WAR, MOTHER AND YOUTH

From independence in 1948 to the 2010 historic general election, the voices of peoples in Burma/Myanmar were by and large imperceptible. During those sixty-two years, Burma/Myanmar did not figure much in world politics, compared to the chronicity of political crises therein. The first fourteen years saw it engaged in a chaotic form of democracy that ended when it became a hermit state after General Ne Win's coup d’état in 1962. Before the 2010 election, the world community turned its eyes to Burma/Myanmar only when there were mass killings: the 8/8/88 massacre and the Saffron Revolution from 18 to 26 September 2007. In other words, the international community did not by and large regard crises in Burma/ Myanmar as international problems — until crisis struck the country again. In this light, the 2010 election was the dawn of metamorphosis both inside and along the country's border zones. However, the international community has been too optimistic about this metamorphosis.

Until May 2014, I had been reflecting upon Burma/Myanmar's future through its past. Even though the country's future looks promising, it is hard to ignore the reality that many people are still suffering: Muslims, the Kachin, and hundreds of thousands of people living in what the Thai state calls “temporary shelter areas” along the Thai-Burmese border. This article is written to record the voices of some of the people living along the border — especially those of the young — without which they will be forgotten. In this introduction, I present a montage of events occurring from 2009 to 2010, before this seemingly promising period of political change.

CHILDREN AND A MOTHER'S MEMORY

Fighting broke out along the Thai-Burmese border zones one day after the historic election on 7 November 2010. For many of those attempting to flee to Thailand, weakened health caused by the displacement led to an early death. For others, it came upon them abruptly without much time for those left behind to prepare themselves emotionally.

Such fragility of life happened to a group of villagers attempting to flee to Thailand.

Myanmar, geographically located at the junction of South, Southeast, and East Asia, shares common maritime boundaries with Bangladesh in the northeast of the Bay of Bengal, with Thailand and India in the Andaman Sea. From the mouth of the Naf River to Kawthaung (Bayint Naung Point), Myanmar has a 2,228-kilometre (1,385-mile) coastline. The coastline consists of three sections: the Rakhine coastline of 713 kilometres (443 miles), the Ayeyarwady Delta coastline of 437 kilometres (272 miles), and the Tanintharyi coastline of 1,078 kilometres (670 miles). On land, the coastline is shared by six administrative states or regions in Myanmar, namely, Rakhine State, Ayeyarwady Region, Yangon Region, Bago Region, Mon State and Tanintharyi Region. After the declaration of the Territorial Sea and Straight Baseline in 1968, Myanmar promulgated its Territorial Sea and Maritime Zones Law in 1977, prior to the conclusion of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Myanmar then signed the UNCLOS and ratified it on 21 May 1996, after which it came into effect on 20 June 1996. In accordance with Article 76 (paragraph 8) of the UNCLOS, on 16 December 2008, Myanmar submitted information on the limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Myanmar has 29,043 square nautical miles of internal waters and 9,895 square nautical miles of territorial waters (please see Table 3.1 for more details). There are 852 big and small islands in Myanmar waters.

This chapter describes the challenges posed by domestic contenders and foreign entities on the Myanmar state's authority, management and control of the maritime frontier, highlighting the many actors involved in making and unmaking the frontier in Myanmar waters. In addition, it looks at the emerging politics of resource control between the central and local/regional governments, for the first time in Myanmar at least since 1962. Using two types of natural resources located in Myanmar waters as examples — fish stocks and hydrocarbon reserves — this chapter describes and analyses the way in which the exploitation of natural resources affects local and central politics, people's livelihoods and the forms of collusion between business and government.

CONTEXT

In June 2012, the Rakhine State (Arakan) was the scene of violent conflict between Buddhists and Muslims. Ever since then, there have been other outbreaks of violence with attacks on mosques and Muslim-owned houses in different parts of the region, notably in Mrauk U, around the town of Thandwe, Yangon and Meiktilla.

This conflict in Rakhine State raises the question of “strangeness” in the sense of belonging to groups at the margins of society, or of being an outsider. I will attempt here to provide an interpretation of the Rakhine concept of the strangeness of the outsider in relation to rituals dedicated to spirits.

Mrauk U is considered by the Rakhine as their cultural and historical heartland. Shortly after the outbreak of the events in Rakhine State, many inhabitants took part in a ceremony whose purpose was to relocate the statue of the palace guardian spirit so that the image faced the West, in the direction of the enemy. Also, many of the inhabitants whose houses had not caught fire in the course of the confrontations that spread through Sittwe (June/July 2012), the capital of Rakhine State, claimed that the guardian spirit of the town had protected them from the flames and from the enemy. This chapter will consider the conflict from the perspective of ritual.

Focusing on ritual is important. I have previously demonstrated how the former Burmese authorities in Rakhine State have relied on spirit cults, to exercise political control over the state (see de Mersan 2009, pp. 319–20, 323–26). In today's context of violence, rituals also allow us to take a step back so as to better understand the situation. Based on the assumption that there is a direct link between rituals and the society that develops them, my main question is “What do rituals have to say about the current social and political situation?”. As we shall see with territorial cults, rituals are expressions of social relationships based on territory between different communities.

DIFFERENT NAMES FOR THE MUSLIMS OF RAKHINE STATE

Based on fifteen years of anthropological research in and on Rakhine State (see de Mersan 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012), this chapter reflects, above all, the points of view and beliefs of the Rakhine, a term which nowadays mostly means the Buddhist Rakhine.

An estimated two million Muslim Rohingya live in the region surrounding the 200-kilometre long border between Bangladesh and Myanmar. The history of the population in reference to this border remains a contentious issue, as in both countries they represent a political challenge to, in Liisa Malkki's influential phrasing, “the national order of things” (Malkki 1995, p. 495). The large-scale denial of the Rohingya's claims to territory or belonging in either country betrays the uneasy fit between nation, state, and the interstate order. Both countries adhere to what Amena Mohsin has aptly described as the French, “state-centred and assimilationist” model of nationhood (Mohsin 1997, p. 2). Such a drive towards forging culturally homogenous nations in turn forces claims made by minorities into a particular political idiom: as “new nations” requiring a state of their own. However, in both Bangladesh and Myanmar, the Rohingya have been excluded even from the assimilation process, effectively being cast out of both nations and states.

Myanmar's stateless Rohingya minority is estimated to number approximately two million, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been wary of accepting these immigrants, arguing first that they contribute to an extant situation of overpopulation and resource scarcity, and that they do not fit within the nationalist project of Islamic Bengaliness. In the last few years these tensions have reached a breaking point, leading to outbreaks of ethnically-based violence in Bangladesh and Myanmar between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine. As ethnic and communal homogeneity and territorial integrity have served as the ideal but impossible core of contemporary nationalisms in Myanmar and Bangladesh, these conflicts resonate beyond their immediate contexts.

This chapter argues that the Rohingya (as well as the Rakhine, the majority population in Rakhine State, of whom a significant number are currently living in Bangladesh) have been configured in changing ways through state-making projects over time. They have been enlisted in various projects of regional development in multiple capacities: in the case of the Rohingya, as labourers and surplus population, while the Rakhine were relocated as settlers and landowners.

The Mae Sot-Myawaddy borderland is teeming with peoples of varying ethnicities, social classes and qualifications working and studying in a myriad of organizations. The diversity of motivations, trajectories and institutions is at once overwhelming and fascinating. This chapter attempts to make sense of this complexity by focusing on the learning and employment adventures of Miriam, a young Burmese woman living in Mae Sot. Although Miriam does not embody an ideal-type, nor does her story represent the experiences of the diverse individuals living on this border, her narrative provides a fascinating account of and the way in which wider structures — both material and intangible — shape an individual life.

Essentially, this chapter asserts that the lives of Burmese migrants in the Mae Sot–Myawaddy border area are largely affected by two economies — the neoliberal and the humanitarian (see Horstmann, this volume) — operating under and outside the jurisdiction of the central Thai and Burmese states, and local (formal and informal) authorities on both sides of the border. While I am aware of other economies operating in this region — the war economy for example, I focus on these two economies because there are a range of learning and employment institutions that make up and support them. The neoliberal market economy as applied to this region brings to mind border trade, garment factories and special economic zones. This is where Miriam's story begins. As we follow her journey into and out of a garment factory and then into various community and non-governmental organizations that make up the humanitarian economy, we discover the workings of these two economies.

By linking individual pathways and institutions to employment in distinct sectors, this chapter identifies the ideologies, beliefs and customs being reproduced and that form the socio-cultural base of the humanitarian industry in this borderland. It also shows that educational institutions are not uniform across the board: some provide training in the skills and attitudes suitable for joining the capitalist underclass in Thailand, others provide training in competencies for employment in community based and non-governmental organizations in the humanitarian sector. While the latter is a step up from precarious factory work, its dependence on donors subjects it to funding fads and donors’ whims.

In Mizoram State of India, a popular weekly television programme, Lamtluang (Mizo Lyric Blog 2014), reports on different cultures, lifestyles, religious institutions, transport systems as well as other facets of daily life abroad. In 2013, journalists from the programme travelled to the Chin State of Myanmar. In an interview of Chin elders, the topic that arose was the close ethnic relations between the Chin and the Mizo (interview with Chin elders at Aizawl 2014). The elders maintained that while Chin State was part of another country, they were not different from the Mizo in any significant way. They explained that the Chin and the Mizo shared a culture and language and that in many cases, even had kin living across the border. Although the border was drawn during the colonial period, the people have always considered themselves, “wrongly divided; they are brethren” (comments by Mizo Elders during the Lamtluang television programme, 12 February 2014 at Aizawl). This was not a new concept. Numerous arguments for this shared ethnicity, history and the wrongly imposed division of the Chin and the Mizo can be found in Vumson (1986, p. 32) and Son (2013, p. 56). In fact, most Chin and Mizo accept that they are the “same people”, yet, the television show emphasized that the Chin are from a “different” country. Chin interviewees did not accept this position and further commented on how badly most Chin are treated by their Mizo “brothers” when they cross the border from Myanmar to escape poverty in search of a better livelihood in the Indian state of Mizoram.

INTRODUCTION

In addressing the border separating the Chin Hills of Myanmar from Mizoram of India, this chapter has two aims. It is a study of border exchanges: illegal and legal, licit and illicit, and the dire situation of the Chin in Mizoram. We argue that the intense xenophobia against the Chin is not only fostered but also institutionalized by the Youth Mizo Association (YMA), the largest civil society organization in Mizoram. The social science term, xenophobia was chosen due to the obvious marginalization of the Chin in Mizoram (as well as toward other non-Mizo).

INTRODUCTION: CONTENTIOUS POLITICS AND RELEVANCE OF SPATIALITY

While a wider spatial turn in social sciences is datable to the 1980s, transforming many areas of social and economic scholarship, the research on social movements and contentious politics has until recently remained largely aspatial, focusing on identity, grievances, political opportunities and resources (Martin and Miller 2003; Tilly 2000). It is most explicit in Myanmar where the complex decades-long ethnic-based armed struggle for autonomy has been coined ubiquitously as an “ethnic issue”, “ethnic problem” or “ethnic politics” by both the national and international community, including politicians, media, representatives of various groups and organizations, and also by academics. While the geo-body of Myanmar is known to be fiercely contested by a plethora of stakeholders since its establishment in 1948, with all projects and struggles by all contestants concerned with the spatial and institutional organization of political rule, “ethnic” foregrounds and thus exaggerates the role of ethnicity and ethnic markers, and fully eliminates the “spatial” as the point of contention. However, territorial autonomy — seen as involving local authority over ethnic homelands and natural resources, with the rights to farm, engage peacefully in community life, speak the mother tongue, or enjoy a clean environment — lies at the heart of the ongoing peace negotiations between the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the government. It is the only accepted political solution for lasting peace, thus making the “spatial” fully relevant.

Thus the lens of contentious place-bound politics, of an intricate assemblage of places and persons connected through shared ideas and networked arrangements as “…engaged in a complex set of political mobilisations at one point in time,” provides a perspective in this chapter that enables the incorporation of more subtleties and shades than the analysis of politics, ethnicity or territory and borders alone (Allen and Cochrane 2007, p. 1171).

The problematic issue is that contention in politics — a phenomenon of organized social resistance to hegemonic norms — is used to refer to social movements, rebellions, protests and various other activism described as “non-formal” or non-state (see Tilly 2000; McAdam et al. 2001; Martin and Miller 2003).

INTRODUCTION

Geopolitically induced forced migration created a legacy of chronic human insecurity, internal displacement, and cross-border exile for tens of thousands of Karenni people for over two decades. Under military rule the country was relatively isolated, except for exploitative resource economy investments by China, Thailand and other Asian neighbours. As Myanmar now goes through fundamental political economic reform processes, many profound changes are affecting the political and human landscape of ethnic border zones.

We focus on Karenni displaced persons, particularly cross-border refugee populations, who face dilemmas such as whether or not to return to lands many of them were coerced into leaving, and which even in relative peacetime have precarious human security. Simultaneously, Myanmar's contested borderlands are experiencing relative absence of armed conflict for the first time in decades, and they are being opened to inward investment, intensified resource exploitation and a complex array of new emerging relations with actors and agencies operating inside Myanmar.

Political and economic changes in the borderlands bring in forms of land and resource dispossession, exclusion/inclusion, and inequality in terms of ownership, access and property rights. We argue that agencies concerned with developmental change and human security need to seriously take into account legacies of past (and current) geopolitical conflicts whilst taking a critical look at the nature and purposes underlying political economic change. Understanding the cumulative legacy of past conflicts is vital to any current examination of the changing political economic landscape. Equally necessary is the analysis of Myanmar becoming a legitimized space for global investment, which generates many projects, but also carries dilemmas of highly differentiated economic benefits that do not necessarily alleviate poverty in former conflict zones.

The chapter focuses primarily upon key transformations in the lives of ordinary Karenni refugees living in Mae Hong Son, Thailand, and reflects upon the major transformations affecting the Kayah (Myanmar) — Mae Hong Son (Thailand) borderland, particularly in relation to issues of human and livelihood security for residents and returnees. It maps lives across the border through ethnographic and everyday geographies relating to past and current contexts.

Previously, the geopolitics of national reconsolidation generated ceasefires between the military junta and various armed ethnic groups in the borderlands, whilst conflict continued with non-ceasefire groups, such as the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP). However, a new era of national reconciliation has opened up.

Over the past two decades, economic hardship and political conflict have driven Burmese migrants, refugees and political dissidents across the border from Myanmar into Thailand at an unprecedented scale. According to estimates, the number of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand may have reached about three million whereas the number of Burmese asylum seekers registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) approximates 15,000. While the past decades saw a massive flow of Burmese nationals coming across the border into Thailand, in recent years a counter-current has emerged with the return movement of Burmese exiles to Myanmar. This is due to a series of political and economic reforms in Myanmar which began to take place in 2011. A new civilian government has loosened internet restrictions, freed political prisoners and pursued economic reforms to attract more foreign investors. As part of the reforms, in August 2011, Myanmar's president Thein Sein called on all exiles to return. According to government rhetoric, Burmese exiles’ departure to escape persecution by the military resulted in a massive drain that deprived Myanmar of some of its best minds.

As a result, over the past two years, a growing number of Burmese political exiles have returned to their home country. Returnees state the reason for return as “we want to contribute to the country” (Rose 2012; Horn 2012). Cheery Zahau, in her talk about returnees at the Burma Update Conference 2013 at the Australian National University, states that, in the past two years, three types of returnees may be identified: those in armed resistance groups, activists, and immigrants who see opportunities in Myanmar. She notes that all three groups go back because they want to contribute to the country's development (Cheery Zahau 2013).

While an aspect of Burmese exiles returning home has been celebrated in the press as part of the reforms, the question of whether Burmese labour migrants have contemplated return has been largely ignored. In May 2012, the international press (BBC 2012; Whiteman 2012) wrote about Aung San Suu Kyi's visit to Burmese migrants at Mahachai in Thailand, a hub for processing and canning seafood which employs tens of thousands of Burmese workers.

This chapter provides a concise map of faith-based and secular humanitarian assistance to the Karen in the Thai-Burmese borderland to show the emergence and development of a humanitarian economy for Karen villagers in southeast Myanmar, and in the nine refugee camps in northwest Thailand. I understand humanitarianism to be a culture of humanitarian aid, compassion and relief, but prefer a broader definition that includes agency which encompasses a range of services — from emergency healthcare to advocacy work, such as training for documentation of human rights violations. I suggest that decades of civil war and repression in southeast Myanmar have created a particular landscape of humanitarianism in the borderlands of southeast Myanmar and northwest Thailand that is characterized by the dense presence of local and international humanitarian organizations. The chapter advances the thesis that humanitarianism takes over state functions in the social services as the economy, health and education sector in southeast Myanmar have largely collapsed (South 2012; Decha Tangseefa 2006). Humanitarianism thus contributes in a crucial way to the consolidation of social support networks of Karen villagers and a parallel state or self-governance of the Karen in the context of open state terror and hostility.

Outlining this specific culture of humanitarianism as it developed in the Thai-Burmese borderland, I find the theory of landscape useful. Describing landscape, cultural geographers were either interested in the materiality of landscape or in the politics of representation and power. I am interested in the relationship between the two: landscape is the way in which specific actors shape a region or area with their practices and the way that a region is imagined and represented. I thus concur with Janet C. Sturgeon's claim that landscapes are more than just physical topography and land cover, but sites for manoeuvre and struggle (Sturgeon 2005, p. 3ff). Humanitarian work, in its informal and underground nature (as in southeast Myanmar), or formal and engineered (as in the camps in northwest Thailand) can be seen as what Sturgeon calls “landscape plasticity”, that is a contribution to negotiated landscapes. In this sense, landscapes are being constantly remodelled and the presence of humanitarian organizations and city-like camps contribute to shaping the materiality of the borderland (Agier 2002).

Often viewed as marginal spaces at the edge of a nation, borders are in fact sites of social, political and cultural change that impact local and national politics. This edited volume underscores this relationship by drawing attention to the significance of the frontier regions in defining and exemplifying many of the dilemmas that beset Myanmar. As van Schendel and de Maaker assert, “[t]he making of borders cannot be separated from attempts to define nations” (2014, p. 3).

The border is often understood as the “line of physical contact between states” (Paasi 1999b, p. 13). In everyday parlance and in the field of international relations, borders are taken to be stable features that separate one nation state from another (Minghi 1963, p. 407), created by and negotiated between state agents, and codified in maps.

This book takes a different approach. It conceptualizes borders — and boundaries — as social practice — processes rather than objects (Berg and van Houtum 2003; Baud and van Schendel 1997), verbs rather than nouns (van Houtum 2011, p. 50) — that are constantly being enacted.

Boundaries may be viewed as constituting

Looking at this obversely, we can say that the act of creating boundaries is the act of constructing figured or symbolic worlds. Practice theory is used in this introductory chapter to frame local practices of border-, boundaryand world-making while referencing larger structures and sociohistorical production. This enables us to consider Myanmar's frontiers not just as entities defined by the border but as spaces where symbolic worlds emerge from local context, partly transforming widely circulating models of nation, identity and culture, and vice versa.