In a country such as Myanmar, which has long been in a constant state of civil war, there is no better reform agenda for a new government than negotiations with armed opponents. Given the long history of military rule in Myanmar, where fighting regularly breaks out between the Burman-dominated armed forces (Tatmadaw) and ethnic armed groups (EAGs), ethnic reconciliation has been one of the challenging tasks for successive governments. After the Tatmadaw's withdrawal from direct political rule in March 2011, the new quasi-civilian government placed persistent attention on the ethnic negotiation issue by bringing ethnic leaders to the table for peace talks. Unlike in the past, where the Tatmadaw (on behalf of both the military government and the armed forces) made ceasefire deals with the EAGs directly, the new peace process in Myanmar put the government and the Tatmadaw in different roles. The quasi-civilian government acted as a negotiating institution between two key stakeholders of the peace process: the Tatmadaw and the EAGs.

Coming during a political transition, the peace talks have been fragile. The talks have sometimes produced promising deals between the Tatmadaw and the EAGs. At other times, disputes between the Tatmadaw and ethnic leaders pertaining to political and security issues have seriously impeded talks. Such political and security issues range from the country's internal domestic affairs — such as heated discussions of “federalism”, and “demobilize, disarm, reintegration” (DDR) — to the country's diplomatic affairs, such as different preferences between the military and EAGs on choices of international observers as foreign witnesses to sign a nationwide ceasefire agreement.

Nevertheless, to the surprise of many scholars and political observers, the Thein Sein government continued to manage its hold on the fragile peace process until the end of its administration in 2015. As a major milestone of the process, the government signed a ceasefire deal with the Tatmadaw and eight EAGs just a month prior to the November 2015 general election, while inviting seven other EAGs, which did not sign at this time, to continue joining the process.

How did the Myanmar transitional government sustain the peace process despite political and security constraints? Analysts have offered different explanations. Attention has been paid to both the characteristics of leaders and of institutions.

On 28 August 2014, a lieutenant colonel of the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army — South (RCSS/SSA-S) inspected land on top of a mountain he bought less than a year before for about US$10,000. The land has a commanding view of Taunggyi and Lake Inle. He said with excitement that a general in Yangon recently bought a similar plot adjacent to his for US$150,000. He added that once he had sufficient money, he would develop the site into a hotel. On the way back to Taunggyi town centre, his Toyota four-wheel drive was stopped by traffic police at an ad hoc checkpoint. He lowered the tinted glass and the police immediately recognized him. After exchanging a few words, the police made an apologetic gesture and waved the car on. The lieutenant colonel explained that they were stopping cars to fine those without the necessary permit. They stopped him because they did not know he had changed his car.

The lieutenant colonel is well known in town because he helped broker a ceasefire agreement between the RCSS/SSA-S and the central government. Before signing the agreement in 2011, the RCSS/SSA-S was one of the major ethnic armed groups in the country (Keenan 2012). In April 1988 the officer was a summer school teacher in Taunggyi and only planned to stay there until the end of classes. However, he was caught up in the student protests and arrested, according to him, simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was released after three months in prison. While there he began to understand the struggles of the ethnic minorities and was sympathetic to them. After his release, he joined the SSA together with five other teachers who had been arrested at the same time. He fought in the jungles and eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 2005 he was seriously ill, so he left the SSA and went to China for treatment. He returned to Taunggyi after he recovered. In 2010 when the RCSS/SSA-S began ceasefire talks with the government, his former superior called him to lead the negotiation team, probably because he was the most educated person they could trust.

In the five years from when its transition from a military regime began in 2011, Myanmar faced a number of conflicts old and new that had profound influence on the breadth and depth of the transition. The Myitsone dam crisis and subsequent suspension of the project in 2011 changed the way the international community saw the transition (Skidmore and Wilson 2012, p. 7). On the other hand, communal violence in Rakhine State and in several parts of Myanmar in 2012 was portrayed as a setback at a time when reforms were bringing high hopes to the future of Myanmar (Wilson 2014, p. 13). Subsequently, the Letpadaung copper mine dispute and clashes with the police and protesters in 2013; land-grabbing disputes between government agencies, the military, and the local people in 2013; clashes between the Constitutional Tribunal of the Union (CTU) and the legislature on the status of the legislative commissions in 2012; and the student movement on educational bill amendments that turned violent in 2015 were obvious examples of conflicts that have had serious impacts on the course of reforms.

Myanmar's legislature, the Hluttaw, was involved in accommodating these transitional conflicts and its effectiveness and assertiveness were not always the same. For instance, its involvement in the ethnic conflict and the peace negotiations was more ceremonial than crucial (Ei Ei Toe Lwin 2013). Next, the Hluttaw was mostly silent on the communal violence in Rakhine State (Ei Ei Toe Lwin 2014a). While it was less responsive to violent clashes like the Letpadaung copper mine conflict, the legislature was quick to flex its muscles against the CTU when the latter ruled against the legislature (Nardi 2012). Moreover, while the government showed signs of compromise with the students on the amendments to the national education bill, the Hluttaw was firm in its process, and rejected the deadline set by the student movement to amend the law (Htoo Thant and Mratt Kyaw Thu 2015). In land-grabbing disputes, the legislature was proactive and had substantial achievements (Thiri Min Tun 2012).

Each of the conflicts was different in nature and therefore required a different legislative response. Some were long-standing conflicts such as the peace process, while some were new, as in the case of communal violence. Some were fast moving as in the case of Letpadaung copper mine conflict, while some encountered many bureaucratic hurdles as in the case of land grabbing conflicts.

Myanmar currently ranks third internationally in the number of accidents and deaths from landmines, after Afghanistan and Columbia. While the use of landmines in Myanmar's myriad conflicts has been documented (Geneva Call 2011; Moser-Puangsuwan 2000a; Selth 2000a), the factors determining their inclusion as a form of community protection have been less researched (South 2012).

To better understand the role of landmine use in Myanmar, this chapter uses civilian self-protection frameworks put forward by South, Perhult, and Carstensen (2010) and Jose and Medie (2015) to outline how several historical and cultural factors, including a culture of militarization and the arbitrary role of patron-client relations, have together with the “four-cuts” counterinsurgent strategy created an environment of “chronic emergency” (Duffield 2008, pp. 8–10) for populations living in conflict-affected areas. Concomitantly, it points to a shift of landmine use away from primary military objectives to the targeting and protection of infrastructure, private assets, and community spaces.

This chapter argues that communities have adopted the military use of landmines to establish an element of control within an “emerging political complex” (Duffield 2014, p. 231), posing an immutable choice between the protection of their community and possible causation of physical and psychological trauma of the same local population.

In some circumstances, landmine use can be a form of community agency, not only to deal with insecurity but also to assess risks on the community's own terms (Bottomley 2001; KHRG 2008). Often communities are left with an immutable decision between the dangers of landmine use or exposure to other threats. They undertake risk assessments that weigh the risk of landmine use against other threats.

These findings are derived from research gathered as part of two Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) surveys, the first representative of a population of 110,000 people across east Bago and Tanintharyi Regions, and Mon, Kayin, and Kayah States who have been directly impacted by landmine accidents. The second was on a population of 100,000 internally displaced persons residing in various locations across northern Shan and Kachin States. The surveys included a series of extensive coordination meetings and interviews with stakeholders, from senior and junior officials in government, ethnic armed groups (EAGs), and CSOs, as well as participant observation of interactions among these groups.

Myanmar has been plagued by armed conflict since independence. Kachin armed resistance, the focus of this chapter, has challenged the state since 1962, now more than half a century. Initial independence claims have been revised to demands for a federal union, but recourse to armed resistance to secure full or partial autonomy constitutes an explicit or implicit separatist claim. The conventional characterization of separatist conflicts in Myanmar, including the Kachin conflict, has focused on centre-periphery ethno-nationalist politics (for example, Egreteau 2012; Smith 1991, 1997, 2007; South 2008). The idea that ‘ethnic’ identity is primary has largely been taken for granted, and analysis has predominantly focused on the structure and patterns of inequality in inter-ethnic relations. This chapter reframes that presupposition.

For all its faults, the previous military government achieved some form of ceasefire deal with forty armed groups between 1998 and 2010 (Min Zaw Oo 2014). One of the most significant of these was the 1994 ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The KIO/A are one of the larger, better organized and more formidable of the non-state armed groups, with a presence spread across a significant part of Kachin and northern Shan States, and while the other ceasefire deals were unwritten ‘gentlemen's agreements’, the Kachin ceasefire was the only one with a signed document (although the signed document was kept secret for a decade). For most of its seventeen years, the Kachin ceasefire also appeared among the most stable and led to a wealth of state-led, civil society and commercial development activity, including the rapid expansion of resource extraction.

Since the return to armed conflict by the KIO/A in June 2011, and their recalcitrant stance in national ceasefire negotiations, analysis has begun to emphasize the growing role of resource exploitation, and it has been tempting to characterize this as a resource-driven conflict. Certainly, almost all violent clashes between the Tatmadaw and the KIA since 2011 have centred around the control of resources and resource trade corridors, suggesting it is pertinent to once again re-examine the causes and characteristics of the Kachin conflict.

For half a century, politics — or rather, the political — were banished from Myanmar. The country's military rulers, having found they lacked political aptitude, instead attempted to generate power “from a society of disconnected singulars” (Wolin 2004, p. 246). In the place of politics, Myanmar got law and order: a mode of association whereby essentially administrative mechanisms coerce people to remain immobilized and quietened (Cheesman 2015a, p. 35).

Well, politics are back. The National League for Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has yet again proven itself worthy successor of U Nu's Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, that unbeatable vote winner of 1950s Burma before the military shut politics down.

But it is not just that with the general election of 2015, on which Michael Lidauer (2016) offers an informative commentary in this publication, we witness the return of politics. The chapters assembled here under the rubric Conflict in Myanmar reveal their return from a variety of angles, and in a host of settings.

What does it mean to talk about the return of politics to Myanmar? How are politics differentiated from “the political” promised in this chapter's title? And what is the relationship of each to conflict?

A convenient place to start on these questions may be with the distinction Chantal Mouffe (2005, p. 9) makes between politics and the political, where the former concerns “the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created” for the organisation of human existence, while the latter refers to the “dimension of antagonism” that is constitutive of human relations (see also Wolin 2004, p. 40). For Mouffe, the political does not reside in elections or in a ruling organisation or set of institutions, as Max Weber (1968, pp. 54-55) would have it. Those arrangements are the stuff of politics. The political is more like a condition in which we disagree but also together try to figure out how to decide on stuff that matters without attempting to kill one another. It is a manner of relating to difference, as Dipesh Chakrabarty (2002, p. 140) has written, in which “difference is neither reified nor erased but negotiated”. In sum, the political is concerned with rivalry among collectivities recognizing one another as substantive equals who communicate hostility dialogically through fundamentally nonviolent means.

BROKEN LIVES, BITTER HOPES

One of the sad facts about the long history of conflict in Myanmar is that nobody knows how many people have died, how many lives have been broken. Perhaps a million? Maybe more? In the civil wars, some of which have raged since the 1940s, the mountains and valleys have echoed with gunfire and artillery blasts, with shouted commands, and with the screams of the people as they have fled for their lives. Damage still pockmarks the landscape, landmines often lie unmapped, a hazard to everyone, and vast territories remain locked in standoffs between the government and its remaining opponents. Round after round of negotiations between these ethnic armed groups and the central government have enjoyed only mixed success. In some areas, central authorities have accepted local governance arrangements that see armed ethnic groups control substantial economies. They levy local fees and taxes, determine what gets taught at school, and inculcate society with their values of resistance and ethnic pride. These arrangements have often proved unstable, with ceasefires teetering, held together only by economic largesse and grim appreciation that the costs of war are immense. Where compromise cannot be found, Myanmar's people suffer through long-running jousts, which can sometimes escalate into full-blown battles, forcing thousands from their homes. During the past half-decade — even as life in Myanmar improved for tens of millions of people — difficult conditions have remained in parts of the Shan, Kachin and Rakhine States. In certain areas, ethnic armed forces have battled hard against the central government, unwilling to concede ground to what they consider occupying forces.

In the past, there was in fact no clear distinction between Myanmar's armed forces, often known by their Burmese name, the Tatmadaw, and the central government. Under the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) that ruled until 2011, Myanmar's military high command and executive leadership were one-and-the-same (see Seekins 1999; Rogers 2009; Farrelly 2013). In practice, this system gave army officers, whatever their rank, dual responsibilities as both administrators and war-fighters. For instance, the head of Myanmar's Northern Command, usually a major general based in the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina, also served as the chairman of the Kachin State Peace and Development Council.

Many complexities that symbolize Myanmar today stem from its borders, border people, and border regions. From Karen and Shan in the east to Kachin and Wa in the north, to Chin and Rakhine in the west, Myanmar's periphery commotions affect its stability and its peace conditions (ICG 2015). Researchers have studied these phenomena, and their approaches range from queries on Myanmar's borders (for example, Cohen 2013; Morshed 2012; Schendel and de Maaker 2014) to nuanced studies on border people, policies, and regions (notably, Chen 2014; Farrelly 2012; Pate 2010).

The way peripheries have dominated Myanmar's future brings to the fore some old questions: what are the causes of conflicts at these outer regions? How do they relate to border administration, and how do the security echelons operating on either side of the border perceive threats? Do these assessments come from physical, tangible elements of fear? Or do they draw from intangible and often imperceptible fear factors like religion, ethnicity, cultures, and languages of the bordering people?

In this chapter I address some of these queries, using the case of the Rohingya in Rakhine State. Despite a long period of neglect, the story of the Rohingya is increasingly finding an audience in the political arena as well as in academia, and yet the Rohingyas’ plight is far from being alleviated. A discussion of the Rohingya offers scope for analyzing not only Myanmar's governance at the fringe areas but also performances by their Bangladesh counterparts, and sheds light on the attendant border management by these respective countries.

Since a number of scholars have delved into ethno-religious issues (Siddiqui 2011), socio-political affairs (Shwe Lu Maung 1989), and nontraditional security matters (Ahmed 2010) relating to the Rohingya, in this chapter I focus on two aspects of traditional security: border management and the conception of threat by the opposing forces of Myanmar and Bangladesh. Drawing examples from past conflicts along the border — and juxtaposing them with findings from the field — I question the way borders are typically managed and the threats constructed. My experiences of past service in this borderland region — with the Bangladesh Army in the early years of the twenty-first century (in areas opposite north-western Rakhine State) and subsequently with the Border Guards during the close of its first decade (in areas west of River Naaf) — help me in this assessment.

The drama and tragedy that began to unfold in June 2011 after a military attack on Kachin army outposts in the north of Myanmar is usually explained in terms relating to military conflict, power struggles, and the failure of the Myanmar state to include and respect the rights of minority groups (International Crisis Group 2013; Lintner 1990; Smith 2007). The relationship between gender and conflict rarely enters the discussion, unless (Kachin) women are portrayed as victims of (state) violence. Women's experiences of and responses to the conflict that do not fit with the dominant image of woman-as-victim are then typically silenced.

This chapter challenges that dominant narrative by critically investigating women's conception of and involvement in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). It provides a new lens to understand the conflict between the Myanmar state and the Kachin minority group by exploring the circumstances that lead women to join or support the armed struggle in Kachin State, asking why and how women are involved in the conflict. Using theoretical insights provided by feminist political economy, it analyses the material basis for women's support for and involvement in the KIO/KIA.

Recent research (Henshaw 2015; Mazurana 2013; Shekhawat 2015) suggests that women — like men — join armies for ideological and political reasons related to their position as members of a marginalized ethnic and religious group. However, a more careful gender analysis will reveal that women's decisions to participate in or support armed struggle stem from gender-specific experiences of insecurity and oppression. In Kachin State, these gender differences are visible in the high number of female-headed households compared to other areas of Myanmar (Union of Myanmar 2015b); the inability of women to inherit property (KWAT 2014, p. 26); and the deliberate targeting of minority women by Myanmar armed forces, or Tatmadaw, officers and soldiers (Human Rights Watch 2012).

It is important to note that women's exposure to gender-based violence in Myanmar is related to their exclusion from positions of power and influence. This exclusion reflects a gendered division of labour that holds men as the representatives of the collective, as evidenced by the acute lack of women in leadership positions within both the local and the national polity (Minoletti 2014).

The watershed Myanmar 2015 elections are widely regarded as more credible and inclusive than any previous polls in the country, and were largely experienced as peaceful and without disruptions. Despite a mostly quiet election day, the electoral process, however, was not free of conflict. One major cluster of conflicts impacting the electoral process revolved around tensions between ethnic armed groups (EAGs) and the national government's military forces, the Tatmadaw — usually termed ‘ethnic conflict’ (see Laoutides and Ware, this volume). Another cluster of conflicts concerned the growing anti-Muslim sentiment, with the potential for violent escalation. A third conflict cluster evolved around questions of constitutional justice. This chapter briefly outlines the conceptual framework for elections and conflict, and then proceeds by reviewing the major clusters. The section on elections and the peace process is followed by a discussion of a little understood element of the electoral process, the partial cancellation of elections. The chapter concludes by summarizing some nascent conflict-mitigating measures of the 2015 electoral process and provides an outlook for challenges ahead.

ELECTORAL PROCESS AND RESULTS IN BRIEF

Despite low expectations based on historical experience and criticism in the period prior to 8 November 2015, the Union Election Commission (UEC) enabled a positive election-day experience for most of Myanmar's voters, and left little doubt that the will of the electorate was respected. The voter list, digitized and publicized for public scrutiny — which had been criticized for inconsistencies and omissions in earlier versions — stood its test on election day. More than a year prior to the polls the UEC engaged in unprecedented stakeholder meetings with political parties and CSOs. It introduced new integrity measures such as transparent ballot boxes, numbered seals, and indelible ink to create better safeguards in polling procedures, and supported the dissemination of voter education materials, including in the mass media and by new communication technologies. International and national observers were deployed in large numbers, all across the country and throughout the pre-election and election day period, with limitations only in conflict-affected areas and around military installations. Observers largely agreed in their assessments of an overall positive election day, while also sharing concerns about undemocratic restrictions in the electoral legal framework.

Myanmar successfully held an historic general election on 8 November 2015 under President U Thein Sein's government. Local people as well as the international community welcomed the election outcome, where the National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide, with 77.1 per cent of seats nationwide. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won only 117 seats out of 1,150, or 10.2 per cent of the total.

In the pre-election period, some people assumed the election would not be free and fair. Even though by -elections had been held successfully on 1 April 2012 and had brought members of the NLD to parliament, they pointed to general mistrust of the Union Election Commission (UEC), as well as to the removal of the Speaker of the Legislature Thura U Shwe Mann as a member of the USDP Executive Committee by a so-called internal party coup. Furthermore, Myanmar was hit hard by heavy rain and flooding between July and August 2015, which led to speculation that the election might not be held, or might be conducted improperly. Nevertheless, when it was conducted, it attracted praise from home and abroad.

The success of the 2015 election was in part due to the respective roles played by certain key institutions. This paper will concentrate on the roles of the UEC, international agencies, and the military, or Tatmadaw. Today, electoral commissions are integral to conducting democratic elections, and in Myanmar too, the role of the newly created UEC was essential to the success of the 2015 election. In countries like Myanmar without a strong tradition of regular elections, international agencies are an important enabling factor in conducting a successful election. In the case of Myanmar, 2015 was the first time the government opened the door to international observer missions and capacity-building organizations, which contributed in important ways to the election outcome. Lastly, the election could not be held successfully without the complaisance of the Tatmadaw, which has a record of having played an obstructionist or spoiling role. Although questions remain about the role of the military in the post-election power transition and in the work of the forthcoming legislature, it was true to its word in allowing the 2015 election to proceed smoothly, and in remaining committed to the process for the transfer of power to a new government despite the NLD's overwhelming victory.