Burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity
By Martin Smith
Zed Books, 1991. 492 pp., $59.95.
Review by Eva Cheng
Though Burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity was published six years ago, it remains one of the richest and most comprehensive sources of information in a single collection on the politics of Burma today.
It examines (in five out of 20 chapters and in considerable depth) three crucial developments that have shaped the political scene and relationship of forces in Burma today — the pro-democracy uprising in 1988, the collapse in 1989 of the Communist Party of Burma (a key opposition political force since independence in 1948) and the landslide victory of the National League for Democracy in the 1990 election.
The political picture of Burma has not changed fundamentally since the book's publication: the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which came to power in a 1988 coup, continues refusing to surrender power to the NLD, which won over 80% of the seats in the 1990 People's Assembly election, compared to only 2% for the SLORC.
The ethnic-based insurgency groups that Burma features aren't directly part of the student-led democracy movement which erupted in 1988, but are a significant force sympathetic to the students' cause, politically collaborating with them and providing the student wing in armed struggle — mostly in areas controlled by these ethnic forces — with training and other logistical help.
To what extent these long-existing (since the early 1950s) guerillas can march with the new student groups as a united political force is still unclear. Even the student activists themselves admit considerable ignorance of these ethnic forces. There is more to catch up on for those outside Burma. This book fills the gap.
Though most ethnic forces took up armed struggle not long after Burma's independence and seized control of vast areas of strategic importance (about 40% of the country, mainly along its borders), they have never been a real threat to Rangoon, despite the fact that the central government lost its legitimacy after Ne Win seized power in 1962. They did not have a political impact in the cities, but rather aimed to build a separate state for their own ethnic groups.
Geographical isolation undermines the ethnic groups as a political force, a situation made worse by their great fragmentation. Among the seven main official ethnic groups (the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Mon, Rakhine [Arakan] and Shan) there are numerous subgroups (44 among the Chin alone), speaking more than 100 languages, with no less than 27 armed groups.
More importantly, crucial questions like the social character of these struggles, what social order they are trying to establish and the political basis of their heavy reliance on armed struggle are not clear. Burma does not seek to answer these questions, but it does provide a useful bank of information on the key historical developments of a complex, fragmented and persistent movement.
Smith outlines how the British colonialists' strategy of ruling the ethnic minority regions through preserving the feudal domination of their hereditary chiefs, as well as the recruitment of some ethnic minorities as a significant component of the colonial army, fostered distrust towards the ethnic forces in the Burman-dominated independence movement.
The post-independence coalition government's allotting of different degrees of autonomy to different groups led some of them to take up arms. The Communist Party also took up arms in the early 1950s, accusing the coalition government of bending too much to British interests.
Ne Win's seizure of power in 1962 and his aggressive military offensives failed to wipe the ethnic forces out but did increase their isolation.
The military's strategy of depriving the insurgency of supply by devastating the hill peoples would have had a crippling effect if there had not been outside support. Burma's vast border, along which the ethnic forces have built their bases, has allowed foreign supplies to come through, particularly from China and Thailand.
The Kuomintang, which ruled China until the 1949 revolution, built a significant base with active CIA support on the Burmese side of the border throughout the 1960s and 1970s to sabotage Beijing. This gave Beijing a direct interest in exerting an influence in Burma, to the extent that it later switched to supporting the Ne Win regime at the expense of the CPB, while giving the latter token support.
Burma also covers intensively developments in the CPB, shaken by extensive purges and brutal killings in the late 1960s, launched to punish dissidents who violated the orders of the party centre and a direct copy of similar atrocities led by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Another chapter covers the mutinies by various ethnic forces within the CPB, which led to its virtual collapse, totally incapable of intervening in meaningfully, let alone leading, the massive uprising in 1988.
The extent to which socialist or communist ideals have been discredited in Burma is striking. Added to the damage done by the CPB is the propaganda of Ne Win, calling the military dictatorship the "Burmese way to socialism" and its political arm the Burma Socialist Program Party.
The huge number of groups, alliances and personalities covered by the book (acronyms and abbreviations for more than 140 groups or alliances are used) makes reading particularly complex. But this reflects the complexity of the struggle itself.