Waiting for the dividend.

Despite hopes of a nationwide ceasefire agreement in Myanmar, the trust needed for lasting peace remains a long way off feels Afsarul Quader BY THE Salween river in the city of Hpa-an, on a patch of ground the size of a football pitch, the foundations are being dug out for a posh new hotel. This would not get much attention anywhere else in Myanmar. Scores of new hotels are going up in Yangon and Mandalay, the two biggest cities, to cater for an influx of tourists drawn by the country's recent opening-up. In Hpa-an, however, it is big news.

For this is the capital of Kayin state, one of the poorest of the country's dismally underdeveloped regions and home to the Karen people, the country's second-largest ethnic group. For decades they have been fighting an insurgency against the majority Burmans, and Hpa-an has suffered commensurate damage and isolation. Many young Karen have simply left, often for work in neighbouring Thailand. A local doctor estimates that four-fifths of those remaining are killing time on methamphetamines, known locally as yaba. So the new hotel and its promise of hundreds of relatively well-paid jobs stands out as one of the first signs of economic revival.

And if not quite a peace dividend, the new hotel could at least be considered a bit of a ceasefire dividend. Work on it began after a landmark agreement to stop fighting was signed in January last year between the Myanmar government and the main Karen political group, the Karen National Union (KNU), representing its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). Officially, it brought to an end the world's longest-running civil war, begun in 1948 just after Myanmar's independence. One obvious testimony to the ceasefire is the smart new KNU office along one of Hpa-an's main roads. It is adorned with photographs of leaders with President Thein Sein and his underlings, all smiles and handshakes, unthinkable only a few years back.

And now come other signs of businesses exploiting the ceasefire to move in around Hpa-an. A new industrial zone has been created, and a textile factory there employs 200 workers. A Malaysian company proposes to build a cable car to the monastery on top of a famously craggy limestone peak, the Zwekabin. And to speed up the arrival of pilgrims and tourists alike, an air route has just started operating between Mae Sot, in Thailand, and Mawlamyine, on the Myanmar coast just an hour's drive from Hpa-an.

This sort of investment is just what...