A Journey into Rebel-Held Myanmar

A very interesting article about a conflict I know allmost nothing about. With the intention to figure out, how to effectivly help people, under oppressed governmen, by helping the local community structures directly.

"I was making the trek into Myanmar to get a sense of how communities were organizing themselves in the vacuum created by the retreating Tatmadaw"

"The restrictions placed by Western governments on engaging with pariah regimes limit the ability to negotiate access to communities and peoples in desperate need of assistance."

"or however dramatic and intense the conditions ordinary people confront in such contexts, their community structures continue to function. It is on such local governance structures that any international effort in contested political settings should be built."

"What I discovered in the course of the five-week trip was a country in the midst of a profound transformation. The struggle against the Tatmadaw has morphed from a fight by ethnic groups to control territory into the emergence of a new form of participatory governance. This governance model has been created organically by a new generation of activists"

But meeting the goal here concretely is not so easy, as traditionally international help goes to strictly civilian organisations only, to not participate in the war. But here there is no seperation.

"I mentioned to Arkar Min Tun, one of the founding members of the group, that in order to receive international support it could be in the organization’s interest to clearly separate the military and civil components of KA-Zero’s activities, he told me it was not possible for as long as the fighting continued. The country was in the midst of an all-encompassing revolution; any separation of activities would be artificial and would undermine the legitimacy of the movement in the eyes of the population"

All in all, the rebels sound quite nice:

“When you give a soldier a gun to fight, you need to tell him that he needs to know that he will have to give it back.”

But there are also dark sides, for sure:

"Sometimes this creates challenges. Marwi explained to me that many of his backers exhort him not to take prisoners."

Why this article focuses on a small rebel group I don’t know. I am pretty sympathetic to them, but unfortunately they don’t really have a lot of power. The larger ones, like the United Wa State Army, the Kachin Independence Army, the Arakan Army, and the Karen National Liberation Army control a much larger part of the country.

And let me tell you, they don’t care about democracy or community lead activism. They will only tolerate absolute independence, which is why fighting happens until they get it (see KIA until ceasefire broke, MNDAA, UWSA, etc). This is because they are involved in running and taxing illegal jade mining, illegal gold mining, cyber scam, and meth operations, and all that money goes away if a functioning federalized system is established. There are literally KNU and Shan State Army leaders under indictment in New York for trying to sell $40 million of heroin in return for weapons. This is part of why the US has been very hesitant to offer aid to these ethnic armed groups.

It is so sad how dysfunctional Myanmar is. If they had a government at least half as functional as Thailand they could be so much better off. The country is so messed up there are literally articles about how criminals have worked out deals with police and judges to send paid substitutes to prison so they wouldn’t have to go. Not to mention the regular reports of ethnic cleansing and massacres.

Hi Charles, I can't read your devex article about interfacing with local governments unfortunately due to some sort of login wall.

What if, instead of struggling to acknowledge local pariah governments, aid organizations ONLY recognized local governments?

A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with a tangerine. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the tangerines. But, in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a tangerine the size of a ruby. The bandit had been throwing them away. Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want a tangerine.