Elucidating Intractability

Violence dramatically escalated in western Myanmar's Rakhine State in 2017 and 2018, forcing well over 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. At the height of violence, the weekly exodus was said to be swifter than the flow of refugees from Rwanda in 1994. Reports of indiscriminate killings, systematic rape, a long history of discrimination, and hateful official language directed against the population have led several organizations and experts, including the UN-sponsored Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, to conclude that the crimes committed against the Rohingya likely meet the definition of genocide. The need to respond to the humanitarian crisis and the responsibility to protect vulnerable groups seem clear. Many have made calls to hold perpetrators accountable and enable Rohingya refugees to return safely and with dignity.

If only it were that simple. Situations of apparent moral clarity tempt us to minimize their political and practical complexity. Yet we know that sustainable solutions cannot gloss over the Gordian knot of history, structural factors, and opportunism that bring about intractable conflict and mass atrocities. In Myanmar's 'Rohingya' Conflict, Anthony Ware and Costas Laoutides provide a great service in elucidating this conflict's intractability and the factors that lead to violence. The book largely succeeds in its aim "to illuminate the multiple dimensions and perspectives, explain the extensive role that historical narratives play, interrogate positions, and provide in-depth analysis that might help conceptualize a pathway forward" (p. 12). While some aspects of the analysis remain open for further inquiry, the value of this work in broadening and deepening understanding of conflict in Rakhine State and how it threatens to undermine the country's reform process is indisputable.

The first part presents a well-rounded portrait of the conflict, illustrating that the internationally dominant narrative of a persecuted Rohingya minority is incomplete. It painstakingly describes the three main tensions in the region: the violence between Rohingya and Rakhine communities, fanned by nationalist sentiment among members of both groups, and two sets of long-standing hostilities between the central Burman state and the peripheral Rakhines and Rohingya groups, respectively. While the Rohingya "have never previously been a particularly violent or religiously radicalized population," despite decades of marginalization, small groups have engaged in armed insurgency since independence in 1948 (p. 47). The focus of the two armed, secessionist groups today—the Rakhine-led Arakan Army (AA) and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—on the central government conveys that both groups perceive the state as the real adversary, rather than their Rakhine or Rohingya neighbors. In providing this fuller picture, Ware and Laoutides make the essential point that resolving the plight of the Rohingya requires recognizing how these three conflicts are interconnected and thus must be addressed together.

The book's second part is particularly valuable in offering a discussion of the competing historical narratives that help justify each party's claims and uphold this conflict's intractability. The authors recount the Rohingya "origin" narrative, which serves to portray the Rohingya as an indigenous group with historical roots in the region that reach back to the ninth century. The Rakhine narrative on the region's historical "independence" serves to bolster Rakhine demands for autonomy from Burman rule. The Burman "unity" narrative counters this conceptualization with a historical interpretation that emphasizes shared ancestry and unity among Myanmar's national races. Finally, the shared Rakhine and Burman "infiltration" narrative portrays the Rohingya as "Bengali Muslims" that pose an existential threat to Rakhine identity, Buddhism, and nationhood.

The authors then carry out the dicey task of evaluating these narratives based on historical records and dispassionate critique. Drawing from Jacques Leider, they conclude that the Rohingya identity, popularized in the 1960s, appears to draw from a "hybridized history" that finds roots in precolonial times as well as extensive Muslim migration in the nineteenth century (pp. 134–35).¹ Thus, the authors convey that while the Rohingya's origin narrative may not be watertight, the group's claims for political rights, even under existing law, are legitimate (p. 135). Ware and Laoutides also highlight how the Rakhine claim for independence is based on a...