As war rages, Myanmar’s coup leader-turned-president wins back neighbours

Yangon, Myanmar – When Malaysia invited Myanmar’s coup leader-turned-president Min Aung Hlaing for a visit in September, it insisted the trip did not amount to recognition. The purpose, an official said, was to address the “longstanding issue” of refugees and migrants from Myanmar in Malaysia.

But when Min Aung Hlaing arrived in Kuala Lumpur last week, the former general – whose power grab in 2021 triggered a devastating civil war – received a red carpet welcome, complete with an honour guard.

After an official luncheon on Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Myanmar was prepared to take its nationals back at its own cost, a message with appeal in a country where anti-refugee sentiment is growing. Malaysia hosts about 193,000 Myanmar nationals, most of them from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

“Because the weather is favourable, I will dispatch Navy ships to repatriate them,” Min Aung Hlaing said.

For his part, Anwar pledged to help reintegrate Myanmar into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 11-member regional bloc that has barred Min Aung Hlaing from its high-level meetings for refusing to carry out its peace plan. Malaysia was a vocal supporter of the plan, which is known as the Five Point Consensus and calls for an end to violence and “constructive dialogue” between the warring parties.

The civil war in Myanmar is now in its fifth year and has killed as many as 100,000 people and displaced at least 3.5 million, according to monitoring groups.

“Malaysia will do whatever is possible to make sure that we … ultimately, take Myanmar as part of our community of nations, without prejudice, and particularly in the context of ASEAN,” Anwar told reporters.

Malaysia is the fifth ASEAN nation to host Min Aung Hlaing since he became president in April, after an election held in December and January, which major opposition parties were barred from participating in. In recent months, he has visited Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Following his return from Malaysia, his spokesperson said Indonesia and Brunei could be next.

“Malaysia’s reversal on Min Aung Hlaing has broken a dam of opposition to the junta,” said Bridget Welsh, an honorary research associate at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute in Kuala Lumpur. She said regional leaders who have welcomed Min Aung Hlaing, despite accusations that he has committed crimes against humanity, were putting pragmatism ahead of human rights.

“It is a step back for ASEAN as an organisation, and for Myanmar,” she said. “It does not offer any concrete path to the resolution of the Myanmar crisis, and in fact, arguably worsens it by giving the military legitimacy internationally, a legitimacy it does not have in Myanmar itself.”

‘Convenience plays a part’

Min Aung Hlaing’s rehabilitation extends beyond Southeast Asia.

Since April, the former general has also visited India, China, Russia and Belarus. At each stop, he has tried to present his government as stable and “on the path to democracy”, while pitching trade and infrastructure deals.

Even the United States appears to have opened the door.

Washington has begun direct talks with Min Aung Hlaing’s government, the Reuters news agency reported last week, despite sanctions on him over human rights abuses. These include the 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya, which sent more than 700,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh and which the US has called a genocide.

Reuters said the latest talks have focused on shutting down scam centres operating from Myanmar that have defrauded Americans of billions of dollars.

Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadipa Institute in Yangon, said Min Aung Hlaing’s quest for international legitimacy has been aided by a coordinated push from China, India and Thailand, all of which share borders with Myanmar. The three neighbours have experienced spillover from the war, such as fighting near their borders, disrupted trade and influxes of refugees.

Khin Zaw Win said the three countries “have the biggest stakes in how Myanmar pans out” and want the military-installed government recognised. “Convenience plays a part for all of them,” he said.

The growing diplomatic recognition, however, has done little to resolve the conflict.

While Min Aung Hlaing has invited all armed groups to peace talks, fighting continues to rage across much of the country. His forces have launched offensives to retake territory lost to opposition armed rebels and ethnic armed groups in Rakhine, Chin, Kachin and Karen states and the Sagaing region. They have been aided by an intensified air campaign and a recruitment drive that has added tens of thousands to their ranks. China, too, has helped by brokering ceasefires between the military and powerful ethnic armed groups on its border.

Still, Laetitia van den Assum, a former Dutch diplomat, said the military is unlikely to regain control of the whole country.

“That would require a huge occupation army and not – as now – a garrison army that controls a particular location,” she said. “That is why Min Aung Hlaing… bets on an increasing number of temporary ceasefires in some parts of the country so that troops can be directed to areas where he wants to continue fighting”.

Van den Assum said she found it “quite surprising” that ASEAN nations are seeking Rohingya repatriation from the very man accused of orchestrating crimes against them.

Myanmar has long denied the Rohingya citizenship, so it is unclear whether it would accept them as nationals. And with much of Rakhine State – their homeland – now held by the ethnic Arakan Army, it is far from clear where they would go.

“It is the blind speaking to the blind,” she said.

‘Low-cost, high optics’

Min Aung Hlaing has made other gestures.

Shortly before his trip to Thailand in August, he allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to see Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader he deposed in 2021. The 81-year-old Nobel laureate has been held incommunicado since the coup, and the ICRC visit on August 3 produced her first photographs in years.

Sai Kyi Zin Soe, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, called the move a “low-cost, high-optics gesture rather than a real political opening”. The visit confirmed only that Aung San Suu Kyi is alive, “nothing more”, he said.

He noted that the military’s air raids have continued unabated even as ASEAN leaders roll out the red carpet, including a September 28 strike on a market in Rakhine State that killed an estimated 50 people.

The continuing attacks, he said, were the “strongest evidence that soft diplomacy hasn’t produced any deterrent effect”.

Sai Kyi Zin Soe also warned that the legitimacy conferred by the foreign visits would embolden the military further.

“Given the near-total absence of deterrence, no meaningful sanctions enforcement, an ASEAN pivoting toward re-engagement, and continued arms and fuel access via China and Russia, the military has every structural incentive to keep escalating, particularly in contested zones like Sagaing and Rakhine, where its grip is weakest,” he said.

Much now depends on the Philippines and Singapore, ASEAN’s current and incoming chairs.

Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, said the two countries must set an agenda that pushes back hard on entreaties from others in the region to allow “Myanmar fully back into the fold” and keep pressing the bloc’s five-point peace plan.

He also urged the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the European Union to adopt targeted sanctions, such as an aviation fuel ban, rather than leaving “the whole Myanmar conundrum” to the regional bloc.

“International accountability is now more urgent than ever, whether that comes through additional universal jurisdiction cases or some sort of breakthrough to refer Myanmar’s generals to the International Criminal Court,” he added.

Zaheena Rasheed reported and wrote from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.