The breakdown of a China-initiated ceasefire in northern Shan State, and the advance of ethnic resistance armies in the same area, have highlighted two crucial issues for the future of Myanmar: the nature and aims of Chinese peacemaking, and what the re-establishment of a federal system akin to that which the country enjoyed prior to the 1962 military coup should look like. China is evidently the only outsider power that is in a position to exercise real influence over some of the ethnic armies as well as the Burmese military. And although most resistance groups, armed or otherwise, say they are in favor of a “free, democratic and federal Myanmar,” none one these has addressed what the status of ethnic minorities within their areas would, or should, be. Would it really bring decades of ethnic strife to an end if the existing seven ethnic minority states – Shan, Kachin, Chin, Karen, Mon, Rakhine, and Karenni (Kayah) – were granted genuine autonomy, the majority Burmans were left to govern the other seven regions, and the union territory around Naypyitaw became common ground for everyone?
The problem is that Chin State is perhaps the only “ethnic state” with only one major “ethnic group”. But, even so, the Chin have no lingua franca; mutually unintelligible dialects are spoken in different parts of the state. In Kachin State, there has always been a huge Shan community , and migration from other parts of Myanmar means that ethnic Kachins have become a minority in their state. And then there is the question of whether the Lisu and Nung-Rawang identify themselves as Kachins? Most Karen, meanwhile, live in Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) Region, not in Karen State in the east, which has Shan, Burman and other communities as well. In Mon State, it is hard to say who is what because most urban Mon are Burmanized and the state capital Mawlamyine has an ethnically and religiously very mixed population. Karenni (Kayah) State has large Shan, Padaung, and Pa-O communities. The population of Rakhine State in the west consists of Buddhist Rakhine (Arakanese), Muslim Rohingya and Kaman, and tribal people in the highlands.
And then there is Shan State, the largest and ethnically most diverse state where several non-Shan peoples – among them the Wa, the Palaung, the Kokang Chinese, and the Pa-O – want their own states or, at least, to be self-governing. The main complication can be observed in the north where Shan, Palaung, and Kachin groups have overlapping claims, and their respective armies have throughout the history of the civil war frequently clashed over territory. The Wa already control a de facto self-governing state spanning more than 20,000 square kilometers in the eastern mountains. Their United Wa State Army (UWSA) is allied with the Shan State Army (SSA) of the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), but has fought battles with the SSA/SSPP’s rival, the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), whose army is also called the Shan State Army. In the south, the Pa-O rose in rebellion in the late 1940s, not to fight the central government but against the power of the Shan saohpas, or princes.
The original SSA, which was set up in 1964 and in 1971 formed a political wing called the SSPP, made a point of having other nationalities among its ranks to show that it was fighting for the entire Shan State. There was a Kokang Chinese unit and several Palaung battalions, and it had Kachin and Wa officers. The RCSS, on the other hand, promotes a strongly ethnocentric, Shan-Buddhist identity. Since an above-ground Shan political party, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, was formed in 1988, the SSA/SSPP has also become more Shan nationalistic. The near-absurd complexity of the situation in Shan State could be illustrated by the example of late Ta Kalei, an ethnic, Christian Karen who wore Buddha amulets and headed a Pa-O rebel army which was allied with the once powerful Communist Party of Burma.
So, what a future federal Myanmar, and, especially, Shan State, would look like is very much an open question. There are, however, some similarities between Shan State and India’s northeastern state of Assam (which was historically a Shan-ruled kingdom). In the years after India’s independence from Britain in 1947, Assam consisted of all areas east of the Siliguri Neck with the exceptions of the old princely states of Manipur and Tripura. Like the Shan, the Assamese dominated the lowlands and various hill peoples lived in the surrounding highlands. But following years of insurgency, the Naga Hills in the east were separated from Assam and, in 1963, became the state of Nagaland. The Mizo area south of Nagaland also saw a rebellion against the Indian state, and peace efforts resulted in the formation of the union territory of Mizoram in 1972, which in 1987 was proclaimed a state. In 1972, the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills also became a separate state called Meghalaya. Assam then had to move its capital Shillong, which was located in what was to become Meghalaya, to Dispur near Guwahati, the main city in the lowlands. In 1972, the Northeast Frontier Agency, which consisted of the northern areas of Assam bordering China, became the union territory of Arunachal Pradesh, and, in 1987, a state. All that remains of Assam are the lowlands around the Brahmaputra River.
The “Balkanization” of Assam did not come about without discontent among the majority Assamese, but it was the price they had to pay for peace. Would the Shan be willing to accept a similar solution to their internal, ethnic conflicts? With all likelihood, no. But, if there won’t be separate states for the non-Shan peoples of Shan State, what could a solution look like? A “confederation” of smaller, ethnic entities? Autonomous districts within the state? But that has been rejected by the Wa, who already have a self-governing territory that for all intents and purposes is being governed separately from the rest of Shan State. A similar development appears underway in Kokang, where the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has wrested control over most territory and established its own administration.
And what would happen to Kachin State? Some Shan, supported by the authorities in Naypyitaw, are already arming themselves to fight the Kachin Independence Army. Even if there is peace in that part of the country, the local Shan as well as Burman and Rakhine migrants, and most likely also the Lisu and the Nung-Rawang, would be opposed to attempts to establish a Kachin-dominated state government. Would a future Karen State consist of the present state as well as Karen-dominated areas in Ayeyarwady Region? Should the Rohingya minority in northern Rakhine State have their own state, or could the Mayu Frontier District, which existed for them between 1961 and 1964, be recreated? And how many from the Buddhist Rakhine majority would be willing to accept either solution to the ethnoreligious antagonism in their state?
There are no easy ways of solving Myanmar’s decades-long ethnic conflicts, and it is not only the leadership of the supposedly unified resistance, called the National Unity Government, that has been unable, or unwilling, to provide workable alternatives to the present order. The foreign peacemakers, who descended on Myanmar in droves during the period of relative openness from 2011 to 2021, held seminars and workshops on catchy topics such as “peacemaking,” “dialogue patterns,” “good governance,” and “reconciliation,” which had little or no relevance to the bitter realities on the ground in the conflict areas. Millions of dollars were wasted on fatuous exercises, suggesting inapplicable solutions modelled on entirely different kinds of peace processes elsewhere in the world. In the end, those efforts raised false hopes, caused confusion, and have only served to aggravate already existing problems and conflicts.
In the broader scheme of things, those foreign groups were and still are irrelevant because there is only one outside power that has the leverage that is needed to put pressure on the military as well as major ethnic armies. And that, of course is China. Unlike the Western peaceniks, China has vital geostrategic interests in Myanmar and will do everything in its might to get what it wants, namely, to secure the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor from the southern province of Yunnan to the Indian Ocean. And that corridor consists of already constructed gas- and oil-pipelines, upgraded highways, and plans for high-speed railroads leading to deepwater ports on the Bay of Bengal. China’s interests are also economic as it has become a major investor in Myanmar and its biggest trade partner.
Contrary to the expectations of many, the junta State Administration Council (SAC) in Naypyitaw is not about to fall, but if it did, that would only mean the beginning of a process to find realistic and workable solutions to a host of challenges related to ethnicity and governmental structures. And any post-SAC administration would also have to find ways to deal prudently with its two giant neighbors: China, which wants to control Myanmar, and, not to be overlooked, India, which, without much success so far, wants to keep Chinese influence at a bare minimum. Other outside actors such as the United States, the European Union, Japan, ASEAN, Canada, Australia, Norway, and Switzerland, which at various times have tried to play roles in Myanmar’s internal affairs, lack the means as well as the manipulative skills to be of any decisive importance.
