For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications. Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context – a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted. Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.

On humanitarian assistance in Burma.

This book examines the ideas which have structured half a century of civil war in Burma, and the roles which political elites and foreign networks - from colonial missionaries to aid worker activists - have played in mediating understandings of ethnic conflict in the country. The book includes a brief overview of precolonial and colonial Burma, and the emergence ethnic identity as a politically salient characteristic. It describes the struggle for independence and the parliamentary era (1948-62), and the quarter century of military-socialist rule that followed (1962-88). The book analyses the causes, dynamics and impacts of on-going armed conflict in Burma, since the 1988 'democracy uprising' through to the 2007 'saffron revolution' (when monks and ordinary people took to the streets in protest against the military regime). There is a special focus on the plight of displaced people, and the ways in which local and international agencies have responded. The book also examines one of the most significant, but least well-understood, political developments in Burma over the last twenty years: the series of ceasefires agreed since 1989 between the military government and most armed ethnic groups. The positive and negative impacts of the ceasefires are analysed, including a study of civil society among ethnic nationality communities. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of social and political change in Burma, and a re-examination of some commonly held assumptions regarding the country, including issues of ethnicity and federalism. The book concludes with a brief Epilogue, taking account of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on 2 and 3 May 2008, resulting in a massive humanitarian crisis.

This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.

Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation, this thesis examines problems that go to the heart of the politics of humanitarian aid. At a time of significant political change in Burma, members of the Back Pack Health Worker Team had to grapple with questions that have shaped the history of humanitarianism but continue to raise complex political and ethical dilemmas. The Back Pack Health Worker Team - or Back Pack, as it is commonly known - is a Non-Government Organisation made up of indigenous medics who provide healthcare to ethnic minority communities in Burma's disputed border areas. Ten years after its creation in 1998, Back Pack had become an influential yet controversial player in the politics of aid to Burma. This thesis explores how humanitarian actors, systems and practices can at different times be defined as legitimate or illegitimate. It examines ways in which an 'embodied history' of violence can influence the worldviews and actions of humanitarian actors, as well as institutions that develop in a particular context to mitigate human suffering. Back Pack's 'humanitarian struggle' unites the provision of aid with a politico-moral vision, itself tied to the life experiences and embodied histories of state violence of its founders and members. This humanitarian struggle implies an attribution of legitimacy to some socio-political actors in Burma rather than others. For over a decade, it was endorsed by international donors and political actors. At a time of significant (geo)political change, however, international-level attributions of legitimacy to different socio-political actors in Burma shifted, with significant impacts on an already polarised and emotive politics of aid. This ethnographic study highlights the importance of analysing systems through which aid works from the perspective of values attributed to these systems by actors at different scales of analysis and in relation to wider political and geopolitical changes. It focuses on the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors and other socio-political actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context - a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or not humanitarian are highlighted. It is in such a context and at a time of significant (geo)political change that constructions of 'licitness' can become most pertinent and that divergent and shifting attributions of value by actors at different scales become particularly significant. Finally, the thesis links this analysis to a conceptualisation of humanitarianism as an unequal 'politics of life' and 'politics of value'. It thus highlights ways in which actors differentially situated in an international system of 'humanitarian government' can be involved in contests over the attribution of value not only to human lives per se, but also to the systems and practices that enable the government of these lives.