During the last 70 years in Myanmar, the military governments of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), together with the Tatmadaw, have adopted a range of tactics that practically and physically construct the borderlands of the country, not only their spaces but also the social formations of people living there and the EAOs that (allegedly) represent them in the armed struggle.
The transformation of EAOs into paramilitary entities somehow connected to the Army has represented a major tenet of the Tatmadaw’s counterinsurgency strategy since the 1960s.
[10] This modus operandi has assumed different incarnations, from Ne Win’s program aimed at molding Shan State armed actors into state-backed KaKweYe (KKY) paramilitary units, to the prominent role of people’s militias in the Maoist-inspired concept of people’s war widely embraced by the Tatmadaw, or the more recent 2009 Border Guard Forces (BGF) reintegration program. For instance, the 23 BGFs and 15 People’s Militia Forces (PMFs) that emerged in 2009 and 2010 from former ceasefire EAOs, factions of EAOs or other militias, today form an effective branch of the Tatmadaw that controls them directly or through patronage relations with prominent local figures. Over the years, with these strategies, the military and successive governments have managed to organize spaces and people outside their direct control. In turn, rural areas, particularly in the north and east of the country, are characterized by a complex and discontinuous political and security landscape presenting multiple centers of power.
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The tactics adopted have been particularly varied. The co-optation of local business or political figures together with the creation of patronage networks, the constitution of paramilitary groups out of disbanded EAOs units or the concession of construction contracts for infrastructures to local, national or regional actors represent some examples. Another such means is the allocation of large portions of land that allows the military and the government to pose as security providers, extract resources of different kind from the areas surrounding allocated lands, establish partnerships with the new owner(s) and intervene in the social configuration of the territory through relocations and administrative settlements.
[12] The so-called “4-cuts” strategy, featured prominently in counter-insurgency manuals of the Tatmadaw, is equally illustrative in this sense. The strategy consists of cutting off intelligence, food, funds and popular support for insurgents in order to destroy them or force them into co-optation processes. Overall, the strategy’s rationale resides in the disconnection of communities from insurgent armed groups and vice versa, in order to shape armed actors as completely separate entities from the underlying population. The tenacious refusal of EAOs to disarm after having signed a ceasefire with the government might be taken as an indication of the reluctance to undertake the very last step in that direction and the willingness of some to continue moving along a centrifugal trajectory from the central government.
Quite tellingly, the Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) processes represent integral components of the peace process codified in the NCA and can be considered as essential elements from the Tatmadaw perspective. In the 2015 National Ceasefire Agreement the two are defined with one single term, “security re-integration”. The synthesis of SSR and DDR into this formula has engendered ambiguities in the peace process: depending on interpretation, such an equation might entail the dismantling of EAOs and their incorporation into the current security apparatus without any concrete reassurance concerning the modification of the latter into a more federal security system or any actual reform in that direction prior to the disarmament of EAOs. Not surprisingly, these issues generate frictions between ethnic organizations, the government and Tatmadaw, as illustrated by a recent declaration issued by Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA) regarding the necessity to postpone the planned Panglong UPC due exactly to this controversial matter. Divergences on SSR and DDR shed a light on the mutually constitutive processes of state building as they lie at the core of structural and organizational interests on both sides and bring to the fore fundamental questions such as the monopoly over the use of force.
Through these techniques, the central government structures its borderlands, squeezing out the fluidity of those rejecting the state by molding their organizations. As the language used in relation to SSR and DDR suggests, the forms assumed by this process have by no means been limited to practices such as constitution of paramilitary groups or patronage networks. Narratives and discourses have also been crucial.
To extend the analysis, one might look at a recent event that, although marginal, allows us to creatively trace the proposed conception of the relations between the state and ethnic organizations, and the role of narratives, in the context of the Rohingya question.
In his recent apostolic journey to Myanmar at the end of November 2017, Pope Francis’ avoidance of naming the Rohingya sparked attention and debate, particularly amongst the international community that had recently awakened to the Rohingya struggle due to the Tatmadaw’s latest wave of repression that burst out in August last year. Besides the indignation aroused, the absence of the name ‘Rohingya’ in the Pope’s speech could be understood as a fragment of the relationship between sovereign powers and “ungoverned” or “state-repelling”
[13] people depicted in Colonel Mathieu’s speech in
The Battle of Algiers. When observed through the prism of the overall landscape, the term Rohingya was conspicuous by its absence in the words of the Pope, in as much as that absence fed back into the Myanmar central government, rather than non-state formations. The state gained authority and (indirect) legitimacy, while state-repelling people remained neglected, relegated behind the categories of armed groups, terrorists, refugees or immigrants. The salience of that absence resides in the overall process of mutual constitution between the Myanmar government and Myanmar’s “state-repelling” groups, a process that has been constantly ongoing since before the birth of the Union of Burma in 1948.
To conclude by paraphrasing Scott, Myanmar probably hosts one of the last areas on earth with a large concentration of state-repelling people. Nevertheless, with the gradual occupation, co-optation and articulation of physical and social spaces and structures by central authorities, the only environment that seems left for state-repelling people is that of illegality, often once again defined by and in mutual relation with the state.
