The International Crisis Group (ICG) has just issued a report entitled “Myanmar’s Coup Shakes Up Its Ethnic Conflicts” that examines how the February 2021 Myanmar coup has affected the conflicts in the country’s ethnic states.
Key suggestions for donors and supporters are that they should shift focus from supporting the peace process to assisting people in conflict-affected areas. International actors should avoid pressuring ethnic armed groups into new ceasefires, engage with the parallel government and other opposition representatives, and work with local civil society organisations to address humanitarian needs.
The following is the Executive Summary of the report:
The Myanmar military’s 1 February 2021 coup d’état has dramatically reshaped the country’s conflict landscape, killing off the decade-old peace process and sparking a new wave of violence. New forces have emerged, long-established ethnic armed groups have recommitted to insurgency and heavy clashes have erupted in areas that had not seen significant fighting in decades. The opposition National Unity Government (NUG) has sought to rally non-state forces – both old and new – to its side in order to topple the junta, with mixed results. Most ethnic armed groups are hostile to the military regime, but they also see little prospect of it collapsing and until now have been reluctant to cement alliances with the opposition. With the multiplication of new fronts stretching its capacities, the military is likely to seek bilateral deals with some groups to free up troops, as it has done in the past. As Myanmar appears headed for protracted conflict, international donors that supported the now failed peace process should shift their focus to alleviating the impact of renewed fighting on local populations.
From the first weeks after the coup, ethnic armed groups have been important players in the battle between the regime and its political opponents. They have adopted a wide range of responses, based on their history, geographic location and strategic objectives: some have sat on the fence or distanced themselves from the resistance movement entirely, while others have sheltered dissidents fleeing the regime, provided some with military training and engaged politically with the NUG.
Several are struggling to balance public pressure to cooperate with the NUG with their own hard-headed assessments of the conflict’s likely trajectory, leading to internal divisions and contradictory messaging.
The Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), which was established shortly after the coup by deposed lawmakers, who had been elected in November 2020, and its parallel administration, the NUG, have sought to build political and military alliances with ethnic armed groups. They have made a number of important concessions, including appointing an ethnically diverse cabinet, repealing the military-drafted 2008 constitution and announcing plans for a new federal charter, in an effort to convince ethnic armed groups that they have a historic opportunity to build the federal system they have long fought for. Perhaps most importantly, the coup has prompted a shift in how much of the Burman majority views ethnic armed groups and minorities’ demands for a fairer distribution of political power.
Decades of propaganda had castigated minorities as the cause of Myanmar’s political problems, but Burmans angry at the regime now view ethnic grievances much more empathetically.
A significant amount of political and military cooperation against the regime is taking place. A united front comprising all of Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups joining the NUG in taking the fight to the military regime is not a realistic prospect, given their diversity and the historical rivalries among them. But at least four groups have emerged as important partners of the parallel government, and another half dozen or so have engaged with the NUG to some degree. In doing so, they have taken a significant risk, motivated largely by the need to respond to public sentiment but also to some degree by the opportunity to establish a genuinely federal state. Even among those groups more inclined to side with opposition forces, however, the CRPH/NUG has struggled to overcome a legacy of mistrust. As a result, even armed groups that have offered important support to the opposition movement have mostly kept relations informal.
The State Administration Council, as the junta refers to itself, has also sought to engage ethnic armed groups, but with a much more limited goal: it wants to keep them off the battlefield as much as possible and stop them from establishing formal alliances with the NUG. If the regime can thus curb the military threat these groups pose, it can train its attention on the dozens, possibly hundreds, of new anti-regime militias that have formed since the coup in majority-Burman areas and are mostly loyal to the NUG. The regime has already announced a five-month unilateral ceasefire pitched at ethnic armed groups and met some of them for talks.
The junta has little to offer ethnic armed groups in terms of meaningful political reform, as the coup has brought an end to negotiations over a formal peace settlement that began in 2016. Ethnic leaders are well aware that Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing is very unlikely to accept a genuine federal system, but the regime has other inducements it can offer, such as promises of de facto autonomy and economic concessions, as well as threats of force. The military has used the inducement tactic many times in the past to divide its opponents, particularly in the 1990s. It will be trickier to pull off today, however, since the ethnic armed groups will face public backlash if they negotiate with the regime.
Myanmar likely faces a protracted period of increased conflict, as neither the Tatmadaw nor the opposition appears likely to prevail. Still, despite some hiccups, the opposition movement is gradually building strength. Even those ethnic armed groups that are unsympathetic to the NUG are seeking to take advantage of the fact the military is stretched, creating opportunities for them to seize new territory or expand their influence. If the anti-regime movement gains further momentum, groups that are sitting on the fence may be enticed into engaging with the CRPH/NUG, thus further bolstering the opposition.
While, in this environment, opportunities for international actors to reduce conflict are limited, there are things they can usefully do to reduce suffering that might also contribute to transforming relations between the majority Burmans and ethnic minorities. A first step should be to recognise that the peace process established a decade ago is dead. Donors that have supported it should shift focus to shielding people in conflict-affected areas from war’s effects through rapid disbursement of emergency funding.
As access to many areas is difficult, donors will need to work closely with local implementing partners; to avoid overburdening these groups, they should show flexibility, particularly by keeping administrative requirements to a bare minimum. They should also recognise the significance of political negotiations between the CRPH/NUG and ethnic armed groups, and support cooperation where the two sides have found ways to work together in areas such as health and humanitarian aid.
