for energy of China and India in their drive to develop their economies with double digit growth will make Burma, with the military leaders who put their pockets and their well being ahead of the country, became an ideal subject for exploitation. India, as the largest democratic country on earth, would have wanted to help promote the democratic cause in Burma. Not possible though, its thirst for energy and Burmas gas deposit in the Bay of Bengal and access to port facilities there proves too much to lose by being moral in her conduct towards Burma. China too has her desirable and the possible when it comes to Burma. Chinas main concern is its oil shipment from the Middle East and the gulf region having the need to pass through the narrow straits of Malacca being blocked. Another concern being that if Burma falls into the influence of the West it could easily fall into complete encirclement. That will be too much a price to pay for being a good neighbour of Burma or a responsible global power. Globalisation has been a game changer for free trade, open market, free flow of labour and services in the twenty-first century. Just as colonisation and philandering have been the methods of exploitation of the weak by the strong in the name of global trade. For example, Elihu Yale, a man who made enormous fortune in private trade could become the founder of Yale College, later to become Yale University. It seems that wealth alone could somehow washed away the wrong doings of the past, wouldnt they? One thing the world should never failed to do is to make sure that there is no proliferation of genes from either Zimbabwes Mugabe or Burmas Than Shwe; nor that the genes of these people are allowed to mutate with either Libyas Gadhafi or Syrias Assad so that the future of mankind is safe. END