WAR AND PEACE IN THE BORDERLANDS OF MYANMAR The Kachin Ceasefire, 1994–2011 edited by Mandy Sadan War and Peace in the Borderlands of Myanmar The Kachin Ceasefire, 1994–2011 Edited by Mandy Sadan Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Studies in Asian Topics, no. 56 First published in 2016 by NIAS Press NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark Tel: +45 3532 9501 • Fax: +45 3532 9549 E-mail: [email protected] • Online: www.niaspress.dk © NIAS Press 2016 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, copyright in the individual chapters belongs to their authors. No material may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978–87–7694–188–8 (hbk) ISBN: 978–87–7694–189–5 (pbk) Typeset in Arno Pro 12/14.4 Typesetting by Lene Jakobsen Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxfordshire Contents Acknowledgements xi Contributors xiii Editor’s Note xix 1. Introduction (Mandy Sadan) 1 Longer Histories of Ceasefire 2. Historical Perspectives on War and Peace in Kachin Space: The First Kachin Ceasefire 1944–1961 (Robert Anderson and Mandy Sadan) 29 Reflections 3. Reflections on the Kachin Ceasefire: A Cycle of Hope and Disappointment (Martin Smith) 57 Political Economies of Ceasefire 4. Understanding Myanmar’s Ceasefires: Geopolitics, Political Economy and State-Building (Lee Jones) 95 5. The Commercialisation of Counterinsurgency: Battlefield Enemies, Business Bedfellows in Kachin State, Burma (Kevin Woods) 114 Cross-Border Diplomacy with China 6. Borderland Ethnic Politics and Changing Sino–Myanmar Relations (Enze Han) 149 7. People’s Diplomacy and Borderland History through the Chinese Jingpo Manau Zumko Festival (Ho Ts’ui-p’ing) 169 Cultural Intimacies of Kachin Nationalism 8. Conspiracy, God’s Plan and National Emergency: Kachin Popular Analyses of the Ceasefire Era and its Resource Grabs (Laur Kiik) 205 9. ‘Before I joined the army I was like a child’: Militarism and Women’s Rights in Kachinland (Jenny Hedström) 236 10. Counting the Days: The Kachin Ceasefire and the Emergence of a New Graphic Medium (Helen Mears) 257 War and Peace in the Borderlands of Myanmar Local to Global Experiences 11. A Woman’s Life in War and Peace (Nhkum Bu Lu) 291 12. Kachin Student Life at Yangon University in the Mid-1990s (Hkanhpa Tu Sadan) 308 13. The Founding of the KNO and the Development of a Diaspora Activist Network (Duwa Mahkaw Hkun Sa) 330 Other Ceasefires Within and Beyond Myanmar 14. The Continuation of War by Other Means: An Anatomy of the Palaung Ceasefire in Northern Shan State (Patrick Meehan) 361 15. The Karen and the Ceasefire Negotiations: Mistrust, Internal Segmentation and Clinging to Arms (Mikael Gravers) 388 16. Ethnic and Land Conflicts in North East India: Lessons for Myanmar (Reshmi Banerjee) 408 17. The Social Memory of the Mizo Buai: Some Comparisons with the Kachin Conflict (Joy L. K. Pachuau and Mandy Sadan) 434 Concluding Remarks 18. Reflections on Ceasefires Past, Present and Future (Matthew J. Walton) 461 Bibliography 475 Index 499 List of Maps 0.1. Political boundaries of areas where the terms Kachin, Singpho and Jingpo are used xxi 0.2 Kachin State xxii 7.1. Manau Sites located in Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture 170 14.1. Areas of northern Shan State in which Palaung (Ta’ang) com- munities live 363 viii CHAPTER EIGHT Conspiracy, God’s Plan and National Emergency Kachin Popular Analyses of the Ceasefire Era and its Resource Grabs Laur Kiik Introduction isiting Yangon in 2014, I noticed some well-meaning locals refer to the dragging Kachin military-political impasse by stat- ing: ‘The Kachins are being too stubborn, too emotional now’. OtherV observers find such talk belittling. They respond by emphasising how ‘The Kachins merely demand that Myanmar begin genuine political dialogue on federalism’ and ‘are thus correct in refusing simply to sign a new ceasefire’. This oscillation between explaining the Kachin impasse either through collective emotional trauma or through formal political discourse misses what Mandy Sadan identified in her monograph on Kachin histories as ‘social worlds beyond’.1 As this chapter tries to show, these are diverse, contradictory, and ambitious social worlds that people live within. They cannot be encapsulated by inaccurate and homogenis- ing expressions like ‘the Kachins’, ‘are emotional’, or ‘want federalism’. It is the argument of this chapter that the way people in these worlds understand their ceasefire experiences to express ethno-national emergency, divine predestination, and ethnocidal conspiracy influences directly their contemporary responses to ceasefire politics. 1. Mandy Sadan, Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories Beyond the State in the Border- worlds of Burma (Oxford: The British Academy and Oxford University Press, 2013), 455–60. 205 War and Peace in the Borderlands of Myanmar Figure 8.1: Many Kachin patriots are working for a future Kachin national modernity – a homeland yet-to-be (photo Hpauyam Awng Di). Many chapters in this volume refer to a hardening of Kachin na- tionalist rhetoric in recent years, in particular the chapters by Mahkaw Hkun Sa, Nhkum Bu Lu, Jenny Hedström, and Hkanhpa Tu Sadan. These chapters often refer to the sense of fear and threat that runs through popular discourses on why the Kachin should support a return to conflict following years of ceasefire. They also reflect widespread concerns about what a peace might bring should a ceasefire be restored too easily. Many contributors also discuss the role that experiences of large-scale land and natural resource grabbing have played in sharpening the resistance. Later in this volume Reshmi Banerjee mirrors many of these concerns in her discussion of similar conflict settings in north-east India, and we see this also in the chapters by Meehan and Gravers de- scribing conflicts elsewhere in Burma. This perception of threat in eth- nic Kachin society in turn has contributed to a situation in which most Kachins have supported the KIO’s military resistance to the Myanmar Army’s provocations and, just as importantly, it has made an easy return to ceasefire more difficult because of a lack of popular support in Kachin society for doing so. 206 Conspiracy, God’s Plan and National Emergency This chapter, therefore, tries to take seriously and to discuss in critical terms how large parts of Kachin society understand the ceasefire era and its 2011 collapse. It focuses particularly on popular understandings of the large-scale resource grabs which defined much of that era. However, my approach is different to that which explains the current Kachin armed conflict primarily as two armies battling each other over rich natural resources; neither do I seek to reduce Kachin popular theories of nationhood and homeland simply to ‘resource nationalism’. Such re- ductionist approaches continue historical misrepresentations of Kachin society, making it appear devoid of political ideologies and led by an ‘inauthentic insurgency’.2 Karin Dean has called out similar state-centric discourses for belittling the popular legitimacy of the KIO.3 What this chapter explores, then, are the politicised social worlds beyond KIO- and-State relations and beyond these persisting misrepresentations. The chapter proceeds by discussing first some currently prevailing forms of Kachin ethno-nationalist ‘theory’. The term ‘theory’ is meant to signal this chapter’s cultural-anthropological approach of foregrounding evolving native terms, through which large parts of a society understand the world in the broadest, ‘cosmological’ sense. Expanding upon Sadan’s historiography of how Kachin ethno-nationalism evolved, I extend the treatment of Kachin political theories to the ‘cosmological’, mainly by showing how the ‘political’ and the ‘religious’ (Christian) cannot be completely disentangled. After briefly describing some collective Kachin experiences of the ceasefire and concurrent resource grabs, the chapter then focuses on those experiences and processes as an object of what I call ‘popularised analyses’. The term ‘analyses’ expresses this chapter’s goal to take seriously the thought projects that people engage in actively, both individually and collectively, to make sense of the world and its developments. These analyses are co-produced and circulated by Kachin-identifying national leaders, activists, educators, religious figures, and crucially, by the whole society at large. Their conclusion deduces that, even though there have been 17 years of ceasefire, Kachin society is facing threatening conspiracies and a national emergency. The chapter concludes by showing how these native theorisations and popu- 2. See Sadan’s critique of colonial era discourses and of Robert Taylor’s misrepresen- tations of ethno-national insurgencies in Ibid., 65–74, 260–270, 319–21, 466. 3. Karin Dean, ‘Peace Means Surrender in Myanmar’, Asia Times (24 January 2013). 207 War and Peace in the Borderlands of Myanmar lar analyses presently guide many people in Kachin society to commit to resistance and the ethno-patriotic project of co-building a ‘land yet- to-be’, instead of engaging in a ceasefire based on compromise. Much of this argument can be extended to other minoritised ethnic nations in Myanmar and beyond. The following discussions draw primarily from periods of ethno- graphic field research in the Kachin region from 2010