Myanmar generals stay defiant about Rohingya opsMyanmar generals stay defiant about Rohingya ops

Suu Kyi criticised for not taking on military, sees her ties with junta deteriorating

SINGAPORE • A year ago, the Myanmar military embarked on a massive crackdown in restive Rakhine state - driving out almost a million Rohingya to Bangladesh and creating one of the world's largest refugee camps while allegedly raping women, killing children and beheading men in the process.

Generals, however, remain defiant, even as sanctions mount and the US State Department and United Nations ready reports that are likely to detail the military's premeditated efforts at effectively ridding the state of Rohingya Muslims.

They believe they essentially eliminated a threat that was "growing bigger and bigger", according to one account of conversations top military leaders have had with counterparts from South-east Asia.

"There was a sense that their problem in Rakhine had been solved, that this was their solution," said a person familiar with the conversations, who declined to be named. The militants, the military alleged, had civilianised the conflict by embedding in villages and towns, and had to be stopped.

Interviews with a half-dozen former Myanmar generals and those familiar with their thinking say that they have also grown irritated by civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi's efforts to quell international outrage - believing she defends them in public while working to undermine them by driving sanctions in private.

Ms Suu Kyi - who made a rare address abroad here in Singapore on Tuesday defending her government's handling of the crisis - has watched this relationship with the generals deteriorate while she grows internationally isolated, dragging her heels and fumbling in response to the crisis last August.

Her preferred tactic of outsourcing the Rohingya issue to a growing number of commissions with international representation, including one that had been led by the late UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, has been widely criticised.

The commission was to come up with recommendations on how peace would be achieved in Rakhine state, where communal violence had erupted in 2012, driving 140,000 Rohingya Muslims into squalid camps. Members of the minority group say they are native to Myanmar, but were excluded from the citizenship law and denied rights and freedom of movement.

On Aug 24 last year, the commission presented its final report in Yangon. It included 88 recommendations on issues, including citizenship for the Rohingya.

Shortly, Rohingya militants allegedly staged 30 attacks on Myanmar police posts in northern Rakhine state, according to the Myanmar military, prompting it to embark on a "clearance operation". Hundreds of Muslim villages were torched and thousands were killed, and an estimated 800,000 others fled across the border to Bangladesh.

Ms Suu Kyi, aware of international pressure in the wake of the violence, asked a new advisory board to implement the Annan commission's recommendations.

The board was "intended more as a group of friends" to help improve international views of Myanmar, rather than a strong team to push forward difficult recommendations", said Mr Richard Horsey, a Yangon-based political analyst.

Among those asked to join was Mr Bill Richardson, a former US ambassador to the UN, who quit within weeks of the board's first meeting in Naypyitaw this January.

"She's in denial, and she's not serious about dealing with this issue," he said of Ms Suu Kyi. "Anything that involves taking on the military, she won't do. She'll just do some PR moves like these commissions."

THE WASHINGTON POST