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  • Tackling Myanmar's Elusive National Identity
  • Priscilla Clapp (bio)

Myanmar's 'Rohingya' Conflict by Anthony Ware and Costas Laoutides is a tour de force: a comprehensive, balanced, meticulously researched, and trenchant analysis of a modern human tragedy. It should be required reading for everyone engaged in efforts to save the Rohingya and to address conflict in Rakhine or elsewhere in Myanmar, whether they are working on the ground or participating in media reporting and public advocacy. The excellent foreword by former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell also adds valuable context to the book.

The authors begin by addressing three major misconceptions in the international community concerning the Rakhine conflict. First, they challenge the notion that the conflict is merely a recent phenomenon arising from communal tensions between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2012 by amplifying the historical origins of the conflict to explain its many earlier manifestations. Second, they debunk the common misconception that the conflict in its current form is driven by oppression of a minority, demonstrating instead that it actually comprises three distinct sets of ethnic rivalries: between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims, between the Rakhine ethnic minority and the Bama majority, and between the Rohingya and the military (the Tatmadaw). Third, the authors clarify the misconception that the Rohingya struggle is about citizenship, contending on the contrary that it is actually a question of whether the Rohingya constitute an indigenous "national race," which is a status above citizenship that determines full political rights in Myanmar.

Ware and Laoutides focus next on three distinct waves of violence that have erupted in Rakhine State in the last five years. The first was a wave of communal violence triggered by local events that were portrayed arbitrarily in terms of religious differences. The second was armed violence set off by the emergence of a militant Muslim armed group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), that staged a series of attacks on security posts in October 2016 and August 2017, triggering an inordinately strong response by the Tatmadaw that sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into refuge in Bangladesh and elsewhere. The third wave of violence has been brought [End Page 178] on by the movement of the Arakan Army (AA), representing the Rakhine ethnic minority, into Rakhine State in opposition to the Tatmadaw. In the last two years, the AA has staged a number of surprisingly deadly armed attacks against the Tatmadaw, effectively extending the armed ethnic conflict in the northeast of the country to the western border. Ware and Laoutides identify five key actors driving the violence in Rakhine State today: the Rohingya with their militant wing ARSA, the Rakhine Buddhists with their armed group the AA, the ethnic Bama-dominated Tatmadaw, the National League for Democracy (NLD) government locked in a power struggle with the military, and the international voices who have "weaponized public shaming" (p. 21).

The book warns that the violence in Rakhine State poses a serious threat to Myanmar's reform process in several important respects. The conflict has confronted the NLD—the main advocate for reform—with two powerful groups attempting to undermine its legitimacy: one "anchored in domestic conservative circles" supported by the Tatmadaw, demanding a hard-line approach to the Muslim population, and a second "spearheaded by international actors," charging the government with collusion with the military in the abuse of human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide (p. 59). In the authors' estimation, Rakhine has become a major battleground in the NLD's power struggle with the military and seriously threatens national cohesion, particularly when combined with the rapid spread of anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, led by ultra-nationalist monks and other groups and propelled by misuse of social media. Anti-Muslim sentiment has become a pawn for political parties in the electoral process, threatening NLD prospects in 2020 and thus hopes for further reform. And finally, the violence against the Rohingya has seriously eroded international support for Myanmar and the reform process.

The book skillfully digests an enormous body of historical research on centuries of Rakhine history to take the reader through the evolving historical narratives that have become so essential for each of the three ethnic parties...

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