In the third week of June 2011, news about a massive flow of people fleeing armed fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burmese government troops began to filter in. The fighting is the first major outbreak of war in Burma since the election-related conflict along the country’s eastern borders with Thailand (in 2010). The fighting ostensibly broke out when the KIA demanded the closure of work on the hydroelectric dam being constructed by a Chinese power conglomerate along the Tapin River in Kachin state in the north of the country. According to the Irrawaddy News, the dam is being financed by China Power Investment Company Limited, and has employed several hundreds of Chinese engineers and workers. Earlier, in March 2011, the political leadership of the KIA wrote to the Chinese authorities and requested them to halt the construction of the dam, as the environmental consequences would be devastating for the people of the state. Burmese military authorities and government-run media say that it necessary for government troops to conduct a military campaign against the KIA, so that the dam may continue as proposed and Chinese investment be secured.
This is the crux of the problem. There are wars being fought all along the frontiers of the former British Empire in South and Southeast Asia. Whether it is North-Western Frontier Province (now called Khyber Pakhtunhwa), or Northeast India, or Northern Burma, one sees the preponderance of armed conflicts, where modern nation-states that include India, China, Pakistan (and the United States of America), are waging war against “tribal insurgents”. Social scientists like James Scott, Sanjib Baruah and Willem van Schendel, do not see this as a mere coincidence. In their writings, they allude to the fact that these frontier regions acted as political and geographical buffers, against the Russians, Chinese and French, for the British Empire in the 20th century. There was little or no investment in these areas and civic law, as exercised in the rest of the colony (be in India, or Burma) was suspended in favour of a vague, highly arbitrary notion of customary law. With the transfer of power, these regions remained as relatively autonomous territories within centralising nation-states for many decades. In fact, Scott calls the highlands of Burma and Northeast India, as the last great enclosures of the modern world, where property rights and rule of law are still fluid, and where the state is only now beginning to exercise control in order to secure the resources that lie beneath the soil, or in the case of hydro-energy, flow through the lands of the peoples that colonialism relegated to the frontiers of civilisation. This is doomed to be a violent transformation.
The Burmese state is a latecomer in this tragic, but brutal attempt to tame the frontier, discipline the indigenous people and secure resources for more powerful agencies. In 1962, the Burmese state abrogated the hard-won federal constitution of Burma and subjugated its people, including the ethnic nationalities that had always seen themselves as autonomous from the dominant Bamar cultural tradition of the country. They, along with the Burmese Communist Party, took to arms. Over time and thanks largely to the machinations of the legendary chief of Burmese intelligence services, Khin Nyunt, these movements gave in to fissures and factions and signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese government, in return for economic and political indulgence for them, in their areas. This arrangement lasted for a while but as would be clear to any student of politics, it hardly allowed for large-scale investment and confidence among big business. Moreover, the Burmese state was always seen as some kind of morally inferior entity, something that it is tried to shake off with the sham elections of November 2010.
It is now clear that a newly primed Burmese state has arrived in the global effort to discipline the frontiers. It will earn accolades from big business and big brother states like China, Thailand and India, for the manner in which it is extending its military might to tame troublesome insurgents. If the flow of refugees becomes too visible, then a community of well-meaning donors will step in to provide relief and request “both parties” to exercise restraint, little realising that with the uncomfortable consensus on development and governance going against them, this might be the last stand for the people of Kachin state.
Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora
xonzoi.barbora@gmail.com
This is the crux of the problem. There are wars being fought all along the frontiers of the former British Empire in South and Southeast Asia. Whether it is North-Western Frontier Province (now called Khyber Pakhtunhwa), or Northeast India, or Northern Burma, one sees the preponderance of armed conflicts, where modern nation-states that include India, China, Pakistan (and the United States of America), are waging war against “tribal insurgents”. Social scientists like James Scott, Sanjib Baruah and Willem van Schendel, do not see this as a mere coincidence. In their writings, they allude to the fact that these frontier regions acted as political and geographical buffers, against the Russians, Chinese and French, for the British Empire in the 20th century. There was little or no investment in these areas and civic law, as exercised in the rest of the colony (be in India, or Burma) was suspended in favour of a vague, highly arbitrary notion of customary law. With the transfer of power, these regions remained as relatively autonomous territories within centralising nation-states for many decades. In fact, Scott calls the highlands of Burma and Northeast India, as the last great enclosures of the modern world, where property rights and rule of law are still fluid, and where the state is only now beginning to exercise control in order to secure the resources that lie beneath the soil, or in the case of hydro-energy, flow through the lands of the peoples that colonialism relegated to the frontiers of civilisation. This is doomed to be a violent transformation.
The Burmese state is a latecomer in this tragic, but brutal attempt to tame the frontier, discipline the indigenous people and secure resources for more powerful agencies. In 1962, the Burmese state abrogated the hard-won federal constitution of Burma and subjugated its people, including the ethnic nationalities that had always seen themselves as autonomous from the dominant Bamar cultural tradition of the country. They, along with the Burmese Communist Party, took to arms. Over time and thanks largely to the machinations of the legendary chief of Burmese intelligence services, Khin Nyunt, these movements gave in to fissures and factions and signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese government, in return for economic and political indulgence for them, in their areas. This arrangement lasted for a while but as would be clear to any student of politics, it hardly allowed for large-scale investment and confidence among big business. Moreover, the Burmese state was always seen as some kind of morally inferior entity, something that it is tried to shake off with the sham elections of November 2010.
It is now clear that a newly primed Burmese state has arrived in the global effort to discipline the frontiers. It will earn accolades from big business and big brother states like China, Thailand and India, for the manner in which it is extending its military might to tame troublesome insurgents. If the flow of refugees becomes too visible, then a community of well-meaning donors will step in to provide relief and request “both parties” to exercise restraint, little realising that with the uncomfortable consensus on development and governance going against them, this might be the last stand for the people of Kachin state.
Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora
xonzoi.barbora@gmail.com
