A new study on ethnic politics in Burma surveys a bewildering field and points the way forward

Ethnic Politics in Burma: States of Conflict by Ashley South. Routledge, 2008, P 277

Since the colonial era, only two Western authors have done the subject justice. Martin Smith’s encyclopedic Burma-Insurgency and the
Politics of Ethnicity, and Bertil Lintner’s Burma in Revolt are landmark studies in cataloguing the confusion of the ethnic puzzle inside Burma.

Whereas Smith’s book was about conflict and ethnic identity, and Lintner’s about conflict, state building and narcotics, Ashley South explores all these topics and then looks at contemporary debates on development and forced displacement, with a more academic discussion of shifting “identities” in Burma. Given the sheer range and depth of all these issues, South overviews them skillfully.

The purpose of the book is to inject greater complexity and detail into the debates over ethnic politics: the role of resurgent civil society in ethnic ceasefire areas and the cities of Burma; the ethnic groups’ constrained participation in the military government’s national convention; and the uneven performance of local development projects.

With a timely epilogue taking into account the effects of Cyclone Nargis, South suggests there are now opportunities in Burma for meaningful participation in national politics for Burma’s long-suffering and splintered ethnic nationalities if they pursue a considerable strategic rethink—what South calls “review, reform and re-engage.”

The author sketches case studies of the Kachin and Mon ceasefires, and examines the development dilemmas within the Wa and Kokang special regions and their struggles with opium eradication. The section on the Karen ceasefire process is well explained, despite omitting mention of late Gen Bo Mya’s breakthrough visit to Rangoon in early 2004.

The sections on the gradually flourishing civil society movement are encouraging and urgent; there are hundreds of health, education and development initiatives inside Burma that South describes without compromising the security of those involved. The international community must start finding ways to strengthen and support these networks, South says, as a process of outflanking the military power structure and its tightly controlled raft of civil society groups like the Union Solidarity and Development Association.

The final chapter, on “re-imagining communities,” outlines pathways for the ethnic groups to engage with the central state and the international community in peace-building and development initiatives. South argues that civil society has a crucial role to play in this—one which the military government and the international community should be aware of—as a vehicle for gradual peace-building and political initiatives. “Cooperation in the humanitarian sector might later be expanded … to include more explicitly political discussions of state-society and center-periphery relations… What is required is more—and better quality—engagement between international and state agencies and local communities.”

To those who have followed South’s prodigious output of reports and articles in the past few years, much of the writing is familiar, but for the lay reader this is a valuable collection of issues, even if all the details occasionally become confusing and disjointed. Some well-designed diagrams show the polarization of arguments and contrasting outcomes of ceasefires and development initiatives, and they demonstrate the author’s grasp of a mountain of complexity.

Where the book stumbles is in South’s over-correction in trying to balance debates over the role of Western development agencies and international advocacy. The repeated use of the phrase “aid and human rights industry” to describe initiatives based around the Thai-Burmese border is somewhat distasteful, not to mention disingenuous, even churlish.

As South states numerous times, this is where he cut his teeth as an aid worker and researcher, before going on to become a consultant for the United Nations and other international groups in Burma.

He fails to outline any similar shortcomings of international aid agencies working inside the country—their political compromises and the dilemmas of dealing with the authoritarian power structures of the Burmese military and unaccountable ethnic militias such as the Wa and Kokang, even though in “industrial” terms these UN and private agencies dwarf the border-based cottage industry. In fact, few if any of these groups do human rights protection work inside Burma, something South omits to mention. The section on the politics of development aid is lamentably weak.

Nevertheless, this book should be standard reading for all aid workers coming into the country now, and must be a cornerstone of the urgent and necessary debate the international community needs to have with the people of Burma on the development of their country. South’s respect for Burma’s ethnic people is clear, and he has succeeded, mostly, in doing his subject real justice.

David Scott Mathieson is Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch.