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ABSTRACT
This article asks how rebel leaders capture and lose legitimacy within their own movement. Analysing these complex and often uneasy relations between elites and grassroots of insurgency is important for understanding the success or failure of peace processes. This is because internal contestation over authority between rival rebel leaders can drive a movement’s external strategy. Based on ethnographic research on the Karen and Kachin rebellions in Myanmar and insights from Political Sociology, the article suggests that leadership authority is linked to social identification and the claim to recognition among insurgent grassroots. If rebel leaders manage to satisfy their grassroots’ claim to recognition, their insurgent orders are stable. Failing this, their authority erodes and is likely to be challenged. These findings contribute to understanding insurgency and peace negotiations in Myanmar and civil wars more generally by showing how struggles over legitimacy within rebel groups drive wider dynamics of war and peace.
Acknowledgements
I like to thank Jurgen Haacke, David Rampton, Hans Steinmuller, William A. Callahan, everyone from IR512 and the two anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to the London School of Economics and its Department of International Relations for funding my doctoral research, including my extensive stays in the field, upon which this article is based. My particular thanks go to my local interlocutors and friends in Myanmar, whom I can unfortunately not name in person due to persisting insecurity and conflict in the region. None of this research would have been possible without their support. I am deeply indebted to them for sharing their knowledge as well as for their trust and friendship.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
David Brenner is Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics, University of Surrey. His research interests include the social dynamics of insurgency, political violence, ethnic conflict, and state formation in contested borderlands. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics (LSE), where he remains affiliated as an Associate Fellow at the Global South Unit.
Notes
1 The KNU and KIO are ethno-national movements that demand greater autonomy from the central state under a federal constitution. They emerged as a result of militarised and violent identity formation during the colonial period and the Second World War. The KNU was established in 1947 and the KIO in 1961. Both started to fight against a post-independence state, which – dominated by the country's ethnic majority – failed to guarantee autonomy rights for ethnic minorities. Decades of armed conflict have entrenched ethnic divides and grievances since (South, Citation2008, pp. 1–22). At the time of writing the KNU fields about 5000 soldiers and the KIO about 10,000–12,000 troops (Myanmar Peace Monitor, Citation2016). For more background on both movements and Myanmar's civil war see Smith (Citation1999, pp. 27–100) and Holliday (Citation2012, pp. 25–40).
2 For a background on the internal divide within the KNU and the movement's ceasefire see Brenner (Citation2017).
3 Interview with Karen environmental and social activist, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 30 October 2015.
4 Legitimacy here is not used as a normative but as a descriptive concept, which stresses the perception of actors themselves. The article therefore, follows Morris Zelditch who defines something as legitimate ‘if it is in accord with the norms, values, beliefs, practices, and procedures accepted by a group’ (Zelditch, Citation2001, p. 33).
5 For a more detailed discussion of my field work please consult my doctoral thesis (Brenner, Citation2016, pp. 62–81). On the limits of transparency in ethnographic work on clandestine movements and conflict zones see Neumann and Neumann (Citation2015, p. 811).
6 Conversation with Karen teacher, Mae Sot, Thailand, 12 November 2013.
7 Interview with KNU administrator, Mutraw, 23 October 2013.
8 For a good analysis of institutionalised discrimination against ethnic minorities in Myanmar see Walton (Citation2013).
9 While some commentators view the 'new' ceasefires since Myanmar’s transition as inherently different in nature, they are essentially modelled around a similar mix between military pressure and economic incentives. For a good discussion of continuity and change in Myanmar’s counterinsurgency see Ruzza (Citation2015).
10 Focus group interview with KNU education workers, Mutraw, 24 October 2013.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 For an analysis of CSOs in Myanmar's militarised ethnic border regions see Fink (Citation2008).
14 Interview with Karen activist, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 30 October 2015.
15 While physical security has improved in eastern Myanmar with the KNU ceasefire in 2012, other social and environmental problems have reportedly deteriorated. These include, land confiscation for economic usage by companies and the military, adverse side-effects of unsustainable natural resource extraction, and the increasing narcotics problem among local youth (Karen Human Rights Group, Citation2015).
16 Interview with Karen activist, Chiang Mai, 30 October 2015.
17 Interview with senior KNU leader, Mae Sot, 15 November 2015.
18 For more background on the KIO see Smith (Citation1999, pp. 60–87, 190–198, 301–333).
19 Conversation with KIA soldier, Laiza, April 2014.
20 Interview with EEDY co-founder, Maijayang, April 2014
21 Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century, Christianity – particularly the large Baptist Church – has had a significant influence on the construction of modern Kachin identity. Although the Kachin conflict should not be reduced to religion, the interests of the KIO and the Kachin churches have historically overlapped to significant degrees (Sadan, Citation2013, p. 35).
22 Interview with Kachin religious leader, Laiza, March 2014.
23 For more information on the internal power struggle within the KIO see Brenner (Citation2015).
24 Interview with Kachin religious leader, Laiza, March 2014.
25 Conversation with a member of the Kachin diaspora, London, 12 November 2014.