Myanmar junta crackdowns on non-committal youths

SALEEM SAMAD

Scores of youths have been arrested in Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar after Yangon, since the junta activated the conscription law early this month, according to news pouring in from war-torn Myanmar.

More than 80 people have been arrested by government soldiers since the second week of February in Chanmyathazi, Maha Aungmyay, and Aungmyaythazan townships in Mandalay, according to Myanmar’s dissident news media, The Irrawaddy.

Combined forces of junta soldiers, police, ward administration officials, and militia members have been taking headcounts and checking households for overnight guests in Mandalay since mid-February.

Migrants working in Mandalay or internally displaced people (IDPs) living in the town were arrested as junta troops searched houses, teashops, and restaurants in the ward on Sunday, allegedly to check for unregistered guests during the day as well as at night.

Streets in Mandalay have become almost deserted after evening hours following the activation of the conscription law and reports that young people are being abducted.

Unverified reports on Myanmar social media say abductions by the army have already begun, while potential conscripts speculate that bribery will be the only way to avoid being conscripted.

The national conscription law was implemented on February 10 by Min Aung Hlaing, a Myanmar army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration Council since seizing power in the February 2021 coup d'état. He additionally appointed himself Prime Minister in August 2021.

On the other hand, the regime has asked students to join the University Training Corps (UTC), which acts as a reserve for the military’s depleted ranks.

Junta newspapers boast that many generals, including regime boss Hlaing, were former UTC members.

Under the Conscription Law, students can defer service, but the regime wants students to join the UTC to recruit them as reserves in the meantime.

The first UTC was formed in 1922 at Rangoon University under colonial rule. It was modelled on the British Army’s University Officer’s Training Corps, which aims to recruit educated officers and expose civilians who will become future employers to aspects of military life.

There are three days of training a week during the academic year with a camp every October.

Junta newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar said the UTCs are commanded by the Directorate of Militias and Border Guard Forces, providing students with four years of training.

University staff and UTC students were quoted by junta newspapers saying the organization teaches basic skills and explains what the military does to protect the country.

In the wake of the 2021 coup, the regime revived a colonial-era law that allows authorities to conduct warrantless searches of private homes and requires all residents to register overnight houseguests. Previously, such searches were mainly conducted at night. But junta troops are also searching households in Mandalay during the day.

Myanmar’s military is aiming to recruit 5,000 able-bodied fighters every month from April under a conscription order, Myanmar watch groups say, revealing its weakness.

Meanwhile, junta soldiers are extorting money from people whom they detain under the pretext of overnight guest registration. The detainees are released after payment is made.

However, pro-junta Telegram channels claim that the young men detained are members of the anti-junta People’s Defence Force and that they possess weapons.

Fighters from the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) have a message for compatriots who have not yet directly supported their resistance against the junta but are now at risk of being pulled into the violent chaos that has engulfed the country since the 2021 coup.

This comes as a coalition of ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy rebels across the country has inflicted heavy losses on government forces, in a counteroffensive that poses an unprecedented – and possibly existential – threat to the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s vicious military is known, reports the South China Morning Post.

Reports from Yangon (formerly Rangoon) show queues of hundreds at the Thailand embassy as people seek a legal way out, while hundreds of mainly young men have been detained after sneaking over the border into Thailand to escape the draft – a warning of the potential for a larger exodus ahead.

Thailand, a country that does not have an asylum system for the protection of refugees, is under pressure to consider formalising entry ahead of the expected influx, writes SCMP.

Earlier in January, China brokered the Myanmar ceasefire, urging the junta and rebel militia to ‘exercise maximum restraint’. ‘The two sides agreed to an immediate ceasefire,’ the Chinese foreign ministry claimed, while pledging a continued ‘constructive role’ from Beijing.

The junta and rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance held two days of talks in the Chinese city of Kunming, the ministry spokeswoman reveals.

In another story on Al Jazeera, Myanmar’s military regime has admitted it is facing “heavy assaults” by anti-coup forces who began a coordinated offensive at the end of last month, claiming to have taken control of several towns in border areas and dozens of military outposts.

Spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told Al Jazeera that troops were under “heavy assaults from a significant number of armed rebel soldiers” in Shan State in the north, Kayah State in the east, and Rakhine State in the west.

Anti-coup fighters are using “hundreds” of drones to drop bombs on military posts, and some sites have had to be evacuated, he added.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the generals seized power from the elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February 2021.

First published in The Daily Messenger, 29 February 2024

Saleem Samad is Deputy Editor of The Daily Messenger and an award-winning journalist. An Ashoka Fellow and recipient of the Hellman-Hammett Award. Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

Myanmar junta forcefully recruiting Rohingya to fight rebels

SALEEM SAMAD

Myanmar’s regime is accelerating its effort to recruit up to 50,000 personnel per year to replenish its armed forces under the reinforced Conscription Law.

Several media outlets have recently reported in independent and pro-resistance Myanmar media on the forcible recruitment of young men in urban areas.

Military junta chief Min Aung Hlaing activated, for the first time in a decade, a conscription law amid heavy regime casualties and desertions.

Following the announcement, the regime formed a central committee led by the Defence Minister to conscript over-18s into military service. Those who fail to comply face three to five years in prison.

The committee announced the formation of branches in each state and region to implement the law, led by the chief minister with the deputy regional military commander as the vice-chair.

The conscription branches will be established in rural areas and townships. The recruitment process will start in April, regime spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun said.

The spokesman said around 6 million men and 7 million women were eligible for compulsory military service, according to the 2019 census.

He said 5,000 people will be called up each month and given training, with around 50,000 recruited per year. The conscription is not intended for only one, two, three, or four years and will be eligible for service for two years.

The junta also activated a Reserve Forces Law, allowing it to send veterans back to the front line. Under the law, all former military personnel must serve in the reserve forces for five years starting from the day they resigned or retired.

Conscription has sparked fear and anger among eligible citizens who have been called on to defend the junta that has brutalised them for three years.

It has also been criticised for legalising the junta’s practice of rounding up civilians for use as porters or human shields.

Desertions and defections plague Myanmar troops

The military government's forces have been stretched thin by the recent upsurge in resistance activity. They were already believed to be depleted by casualties, desertions, and defections, though there are no reliable numbers regarding their scale.

The army faces two enemies: the pro-democracy forces formed after the army takeover and better-trained and equipped ethnic minority armed groups that have been battling for greater autonomy for decades.

There are alliances between the resistance groups, as reported by the pro-rebel newspaper The Irrawaddy.

In September of last year, the Defense Ministry of the National Unity Government (NUG), the leading political organisation of the resistance that acts as a shadow government, stated that more than 14,000 troops have defected from the military since the 2021 seizure of power.

The military seized power and ousted the elected government headed by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021. She has been kept in home custody to serve prison sentences for election fraud and other trumped-up charges.

Forced recruitment of Rohingyas

Myanmar’s military is forcibly recruiting Rohingya men from villages and camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Rakhine State, and it is feared they will be used as human shields, activists, and residents of the state warn.

Sittwe, the state capital of Rakhine State, has 13 IDP camps for about 100,000 Rohingya people who were displaced by ethnic and religious violence in the western state in 2012.

At least 400 Rohingya men have already been forcibly recruited from villages and IDP camps after Rohingya community leaders and administrators were pressured to compile lists of at least 50 men for each small IDP village and at least 100 for each IDP camp in three Rakhine townships – Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Sittwe.

The junta is offering freedom of movement to Rohingya Muslims restricted to IDP camps as part of a bid to entice them into military service amid the nationwide rollout of a conscription law.

Junta forces have told Rohingya men that if they serve in the military, each one will receive a sack of rice, a citizenship identity card, and a monthly salary of 150,000 kyats (US$ 41), Rohingya residents of Rakhine State and activists stated.

Since taking the census on Monday, junta officers have repeatedly visited the camp, trying to persuade Rohingya residents to serve in the military with an offer of free movement within Kyaukphyu township, said another camp resident.

However, the conscription law only applies to Myanmar citizens, but the citizenship of Rohingya people has been scrapped after a draconian Citizenship Law of 1982 requires individuals to prove that their ancestors lived in Myanmar before 1823 and refuses to recognize Rohingya Muslims as one of the nation's ethnic groups or list their language as a national language.

Despite the compulsory military training schedule to begin in April, junta troops arrested at least 100 men from four villages in Buthidaung Township on 18 and 19 February, and they were transferred to a nearby military base for basic military training.

Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, describes that two weeks of training would make them vulnerable either to be captured or killed on the battlefront by the battle-hardened Arakan Army (AA) rebels fighting the military junta for more than a decade. Lwin said the junta’s military will use the Rohingya foot soldiers as human shields and porters.

Rohingya to defend IDP villages

Junta troops informed Rohingya community leaders that the AA had established armed fortified camps near the Rohingya villages and that residents would have to undergo military training to defend their villages.

The junta’s troops, who are fighting the AA, know the terrain of Rakhine State better than the AA does and have public support.

Since November, the military has surrendered Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myay Pon, and Taung Pyo townships in Rakhine state.

The capital of Rakhine State, Sittwe, is besieged by government troops. Civil administration officials and their families have been evacuated to safe places by commercial flights, while other officials have been shifted by Naval vessels.

Rights campaigners fear that drafting Rohingya into military service could stoke ethnic tensions in Rakhine state, while legal experts argue that the drive is unlawful, given that Myanmar has refused to recognize the Rohingya as one of the country’s ethnic groups and denied them citizenship for decades.

An estimated 1.2 million ethnic Rohingya refugees have been languishing in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, since 2017 after fleeing the genocide committed by Myanmar military forces.

Another 630,000 living within Rakhine State are designated stateless by the United Nations, including those who languish in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and are restricted from moving freely within Rakhine state.

First published in The Daily Messenger, 25 February 2024

Saleem Samad is Deputy Editor of The Daily Messenger and an award-winning journalist. An Ashoka Fellow and recipient of the Hellman-Hammett Award. Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

The fractured state of Myanmar

Myamnar rebels gains ground - Photo: Public Domain 

SALEEM SAMAD

If anybody reads Myanmar's state-run daily newspaper, the Global New Light of Myanmar, the oldest English Daily which covers news, the state Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV), one would not fathom the crisis faced by the Myanmar government.

News coming in from dissidents, journalists and media activists inside Myanmar rebel-held regions gives diametrically opposite news, which is not comfortable for the military junta in the capital, Naypyidaw.

The rebels are upbeat when they could make the government troops withdraw from northern Rakhine State after the onslaught of the rebel Arakan Army (AA).

The AA is one of the three ethnic armies in the Brotherhood Alliance, which launched Operation 1027 against the Myanmar military dictator, which ousted an elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy and plunging the Southeast Asian nation into bloody turmoil.

Armed insurgencies by the People's Defence Force (PDF) of the National Unity Government (NUG) have erupted throughout Myanmar in response to the military government's crackdown on anti-coup protests.

As of February 7, 2024, at least 6,337 civilians, including children, have been killed by the junta forces and 21,000 arrested.

Meanwhile, pictures and videos surfaced on social media and several other websites of the rebels, indicating that they have taken control of six towns in Rakhine State—Pauktaw, Kyauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Taungpyoletwe and Myebon—and one in Chin State, Paletwa.

The government soldiers, in retaliation, are attacking civilians in the south. The Rohingyas in the north of Rakhine State have also taken the brunt and fled from their settlement.

The guards of the Rohingya settlements have long abandoned their checkposts and the ethnic community has scattered for safety and security.

Unfortunately, the Arakan Army is equally not so kind to them. The Rohingya forced them to flee towards the coasts of the Naf River, with advice to cross into Bangladesh.

They are asked to join their relatives and neighbours living in squalid refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

Intensified patrols and vigilance of Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB) and Coast Guards have discouraged them from crossing the river, which borders Bangladesh with Myanmar.

Several sources in Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar and Ghumdhum in Bandarban have indicated that some Rohingya, after taking dangerous journeys through the hill forests, have trekked into the camps.

Officials working with international NGOs have confirmed the incidents of some illegal migration and have been sheltered in the camps by relatives mostly.

The NGO officials declined to be named and said they are not expecting a huge or even moderate influx of Rohingya people, as the borders are sealed.

The refugee leaders and camp leaders are reviewing the situation across the border into Rakhine State. They are in touch with scores of Rohingyas who are living in extreme difficulties.

The Home boss and Chief of BGB have reiterated that they will not allow a single Rohingya to enter Bangladeshi territory under any circumstances.

UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar

On the other end of the world, Myanmar’s ruling military junta has “doubled down” on civilian attacks while showing signs of becoming “increasingly desperate” by imposing military service, the UN special rapporteur UN’s Tom Andrews said at Geneva on Wednesday.

“While wounded and increasingly desperate, the Myanmar military junta remains extremely dangerous,” the UN’s Tom Andrews said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the conscription law, the junta was trying to justify and expand its pattern of forced recruitment.

The junta faces widespread armed opposition to its rule three years after seizing power from an elected civilian government and has recently suffered a series of stunning losses to an armed alliance of ethnic minority groups.

Junta Families Evacuated

On last Saturday, a naval vessel reportedly carrying family members of the junta and police personnel was seen departing from Maday Island, where the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project is located.

Earlier, on February 15 and 16, the family members were evacuated from Ma Ei town by helicopter. Later the soldiers and police personnel were seen leaving Ma Ei police station in military vehicles.

Following the Arakan Army's capture of many towns after the conflicts erupted in Ramree, Taungup and Kyaukphyu localities, the military regime relocated their family members to Kyaukphyu, Thandwe and Ann localities. Later, the officer’s families were shifted to Yangon.

Sittwe Braced for Street Fight

Fighting continued in northern and southern Rakhine State since the AA launched an offensive against Myanmar’s junta in mid-November last year.

The AA has seized Mrauk-U, Minbya, Kyauktaw and Pauktaw towns and Paletwa in southern Chin State, along with numerous junta bases and border outposts. Only Sittwe remains to be occupied by AA.

The AA has urged the government’s Regional Operations Command in the state capital, Sittwe, to surrender. Sittwe is the junta’s administrative seat in Rakhine.

The junta forces are systematically fortifying their defence arrangements in Sittwe. They have obstructed the access of roads and even destroyed many bridges to obstruct AA advancements.

Civil administrative officials and residents have left Sittwe in fear for their lives during the street battle. Many residents cannot afford to leave and there is no way out from Sittwe if fighting breaks out.

Commodities and fuels in Sittwe are running low since the roads were blocked. Shops are selling off their stocks as they are in a hurry to leave the city.

Despite the night curfew in Sittwe, the hospitals and clinics are still operational, but the city is in panic.

The Brotherhood Alliance warned civilians of the rising danger of landmines in Rakhine State, saying the junta’s military is placing landmines around its outposts and bases there.

Nervous Junta

Junta troops arrested around 600 civilians after their flights from Yangon landed at two airports in Sittwe and Kyaukphyu city in Rakhine state, according to family members, who said the military is holding them on suspicion of attempting to join the armed rebels.

The arrests come amid the enactment of a conscription law that has sent draft-eligible civilians fleeing from Myanmar’s cities, saying they would rather leave the country or join anti-junta forces in remote border areas than fight for the military.

India-Myanmar Military Forge Ties

Myanmar Tatmadaw and the Indian Armed Forces to forge friendly ties and further cooperation.

The Vice-Chairman of the State Administration Council Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Commander-in-Chief (Army) Vice-Senior General Soe Win held parleys with an India Army delegation led by Lt-Gen Harjeet Singh Sahi, the General Officer Commanding III Corps of the Indian Armed Forces, at the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday, according to the official daily The Global New Light of Myanmar.

They cordialy discussed friendly relations between Myanmar and India and the two armed forces and promotion of further cooperation, and plans to cooperate in peace and stability, security and development at the border regions between the two countries.

First published in The Daily Mesenger, 23 February 2024

Saleem Samad, is Deputy Editor of The Daily Messenger, an award-winning independent journalist, and recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter (X) @saleemsamad

21st February: International Mother Language Day

 

SALEEM SAMAD

The International Mother Language Day (IMLD) on 21st February is observed worldwide to promote cultural diversity, linguistics and multilingualism, In Bangladesh, the day is observed as National Language Martyrs Day.

UNESCO announced the IMLD on 17 November 1999. It was officially recognised in 2008 under the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution.

Unfortunately, due to globalisation just over 40% of the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world today are endangered and only a few hundred languages have a place in educational systems.

Every two weeks a language disappears — taking with it an entire cultural and intellectual heritage.

Two Bangladesh-born activists Rafiqul Islam and Abdus Salam live in Vancouver, Canada wrote a letter to Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations on 9 January 1998 urging him to take steps to save the world's languages from extinction by declaring an International Mother Language Day. The duo proposed the date as 21 February to commemorate the language martyrs of 1952 in Dhaka.

Pakistan Legislative Assembly in 1948 in the capital city Karachi (later the capital moved to Islamabad) adopted Urdu as the official language with an overwhelming voice vote.

The people of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) demanded that Bangla, the language spoken in Bangladesh should also be recognised as an official language.

It was very odd, that Urdu was never the mother tongue of Pakistan. The four provinces of Pakistan – Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, North West Frontier Province (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and East Bengal (now Bangladesh) had separate mother languages for centuries.

Urdu was spoken only by political elites of the Pakistan Muslim League and elites of Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan negotiated a separate nation for Muslims of India from the British Raj and other political elites spoke Urdu.

In 1948, a year after the birth of Pakistan, declared Urdu to be the national language of the nascent state.

The elected members from East Bengal of the Pakistan constituent assembly vehemently protested in the house. But the voice was too feeble to make them heard in the assembly.

Promptly, the political leaders, youths and students in Bangladesh protested loudly. The news of the stubborn Pakistan politician's refusal to accept another state language picked up momentum among all strata of the society. The country plunged into country-wide unrest.

On 21 February 1952, the angry student decided to march towards the East Bengal Legislative Assembly in Dhaka in demand Bangla should also be an official national language.

Hundreds of students marched with banners and placards enroute to the provincial assembly hall – located on the Dhaka University campus was barricaded by armed police.

The civil administration imposed a ban on rallies and street protests. The students attempted to march through the barricade – police fired live bullets at the demonstrators. Five protesters were shot and killed and hundreds more were wounded.

The news of police firing sparked wildfires all over the country. Hundreds of students and political leaders were arrested for protesting the police firing and demanding recognition of Bangla as a national language of Pakistan.

Finally, Bangla was recognised as one of the state languages of Pakistan at a session of newly elected members of the United Front to the National Assembly on 9 May 1954.

The Bangla language created a nation-state – from East Bengal to East Pakistan and now to present Bangladesh.

After 1952, the people of Bangladesh were frustrated with the attitude of the elite politicians of Pakistan who deliberately adopted a policy to alienate people living in the eastern province of Pakistan.

The citizens of Pakistan looked down on the people of the eastern region as a low-caste Bangalee (Bangla-speaking population). Visible marginalisation in higher education, jobs in civil administration and recruitment in Pakistan's armed forces. The people in Bangladesh felt they were deliberately discriminated against.

Moreover, the administration of the eastern province was dominated by people in civil administration, judiciary, police and military who were transferred from Pakistan, and they spoke Urdu, a language alien to the local people.

The simmering dissent in East Bengal, treated as a colony of Pakistan and governed by political and military elites from the capital Islamabad for 2.5 decades erupted in a mass protest in 1969.

The IMLD has also made an impact in Bangladesh. The 50 different Adivasis (national ethnic communities) were now able to study their languages in schools in remote hill forests.

To conclude the United Nations on IMLD says: Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. When one language vanishes, a part of the world’s rich tapestry of cultural diversity also disappears.

First published in The Daily Messenger, 21 February 2024

Saleem Samad is Deputy Editor of The Daily Messenger, an award-winning independent journalist, and recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter (X) @saleemsamad

China's dam on the Brahmaputra to threaten Bangladesh, India

SALEEM SAMAD

China secretly building the world's biggest dam over the mighty Brahmaputra River which is likely to jeopardise the ecology, environment and morphology.

If the mega project goes through will immensely cause hardship for several million people in downstream India, and of course Bangladesh.

China's $1.5 billion dam over Brahmaputra, known as Zangmu Hydropower Station, has raised serious concerns in Bangladesh and India.

China did not consult with the two neighbouring countries, which is mandatory according to the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers is an international guideline regulating how rivers and their connected ground waters that cross national boundaries may be used, adopted by the International Law Association (ILA) in Helsinki, Finland in 1966.

Dhaka and New Delhi know very well that diplomatic parleys will not dent the simmering issue with the arrogant Beijing administration.

The hydropower dam over the mighty Brahmaputra River, China is opening another flashpoint with India, as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has its party in power in the northeast state of Assam, where the river flows further south and enters Bangladesh delta.

The Brahmaputra River once it enters Bangladesh, at Bahadurabad in Jamalpur, gets a local name. The Jamuna River directly flows from the yawning Brahmaputra River, said researcher and writer Mohiuddin Ahmad.

The people along the Jamuna River people are critically dependent on the river for rejuvenating life in the monsoon for massive agricultural activities and navigation to millions in the floodplains.

China’s planned super dam on a major river that flows into northeast India threatens to turn into another in a series of flashpoints with New Delhi and Beijing and is likely to spark concerns in Bangladesh.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India's National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including ‘Water: Asia's New Battleground.’

China is unmatched as the world's hydro hegemony, with more large dams in service than every other country combined. Now it is building the world's first super dam, close to its heavily militarised frontier with India.

This megaproject, with a planned capacity of 60 gigawatts, would generate three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam, now the world's largest hydropower plant.

China, though, has given few updates about the project's status since the National People's Congress approved it in March 2021.

China presented the super dam project for the approval of the National People's Congress only after it had built sufficient infrastructure to start transporting heavy equipment, materials and workers to the remote site.

Barely two months after parliament's approval nearly three years ago, Beijing announced that it had accomplished the feat of completing a "highway through the world's deepest canyon." That highway ends very close to the Indian border.

Opacity about the development of past projects has often served as cover for quiet action. Beijing has a record of keeping work on major dam projects on international rivers under wraps until the activity can no longer be hidden in commercially available satellite imagery.

The super dam is located in some of the world's most treacherous terrain, in an area long thought impassable. The hydrology and river morphology have not been fully explored, meaning research on the gigantic river is still under study by experts.

Bangladesh is trailing behind in conducting a study on the river Brahmaputra, said Ahmad, who had worked for Bangladesh Delta Plan (BDP) for 100 years.

To understand, the Brahmaputra, known to Tibetans as the Yarlung Tsangpo, drops almost 3,000 meters as it takes a sharp southerly turn from the Himalayas into India, with the world's highest-altitude major river descending through the globe's longest and steepest canyon.

Twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States, the Brahmaputra gorge holds Asia's greatest untapped water reserves while the river's precipitous fall creates one of the greatest concentrations of river energy on Earth. The combination has acted as a powerful magnet for Chinese dam builders.

During the British Raj, several British expeditions and researchers failed to enter Tibet, now a territory of China, said Sanat Chakraborty, a journalist and researcher on the river morphology, life and history of rivers in northeast India.

Another journalist Samrat Chowdhury, an acclaimed Indian journalist who floated on the Brahmaputra for days in the northeast as well as in Bangladesh has written a book The Braided Rivers, which describes the life of boatmen, fishermen, the chars (shoals) people, vibrant trading in hats (market) and farmers. He described how millions of people are dependent on the river.

The behemoth dam, however, is the world's riskiest project as it is being built in a seismically active area. This makes it potentially a ticking water bomb for downstream communities in India and Bangladesh, writes Chellaney.

What is alarming, the southeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau is earthquake-prone because it sits on the geological fault line where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake, along the Tibetan Plateau's eastern rim, killed 87,000 people and drew international attention to the phenomenon of reservoir-triggered pressure from a dam's reservoir may have helped trigger the earthquake.

Some Chinese and American scientists drew a link between the quake and Sichuan's Zipingpu Dam, which came into service two years earlier near a seismic fault. They suggested that the weight of the several hundred million cubic meters of water impounded in the dam's reservoir could have triggered RTS or severe tectonic stresses.

But even without a quake, the new super dam could be a threat to downriver communities if torrential monsoon rains trigger flash floods in the Great Bend of the Brahmaputra. Barely a few years ago, some 400 million Chinese were put at risk after record flooding endangered the Three Gorges Dam.

In pursuing its controversial megaproject on the Brahmaputra, China is cloaking its construction activity to mute international reaction, alleges the Centre for Policy Research.

The Brahmaputra was one of the world's last undammed rivers until China began constructing a series of midsized dams on sections upstream from the famous canyon. With its dam building now moving close to border areas, China will in due course be able to leverage transboundary flows in its relations with rival India.

But the brunt of the environmental havoc that the megaproject is likely to wreak will be borne by Bangladesh, in the last stretch of the river. The environmental damage, however, is likely to extend up through Tibet, one of the world's most bio-diverse regions. In fact, with its super dam, China will be desecrating the canyon region which is a crucial Tibetan holy place.

A cardinal principle of water peace is transparency. The far-reaching strategic, environmental and inter-riparian implications of the largest dam ever conceived make it imperative that China be transparent. Only sustained international pressure can force Beijing to drop the veil of secrecy surrounding its project.

First published in The Daily Messenger, 15 February 2024

Saleem Samad an award-winning journalist is Deputy Editor of The Daily Messenger. An Ashoka Fellow and recipient of the Hellman-Hammett Award. Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad