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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the ways in which processes of weapons acquisition and armed collectives formation contribute to shape rebel polities – with their populations and attendant political geographies – in frontier spaces. It argues that the acquisition of weapons and the formation of an armed ensemble are shaped by political rationalities and techniques of governing the entanglements between humans and weapons that are diffused throughout society as a whole. Drawing on biopolitical governmentality, I also show that by governing weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed force rebel movements shape the rebel polity’s collective identity and political geographies of ‘vital’ space in frontiers. Harnessing fieldwork-based research to study Ta’ang rebel movements in Myanmar, I find that weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed ensembles have been inflected by govern-mentalities of narcotics eradication and ethnonationality. The article concludes that some forms of rebel rule at the edge of the state in Myanmar can be qualified as ‘blunt’ following work by anthropologist Elliott Prasse-Freeman. That is to say, rebel rule lacking the governmental apparatuses to intensively know and promote life at aggregate scales still operates massifications and divisions of biological populations and political space via the formation and governing of armed ensembles.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the interlocutors that offered their time and shared their knowledge, stories, and experiences in the research process. Gratitude goes also to Regine Schwab and Hanna Pfeifer for their invaluable feedbacks on previous versions of this article, as well as to the Turin-based Einaudi Foundation whose financial support made the write-up possible. I also greatly benefitted from discussions with and feedbacks from Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Jasnea Sarma, and Matteo Proto. Lastly I thank Dr. Ekaterina Golovko for directing me to the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in “Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere” that was key to shape the remarks on the uniform and the act of wearing the uniform.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. November 2019.
2. Korf, Hagmann, and Doevenspeck, “Geographies of Violence.”
3. Tsing, Friction.
4. Woods, “Ceasefire Capitalism.”
5. In this article I refer to the Tatmadaw as Sit-tat. It is important to note that the name Tatmadaw is used by the Myanmar Armed Forces to refer to themselves since the suffix -daw confers to it an elevated institutional/royal status in reference to the kingdoms of the Bamar dynasties. Many among the resistance prefer to use the Burmese word sit-tat which translates as “military force” or “armed group” in order to delegitimise them as the state’s armed forces.
6. Cons and Eilenberg, “Introduction”, 2.
7. Rose and Miller, “Political Power Beyond” 178–9.
8. For a review: Marsh, “Tools of Insurgency”; and Buscemi, “Armed Political Orders.”
9. Pfeifer and Schwab, “Politicising Rebel Governance.”
10. Bourne, Arming Conflict; Krause, “War, Violence and the State”; Marsh, “Tools of Insurgency.”
11. Kasfir, “Rebel Governance”, 27–33; for a critique Hoffman and Verweijen, “Rebel Rule.”
12. Kasfir, “Rebel Governance”, 33; Arjona, Rebelocracy, 74.
13. Prasse-Freeman, “Refusing Rohingya.” See also Brenner and Tazzioli, “Defending Society.”
14. Particularly of the PSLF/TNLA, the Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army-North (SSPP/SSA-N), and the Revolutionary Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA-S) (rank-and-file only).
15. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
16. Tsing, The Mushroom at the End; Ong and Collier, Global Assemblages; Latour, Reassembling the Social.
17. Cons and Eilenberg, Introduction, 6.
18. Campbell and Prasse-Freeman, “Revisiting the Wages of Burman-ness.”
19. Brenner, Rebel Politics; Buscemi, “The art of Arms.”
20. Thant Myint U, The River of Lost.
21. Hicks, The Brutish Museum.
22. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.
23. Rose, Powers of Freedom.
24. Glouftsios, “Governing Border Security.”
25. For a more substantial account of the literature see Minca, “The Biopolitical Imperative”.
26. Ibid, 168.
27. Ibid., 178.
28. Glouftsios, “Governing Border Security”, 4.
29. Hoffman and Verweijen, “Rebel Rule.”
30. Prasse-Freeman, “Refusing Rohingya.”
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Prasse-Freeman, “Refusing Rohingya.”, 10
34. Ibid.
35. Law and Mol, “Situating Technoscience.”
36. Glouftsios, “Governing Border Security”.
37. While I am aware of the agentic value of non-human technical matter as an active participant rather than as a passive medium that channels power relations to manage populations (of things and people), what I analyse in this paper are especially the rationalities that inform techniques of acquiring weapons and forming an armed force (e.g. aspects like training of human components and political frames such as codes of conduct, for example).
38. Cheesman, “How in Myanmar.”
39. Prasse-Freeman, “Necroeconomics”, 8.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Cheesman, “How in Myanmar.”
43. Prasse-Freeman, “Necroeconomics”; Lehman, “Ethnic Categories”; Leach, Political Systems; Sadan, Being and Becoming.
44. On mass violence: Ong and Prasse-Freeman, “Expulsion/Incorporation.”
45. Buchanan, “Militias.”
46. Meehan, “Drugs, Insurgency and State-Building.”
47. Buscemi, “Armed Political Orders.”
48. Buchanan, “Militias”, 11.
49. Kramer, The United Wa, 50.
50. Kramer, The United Wa, 24.
51. Interview with PSLO/A last chairman and vice-chairman (Tar Aik Mone and Tar Khun Yee), November 2019.
52. It is interesting to note how the consultation process that preceded the ceasefire spoke of a political geography of Ta’ang areas bringing together people from Manton, Namhsan, Namhkan, or Mandalay and other regions outside the confines of the limited “Palaung Shan State Special Region 7” that would have later been granted by the military-state.
53. Pfeifer and Schwab, “Politicising Rebel Governance.”
54. Buscemi, “The Art of Arms.”
55. Woods, “Ceasefire Capitalism.”
56. Such as rural areas surrounding Namhkam, but also further south into Maiwee (east of Namhpakar and Kutkai) as well as north of Manton and Namtu.
57. PWO, Poisoned Flowers.
58. Kramer and Woods, Financing Dispossession.
59. PWO, Poisoned Flowers, 27.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Brenner, Rebel Politics.
63. Interview with humanitarian worker with fieldwork experience, March 2019.
64. See above 59., 28.
65. PWO, Still Poisoned, 19.
66. Interview with TNLA major, November 2019.
67. See above 59., 54.
68. Interview with PSLO/A last chairman and vice-chairman (Tar Aik Mone and Tar Khun Yee), December 2019.
69. Military government of Myanmar at the time.
70. Burmese unit of measurement for edible oil.
71. Kramer and Woods, Financing Dispossession
72. PWO, Poisoned hills and Still Poisoned.
73. Ong and Prasse-Freeman, “Expulsion/Incorporation”, 48–49.
74. Interview with TNLA second lieutenant, November 2019.
75. Ferguson, “Repossessing Shanland”, 73, 103.
76. At the headquarters of which it had maintained a small contingent of troops even before TNLA’s creation.
77. Frontier (2021), Rising Dragon: TNLA Declares ‘Victory’ in Northern Shan, Frontier, February 4, available online at https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/rising-dragon-tnla-declares-victory-in-northern-shan/
78. Prasse-Freeman, “Refusing Rohingya.”
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Francesco Buscemi
Francesco Buscemi (PhD in International Relations) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bologna, Department of History and Cultures, Geography Unit. He is also a research fellow at the Turin-based Einaudi Foundation. His research is situated at the intersections of political geography, peace and conflict studies, and borderlands studies. In particular, he focuses on the social and spatial re-configurations of authority and (dis)order at the margins of the state by delving into the politics of governing weapons and human/weapon entanglements.