The battle for Myanmar is far from over Adam Taylor Protesters hold banners as they make a three-finger salute against Myanmar s recent military coup, in Yangon in May. (AFP/Getty Images)
This week, Myanmar’s generals marked 100 days of self-declared junta rule. But even though the military ousted the country’s democratically elected leaders in a coup more than three months ago, the generals do not have full control of the country. And given the scale of the movement against them, it is not clear they ever will. Reports from inside Myanmar paint a picture of persistent resistance and a struggling military government. On the hundred-day benchmark on Tuesday, “demonstrators took part in marches, motorcycle convoys and flash protests to evade security forces, some making three-finger gestures of defiance,” Reuters reported, adding that hundreds of people were on the streets of Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, carrying a banner that called for “comp
Back when it looked like Myanmar had a chance at democracy, American lawyer Eric Rose opened a firm in Yangon to advise investors interested in the newly opened country. In 2014, a client asked him to evaluate a potential joint venture with several state-owned pharmaceutical companies, Rose got a glimpse at how the military ran business ventures.
As part of due diligence, Rose talked to the directors and reviewed the financials of the companies, which were under the control of a government still dominated by generals that had run Myanmar since the 1960s. The businesses were inefficient, the equipment outdated, the employees poorly trained veterans, he said. The companies’ leaders were former military officers without business experience. “They were losing money left and right,” he said. “There was no prospect of these businesses ever turning around.”
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Less than a decade after it came in from the cold, Myanmar is once more facing the freeze. Since the mili-tary forcefully seized power on Feb. 1 over unhappiness with the country’s elections, huge crowds of anti-coup protesters have taken to the streets daily. The crackdown seems to be intensifying, with police opening fire on protesters and threatening further violence.
As a result, the governments of countries like the U.S., UK, Canada and New Zealand have already announced sanctions against the generals who led the coup, and military-linked companies.
For Myanmar, the escalating crisis places precious foreign direct investment at risk. Before the coup, investment in Myanmar was on the up. The World Bank reported a 33 percent jump in total foreign direct investment commitments in Myanmar to $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2019/2020, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, total trade in goods between the U.S. and Myanmar reached nearly $1.3 billion in the first 11 months of 2020, up f