The fall of Asia’s longest-serving intelligence chief.

General Khin Nyunt, the chief of the Office of Military Intelligence, or OCMI, and since August last year prime minister of Burma, took a day off from his hectic schedule of public engagements to celebrate his 65th birthday on October 11. Seven days hence he was going to have a lot more free time.

On Monday, October 18 at some time before lunch Khin Nyunt was detained in Mandalay where he was on an official visit. At about 18:00 the Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence, or OCMI, headquarters at Eight-mile Junction, Rangoon was raided by Burma Army personnel. Some time after 20:00 Khin Nyunt arrived at Mingaladon Airport where he was met by Defense Services Chief of Staff and Coordinator of Special Operations (Army, Navy and Air) Gen Thura Shwe Mann.

Shwe Mann accompanied the deposed prime minister to his office at the OCMI building where he was told to hand over his pistol and his radio. The 20-year reign of Asia’s longest-serving intelligence chief was over.

The next day news of the palace coup was broken by Thai government spokesman Jakrapop Penkair, who said Khin Nyunt had been deposed for corruption. That evening Myanmar Television news confirmed that the State Peace and Development Council, or SPDC, had permitted the prime minister to resign on “health grounds with effect from today” and that in his place Lt-Gen Soe Win had been appointed PM. Up to that time, Soe Win had been Secretary-1 of the SPDC.

According to various Rangoon sources, Khin Nyunt’s wife Khin Win Shwe, daughter Thin Le Le Win, and sons Maj Zaw Naing Oo (44th Light Infantry Battalion, headquartered in Thayet, Magwe Division) and Ye Naing Win, an entrepreneur who ran the country’s only Internet server, were also detained.

It is unlikely that the deposed PM is under house arrest at his home. Until Monday, October 18 he shared a residential compound at Eight-mile Junction with, among others, Sr-Gen Than Shwe and Deputy Sr-Gen Maung Aye, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the SPDC, respectively. The housing estate backs onto a War Office compound. Basic security concerns would require Khin Nyunt and his family be somewhere off-site. Those concerns would also have dictated that his power base be shut down.

The Friday evening news on October 22 announced that the SPDC had repealed the 1983 National Intelligence Bureau Law and dissolved the National Intelligence Bureau. The coup had become a route. The spook apparatus appears to have been made inoperative.

Five of the seven Heads of Department at OCMI are reportedly under some form of detention, including Brig-Gen Myint Aung Zaw (Administration), Brig-Gen Hla Aung (Training), Brig-Gen Kyaw Han (Science and Technology), Brig-Gen Than Tun (Politics and Counter Intelligence) and Brig-Gen Myint Zaw (Border Security and Intelligence). OCMI posts nationwide have been shut down or commandeered by regular army officers, while intelligence staffers down to the rank of major have been told not to stray far from home.

Brig-Gen Kyaw Thein (Ethnic Nationalities and Ceasefire Groups, Drugs Suppression and Naval and Air Intelligence) is still free, while Brig-Gen Thein Swe (International Relations), the father of Myanmar Times newspaper co-founder “Sonny” Myat Swe, prudently retired a week or two before the putsch and since October 18 has been claiming to be suffering from amnesia.

There has been a flurry of house searches and asset seizures—not least the Burma Army’s takeover of Bagan Cybertech Ltd, the Internet server run by Ye Naing Win and OCMI Deputy Department Head Col Tin Oo.

The only senior OCMI employee unaccounted for is Deputy Chief Maj-Gen Kyaw Win. It’s likely that he was complicit in the coup (he was a prot?g? of Sr-Gen Than Shwe), perhaps feeding his immediate superior false information at intelligence briefings. As PM with a hectic public schedule, Khin Nyunt had no time to oversee day-to-day spook operations. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that he wasn’t taken entirely by surprise.

On September 12 Khin Nyunt and a party of cabinet ministers and bureaucrats made a goodwill visit to Singapore. Its believed that during that time, the entire 70-man OCMI detachment at Muse on the Chinese border (including the border Security Department, better known by its Burmese acronym Na Sa Ka) was arrested by troops from the Northeast Regional Command on corruption charges and transported to Mandalay. The decision to bust them can only have come from the top.

The PM and his party returned to Rangoon on September 17. The next day the SPDC announced the “retirement” of both the minister of foreign affairs and his deputy (who had just returned from Singapore with Khin Nyunt) and the ministers of agriculture and irrigation and transport, the appointment of four replacements and the reshuffling of five other portfolios.

The SPDC orders were all signed by Lt-Gen Soe Win, at that time Secretary-1 of the SPDC. Khin Nyunt must have had a fair idea of what was to come. According to several sources, when the OCMI building was raided on October 18, a number of important, incriminating files were missing. There is speculation that the PM spirited the documents out of the country to be used as bargaining tools in the event of his being purged. The question that remains unanswered is what was the motivation for the coup?

There are two main theories: friction over control of business turf or that Khin Nyunt was becoming too powerful. The business turf argument is not backed by any real evidence—the families and cronies of the elite all got a piece of the action. The “Khin Nyunt too powerful” theory is similarly unsubstantiated—since being appointed PM in August 2003 he has looked increasingly marginalized and ineffectual.

His seven-point road map to political reform, unveiled shortly after taking office, was derailed at the first stop—the constitution-drafting National Convention, convened in May, was adjourned indefinitely in early July. The ceasefire with the Karen National Union, negotiated by his subordinates at the OCMI, was ignored by the Burma Army, which continued to attack Karen troops and civilians. It looked very much as though Than Shwe and Maung Aye were deliberately (and successfully) undermining him.

Khin Nyunt had no combat troops under his command, so no ability to pull a coup. Possibly he was trying to use patronage to buy the loyalty of field commanders, but there is no evidence yet (the rumor that three Light Infantry Division commanders were detained in the purge is still to be confirmed). His wife had built up a modest patronage-dispensing machine through her presidency of the Myanmar Women’s Affairs Federation, but it was of little relevance.

While it’s possible they had information that indicated otherwise (or that paranoia caused them to act), Khin Nyunt didn’t appear to be a threat to either Maung Aye or Than Shwe.

A Burmese expatriate who knew all the major players personally claims that the purge had nothing to do with fear of the spook. Than Shwe and Maung Aye simply held an intense personal dislike of him for years and were looking for the right occasion to get rid of him. 

Khin Nyunt had been untouchable so long as his patron, retired strongman Ne Win, maintained influence from behind the scenes. But when Ne Win’s son-in-law and three grandsons were arrested and convicted of “conspiring to overthrow the state” in 2002, his moral authority evaporated and the spy chief became vulnerable. So why did the SPDC appoint him prime minister last year?

Than Shwe, a poor English-speaker, didn’t like having to attend Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, meetings. In the wake of the May 30, 2003 Depayin Massacre (in which dozens, perhaps hundreds of supporters of the opposition National League for Democracy were beaten to death by a government-orchestrated mob), he had further reason for staying away. In appointing Khin Nyunt PM, the responsibility for dealing with Asean heads of state, making excuses for Depayin and trying to roll back the US sanctions put in place after the massacre, fell to him. It also meant he had considerably less time free to play spy.

Over the course of 15 months, with the tight US economic sanctions still in place, Khin Nyunt could boast of no successes and looked weak. He had demonstrated himself surplus to requirements. It’s likely that the date for the coup was made on advice from a fortuneteller.

Note that the “retirements” of the cabinet ministers (September 18) and the purging of Khin Nyunt (October 18) took place on dates that are both divisible by the number nine and add up to nine (1+8=9)—doubly auspicious. The leading members of the regime, acutely superstitious, appear to have a penchant for “9” (the late strongman Ne Win was also very fond of 9).