For a man concerned about the ebbs and flows of heavenly favour, March must have seemed like a very good month to the leader of the Myanmar junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. It began with a visit to Belarus and Russia and a warm meeting with President Putin, who thanked the general for his gift of six elephants.
Last week he reviewed massed ranks of saluting troops and overflying fighter jets at the country’s annual Armed Forces Day; this week he had an invitation to a summit meeting of Asian leaders in Thailand. After four years of international isolation and civil war, following the coup in which he overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, Min Aung Hlaing finally seemed to be back on the global scene.
Last Friday, it all came tumbling down. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar, devastating the cities of Mandalay, Sagaing and the capital, Naypyidaw; the official number of dead is close to 3,000 and is sure to rise. Apart from the physical damage, it is a grave spiritual blow to Min Aung Hlaing, a deeply superstitious man known for his consultations with fortune tellers and astrologers, and the dictator of a country in which the fortunes of its people are often regarded as a judgment on their rulers.
“When leaders are bad, people suffer,” wrote one Facebook user, Myo Naing Win, in a comment typical of many on Burmese-language social media. “As long as bad rulers rule, disaster will befall them.” But far from yielding to his divine punishment, Min Aung Hlaing is fighting back and struggling to turn the country’s worst earthquake for a century to his political advantage.
Many of Myanmar’s previous military rulers have been superstitious, and Min Aung Hlaing is an assiduous practitioner of what in Burmese are called yadaya, rituals performed to avert misfortune on the advice of soothsayers.
He has collected lucky white elephants and precious stones. He ordered the cultivation of a million acres of sunflowers, ostensibly for their oil but also because the word for the plant in Burmese sounds like the phrase “long lasting” — which is what the junta leader wants to be.
It is a common belief in Myanmar that the advice of sorcerers was behind one of the grimmest aspects of the junta’s crackdown on peaceful protesters: the habit of the security forces of killing them with shots to the head.
Having expended so much energy and money on averting misfortune, it is devastating to suffer a historic natural disaster. The earthquake is seen by many as retribution for the junta’s brutality in the civil war against resistance militias and independence armies, reminiscent of the devastating cyclone in 2008 that came eight months after the bloody suppression of an uprising of Buddhist monks.
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“Even if he’s too arrogant and self-assured to believe that this is the universe telling him something, he knows that around him are a lot of superstitious people,” said Richard Horsey, an adviser to the International Crisis Group think tank. “In the broader military elite circles and the country beyond, many will be interpreting this as a sign.”
The 2008 cyclone hit the isolated Irrawaddy Delta, but the earthquake struck hard in Naypyidaw, toppling the lodgings of civil servants and damaging Min Aung Hlaing’s own presidential palace.
“Senior officials have been killed, ministry buildings are in disarray,” Horsey said. “This isn’t kind of out of sight, out of mind. All of his inner circle, everybody else can see exactly what’s happening. And so failure will be extremely obvious and difficult to spin.”
Min Aung Hlaing has been trying nonetheless, being photographed inspecting the damage in Naypyidaw, meeting bandaged victims and handing over boxes of aid to survivors. He has been on the phone to the prime ministers of Malaysia and India, and even to President Xi of China, who has not met him since his coup in 2021.
On Thursday he is due to fly to Bangkok for a meeting of a group called the Bay of Bengal initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Co-operation, which includes India, Thailand and Bangladesh.
Some in Myanmar will see this as deserting his post at a time of emergency. But for the general it is a crucial opportunity to present himself as an international statesman doing his best at a time of national crisis. When Myanmar’s pro-democracy government in exile announced a ceasefire, Min Aung Hlaing rejected it, but on Wednesday he changed his mind and promised a ceasefire of his own until April 22.
“I think all of this karmic comeuppance must be really affecting him and lots of other people,” David Mathieson, an independent analyst on Myanmar, said. “But maybe he thinks he can manipulate this to his advantage that this is the moment where he can get some brownie points from the international community and people inside the country.”
