Burma Insurgency - Background
Ethnic minorities make up about a third of Burma's population of roughly 50 million. Ethnic minorities live throughout Burma, but are concentrated mainly in the seven states and divisions named after the Shan, Kayah, Karen, Mon, Chin, Kachin, and Rakhine ethnic groups. National identity cards, which all Burmese must carry, and passports generally indicate the ethnicity of non-Burmans, either explicitly or through the use of personal titles in ethnic minority languages rather than in Burmese.
Circumstances of history have contributed to the difficulty of party and government efforts to unify the nation. Over the past millennium, three dynasties dominated by ethnic Burmans succeeded for relatively brief periods in imposing their political authority over the area within the boundaries of the modern political state, and at times these dynasties expanded to the east and west considerably beyond those perimeters. During the Konbaung period, the Shans, Chins, Kachins, Kayahs, and other peoples had been linked to the royal court in a tributary relationship that did nothing to limit the local authority of their rulers.
The British policy, developed first in India, was to interfere as little as possible in the internal affairs of the minority groups and to separate their administration from that of Burma Proper. Thus when the dyarchy system was introduced in 1923, the Burma Frontier Service was created with its own corps of civil servants. In the 1937 constitution "Ministerial Burma" (Burma Proper, which was included in expanded self-government) and the peripheral border areas were further segregated. Not until the Union of Burma was formed in 1948, however, had all the diverse peoples within its ill-defined borders formally been brought together in a single, if somewhat tenuous, federation.
The government has a contentious relationship with Burma's ethnic groups, many of which fought for greater autonomy or secession for their regions after the country's independence in 1948. At the time of independence, only Rangoon itself was under the control of national government authorities. Subsequent military campaigns brought more and more of the nation under central government control.
Signed by General Aung San and representatives from the Kachin, Shan and Chin communities in February 1947, the Panglong agreement promised these groups a fair amount of autonomy over their own affairs in exchange for their support for Burma’s independence. This agreement allowed for a large degree of self-governance and the option to withdraw from the federation after a decade. That agreement forms the legal basis for demands for self-governance today. Aung San’s death just months later brought an end to the dream of Panglong, as his successor U Nu never fully implemented the agreement, in particular the promise of local autonomy.
Given the difficulty of finding an acceptable solution to the problem of political and ethnic diversity, it was not surprising that the new leadership was unable to reconcile the differences and that the resilience of the newly forged union was tested almost immediately. Within several months of independence, communist bands were in armed rebellion, seeking to overthrow the central government. Several months thereafter, elements of the Karen minority-the largest of the discontented ethnic groupslaunched their own revolt, as did members of other ethnic minorities, all seeking a territory for their own group and greater decisionmalong authority in matters affecting its future. Wholesale Karen desertions played havoc with Burma's armed forces, and dissidents soon occupied much of Lower Burma and spread elsewhere. By 1951, however, in part because the insurgents were never able to unify their efforts and in part because of U Nu's determined response, the reconstructed armed forces had brought the insurrection substantially under control, although insurgents continued to dominate much of the countryside.
For over six decades, the army has battled diverse ethnic insurgencies. These ethnic minority insurgent groups have sought to gain greater autonomy, or in some cases, independence from the dominant ethnic Burman majority. The Government justifies its security measures as necessary to maintain order and national unity. However, most major insurgent groups have reached individual accommodations which provide varying levels of stability and autonomy from central government control.
The Government reinforced its firm military rule with a pervasive security apparatus led by the military intelligence organization, the Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence (DDSI). Control is buttressed by arbitrary restrictions on citizens' contacts with foreigners, surveillance of government employees and private citizens, harassment of political activists, intimidation, arrest, detention, and physical abuse.
The authorities continued to regard the Muslim and Christian religious minorities with suspicion. Moreover, there was a concentration of Christians among some of the ethnic minorities against whom the army fought for decades. Religious publications, like secular ones, remained subject to control and censorship. Those residents unable to meet the restrictive provisions of the citizenship law, such as ethnic Chinese, Arakanese, Muslims, and others must obtain prior permission to travel.
Although in practice the distinctions between the various insurgent groups were often blurred, all could be classified as one of three kinds according to their organizational goals.
- The revolutionary movements were established to overthrow the existing central government and create a new structure in its place. By the early 1980s, U Nu's movement being definct, only the Burmese Communist Party [BCP] was representative of this kind.
- Ethnically rooted insurgencies were legion. In fact, it has been said that in Burma, if a group was ethnically distinct from the Burmans or other ethnic groups, then it would be represented by at least one insurgent movement. Unlike the revolutionaries, ethnic insurgents were interested only in ruling their own people and territory and sought either greater autonomy from the central government or outright independence.
- Warlord associations were organized feudally around one or more leaders in order to conduct illicit market activities and control trade routes. These were essentially armed economic enterprises and inclued, among others, the Chinse groups and the Shan United Army.
The distinction between armed economic enterprises and others came to be less clear-cut in the mid-1970s, as it became very difficult to distinguish the problems of insurgency from those of the black market network and the international narcotics trade because most anti-govermnent groups were heavily involved in one, if not both, pursuits. For some groups, this was not a new development; they had always been armed commercial enterprises. Most ethnic insurgents and the communists, however, had organized for political purposes. Although they often had engaged in smuggling, permitted poppy cultivation in their areas, or allowed passage of opium caravans through territories they controlled, most clearly had not been oriented primarily toward illicit commercial activities..
Despite differences in basic goals, the day-to-day operations of most groups were often indistinguishable because all had to devote significant resources and attention to supporting themselves. The raison d'etre of warlord groups was precisely that, of course, and they were not troubled by the need to balance any other considerations. As became clear in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, other groups often found that administering commercial interests could work to the detriment of maintaining group cohesiveness. Even incidental participation in commerce appeared to carry temptations for deeper involvement, leading to the development of rivalries between individual entrepreneurs. Political ideals were also undermined as some group members became more interested in securing profits than in working to achieve political goals. Moreover, the complexity of black market and opium trade operations created attractive opportunities for individuals to set up their own specialized operations, either as a sideline activity or as an independent splinter organization.
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