Networks of noncompliance: grassroots resistance and sovereignty in militarised Burma

Abstract

This paper examines repression and state–society conflict in Burma through the lens of rural and urban resistance strategies. It explores networks of noncompliance through which civilians evade and undermine state control over their lives, showing that the military regime's brutal tactics represent not control, but a lack of control. Outside agencies ignore this state–society struggle over sovereignty at their peril: ignoring the interplay of interventions with local politics and militarisation, and claiming a ‘humanitarian neutrality’ which is impossible in practice, risks undermining the very civilians interventions are supposed to help, while facilitating further state repression. Greater honesty and awareness in interventions is required, combined with greater solidarity with villagers' resistance strategies.

Keywords:

• peasant resistance
• humanitarian policy
• Karen
• Kayin
• Burma
• Myanmar

Notes

¹Earlier versions of this paper appeared on the websites of Yale University Agrarian Studies (http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/archive/colloq0708.html) and Karen Human Rights Group (http://www.khrg.org/reports/articles/index.php).

²The author worked with Karen villagers and refugees from 1991–2007, living partly in resistance-controlled conflict zones of Karen State and partly in Thailand. With no human rights background, he founded KHRG with Karen villagers and followed their vision of human rights, documenting their perceptions of the situation through interviews and participant observation, conducting advocacy and seeking ways to support villagers in their resistance strategies. This work has included several other states and divisions of Burma and regular interaction with people from urban areas and all ethnicities. KHRG now has over 40 Karen researchers in Burma.

³Burma was renamed ‘Myanmar Naing-Ngan’ by the ruling military junta in 1989. This name change has been rejected as illegitimate by the leadership elected in 1990 (but never allowed to form a government), and as assimilationist by most ethnicity-based opposition groups; this paper therefore retains ‘Burma’. ‘Burman’ refers to the dominant ethnic group, ‘Burmese’ to their language and the nation-state.

⁴State censuses have set Karen population at ‘between 2 and 5 million, whereas Karen nationalists claim between 7 and 12 million’ (Cheesman 2002, 203). The current regime claims the population is almost 70 percent Burman with the remainder divided among 135 so-called ethnic ‘races’, using the skewed 1983 census which labelled everyone with Burmese-language names ‘Burman’ and classifying every small subgroup as a ‘national race’ in an apparent attempt to exaggerate Burman dominance while dividing the remainder into numerically insignificant polities (see Smith 1991, 30).

⁵This happened to the Karen National Union in 1994, leading to mutiny and breakaway of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. A DKBA soldier interviewed afterward stated the group's objectives as first getting rid of the KNU, then driving the Tatmadaw out of Karen State (KHRG 1995, 18) – thereby reinstating local sovereignty.

⁶The Tatmadaw Army numbers approximately 350,000, the KNLA 3,000–5,000 (HRW 2002, 19, 121).

⁷Analysis drawn from my 1991–2007 field work and interaction with these groups; see also http://www.khrg.org.

⁸The association of monks. The ‘Three Gems’ of Buddhism providing spiritual refuge to the faithful are the Buddha, the Dhamma (the Buddha's teachings), and the Sangha (Skidmore 2004).

⁹The following summary is synthesised from author's experience and KHRG reports 1992–2008 (www.khrg.org).

¹⁰See KHRG (2007b, 2006b).

¹¹Author's interviews with Karen health workers, September 2005, unpublished.

¹²See World Food Programme (2007).

¹³Karen villages are seen as anti-government so almost no Tatmadaw recruitment occurs here; officers and soldiers, predominantly Burman, are recruited and sent from cities and towns elsewhere, and officers try to profit from their postings and send money home.

¹⁴From author's interview with KHRG researcher, 2007.

¹⁵From author's interview with KHRG researcher, 2007.

¹⁶Author's interview in November 2005 with Karen human rights researcher who had interviewed the headwoman.

¹⁷From author's interviews with villagers and soldiers in the area, November 2005. See also KHRG (2005b).

¹⁸Translated from field report of KHRG researcher who was present. Village names are omitted to protect them.

¹⁹This aspiration to non-state space rather than just a more accommodating state is evidenced by Karen society's aversion to hierarchical structures through history, and by the 1994 creation of the DKBA, which was largely driven by public perceptions of KNU behaviour as increasingly state-like (taxation, forced recruitment, etc.) in areas it controlled.

²⁰State media reported in 1993 that ‘over 800,000 farmers’ had ‘contributed labour’ on the Loikaw-Aungban railway, admitted that ‘people are dying every day’, and noted UN support (KHRG 1994). UNDP refused to comment on its involvement, but was soon ordered by donor countries on its Board of Governors to restrict its Burma interventions to local water and health projects, with no major infrastructure. Since then UNDP Rangoon has lobbied for a resumption of infrastructure aid, falsely claiming that it was stopped by Western economic sanctions imposed much later; see for example UNDP Executive Board (1999).

²¹See Joint Principles of Operation of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) Providing Humanitarian Assistance in Burma/Myanmar, June 2000[online], agreed by international agencies in Rangoon. Available from: http://burmalibrary.org/docs3/Joint_Principles_of_Operation.htm. [Accessed 11 April 2008]. Ironically, this document includes several principles, such as freedom of access and hiring, which directly contradict their MOUs.

²²Witnessed through author's participation in UN/NGO meetings in Thailand from 1992–2007.

²³Available from: http://www.reliefweb.int/ocha_ol/pub/idp_gp/idp.html [Accessed 11 April 2008].

²⁴Groups providing such aid include Karen Office of Relief and Development (KORD), Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People (CIDKP), Backpack Health Worker Teams (BPHWT), and Free Burma Rangers (FBR).

²⁵See for example Refugees International (2008), which recommended massive increases in aid based on interviews with ‘the staff of over forty humanitarian organisations’ but none with civilians on the ground; or International Crisis Group (2004), which outlines the ‘way forward’ without consulting rural villagers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Malseed

My thanks to the villagers and human rights workers who gave their time and information toward this research, Bel Angeles for her patience and suggestions, anonymous reviewers and Yale Agrarian Studies colloquium participants for comments, and the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale for support during writing.