Ceasefire capitalism: military–private partnerships, resource concessions and military–state building in the Burma–China borderlands

Abstract

Since ceasefire agreements were signed between the Burmese military government and ethnic political groups in the Burma–China borderlands in the early 1990s, violent waves of counterinsurgency development have replaced warfare to target politically-suspect, resource-rich, ethnic populated borderlands. The Burmese regime allocates land concessions in ceasefire zones as an explicit postwar military strategy to govern land and populations to produce regulated, legible, militarized territory. Tracing the relationship of military–state formation, land control andsecuritization, and primitive accumulation in the Burma–China borderlands uncovers the forces of what I am calling ‘ceasefire capitalism’. This study examines these processes of Burmese military–state building over the past decade in resource-rich ethnic ceasefire zones along the Yunnan, China border. I will illustrate this contemporary and violent military–state formation process with two case studies focusing on northern Burma: logging and redirected timber trade flows, and Chinese rubber plantations as part of China's opium substitution program.

Keywords:

• ceasefires
• counterinsurgency development
• military territorialization
• land concessions
• Burma

Notes

¹The current regime in power (the State Peace and Development Council, or SPDC) changed the country's official name to Myanmar in June 1989. As many of the readers will be more familiar with the country and place names before the government changed them, I will use the older names in this study, unless an official title of a department, in quotes, name of company, or in the works cited. This is not meant to be a political statement.

²The Burma–China borderlands in northern Burma refers to southeastern Kachin State (around Myitkyina and Bhamo), northern Shan State (around Lashio and Kutkai) and northeastern Shan State (Wa and Kokang areas), all of which border Yunnan province, China.

³For this study I use a variety of terms to describe the Burmese state and military apparatus, most often ‘military–state’, but also government, military–government, regime, junta and state. The use of ‘military–state’ attempts to show how these two institutions – the ‘state’ and ‘military’ – are separate yet intimately connected, and certainly not a monolithic entity (see Callahan 2005). The national elections in November 2010 civilianized the military government, although many of those elected to top positions are former high-level military officials. The nomenclature used in this study thus still holds in post-election Burma.

⁴These people represent state-like actors in practice by conducting activities that invite military–state processes that root certain military and state governance regimes in place. This includes investing state-backed finance capital, facilitating resettlement of upland villagers intothe lowlands, signing business deals with military officials, and registering village land with government authorities, among other practices.

⁵Non-government organizations (NGOs) also play a vital role to this process, but will be analyzed in a later published study.

⁶Comment from Kachin elder during the transition from British to Burmese rule (Smith 1991, 74).

⁷After the ceasefires signed in Kachin State with the various insurgent groups in the early 1990s, by late 2003 there were reportedly fifty or more Burmese Army battalions in northern Kachin State alone – three times as many as before the ceasefires. Similarly, the number of Burmese Army battalions in Shan State increased from 30 to 40 before 1988 to over 100 in 2006 (COHRE 2007).

⁸It is recognized that China's goals become fractured with a spatially-explicit analysis: Beijing, Kunming and Yunnan prefecture governments all prescribe to different development desires for northern Burma, and must be taken into account when understanding ‘China's’ ambitions in Burma. That task, however, is beyond the scope of this study.

⁹In these ethnic areas it is not uncommon for villagers, and especially local non-state leaders, to continue to call for various forms of independence from the ‘Union of Myanmar’, as had their forefathers in the 1947 Panglong Agreement.

¹⁰While NGOs also contribute to the production of state landscapes in the uplands of northern Burma, I will exclude any explicit analysis of this mechanism from this study. However the role of NGOs is nonetheless imbricated in this research's case studies.

¹¹This is not to say that local ethnic political groups were isolated and inward looking; rather, in comparison to the Burmese government, local traders and insurgent groups' business contacts were based more on clan and familial trading partners.

¹²See Le Billon (2000) for a similar shift in resource clientelism from war to seeming peace in Cambodia.

¹³NDA-K was the second strongest Kachin armed group after it broke off from KIO/A in the early 1990s and signed a ceasefire agreement. With the approaching national elections in 2010, it was transformed into three different battalions of the government-sponsored Border Guard Force (BGF), under the control of the Burmese army, in November 2009.

¹⁴Interview with Kachin NGO development worker, July 2008.

¹⁵On public authority, see Sikor and Lund (2009).

¹⁶Before the war formally ended in what are now ceasefire zones, the regime followed a particular type of scorched earth campaign that came to be known as the ‘Four-Cuts Policy’: cutting links of food, funds, information and recruits between the insurgents and their families and the local populace. This counterinsurgency program shunned a ‘hearts and minds’ approach and instead borrowed from the British ‘new village’ model developed during the Malayan Emergency (Stubbs 1989), which was later adopted by the US in Vietnam as the ‘strategic hamlet’ approach. The ‘Four- Cuts Policy’ approach has evolved to be couched in counterinsurgency development projects during ceasefire periods in ethnic borderlands, such as relocating villagers from the uplands into the lowlands – sometimes with assistance from NGOs and UN agencies. These military–surveillance villages are almost never provided any material support and oftentimes become new sources of forced labor for the military, nothing like winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of villagers.

¹⁷The importance of the nature of the extracted resource in question (e.g. oil, diamonds, logs, plantations, etc.) in terms of its wider territorial effects must also be considered. The effect the physical properties and geographic distribution of the resources have on conflict matters, such as point-source resources versus diffuse resources (Auty 2001), as well as degree of fragmentation and peripherialization (Le Billion 2001).

¹⁸See Peluso and Vandergeest (2011) for examining the historical production of national natures in Southeast Asia. For the case of Burma, however, local resources become not only nationalized (i.e. controlled by government agencies), but also militarized (i.e. patrolled by military agents).

¹⁹Interview with Chinese academic in Kunming, Yunnan, China, June 2004.

²⁰See Peluso and Vandergeest (2011) and Le Billon (2000) for other examples of the political violence of nationalizing forest resources in Southeast Asia.

²¹The temporary blockage of the informal cross-border timber trade didn't stop logging in Kachin State, nor permanently or fully stop cross-border timber trade. It resumed in the dry season of 2008 and continues today, albeit at lesser volumes than during its height in the mid-2000s.

²²Muse (Burma–side)/Ruili (China-side) on the old Burma Road became the only legal overland checkpoint with China for timber. The one select Burmese company that can legally export timber across the border into China is allegedly Awng Mai, which is supposedly ownedby the then northern military commander Major General Ohn Myint.

²³The colonial British officers used a similar governance strategy for ethnic populations in Upper Burma.

²⁴The case in Burma diverges from the ‘hearts and minds’ approach implemented in Malaysia (Stubbs 1989) and Thailand (LeBlond 2010). See Vandergeest and Peluso (2006) for a comparative historical study on forestland management as counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia.

²⁵The southern parts of Burma, particularly Mon State, Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division and Karen State have been considered ‘traditional’ rubber growing areas since the time of the colonial British. However, despite questionable climatic factors, the biggest increase of rubber cultivation in the country is now these ‘non-traditional’ rubber growing areas in the uplands of northern Burma.

²⁶According to MoAI's 30-year Master Plan for the Agriculture Sector (2000–01 to 2030–31), the government plans to convert a total of 10 million acres of ‘wastelands’ into industrial agricultural production (MoAI 2002). Between 2000–2005 the government aimed reclaim 1.14 million acres of arable land for agricultural cultivation (NCEA 2000).

²⁷A fundamental law passed to enable developing large areas of now-termed ‘wastelands’ was the 1991 Management of Cultivable Land, Fallow Land and Waste Land, which specifically targets ‘wastelands’ and ‘fallow lands’ to boost agricultural productivity to enable export earnings. This includes the right to commercially cultivate land for a maximum period of 30 years for a maximum amount of 50,000 acres (5,000 acres max at first); although in practice this is often not followed. The agency that oversees the land allotment process is the Land Management Committee, which is infiltrated by top military officials. It is unknown at the time of writing how the recent national elections will affect this committee and the way it governs land.

²⁸Sometimes the Burmese company already exists and is locally based. This includes high-ranking military officials in ceasefire groups and paramilitaries who have their own side businesses and rely upon their political-military positions to obtain land concessions and secure necessary finance capital. However, it appears it is more common for Chinese companies to find a Burmese counterpart, whether civilian or military, who will create a Burmese company as a front to the actual 100% Chinese venture.

²⁹This assertion is based on interviews with local development NGOs in Shan and Kachin States (Interviews, June and July 2008 and 2009) and propaganda posters viewed in provincial capitals.

³⁰This double alliance with both government and ceasefire group affiliates illustrates the economic cooperation among competing political entities. These multiple economic alliances across political lines caution against making clear-cut generalizations about different political players and parties, territorial control and resource extraction patterns.

³¹Interviews with NGOs, informants and field assistants (September-December 2010).

³²Interviews with NGOs, informants and field assistants (November-December 2010).

³³Htay Myint got his start in the industrial agricultural sector in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he received massive oil palm concessions in Tenasserim Division ushered through by then southern military commander Ohn Myint – who later facilitated Htay Myint's concession in Hugawng Valley after he became the northern regional commander in Kachin State.

³⁴Interviews with NGOs, informants and field assistants (November-December 2010).

³⁵For more information about the politics of conservation in Burma, see Noam (2007), andspecifically on the tiger reserve see KDNG (2010).

³⁶In a rare act of defiance, a group of local farmers whose land has been (or threatened to be) confiscated are currently defying orders to relocate. Some have refused any form of meager compensation offered, and sued Yuzana in the provincial court – the first time that villagers have sued a major company in Burma. Interestingly, no such known organized resistance occurred in reaction to the creation of WCS's Hugawng Valley Tiger Reserve.

³⁷There was speculation at that time that these privately armed Burmese citizens would outnumber local Kachin for the elections and coerce them into voting for government-party candidates running for Hugawng Valley in the November 2010 elections. The two candidates in the mining town of Hpakant in Hugawng Valley were former northern military commander Maj. Gen. Ohn Myint (who ushered in Yuzana's concession in the first place) and Bawk Ja, the woman who led the farmers' resistance to Yuzana's concession. Ohn Myint of the government party was declared the winner after nearly half of the total cast votes were mysteriously disqualified. Bawk Ja went into hiding after the election, following government orders for her detainment for leading the farmer's court case seeking compensation from Yuzana for confiscating their land.

³⁸Lahu environmentalist referring to farmers in southeastern Shan State (Interview, June 2009).

³⁹See Yunnan State Council (2006). For more information on China's opium crop substitution program and Chinese agro-investment in northern Burma and Laos, see Shi (2008), Cohen (2009), Kramer (2009), TNI (2010a), and Kramer and Woods (2011).

⁴⁰In 2006 – the very same year the rubber boom began – poppy cultivation started to increase for the first time in northern Burma since after over a decade of decline. Opium cultivation in Burma has increased for the third subsequent year, up to 78,000 acres in 2009, an increase of 11% (UNODC 2010).

⁴¹The UNODC, then named UNDCP, with funding mainly from the US and Japan, initiated WADP (Wa Alternative Development Project) starting in 1997–8, which then became the UNODC/Wa Project. The project was terminated in 2008.

⁴²It is unclear what qualifies for this classification – whether it includes all crops planted in northern border areas, and the degree to which the figures correlate with Chinese investment in the agriculture sector in northern Burma.

⁴³The only data available on agricultural plantations in northern Burma is from various Burmese ministries and departments, which are notoriously unreliable and often do not indicate actual acreage planted. This also does not include agriculture plantations that bypass government agencies, such as those established in non-government-controlled territory, including UWSP/A where most of the rubber is cultivated. To date no other alternative source of information on total plantation areas is available.

⁴⁴Chinese companies participating in cross-border development schemes receive several state-subsidized benefits, such as cash funds, lowering of bureaucratic hurdles for investment, and most importantly, quotas to import tariff-free crops produced under the scheme.

⁴⁵However, in early 2010 the Beijing government apparently temporarily suspended their opium substitution program to assess its successes and failures as part of its monitoring and evaluation by various satellite mapping and limited ground-truthing exercises.

⁴⁶This information was presented at a Transnational Institute (TNI) workshop in January 2010 in Kunming, Yunnan by a Chinese academic.

⁴⁷The country's national rubber association confirms that the Burmese government does not support smallholder agricultural development in the north, only big companies with expansive land concessions (Interview, June 2009).

⁴⁸One report estimated smallholder opium-growing households losing up to 80% of their annual income since the opium ban (Food Security Working Group 2006).

⁴⁹Office interviews in Rangoon and Kachin State, June and July 2008, 2009 and 2010, and north Shan State, December 2010.

⁵⁰Sometimes farmers pay what they believe to be a formal land tax in order to secure their land from confiscation, when in fact they are actually paying an informal bribe to a local agriculture officer, much to the dismay of the farmers.

⁵¹In the past land confiscation was for the purpose of forcibly relocating troublesome ethnic populations as an explicit national military security measure during wartime and soon after ceasefires.

⁵²Interview with WFP representative, July 2008.

⁵³Data from a TNI workshop, Bangkok, April 2010.

⁵⁴Burman Burmese are the ethnic majority, who fill nearly all high-level military–government positions.

⁵⁵The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) previously displaced after decades of continued conflict must be placed in the millions. The number of IDPs forcibly displaced between only 2005 to 2007 and only in eastern Burma is almost 100,000 people (COHRE 2007). Until the KIO/A ceasefire, an estimated one third of the Kachin population was internally displaced, with about 100,000 having been displaced since the 1960s. Since the 1990s, almost 100 Kachin villages were destroyed and forcibly relocated to a number of government relocation sites, mostly in and around Myitkyina, the provincial capital of Kachin State (COHRE 2007).

⁵⁶See Baird and Shoemaker (2007) for the case of Laos, which mirrors trends in Burma with rubber establishment and relocation of upland populations, albeit with a less overtly militarized approach.

⁵⁷Western governments have mostly condemned the elections for being neither free nor fair, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's party the National League for Democracy (NLD) boycotting the elections, and not releasing political prisoners so they could run for office. However some analysts remain hopeful that the elections will open up space for political dialogue and eventual political transition (TNI 2010b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Woods

Data presented in this study have been collected over several years. Field research in Burma presents numerous challenges, and it is only with the assistance of many international and national colleagues and organizations, who I will refrain from naming for security reasons, that my work continues to be possible. Given field access restrictions for westerners in the country, I work cooperatively with local researchers who remain committed to helping their communities, despite the risks. I am greatly indebted to them for their trust and generosity. Two anonymous reviewers also provided very helpful comments.