Myanmar’s MI and the Kempeitai: a historical footnote – New Mandala

After the 1962 coup in Myanmar (then referred to as Burma), one of many first steps taken by Normal Ne Win was to “revamp and reorganise” the nation’s army intelligence equipment. In keeping with the British author Harriet O’Brien, the Directorate of Defence Companies Intelligence (DDSI), broadly referred to as the Navy Intelligence Service (MIS, or just “the MI”) was Ne Win’s “particular creation”. A program was carried out to:

Increase and retrain the army intelligence forces … The MI turned more and more highly effective and their operations steadily prolonged past merely gathering info to help troops combating the rebel armies … They turned a community of spies, a strong secret police pressure monitoring the actions of peculiar folks.

Ne Win’s inspiration for an expanded army intelligence organisation with a broader remit is popularly believed to be the Japanese Kempeitai army police, from which it’s stated the outdated dictator obtained intelligence and counter-espionage coaching in the course of the Second World Conflict.

Exhausting proof to help this declare, nonetheless, is troublesome to seek out. It raises the query of whether or not that is one other case of the traditional knowledge with regard to Myanmar profitable out over cautious analysis. A fast historic survey may assist make clear issues.

Colonel Keiji Suzuki, the Japanese spy despatched to Rangoon in 1940 to recruit younger Burmese nationalists for the approaching conflict towards the British, was assigned by the Second Bureau (Intelligence) of the Imperial Japanese Military (IJA) Normal Workers. In keeping with Kyi Win Sein, Ne Win studied for a brief interval on the Nakano College in Tokyo with 4 different members of the group referred to as the “Thirty Comrades”. The Nakano College was the IJA’s important coaching centre for army intelligence, counter-intelligence and unconventional warfare. Additionally, in 1941 the group’s military instructors on the island of Hainan have been often Nakano College graduates.

This has led James McAndrew, Bertil Lintner and different Myanmar-watchers to imagine that the Kempeitai educated Ne Win. The Japan-based scholar Donald Seekins additionally appears to have conflated the Nakano College with the Kempeitai. He has prompt that “the subtle Navy Intelligence equipment [Ne Win] established after Burma turned unbiased could owe one thing to his Japanese lecturers”. In his complete biography of Ne Win, Robert Taylor doesn’t check with this reported intelligence coaching, apparently as a result of he discovered no proof to warrant mentioning it.

The difficulty is related as plenty of students and different commentators have claimed that, after seizing energy in 1962, Ne Win was eager to “break with the British custom and switch the intelligence equipment right into a secret police alongside the strains of the Kempeitai or Germany’s environment friendly Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo)”.

In keeping with Kin Oung, for instance, within the early Seventies DDSI chief “MI” Tin Oo was inspired by Ne Win not simply to gather army intelligence, which had been the principle focus of his predecessors, however to create a secret police pressure that would monitor and management the civilian inhabitants. Tin Oo was additionally charged with protecting an in depth eye on the armed forces (Tatmadaw), the loyalty and cohesion of which was essential for the regime’s survival. Thus, wrote Kin Oung, “the Kempeitai custom was reborn”.

Allusions to the DDSI’s supposed Kempeitai antecedents have additionally been made by sundry politicians, activists and human rights campaigners. They’ve been eager to blacken the identify of Myanmar’s fashionable intelligence equipment by linking it to the reviled Japanese army police pressure, which in 1945 was described by the US Workplace of Strategic Research as “essentially the most highly effective, essentially the most hated, and essentially the most feared organisation in Japanese-occupied territory”.

The essential query right here is whether or not the Burmese obtained intelligence coaching from the Kempeitai, or from members of the IJA’s intelligence corps. The latter appears to be the case. The Nakano College was not below the management of the Kempeitai, which had its personal devoted coaching services. The College taught programs in intelligence and counter-espionage, topics that additionally fell throughout the obligations of the Kempeitai, however there isn’t any proof that Ne Win or another members of the Thirty Comrades have been educated in intelligence issues by the army police.

All that stated, the Japanese roots of Myanmar’s army intelligence organisation stay unclear. Burmese servicemen obtained instruction in related topics from Japanese officers after the creation of the Burma Independence Military (BIA) in 1941 and the Burma Defence Military (BDA) in 1942. After nominal independence was granted to Burma by the Japanese in 1943, the Burma Nationwide Military (BNA) too obtained coaching from the Japanese, each in Burma and Japan. Throughout this time, Japanese army doctrine was probably absorbed by members of the nascent Tatmadaw, not at all times to their credit score.

Additionally, till the mid-Seventies, “virtually all the administrators of the DMT [Directorate of Military Training] and commandants of the Tatmadaw’s coaching faculties have been officers educated in the course of the Second World Conflict by the Japanese”, famous Maung Aung Myoe — although as his analysis explains, Burmese personnel additionally attended programs in different nations. Between 1948 and 1962, for instance, 1,070 officers and 782 different ranks have been despatched overseas for coaching, to the US, UK, Australia, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Individuals’s Republic of China. A few of these programs lined intelligence and counter-intelligence.

To take the US as an illustration, coaching was offered at a secret CIA base on the Pacific island of Saipan, which had as its cowl identify the “Naval Technical Coaching Unit”. This facility performed programs in intelligence tradecraft, communications, counter-intelligence and psychological warfare. Burmese officers additionally attended CIA coaching programs on Okinawa, most probably on the Military Liaison College, later renamed the US Military Pacific Intelligence College. Courses targeted on fight intelligence and intelligence assortment. Tatmadaw officers could have additionally obtained “covert coaching” on Guam, offered by the Defence Intelligence Company.

These and different such contacts should be taken into consideration when contemplating claims that the Kempeitai was the ideological wellspring of, if not the sensible mannequin for, Myanmar’s dreaded army intelligence equipment. On the very least, the extensive variety of coverage approaches, methodology and experiences to which Burmese intelligence officers have been uncovered throughout this early interval should increase questions on their private {and professional} improvement, and thus the sources of the Tatmadaw’s intelligence traditions, techniques and strategies.