It’s been nearly a month since a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar, killing over 3,700 people and injuring thousands more. The military junta has announced it will extend its ceasefire after meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Bangkok for rare backroom talks with ASEAN. Is this disaster a brief window for peace and cooperation—or does the humanitarian response risk becoming another front in Myanmar’s civil war? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Moe Thuzar, Senior Fellow at ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. She’s also the Coordinator of its Myanmar Studies Programme.
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00:00Hi, welcome back to Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris. Let's continue our discussion about the
00:24Myanmar crisis almost a month after that devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck on March 28th
00:33and the following aftershocks. Now, could the aftermath of the earthquake shift the balance
00:41of Myanmar's civil war? Joining me on the show to discuss this further is Mo Thuzar, who is a senior
00:47fellow at the ICS Youth of Asia Institute in Singapore. She's also the coordinator of its Myanmar
00:51Studies program and prior to joining ICS, she spent close to 10 years at the ASEAN Secretariat. Mo,
01:00welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining me. Can you begin by sharing how you see or to what
01:06extent you see the March 28th earthquake? Whether that has reshaped Myanmar's internal conflict? Has
01:14it created any significant shifts in dynamics between the military regime and resistance forces?
01:23Thanks for having me back on the show, Melissa. It's always good to continue the conversation,
01:28albeit it's a very sad, tragic topic that we're talking about, of course. And at the outset,
01:35may I also just express my sympathy and condolences to all the people and communities in Myanmar who
01:42have suffered from yet another tragedy adding to the staggering toll that they've been going through
01:49since 2021 and the coup. Your question is really interesting about the extent to which this recent
01:57earthquake has or has the potential to reshape the internal conflict raging on in Myanmar. I think at this
02:08point, it's maybe a bit hard for me to see how the dynamics might change. And why I say this is because
02:17the earthquake hit areas are mainly in, you know, in central Myanmar, those areas are the Mandalay region,
02:26Zagayan region, and the Nibida Federal Territory. And these are areas that are largely under the
02:33military regime, the State Administration Council or the SAC as acronym. These are areas under the SAC's
02:41administrative control. So, of course, we do see that some of the smaller towns in the earthquake hit
02:50region may have what you might call weakened governance or administrative assertion from the center,
03:00from Nibida. And they might also be in those areas, you know, those smaller towns and so on. They might
03:07also be in those areas where the resistance against the military are also contesting the military's reach
03:16and assertion. So, I think those dynamics are there. And what we've seen, of course, is that the Myanmar
03:24military, the SAC has tried to take advantage of the various ceasefires that were announced for humanitarian
03:33reasons after the earthquake, and also taking advantage of earlier brokered ceasefires with some of the
03:40ethnic armed organizations to try and renegotiate some terms to either regain or resume territorial and
03:50administrative control in some parts of Northern Shan State. So, these are all happening while, of course,
03:57the focus of the region and the world at large would be on the aftermath of the earthquake. So,
04:04we're trying to just look at all of these shifting dynamics. Okay. Well, the International Red Cross
04:11said that the ceasefire has really helped them in terms of distributing aid to the hardest hit areas.
04:18Talk to me about the ceasefire. How genuine is it? Is it likely to hold? How fragile are we thinking?
04:24Because the military regime has extended the post-earthquake truce till the end of the month,
04:30if I'm not mistaken. How do we think about this ceasefire? That's a really interesting and important
04:38question, Melissa, because there have been earlier attempts at different types of ceasefire with
04:46different ethnic armed groups since the coup. And what's different, of course, is this current ceasefire
04:55is for humanitarian reasons. And I think the kind of attention and even pressure, if I could use that
05:03word, from various ASEAN members, particularly current ASEAN Chair Malaysia, of course, really pushing for
05:11extending the ceasefire so that humanitarian access could, you know, humanitarian assistance could be
05:18reached, could reach the communities that really need them. And for whoever wishes to deliver and
05:26provide humanitarian assistance, including medical support and relief, of course, reaches and accesses
05:32those areas. I think that's the main concern. And here, of course, if we are looking at it under the ASEAN
05:40framework, there are these intergovernmental concerns about, you know, the country that needs the assistance,
05:49has to request for it. And even if assistance is offered, say, by regional neighbors,
05:55it has to be something that that assistance, once it reaches the ground in Myanmar, needs to be a kind of like
06:04coordinated or, you know, delivery needs to be coordinated by the requesting party. So in this case, the requesting
06:11party is the State Administration Council, the military regime. And that brings into question of how much needed
06:19assistance reaches the communities that are in need. What is the priority? What is the triage?
06:25Because, of course, we have visible destruction in places like Nebidaw, the capital. But, you know,
06:32the epicenter is in areas like in Zagai, which I understand is where the Malaysian humanitarian teams
06:40really tried very hard to negotiate access too. So I think, despite all these, you know, the complexities of
06:47getting access and reaching communities in need, what we're also seeing, you mentioned the ceasefire.
06:54Despite ceasefire announcements, even after extending them, we've also seen the SAC continuing with
07:03airstrikes in several areas, including the peripheral parts of central Myanmar, which is where the
07:09earthquake struck. And up to mid-April, of course, they are continuing ongoing monitoring,
07:15but up to mid-April, those that were really monitoring the incidents of the airstrikes were
07:19reporting that there have been over 20. And so this is something, you know, this raises,
07:24I think for researchers like myself, this raises more questions about how the military regime
07:29actually interprets its ceasefire announcements, similar to how the State Administration Council
07:35regime also interpreted the five-point consensus after, you know, agreeing to it with the nine ASEAN
07:41heads of state and government way back in April 2021. Well, you referenced the meeting with Prime
07:50Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Bangkok to negotiate the extension of the ceasefire. I'm curious about that,
07:57because ASEAN has largely sidelined the military junta since the 2021 coup. I'm wondering what this recent
08:08engagement with Prime Minister Anwar, that meeting in Thailand. What does that signal about ASEAN's current position
08:16in meeting with the SAC? Are there signs that maybe the military regime is using this disaster to
08:24try and reset its international image or maybe even consolidate its power internationally or regionally?
08:30Oh, thanks for bringing that up, Melissa. It's an important point to raise, particularly in the context of
08:40Prime Minister Anwar's recent meeting with the chairman of the State Administration Council, Senior General Min online.
08:48I think we need to differentiate between ASEAN summits that involve the heads of state and government from
08:55all the ASEAN members and meetings that are held, say, for example, you know, what has just taken place
09:04recently in Bangkok, meetings that are held as an initiative of the ASEAN chair in a specific context
09:12to push for more acquiescence from the State Administration Council chief in this current post-earthquake situation.
09:21And as we were talking earlier, the ASEAN countries actually called for ceasefires as a humanitarian pause.
09:30So that's one part. Of course, up to now, the ASEAN countries are still upholding or holding the line
09:38on the decision that was made since October 2021 by the ASEAN foreign ministers in the SAC foreign
09:47ministers' presence as well to restrict the SAC's attendance at high-level political meetings, such as the ASEAN summit,
09:56restricting that attendance to a non-political representative only. And since 2022, that restriction was expanded
10:04to the foreign ministers' meeting. So, you know, from a researcher's point of view, I think I have to be clear
10:11that meeting a military regime which has, you know, been so intransigent about implementing
10:20the five-point consensus to which it had agreed to, I think we have to be clear that meeting in a specific
10:28context such as pushing for humanitarian access is different from inviting the junta back to the ASEAN table.
10:36And, you know, my institute, the ICC Sufisak Institute, runs these annual surveys called the State of Southeast
10:45Asia Survey. So for this year's survey findings for the Myanmar question, we do see that regionally,
10:54appetites for, you know, inviting the military regime back to the ASEAN table, you know, such reinstatement,
11:02appetites are even lower this year. In fact, there is more preference regionally to impose harder
11:10measures on the State Administration Council to increase the cost of its non-compliance with the
11:16five-point consensus. I think that was the second part to your question. I'm sorry, I may have missed it in
11:23talking about differentiation.
11:24You answered it beautifully. It was whether or not the military regime is using this disaster to
11:30reset its international image. I do want to ask you, in the very brief time that we have left,
11:35the minute or so that we have left, what will you be watching out for, Mo, in the near future,
11:39in the coming weeks or so, as Myanmar tries to recover from this disaster?
11:43Well, the situation in Myanmar is, you know, it's fluid, it's constantly evolving, you know,
11:47that's almost a truism. But that is the situation. And so what we can try to watch for from where
11:53we're sitting is how the different political actors are reacting to this critical moment,
11:59the different political actors in Myanmar. So the earthquake's immediate impacts have been
12:03devastating on a people who've already been suffering from the effects of the conflict and
12:08the cycle of violence that has spiraled since 2021 and now the earthquake. So the recovery needs
12:15from the earthquake are still emerging and those recovery needs and the longer-term reconstruction costs.
12:21Who will bear the cost of reconstruction? I think all of these, you know, require this kind of medium
12:28to long-term perspective of why it's important to continue caring about what happens in Myanmar,
12:33because there have been spillover effects in this region from the Myanmar crisis. There will be
12:39spillover effects continuing to which the earthquake's impact will only add.
12:43Mo, always a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
12:47Mo, those are there from the SES Youth Association Institute in Singapore,
12:51wrapping up this episode of Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris, signing off for the evening.
12:56Thank you so much for watching. Good night.
13:17Good night.
13:23All right.
13:26I'll see you next time.
13:26Good night.
13:28Good night.
13:28Good night.