Unmasking the familiar

Tuesday, 20 July 2010 13:51


Title: Than Shwe – Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant

Publisher: Silkworm Books

Author: Benedict Rogers

Reviewed by: Joseph Ball

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Even if there had yet to be an attempt to write a biography of Burma’s military strongman, Senior General Than Shwe has long occupied a position of public scourge over the country’s moribund drive towards democracy and failing public institutions – his distorted physical characteristics commonly adorning opposition publications and websites.

In Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant, Benedict Rogers is welcomingly straightforward in disclosing his arsenal of bias and the strategic limitations in attempting to compile such a tome. He unabashedly describes himself as a staunch human rights activist working towards the overthrow of the military government, approaching what he calls an “inaccessible biographical subject”.

Accordingly, the reader is offered the verdict on Than Shwe in the opening pages of the work, as “Than Shwe appears to have a remarkable ability to block out, justify, or remain indifferent to the moral implications of his actions.” He is, needless to expound, found guilty as charged on all counts.

In a book that often reads as an encyclopaedia of general (pun intended) wrongs, the actual circumstances surrounding Than Shwe’s life are routinely prefaced as “most likely”, “was probably” or “could have been” – such are the murky reaches in which competing claims to the historical figure of the dictator can be found. The senior general is at once portrayed as both a monumental dolt and a strategic mastermind.

While Rogers succeeds in raising important questions relevant to the formative experiences of Than Shwe – such as to what extent a run of battlefield losses may have furthered his decision to prioritise a vast military modernisation programme once assuming the leadership – subject matter is sometimes dealt with too cursorily in instances the verdict may not so easily be approached from the dais of moral right and wrong.

The reader is informed how Than Shwe reportedly never questioned the logic of coups or the purging of fellow officers, while “the Tatmadaw [armed forces] has been subject to various forms of factionalism and division, but not enough ultimately to break the unity of the military”. Here, a brief analytical foray into the details of military socialisation, offering the reader a greater appreciation of Than Shwe’s own experiences as well as offering creative paths forward, may have proven quite illuminating.

Additionally, it becomes quite clear that Than Shwe is consumed with a developmental paradigm to the demands of modernity. What impact, then, has this had on the political stalemate with an opposition camp adhering to a more recent democratic paradigm to modernity that has largely come to supplant that of the developmental model – at least in the halls of the euphemistic international community?

Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant is certainly consistent in its rendering of historical interpretation. The junta’s strategy of “disciplined democracy”, Rogers writes, it would seem means everyone can vote – as long as they vote the right way”. Unfortunately, while accurate, this is hardly a definition of democracy unique to Burma’s military leaders. As veteran Irish politician and third president Eamon de Valera quipped: “The majority have no right to do wrong.” In 1991, to note but one well-documented example, Algeria, supported by Washington, found it expedient to void the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front.

One interesting angle to possibly pursue regarding the book’s utility is to what degree it can contribute towards furthering a foundation upon which Than Shwe can serve as Burma’s Suharto or Marcos – responsible figures yet also scapegoats – thereby increasing opportunities for reformist officers and civilian leaders to reach common ground.

Without question, the volume provides an extensively collated, up-to-date reading of the litany of crimes levelled against Than Shwe and his regime, while including often forgotten and humorous anecdotes such as the time a friend of former US president George W. Bush worked as a consultant for the junta in a bid to improve its image in Washington.

Biographies should seek to neither denigrate nor unduly praise the subject. It should be left up to the reader to reach his or her own judgement of the individual in question. With Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant, Rogers wilfully charts a different course. One gains the impression that the work may have been better approached in the manner of Christopher Hitchens’ highly engaging, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

In any case, it is well documented that autocratic regimes tend to maintain highly detailed records – records, however, that can only be accessed once the regime in question falls victim to history. Such a scenario has repeatedly played itself out throughout the former Soviet Union. Meanwhile, attempts to compose a biography of North Korea’s reclusive Kim Jong-il have produced some deplorable volumes.

Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant is a readable work that does fill a gap in available literature, though the definitive biographies of Burma’s most recent military head of state undoubtedly, and with good reason, remain waiting their day.