By Charles Petrie at Neom Magazine: 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 name for the country’s armed forces). Contacts from my days as the U.N. representative and subsequently facilitating ceasefire processes had told me that in the maw of renewed conflict, novel and participatory forms of local governance were emerging.
This was of particular interest to me because I have long been arguing that humanitarian responses amid conflicts or after disasters (or both) in places where the governing authority was considered illegitimate by the international community were, by definition, severely restricted in their ability to reach the most vulnerable populations. So here might be a way to reshape how international assistance gets to people suffering under difficult conditions.
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. The essence of any negotiation with a pariah regime is to cede some ground (tacit recognition, acknowledgement of authority) in return for something greater (access to populations, suspension of attacks, freeing of civilians), a process of give and take made exceptionally difficult if you find yourself unable to give.
Thus, as I have been arguing within the U.N. and without, a new form of international engagement needs to be found that complements existing humanitarian approaches to reaching populations caught up in civil wars or living under oppressive military regimes. For 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.
So, the purpose of my mission was to explore how such local governance structures worked: their degree of formalization, their relationships to the population, their links with armed groups and the structures and channels of support they received. I also wanted to gauge the level of political risk for Western governments that supporting such non-state structures would involve.
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. While this process started in Karenni or Kayah State — the region I traveled in — it is being observed and, in some cases, copied in other areas and by other armed groups like the Karen National Union (KNU), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in northern Shan State and some of the Chin militias.
Myanmar has been under some form of military rule for most of the time since its independence from British rule in 1948. In that time, the leadership of the military has been dominated by the majority ethnic group, the Bamar, which to varying degrees oppressed the country’s numerous other ethnic groups, making Myanmar the setting for one of the longest-sustained ethnic insurgencies on the planet. For much of this time, especially under the regime of General Ne Win, from 1962 to 1988, the military isolated the country through decades of self-imposed seclusion. This was followed by some 20 years of ostracization by much of the international community as a response to the violent repressions of the 1988 and early 1990s protests.
A New Revolution
Everything changed when a new generation of military leaders took over in 2010. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released from prison and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), was allowed to participate in national elections. The military for the most part stood aside. Committed to completing the mission of her father, General Aung San, who had been assassinated in 1947, Suu Kyi set out to unify the country under a form of federalism that ensured Bamar dominance. But many of the armed groups rejected her vision. At the end of 2020, confronting an overwhelming NLD victory at the polls and concerned that it would lose its grip on power completely, the Tatmadaw prepared to stage a coup.
What Senior General Min Aung Hlaing had not counted on when he launched the coup on Feb. 1, 2021, was the fact that Myanmar had become a fundamentally different country following a decade of growing openness to the international community. Young people and civil society in general mobilized against him and the military in a manner unseen before; administrative officials, public civil servants and many workers took to the streets to protest. In the first months after the coup, the military killed thousands of people.
The mobilization in the streets sparked the emergence of a new political dynamic, one that transcended previous generational, ethnic and cultural divides. In the past, the ethnic armed insurgencies had been little concerned by the Bamar majority’s fight for democracy, which had been waged under Suu Kyi’s leadership against the military. In return, the Bamar majority had paid little attention to the grievances underlying the historic insurgencies that had been underway since independence along the border areas of the country. With the coup, Min Aung Hlaing achieved what until then seemed almost impossible: uniting all the people of Myanmar. Unfortunately for him, it was against the military.
Underlying this newfound solidarity was the experience of young people who had tasted previously forbidden freedoms and were not ready to give them back; between 2011 and 2021, they had been interacting across ethnic lines and been connected to the outside world, including to other youth-led movements, such as the Milk Tea Alliance. They became a generation with its own music, traditions, values and habits. But most importantly, they didn’t inherit the same fear of authority that was so ingrained in their parents.
Much like the movements that sprang up before them in Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Chile, Egypt, France, Georgia, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Thailand, Ukraine and even the U.S., the youth in Myanmar have used social media to mobilize and sustain their resistance. I would argue that what we are seeing in Myanmar is the first successfully sustained rebellion against an oppressive regime since the Arab Spring. Deep in the Karenni jungle, a young doctor said to me: “This is more than just a civil war; it is a revolution.”
Being in their 20s and early 30s, these young and for the most part urban activists have introduced new technologies and ways of thinking to an old fight. Most evenings, they can be found in west Demoso, debating and strategizing in makeshift coffee shops, tattoo parlors and Starlink-connected internet cafes and guesthouses. They run these venues — as well as small enterprises like petrol stations, money changers, car-repair workshops, rice and wood sawmills, and furniture makers — to generate funds to support displaced populations and the frontline troops.
More here.
