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Khin Nyunt’s youngest son, Ye Naing Win, ran Burma’s only Internet service-provider.

But the “invisible government” of the MI grew too big for the army’s comfort and so was uprooted swiftly before it could overtake the entire military regime.

 

The End of the MI Era?

 

Less than a week after the purge, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, the junta’s third ranking member, told leading businessmen that Khin Nyunt was made to pay the price for “disobedience, corruption and bribery” by his military intelligence apparatus. The New Light of Myanmar reported him as saying, “In the military everybody is liable for their failure to abide by the law. Nobody is above the law.”

 

So what’s next now that Khin Nyunt is gone?

 

Reports from Rangoon say that Maj-Gen Myint Swe, the Commander of the Rangoon Military Command who has close relations with Than Shwe’s family and who led the operation to arrest Khin Nyunt, will take over as Burma’s chief spook. But it is still uncertain what form the new intelligence network will take.

 

A few days after the purge, the government abolished the National Intelligence Bureau, or NIB, and its existing laws. NIB controlled the MI, the police Special Branch and the investigation bureaus.

 

The new prime minister and Maung Aye will likely have some control over the new MI units, but Than Shwe will exercise ultimate control. The refashioned intelligence office will still be critical to the regime’s survival, and will be structured to prevent another Khin Nyunt or Brig-Gen Tin Oo from emerging.

 

The regime will also have to tackle several sensitive issues, like dealing with the ceasefire groups, which have expressed concern over the sudden leadership changes.

 

As the architect of the ceasefire agreements, Khin Nyunt maintained good relations with ethnic leaders. Already, however, new Prime Minister Lt-Gen Soe Win and Lt-Gen Thein Sein, the new Secretary-1 of the junta, have met with several ethnic ceasefire leaders in Rangoon and assured them that the conditions of the agreements remain unchanged.

 

Maung Aye’s past hostilities toward the ethnic minorities are no secret and analysts fear he will rekindle the armed conflict between the central government and the ceasefire groups. Full-scale conflict would be anathema to Rangoon, but military leaders need a modicum of “instability” in the country in order to justify and prolong its rule. Thus, the prospects of “limited civil war” in Burma linger.

 

It is also likely that the sacking of Khin Nyunt will have minimal impact on the constitution-drafting National Convention and the seven-point road map to political reform.

 

The road map, announced last August by Khin Nyunt, is actually the brainchild of Than Shwe.