What is Laos’ Game Plan for the Myanmar crisis?

For the first time in nearly three years, Myanmar’s seat was occupied at the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat (AMM) held over 28-29 January 2024, in Luang Prabang, Laos. Daw Marlar Than Htaik, Permanent Secretary of Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sat with foreign ministers at the AMM retreat as Myanmar’s non-political representative. The retreat convenes early in the year to finalise the grouping’s agenda for the year, taking into consideration the smorgasbord of geopolitical issues, and ongoing regional concerns. Key among the latter is the issue of implementing ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus (5PC) on Myanmar.

Reactions from various ASEAN states were mixed. Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith has expressed optimism that the engagement may work. On the other hand, Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan is not inclined to “raise hopes or expectations unrealistically”. Similarly, Indonesia’s foreign ministry spokesperson observed that a Myanmar representative attending the retreat did not signal any change.

Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, the intransigence of the SAC has been a main obstacle to ASEAN’s interventions, deepening doubts of the 5PC’s effectiveness. For 2024, Laos has committed to uphold ASEAN decisions regarding Myanmar, including the non-political representative criterion for Myanmar’s presence at ASEAN Summits and foreign ministers’ meetings. This was a decision made in October 2021,  given limited progress on the implementation of the 5PC. This criterion was later applied to the foreign ministers’ meetings, starting with the 2022 AMM Retreat in Cambodia. Objecting to these decisions and subsequent affirmations by ASEAN, the SAC refused to send any representatives to these high-level ASEAN meetings. In practice, Myanmar civil servants have been attending ASEAN meetings since the 2021 coup, including senior officials’ meetings in the foreign affairs track. Naypyidaw is thus aware of foreign ministers’ discussions. But Myanmar’s foreign ministry has issued demarches objecting to ASEAN statements regarding the situation in Myanmar.

Whether it was Laos’ effort in persuading the SAC to send a representative, or the junta changing its mind after seeing its political leaders locked out of high-level meetings in the past three years, Naypyidaw has taken a first half-step towards establishing a line back to ASEAN.

But the fact is that ASEAN has always kept Myanmar’s seat at the table. The message is clear – Myanmar as a member state remains part of the family, but ASEAN will not condone acts of continuing violence in Myanmar. However, this collective position has not stopped some individual members from proposing that Myanmar be “invited back to the ASEAN table”.

Departing from past Chairs’ decision to either appoint their Foreign Ministers as the Special Envoy or set up a special office of the Special Envoy, Laos has appointed a Special Envoy separate from the foreign minister. Veteran diplomat Alounkeo Kittikhoun, as the new Special Envoy, started his mandate with a mission to Naypyidaw in mid-January, taking a page from Cambodia’s playbook. But compared to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s highly-publicised visit, Mr Alounkeo’s Naypyidaw visit was discreet, with no public announcement or confirmation, until Myanmar state-run media aired footage of Mr Alounkeo’s meeting with the SAC chief. The SAC made the most of Mr Alounkeo’s visit. It was the state-run newspaper, the Global New Light of Myanmar, that made one point painfully clear with the headline: “Myanmar aligns ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus with the SAC’s Roadmap”. In short, the 5PC follows the junta’s roadmap, not the other way round.

But the fact is that ASEAN has always kept Myanmar’s seat at the table. The message is clear – Myanmar as a member state remains part of the family, but ASEAN will not condone acts of continuing violence in Myanmar. However, this collective position has not stopped some individual members from proposing that Myanmar be “invited back to the ASEAN table”.

Having a full quorum for the retreat can be interpreted as Laos’ ability to leverage its bilateral relations with Naypyidaw, and the current domestic situation in Myanmar. The SAC, particularly its chief, has suffered a loss of confidence among supporters on the ability to respond effectively to the rapid progress of Operation 1027 launched by ethnic armed organisations in northern Shan State in late October 2023.  Laos may have deployed diplomatic reasoning to the SAC to demonstrate give-and-take. The SAC’s response to Laos’ soft approach by sending a non-political representative to a high-level ASEAN meeting — in this case, Daw Marlar Than Htaik — is also a way of asserting a visible (albeit non-political) presence.  

Even so, it is doubtful that ASEAN will welcome back any form of political representation from the SAC until and unless substantive progress is made on the 5PC. Substantive progress may constitute a cessation of violence against innocent civilians, allowing the Special Envoy to meet not just with “approved parties” but with all parties including political prisoners and a demonstration of willingness to engage in constructive dialogue.

Whatever Laos’ game plan might be, it already enjoyed some early advantages as the ASEAN Chair. One, being smaller and of less strategic weight, Laos can appeal to its bigger neighbours including Thailand, India, and China to assist its chairmanship by working with ASEAN and Myanmar rather than acting unilaterally. Two, it can also seek the support of immediate neighbours with an interest in warding off conflict spillover along borders with Myanmar. Still, these calculations are contingent on the extent of bilateral diplomatic leverage Laos enjoys with Naypyidaw, Beijing and New Delhi.

Laos’ innate risk-averse tendency may yield symbolic rather than actual concessions from the SAC. The discreet nature of Laos’ moves also suggests that plans to engage with other Myanmar stakeholders will be carried out quietly. Any strategy going forward, however,  requires Laos to demonstrate its sincerity to all parties, and not just the military, to realise the 5PC’s commitment to facilitating a long process of dialogue for peace in Myanmar.

Sustaining the momentum of engagements, even if in an attenuated form, and in consultation with the ASEAN Troika – a mechanism set up to ensure continuity among successive ASEAN chairs —must be part of this strategy. There should be nothing short of a family effort to ensure adherence to the 5PC.  

2024/27