Rebel Territory in a Resource Frontier: Commodification and Spatialized Orders of Rule in Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar
Publisher: Geoforum
Author(s): Kevin M. Woods
Date: 2021
Topics: Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources, Governance, Land
Countries: Myanmar
In southeast Myanmar (Burma), a global biodiversity hotspot is nestled within territory governed by an ethno-nationalist armed rebel organization fighting against the military state for self-determination.The forests of Tanintharyi Region (or Tenasserim) along the coastal extension of Myanmar between the Andaman Sea and the border with Thailand gives refuge to critically endangered wildlife, provides valuable forest ecosystem services, and acts as a massive carbon sink. Indigenous Karen (or Kayin) communities also call this habitat home, who are well known for their traditional agroforest management practices that have contributed to ecosystem richness. The landscape also provides a suitable habitat for guerilla tactics by rebel troops belonging to the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and their political wing the Karen National Union (KNU).Having been established seven decades ago, the KNU is the longest active ethnic-based insurgent organization in the country and one of the largest, best known, and most politically significant insurgencies in Myanmar (Jol- liffe, 2016). Over the past two decades, and especially since KNU’s bilateral ceasefire in 2012, government forest department officials, the national military, domestic agribusiness companies, and foreign conservationists have moved into these insurgent spaces through what can be best described as territorially-inscribed land and resource control grabbing (Barbesgaard, 2019; Woods, 2019a). These contestations over authority between rebels and those tied to the military state have emerged through multi-scaled political economy from war to ceasefire, and is reflective of the multiple overlapping crises of capital accumulation, climate change, and systems of rule.