IF only Saddam had planted bushes to the liking of George Bush Sr in the gardens of each of his many palaces spread all over Iraq, about 12 years back, the future of the ill-fated country that is Iraq would have still been in the hands of the much-hounded Saddam. Bush, after all, has a fondness for bushes.
One still remembers the story of the Mughal emperor who got the most beautiful building in the world, the Taj Mahal, constructed by workmen whose hands were later amputated so that no other such building would appear on the surface of the earth a second time. Saddam Hussain was one such workman controlled by the USA in its design against the main axis of evil in the 1980s. He wanted to build a Taj Mahal for the Americans in the Middle-East by acquiring unique expertise in the use of weapons of mass destruction, second only to the countries which had fought two World Wars in Europe. He had to be, therefore, maimed or even exterminated as a “target of opportunity.”
Not so Burma, although the daughter of that country’s first post-WWII leader, General Aung San, was tortured, at least mentally, by a dictatorial military regime, and Aung San Suu Kyi (her name) was awarded a Nobel Prize for “courage”. Neither Bush, Blair nor the United Nation which had had a distinguished Burmese Secretary General, U. Thant, had ventured to oust General Ne Win or his successor who impoverished the once prosperous country and in return taught it their own version of the Buddhist doctrine and a local brand of socialism. Had Saddam Hussain not fallen prey to the designs of Carter, Reagan and George Bush Sr, he would have continued to develop his country under the Ba’thist Party manifesto of his senior, Hassan-Al-Bakr.
As for Burma, it should not be forgotten that Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris, is a born British and the couple had studied together at Oxford before getting married. But neither Margaret Thatcher nor John Major and yes, even his successor, Tony Blair, had any qualms about the mother of British/American children being subjected to humiliation.
Another reason: Burma is distantly away from Bush’s main ally in the Middle-East, Israel. Besides, Burma’s once-famous oil wells (remember the B in PBS), have all but fallen into disuse; their annual production today is around seven million barrels (Pakistan has a production of about 20 million barrels annually).
Another point to be mentioned is the lack of investment dollars in Myanmar; its per-capita productivity of around $1,000 is less than that of even Bangladesh. Arab countries such as Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE and even Iran have petro-dollars in plenty to invest. Iraq paid the price because it constantly posed a threat to the Saudis and Kuwaitis, and thus prompted them to disinvest in business and buy more sophisticated weaponry. The threat had to be removed and Iraq captured like a booty. Iraq produces a maximum 30 million barrels a day whereas the USA uses about a 150 million barrels a daily for its cars, aeroplanes, factories, etc. Cheap oil from Iraq would lower the price of oil all over the world, a proposition not to the liking of American oil companies as well as British Petroleum.
Iraq and Burma have a few other things in common. The British removed King Thibaw of Burma in 1883, and made it a province of the Indian Empire. Iraq was then a province of the Ottoman Empire. The British had removed a king in Burma, but 40 years later installed King Faisal in Iraq after WWI. He was a Hashemite ruler like the Sharif of Makkah and his son became King Abdullah of Transjordan. Burma became independent 15 years after Iraq and its politicians in the 1930s were far less experienced than, for instance, the politicians in the Indian Congress and even a few Muslim Leaguers.
When the Japanese overran Burma mainly for its oil, for use in their planes, ships and tanks during WWII, it was natural for the young General Aung San to form a government a few months before Pakistan’s independence in 1947. He was gunned down along with his Cabinet in July 1947. He may have had links with the Maoist revolutionaries and may have become a thorn in the eyes of Truman and Attlee; a capitalist conspirator, U Saw, was later apprehended and hanged. Suu Kyi became an orphan in her infancy.
Eleven years later, the bodies of Faisal II, his uncle Abd-i-Ellahi and Prime Minister Noori-as-Saeed, were dragged along the streets of Baghdad by a military man, Abdel Karim Kassem, who in turn, met the same fate. Two Arif brothers who were Islamic-minded military men ruled Iraq by turns. The US and Britain had no objection at all to this state of affairs. A few years later, Hasan Al-Bakr of the Ba’ath Party appeared on the scene with Saddam Hussain as his Vice President; General Ne Win, a socialist pretender reigned supreme in Burma during that period. Saddam Hussain became President of Iraq in 1979. He hated the Kurds and the Shias, and so became a willing partner of US President Jimmy Carter against Iran. Of course, the Ayatollahs should not have stopped the economic and social progress made under the Shah, but then the taking Americans hostage at the Embassy in Teheran gave Carter another axe to grind.
Burma has its own Karen and Shan rebels, but then the mountains make links with China or Thailand extremely difficult. So Bush should forget about them.
The first US, UK/Iraq War was not for oil; it was because of Kuwait’s money and occupation. Twelve years down the road, the second US, UK/Iraq War has not been for oil or even Israel (Saddam accepted April Glasbie, a Jew and pro-Israel as the US Ambassador in Baghdad in 1989), it was to prevent Arab investment dollars from being withdrawn as Saddam posed a grave threat to monarchies and other dictators in the region.
The moral of the story: Do not become a US ally like Saddam, Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Noriega, Cao Cy of Vietnam, so that being ditched or even exterminated will not ever happen.
The US, after its defeat in Vietnam, is quite afraid of the yellow race including the Chinese, North Koreans, Vietnamese and Burmese. Pakistan can feel safe.
