Myanmar Update Series. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2016. xiv, 390 pp. (Maps, illustrations.) US$29.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4695-84-8.
This volume is based on the 2015 Myanmar/Burma Update Conference held annually at the Australian National University since 1999. The 2015 Myanmar Update focuses on the country’s ongoing political, economic, and social conflicts. The book comprises fifteen chapters arranged in three sections: “War and Order,” “Elections and After,” and “Us and Them.” As noted by Nicholas Farrelly, one of the editors, Myanmar is undergoing a political transition after more than half a century of military dictatorship, and this book provides a timely discussion of conflicts of war, politics, and religion (6).
Each of the five chapters in the section “War and Order,” though varied in focus, are related to internal conflicts between the union government and ethnic armed groups. In chapter one, Su Mon Thazin Aung writes about the roles of the Myanmar Peace Centre and its strategy for the peace process under the Thein Sein administration from 2011 to 2015. This is followed by two chapters on ethnic conflicts in Kachin. Costas Laoutides and Anthony Ware provide a powerful account that interprets the ethnic conflicts in Kachin state as a conflict on framing, distribution, and management of political power, rebutting arguments that hold the conflicts in Kachin are best understood in relation to resources and territorial control. Jenny Hedstrom then discusses the insecurity and violence faced by Kachin women, an area typically overlooked by researchers.
Kachin is certainly not the only area in Myanmar where there are ongoing ethnic conflicts, and Ricky Yue provides an overview of the political actors of the Pa-O Self-Administered Zone in the southern Shan State. His chapter provides an important explanation of how ethnic groups have been incorporated into the nation-state building project led by the union government, while at the same time demonstrating how not all political groups aiming to represent ethnic populations can attain the same level of recognition and support from the broader populace or union government. The section’s final chapter, written by George S. Cathcart, looks at the problem of landmines as a form of community protection in eastern Myanmar.
Chapters in the second section, “Elections and After,” focus largely on the 2015 election broadly seen as more legitimate than those prior because of less obvious military intervention. Michael Lidauer provides a detailed account on three clusters of conflicts impacting the electoral process, namely conflicts between ethnic armed groups and the military, anti-Muslim sentiment, and constitutional injustice, although the connections between these conflicts is not made entirely clear. Chaw Chaw Sein then investigates the roles that the Union Election Commission, international agencies, and the military played in the 2015 election and how each contributed to its success. Than Tun’s chapter critically examines the reasons for the exceptional victory of the Arakan (Rakhine) National Party in Rakhine State, which managed to gain support from ethno-nationalist Buddhists. He also cautions against dismissing entirely the influence on politics of ethnicity and religion in current-day Myanmar simply because these issues failed to dominate the election.
The last two chapters of this section are concerned less with the election per se and more with the legislature and legal reforms. Chit Win’s chapter attempts to outline the key characteristics of the legislature and its roles in conflict resolution by examining its responses to borderland conflicts and peace negotiations, resource-based disputes, and communal violence during its first term (2011–2016). Melissa Crouch, in the final chapter, discusses the dual capacity of laws to both manage and engender conflict in Myanmar.
The last section, “Us and Them,” is dedicated to issues related to religion and disputes. Tamas Wells critically illustrates the contrasting narratives of democratization held by Western aid workers and local Burmese activists by examining their reactions to communal conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims. While this chapter does point out differences between Western and local actors in conceptualizing democratization, I would argue that a West-Myanmar dichotomy provides a false binary, and omits the presences of non-Western aid workers and agencies. The next chapter by Bridget Welsh and Kai-Ping Huang should be read and compared with that of Wells. By analyzing quantitative research on people’s opinions regarding conflicts, the two argue that the public supports decentralization, democracy, and political reform. Their chapter provides an additional account from the broader populace on the conceptualization of democracy and democratization in Myanmar.
The next two chapters focus more on religious conflicts. Matt Schissler offers an explanation of how the idea of a so-called Muslim threat has been popularized in Myanmar, leading to Islamophobia and even holocaust denial. Gerard McCarthy then examines Buddhist charitable organizations in provincial areas and their role in supporting local social safety nets. In the final chapter, Helal Mohammed Khan examines governance along the fringe areas of Bangladesh and Myanmar in order to shed light on the attendant border management approaches employed by each. I found this chapter to be only tangentially related to religious conflict, but it is also the only one in the book that talks about border tensions and management—an important topic for a country that borders five others.
This book provides useful insights on a variety of topics related to conflicts in Myanmar and more importantly, as Nick Cheesman points out in his concluding chapter, on the return of politics and the promise of the political to Myanmar (here “political” being the condition wherein parties try to come to agreed upon solutions despite their mutual disagreements), however long and circuitous the process of their return may be. He ends by tying the chapters together with the central question of what it means to be political in Myanmar after the end of the military dictatorship. However, since the book is a collection of essays from different authors on disparate issues, the connections between chapters can seem tenuous, and there is no explicit definition given for “conflict” that might otherwise provide some kind of through line. This volume will prove useful in providing a broad, political economy perspective of conflict in Myanmar during recent years, although it remains important to remind ourselves that conflicts continue to evolve once described and there are still more worthy of attention than can be covered in one book.
Francesca Chiu
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom