An obscure financial watchdog could bring down Myanmar’s murderous regime

Excerpt The 2021 coup by Myanmar’s military plunged the country into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people. But now the United States and its allies have a golden opportunity to loosen the grip of the cash-starved regime by cutting it off from the foreign currency it needs to buy weapons from Russia, China and Iran. At their meeting in October,the U.S. and the 39 other members of the Financial Action Task Force — the world’s leading money-laundering watchdog — will decide whether to impose banking restrictions on Myanmar’s brutal regime for its illicit financial activity. In the past, the FATF took Myanmar’s supposed reforms at face value — even when they clearly enriched the country’s unelected junta. The task force should not make the same mistake this time. Dan Swift is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Sean Turnell is a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute.