Should war resume in parts of Burma’s borderlands, the country will simply return to its pre-1989 situation, and the challenges of national reconciliation and local sustainable development will begin again.

- Extracted from David Scott Mathieson, “Peace in name only”, The Irrawaddy, October 2009.

As China continues to have problems with its own internal ethnic tensions, some of those it faces in Burma are richly ironic, but the entire situation is becoming more complex and fraught by the day.

- Michael Sainsbury, “For China, Burma is thorny territory”, The Australian, 8 September 2009.  This old New Mandala picture provides some context for the headline.

The northern three Wa divisions are currently on standby and say they expect an attack from the government army in the coming days…

- Wai Moe, “Clouds of war move over Shan State”, The Irrawaddy, 2 September 2009.

Of all of the hundreds of news reports about the recent battles in the Shan State this is one of the best.  It is well worth a look for anyone hoping to piece together what has happened over the past week and what some of the likely implications are.

But investigations by the media and concerned agencies in the next few weeks will find whether the ideal goal of forming a grand alliance against the hated military regime is too late or can still be a dream come true.

- Extracted from “The fall of Kokang raises questions”, Shan Herald Agency for News, 31 August 2009.

In the northern Shan State there has been fighting on a scale that hasn’t been seen for decades.  According to Xinhua, tens of thousands refugees from the Kokang region (controlled by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and also known as Shan State Special Region 1), have fled across the border into China’s western Yunnan.  A good map of the area is available here.  There is speculation that the fighting may now spread to the eastern Shan State (pictures of the exact area available here), and even to the Kachin State.

The battles in the northern Shan State have already tested the resolve of those who have enjoyed such long periods of “peace” and “development” under the ceasefires.  I would expect that many of the “ceasefire” troops, particularly those from the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, have only limited combat experience.  700 of their men have reportedly already surrendered to Chinese authorities.  Many United Wa State Army soldiers, on the other hand, have a fair amount of frontline fighting under their belts. Some of their units have maintained battle-readiness through their long-term deployments along the Thailand-Burma border.  Will they now be drawn into a more general conflict?

One of the other issues that intrigues me about these battles in the northern Shan State is the possibility of an alliance of ceasefire armies that draws some of its strength from the connections made during the SPDC-sponsored constitution-drafting National Convention.  During the National Convention, delegations from  “ceasefire” areas, such as this one,  lived and worked together in Rangoon.  It would be surprising if they did not develop some strong relationships.  Before the opportunities presented by the National Convention many of the top ethnic leaders had spent their recent years relatively isolated in their border strongholds.  In the meantime, non-ceasefire groups have been largely forced to make do with these kinds of mountain-top meetings.

But are things now changing?  In the past days the “Myanmar Peace and Democracy Front”, with Wa, Kokang, New Democratic Army – Kachin and Eastern Shan State Army members, has released a joint statement (translated here) that gives some sense of the potential solidarity among the ceasefire groups.

And this “Myanmar Peace and Democracy Front” is only one possible alliance configuration.  Could a broader grouping of Wa, Kokang, Shan, Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Mon, etc., get together to take the fight back to the SPDC?  It remains an intriguing, but unlikely, possibility.  Instead, is 2009 going be the year when the ceasefire armies will be “divided and ruled” once-and-for-all?

As part of an informal agreement between the UWSA and the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military), the UWSA leaders agreed to wage battles against the army of infamous drug baron Khun Sa and subsequently the Shan State Army (SSA). Wei was involved in significant battles against both of these armies. According to Wei however, Wa soldiers were often unenthusiastic contributors to the battles, realising that they were closer ethnically with their opposition than with the Burman-dominated military that their leaders were collaborating with. In Wei’s experience it was not unusual for battles to involve soldiers firing over the heads of their opponents. While the Yangon regime had co-opted the UWSA in its fight against the Shan, it seems that Wa identity could not simply be bought.

Given the significant proportion of their revenue that the UWSA derives from trade in narcotics, it is usually Wa soldiers that are called on to make the long and dangerous journeys trafficking drugs to the Thai border. Wei was deployed within small teams carrying packs filled with yaba (amphetamine) pills, to trek from WSR2 to southern Shan state where the drugs would be taken on into Thailand.

Contributing to the disenchantment of Wa soldiers has been an increasing influence on power in the UWSA by ethnic Chinese who are attracted by the business opportunities in WSR2, and who make the most of their connections with rebel leaders. The UWSA is now largely Chinese-speaking, and the key figures in it are an ethnic mix of Wa and Chinese. The rise to power of this “borderlands mafia” led regular Wa soldiers to question their leadership’s sincerity in campaigning for Wa autonomy.

The balance of power in the organisation has important implications for the assertion of Wa identity. When questioned regarding the accuracy of perceptions that the Wa are little more than drug producers and traffickers, Wei Yu Hua puts the blame squarely on “Chinese businessmen”. Whether Wei makes a distinction between Chinese in the Wa leadership, and those that dominate the business community in Panghsang, the de facto regional capital, is not entirely clear. It seems likely however, that such actors are seen by many Wa as closely related.

Adding to this discontent during the 1990s, increasing numbers of Wa soldiers were sent by UWSA commanders on suicide missions in order to inflict major damage on their enemies. This issue, among others, led Wei to desert the UWSA and escape from Myanmar to the Chiang Rai province of Thailand.

In the diversely populated hills of northern Thailand, Wei was able to work alongside people from Karen, Akha and Lahu ethnic groups. He was eventually able to settle down in a village officially labelled “Lahu” by Thai authorities, although in reality its makeup defied any simplistic categorisation. Wei married a Karen woman, also a refugee.

Such is the stigma surrounding the Wa in Thailand, that Wei is perfectly willing to identify himself as Lahu to government census collectors, Karen and/or White Karen to inquisitive foreigners and even some local Thai, and only rarely as Wa. In addition, Wei has learnt to speak Thai and Lahu languages, in addition to Wa and Chinese.

In Myanmar the Wa are politically represented by the United Wa State Party (UWSP), the political wing of the UWSA. The party asserts a unique Wa identity, in contrast to the other ethnic groups in Shan state and the Burman majority. However, while there is a clear expression of ethnic rights at a group level, it is important to recognise that people may be willing to adopt alternative or multiple identities at an individual level, which may even seem contradictory. This plays out in the case of an individual such as Wei Yu Hua, who has interacted with a range of people in different countries, and adopted different identities in different situations. At the same time, Wei maintains a fundamental difference between the Wa and the Burmans is worth fighting for.

Some scholars have called for distinguishing between the “internal and external sovereignties of a State”. This may involve “using the term ‘internal sovereignty’ to mean ‘effective [State] control of a territory’ and noting that ‘external sovereignty’ – recognition by international community – is the basis on which a State is considered sovereign” (Dean 2005: 811). In the context of observations regarding the formation of Wa identity, it becomes clear that internal sovereignty may be as important in the everyday lives of the Wa as external sovereignty. It seems important then, to examine the legitimacy with which the UWSA/UWSP enacts its internal sovereignty in the region.

It is also clear that representative organisations such as the UWSP may not be accurate and legitimate ambassadors for the group, even with regard to the assertion of group identity. While the organisation may have been founded with the intention of defending ethnic rights, some have more power than others in shaping the agenda. The subversion of the international border has increased interaction with the region of China in which forty percent of the Wa population lives, and has led to a significant level of influence of non-Wa over the activities of the UWSP/UWSP. Given that it is the UWSP that has so far been, and will most likely continue to be engaged in negotiations with the Myanmar government, it would be reasonable to consider these issues in any analysis of the negotiations.

The ambiguous nature of identity creation poses interesting questions for the nature of power relations in a country like Myanmar. For instance, if a political resolution to the tension between the Myanmar regime and the UWSP resulted in the establishment of an official Wa “autonomous” area, what would be the implications for the assertion of a unified Wa identity? How much autonomy should the UWSP enjoy from Naypyidaw, and how much influence should it have in the day-to-day lives of Wa people? While it is clear that at a group level, many ethnic groups are keen to express their opposition to the state, it is equally clear that individuals may be flexible in their identification with ethnic identity.

It seems that structures of state, as necessary as they are, can only ever be approximations of localised identity. In this regard, it seems fair to maintain scepticism in relation to claims by those with power or influence who may assert the right to speak on behalf of a particular group. It is also important to consider the implications of identity formation for arrangements of state, be it by central or regional authorities.

Note: The name Wei Yu Hua is a pseudonym.

Reference

Dean (2005), ‘Spaces and territorialities on the Sino―Burmese boundary: China, Burma and the Kachin’, Political Geography, v.24, pp.808-830.

I’m sure I join most New Mandala readers in wishing Aung San Suu Kyi a happy birthday with many more to come.

I am delighted to announce the publication of Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia. It has been published by National University of Singapore Press,  NIAS Press, and University of Hawaii Press. The book is the result of research collaboration that has been going here at the Australian National University over the past six or so years. It features chapters by myself, Craig Reynolds, Nicholas Farrelly, Holly High, Sarinda Singh, Warren Mayes and Antonella Diana (all of whom have made previous contributions to New Mandala).  Here are the opening paragraphs from the first chapter, “Modern Tai Community”.

This book provides a new approach to the study of community in the Tai world of mainland Southeast Asia.

Much of the current ethnographic work in the Tai world is constrained by a conceptual framework that associates community with tradition, locality and subsistence economy. This traditional community is commonly portrayed as being undermined by the modern forces of state incorporation, market penetration, globalisation and population mobility.

In this volume, we take a very diff erent view. We challenge the widely held view that community is a traditional social form that is undermined by modernity. Using case studies from Thailand, Laos, Burma and China, we explore the active creation of ‘modern community’ in contexts of economic and political transformation.  Our aim is to liberate community from its stereotypical association with traditional village solidarity and to demonstrate that communal sentiments of belonging retain their salience in the modern world of occupational mobility, globalised consumerism and national development.

Our focus is on the Tai world, made up of the various peoples who speak Tai languages. The largest groups are the Thai of Thailand, the Lao of Laos, the Shan of Burma and the Dai of southern China. Of course, each of these categories is problematic; they are all the modern products of historical circumstance rather than being natural or self-evident ethnic groups. There are certainly linguistic and cultural similarities that justify the shared label ‘Tai’ but this must be treated as a preliminary delineation of a field of interest without rushing to assumptions about a common identity or a sense of shared history. Indeed, our primary goal is to critically examine contemporary notions of belonging in this Tai world.

Here is the table of contents.

Tai Lands and Thailand is part of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Series. Special thanks to the staff at NUS Press for a great job on producing a very attractive volume!

Nonetheless I was startled to see the contrasting headlines for two recent and very important articles.  They are, just to clarify, about exactly the same matter!

• Lawi Weng, “Kachins reject Border Guard role”, The Irrawaddy, 10 June 2009.
• KNG, “KIO accepts junta’s idea of transformation of armed-wing”, Kachin News Group, 9 June 2009.

Taken together it looks like there is acceptance of “transformation” while the junta’s immediate effort to convert the Kachin Independence Army into a “Border Guard” has been rejected.  Or has it?

Whatever the reality of the recent negotiations it sounds like the Kachin are playing a smart hand up at Laiza.  They even managed to get the only coverage of these historic matters to take the story in completely different directions.

As this excellent article recently pointed out, these are interesting (and tough) times for many of Burma’s ceasefire groups.