Looking for an angle - political crises and civil war in Myanmar fail to interfere with free market developments

LANDING AT the airport of a Third World country is one of the few daredevil stunts that require no physical ability or athletic prowess. The only qualification, in fact, is size: if you can fit into an airline seat, you can land on a runway one hundred or so feet shorter than international aviation standards require for the airplane you're on. And when the plane touches down, brakes smoking and squealing, engines at full reverse thrust ... well, you feel pretty cool. The plane taxis to a stop, a gaggle of Keystone Cops swarm around it--some to manhandle your luggage, some to wheel a rickety, treacherous staircase to the door--and you step outside, with the wind in your hair, and make your way to the terminal (a World War II-era hangar), passing here and there a frowning, Uzicradling 17-year-old boy in uniform. Under such circumstances, it is impossible, absolutely impossible, not to hum the James Bond theme.

Alas, this pleasure is fast becoming rare. On a recent trip to Burma, I flew in a tidy Thai Airways Boeing 707. It was clear from the air, as we approached Rangoon airport, that the landing strip was plenty long and, worse, free of potholes. The staircase was shiny and new. Everyone smiled. It was a sign of things to come.

To be sure, Burma is a country in turmoil. The opium growers of the Shan tribe in the east and the Arakan people on the western coast are both fighting for independence from the central government in Rangoon, made up mostly of Burmese. Only the central valley, which spreads out from the banks of the Irrawaddy River, is free from civil war.

On September 18, 1988, after forty years of desultory and abortive attempts at democracy and union, interspersed with the ramshackle socialist dictatorship of Ne Win, the military declared martial law. Under the particularly brutal hand of General Saw Maung, power was vested in something called the State Law and Order Restoration Council, which is about as grim an organization as its acronym, SLORC, suggests. Resistance to SLORC, led by the National League for Democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi--daughter of a martyred Burmese patriot--floundered. SLORC, showing once again its tin ear, renamed the country the Socialist Union of Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, where she has been since 1988. Four years later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. Six years later, she was visited by a United States congressman.

It is a political situation designed to confound and outrage Western--especially American--do-gooders: the government stays the same, the repressive laws stay the same, the freedom fighter remains imprisoned, and yet everything changes. SLORC has lifted the ban on private property, on private enterprise, on private travel, on private profits. In many ways, it has outflanked its critics: who needs democracy when you have the free market? In fact, is not democracy--especially as Aung San Suu Kyi would have it: noisy and chaotic--and antithetical to secure profit making?

Profit, of course, is the religion currently sweeping Southeast Asia. What was formerly known as Burma, and then as the Socialist Union of Myanmar, is now simply the Union of Myanmar. But don't bother to keep track. The smiling customs official who greets you--Uzi-less--at the Rangoon airport says, "Welcome to Burma," followed by a more businesslike, "Please give me three hundred dollars."

SLORC, like governments everywhere, is determined to get its cut of the prosperity pie first. You are required to exchange three hundred dollars upon arrival, and in return you receive three hundred foreign-exchange certificates, which you are free to do with as you wish. What you do is exchange them on the black market, at roughly one hundred kyat to the dollar. The cab driver who hustles you into his car will gladly make the exchange and will also volunteer to pay you the going rate for any dutyfree whisky and cigarettes you may be carrying. It's a good idea, in fact, to grab a few bottles and a carton or two on the way through Bangkok airport (Johnnie Walker Red and Triple 5 are the preferred brands).

The black market is not exactly black: the exchange of certificates, cigarettes, and whisky for kyat is not illegal, or even frowned upon; in fact, most such transactions occur in the airport terminal, under the wistful gaze of uniformed, unarmed officials who are disappointed, no doubt, at being locked into such dead-end jobs with the civil service, instead of raking it in like the cab drivers.

Everywhere I traveled--Rangoon, Mandalay, the mountain town of Maymyo, the stately and dignified runins of Pagan--the people were cheerfully working some angle. In Rangoon, a Dutch hotel entrepreneur has recently finished restoring the old Strand Hotel. The Queen Mother of British Empire hotels, the Strand had for a while become a mosquito-infested, creepy relic. Atmospheric, yes, but not suitable for the hordes of businessmen expected to take advantage of the newly opened Burma Market. Thanks to our Dutch friend, guests can now pay $200 for the privilege of a spotless room, continuous electrical power, and plentiful bottles of Evian water. The place is rarely full, which results in a guest-staff ratio that is positively imperialist. When my traveling companion and I returned to our room one afternoon, we found no fewer than ten employees: three making the beds, three in the bathroom stacking fresh towels, two rearranging the flowers, one staring slackjawed at a music video on the TV, and the last transfixed and mystified by a small bottle of Kiehl's Men's Aftershave Moisturizer. They smiled and bowed and hung around looking busy until we tipped them.