Following a half-century of civil war - the longest-running such conflict in the world - the late 1980s and 1990s saw the majority of Burma’s insurgent armies agree ceasefires with the military government in Rangoon. Although, the KNU - once the most powerful of Burma’s armed ethnic nationalist organisations - still fights on in the jungles of Southeast Burma, the conflict seems to entering a protracted end-stage.

The situation of a number of well-armed ex-communist militias in northern Burma has attracted considerable attention, as many of these ‘ceasefire groups’ have been active in narcotics and amphetamines production, the social effects of which are being felt in Thailand and the west. These groups have been accused of abandoning any vestiges of political ideology, to concentrate on enriching their leaders, and supporting the SLORC-SPDC regime, though kick-backs and participation in the state-controlled constitution drafting process. However, another sub-set of the fifteen-or-so officially recognised ceasefire groups has largely eschewed the drugs trade (although these groups have enthusiastically participated in logging and other forms of natural resource extraction).

Unlike Burma’s ex-communist insurgents, ceasefire groups such as the New Mon State Party (NMSP), and the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), have remained active politically, although their influence on events from ‘within the legal’ fold has been severely restricted - as that that of all political parties. Nevertheless, since the ceasefire, Mon nationalists - including those who never took up arms, or had long ago renounced armed conflict - have found some limited space within which to work for the development of ‘civil society’ within their community. However, progress in the fields of human and political rights has been minimal. Critics have accused NMSP leaders of achieving little by means of the ceasefires, while helping to legitimise the military regime.

Having given up their largely symbolic armed opposition to Rangoon, the NMSP and other ceasefire groups are in danger of becoming marginalised within their own communities, unless they can re-invent themselves as post-ceasefire political (and/ or development) organisations. Already since 1995, six ex-Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA) splinter groups (three in NMSP Tavoy District, two in Mergui District, and a new faction which emerged this September) have gone back to war with the Tatmadaw - although none has represented a significant military challenge. At present, it seems unlikely (although not impossible) that the mainstream NMSP, led by the octogenarian Nai Shwe Kyin, will resume the armed conflict.

Therefore, the party is faced with three sets of options. It might ignore

critics in the west and among the opposition, and engage with Rangoon - if not

politically, then at least on economic and ‘development’ projects (the latter are often

associated with human rights abuses). Alternatively, the party may avoid all

but low-level co-operation with the military regime, and support the

democracy movement, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD. This latter option

is, of course, unlikely to be compatible with successful business ventures, or the

smooth implementation of development or education initiatives in governmnet-

controlled areas. To work with the NLD is to invite the wrath of the Tatmadaw and

military intelligence apparatus.

Since the mid-1990s, the NMSP has tended to oscillate between these two strategic poles. At key moments, the party has supported the NLD, attempting to pressure the SLORC-SPDC into reform, and seeking to represent the ethnic nationalist agenda, both within the democracy movement and internationally. However, in moments of crisis, the NMSP has been forced to back down, and acquiesce to the governmnet line. Unsurprisingly, such inconsistency has provoked criticism, both from the SLORC-SPDC and the opposition. It has also led to power struggles and defections within NMSP ranks.

Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t - and with little room for manoeuvre in between - NMSP leaders have attempted to ‘keep their powder dry’, waiting for a sea-change in Burmese politics, around which to align their actions. However, this is in many ways the most dangerous policy. The party is currently in the throes of an economic, political - and above all, identity - crisis, which threatens to undermine the bases of its support. Unless it can re-invent itself, the NMSP faces further political marginalisation.

However, the NMSP is not the only Mon player on the political stage. As well as a number of small, ‘un-reconstructed’ armed groups - active along the Thailand border - several local NGOs and religious groups have emerged in Mon state over the past few years, and have often taken the lead in working for community development. The Mon political scene is heterogeneous, and features a number of impressive individuals and groups. Although three of the five Mon National Democratic Front (MNDF) MPs elected in 1990 are currently in jail (one is in exile), the front remains an important example of Mon politicians’ ability to mobilise support, based on a political and cultural heritage that has permeated lower Burma for centuries.

THE MON NATIONALISM AS A CASE STUDY

Pre-colonial Mon Civilisation. The more than one million Mon people today living in Burma and neighbouring Thailand constitute an ethnic minority. However, this has not always been the case.

From early in the first millennium, for a period of more than a thousand years, Mon and Khmer kings ruled over much of mainland Southeast Asia. Across northern and central Thailand until six or seven hundred years ago, and in central and lower Burma for another three hundred years, the bulk of the population were ethnic Mons - the people of the Golden Sheldrake. The classical period of Mon history came to an end in 1757, when the Burman warrior-king Alaungphaya defeated the last Mon ruler of Pegu. Thousands of his followers were driven into exile in Ayuthaiya (Thailand), where they settled in the border areas adjoining Burma.

Mon civilisation was among the most distinctive and influential in precolonial Southeast Asia. Significant aspects of the language, art and architecture, political and legal arrangements, and above all the religion, of the great Thai and Burman civilisations were derived from the earlier Mon society, which acted as a vector in the transmission of Theravada Buddhism and Indianised culture to the region. This civilising role helps to explain the enduring prestige attached to the Mon heritage across mainland Southeast Asia.

Mon nationalists have looked back to the classical era as a golden age - a source of inspiration and legitimacy. They have struggled to defend the historical Mon identity from assimilation into that of the Burman and Thai majorities. Although, by the nineteenth century, the era of Mon political ascendancy was past, the language and culture survived - and, in some cases, thrived.

The Colonial Era. During the colonial period in Burma, indigenous socio-political identities were undermined, leading to the emergence of new ideas of the nation, based on a combination of traditional and received concepts. One important consequence of colonial administration was the emergence of social groups based on newly-articulated ethnic identities. Self-consciously distinct ethnic groups, such as the Karen and Kachin minorities, were encouraged to identify themselves in opposition to other sectors of a segmented ‘plural society’.

The question of whether discrete ethno-national identities pre-existed - or were a product of - the eighteenth century Mon-Burman wars, and one-and-a-quarter centuries of colonial rule, has been tackled by a number of scholars. Although the British period saw considerable further absorption of the Mon language and culture into the Burman centre, sectors of the old Mon elite remained secure in their identity, based as on the achievements of the precolonial civilisation.

As traditional social, economic and political structures were overthrown, and replaced by an administration geared to the needs of British India, members of the Burman majority found themselves marginalised within the colonial state, with little reason to identify with its ethos or structures, but considerable reason to resent those (such as the Karen) who did. When, in the 1920s and '30s, colonial rule came under assault from a militant new generation of well-educated Burmese nationalists, the institutional weakness of a potentially independent state of Burma became apparent. With the traditional polity destroyed, and the colonial state increasingly discredited, different parties put forward competing, more-or-less articulate, ideas of a future Burma.

Until the eve of the Second World War, Mon political activity was largely conducted from within the mainstream Burmese nationalist movement. Mon students participated in the 1920 University Students' strike, and the Mon politician, U Chit Hlaing, served for several years as president of the General Council of Burmese Associations, the first overtly political movement in modern Burma.

In 1939 the All Ramanya Mon Association (ARMA) was established by U Chit Hlaing and colleagues in Rangoon. The majority of post-war Mon leaders were at one time or another members of the ARMA, and the association is regarded as the forerunner of the modern nationalist movement. Its official objective was the preservation of Mon language, culture and religion. The association was reluctant to play more active political role, for fear of fragmenting the burgeoning Burmese nationalist movement.

However, following the war, in November 1945, Nai Po Cho, a Moulmein-born Christian and English lecturer at Rangoon University, formed the United Mon Association (UMA), the first overtly political Mon organisation of modern times. At first the UMA worked closely with Aung San’s AFPFL. However, it soon became apparent that the Burman war veterans in the AFPFL and Tatmadaw, who were in the forefront of the drive for independence, regarded Burma a unitary state, and had little sympathy for the nascent Mon cause.

Independence and Civil War. As they were not regarded as residents of the ‘Frontier Areas’, the Mon were not represented at the historic February 1947 Panglong Conference. Instead, the majority of Mon leaders preferred to throw in their lot with the ambitious Karen nationalist leadership.

Although twenty-four seats had been reserved for the Karen, the KNU boycotted the 9^th April 1947 elections to the Constituent Assembly, as did Nai Po Cho’s UMA, which had by this time become disillusioned with the lack of recognition granted to Mon claims within the AFPFL. According to Nai Shwe Kyin, the 1947 poll was rigged, and despite vigorous campaigning and strong support among their own community, the seven independent Mon candidates all failed to win any seats.

The first Mon armed organisation of modern times, the Mon National Defence Organisation (MNDO), was established in Moulmein in March 1948. It was modelled on the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), which had been set up by Mahn Ba Zan in July the previous year, as the armed wing of the KNU. Although originally conceived of an organisation for the defence of the Mon community from marauding Burman militias, the MNDO soon took the political offensive.

On 20^th July 1948 a small groups of Mon rebels seized weapons from Zarthabyin police station in southern Moulemein District, before raising the sheldrake flag and declaring their intention to fight for Mon autonomy, within the newly-independent Union of Burma. Six weeks later, the MNDO, together with the KNDO and Karen policemen, took control of the key port of Moulemein. They withdrew after a few days, before going back underground at Insein, in late January 1949 (the battle from which the start of the Mon and Karen insurgencies is usually dated).

Following the development of ideological fissures within the movement, and after a number of battle-field defeats, more than a thousand Mon troops agreed a ceasefire with the U Nu regime on 12^th July 1958, two months before the first Ne Win coup (in total, about 5,500 insurgents ‘returned to the legal fold’ in 1958). Within a week, a small band of activists, led by Nai Shwe Kyin, had established the NMSP - the vanguard of the armed Mon nationalist movement for the next forty years.

In March 1962 Ne Win and the Tatmadaw again captured the state, in order to defend and project a unitary idea of the nation, the origins of which lay in the colonial era and Second World War. Throughout the Ne Win era, Burma’s communist and ethnic insurgents fought on.

Like the KNU and KIO, the NMSP was a leading member of the National Democratic Front (NDF) and Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), fighting a series of (mostly losing) battles against the Tatmadaw, during which attitudes to the conflict in Burma hardened on all sides. As a result of the fighting, and the Tatmadaw’s brutally effective counter-insurgency strategy, millions of civilians across Burma became displaced, including tens of thousand within Mon State (a largely artificial entity, gazetteered under the 1974 constitution).

In 1990 the first regular Mon refugee camps were established in Thailand, where nearly 50,000 Karen and Karenni refugees were already living along the border, further to the north. By 1995, all but three thousand of the ten thousand Mon refugees had been more-or-less forcibly repatriated by the Thai military authorities (the last Mon refugees in Thailand - at Pa Yaw - were repatriated in 1996). Through the relocation of civilian victims of the civil war, the Royal Thai Army and National Security Council pressurised the NNSP into agreeing a ceasefire with Rangoon, which in turn would open the way for the economic exploitation newly ‘pacified’ parts of lower Burma.

Although they continued to receive limited assistance from Thailand-based NGOs, the repatriated Mon refugees enjoyed no real protection - as was demonstrated on 21^st July 1994, when the Tatmadaw attacked Halochanee camp, to which some 4,000 Mon refugees had recently been moved. In the face of attacks on its civilian support base, and continued economic and political pressure from the Thai authorities, on 29^th June 1995 an NMSP delegation in Moulemein finalised a ceasefire with the SLORC. The terms were similar to those agreed with the KIO in 1994, under which the ex-insurgents would continue to control some ‘liberated zones’ in the countryside, but be largely excluded from mainstream national politics. In return, they would receive limited ‘development assistance’ from the regime. such as it was, this turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice.

NON-CEASEFIRE GROUPS and CEASEFIRE GROUPS

The KNU et al. If the KNU was going to make a ceasefire with Rangoon, then it would have been in a far stronger negotiating position before the fall of its Mannerplaw headquarters in January 1995, than afterwards. The KNU was further weakened by the loss of its remaining ‘liberated zones’, during the Tatmadaw’s 1997 dry season offensives (which also targeted a NMSP break-away faction in the southern Mergui District). Since the mid-1990s, the KNU leadership has chosen to make a virtue of necessity, refusing to negotiate with Rangoon (despite some hesitant ‘talks about talks’), without the inclusion of a substantive political element in any talks.

The persistence of Karen insurgency, though probably militarily insignificant to the SLORC-SPDC, is of considerable symbolic importance; General Bo Mya and colleagues are mindful of their place in history. Meanwhile, Burma’s one million-plus IDPs and refugees - including many tens of thousands of Mons and Kachins - continue to suffer abuses, largely at the hands of the Tatmadaw.

Since 1995, individual NMSP officers have kept-up low-level contacts with their erstwhile allies. However, on more than one occasion, the governmnet has punished the NMSP for maintaining these contacts, by withdrawing Mon economic concessions.

The Ex-Insurgents. As noted above, Burma’s ex-communist (Wa, Kokang and other) ceasefire groups have been consumed by tensions between their economic and political activities, usually at the expense of the latter. Meanwhile, ex-DAB member-groups, such as the NMSP, KIO, Shan State Progress Party, Pa-O National Organisation, Palaung State Liberation Army and Kayan New Land Party (not all of which have steered clear of the narcotics trade) have faced the dilemma outlined above: whether to engaged with SPDC, or support NLD (and/ or their erstwhile allies, such as KNU).

Although critics have accused the ceasefire groups of profiting financially from these agreements, this has only been true of the narco-traffickers in northern Burma. Since the ceasefires, the coffers of both the NMSP and KIO have been depleted, due to limited opportunities to collect ‘taxes’ in areas previously patrolled by their troops. These resources have been only partially replaced with revenues from business enterprises, and assistance from the SLORC-SPDC (which supplies the NMSP with cash to buy rice). The ex-insurgents have not demonstrated much commercial acumen: while the NMSP-controlled Rehmonya International Company has made money from logging (and to a certain extent, fishing) licences, its trading and transport ventures have not flourished.

The NMSP continues to be prone to splits and internal power struggles (as does the KIO: on 24^th February 2001 General Zau Mai was forcibly replaced as KIO Chairman by a group of ‘Young Turks’). However, despite the dangers of being compromised, corrupted or emasculated by the relationship with Rangoon, the Mon ceasefire has also presented the NMSP new opportunities to work among communities ‘inside’ Burma, while maintaining limited ‘liberated zones’ in the border areas.

Over the 1995-96 academic year, the NMSP’s Mon National Education Committee administered 283 schools, including eight in the refugee settlements, and 177 'mixed' institutions (state schools where Mon is sometimes taught after hours, its use being banned in the government’s education system). Like the refugee relief operation, the Mon National School system was largely dependent on foreign donors. By 2001, there were 148 Mon National and 217 ‘mixed’ Mon schools, teaching 51,050 pupils, approximately seventy per cent of whom lived in government-controlled areas.

In the late 1990s, Mon community workers began to develop fruitful contacts with Kachin and other indigenous NGOs in Burma. Significantly, by 1999 the Mon Textbook Committee was printing materials in Moulmein, rather than Bangkok: the party had re-oriented itself towards a Burmese axis, after decades of dependency on Thailand. However, developments in the field of education were not matched on the political front, despite KIO initiatives to develop a alliance of all ceasefire groups.

OTHER MON GROUPS - ‘INSIDE’ and OUT

As well as various precariously positioned Mon armed groups in the border areas, a number of Mon NGOs developed in the 1990s among the refugee and activist populations in Thailand (and among the Thai Mon). These small groups enjoyed close links with Mon exiles in North America, Australia and Europe, and with the wider Burmese opposition. Their young members - many of whom were ex-NMSP personnel, and tended to be at least partly supported by western donors - concentrated on human rights reporting and political lobbying. Most of these organisations were members of the Mon Unity League, a nationalist umbrella front, which the NMSP left in 1999, when the league’s criticism of the SPDC became an embarrassment to the party’s leaders in Rangoon and Moulemien.

Other sectors of the Mon nationalist community remained ‘inside’ Burma. As well as the MNDF (some members of whom founded an Overseas MNDF, in exile), these included Mon students and literary societies, and fledgling local NGOs. Many of these groups were associated with the prestigious Mon sangah, which retained a distinct identity within the monkhood of lower Burma. The influence of the sangah cut across all sectors of the Mon community, in Thailand and Burma, helping to integrate the people into the majority culture, while in many instances retaining Mon characteristics.

The continued strength of this ‘sleeping giant’ was illustrated by the participation of members of the sangah in programmes to revive and promote Mon language and culture. Together with the Mon Literature and Culture Committee, since 1996 the sangah’s Association for Summer Mon Literature and Buddhist Teachings Training has been at the forefront of a series of successful Summer Language Training campaigns, which in 2001 saw more than 45,000 (mostly state primary school) students take Mon language classes during the school holidays. This is surely testimony to the continued relevance to families across lower Burma of a distinctly Mon education; it also illustrates the degree to which the NMSP has been side-lined in recent years, as the Mon community has struggled to maintain itself. This marginalisation has been compounded by the party’s inability to mitigate the on-going human rights crisis, or significantly influence the political process.

TALKS AND TRANSITION

Talks commenced between Aung San Suu Kyi (but not ethnic minority representatives) and the SPDC in October 2000. On 27^th January 2001 a KIO spokesman went on record, in an interview with the DVB opposition radio station, welcoming the re-newel of dialogue between the governmnet and NLD. He hoped that the ceasefire groups would soon be involved in the discussions, which might develop into substantive negotiations. The DVB reported that the NMSP also supported the talks, but was wary of issuing a public statement to this effect.

Once again, developments in Rangoon are setting the ethnic nationalist agenda. A visiting EU delegation to Burma declared that the talks offered the best prospect for change since 1990. While this may be the case, they also represent a potential threat to the ethnic nationalists. While the Burman political class remains divided between pro- and anti-democracy camps, the minorities are of some use as allies to both the governmnet and opposition, and might therefore negotiate from positions of relative strength. However, ethnic nationalist politicians remember previous instances of Burman duplicity, and fear the consequences of any deal struck in Rangoon, without their participation. As members of the urban, predominantly Burman, political elite, NLD (and SPDC) leaders are members of a different political class to the veteran ethnic minority leaders. It is therefore not surprising that differences exist, especially at the level of political culture.

The issue is finely balanced. Most ethnic nationalist politicians are convinced of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal integrity. However, if the SPDC and NLD were to agree a common position, without consulting the minority groups, then the latter might again find themselves marginalised, and overlooked as decisions regarding Burma’s future were made in the capital.

Although the NLD promises future political participation for all ethnic groups, political changes in Rangoon would not necessarily translate into improvements in the troubled countryside. In fact, any upheaval is likely to involve further violence and suffering. Ethnic nationalist support for the urban democracy movement is therefore tempered by the reality of a powerful and divisive military regime.

When UN Special Envoy Razali Ismail (who had helped facilitate the talks) returned to Burma recently, the political atmosphere was less optimistic - although several NLD (but no MNDF) political prisoners had been released. Meanwhile, Burma’s peoples - Burman and ethnic minority alike - continue to suffer.

CONCLUSIONS

In general, the international community has been slow to recognise - and support - the significance of the ceasefires. These agreements have undoubtedly strengthened the position of the Tatmadaw, and allowed the military regime to make much of the ex-insurgents’ ‘return to the legal fold’. However, they have also created some political space, within which Mon politicians and community leaders have begun to work on the rehabilitation and development of ‘civil society’. Despite the on-going repression of political and human rights, the sheldrake may yet fly again.

If the NMSP is to play a central role in this tentative revival, then the party will have to re-invent itself as a post-insurgent group, with a clear and relevant political vision. The ageing NMSP leaders will have to determine where they stand on the big issues of Burmese politics. In particular, the party must adopt a consistent policy towards the mainstream democracy movement (i.e. the NLD), and explain this position to constituencies inside Burma, on the border and overseas. Such political re-positioning will have to be accompanied by a re-conceptualisation of democracy as a process - which must be reflected in the party’s policy and practice - and not just an end-state, to be achieved in some distant future.

The international community can play a part here. As well as continuing to bring pressure on the SPDC to initiate political reform, foreign governments, UN and donor agencies, and IGOs and NGOs must engage with and empower those non-regime groups attempting to work inside Burma, under the most difficult of circumstances.

* * * * * * * * * * *

These issues are covered in greater detail in Ashley South’s forthcoming book –

Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake (Curzon Press May 2002).

This is a political history of the Mon people of lower Burma and Thailand - the people of the Golden Sheldrake. The Mon are renowned for their important civilising role in pre-colonial Southeast Asia and achievements in the fields of art and religion. However, contemporary Mon society has until now received less attention.

Charting Mon history from the earliest times to the present, Ashley South describes the origins of Burma’s ethnic politics in the pre-colonial era and developments during the British (and Japanese) colonial periods. Following independence in 1948, Burma was plunged into a civil war which still drags on today. The book explores the background to and major episodes in the war, and compares the experiences of various parties to the conflict, including the Mon, Karen and Kachin ethnic communities and insurgent organisations. It provides unique insights into the dynamics of armed conflict in Burma, and examines the controversial series of ceasefire agreements negotiated since 1989, between various insurgent armies and the military government. Exploring the relationship between the Burmese democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the ethnic insurgents, international and local non-government organisations, and Burma’s one million-plus refugees, the author concludes by looking at the future of the ‘ethnic question’ in Burma.

This is one of the most important contributions in recent years to the literature on Burma. Situating events in a regional perspective, Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake will be of interest to students of Southeast Asian history and politics. Anthropologists will appreciate the sustained focus on issues of identity and assimilation, whilst the author’s first-hand accounts of the humanitarian crisis along the Thailand-Burma border are of particular relevance to the study of displacement and under-development.

ISBN 0 7007 1609 2 : 324 pp.

Hardback : £45.00.

publish@curzonpress.co.uk