Kofi Annan, The Gentle Peacemaker

August 22, 2018

Foreign Policy pays tribute to Kofi Annan, The Gentle Peacemaker

Kofi Annan was the epitome of international diplomacy—which is why he was both an inspiration and a disappointment.

By James Traub

 

Not long after the announcement that former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan had died at 80 on Saturday, I heard a broadcast of his voice, and the whole man came back to me at once: the velvet texture of his presence, the exquisite courtesy and kindness, the reticence born of both native tact and endless diplomatic experience, the slightly throttled cadence that must have come from wrapping his West African tongue around English vocables but always lent him a quality of diffidence or remove. Annan was a rare kind of man—too cautious to be actually interesting, yet profoundly compelling.

I notice a metaphysical confusion in some of the commentary around Annan, including his New York Times obituary: Because the U.N. suffered self-evident failures during Annan’s tenure, Annan must have had corresponding moral flaws. The U.N. was feckless, so Annan was feckless. The oil-for-food program turned into an ugly mess, so Annan was tainted by corruption.

This strikes me as a misunderstanding of the man. So, however, does the view of many who loved and admired him that Annan was a martyr to the cynical power politics and reckless ideology of his time, and thus innocent of the consequences of his own shortcomings.

I spent hundreds of hours in Annan’s company, and dozens of hours alone with him, while writing The Best Intentions, my 2006 book on the U.N. during his tenure. I watched from a privileged position when Annan traveled to Baghdad in 1998 to persuade Saddam Hussein to permit weapons inspectors to return to Iraq.

One thing I learned about Annan was that his delicacy was born not of timidity but of diplomatic calculation; after emerging from his grueling, and at least temporarily successful, negotiations with Saddam, he talked to me about the importance of allowing an Arab autocrat to save face in order to make concessions possible. The next morning, I watched while he admonished Saddam’s vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan: “You should try to moderate your language.” That was the Annan equivalent of cold fury.

Annan came from a line of Ashanti tribal chiefs. He understood, in the chiefly way, that one could win by allowing the other man to feel that he had won, a strategic act of ego suppression whose merits one could not even explain, much less justify, to the current president of the United States. At times, he seemed almost to have eliminated himself; he had thoughts where other men had feelings. He could listen endlessly to a circle of Darfuri women who had been raped by janjaweed militias, but he could not find the language, or the gesture, to console them. Yet his very gravity, his patience, felt like a kind of blessing.

Yet this extreme reserve was also Annan’s weakness. He regarded outright conflict as failure; this deeply held conviction also served as a pretext to shy away from necessary confrontation. He could not, to take a small example, fire people—he had others do his dirty work. He could not, would not, fight back.

In the fall of 2004, conservatives smarting from the Security Council’s failure to approve the decision to go to war with Iraq put unrelenting pressure on Annan over the wildly overhyped oil-for-food scandal, with some demanding that he resign. Annan made the strategic calculation, perhaps a prudent one, that he would only stoke the fires by responding. But he couldn’t even bring himself to call, say, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and tell him to protect the U.N. by defending the secretary-general. Annan’s aides fell into despair over their boss’s passivity. I asked Annan if he didn’t feel enraged at the gross cynicism of the attacks. “You do get mad sometimes,” he murmured. Not “I do,” but “you do.”

About the Author

James Traub is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation, and author of the book “John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit.” @jamestraub1

 

It is natural to compare a U.N. secretary-general to a pope, because that is the only other job surrounded with so bright an aura of moral authority. But while the College of Cardinals selects each new pope with an eye to what is best for the Roman Catholic Church, the great powers choose sectaries-general with an eye to what is best for them—which often dictates a maximally compliant figure.

Annan surprised the United States by proving to be a far more commanding figure than it had expected, with a charisma that allowed him at times to act as an independent figure. But he was also a lifelong U.N. man who had thoroughly internalized the institution’s norms and thus at critical moments—above all in Rwanda and in Bosnia, when he was head of peacekeeping—could not abandon those norms when they no longer served the cause of justice. Think, by contrast, of Pope Francis, a man of his church as Annan was of his, who has nevertheless outraged conservatives by his willingness to rethink and even discard orthodoxy.

But that’s unfair, of course. The pope has sovereign authority over the Vatican and spiritual authority over Catholics. The secretary-general occupies almost the opposite position, as he is subject to the sovereign authorities who choose him and who exercise supreme power in the Security Council.

It wasn’t Annan who failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, any more than it was his successor, Ban Ki-moon, who failed in Syria. China blocked even the possibility of effective action against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, whom it regarded as a client, as Russia did in the case of Syria. Annan had almost a charmed first term, when Bill Clinton was the U.S. president, and a nightmarish second one, during the time of George W. Bush.

So yes, the institutional and political limits on the power of the secretary-general are so severe that the personal attributes of the individual are almost incidental. Kurt Waldheim was a dreadful person but hardly a worse U.N. leader than the gentle U Thant. Dag Hammarskjold was a truly great secretary-general not only because of his abundant gifts but because the great powers hadn’t yet caught on to the powers implicit in the office.

You’ll never have a great secretary-general again, even if the great powers install a wily, experienced former head of government, as they have in the case of the incumbent, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres.

Realism dictates that we let go of our obsession with the foibles of each new secretary-general, but we wish—or, in any case, I wish—to cling to a tattered faith in the institution. Kofi Annan’s power to disappoint was a measure of his power to inspire. He was a man of Africa who had thoroughly imbibed the moral habits of the West. In his first speech as secretary-general to the Organization of African Unity, he said that while he knew that many African leaders—that is, his audience—considered the demand for human rights as “an imposition, if not a plot, by the industrialized West,” he regarded that view as “demeaning of the yearning for human dignity that resides in every African heart.”

Perhaps the finest thing one may say of Annan’s tenure is that he found the U.N. a club of states and infused into it the liberal principle of individual rights. Perhaps the worst thing one could say is that Annan never found a way of saying no, even politely, whether to a U.S. president demanding that the U.N. clean up his mess in Iraq or to right-wingers howling for his head.

No one believed in the U.N. more single-mindedly than Annan. To acknowledge his flaws as well as his virtues, and to say that they mattered, is to render Annan the elementary service of saying that he mattered. That soft, finely modulated voice will remain with us even as the man himself is gone. It is the voice of our better angels.

 

Aung San Suu Kyi was never the Heroine of Human Rights Community

July 21, 2018

by Napat Rungsrithananaon

http://www.asiasentinel.com

Talk is cheap; Action demands Courage and Compassion, Madam

Before coming to power in a landslide victory for her party, the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi was widely perceived as the embodiment of hope, a brave symbol of defiance against the Myanmar military dictatorship and a heroine of the human rights community.  It is a perception that has sadly collapsed, having foundered on the treatment of the country’s Muslim Rohingya population, who make up just 4 percent of the country’s 53 million population.

This week, Suu Kyi and Senior General Min Aung Hliang have convened a five-day conference in Naypyidaw, the country’s administrative capital, meeting with representatives of the country’s long-oppressed ethnic minorities in an effort to reach a lasting peace. The off-delayed 21^st Century Panglong Conference is given little prospect of success by analysts. But for the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, the chances for success are even less.

Aung San Suu Kyi, look yourself in the mirror, instead of pointing fingers at genocide victims

Among the Oxford-educated Suu Kyi’s many honors is the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1991 for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights, having spent 15 of her 21 years in the country under house arrest. In her 2012 acceptance speech more than 20 years after being awarded the prize, Suu Kyi reaffirmed her values. She spoke about creating “a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless” and “a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace.”

That same year, however, saw an outbreak of communal violence in Myanmar that resulted in the displacement of more than 100,000 Rohingya people who were forced into makeshift refugee camps. At least 200 people were killed in clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state, a territory of 3.1 million people on Myanmar’s west coast.

Although Muslims have been in Myanmar since at least the 9^th century, their numbers increased markedly during British imperial rule. Nonetheless, the majority Buddhists, who make up 90 percent of the country’s population regard them as interlopers.  The violent blow-up generated by ethnic differences has largely discredited the country’s heralded transition to democracy, which began in 2010.

As the leader of the opposition at the time, Suu Kyi at first deflected the blame and responsibility to the government, claiming that the crisis was “the result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime” which in turn created a “climate of mistrust.” Once in power as State Councillor, the equivalent of Prime Minister, she pledged to “abide by our commitment to human rights and democratic values.”

Fast forward six years, the crisis shows no sign of abating. In fact, it escalated further when government troops launched a massive security operation in response to coordinated attacks in October 2106 by the militant Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, resulting in the deaths of nine police.  A second attack occurred in August 2017, with more than 30 onslaughts against police posts in northern Rakhine state.

Since the onset of the crisis, outside observers have continued to document numerous mass atrocities including widespread killings, torture and rape committed by Myanmar’s army and other state security forces. As widely reported, more than 717,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017. Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the UN Human rights chief, has called the security operation in Myanmar “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Having joined the government, Suu Kyi could no longer deflect the blame and responsibility. Unfortunately, her response has not been any more commendable. She has repeatedly failed to speak out against the violence inflicted on the Rohingya or address the allegation of ethnic cleansing, insisting that the crisis was instigated by “terrorists” and distorted by a “huge iceberg of misinformation” – something her government has bizarrely continued to maintain by obstructing independent investigations into the crisis.

Barring the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar from entering the country, the government has offered a further indication that whatever is being concealed in the Rakhine state must be something terrible.

Suu Kyi’s refusal to condemn the violence or attempt to lead her government away from it has made her the target of worldwide criticism as her country’s military wages its campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Her defenders argue that while she makes the majority of important decisions, the military retains control of three crucial ministries – home affairs, defense and border affairs – and is hence the real power in northern Rakhine state and along the border with Bangladesh. There is therefore an argument that Suu Kyi is in fact powerless – that she is not in charge of decisions capable of alleviating the suffering of Rohingya or that she cannot do so without risking the stability of the whole country. While that argument is popular among her supporters, it doesn’t explain her failure to at least speak up for the Rohingya.

But it is more likely that the world got Suu Kyi wrong from the beginning, that she was never really truly a political saint. Western leaders have a tendency to champion individuals – often activists who have made high-profile heroic sacrifices – as one-stop solutions to the problems of dictatorship or shaky new democracy. Then, in their zeal to find simple solutions to complex situations, they overlook their champions’ flaws, fail to see the fundamental challenges of being in power and assume that countries are the products of their leaders – when it is almost always the other way around.

Looking back, there were early signs that Suu Kyi might not after all be a determinedly unquestioned champion of human rights. In a 2013 interview with the BBC, for instance, she refused to acknowledge the rising violence directed at the Rohingya and pointed out that Buddhists had also been displaced from their homes and similarly subject to violence.

Then she went on to claim that Myanmar as a whole – as do many other parts of the world – live in fear of “global Muslim power.” Instead of raising eyebrows, this Islamophobic remark went largely unnoticed, with Western leaders continuing to embrace her advancement.

Leaving aside her more recent effort to consolidate and centralize her authority – she also serves as foreign minister and the chair of various committees – it should still be reasonably clear that the world might have really got her wrong from the beginning. A champion of human rights and democracy could not have possibly made such an Islamophobic remark.

Andrew Selth, a professor at the Griffith Asia Institute, sums up the issue very neatly when he writes: “If Suu Kyi had so far to fall, it is because the international community raised her so high.”

Napat Rungsrithananaon is an intern at Free the Slaves. 

ICAN founded by Malaysia’s Dr. Ronald McCoy wins Nobel Peace Prize 2017

October 26, 2017

ICAN founded by Dr. Ronald McCoy wins Nobel Peace Prize 2017

http://www.straitstimes.com

Dr Ronald McCoy founded ICAN a decade ago

Dr Ronald McCoy founded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) 10 years ago. On October 6, Ican won the Nobel Peace Prize.

by Trinna Leong

Malaysia Correspondent In Kuala Lumpur

As a young medical student in post-war Malaya, Dr Ronald McCoy read Hiroshima by John Hersey, a 1946 report published in The New Yorker detailing the aftermath of the atomic bomb through the eyes of six individuals.

The horrifying accounts deeply affected him but he felt helpless over how to prevent such utter devastation from occurring again.

“I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it,” Dr McCoy told The Straits Times.

 

But there was.

Decades later, Dr McCoy heard of and joined IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Years of campaigning to eradicate nuclear weapons led the retired obstetrician to found the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) 10 years ago.

On October 6, Ican won the Nobel Peace Prize, after the United Nations announced in July that 122 countries had signed on to adopt a total ban on nuclear weapons.

The first UN treaty of its kind, it is legally binding and comes into effect once 50 nations ratify it. Absent from the negotiations were the nine nuclear-armed states and their allies, while Netherlands voted against it and Singapore abstained.

 “A lot of people in the world don’t understand what are the consequences of a nuclear war,” Dr McCoy said in an interview at his home in Petaling Jaya.

NOT AN INSURMOUNTABLE TASK

A lot of people in the world don’t understand what are the consequences of a nuclear war. There is the feeling that no matter what they do, nuclear weapons won’t be disarmed. But if there is a human problem, surely there is a human solution.

DR RONALD MCCOY, who founded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or Ican.

“There is the feeling that no matter what they do, nuclear weapons won’t be disarmed. But if there is a human problem, surely there is a human solution.”

The founding of Ican, Dr McCoy said, stemmed from the 2005 failure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to produce any agreed action plan.

“It felt like barking up the wrong tree… So I said, ‘Let’s take nuclear disarmament out of the NPT process, which was not working, and let’s form an international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons’. That is how we got Ican.”

A sprightly 87-year-old, Dr McCoy has had an illustrious career delivering more than 20,000 babies during his 40 years working as a doctor in Malaysia.

Watching over soon-to-be mothers and their babies, Dr McCoy could not shake off the feeling of responsibility for children growing up in a world with nuclear weapons.

“This baby now lives in a world bristling with nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear war… To me, I have an extended responsibility to do something about that,” he said.

He added: “As doctors, we cannot do anything in a nuclear war… Nuclear disarmament is a kind of preventive medicine.”

Dr McCoy said that the countries possessing nuclear weapons cannot use the excuse of deterrence to justify having such destructive arms.

“You can’t forever rely on deterrence without an accident occurring one day,” he said.

The road to eradication of nuclear weapons, Dr McCoy believes, has to come from the country with the most nuclear arms – the United States.

“If the US gives these up, other nuclear states would give up their nuclear weapons. The change has to come from the US.”

Despite his age, Dr McCoy has not slowed down. Spending his days responding to e-mails and reading the news and reports on nuclear weapons disarmament, he stays healthy by doing light exercises at home.

Dr McCoy, whose father was a civil servant with Malayan Railways, grew up in Kuala Lumpur.

It was a five minute-walk from his home to his primary school in Pudu, an old neighbourhood in KL; later, he cycled daily to the prestigious all-boys Victoria Institution for his secondary school education.

Of Anglo-Indian descent, Dr McCoy said many people are surprised to learn that he is Malaysian. “Maybe it is my name and the colour of my skin. So I would say, ‘I am 200 per cent Malaysian’,” he said in jest.

Although he thinks that it will be “a tough road ahead” for nuclear abolition, the bright and cheerful grandfather of four is optimistic that nuclear weapons disarmament is possible.

More so after the UN treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons was passed.

“You should have heard the roar in the room when they announced it!” he exclaimed.

“When we get to zero nuclear, I won’t be around. But do leave me a forwarded message and wherever I am, I will celebrate,” he said, smiling.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be presented on December 10 in Oslo, Norway. Dr McCoy will be attending the ceremony.

When asked if he could impart any advice to the younger generation, he said: “Love your fellow human beings. What could be more needful than that today?”

Correction note: The headline has been edited for clarity. We are sorry for the earlier error.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 23, 2017, with the headline ‘Malaysian doctor wins Nobel prize for anti-nuke movement’. Print Edition | Subscribe

2017 Nobel Peace Prize Goes to ICAN–Congratulations

October  7, 2017

by Robin Wright

http://www.newyorker.com

 

The dreamers won. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is still so green that, when the call came from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the group initially thought it was a prank. But, in the middle of two brewing crises over nuclear weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to a global coalition of young activists who defied the United States and the eight other nuclear powers this summer to win support at the United Nations for the first treaty to ban the world’s deadliest weapon.

With dogged determination, ICAN, which was formed just a decade ago, generated support from more than a hundred and twenty countries for the landmark accord. Fifty-three nations have signed it since the formal process began, on September 20th.

The Trump Administration led a boycott of talks on the ICAN initiative at the United Nations last spring. “There is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., told reporters. “But we have to be realistic. Is there anyone who thinks that North Korea would ban nuclear weapons?”

The Nobel committee cited ICAN, which is based in Geneva, for “its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

Arms-control advocates were jubilant on Friday. “A stunning achievement with profound impact on global efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons,” Joseph Cirincione, the President of the Ploughshares Fund, told me. “No one but the members of ICAN thought they could succeed. They are dreamers in the best sense, people with a big vision and a big plan to match. Think John Lennon.” The Nobel committee’s message is clear, he said. “All nine nuclear-armed states are building more and newer nuclear weapons. The risk of nuclear war is at its highest level since the early nineteen-eighties, with impulsive, unstable leaders elevating the role of nuclear weapons in their strategies and playing nuclear chicken in Northeast Asia. The committee hopes that if the great nations won’t eliminate the one weapon that can destroy humanity, then the people themselves must force them to do so.”

In a statement, ICAN described the prize as “a tribute to the tireless efforts of many millions of campaigners and concerned citizens worldwide who, ever since the dawn of the atomic age, have loudly protested nuclear weapons, insisting that they can serve no legitimate purpose and must be forever banished from the face of our earth.”

In a video, Beatrice Fihn, ICAN’s Executive Director (pic above), described how she thought the call from the Nobel committee was a joke. “You just get so nervous that it’s not real. So, it wasn’t until the actual broadcast, when she spoke the name ICAN, that we really understood that it was real,” she said, shortly after the news broke. Asked if she thought the treaty or the Nobel Prize would change the minds of the world’s nuclear powers, she said, “It doesn’t work like that. The treaty is meant to make it harder to justify nuclear weapons, to make it uncomfortable for states to continue with the status quo, to put more pressure on them. That isn’t going to happen overnight, of course. But it is a huge boost to all the people who worked on this issue for a very long time, the new generations who are mobilizing around this issue, through our campaign and other work. It’s a huge signal that this is worthy to work on and this is needed and appreciated.”

Beatrice Fihn, left, Executive Director of the International campaign to abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and Actor and UN Messenger of Peace Michael Douglas, right.

The Nobel decision comes amid growing tensions between the United States and North Korea, which this year has tested both a nuclear bomb and new missile-delivery systems. President Trump has repeatedly vowed that North Korea cannot be allowed to keep its advanced-weaponry program. Last month, he warned Kim Jong Un, whom Trump nicknamed “little Rocket Man,” that the military option is on the table to contain Pyongyang’s ambitions.

The Trump Administration will also unveil its strategy next week regarding the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, negotiated between Iran and the world’s six major powers. President Trump is expected to announce that Tehran is not fully conforming to the “spirit” of the accord, even though the U.N.’s nuclear-watchdog agency has repeatedly reported that Iran has fully complied with the deal’s restrictions. The move would endanger the deal but not automatically kill it. It would open the way for Congress to re-impose the economic sanctions lifted as part of the agreement—and put Washington and Tehran on a collision course.

The Nobel Prize was not a message to the Trump Administration, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters on Friday. “We’re not kicking anyone in the legs with this prize,” she said. Instead, it was to offer “encouragement” to all parties engaged in disarmament initiatives. The Nobel committee also recognized that a formal ban—enshrined in the treaty promoted by ICAN—would “not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies support the nuclear-ban treaty.”

Yet ICAN has generated growing support among non-governmental groups—now totaling four hundred and sixty-eight disarmament, humanitarian, and environment organizations worldwide—since it was founded on a shoestring in 2007. The movement began in Australia but formally launched in Vienna.

Fihn, who is Swedish, said the movement was inspired by a similar coalition that mobilized support for a treaty to ban land mines. The U.S.-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and its American coördinator, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. The land-mine treaty has been signed by the vast majority of U.N. members, although the big three—the United States, Russia, and China—have spurned it. Campaigns by civil society and grassroots movements have a growing profile on global issues—from the environment and human rights to the regulation or elimination of other weapons of mass destruction, despite pushback from major powers.

The new Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was voted on in July, prohibits nations from “developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons.” It also prohibits assisting, encouraging, or inducing any country to engage in these activities.

Any country that commits to destroy its nuclear weapons—in a legally binding and time-bound plan—is eligible to join. All nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israeli, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—have directly or implicitly rejected the treaty, which will not take force until fifty countries ratify it, the step after signing it.

“The ceremony to open signatures on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came a day after Donald Trump vowed to totally destroy North Korea if they attacked, which was followed by additional nuclear threats from North Korea,” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, in Washington, told me. “At a time when nuclear dangers and tensions are rising, ICAN’s call to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons — and the Nobel Prize itself—is the appropriate rejoinder to those governments and leaders who continue to promote the role and potential use of these mass-terror weapons in the twenty-first century.”

• Robin Wright is a contributing writer for newyorker.com, and has written for the magazine since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

This is the real Aung San Suu Kyi

September 21, 2017

 

The Powerless Lady evades the Rohingya Issue in her speech to the World

December 19, 2017

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of Myanmar, stood before a room of government officials and foreign dignitaries on Tuesday to at last, after weeks of international urging, address the plight of the country’s Rohingya ethnic minority.

But those who expected Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to deliver an eloquent requiem for an oppressed people were disappointed.

In her speech, delivered in crisp English and often directly inviting foreign listeners to “join us” in addressing Myanmar’s problems, she steadfastly refused to criticize the Myanmar military, which has been accused of a vast campaign of killing, rape and village burning.

“The security forces have been instructed to adhere strictly to the code of conduct in carrying out security operations, to exercise all due restraint and to take full measures to avoid collateral damage and the harming of innocent civilians,” she said.

As she spoke, more than 400,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority long repressed by the Buddhists who dominate Myanmar, had fled a military massacre that the United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” The lucky ones are suffering in makeshift camps in Bangladesh where there is not nearly enough food or medical aid.

A stark satellite analysis by Human Rights Watch shows that at least 210 of their villages have been burned to the ground since the offensive began on August 25. Bangladeshi officials say that land mines had been planted on Myanmar’s side of the border, where the Rohingyas are fleeing.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi tried to mollify her critics by saying she was committed to restoring peace and the rule of law.

“We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence,” she said. “We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people caught up in the conflict.”

Photo

Supporters of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, on Tuesday. Credit Lynn Bo Bo/European Pressphoto Agency

But asking why the world did not acknowledge the progress made in her country, she also boasted that Muslims living in the violence-torn area had ample access to health care and radio broadcasts.

It was a remarkable parroting of the language of the generals who locked her up for the better part of two decades, and in the process made a political legend of her: the regal prisoner of conscience who vanquished the military with no weapons but her principles.

Officials in Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s government have accused the Rohingyas, who have suffered decades of persecution and have been mostly stripped of their citizenship, of faking rape and burning their own houses in a bid to hijack international public opinion. She has done nothing to correct the record.

A Facebook page associated with her office suggested that international aid groups were colluding with Rohingya militants, whose attack on Myanmar police posts and an army base precipitated the fierce military counteroffensive. In a statement, her government labeled the insurgent strikes “brutal acts of terrorism.”

It has been a stunning reversal for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 72, who was once celebrated alongside the likes of Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to her for her “nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.”

During her address, made from a vast convention center in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi tried to evoke a program of grand goals including democratic transition, peace, stability and development. But she also cautioned that the country’s long experience with authoritarian rule and nearly seven decades of ethnic conflict in Myanmar’s frontier lands have frayed national unity.

“People expect us to overcome all these challenges in as short a time as possible,” she said, noting that her civilian government only took office last year. “Eighteen months is a very short time in which to expect us to meet and overcome all the challenges that we are facing.”

Photo

Myanmar police officers at the Bangladesh border near Maungdaw Township in Rakhine State last month. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But there were worrisome signs from the moment she entered a power-sharing agreement with the military after her National League for Democracy won 2015 elections.

Myanmar’s generals — who ruled the country for nearly half a century and turned a resource-rich land also known as Burma into an economic failure — stage-managed every facet of the political transition. The Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar Army is known, made sure to keep the most important levers of power for itself.

It also effectively relegated Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to the post of state counselor by designing a Constitution that kept her from the presidency.

“It’s always a dance with the generals,” said U Win Htein, an N.L.D. party elder. “She needs to be very quick on her feet.”

Mr. Win Htein, a former military officer who served alongside some of the Tatmadaw’s highest-ranking generals, warned that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had to placate an army with a history of pushing aside civilian leaders under the pretext of defending national sovereignty.

“The army, they are watching her every word,” he said. “One misstep on the Muslim issue, and they can make their move.”

Yet even before the compromises that accompanied her ascension to power, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was already distancing herself from the hopes invested in her by the international community.

“Let me be clear that I would like to be seen as a politician, not some human rights icon,” she said in an interview shortly after her release from house arrest in 2010.

Photo

Rohingya refugees resting after crossing into Bangladesh from Myanmar last month. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Such a recasting of her role has disappointed Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates. In an open letter, Desmond Tutu, the South African former archbishop, advised his “dearly beloved younger sister” that “if the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.”

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, was even more pointed.

“She should not have received a Nobel Peace Prize if she says, sorry, I’m a politician, and the norms of democracy don’t suit me,” he said in a telephone interview with The New York Times. “The whole world stood by her for decades, but today she has become the mirror image of Aung San Suu Kyi by destroying human rights and denying citizenship to the Rohingya.”

“All we can do,” he said, “is pray for the return of the old Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Beyond her personal legacy, the direction of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership carries global consequence.

“People are invested in her because we need her to succeed. This is a democratic moment, and she represents Burma’s democratic promise,” said Derek Mitchell, the former American ambassador to Myanmar. “The country sits at the crossroads of Asia in a region where democracy is in retreat, which makes Burma’s success even more important.”

In Tuesday’s speech, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, acknowledged the state of democracy in her country.

“We are a young and fragile democracy facing many problems,” she said, “but we have to cope with them all at the same time.”

But she also stressed that “more than 50 percent” of Rohingya villages in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine remained “intact.” And she seemed to borrow vocabulary from a self-help manual when she described the need to research why certain villages had not been touched by the violence.

“We have to remove the negative and increase the positive,” she said.

As the daughter of the assassinated independence hero Gen. Aung San, who founded the modern Burmese Army, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been unapologetic about her fondness for the military, even as it has driven out the Rohingyas and stepped up military offensives against other ethnic armed groups.

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Fires in Myanmar as seen from the Bangladesh side of the border this month. The Myanmar military has been accused of a vast campaign of killing, rape and village burning. Credit Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

“We do not have any trust in Aung San Suu Kyi because she was born into the military,” said Hkapra Hkun Awng, a leader of the Kachin ethnicity from northern Myanmar, one of more than a dozen minorities whose rebel armies have fought the Tatmadaw over the decades. “She is more loyal to her own people than to the ethnics. Her blood is thicker than a promise of national reconciliation.”

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi belongs to the country’s Bamar ethnic majority.

Even before the mudslinging of the 2015 election campaign, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was sidestepping questions about the sectarian violence in Rakhine that disproportionately affected the Rohingya. Rather than condemning pogroms against the persecuted Muslim minority, she has dismissed accusations of ethnic cleansing and called, instead, for rule of law to solve any problem.

Because most Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship by the military, it has not been clear how any laws might apply to them. Indeed, even though Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said Tuesday that Myanmar was prepared to repatriate refugees who can establish that they are residents of Myanmar, that may be a formidable task for people who are unlikely to have documents proving they lived in Myanmar before fleeing across the border.

“I can confirm now that we are ready to start the verification process at any time, and those who have been verified as refugees from this country will be accepted without any problems and with full assurances of their security and their access to humanitarian aid,” she said.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has largely shielded herself from the media and has holed up in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s bunkered capital, which was unveiled more than a decade ago by a junta paranoid that the former capital, Yangon, might be vulnerable to foreign invasion.

Earlier this month, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi chose not to attend the United Nations General Assembly, where her stance on the Rohingya would surely have met with criticism. Just a year ago, as the nation’s new civilian leader, she attended the annual assembly and was celebrated by world leaders.

Still, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is attuned enough to public sentiment to understand the deep reservoir of anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar. Even though a Muslim bloc had been a loyal patron of the N.L.D. for decades, the party did not choose to stand a single Muslim candidate in the 2015 polls.

If anything, her equivocations on the Rohingya have given currency to the widely held assumption in Myanmar that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who have occupied land that rightfully belongs to the Burmese.

Since Myanmar’s political transition began, a virulent strain of Buddhist extremism has pushed such attitudes further into the mainstream. Influential monks have preached anti-Muslim rhetoric and pushed successfully for a law that circumscribes interfaith marriage. N.L.D. elders have prayed at the feet of one of the movement’s spiritual godfathers.

“Buddhist nationalist radicalism has been allowed to spread basically unchecked,” said Min Zin, the executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar. “The government is doing very little to stop it.”

Saw Nang contributed reporting.