The River of Lost Footsteps, by Thant Myint-U

The 12 January this year was a black day for the Burmese democracy movement. A draft resolution calling for the implementation of reforms in Burma (Myanmar), sponsored by the US and Britain, was blocked in the UN Security Council by China and Russia, using their vetoes. A week later, Burma's state-run media reported that the ruling military junta had acted "considerately" toward the movement's iconic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, by not jailing her for the remainder of her days. Her crime? She had neither repatriated moneys accruing to her from her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and other awards, nor offered to pay tax on them.

The clear inference was that her latest spell of house arrest, begun in 2003, is set to continue indefinitely. It didn't matter one iota that the same moneys had been dedicated by Aung San Suu Kyi to educational and healthcare projects for the benefit of her own people. For some Burma-watchers, the outcome of the UNSC vote was a foregone conclusion. One of history's little ironies is that where Britain failed, China is succeeding. Among Britain's motives for annexing Burma in the 19th century, through a series of military assaults, was the desire to open a major trade corridor from the Bay of Bengal into southern China. This never materialised. But since 1990 - the year Burma's generals declined to honour the results of a general election they themselves had called - the Chinese have steadily achieved the reverse, driving trade down toward the Indian Ocean from Yunnan, and making of Burma a client state in the process. Burma renders up its considerable natural resources (jade, rubies, timber, oil, gas, tungsten). In return China provides its regime with technology and arms. It was never on the cards that the People's Republic would accede to a resolution that potentially threatened its expansionist economic interests.

Thus does the UN rubber-stamp realpolitik. But if pro-democracy activists were dismayed, it was not just Burma's generals who drew satisfaction from the 12 January vote. For a while now some commentators, no less critical of the junta than the activists, have questioned whether the activist-led policies of sanctions and isolation adopted by the USA, Britain and the EU have not been counter-productive - firstly by inducing a siege mentality among those who govern Burma; and secondly by making life easier for China. It's all very well occupying the high moral ground, the argument goes, but if insistence on principle delivers no results, then at the least a rethink of Burma strategies is called for.

Thant Myint-U belongs unequivocally with the "revisionists". The activist programme, he writes at the beginning of The River of Lost Footsteps, has "had the unintended consequence of further entrenching the status quo." At its end he warns that further isolating "one of the most isolated countries in the world" is "dangerous". This diagnosis has already made waves in the US, where his book was published earlier this year. And understandably so. He has palpable pedigree. His maternal grandfather was U Thant, the celebrated third UN Secretary-General, and arch-enemy of Burma's erstwhile dictator Ne Win; while a previous study, The Making of Modern Burma, is one of very few recommendable books about its subject-matter. He has also himself pursued a good career within the UN.

Sandwiched between his endpaper polemics Thant Myint-U delivers his main course, a greatly engaging if at times idiosyncratically selective narrative of Burmese history from its dawn.Up until the British conquest, everything is a bit dreamy. The author draws on old chronicles of dubious reliability to pick out great Burman heroes, avoiding such vexed questions as whether it was the Burmans themselves or the Mons who established Buddhism in the first millennium. Indeed the Mons, one of many minorities who make up between 30 and 40 per cent of Burma's population, do not get a look-in until the 15th century. But come the British, Thant Myint-U gets into his stride. In his view, our forebears wrecked his country, principally by dismantling not only the Burman monarchy, but also an entire governing elite of lords and gentry.

Little by little, the minorities inch their way into Thant Myint-U's account. Ever since independence in 1948, Burma has been plagued by "ethnic" insurgency - not just the Mons, but also the Karens, Karennis, Kachins, Chins, Shans and half a dozen others. Their fractiousness, as well as a long and bloody communist resistance, helped mould the Burmese army into the repressive instrument it became.

Yet towards the minorities Thant Myint-U is less than even-handed. He points an accusing finger at the British, who preferred Kachins and Karens above Burmans, partly because of their willingness to embrace Christianity. But if these groups welcomed the colonial power, that was because they had suffered at the hands of Burman supremacism.

Equally, Thant Myint-U's account of the August 1988 democracy uprising, which propelled Aung San Suu Kyi onto first the national, then the international, stage, is at best fitful. The immediate target of the people's anger was General Sein Lwin, installed by Ne Win as president the month before. Sein Lwin, known as the "Butcher of Rangoon", had already perpetrated a series of atrocities against the then capital's students, but of these there is no mention. Similarly Thant Myint-U downplays the numbers massacred during the uprising itself. No more than a few hundred, he suggests, whereas foreign embassies, which had no good reason to lie to their governments, reported thousands.

While he has few kind words for Ne Win, Thant Myint-U blithely passes over the current and equally ruthless "senior general", Than Shwe. He is, however, at home with an older generation, notably U Nu, Burma's first prime minister. The effervescent but bumbling Nu is brought convincingly to life, as is the author's grandfather; and one pleasure of The River of Lost Footsteps is its sprinkling of family memories.

Thant Myint-U's take on his country's past is too patrician to stand as serious modern historiography - the reason perhaps why his book has no index. Yet that should deter no-one from reading it. His expatriate lament is often eloquent, often vivid. Even if it doesn't quite connect with his advocacy of greater engagement, it positions him somewhere near the lonely heart of Burma's enduring sadness, from which there is no easy, quick release.

'Perfect Hostage', Justin Wintle's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, is published this April by Hutchinson

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