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January 17th, 2025 | 11:37 PM ET

Obama's Legacy on Myanmar

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Posted: January 13th, 2017

By Rafael D. Frankel

Dr. Rafael D. Frankel is the vice president of BowerGroupAsia (BGA), a government affairs and public policy consulting firm supporting top businesses operating in the Asia-Pacific. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent for 10 years based in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Thirteen years ago, on a reporting assignment for The Boston Globe, I described “Burma” as a “deteriorating” country where “the frayed fabric of a nation [was] coming apart at the seams.” The capital, Rangoon, was “clogged with 20-year-old cars running on spare parts and spewing black exhaust.”

Today, Yangon is an entirely different world. And the politics of Myanmar have progressed so rapidly that long-time visitors can be forgiven for doing double takes. Referring to Aung San Suu Kyi as the leader of a democratically elected government rather than an opposition activist detained under years of house arrest still boggles the mind. Yet ethnic tensions, which lead to decades of civil war, remain, as do human rights abuses by the military.

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