This is adapted from a paper I wrote for my Comparative Politics class at Harvard.
A Friendless People
Thousands have been killed. Hundreds of thousands have fled. They are a people without a home, much less a state. Such is the plight of the Rohingya, whom a UN spokesperson once called the most friendless people in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (“UN”).
This latest wave of state-sponsored violence follows a series of attacks by militants—a small insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—in August on Myanmarese military outposts. The brutal military crackdown is ostensibly targeted at insurgents. Yet, it is unmistakably civilians who are bearing the brunt of the violence, with the UN High Commissioner calling the response “clearly disproportionate” and “without regard for basic principles of international law” (“UN”).
The approach of ethnic institutionalism has the most to offer by way of explaining the crisis in Rohingya. This paper’s argument will be grounded primarily in the work of institutional scholars like Lieberman, Singh, and Wilkinson but it will also draw upon insights from other theories of ethnic conflict. It will, however, argue that these alternative approaches ultimately fall short of the bar set by an institutional approach in providing an entirely convincing explanation. There will also be a comparative analysis with the historical cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, with a consideration of lessons that can be learned from the two tragedies.
In tracing the institutional origins of Myanmarese conflict, one must begin just prior to the colonial era. The colonial roots of this conflict share much with Rwanda, a comparison that will be explored further later. Prior to the 18th century, Muslims and Buddhists coexisted peacefully in the Kingdom of Arakan, now Rakhine State (“Tracing History”). In 1784, the Kingdom was conquered by the Burmese, only to come under British rule by 1824. A crucial factor for institutionalist arguments is imperial Britain’s frequently employed “divide and rule” strategy. This was a carefully executed and nefarious application of ethnic institutionalisation, which scholars Lieberman and Singh note is often a “component of a strategy of domination” (Lieberman 2). Colonial governors identified ethnic cleavages and endeavoured to bolster their salience, thus mitigating the risk that a broad-based indigenous alliance could form against British rule. In the case of Myanmar, the British systematically favoured Muslims at the expense of Buddhists and other groups (“Tracing History”). Then, during World War II, the British army recruited Muslims as soldiers, pitting them directly against many Buddhists who were aligned with the Japanese (ibid). Under Lieberman and Singh’s framework for ethnic institutionalisation, British divide and rule generated a strong cleavage by establishing religion as “meaningful marker of ethnic distinction” (Lieberman 3).
For the sake of argument, that the Buddhists and Muslims found themselves on opposite sides of the war may not be solely a result of British colonisation—it is possible that Myanmarese Buddhists would have had sympathies with predominantly Buddhist Japan and that the Muslims would have aligned with the Allies. But such an outcome would was by no means necessary; World War II was not primarily an ethnic nor religious war. The very existence of the rift between Buddhists and Muslims was largely an outcome of British tactics, and the division between the two in war grew because the British and Japanese further institutionalised those differences.
The institutionalisation of ethnicity continued after British rule as well, albeit with something of a hiatus from 1948 to 1982. In 1982, the military junta decreed that the Rohingya were no longer to be recognised as citizens of Myanmar. This signalled the beginning of “strong internal institutionalisation,” with the government vigorously fostering the notion that a “dividing line exists between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Lieberman 2). Among over 100 ethnic groups, it was the Rohingya who were singled out and refused the right to own property, to vote, to obtain any benefits of citizenship (Calamur). Taken from the institutionalist perspective, there is, it must be said, one rather intriguing aspect of the Myanmarese government’s approach to the Rohingya. Lieberman and Singh note that when the question of ethnicity is removed from census response options, or when certain ethnic groupings are simply not officially recognised, there is a marked decrease in the instance of ethnic conflict. Yet, although “Rohingya” is no longer an officially recognised ethnicity, and one cannot identify as “Rohingya” on the census, no such benefit has manifested itself in Myanmar. Superficially, this may appear to be a refutation of sorts to institutionalist notions. Upon closer inspection, however, the government’s systematic refusal to acknowledge a Rohingya identity is only another means by which to create an “ethnic other,” against which it is “easier to mobilise followers to commit acts of violence” (Lieberman 2). The refusal to acknowledge a Rohingya identity does not so much dissolve the salience of the label as it does emphasise it, by unequivocally categorising the Rohingya as an undesirable other, denied any and all benefits of citizenship—including the fundamental benefit of state recognition. This is a prime example of “institutionalisation via partition,” with an alteration of the “legal boundaries of citizenship so that previous ethnic categories now differentiate citizens from non-citizens” (Lieberman 4).
The final institutional factor is less about ethnic institutionalisation than it is about the interaction between the ethnic and political compositions of a nation. Wilkinson argues that the incidence and severity of ethnic conflict are related to the electoral interests facing governments (Wilkinson 6). He contextualises his argument in democratic systems, and Myanmar is far from being a complete democracy. That said, democratic institutions do exist to a considerable degree in Myanmar, and thus there are strong electoral incentives facing politicians like Aung San Suu Kyi and parties like her National League of Democracy. Damagingly for the Rohingya, they hold no electoral significance. To begin with, at only four percent of the population, they would face an uphill battle becoming relevant in elections or in the construction of coalitions (Wilkinson 8). The undemocratic tendencies of Myanmar further depress the electoral sway held by the Rohingya community: deprived of citizenship, the right to vote and the ability to run for election, their influence on the workings of democracy is more or less reduced to nil. In addition, Wilkinson finds that a critical condition for the prevention of anti-minority violence is that the “majority community does not regard increasing the minority's security as fundamentally threatening its own dominant positions…and its own security” (Wilkinson 140). This condition is left unfulfilled in Myanmar because of deep-seated fears that the Rohingya pose a fundamental threat to the safety and wellbeing of Buddhists—an idea that will be developed further in this paper’s discussion of the ARSA.
With the gaping religious and cultural differences between Rakhine Buddhists and the region’s Rohingya, primordial theories of ethnic conflict hold understandable allure in explaining Myanmar's violence. These “primordial attachments,” the “congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on…are seen to have an ineffable, and at times overpowering, coerciveness” that can jeopardise ethnic stability (Geertz 259). Geertz is particularly pessimistic in his discussion of the effect “primordial attachments” can exert on new states—specifically in the “transfer of sovereignty from a colonial regime to an independent one” (Geertz 269). He argues it is during such periods, while the state is still weak and civil society unestablished, that primordial sentiments are particularly heightened, with people placing ethnic loyalty above loyalty to the state (Geertz 260).
Damningly for primordialists, there is strong evidence to suggest that intrinsic hatred is simply not to blame. A significant body of research suggests that prior to the British colonisation of Myanmar, the pronounced ethnic differences between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims did not have political salience (“Tracing History”). The two groups coexisted in a largely peaceful manner. Importantly, historians have even found that a number of Rohingya Muslims “were even advisors to Buddhist royals” (ibid).
The component of Geertz’s argument that addresses new states in a transition away from colonialism too provides scant explanatory power in Myanmar’s case. First, as aforementioned, ethnic tensions became salient during the colonial era, with British “divide and rule” tactics. Of course, adherents to Geertz’s theory would argue that such tensions were only exacerbated by the transitional process accompanying independence. To that effect, note that ethnic relations were hardly at their nadir when Myanmar gained independence in 1948. The new state enjoyed relative ethnic stability and the Rohingya were accorded equal rights (Calamur). Rohingya were not subjected to serious, large-scale violence even in the period after General U Ne Win snuffed out the nascent democracy in 1962 (BBC timeline). It was only after the junta’s 1982 citizenship law, which left the Rohingya stateless, that group has been particularly victimised (“Myanmar Profile”). As covered earlier, this is fundamentally an institutional factor. Finally, although there has been an uptick of violence against the Rohingya since the country’s democratic transition in 2011, it would be rich to describe the relatively stable, gradual transition as anything proximate to a change in the state itself. And, if anything, we can speculate that the institution of an at least notionally civilian government led by a Nobel Peace laureate may have put something of a dampener on the potential scale of violence.
It is helpful to consider as well the potential instrumentalist approach to ethnic conflict in Myanmar. The theory holds that ethnicity is fundamentally fluid, little more than tool by which one seeks money, power or resources more generally (Lecture). Instrumentalism can perhaps be seen as the polar opposite to the rigidity dictated by primordialism.
One common instrumentalist argument relates to development priorities in Myanmar. Proponents of the argument hold that the government, eager to spur state-led economic development, is engaging in ethnic cleansing simply to increase its landholdings and develop infrastructure projects (Forino). This argument provides useful insight in explaining some of the incentives that may be at play, but it does not do much in explaining why the Rohingya, instead of Myanmar’s other minority ethnic groups, have been disproportionately targeted and subjected to ethnic cleansing.
Another instrumentalist argument is that the ARSA, which claims to be primarily occupied with the protection of the Rohingya, is nothing more than a front for the spread of Islamism in Myanmar—essentially a fundamentalist Muslim ploy to grab power in Myanmar (“Myanmar's Rohingya”). Despite the vociferous claims of Myanmar’s government, there is simply no evidence to support that contention. The ARSA’s numbers are estimated at under one thousand, and Rohingya as a whole comprise only four percent of the population; these are hardly numbers suggestive of a serious threat. The ARSA is also poorly armed. In their latests wave of attacks against Myanmarese security forces, they wielded bamboo sticks against the army’s machine guns (BBC News). All this suggests that there is unlikely to be a serious instrumentalist explanation to the fighting, especially because observers generally agree that the ARSA were fundamentally a reactionary force: they did not themselves generate ethnic violence, but became active as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya (BBC News).
The instrumentalist approach is further undermined by individual-level reactions. Specifically, the Myanmarese government has repeatedly offered the Rohingya the ability to label themselves Bengali, removing themselves from the Rohingya identity and the associated hardship. Although “many Muslims in Rakhine state were previously indifferent to how they were labeled,” most are now outright refusing to accede to the government’s demand to identify as Bengali (Calamur). Although an acknowledgement of Bengali ethnicity does run the risk of legitimising the Myanmarese narrative that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants, it would, at the very least, allow fleeing Rohingya to assimilate into Bengali-majority Bangladesh. The country currently refuses to see the Rohingya as among their own, hosting them as refugees while insisting that they are not emigrants from the country and thus not owed much (BBC News). Officially adopting Bengali identity would serve as a workaround. Yet for the majority of Rohingya today, purely utilitarian considerations are clearly subsidiary to ethnic solidarity. This undermines the instrumentalist narrative, lending credence to the institutionalist idea that “strong internal institutionalisation” of ethnicity makes it “difficult to conceive…of joining a different group” as this “defection [would be seen] as an affront” (Lieberman 5).
The origins of ethnic strife in Myanmar share an eerily similar colonial narrative with the violence in Rwanda. In Rwanda too were damaging ethnic cleavages formed through institutionalisation, this time at the hands of Belgian rulers. Employing the pseudoscientific methods of eugenics, the colonialists systematically favoured the Tutsi minority, labelling the Tutsi “superb humans” and “Europeans under a black skin” who were at their core “a civilising race” (Mamdani 87-89). These conclusions were grounded in observations such as the taller and more slender build of the average Tutsi as compared to the average Hutu—differences in physique that later anthropologists determined were the result of wealth, not genetics (Mamdani 45). Anthropologists have in fact found no genuine, consistent racial difference between the two groups: it is essential to understand that the distinction was constructed purely by institutionalisation, without rigorous scientific grounding (Mamdani 42). Thus, while Hutu and Tutsi identity was activated on “descent-based attributes,” the attributes upon which Buddhist and Rohingya ethnicity are activated have stronger bona fides—there are far more tangible racial differences between the two groups (Chandra 59). The role of institutionalism was even more developed in Rwanda than it has been in Myanmar thus far, with the Belgian government devising an intricate set of mechanisms to strengthen the delineation between Hutu and Tutsi. Mahmoud Mamdani, a scholar of Rwandan ethnicity, writes that “key institutions…were organised around an active knowledge of [ethnic] identities” (Mamdani 88). Consequently, to be Tutsi was to be privileged. This institutionalisation sowed the ethnic divide that precipitated rampant ethnic conflict in the postcolonial era.
Another common theme is that of the government and ethnic entrepreneurs leveraging the threat of insurgency to mobilise supporters. The threat of insurgency was more acute in Rwanda, with the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) posing an existential threat to the Hutu government—the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, ultimately did topple the government. The Hutu Power movement fomented this paranoia through radio broadcasts and other propaganda measures to aid in the mobilisation of militias and to breed further popular resentment against the Tutsi (Straus 201). In Myanmar, as discussed earlier, the threat posed by the ARSA is far less acute, diminishing the importance of the instrumentalist argument and somewhat softening the power of ethnic entrepreneurs. That said, the military in Myanmar has done its best to portray the ARSA as a severe threat, and it has been at least partially successful in this endeavour—helping cement broad-based support for its campaigns against the Rohingya (Calamur).
There are sobering lessons to be learned from the international community’s experience with the genocide in Rwanda. Then, a million innocents were butchered as the world dithered and demurred. Aside from withdrawing UN peacekeepers, the international community took little action. Although many are quick to blame peacekeepers, it is important to note that it is not within their mandate to independently engage in combat, unless directly targeted. General Romeo Dallaire, who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda, insisted that something could have been done if his forces were granted the authority to intervene, although other commentators insist that “it would have been virtually impossible” to have taken effective action (Mamdani 213). In the future, the United Nations might be well advised in sending peacekeepers more pre-emptively and with a wider mandate to step in. The machinery of genocide is not yet in place in Myanmar, and the Suu Kyi-led government still seeks to maintain whatever it can salvage of its international credibility. A large deployment of peacekeepers at this time would send a strong, tangible signal to military and civilian leaders in Myanmar that the international community will not tolerate the treatment of the Rohingya. It would send a message to the military that any violence would be closely surveilled, and that a definite choice would have to be made between further oppression of the Rohingya and avoiding complete pariah status—and maybe the risk of more direct international military intervention. Absurd claims like, for instance, that the Rohingya set their own villages on fire, would no longer be tenable. On a pragmatic level, peacekeepers could also help prevent wonton mob violence against Muslims—before the situation develops to a stage at which, like in Rwanda, it is utterly unsalvageable.
The situation in Myanmar also yields instructive, cautionary parallels with the Yugoslavian crisis. Following Myanmar’s independence from the British, the Rohingya appealed to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, asking to be annexed by the country (Calamur). Those requests were refused, but there are serious fears in Myanmar, compounded by the activities of the ARSA, that the Rohingya seek an autonomous region along the country's border with Bangladesh, “at the expense of Rakhine territory” (ibid). Hardline ethnic entrepreneurs, like Buddhist nationalist Maung Thway Chun, engender paranoia with warnings that Muslims will “swallow our country” leaving “land we inherited from our former generations…lost in time.” This rhetoric shares striking similarities with Slobodan Milosevic’s incendiary speeches at rallies: he magnified nationalist fervour by insisting that Serbians were being oppressed and by stoking fears that historically Serbian territory was at risk (Lecture). With their emphasis on political entrepreneurs trying to take advantage of ethnic divisions, these similarities are tinged with instrumentalism. That said, it is telling that Myanmar has no equivalent to Milosevic, the wildly popular ethnic and ruthlessly pragmatic ethnic entrepreneur. Ethnic entrepreneurship is not nearly as strong a force in the oppression of the Rohingya.
On that note, it is worthwhile to contrast the role of insurgency in the Yugoslavian wars and in Myanmar. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fought for the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and was bolstered by the collapse of nearby Albania, which led to an easy availability of arms (Lecture). Although certainly not powerful enough to topple Serbian forces, the KLA benefited from NATO support in the Kosovo War. It ultimately saw through its goal of establishing an independent Kosovo. The ARSA, on the other hand, is in a much weaker position, as covered earlier in the paper. However, if an external event—similar to the collapse of Albania in the case of the KLA—allows the ARSA to arm itself, the comparison to the KLA may become more pertinent.
The role of the ethnic security dilemma is another factor to consider in the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Myanmar. In times of heightened ethnic tension, scholars consider an effective and neutral state as conditions for the prevention of violence between opposed ethnic groups (Lecture). In Yugoslavia, neither condition was fulfilled. The Yugoslav state came to be dominated by the Serbs and also suffered from a serious breakdown in efficacy as the country splintered. The key distinction in Myanmar is that, although the state is certainly not neutral, it is quite powerful. Thus, while Rohingya are suffering directly at the hands of the state, and there is an incentive for them to arm themselves in any way possible, Buddhists do not face any such greatly compelling incentive.
The Yugoslavian case provides an anatomy of effective and ineffective responses to mass killing. As eight thousand Muslim men and boys were murdered in Srebrenica, foreign powers weighed their options on the sidelines. Eventually, the bombing campaign in Bosnia led to the cessation of hostilities by bringing the Serbs to the negotiating table to sign the Dayton Accords. But decisive action needed to have come earlier. NATO bombings in Kosovo were far more effective, crucial in crippling the offensive capabilities of the Serbian army and eventually toppling Slobodan Milosevic (Lecture). It is unclear whether international military intervention in Myanmar is required; it is quite clear that there is little appetite for one at this moment. We can be unequivocal, however, about the need for a far more authoritative response. The lessons drawn from the Yugoslavian case do point toward the same suggested model of pre-emptive intervention as discussed in the analysis of Rwanda.
The spectre of genocide looms again. While politicians debate semantics, hundreds of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable, defenceless people wait to slaughtered. Constructing a theoretical approach by which to understand the conflict is critical in any sincere, impactful attempt to solve it—as is an appreciation of the parallels between the current strife and historic ethnic calamities. But theorising and analysing only go so far. Although grounded in an academic study of the tensions, this paper attempts as well to employ past experiences to suggest how more killing can be prevented. Humanity simply cannot afford to spectate another wholesale slaughter of innocents.
Works Cited
Calamur, Krishnadev. “The Misunderstood Roots of Burma's Rohingya Crisis.” The Atlantic,
Atlantic Media Company, 25 Sept. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/rohingyas-burma/540513/.
Chandra, Kanchan. Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Forino, Giuseppe, et al. “The Oil Economics and Land-Grab Politics behind Myanmar’s
Rohingya Refugee Crisis.” Quartz, Quartz, 11 Sept. 2017, qz.com/1074906/rohingya-the-oil-economics-and-land-grab-politics-behind-myanmars-refugee-crisis/.
Lieberman, Evan, and Prerna Singh. “The Institutional Origins of Ethnic Violence.” Comparative
Politics, vol. 45, Oct. 2012, pp. 1–24.
Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in
Rwanda. James Currey, 2013.
“Myanmar Profile - Timeline.” BBC News, BBC, 31 Oct. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
pacific-12992883.
“Myanmar's Rohingya Are in Crisis-What You Need to Know.” National Geographic, National
Geographic Society, 29 Sept. 2017, news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/rohingya-refugee-crisis-myanmar-burma-spd/.
“Myanmar Rohingya: What You Need to Know about the Crisis.” BBC News, BBC, 19 Oct. 2017,
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41566561.
“Tracing History: Tension between Rohingya Muslims, Buddhists Date Back to British Rule.”
Hindustan Times, Hindustan Times, 16 Sept. 2017, www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/tracing-history-tension-between-rohingya-muslims-buddhists-date-back-to-british-rule/story-9mo9eTjOaJ4JQmXGef0BHL.html.
“UN Human Rights Chief Points to 'Textbook Example of Ethnic Cleansing' in Myanmar.” UN
News Center, United Nations, 11 Sept. 2017, www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57490#.WhJA5LQ-dE4.
Wilkinson, Steven. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
A Friendless People
Thousands have been killed. Hundreds of thousands have fled. They are a people without a home, much less a state. Such is the plight of the Rohingya, whom a UN spokesperson once called the most friendless people in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (“UN”).
This latest wave of state-sponsored violence follows a series of attacks by militants—a small insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—in August on Myanmarese military outposts. The brutal military crackdown is ostensibly targeted at insurgents. Yet, it is unmistakably civilians who are bearing the brunt of the violence, with the UN High Commissioner calling the response “clearly disproportionate” and “without regard for basic principles of international law” (“UN”).
The approach of ethnic institutionalism has the most to offer by way of explaining the crisis in Rohingya. This paper’s argument will be grounded primarily in the work of institutional scholars like Lieberman, Singh, and Wilkinson but it will also draw upon insights from other theories of ethnic conflict. It will, however, argue that these alternative approaches ultimately fall short of the bar set by an institutional approach in providing an entirely convincing explanation. There will also be a comparative analysis with the historical cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, with a consideration of lessons that can be learned from the two tragedies.
In tracing the institutional origins of Myanmarese conflict, one must begin just prior to the colonial era. The colonial roots of this conflict share much with Rwanda, a comparison that will be explored further later. Prior to the 18th century, Muslims and Buddhists coexisted peacefully in the Kingdom of Arakan, now Rakhine State (“Tracing History”). In 1784, the Kingdom was conquered by the Burmese, only to come under British rule by 1824. A crucial factor for institutionalist arguments is imperial Britain’s frequently employed “divide and rule” strategy. This was a carefully executed and nefarious application of ethnic institutionalisation, which scholars Lieberman and Singh note is often a “component of a strategy of domination” (Lieberman 2). Colonial governors identified ethnic cleavages and endeavoured to bolster their salience, thus mitigating the risk that a broad-based indigenous alliance could form against British rule. In the case of Myanmar, the British systematically favoured Muslims at the expense of Buddhists and other groups (“Tracing History”). Then, during World War II, the British army recruited Muslims as soldiers, pitting them directly against many Buddhists who were aligned with the Japanese (ibid). Under Lieberman and Singh’s framework for ethnic institutionalisation, British divide and rule generated a strong cleavage by establishing religion as “meaningful marker of ethnic distinction” (Lieberman 3).
For the sake of argument, that the Buddhists and Muslims found themselves on opposite sides of the war may not be solely a result of British colonisation—it is possible that Myanmarese Buddhists would have had sympathies with predominantly Buddhist Japan and that the Muslims would have aligned with the Allies. But such an outcome would was by no means necessary; World War II was not primarily an ethnic nor religious war. The very existence of the rift between Buddhists and Muslims was largely an outcome of British tactics, and the division between the two in war grew because the British and Japanese further institutionalised those differences.
The institutionalisation of ethnicity continued after British rule as well, albeit with something of a hiatus from 1948 to 1982. In 1982, the military junta decreed that the Rohingya were no longer to be recognised as citizens of Myanmar. This signalled the beginning of “strong internal institutionalisation,” with the government vigorously fostering the notion that a “dividing line exists between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Lieberman 2). Among over 100 ethnic groups, it was the Rohingya who were singled out and refused the right to own property, to vote, to obtain any benefits of citizenship (Calamur). Taken from the institutionalist perspective, there is, it must be said, one rather intriguing aspect of the Myanmarese government’s approach to the Rohingya. Lieberman and Singh note that when the question of ethnicity is removed from census response options, or when certain ethnic groupings are simply not officially recognised, there is a marked decrease in the instance of ethnic conflict. Yet, although “Rohingya” is no longer an officially recognised ethnicity, and one cannot identify as “Rohingya” on the census, no such benefit has manifested itself in Myanmar. Superficially, this may appear to be a refutation of sorts to institutionalist notions. Upon closer inspection, however, the government’s systematic refusal to acknowledge a Rohingya identity is only another means by which to create an “ethnic other,” against which it is “easier to mobilise followers to commit acts of violence” (Lieberman 2). The refusal to acknowledge a Rohingya identity does not so much dissolve the salience of the label as it does emphasise it, by unequivocally categorising the Rohingya as an undesirable other, denied any and all benefits of citizenship—including the fundamental benefit of state recognition. This is a prime example of “institutionalisation via partition,” with an alteration of the “legal boundaries of citizenship so that previous ethnic categories now differentiate citizens from non-citizens” (Lieberman 4).
The final institutional factor is less about ethnic institutionalisation than it is about the interaction between the ethnic and political compositions of a nation. Wilkinson argues that the incidence and severity of ethnic conflict are related to the electoral interests facing governments (Wilkinson 6). He contextualises his argument in democratic systems, and Myanmar is far from being a complete democracy. That said, democratic institutions do exist to a considerable degree in Myanmar, and thus there are strong electoral incentives facing politicians like Aung San Suu Kyi and parties like her National League of Democracy. Damagingly for the Rohingya, they hold no electoral significance. To begin with, at only four percent of the population, they would face an uphill battle becoming relevant in elections or in the construction of coalitions (Wilkinson 8). The undemocratic tendencies of Myanmar further depress the electoral sway held by the Rohingya community: deprived of citizenship, the right to vote and the ability to run for election, their influence on the workings of democracy is more or less reduced to nil. In addition, Wilkinson finds that a critical condition for the prevention of anti-minority violence is that the “majority community does not regard increasing the minority's security as fundamentally threatening its own dominant positions…and its own security” (Wilkinson 140). This condition is left unfulfilled in Myanmar because of deep-seated fears that the Rohingya pose a fundamental threat to the safety and wellbeing of Buddhists—an idea that will be developed further in this paper’s discussion of the ARSA.
With the gaping religious and cultural differences between Rakhine Buddhists and the region’s Rohingya, primordial theories of ethnic conflict hold understandable allure in explaining Myanmar's violence. These “primordial attachments,” the “congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on…are seen to have an ineffable, and at times overpowering, coerciveness” that can jeopardise ethnic stability (Geertz 259). Geertz is particularly pessimistic in his discussion of the effect “primordial attachments” can exert on new states—specifically in the “transfer of sovereignty from a colonial regime to an independent one” (Geertz 269). He argues it is during such periods, while the state is still weak and civil society unestablished, that primordial sentiments are particularly heightened, with people placing ethnic loyalty above loyalty to the state (Geertz 260).
Damningly for primordialists, there is strong evidence to suggest that intrinsic hatred is simply not to blame. A significant body of research suggests that prior to the British colonisation of Myanmar, the pronounced ethnic differences between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims did not have political salience (“Tracing History”). The two groups coexisted in a largely peaceful manner. Importantly, historians have even found that a number of Rohingya Muslims “were even advisors to Buddhist royals” (ibid).
The component of Geertz’s argument that addresses new states in a transition away from colonialism too provides scant explanatory power in Myanmar’s case. First, as aforementioned, ethnic tensions became salient during the colonial era, with British “divide and rule” tactics. Of course, adherents to Geertz’s theory would argue that such tensions were only exacerbated by the transitional process accompanying independence. To that effect, note that ethnic relations were hardly at their nadir when Myanmar gained independence in 1948. The new state enjoyed relative ethnic stability and the Rohingya were accorded equal rights (Calamur). Rohingya were not subjected to serious, large-scale violence even in the period after General U Ne Win snuffed out the nascent democracy in 1962 (BBC timeline). It was only after the junta’s 1982 citizenship law, which left the Rohingya stateless, that group has been particularly victimised (“Myanmar Profile”). As covered earlier, this is fundamentally an institutional factor. Finally, although there has been an uptick of violence against the Rohingya since the country’s democratic transition in 2011, it would be rich to describe the relatively stable, gradual transition as anything proximate to a change in the state itself. And, if anything, we can speculate that the institution of an at least notionally civilian government led by a Nobel Peace laureate may have put something of a dampener on the potential scale of violence.
It is helpful to consider as well the potential instrumentalist approach to ethnic conflict in Myanmar. The theory holds that ethnicity is fundamentally fluid, little more than tool by which one seeks money, power or resources more generally (Lecture). Instrumentalism can perhaps be seen as the polar opposite to the rigidity dictated by primordialism.
One common instrumentalist argument relates to development priorities in Myanmar. Proponents of the argument hold that the government, eager to spur state-led economic development, is engaging in ethnic cleansing simply to increase its landholdings and develop infrastructure projects (Forino). This argument provides useful insight in explaining some of the incentives that may be at play, but it does not do much in explaining why the Rohingya, instead of Myanmar’s other minority ethnic groups, have been disproportionately targeted and subjected to ethnic cleansing.
Another instrumentalist argument is that the ARSA, which claims to be primarily occupied with the protection of the Rohingya, is nothing more than a front for the spread of Islamism in Myanmar—essentially a fundamentalist Muslim ploy to grab power in Myanmar (“Myanmar's Rohingya”). Despite the vociferous claims of Myanmar’s government, there is simply no evidence to support that contention. The ARSA’s numbers are estimated at under one thousand, and Rohingya as a whole comprise only four percent of the population; these are hardly numbers suggestive of a serious threat. The ARSA is also poorly armed. In their latests wave of attacks against Myanmarese security forces, they wielded bamboo sticks against the army’s machine guns (BBC News). All this suggests that there is unlikely to be a serious instrumentalist explanation to the fighting, especially because observers generally agree that the ARSA were fundamentally a reactionary force: they did not themselves generate ethnic violence, but became active as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya (BBC News).
The instrumentalist approach is further undermined by individual-level reactions. Specifically, the Myanmarese government has repeatedly offered the Rohingya the ability to label themselves Bengali, removing themselves from the Rohingya identity and the associated hardship. Although “many Muslims in Rakhine state were previously indifferent to how they were labeled,” most are now outright refusing to accede to the government’s demand to identify as Bengali (Calamur). Although an acknowledgement of Bengali ethnicity does run the risk of legitimising the Myanmarese narrative that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants, it would, at the very least, allow fleeing Rohingya to assimilate into Bengali-majority Bangladesh. The country currently refuses to see the Rohingya as among their own, hosting them as refugees while insisting that they are not emigrants from the country and thus not owed much (BBC News). Officially adopting Bengali identity would serve as a workaround. Yet for the majority of Rohingya today, purely utilitarian considerations are clearly subsidiary to ethnic solidarity. This undermines the instrumentalist narrative, lending credence to the institutionalist idea that “strong internal institutionalisation” of ethnicity makes it “difficult to conceive…of joining a different group” as this “defection [would be seen] as an affront” (Lieberman 5).
The origins of ethnic strife in Myanmar share an eerily similar colonial narrative with the violence in Rwanda. In Rwanda too were damaging ethnic cleavages formed through institutionalisation, this time at the hands of Belgian rulers. Employing the pseudoscientific methods of eugenics, the colonialists systematically favoured the Tutsi minority, labelling the Tutsi “superb humans” and “Europeans under a black skin” who were at their core “a civilising race” (Mamdani 87-89). These conclusions were grounded in observations such as the taller and more slender build of the average Tutsi as compared to the average Hutu—differences in physique that later anthropologists determined were the result of wealth, not genetics (Mamdani 45). Anthropologists have in fact found no genuine, consistent racial difference between the two groups: it is essential to understand that the distinction was constructed purely by institutionalisation, without rigorous scientific grounding (Mamdani 42). Thus, while Hutu and Tutsi identity was activated on “descent-based attributes,” the attributes upon which Buddhist and Rohingya ethnicity are activated have stronger bona fides—there are far more tangible racial differences between the two groups (Chandra 59). The role of institutionalism was even more developed in Rwanda than it has been in Myanmar thus far, with the Belgian government devising an intricate set of mechanisms to strengthen the delineation between Hutu and Tutsi. Mahmoud Mamdani, a scholar of Rwandan ethnicity, writes that “key institutions…were organised around an active knowledge of [ethnic] identities” (Mamdani 88). Consequently, to be Tutsi was to be privileged. This institutionalisation sowed the ethnic divide that precipitated rampant ethnic conflict in the postcolonial era.
Another common theme is that of the government and ethnic entrepreneurs leveraging the threat of insurgency to mobilise supporters. The threat of insurgency was more acute in Rwanda, with the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) posing an existential threat to the Hutu government—the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, ultimately did topple the government. The Hutu Power movement fomented this paranoia through radio broadcasts and other propaganda measures to aid in the mobilisation of militias and to breed further popular resentment against the Tutsi (Straus 201). In Myanmar, as discussed earlier, the threat posed by the ARSA is far less acute, diminishing the importance of the instrumentalist argument and somewhat softening the power of ethnic entrepreneurs. That said, the military in Myanmar has done its best to portray the ARSA as a severe threat, and it has been at least partially successful in this endeavour—helping cement broad-based support for its campaigns against the Rohingya (Calamur).
There are sobering lessons to be learned from the international community’s experience with the genocide in Rwanda. Then, a million innocents were butchered as the world dithered and demurred. Aside from withdrawing UN peacekeepers, the international community took little action. Although many are quick to blame peacekeepers, it is important to note that it is not within their mandate to independently engage in combat, unless directly targeted. General Romeo Dallaire, who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda, insisted that something could have been done if his forces were granted the authority to intervene, although other commentators insist that “it would have been virtually impossible” to have taken effective action (Mamdani 213). In the future, the United Nations might be well advised in sending peacekeepers more pre-emptively and with a wider mandate to step in. The machinery of genocide is not yet in place in Myanmar, and the Suu Kyi-led government still seeks to maintain whatever it can salvage of its international credibility. A large deployment of peacekeepers at this time would send a strong, tangible signal to military and civilian leaders in Myanmar that the international community will not tolerate the treatment of the Rohingya. It would send a message to the military that any violence would be closely surveilled, and that a definite choice would have to be made between further oppression of the Rohingya and avoiding complete pariah status—and maybe the risk of more direct international military intervention. Absurd claims like, for instance, that the Rohingya set their own villages on fire, would no longer be tenable. On a pragmatic level, peacekeepers could also help prevent wonton mob violence against Muslims—before the situation develops to a stage at which, like in Rwanda, it is utterly unsalvageable.
The situation in Myanmar also yields instructive, cautionary parallels with the Yugoslavian crisis. Following Myanmar’s independence from the British, the Rohingya appealed to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, asking to be annexed by the country (Calamur). Those requests were refused, but there are serious fears in Myanmar, compounded by the activities of the ARSA, that the Rohingya seek an autonomous region along the country's border with Bangladesh, “at the expense of Rakhine territory” (ibid). Hardline ethnic entrepreneurs, like Buddhist nationalist Maung Thway Chun, engender paranoia with warnings that Muslims will “swallow our country” leaving “land we inherited from our former generations…lost in time.” This rhetoric shares striking similarities with Slobodan Milosevic’s incendiary speeches at rallies: he magnified nationalist fervour by insisting that Serbians were being oppressed and by stoking fears that historically Serbian territory was at risk (Lecture). With their emphasis on political entrepreneurs trying to take advantage of ethnic divisions, these similarities are tinged with instrumentalism. That said, it is telling that Myanmar has no equivalent to Milosevic, the wildly popular ethnic and ruthlessly pragmatic ethnic entrepreneur. Ethnic entrepreneurship is not nearly as strong a force in the oppression of the Rohingya.
On that note, it is worthwhile to contrast the role of insurgency in the Yugoslavian wars and in Myanmar. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fought for the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and was bolstered by the collapse of nearby Albania, which led to an easy availability of arms (Lecture). Although certainly not powerful enough to topple Serbian forces, the KLA benefited from NATO support in the Kosovo War. It ultimately saw through its goal of establishing an independent Kosovo. The ARSA, on the other hand, is in a much weaker position, as covered earlier in the paper. However, if an external event—similar to the collapse of Albania in the case of the KLA—allows the ARSA to arm itself, the comparison to the KLA may become more pertinent.
The role of the ethnic security dilemma is another factor to consider in the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Myanmar. In times of heightened ethnic tension, scholars consider an effective and neutral state as conditions for the prevention of violence between opposed ethnic groups (Lecture). In Yugoslavia, neither condition was fulfilled. The Yugoslav state came to be dominated by the Serbs and also suffered from a serious breakdown in efficacy as the country splintered. The key distinction in Myanmar is that, although the state is certainly not neutral, it is quite powerful. Thus, while Rohingya are suffering directly at the hands of the state, and there is an incentive for them to arm themselves in any way possible, Buddhists do not face any such greatly compelling incentive.
The Yugoslavian case provides an anatomy of effective and ineffective responses to mass killing. As eight thousand Muslim men and boys were murdered in Srebrenica, foreign powers weighed their options on the sidelines. Eventually, the bombing campaign in Bosnia led to the cessation of hostilities by bringing the Serbs to the negotiating table to sign the Dayton Accords. But decisive action needed to have come earlier. NATO bombings in Kosovo were far more effective, crucial in crippling the offensive capabilities of the Serbian army and eventually toppling Slobodan Milosevic (Lecture). It is unclear whether international military intervention in Myanmar is required; it is quite clear that there is little appetite for one at this moment. We can be unequivocal, however, about the need for a far more authoritative response. The lessons drawn from the Yugoslavian case do point toward the same suggested model of pre-emptive intervention as discussed in the analysis of Rwanda.
The spectre of genocide looms again. While politicians debate semantics, hundreds of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable, defenceless people wait to slaughtered. Constructing a theoretical approach by which to understand the conflict is critical in any sincere, impactful attempt to solve it—as is an appreciation of the parallels between the current strife and historic ethnic calamities. But theorising and analysing only go so far. Although grounded in an academic study of the tensions, this paper attempts as well to employ past experiences to suggest how more killing can be prevented. Humanity simply cannot afford to spectate another wholesale slaughter of innocents.
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