poem as prologue
The Highway Taken
Joe Garth Crawst

All jogging paths converged on a massive highway
And sorry I could not find a faster way off,
And being one jogger, quick I ran
And jogged on as one who wanted back in town
To where my dinner waited in a stovetop pan.

I then was running with a sigh
Somewhere next to fields with many a fence:
All roads converged on the Trilateral Highway, and I--
I got off that route most travelled by,
and that--that made me lost.

True story.

Head Out on the Highway

I live about two kilometers from a stretch of the highway that will one day connect to the Trans-Asia Highway, a project the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank hope will support "the socio-economic development of more than 200 million people...in Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar [Burma],
Thailand and Vietnam." 1 It will cost more than $40 billion over the next 25 years.

This seven+ nation highway--like most highways--frightens me. Not only are there environmental and social costs , but political ones as well. This is because--within the timeframe of the highway--there seems to be only a small window of opportunity for democracy in Burma. This highway could have a major impact on that process. Let me explain why.

In the next few months, Burma's ruling military government since 1962 will begin another constitutional convention process. Whether that process is transparent and has a concrete timetable remains to be seen. The junta--now known as the SPDC or "State Peace and Development Council,"--began this process in 1996, and failed. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy--the opposition's biggest party--walked out of negotiations.

There is a long history of failed democracy in Burma. Assuming the opposition was too fragmented to elect a leader, the SPDC allowed nation-wide elections in 1990 and an 80% majority put Aung Sun Suu Kyi in power. The junta freaked and put Aung San under arrest shortly thereafter. Through international pressure, she has been released several times, but after a rally last year in which she was hurt, the government put her under house arrest in a government "guest house."

The refugee community remains skeptical of the most recent attempt by the SPDC to start the constitutional process. Many see this as just an attempt to convince the right-leaning Thai government to continue bilateral trade talks with the Myanmar (Burmese). (The US and EU continue their 15-year trade sanctions, while India and China, among other nations, keep the regime alive and well-stocked with all sorts of weapons. They like Burmese gems and have their eyes on other natural resources). The Thai government--and to some degree the United Nations--are pushing for cease-fire agreements whether or not this leads to a real constitution. Then surroundnig countries can ship refugees back to Burma, thought of political retribution by the SPDC be damned.

Now that many ethnic groups are signing cease-fire agreements, pressure is mounting for a constitution to secure some degree of civil society. Four ethnic groups--the Arakan, Shan, Chin and Karenni--hold out for independence. (One independent local observer told me that this is because the SPDC teaches a very skewed version of federalism in its state schools, braingwashing the citizenry into thinking federalism divides a country, not state, national and local power).

Another leading incentive for the SPDC (SLORC, junta, whatever) to propose a more definite timetable with some degree of legitimacy is the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) chairmanship, which will be passed to Burma in 2006. If an authoritarian regime represents one of Asia's top trade groups, western nations will have a hard time seeing past the human rights abuses, and this could hurt trade in the other nine member countries.

Though the Pan-Asian and Trilateral Highways' short-term impact on the upcoming constitutional process may be considerable, the long-term consequences are what worry me. If the SPDC remains in power, these highways may bring prosperity--but only to the ruling class. Very little in Burma trickles down.

Once trade kicks in, the military will be able to reign in the rest of the ethnic groups, and the democracy movement will lose steam. Trade between the regional powers will increase. (Burma would then be like Indiana, which has nothing better to put on its license plates than "Indiana: the crossroads of America.")

This trade would probably produce a closed society something like China was in the 1980s shortly after Deng Xiao Ping's reform and opening of the the mid-late '70s. Burma's upper (read: upper=military) class would see the same kind of freedom that mainland China's moneyed middle and upper classes began to see: freedom of movement, and freedom to buy things. Freedom to express thought--the only freedom really worth dying for---would be far away.

Though the freedom that comes from money is an improvement for some, cutting giant highways through the rainforest is not good for the most important long-term goal: survival of the planet.

I apparently traveled on a part of one of these highways in Ho Chi Minh City. I didn't even know it. Now I cross a this ever-widening portion of the highway whenever I ride my bike to the local reservoir for a swim.

I can see for miles and miles. All the way to New Dehli.

Taking the world in a love embrace and firing all of my guns at once,
~your narrator