Peri-conflict peace: brokerage, development and illiberal ceasefires in Myanmar’s borderlands

ABSTRACT

Successive Myanmar governments have enlisted illiberal means in attempts to end the world’s oldest civil wars. Since the 1990s, state-led attempts at peace-building have offered ethnic armed groups limited political autonomy or institutional recognition. Many of the 1990s ceasefire agreements, and the new wave agreed since the transition to partial civilian rule in 2011, have instead sought to erode insurgent legitimacy and control over local populations through encroachment of state-led development initiatives and elite resource extraction rackets into restive regions. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted during periods of ceasefire in Kachin (1994–2011) and Karen States (2012–2019), this article explores how illiberal peace-building has inflamed tensions between ‘insurgent social order’ and the central state over who and how development is brokered and delivered. While illiberal peace sustains economic and political activity, attempts by the central state to cut insurgent social order out from the mediation and regulation of public goods can provoke intense grassroots conflict within insurgent groups and with the state. Violence looms as a proximate possibility in these contexts despite elite ceasefire, creating what we term ‘peri-conflict’ peace.

KEYWORDS:

• Brokers
• development
• hybrid political orders
• illiberal peace-building
• Myanmar

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Terence Lee, Ashley South, Lars Waldorf, participants in the 2018 LSE Comparative Peace-building in Asia Workshop and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Snyder, ‘Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder?’.

2. See Farrelly, ‘War, Law, Politics’.

3. Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination.

4. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’.

5. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers and Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 1–24.

6. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’.

7. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 342.

8. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 413. See also Staniland, Networks of Rebellion.

9. See Wickham-Crowley, ‘The Rise (And Sometimes Fall) of Guerrilla Governments’, 477, 492.

10. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 415.

11. Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination.

12. Ibid., 7–8.

13. Harrison and Kyed, ‘Ceasefire State-Making and Justice Provision’.

14. Podder, ‘Understanding the Legitimacy’, 687.

15. See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, 167.

16. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 416, 411.

17. Berdal and Keen, ‘Violence and Economic Agendas’, 798.

18. Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’, 5.

19. On joint extraction pacts, see Snyder, ‘Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder?’. On allocation of rents ‘solving’ the problem of violence, see North et al., Violence and Social Orders, i and Lee, ‘Political Order’. Such arrangements may prove ‘stable’ at least until they become imbalanced and begin to disproportionately benefit the central state and its military over and above insurgent armed elites, a common dynamic of illiberal peace accords which subsequently break down. For a relevant discussion, see Thakur and Venugopal, ‘Parallel Governance and Political Order’.

20. Here we draw on the conceptual work on borderland brokers and more broadly the brokerage of development on the periphery of nation-states by Meehan and Plonski, Brokering the Margins, 25–49 and Goodhand, The Centrality of the Margins, 8–11.

21. See Smith, Burma.

22. Taylor, The State in Myanmar, 99–103.

23. Ibid., 235.

24. For more detailed history, see Callahan, Making Enemies and Farrelly, ‘Transnational Flows of Military Talent’.

25. See Callahan, Making Enemies.

26. See Lehman and Callahan, ‘Making Myanmars’, 102–107.

27. Oh, ‘Competing Forms of Sovereignty’ and Jolliffe, ‘Ethnic Conflict and Social Services’.

28. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 414.

29. Kyaw Yin Hlaing, ‘Reconsidering the Failure’.

30. Smith, Burma, 98–99, 283. Conservative estimates in Smith, State of Strife, 19 estimated that 40 per cent of all trade activity occurred outside of state control during this period. Others placed illegal trade in the early 1980s at up to 75 per cent of total official trade, see Than, ‘Myanmar’s External Trade, 58.

31. South, Ethnic Politics in Burma; South, ‘Burma’s Longest War’; Sadan, Being and Becoming Kachin.

32. Cf. Wickham-Crowley, ‘The Rise (And Sometimes Fall) of Guerrilla Governments’, 477.

33. See Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’.

34. Meehan, ‘Drugs, Insurgency and Statebuilding’, 385–386; Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’, 98.

35. Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’ and Meehan, ‘Drugs, Insurgency and Statebuilding’, 391.

36. See Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’ and Meehan, ‘Drugs, Insurgency and Statebuilding’, 382.

37. Callahan, Political Authority in Burma’s Ethnic Minority States, 24 and Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’, 100–101.

38. Woods, ‘Ceasefire capitalism’. See also Meehan, ‘Drugs, Insurgency and Statebuilding’, 391.

39. See Farrelly, ‘War, Law, Politics’. On the inequitable outcomes delivered by military capitalism and ceasefire extraction both in ceasefire regions and for Tatmadaw and insurgent combatants alike, see McCarthy, ‘Military Capitalism’.

40. For an early analysis, see Farrelly, ‘Finding Space For Development’.

41. Global Witness, ‘Jade’, 61; Woods, ‘Ceasefire capitalism’.

42. See Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’ and Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’.

43. Enriquez, ‘Kachin Military Terms’.

44. Le, ‘Kachin Pene Myoge Myitkyinamyoze Thamin’.

45. Hertz, A Practical Handbook, 42.

46. Sturgeon, ‘Border Practices, Boundaries, and The Control of Resource Access’.

47. Blum, ‘Portraits of “Primitives”’, 117.

48. Seekins, ‘Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar)’, 287.

49. Sadan, Being and Becoming Kachin, 343–344.

50. Ibid., 424.

51. Of course, that space can expand and contract in sometimes unexpected ways. In 2007, during the crackdown on the widely heralded monastic protests, a Sutdu in Myitkyina, Sutdu Lumyang Bum Yun, was arrested by the local Military Affairs Security Unit for providing free drinking water to protestors (he owns a bottled water company). He was later released.

52. See Sanda, The Moon Princess.

53. As discussed in Farrelly, ‘Finding Space For Development’, 46–47.

54. See Sam, ‘Vanishing Lady Tycoon’.

55. The gems mined in northern Burma are jadeite which should not be confused with what is sometimes called ‘Chinese jade’ or nephrite. Jadeite is a significantly more valuable commodity.

56. Global Witness, ‘Jade’, 6.

57. Callahan, Political Authority in Burma’s Ethnic Minority States, 3–4.

58. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 419.

59. Woods, ‘Ceasefire Capitalism’.

60. See Brenner, ‘Ashes of Co-optation’.

61. Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’, 104–105.

62. Global Witness, ‘Jade’, 10.

63. Ibid, 92–94.

64. Ibid, 94.

65. Snyder, ‘Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder?’; Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’; Farrelly, ‘Spatial Control and Symbolic Politics’ and ‘Ceasing Ceasefire?’.

66. Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’, 158.

67. See Brenner, ‘Ashes of Co-optation’.

68. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 419–420.

69. Brenner, ‘Ashes of Co-optation’; Jones, ‘Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires’, 109–110.

70. Farrelly, ‘Ceasing Ceasefire?’, 53.

71. Ibid., 55.

72. See Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’.

73. Strengthened by a reinvigorated Kachin insurgent nationalism, the post-2011 leadership of the KIA refused to sign the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement nor formally participate in peace negotiations led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government since 2016. Instead the KIA has formed a major part of an alternate ‘Northern Alliance’ grouping that is demanding a far more advanced form of federalism than that which Myanmar’s military is willing to concede (see Lwin Cho Latt et al 2018).

74. South, ‘Burma’s Longest War’, 8.

75. South, ‘Burma’s Longest War’, 8 and Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 414.

76. South, Ethnic Politics in Burma, 58.

77. The ethno-nationalism of the KNU was instead replaced by Buddhist nationalism, facilitated by an alliance between Karen monastic authorities and the DKBA. See South, Ethnic Politics in Burma, 58 and Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’, 167. For an account of the role DKBA leaders continue to play in large-scale religious and social philanthropy while simultaneously running gambling and methamphetamine rackets in contemporary southeast Myanmar, see Chambers, ‘On Power and Morality’.

78. South, ‘Burma’s Longest War’, 15 and Lambrecht, ‘Oxymoronic Development’, 167.

79. Decobert, The Politics of Aid to Burma.

80. Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’, 414; Pohl Harrison and Kyed, ‘Ceasefire Statemaking’.

81. South, ‘Burma’s Longest War’, 16–17.

82. See Brenner, ‘Inside Karen Insurgency’, 93.

83. See Myoe, ‘Partnership in Politics’.

84. See Latt et al., ‘From Ceasefire to Dialogue’.

85. See Robertson, et al., ‘Local Development Funds in Myanmar’.

86. See Egreteau, ‘The Emergence of Pork-Barrel Politics’.

87. Karen respondents interviewed in Burmese and in S’gaw Karen dialects would frequently use the term ‘Bamar’ interchangeably to refer abstractly to both the military and the government, a situational conflation common in other ethnic areas, including Kachin State (where ‘myen’ is the key term). For a lengthier dissection of the Karen ceasefire, see also Brenner, ‘Authority in Rebel Groups’.

88. See Harrisson and Kyed, ‘Ceasefire statemaking’.

89. BNI, ‘Karen land ownership’.

90. The Border Affairs Minister also claimed that the KNU was breaching the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), which required signatories to: ‘Avoid hostile propaganda, defamatory, untruthful or derogatory statements, both within and outside the country.’ See Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. See Nyein ‘Karen State Chief Minister’.

93. For background, see Gleeson, ‘Karen Groups Slam Tatmadaw Incursion’; Anon, ‘Armed Clashes in Papun District’; and Nyein ‘KNLA, Tatmadaw Clash Again’.

94. For details see Han, ‘Karen Fighters Criticize Military Expansion’.

95. See KNLA statement in: http://english.panglong.org/2018/05/16/armed-clashes-in-papun-district-an-end-to-peaceful-negotiation/ [accessed 21 May 2018].

96. For instance, see: http://english.panglong.org/2018/05/16/armed-clashes-in-papun-district-an-end-to-peaceful-negotiation/ [accessed 21 May 2018].

97. South, ‘Hybrid Governance’, 3.

98. Ibid.

99. See McCarthy, ‘Democratic Deservingness’, 349–353.

100. See Smith et al, ‘Illiberal peace-building in Asia’, 3.

101. Smith, ‘Illiberal Peace-Building in Hybrid Political Orders’, 1512.

102. Ibid, 1511.

103. South, ‘Hybrid Governance’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerard McCarthy

Dr. Gerard McCarthy is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He completed his PhD on the politics of redistribution and inequality in post-reform Myanmar at Australian National University (ANU) where he was also Associate Director of the Myanmar Research Centre from 2017–2019.

Nicholas Farrelly

Prof. Nicholas Farrelly is Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. He was previously Associate Dean of ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific where he founded New Mandala and helped establish ANU’s Myanmar Research Centre. His research focuses on political conflict and social change in mainland Southeast Asia, particularly in Myanmar’s borderlands and Thailand.