What’s in a Norm? What Normative Frameworks in Myanmar Reveal About Inclusivity

Abstract

This chapter introduces the peace and conflict landscape in Myanmar and existing normative frameworks around inclusion and exclusion in Myanmar politics. I argue that political flashpoints in Myanmar’s contemporary history have forged robust narratives around political inclusion and exclusion for the country’s main conflict parties—the ethnic armed organizations (EAG) and the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces). In particular, discourses around building national unity through ethnonationalism for the EAGs and building national unity through militarized statebuilding for the Tatmadaw reveal a common discourse around unity. “Unity” can thus be seen as a key normative framework in the Myanmar context. However, while unity can be seen as a moral and political touchstone between the negotiating parties, the clashing interpretations of the concept of unity and what constitutes national unity in Myanmar forms the heart of the decades-long conflict and risks reifying existing divisions between the main stakeholders.

5.1 A Moral Touchstone? The Concept of “Unity” Among Myanmar’s Conflict Parties

In this chapter, I explore the “cognitive prior,” or the existing normative framework around the concept of “unity” in Myanmar politics and history. While unity (unified national identity) means different things to the Tatmadaw and the EAGs, I argue that the notion can be seen as a political and normative touchstone that suggests congruence with the inclusivity norm. The notion of unity can prospectively act as a gateway to norm diffusion in Myanmar. The existing narratives, discourses and beliefs around unity have been forged over Myanmar’s contemporary history and directly impact Myanmar peace politics. Most of the country’s most pressing issues concern conflicts around lu myo. This concept is translated and used in multiple ways, for example as taingyitha lu myo (national races)—used by nationalist movements and former iterations of military government—or lu myo zu (ethnic nationalities)—used by democratic opposition (Yawnghwe 2004). Scholars argue that these multiple and conflicting concepts of race and nationality were created by early decision-makers in an attempt to keep the fledgling nation together during the tumultuous years following Burma’s independence from the British, when multiple communist and liberation insurgencies sprang up, the Chinese Kuomintang entered through the porous northeast border, and political leadership was weakened after independence leader Aung San’s assassination. This painful period of early independence also bore two distinct nationalisms: one of the center, striving to “protect” Buddhism and Bamar identity after decades of foreign dominance; and one at the periphery, striving to actualize unfulfilled promises of self-determination for ethnic nationalities. The Union of Burma that emerged out of this period is a paradox: it is a “union comprised of fragmented little nationalisms piling on top of each other” (Myint-U 2011). This section outlines how these distinct nationalisms have, while striving to create a unified nation, resulted instead in division and conflict over who is included and excluded in this nation. In this chapter, I discuss key flashpoints in the country’s history that are formative in crafting the cognitive prior of unity of both sides, with the understanding that these histories are contested¹ (Baechtold 2016).

5.2 Unified National Identity Through Ethnonationalism

The narrative of ethnonationalism is a central component of Myanmar politics and directly informs the concept of unity among ethnic armed organizations and the ethnic communities they claim to represent. Ethnonationalism² can be understood as the political mobilization and classification of ethnicity “to establish legitimate political existence” (Gravers 2007, 5), but can also be used to establish symbolic “boundaries of identification and of inclusive/exclusive membership used in violent conflicts” (ibidem, 6). Ethnicity itself is a “flat concept in and of itself […] but develops its virulence as underpinned” by “issues of political rights and distribution, state power versus decentralization, the question for equality and freedom, and the question of who controls the demos in Myanmar’s future democracy” (Laoutides and Ware 2016, 49). The narrative of ethnic unity has been a central part of ethnonationalist discourse amongst the EAGs (Sakhong 2012; Walton 2008). However, while mobilizing ethnic unity against a common enemy has invited cooperation between EAGs at different points in Myanmar’s ethnic conflict history (Thawnghmung 2011), the EAG’s fraught history of inter-ethnic alliance building shows its susceptibility to fragmentation. Ethnic unity might have become grounds for ethnonationalist actors to employ “ethnic identity” as a key means for framing identity and political mobilization against a dominant Bamar-Buddhist majority, but it does not guarantee inter- or intra-ethnic harmony.

5.2.1 The Forging of Ethnic Identity in Pre-colonial and Colonial Burma (-1886–1941)

As historian Thant Myint-U argues, the ethnic conflict in Myanmar is predicated on “rival notions of ethnic identity and nationalism” with roots in “Burma’s colonial past” (Myint-U 2011, 84–94). Pre-colonial and colonial Burma were formative eras in creating a narrative around ethnonationalism, in which inhabitants of Myanmar base their identity on ethnicity, race, religion and territory. Before Burma became a British colony, it was known as the land of kings, and it is worthwhile to note the plural. Records of pre-colonial Burma detail the conquests of contemporary kingdoms originating from the earliest recorded inhabitants, Tibeto-Burman migrants moving into the northern hills of Kachin (Smith 1999, 32; Cady 1960; Sadan 2013) and into the south, to present-day Thailand. Some of the earliest recorded history details the diverse Mon, Burman, Arakan and Shan valley kingdoms and reveals how the center of power oscillated after conquests between them. Notable peaks of power oscillated between Burman, Mon and Shan kingdoms, and vestiges of these great kingdoms are still present in modern-day Myanmar. In contrast, the hill peoples of Shan, Kayah and Chin have little recorded written histories. Nevertheless, contemporary accounts of ethnic relations and politics in Myanmar (Smith 1991; Lintner 1994; South 2008; Sadan 2013; Cheesman and Farrelly 2016) record diverse populations with complex clan systems, marriage customs and spiritual beliefs.

The British conquest of Burma ended in 1885 with the annexation of the last vestiges of what had been mainland Southeast Asia’s greatest empire (Charney 2009) and the inglorious surrender of the last king of Burma, King Thibaw (Myint U 2006). King Thibaw’s defeat came at the tail end of three Anglo-Burmese wars (1824–1826, 1852–1853 and 1885) that had essentially “carved” up the country (Charney 2009, 5). Historians seem to agree that as most of the sources on Burma were written by “scholar-cum-adventurers” (Smith 1999) during the British colonial period, most of the outside world’s contemporary understandings of Burma were shaped by external accounts, even though “the foreign imagining of Burma had little to do with how Burmese viewed their own country” (Charney 2009, 5).³

The effect that the British colonial rule had on forging ethnic identities in Burma cannot be understated. Many historians agree that in the pre-colonial reality, identities and self-identifications in terms of religion, ethnicity and culture were fluid (Smith 1991; 1994; Charney 2009; Laoutides and Ware 2016). Nevertheless, they were described by British authorities as singular and exclusive categories and treated as such in practice. Today, the oft-cited figure that Myanmar is home to “135 ethnicities” is actually based on a number produced by such problematic methods, and scholars speculate it derives from the last published British census of Burma taken in 1931 (Taylor 2015, 8). Fusing together the myriad of ethnic identities into the ethnic nationalities of Bamar, Shan, Mon, Karen, Arakenese and others, became a source of tension and confusion that remains to this day.⁴

Not only did the British create artificial categories of ethnic identity relegated to contrived physical borders, they distributed power and agency unevenly along these lines, as they did in other colonies to similarly devastating consequences. Where before there was a fluid and oscillating center of power, they now created a literal center and periphery. The country was divided into Ministerial Burma (formerly known as Burma proper)—the central area that encompassed the then-capital Rangoon and surrounding areas—and the Frontier Areas (which became known as the Scheduled or Excluded Areas)⁵—comprising of Shan States, and areas that are home to primarily Chin and Kachin ethnic groups. This greatly affected the relationship between Bamar and non-Bamar notions of identity, belonging and nationalism in the country. The increasing tensions based on nationalism and anti-colonialism (see student protests in Rangoon University) were formative events for Ministerial Burma that are only comprehensible in the context of direct administration and rule. These decisions had the effect of essentially isolating the Frontier Areas from lowland Ministerial Burma, setting the stage for future division along ethnic lines. In that way, British colonial rule forged ethnicity as a central marker of identity and agency in the country.

5.2.2 The Panglong Conferences and the Promise of Inclusion (1945–1947)

To this day, EAGs often promote the notion that unity among ethnic groups is strength, and division is weakness in the face of the “divide and conquer” tactics the Tatmadaw⁶ employed over decades of conflict⁷ (Keenan, 2015). Since the colonial period, the notion of ethnicity had become politicized in Myanmar into a “communal consciousness […] ideologized as ethnic nationalism,” and articulated by elites in the different ethnic communities. Ethnic nationalism in Myanmar became a key political position for the EAGs. However, intra-ethnic nationalism (e.g. Kachin nationalism among other ethnic minorities) can undermine or challenge ethnic unity. In-depth discussions of the politics between and among EAGs is far beyond the scope of this book,⁸ but are important to understand that the identification of a common “enemy” has brought diverse and often in-fighting ethnic groups together during several important flashpoints in the country’s history. The most important of these is the Panglong Agreement of 1947, in which ethnic unity among the Shan, Chin, Kachin and Karen acted as a counterpoint to the divisions created by British colonial authorities.

The initial years after independence were fraught by conflicting views and politics of how the political structure should be formed in a divided country: how were the different ethnic and geographic regions to be structured? And how should unity be formed after the Second World War had seen a number of ethnic groups militarily supporting the Allied forces, and thus during considerable parts of the war opposing the Bamar and their Japanese allies (Myint-U 2006).⁹ For the aspiring independent nation, it was thus an imperative to find a solution for equal coexistence after independence. However, the Kachin and Shan were reticent to sign on to a Bamar-dominated union, and actually raised the possibility of amalgamating with China and Siam (present day Thailand) respectively. It was in these early days of contestation that Aung San attempted to forge a unified version of the country via two conferences conducted in Panglong, a British hill station in Shan State. It was here that the vision of a federal union in which ethnic groups would have autonomy and the right to self-determination was most prominently laid out.

In the 1946 and 1947 Panglong Conferences, Shan, Kachin and Chin representatives discussed and agreed upon the formation of the Union of Burma based on guarantees of full autonomy and equal wealth. Aung San famously assured the ethnic representatives: “If Burma receives one kyat,¹⁰ you will also receive one kyat” (ICG 2011). After three days of discussions, Aung San left Panglong having secured the agreement of leaders of the hill peoples (notably without including the Karen) to enter into a federal system with the central government. The resulting Panglong Agreement¹¹ guaranteed those living outside the central administration area demarcated by the British, “the rights and privileges which are regarded as fundamental in democratic countries.”¹²

In the text of the 1947 Panglong Agreement, Aung San spells out “promises” to ethnic minorities.¹³ To push this agenda forward, Aung San went to the second conference organized by the Shan Sawbwas, again in Panglong. Despite key issues¹⁴, the Panglong Conference is “the event that came closest to embodying ethnic unity,” among both the ethnic minorities and the dominant Bamar (Walton 2008, 910). It has provided an opening for a shared sense of historical identity among ethnic groups and constructed a common sense of nationalist identity. The “spirit of Panglong” (Sakhong 2012, 43) is a phrase often used by contemporary ethnic elites and now refers to both the “promises” of equality and self-determination made by independence leader Aung San to Shan, Kachin and Chin ethnic leaders and the respectful negotiation between ethnic groups on equal footing, which had made them possible in the first place.¹⁵ To many observing EAGs in Myanmar, the Panglong Agreement serves as the bedrock of ethnic politics. The phrase is also currently used as a political narrative by EAGs as a form of ethnic unity promotion¹⁶ and forms a core element of the EAGs’ belief system. Reviving the “spirit of Panglong” lies at the heart of the decades-long conflict. More specifically, self-determination, federalism and ethnic equality (BNI 2013, 55) form the crux of what many EAGs have been fighting for over decades, even after demands for secession started to cede:

For all ethnic nationalities and democratic forces, the revival of the Panglong Agreement means re-building the Union of Burma based on federal principles that will guarantee democratic rights for all citizens, political equality for all ethnic nationalities, and the rights of internal self-determination for all member states of the union. (Sakhong 2012, 43)

Driven by the related narratives of the “spirit of Panglong” and of ethnic unity, ethnic groups have entered into complex arrangements, alliances and coalitions since the start of ethnic insurgencies. This stems from the shift of targets for the ethnic movement: from outright opposition to the political regime to the desire for inclusion into formal politics (Smith 1999). To defend the “spirit of Panglong” is to promote the ethnic voice in political decision-making.

5.2.3 EAGs, Ethnic Alliances and the Limits of Ethnic Unity in Armed Ethnonationalist Movements (1948 to Present)

EAGs are not monolithic entities in and of themselves, but must be understood as armed wings of ethnonationalist movements or even of fractions of such movements. Each ethnic nationality has their own temporal, spatial and cultural trajectory of armed resistance against the central government and their constituents are not necessarily a pan-ethnic identity, but their respective ethnic communities. What is more, there are many studies that criticize the emphasis on EAGs in both scholarly and policy literature (Thawnghmung 2011) and question how representative of ethnic communities EAGs really are (Harriden 2002). Numerous anthropological studies of specific ethnic communities also reveal dominant sub-ethnic groups within minority communities (Sadan 2013; South 2008; Harriden 2002). Therefore, discussing ethnonationalism as a core element of the cognitive prior of unity necessitates understanding the heterogeneity of ethnic nationalities and the limits of ethnic unity. The distinct characteristics of each EAG and the fraught history of alliance building among EAGs shows that ethnic unity is an important mobilizing narrative, but only to a point—a nuanced understanding of inter- and intra-ethnic relations in Myanmar is paramount.

Discourse on national unity through ethnonationalism is far from homogenous, and varies on two levels militarily, politically and socially: an “inter-ethnic” level and an “intra-ethnic” level. At the root of it, Myanmar’s conflicts are of a subnational nature that has to do with governance and authority, and not just territory (Denney and Barron 2015; Joliffe 2015; Burke et al. 2017). Furthermore, intra- and inter-ethnic clashes are also part of the makeup of Myanmar’s conflict landscape—which is not limited to clashes between the Bamar-dominated Tatmadaw and the EAGs. Therefore, national unity at the intra-ethnic level requires understanding what politics of representation and participation mean within ethnic communities. This makes durable ethnic unity elusive, as finding consensus among this many groups extremely challenging. This heterogeneity illustrates that discourses around ethnic unity must be nuanced, especially when they are used as strong narratives for political purposes.

The “spirit of Panglong” and other ethnonationalist narratives developed an entrenched set of practices around alliance and coalition building as this normative core was threatened and ignored during the decades of military rule and conflict. While a comprehensive analysis of the numerous ethnic alliances formed since independence reaches beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to note that these alliances are distinct from each other: they are military alliances, political coalitions and coordination bodies. However, an emerging body of Burma studies literature addresses the reality that ethnic alliances are not monolithic but malleable and prone to fragmentation (Brenner 2015).¹⁷

The most significant ethnic coalition in the context of the NCA process is the UNFC. The UNFC is “the latest coalition of ethnic armed groups” (BNI 2013, 56) and consisted of 11 armed groups in 2013.¹⁸ The goal of the UNFC is to “establish the future Federal Union (of Burma)” and “to form a Federal Union Army to provide protection to the people of the country.”¹⁹ The UNFC’s membership shifted significantly over the course of the NCA process due to intra- and inter-ethnic politics²⁰ but featured most of the EAGs in operation. This grouping of EAGs was diverse in terms of military and political leverage. For instance, the KIO, KNU, KNPP, NMSP and SSPP/SSA had large numbers of troops and swathes of EAG-administered territory. Smaller groups such as the LDU, the Arakan National Council (ANC) and the Wa National Organization (WNO) had very little. Despite this diversity, the KIO and NMSP (de facto leaders of the UNFC) decided to promote all-inclusiveness in the NCA process regardless of EAG size, strength and influence necessary. They felt that all-inclusiveness was a reasonable strategy to combat the uncertainty of the government’s next steps and the threat of military attack from the Tatmadaw (Keenan 2015). As one observer noted, the EAG logic of ethnic unity was meant to avoid a scenario “where one group signed, and another did not, and the Tatmadaw then went after the ones who did not.”²¹ During the NCA negotiations, the EAGs lobbied for guarantees on two main points: for political reform restoring genuine rights to the peoples, and a ceasefire treaty that ensured demilitarization on both sides. Many EAGs who eventually refrained from signing did not feel that these two conditions were going to be met post-NCA.

The heterogeneity of the EAGs in Myanmar underscores the political mobilization of ethnicity in the country. Ethnonationalist sentiments envision a unified national identity built not only on inclusion in Myanmar’s politics, but equity in all aspects of political decision-making that concern ethnic communities. This interpretation of national unity, however, flies in the face of the discourse of national unity espoused by the Tatmadaw.

5.3 Unified National Identity Through Militarized State Formation

“Leadership of military, once ethnically diverse, has been solidified into one ethnically Burman, with important consequences for minority relations—the single most important and enduring issue facing the state” (Selth 2002).

This section explores the narratives that comprise the Tatmadaw’s perception of national unity. It explores how the Tatmadaw’s development into the “thuggish” (Myint-U 2019), yet disturbingly “durable incarnation of military rule” (Callahan 2003, 3) was based on an impenetrable narrative around the primacy of the union. The Tatmadaw focused on building national unity through a complex relationship between statebuilding and warfare. It acted, and continues to act, as the “arbiter” of who was included and excluded in the state, “who would be called an “enemy” and who could claim citizenship privileges (ibidem). As for the EAGs, the events of the tumultuous post-independence period played a large role in establishing this narrative, as members of the fledgling Burmese army saw themselves as taking a political role from an early stage (Selth 2002, 11) due to Aung San’s double identity as soldier and political leader. As these young nationalists witnessed the assassination of their moral and political leader during the birth of their country, a culture of fear and vulnerability was instilled, which would pervade generations of military governments. After taking over Burma’s first democratic government after independence through a “caretaker” role, “the 18 months of the caretaker government gave the Tatmadaw a taste for direct power” and convinced many in upper leadership that they could do a better job of running the country (Selth 2002, 12). After Ne Win’s military coup in 1962 and under future incarnations of the Tatmadaw dictatorships of Saw Maung and Than Shwe, the “conflation of state and nation—in the form of a politicized army” (South 2007, 155) has directly influenced Burmese political culture. The militarized approach to statebuilding is predicated on the belief that “only if the Armed Force is strong, will the Nation be strong” (Selth 2002, 268).

Understanding the motivations and political doctrines of the Tatmadaw is the subject of a large amount of analysis and debate. The creation and history of the Tatmadaw, forged against a perceived “backdrop of shattered national unity” (Larkin 2010, 101) is a heritage that the Tatmadaw is proud of (Gravers and Ytzen 2014, 63). Where the history of ethnic politics has been relatively well documented over the decades since the British occupation, comprehensive studies of the Tatmadaw have not been possible due to the inaccessibility of documents.²² Therefore, this analysis is based on the scant literature on the Tatmadaw’s emergence and legacy in Myanmar’s contemporary history.

I look at the formation of the Tatmadaw’s narrative of national unity through three military regimes in Myanmar (1) post-independence political and military instability and the military takeover of government (2) the BSPP years and the “Burmese Way to Socialism” (3) the entrenchment of military rule under SLORC and SPDC.

While Myanmar analysts often refer to the Tatmadaw planting a “spectre of ‘chaos’” to rationalize their actions (Steinberg 2015, 5), the Tatmadaw sees itself as the protector and defender of a fragile state. In a visit to the Nay Pyi Taw Defense Services Museum, which details the country’s history through the eyes of the Tatmadaw, journalist Emma Larkin sums up the Tatmadaw’s perspective of history:

In 1948, after World War II, the military saved the country from disintegrating by bravely fighting off insurgents and invaders. In 1962, the army took control of the government because the ruling politicians didn’t have the strength to hold the country together and prevent ethnic groups from seceding. In 1988, the army yet again had to protect the people from mass anarchy when, as the regime propaganda puts it, a wave of panic that was instigated by bogus students and communist agitators swept through the country. (Larkin 2010, 105)

These narratives and the self-conception of the Tatmadaw encompass a large part of the Tatmadaw’s cognitive prior, which are encapsulated in the twin notions of “national unity” and the “primacy of the union.” This is summed up in their main beliefs, outlined in what they call the “Three National Causes”: (1) non-disintegration of the Union (2) non-disintegration of national solidarity (3) perpetuation of national sovereignty (Maung Aung Myoe 2009). These Three National Causes are core elements of the Tatmadaw’s mission and feature prominently in all aspects of the organization.

5.3.1 The Formation of the Tatmadaw (1941–1960)

The Tatmadaw was born in the chaos that followed Burma’s independence from the British and consequently forged a narrative out of trauma. In the 1940s, young independence leader Aung San’s rise to prominence as the founder of the Burma National Army (BNA) and the political leader of the fledgling democracy was cut short by his assassination a year before Burma proclaimed independence. Soon after, internal insurgencies from ethnic minorities sprang up all over the country, and external security threats from the Chinese and Japanese entrenched a certain fear of foreign domination and internal secession. Therefore, understanding the events in the 1940s before Burma’s independence in 1948 is central to understanding the notions of identity, race and nationalism in Burma. It was in this period that a narrative around Burma as a “Union” united against all kinds of external and internal forces began to form.

After over 100 years of British rule, Burma was an independent state. However, the question of what governance of independent Burma would look like was not clearly answered. The chaos of the post-independence period in Burma in the late 1940s and early 1950s deeply traumatized Burmese nationalists, who feared the country would fall apart during its birth. The new Burmese government’s plans for newly independent Burma were abruptly dashed when Aung San and five of his cabinet members were assassinated in Rangoon in July 1947. Aung San’s assassination prompted a period of “democratic experimentation” (Holliday 2011; Charney 2009) that is characterized by fragmentation and chaos. U Nu took on the leadership of the provisional government, but remained in the shadow of his predecessor. He was perceived by many as lacking the political vision, charisma and ability of Aung San. Furthermore, the government’s newly drafted 1947 Burma Constitution did not honor all the provisions made in the 1947 Panglong Agreement (Keenan 2015). Ethnic minorities beginning an armed resistance against U Nu’s government armed themselves with guns and weaponry left abandoned by the Japanese, Chinese and British. Now with the political and military means available to them, Karen, Mon and other ethnic minorities began insurgencies in the southeast. Concurrently, thousands of Chinese Kuomintang troops were pushed out of now-Communist China. In Burma, they found a haven for retreat and a base for attempted invasions back into China.

This period of “sense” of trauma would lead to the military taking the role of “caretaker government” from 1958 to 1960. To some Burma historians, the 10-year window of independence under U Nu is seen as a “democratic experiment” gone wrong (Charney 2009, 72). In 1958, an embattled U Nu transferred power to General Ne Win, who was to take over as Prime Minister of a caretaker government in 1958. The military caretaker government did step down two years later in 1960, organized elections and handed power over to the civil government of U Nu once more. In the two years that followed, the struggling U Nu government failed to overcome the myriad of challenges they faced (Charney 2009, Smith 1991). On a fateful morning in March 1962, General Ne Win informed the country via radio broadcast that he had just launched a military coup. The same afternoon, a second broadcast announced the creation of a military government headed by the Revolutionary Council (RC) under the chairmanship of Ne Win. The RC dissolved Parliament the next day. Thus began a period of military rule, during which the identity and the viability of the state was increasingly equated with the existence of the military. The state “depended” on the army, and the army became the state.

Members of the Tatmadaw view themselves as the sole protector of the nation: throughout Burma’s journey to independence, the Tatmadaw protected the nation from disintegration instigated by both internal and external forces. For instance, to the Tatmadaw, the 1962 coup was legitimized by instability. It was a necessary step because of the threats to the Union, including an ethnic-led “Federal Movement” that risked secession. As Ne Win expressed, “Federalism is impossible, it will destroy the Union” (Smith 1991, 196).

5.3.2 The BSPP Military Government (1962–1988)

During this period of military rule, the Tatmadaw reinforced its narrative of the “primacy of the union,” or the need to keep the union together at all costs. This narrative is inherently paradoxical, as the more the Tatmadaw attempted to keep groups from seceding and internal dissent at bay, the more the country became divided along the different “nationalisms” described earlier in this chapter.

The years following the 1962 coup are dark, characterized by the entrenchment of authoritarian rule, the demise of freedom of expression (Charney 2009, 131) and self-imposed isolation. What began as (in the Tatmadaw’s eyes) a project to lead in the country’s best interests gradually eroded with Ne Win’s political party, the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP) consolidating power in 1964. The BSPP’s aim was to “transform society into socialism” (Smith 1999, 197), and in the years that followed the coup, the BSPP implemented an ideology outlined in a paper entitled “The Burmese Way to Socialism”²³ that mixed Marxism with Buddhism. The results of this experiment were disastrous for the country. Under Ne Win, Burma closed itself off from the rest of the world and nationalized all business and industry resulting in rising national debt and a plummeting national currency. All the while, the ethnic resistance grew in response to the coup, with more groups taking up arms in pursuit of minority rights, federalism and, for some, secession. By 1987, Burma was declared a Least Developed Country by the UN,²⁴ a far cry from its position as the world’s largest rice producer in the 1950s.²⁵

During Burma’s freefall under the BSPP, the armed conflict between the Tatmadaw and the ethnic insurgencies wrought havoc on the ethnic communities in the border regions. Ongoing “peace processes” did not result in any genuine progress, and over the next few decades, the civil war continued unabated in the borderlands,²⁶ devastating the ethnic communities caught in the crossfire. During the armed conflict in the 1960s, the Tatmadaw enlisted a brutal counter-insurgency strategy called the “four cuts,” which aimed to cut off insurgents from local support in the form of food, intelligence, recruits and funding. The results of these campaigns were catastrophic for ethnic regions. Human rights reports from the border areas detail horrifying accounts of rape, extra-judicial killing, forced portering and other forms of forced labor, torture and numerous other forms of human rights abuses.²⁷ The insurgencies were eventually beaten back into the borderlands²⁸ that largely lay beyond government control and where a status quo of EAGs essentially taking on government-type mandates of service provision and administration (Joliffe 2015; ICG 2011) slowly developed. The Tatmadaw was unable to take these strongholds. Decades of low-intensity conflict thus chipped away at the vision of a united Burma.

The military government’s narratives for the conflict continued to create a discursive effect: the Tatmadaw was still acting in the name of national unity, in order to keep the union intact, protecting it from dangerous forces that were out to destroy it. This framing of the ethnic insurgencies as illegitimate forces of destruction rather than legitimate entities with legitimate grievances pervades to this day. Any grievances from ethnic communities fell on deaf ears in the Bamar-majority center.

Many people living in the central regions of the country became increasingly frustrated with the BSPP (Steinberg 2011). Since the 1962, dissidents against the military government were violently oppressed. Several protests at universities, including a 1974 student-led protest over the Tatmadaw’s slighted burial of former United Nations Secretary General U Thant, were violently quashed. The 1974 student protest was in response to the Tatmadaw’s “insulting” treatment of U Thant but also reflected larger opposition against the BSPP. The long-simmering dissent and unrest over the decades of military rule reached a boiling point during what became known as the 1988 protests or the “8888 Uprising,” one of the most important events in contemporary Burmese history.

The 8888 Uprising is key to understanding the nuances of nationalism in the country. The actual spark of these protests was a fight between students and soldiers in a tea shop. The fight led to the riot police intervening and killing some of the students in the process.²⁹ Student protests over their deaths spread like wildfire, culminating in large-scale public demonstrations against the regime. On 8 August 1988 (an auspicious date to many in Burma,)³⁰ students organized a wide scale protest against the government. Tensions came to a head when Ne Win’s security forces violently quashed a demonstration by opening fire on thousands of student protestors. The ensuing perception of chaos allowed the regime to paint its intervention in a way that fit the Tatmadaw’s narrative. The Tatmadaw “rescued” the state from violent rioters and criminals (Myint U 2011). During the 8888 Uprising, the international community could only watch in horror³¹ as the military government violently crushed the protesters with impunity.

It was in this period of crisis, that in almost storybook fashion, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar. She was caught up in the democracy movement, and as the only daughter of Aung San, naturally possessed the moral authority and political legitimacy that the military regime knew they could never fully achieve. She joined the democratic opposition party called the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1989 and soon rose to prominence within the organization. Her involvement with the NLD catapulted the party to popularity with Burmese citizens opposed to the regime. With her outspoken opposition and growing popularity as a democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi posed a real challenge to the regime. Consequently, she was arrested in 1989 and sentenced to house arrest, where she would remain for 20 years.

5.3.3 SLORC and SPDC (1990s–2010s)

This period of the country’s history is characterized by upheaval—natural disasters, widespread internal protest, ethnic insurgencies and international pressure.

In September 1988, the BSPP government broke down as a second coup d’état took place to shore up military rule. The next iteration of military government was called the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) led by General Saw Maung, although it is widely believed that his longtime mentor, Ne Win, continued to pull the strings from behind the scenes. In 1997, General Saw Maung was quietly deposed internally due to erratic behavior (he saw in himself the incarnation of the great Burmese King Kyanzittha, and acted according to ancient royal rituals). Saw Maung was replaced by Senior General Than Shwe, and the SLORC morphed into the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Regardless of that title, under Than Shwe,³² the Tatmadaw would double the size of its forces to 400,000 and preside over almost 20 more years of military rule.

As in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the citizens of Myanmar were subject to the suppression of freedom of speech and association. Political disappearances were prevalent, and it was common knowledge that the government’s Military Intelligence units were omnipresent throughout the country, from the streets to teashops. In this period, in order to sustain the growing military apparatus, the failed socialist experiment (the Burmese Way to Socialism) was abandoned and gave way to state capitalism and cronyism (Woods 2011).

In 1990, the military regime tightened its grip on the country as the NLD won a landslide election. The Tatmadaw refused to accept the election results and ignored widespread international criticism. They continued in much of the same vein throughout the 1990s and early 2000s—quashing internal dissent, fighting with ethnic insurgencies through the four cuts strategy, and shoring up their military capacity. The mid-2000s ushered in a period of change, characterized by upheaval and tragic confrontations between a growing democratic movement, international pressure and the military’s obsessive need for order and national unity.

In 2006, the military government moved the capital from Yangon to the central scrubland 400 km north (its name, Nay Pyi Taw, literally translates to “site of the royal country”) due to a number of reasons that are not well understood and widely speculated.³³ The secretive move heightened frustrations in and outside the country with the megalomania, isolation and utter denial of the real problems plaguing the country. Two years later, unrest over rising fuel prices and economic deprivation sparked another wave of protest. The Tatmadaw once again responded with violent oppression, albeit with a shocking new target: the Sangha. During the 2007 Saffron Revolution (named for the color of the robes traditionally worn by the Sangha), monks started to campaign on behalf of Buddhists who could no longer afford to offer the monks food and alms (as per Buddhist tradition) and were forced to leave their children in monasteries.³⁴ The military government refused to acknowledge the rising levels of dissent, resulting in what was previously unthinkable in Burmese Buddhist culture: the overturning of the alms bowl, a grave symbol of rejection in the Buddhist religion.³⁵ Demonstrations grew to over 50,000 people, at which point the military government made the decision to open fire on protesters, beating monks and raiding monasteries. Given the role that the Sangha holds in the social fabric of this deeply religious country, what occurred during the Saffron revolution instantly destroyed whatever legitimacy the military had left in the eyes of many people.

A year later in 2008, Cyclone Nargis swept through the Myanmar delta and killed an estimated 138,000 people. Accounts of whether the government issued safety warnings in time vary widely,³⁶ but the government’s preventive actions were clearly inadequate. Documentation of the cyclone raging in the Ayeyarwaddy delta and destroying communities abandoned by the government shocked the world and prompted foreign governments and international agencies to take action through coordinated humanitarian assistance. Worried that “humanitarian assistance” would invite “humanitarian intervention” (Myint-U 2011, 101), the government decided to block external aid from entering the country. The disaster revealed the Tatmadaw’s adherence to the “primacy of the union” narrative under tragic circumstances.

During the mid-2000s, the military was still attempting to address the numerous ethnic insurgencies in the border regions. A decade earlier, the military government negotiated bilateral ceasefires (Farrelly 2012) with a large number of EAGs. These ceasefires were agreed upon in the form of unwritten “gentlemen’s agreements” (Min Zaw Oo 2014), many of which were adopted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, from the perspective of EAGs and ethnic communities, two decades of ceasefires have failed to bring about real peace dividends. Many EAGs felt that the military took advantage of them.

In the mid-2000s, the military government formed a special group called the National Convention to draft a new Constitution. The National Convention was sold to the EAGs as an inclusive process, in which the EAGs and the NLD would meaningfully participate. In reality, the NLD had walked out on several occasions and the EAGs had very little influence over the process or content of the new constitution. Tension over the fraught National Convention process boiled over in 2009, when the government issued an unexpected ultimatum of sorts, requiring ceasefire groups to transform their armed branches into so-called “Border Guard Forces” (BGF), which were to fall under partial command of the Tatmadaw (ICG 2011). This order “severely undermined trust and critically damaged the fragile peace” (ICG 2011, 5). The EAGs felt cheated out of the promise of political dialogue. They also felt insulted as the order reduced their autonomy without any concessions. None of the ceasefire groups (with the exception of the DKBA, which later split with the KNU) agreed, despite mounting military, political and economic pressure.

The events in the mid-2000s shifted the political landscape in Myanmar and left the country and its leadership in disarray. For reasons still not fully understood, in 2009 General Than Shwe abruptly announced his retirement and called for general elections. The military government’s political party, Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), won over 90% of the vote (the result was subsequently boycotted by the democratic opposition and activist groups). The newly elected Thein Sein’s rhetoric of “disciplined democracy” left the nation and long-time observers of Myanmar both bewildered and suspicious. Thein Sein’s inaugural speech was, in both form and content, unprecedented. The Thein Sein government then precipitated a number of extraordinary reforms, including the release of hundreds of political prisoners, the shortening of blacklists and the relaxation of press censorship. The Thein Sein government also “stressed the need for national unity and ending ethnic conflict” (Horsey 2012, 46) and relaunched peace talks with all EAGs without the pre-conditioning of disarming. These changes left both Myanmar nationals and the world with a feeling of cautious optimism.

This period of Myanmar’s history illustrates how far the Tatmadaw’s “primacy of the union” narrative extends. It also reveals important themes in Myanmar: monastic participation in politics, the impoverishment of the population, the center-periphery divide and the Tatmadaw’s own fears of foreign involvement and democratic regime change. The tumultuous period remains fresh in the collective memory of the country, which renders the reform period of the 2010s all the more extraordinary.

5.4 Unity and Inclusivity in Myanmar: Congruent or Clashing Normative Frameworks?

After taking an in-depth look at the set of narratives around national identity, inclusion and exclusion that the EAGs and the Tatmadaw endorse, this section looks at the cognitive prior that encapsulates these narratives. The cognitive prior that has been forged through Burmese history for both conflict parties is the notion of unity. Ethnic unity and the primacy of the union are twin themes that are related, but at times opposed. The notion of unity is a gateway to diffusing the inclusivity norm,³⁷ given the salience of the discourses around unity in the country’s history and politics, in particular among the Tatmadaw and the EAGs, I view unity as a clear gateway to the inclusivity norm. Thein Sein’s inaugural speech to the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw³⁸ was unprecedented and caught the nation and foreign analysts alike off-guard. He launched into a discourse of national unity, focusing on ethnic nationalities: “As you know, national brethren remain united in the struggle to liberate the nation from the rule of the colonialists and regained independence. But, in the post-independence period, national races involved in armed conflicts among them for about five decades due to dogmatism, sectarian strife and racism instead of rebuilding the nation. In consequence, the people were going through the hell of untold miseries” (New Light of Myanmar 2011, 11).

This inaugural speech is a departure from governments past, as directly addressing matters of national security and referencing the conflict-affected communities in the border area. Rhetoric such as “flourishing Union spirit” and “national solidarity” are salient in the text. Furthermore, a 2011 op-ed in the government newspaper mentions “unity” no less than five times in the first paragraph: “Myanmar is a Union where many national races are living in unity and amity. As national races of the Union are residing in all the regions in unison, the national unity has been consolidated” (New Light of Myanmar 2011). As history has showed, discourse around national unity is not new, but unity as a moral imperative is. The President’s 2011 call for all stakeholders, in particular for the EAGs to enter into negotiations without pre-conditions (e.g. disarmament or assimilation into the Border Guard Force) was unprecedented.

The content, timing and context of Thein Sein’s speech on unity lends itself to congruence with the inclusivity norm. Unity is employed as a moral imperative based on the notion of inclusion and equality. It is an imperative for the diverse conceptions of identity (such as ethnicity and religion) to co-exist peacefully. Therefore, the concept carries an ethical aspect in terms of right conduct. These factors give it a high level of congruence to the inclusivity norm, which, as previously discussed (see Chap. 2), is based on the Western liberal notions of equality and self-determination. Such notions have a normative appeal to the EAGs, whose core demands are self-determination and equality in what they view as a Bamar-dominated society. Among Bamar Buddhists, unity is also an “indicator of correct moral practice” (Walton 2012a, 103). Walton (2012a) remarks that the Burmese word for unity is nyi nyut ye and can be traced to the moral code of conduct of the Sangha, which enjoins coming together and respecting a majority decision. Therefore, “as a moral concept, unity represents devotion to a common purpose and loyalty to a group or community; it requires subsuming one’s own interests for the benefit of the whole, something that encapsulates the Buddhist practice of rejecting atta (ego)” (103). This is confirmed by Houtman, who writes that “Burmese ideas of national unity are based on the Buddhist concept of harmony as a product of [moral practice]” (quoted in Walton 2012a, 104).

However, unity can also be a source of division, as unity has been used for decades by political leaders in Myanmar to quash dissent and exclude those who are not viewed as “belonging” in Myanmar. The EAGs have thus viewed the military government’s discourse of unity with disdain, as they view the “institutionalized dominance” of the Bamar (and resulting military action against ethnic insurgency) difficult to challenge precisely because it is based on the grounds of “national unity” (Walton 2012b, 6). As ethnic activist and academic Sakhong writes, the conflict in Myanmar is a state-formation conflict based on the government’s conflation of “nationbuilding” and “statebuilding,” which results in a nationbuilding process of:

[…]ethnic “forced-assimilation” by successive governments of the Union of Burma. The “nation-building” process with the notion of “one ethnicity, one language, one religion” […] which originated in the anti-colonialists moto of Amyo, Batha, Thatana, that is to say, the Myanmar-lumyo, or Myanmar ethnicity, Myanmar-batha-ska Myanmar language, and Myanmar-thatana of Buddha-bata or Buddhism. (Sakhong 2012, 2)

In this sense, unity refers to unity of Bamar ethnicity, Bamar language and Bamar religion. This sentiment has been widely acknowledged among EAGs and scholars for many years. This process was first called “Burmannisation” as used by Lewis (1924) and later “Myanmafication” by Houtman (1999). Sakhong argues above that Thein Sein and the government’s call for national unity rings hollow in the ears of many EAGs because unity in practice means ethnic assimilation into Bamar culture.³⁹ In Walton’s (2012b) comparison of Burmanness as a privileged identity akin to Whiteness and White privilege in critical race theory in the west, he directly uses the world “inclusive:” “The synonymous nature of [Burmannization and Myanmafication] indicates that government attempts to create a more inclusive ‘Myanmar’ national culture since 1989 have, in practice, merely nationalised Burman cultural elements” (Walton 2012b, 11). The EAGs have seen it in their resistance, and the contemporary crisis flashpoints in Rakhine state have exhibited this pattern to a tragic extreme. In Rakhine state, the risk is not just the disintegration and fragmentation of the union, but a fear of a Muslim takeover, necessitating the need to “protect” Buddhist (and consequently, Myanmar) culture at all costs: “the ways in which Buddhism and national identity have become intertwined in the dominant national narrative…provide an impetus for many Buddhists to prioritize both the preservation of the state and the religion, seeing the two as inseparable and interdependent” (Walton 2015, 115). This is evidenced in anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim propaganda, and the nefarious movement in 2016 to pass the controversial “protection of race and religion laws”⁴⁰ by hardline Buddhist organization Ma Ba Tha (Walton and Hayward 2014). While the analysis in the subsequent chapters focuses on narrative on the inclusion and exclusion of certain armed groups linked to ethnic nationalities, understanding that dominant narratives surrounding a Myanmar national identity is also influenced by the inclusion and exclusion of EAGs that also converge around religious identities and world-views that are non-Buddhist.

5.5 Concluding Thoughts

Drawing back to the discussion on existing normative frameworks, Myanmar is particularly studied as a contentious example of the salience of the norms of non-interference and non-intervention in the framework of the ASEAN Way (Haacke 2023; Jones 2008). ASEAN’s “albatross” (Jones 2008) therefore provides a compelling normative environment to test the diffusion of a cosmopolitan liberal norm in a peace process context that has resisted normative influence from its regional counterparts. Furthermore, the Myanmar peace and conflict landscape is forged upon a strong “cognitive prior”, or existing normative framework around inclusion, exclusion and “unity.” While the discourse around unity in Myanmar has congruency with the inclusivity norm, opening the door for possible norm diffusion, the paradox of the unity discourse in Myanmar is that it can just as easily be employed (and actually is quite susceptible) to fostering exclusion. The “successful” diffusion of the inclusivity norm in Myanmar can create opportunities for equality and equal representation based on its cosmopolitan origins, but also risks reifying “Burman-ness” and the institutionalization of “Myanmafication.” These existing normative frameworks around inclusivity has obvious implications for those who might seek to intervene in order to promote inclusive peace—lack of knowledge or context can risk doing greater harm than good in the larger context of historical and contextual Myanmar politics.