Mikio Oishi Editor

Managing Con� icts in a Globalizing ASEANIncompatibility Management Through Good Governance

Managing Conflicts in a Globalizing ASEAN

Mikio OishiEditor

Managing Conflicts in a Globalizing ASEANIncompatibility Management Through Good Governance

ISBN 978-981-32-9569-8 ISBN 978-981-32-9570-4 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9570-4

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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EditorMikio OishiFaculty of Humanities, Arts & HeritageUniversiti Malaysia SabahKota Kinabalu, Malaysia

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Contents

1 Introduction: Current Conflicts in Southeast Asia and Their Management in the Region’s Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Mikio Oishi

2 Myanmar’s Unwanted Ethnic Minority: A History and Analysis of the Rohingya Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Stephen C. Druce

3 The Resurgence of the Kachin Conflict in the “Burmese Way to Capitalism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Mikio Oishi

4 The Transformation of Ethnic Conflict in Vietnam: The Case of the Khmer Krom in the Mekong Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Mikio Oishi, Nguyen Minh Quang, and Nguyen Van Minh

5 Political Impasse vs Economic Development: A History and Analysis of the West Papua Conflict in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Stephen C. Druce

6 In Search of Democracy with a National Character: Thailand’s Current Political Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Nichan Singhaputargun and Mikio Oishi

7 Managing the Mekong River Conflicts: Political Stability at the Cost of Local Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143Suwit Laohasiriwong and Mikio Oishi

8 Preventing Dispute over Haze Through Regional and Local Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165Helena Varkkey

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9 Conclusion: Emerging Patterns of Incompatibility Management in Southeast Asian Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191Mikio Oishi

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Contents

1© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020M. Oishi (ed.), Managing Conflicts in a Globalizing ASEAN, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9570-4_1

Chapter 1Introduction: Current Conflicts in Southeast Asia and Their Management in the Region’s Globalization

Mikio Oishi

1.1 Introduction

The age of globalization is considered to have begun in the 1970s when relative transportation costs decreased drastically, direct foreign investment (FDI) increased rapidly, and electric communication expanded tremendously (Hegre et  al. 2002: 7–8). As a result of these developments, we in the early twenty-first century are liv-ing in the world of supraterritoriality (Davies and Nyland 2004: 6), where different regions and districts are connected real-time in cyber space with physical distance increasingly made irrelevant and void. This situation has impacted Southeast Asia, which has long been characterized with historical openness and exposure to external influences, including those of ancient world civilizations and Western colonialism.

For some time after achieving independence, countries in the region except in the war-torn Indochina were comparatively introverted and pre-occupied with the twin process of state-formation and nation-building (Ayoob 1991: 267). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) formed in 1967 was eager to keep the part of South East Asia under its footprint as a “Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality” (ASEAN Secretariat 2012) in the global rivalry between superpowers. However, the end of the Cold War appears to have re-activated the region’s inherent openness while still engaging and balancing among external powers (Kausikan 2016). This trend eventually led to the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015, which aims to transform Southeast Asia into a large market of over 600  million people, seamlessly integrated to the global economy, particularly “global value chains” (Lopez-Gonzalez and Kowalski 2015; OECD 2018) by boost-ing international trade and welcoming foreign direct investments from outside the region.

M. Oishi (*) Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysiae-mail: mikio.oishi@ums.edu.my

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The globalization of Southeast Asia cannot but impact regional conflicts with its aggravating and alleviating factors and in terms of the ways they are managed. In the process of globalization, the state serves as a structure mediating between the forces of globalization and the locality, where conflict appears typically from resource extraction and energy development, such as mineral mining and dam con-struction by multinational corporations, and ASEAN can be understood as a loose collectivity of such mediatory structures (Oishi and Ghani 2016: 107–108). This structural make-up of Southeast Asia may work to protect the interest of the local people or may collude with the global forces at their sacrifice. Several questions can be asked in this respect. How does the globalization of the region affect existing conflicts, most of which are of an ethnic nature? What kinds of incompatibility does it generate as new causes of conflict? How does it positively or negatively influence the ways in which conflict is managed? This book aims to understand contemporary conflicts in Southeast Asia and their management in the context of the region’s glo-balization. Specifically, it investigates incompatibility, which constitutes the core of conflict (Ramsbotham et al. 2011: 10), and its management in the general trend of globalization.

In the following sections, this chapter first overviews the types of conflict in contemporary Southeast Asia that are examined as case studies in the following chapters of the book.1 These types are ethnic conflict, conflict over democracy, and cross-border environmental and resource conflict, and they are put in the region’s context of globalization. The chapter then provides the two key concepts: incompat-ibility management and mediation regime, both of which constitute the framework to analyse the management of the conflicts taken up in this book. Another key con-cept, that is, good governance is also introduced for the purpose of assessing media-tion regime to be applied to each conflict case.

1.2 Types of Conflicts to Be Examined in This Book

Although the conventional ASEAN Way of conflict management has been under challenge since the end of the Cold War (Askandar et al. 2002), most ingredients of this formula can still operate effectively in the political landscape of the region. The management of contemporary conflict in Southeast Asia has to perform in the space that is intrinsically characterized by a strong shock-absorbing capability (Oishi 2017), enmeshed with layers of structures and practices, which may operate towards or against good governance at the local, national, regional, and global levels and more and more exposed to the effects of the globalization of Southeast Asia.

1 For other significant conflicts in contemporary Southeast Asia and their management, see M. Oishi (ed.) (2016), Contemporary conflicts in Southeast Asia: Towards a new ASEAN way of conflict management, Singapore: Springer.

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1.2.1 Ethnic Conflict

Four of the seven cases selected for this book are carry-overs of the ethnic conflicts that began before the advent of globalization in the region. They involve four ethnic minorities: the Rohingya in northwest Myanmar, the Kachins in north Myanmar, the Khmer Krom in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, and the West Papuans in the Indonesian territory of West Papua. All cases show uneasy relations between those minority groups and central governments, which either aim to keep the grieved or disgruntling population (the Kachins, Khmer Krom, and West Papuans) under their own rule or persecute, expel from national territory or annihilate them (the Rohingya) in what appears tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia typically arises from the twin process of state- formation and nation-building. Certain ethnic groups that find themselves in newly established states in Southeast Asia do not willingly belong to the new political entities. As a result, there is a conflict between official nationalism and ethnic nationalism with fundamental incompatibilities involved. The former is threatened by the latter’s separatism, while the latter resists being absorbed into the former together with the identity of ethnic groups that it represents (Anderson 2006: 85–114; Smith 1981: 10–12). The history of the post-independence Southeast Asia possesses the aspect of a regional struggle to find the ways to settle the fundamental contradiction between the two nationalisms. During the Cold War period, the region sought to manage this type of conflict by making sure that it did not spill over national borders and hereby preventing its internationalization. By so doing, this region achieved and maintained stability, which opened the door for economic development, and the prosperity-peace virtuous circle replaced the poverty-conflict vicious circle (Bercovitch and Oishi 2010: 30–32). However, this virtuous circle has been threatened as the post-Cold War era witnesses the increasing internationaliza-tion of ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia. The answer to the internationalizing con-flict is to internationalize conflict management, as can be identified in the cases of Indonesia’s Aceh, the Philippines’ Mindanao, and Thailand’s Deep South (Baikoeni and Oishi 2016; Druce 2016; Quang and Oishi 2016).

The internationalization of ethnic conflict reflects Southeast Asia’s general trend of globalization, which casts an increasingly long shadow over the four cases of this category investigated in this book. Its impact can be captured in two ways. Firstly, the globalization of this region is generating new incompatibilities to exiting ethnic conflicts. Forces of globalization epitomized in export-oriented development strate-gies and foreign direct investment pursued and promoted by the central government are blind or insensitive to the local situation and tend to negatively impact local communities mostly in terms of local environment and livelihood. In this picture, the central government regulates the impact by determining the extent to which national economy is exposed to the external forces and choosing the particular regions of the country earmarked for this purpose. Negative effects add to incompat-ibilities of existing ethnic conflicts, in which local ethnic communities tend to hold the central government responsible for their own aggravated plights and grievances.

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Second, the globalization of Southeast Asia is opening up new potentials for the management of this region’s ethnic conflicts, which has already been subject to internationalization. This trend can be observed in these conflicts, which are increas-ingly discussed or deliberated in the venues of inter-governmental organizations such as the ASEAN, the United Nations, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and receiving the help of international expertise on conflict management. However, perhaps the most outstanding feature of globalizing ethnic conflict management can be found in the mode of operation of civil society in Southeast Asia. It can operate across the different levels of society. Through its numerous channels and networks for which boundaries of any kind are becoming insignificant, local issues may quickly turn into national, regional, and global issues, requiring to be addressed accordingly. The development of communication technology has sped up this pro-cess. Civil society represents voluntary associations of citizens and serves as the reservoir of ingenuity and creative ideas. The values and norms it generates and applies to society can contribute to peacefully and constructively managing conflict due to their regulative and constitutive functions, which can be employed to address ethnic conflicts that are easily internationalized in the post-Cold War Southeast Asia (Thakur and Van Langenhove 2008: 17–18; Oishi 2016: 13).

1.2.2 Conflict Over Democracy

For more than 15 years, the Southeast Asian region has been witnessing a persistent and seemingly interminable political conflict in Thailand. What have been observed in this conflict are huge demonstrations against incumbent governments. These events have paralysed the national capital of Bangkok several times and for consid-erable periods plunged in bloodbaths in street fights between demonstrators and security forces and resulted in the sudden downfall of governments by the declara-tions of the Constitutional Court or military coups. Unlike ethnic conflicts in the region, the Thai political conflict has not stemmed from the fundamental contradic-tion between the official nationalism and the ethnic nationalism. However, like those ethnic conflicts, it can be regarded as a by-product of the twin process of state-formation and nation-building.

The conflict involves virtually all Thais, who have been thrown into the powerful and inexorable vortex of modernization as an aspect of the twin process. In opening up and exposing Thailand to globalizing forces, the current process of moderniza-tion has given rise to a number of issues, such as the gap between the haves and the have-nots, urban-rural and regional disparities, and the undermining of the cultural and moral fibres of Thailand. These issues have elicited different individual responses, which have eventually brought about two mutually opposing camps over the idea of democracy. Two versions of democracy have locked horns with each other not only within political institutions but also in the street without end and with looming prospects of the total breakdown of the country. Only the military seems to have been able to control the situation with the imposition of martial laws and

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coups. There has been a heavy involvement of civil society organizations including NGOs, famers’ and fishermen’s organizations, and the social work wing of political parties. However, they have been divided between the two camps and been acting as parties to conflict with apparently very few to mediate the deep gap.

1.2.3 Cross-Border Environmental or Resource Conflict

The exposure to global forces can directly cause international conflict in Southeast Asia. This book looks at two cases of such conflict: the Mekong River conflicts and the latent conflicts between Indonesia and its neighbours, particularly, Singapore and Malaysia, over the spread of haze from Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan islands. Dam construction is the main cause of the Mekong River conflicts, which can be divided into two types depending on the location of the dam project: the Yunnan Province in China and other riparian countries, especially Laos. While both types possess their own distinct patterns of conflict, they share between them the negative effects of the global dam construction industry on the fishing activities and people’s livelihood along the Mekong River with governments standing between the two sides. Accordingly, the management of the conflicts involves a variety of stake-holders such as local communities, the government – local and national, the global dam construction sector and civil society at different social levels.

Since the 1990s, the haze from Sumatra and Kalimantan has caused a serious health problem and other inconveniences not only to the Indonesians themselves but also to the people of Singapore and Malaysia, who are at the receiving end of the haze. However, this problem has yet to crystallize into clear-cut conflicts among the stakeholders, who are plantation companies that operate across national borders, the governments of the three countries, and the civil society that also acts in a transna-tional manner in addition to the residents in these countries. The fact that they remain latent conflicts seems to suggest that specific mechanisms of conflict preven-tion are working, and this book is interested in capturing these mechanisms by focusing on incompatibility management.

1.3 Incompatibility Management

This book aims to understand conflict in Southeast Asia in terms of incompatibility and its management. Incompatibility is a situation in which positions of parties clash with each other and the parties cannot achieve their own goals without negat-ing those of other parties. For this reason, incompatibility makes up the core of conflict, and it is crucial for the research field of conflict management to identify incompatibilities involved in a target conflict and investigate and evaluate the ways they are dealt with. Theoretically, incompatibility can be handled in one of the fol-lowing ways or in their combinations.

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1.3.1 Eliminating Conflict Party as the Carrier of Incompatibility

The simplest way to handle incompatibility is to eliminate other parties as its carri-ers. In this case, obstructing positions or goals dissipate together with the eliminated parties, making it possible for the remaining party to freely pursue its positions and goals by imposing its own terms on the constituency of the demised parties (Oishi 2011: 101). When there is a large disparity in power between the parties, the stron-ger ones are tempted to adopt this approach against the weaker ones, as can be seen when the state actors are intent on crushing the non-state opposition or insurgent movements with armed forces. However, if the root causes of the incompatibilities are unaddressed at the same time, as is usually the case, new parties may arise from these root causes with their own incompatible positions and goals.

1.3.2 Imposing One Party’s Position on Others

It is not necessary for the parties in conflict to eliminate other parties to achieve their goals. They may make others accept their own positions by several means, such as open or subtle coercion, manipulation, or deception. In this case, the targeted parties may drop or change their original positions with the result that there exist no incom-patibilities any longer between the parties. Coercion can be peaceful or non- peaceful. Non-peaceful coercion is easier to recognize than peaceful one, as can be found when parties use physical force or threat to impose its own will on others. On the other hand, peaceful coercion can be carried out by economic and moral coer-cion. Economic power is invoked against the target parties as economic sanctions in the former category, while a sense of guilty or moral burden is aroused in the target parties in the latter. In both types of coercion, the target parties are forced to conduct themselves against their own will. Among the most celebrated cases of moral coer-cion was the civil disobedience movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, which led to the independence of India (Bennis et  al. 1984: 40–41). Imposition can be achieved through manipulation and deception as well with the target parties being unaware of the fact that they are being manipulated or deceived.

The status quo as a result of coercion, manipulation, or deception is fundamen-tally unstable due to the grievances and frustrations of the coerced parties and the likely anger and resentments of the manipulated or deceived parties in case they find the truth of the situation. Similar to these strategies is what may be called “incom-patibility absorption”. In this case, incompatibilities are internalized in target parties or their members when they are manipulated into dropping or not forming their own positions by unconsciously accepting the social conditions that hurt them. Thus, a potential conflict may be absorbed by the target parties and not manifest itself out-wardly. However, there is always the risk that the parties that have internalized

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incompatibilities may externalize them by becoming conscious of and rejecting harmful social conditions that they have accepted.

1.3.3 Deciding Who Has the Right to Their Position

Incompatibilities may be addressed by resorting to legal remedies, which may determine who are entitled to particular positions and to what extent. In interna-tional conflict, international treaties or agreements and, more generally, principles and norms of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), may be invoked by the parties to settle their conflict. When they cannot determine on their own, they may bring their case to institutions of arbitration, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. For conflict within Southeast Asia, ASEAN is equipped with a conflict settlement mechanism, called the High Council, although it has never been called upon in the organization’s his-tory. Countries in Southeast Asia tend to be reluctant to seek the help of interna-tional arbitration on issues where sovereignty is at stake. However, there are well-known cases of Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh between Singapore and Malaysia and Sipadan and Ligitan between Malaysia and Indonesia (Caballero- Anthony 2005: 271),2 where these countries agreed to comply with the decision of the ICJ, as the conflicts did not pose them any existential threat. Since interstate arbitration usually creates winners and losers, incompatibilities are dissolved or suppressed, depending on the degree to which the losers accept the verdict with conviction or reluctance. In case of suppression, the resulting status quo may not be stable or sustainable.

1.3.4 Turning Clashing Positions into New Ones That Are Mutually Compatible or Are More Manageable While Incompatibilities Remain

Incompatibilities may cease to exist by changing mutually incompatible positions of the parties into compatible ones. In other words, incompatible positions may be adjusted to each other through negotiation in such a way that no clash may take place between them any longer. There are several ways in which this result is achieved. The parties may make mutual concession or accommodation by giving up

2 Disputes over maritime sovereign rights generally take place on the periphery of a nation far from the national centre. For this reason, this type of conflict is not considered to pose an existential threat to the state unlike terrestrial dispute on land borders. For a detailed discussion on this differ-ence, see Mak (2009: 115–118).

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some part of their positions voluntarily. Or the parties may drop their original posi-tions for the benefit of other parties, “sometimes with compensations by linkage to other issues” (Ramsbotham et al. 2011: 187). In these manners, incompatibilities may disappear but, if the altered positions cannot fully satisfy the interests of the parties, the resulting status quo may be unstable. On the other hand, the parties may accommodate their original positions to each other quite well and resultant posi-tions can still fulfil their underlying interests. This is possible theoretically, as there can be more than one way in which interests of the parties can be met through posi-tions (Fisher and Ury 1981: 41). For example, the security of a state party may be enhanced by surrendering certain territorial claims to the other party due to height-ened prospects of economic benefits from the latter as a result.3 What differentiates this approach from the earlier ones is that the parties go beneath their respective positions to know each other’s underlying interests, which are then taken into con-sideration in adjusting their own positions. Here, incompatibilities are dissolved through integration (Ramsbotham et al. 2011: 187–188).

Moreover, it is also possible that clashing positions are transformed into new ones between which incompatibilities still exist or new incompatibilities replace old ones, but that they may be managed more easily than before or the original ones. This approach may be considered as realistic from the standpoint of “conflict trans-formation” (Miall 2004: 9–10), which does not regard conflict as something to be shunned, suppressed, or brought to an end soonest, but as an occasion for social change through its transformation at the personal, group, issue, actor, structural, and contextual levels (Ramsbotham et al. 2011: 175–176). In ideal cases, conflict may even be changed into a process of “social learning” (Fiorino 2001: 328–330) through incompatibility management.

1.3.5 Manoeuvring Around Incompatibilities or Setting Them Aside and Waiting for Their Change

Incompatibilities may be manoeuvred around or simply set aside with a view to avoiding direct clash between contradicting positions of the parties. By so doing, conflicting parties may expect the incompatibilities to change over time or, better still, disappear eventually rather than seeking to directly address them, as discussed in the previous subsection. In this approach, the incompatible positions are expected to co-exist with each other without causing violence at least for a certain period. Therefore, it is crucial that appropriate measures are taken to prevent direct clash and that there exists in conflict situation the capacity to absorb tensions or shocks that may arise from incompatibilities. This capacity would be envisaged to serve as a buffer between incompatible positions.

3 This case shows that the interest of the parties, i.e., national security, can be satisfied by changing their positions, i.e., maritime claims, which constitute a particular incompatibility.

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1.4 Mediation Regime

This book adopts the concept of mediation regime to capture the efforts to manage conflicts in Southeast Asia. Mediation regime is envisaged to possess the different functions of incompatibility management as discussed in the previous section. Since it is conceptualized to include only the peaceful functions, the function to eliminate parties with physical force is excluded in order to distinguish the conflict manage-ment process from the conflict process itself. This section first discusses the concept of mediation regime – the creation of the concept based on international regime, its fundamental function, and more specific functions – and then looks at the relation-ship between mediation regime and good governance. The idea of good governance is used to assess the quality of mediation regimes envisaged for conflicts that are adopted by this book.

1.4.1 Concept of Mediation Regime

The concept of mediation regime can be developed from international regime. Krasner defines an international regime as a set of “principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area” (Krasner 1983: 1). As is implied in this definition, actors, state or non- state, can also be regarded as components of an international regime. Following a constructivist understanding, an international regime is equipped with regulative and constitutive functions. As Hasenclever et  al. (1997: 163) put it, “on the one hand, they [international regimes] operate as imperatives requiring states to behave in accordance with certain principles, norms, and rules; on the other hand, they help create a common social world by fixing the meaning of behavior”. Thus, interna-tional regime enables actors to generate among themselves “principled and shared understandings of desirable and acceptable forms of social behavior” (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986: 764). On the other hand, its constitutive function may help actors to reframe issues at stake and arrive at a shared understanding on their nature, while the actors may in the beginning be in contention or disagreements with each other over the definition of the issues.

Thus, the concept of mediation regime can be acquired by adding peaceful func-tions of incompatibility management to international regime as defined above. Its fundamental function is to cause incompatible4 positions or goals of conflicting parties to be transformed in such ways that integration between those positions or goals takes place or to come to terms with each other for co-existence, as is shown in Fig. 1.1.

In actual conflict situation, the process within mediation regime for integration or co-existence may not proceed smoothly or in a linear manner. It may see ups and

4 In this book, words “contradictions” and “incompatibilities” are used interchangeably.

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downs, progressing and regressing, and crisis may break out from time to time. For this reason, mediation regime needs to include several particular functions of con-flict management.

The first particular function is to regulate or control the behaviour of conflicting parties to make sure that incompatibilities may not cause physical clashes between them. Obviously, regulative functions deriving from international regime may restrain the conduct of the parties by mechanisms such as “institutional binding” and “institutional balancing” (He 2008: 492–97). In the former, the norms, princi-ples, and rules of mediation regime may internally prohibit the parties from resort-ing to coercive or unilateral actions. Similar results may be expected from the latter approach by taking advantage of the fear of the actors that they may be excluded from important interactions in multilateral venues as a result of their own erratic actions. In both approaches, “saving face” may play a significant role in keeping Asian actors in line along with the notion of “appropriate behaviour” in specific circumstances (Hasenclever et al. 1997: 163). Also, economic measures or arrange-ments help in case the parties command certain degrees of economic resources. There are at least two ways in which economic measures regulate the behaviour of the parties. First, economic development stabilizes conflicting parties by transform-ing the “poverty-conflict” vicious circle into the “prosperity-peace” virtuous circle (Askandar et al. 2002: 30–31). This stabilization may remove or reduce negative elements in the conduct of the parties. Second, when they initiate or deepen eco-nomic interdependence between themselves, it may serve as an infrastructure for peace by functioning as confidence-building measures between the parties due to constant interactions in economic projects and by increasing the costs of hostilities such as military actions and nudging the parties for self-restraint.

The second particular function of mediation regime is to transform the nature of incompatibilities in conflict. There can be several specific ways to carry out the transformation of mutually incompatible positions or goals into the ones that are compatible or co-existent with each other. For example, when the original incom-patible positions or goals cannot be subject to reconciliation straightforward, they may be altered in such manners that would allow for mitigation in the intensity of

Position/Goals

Integration/Co-existence

Mediation Regime

Position/Goals

Fig. 1.1 The basic function of a mediation regime

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incompatibilities. Constitutive functions of mediation regime originated in international regime may contribute to such transformation by changing the way in which the parties to conflict define or frame the incompatibilities. These changes and alterations can be considered as taking place within the boundaries of a media-tion regime, which may be able to claim a part in positive results. Economic inter-dependence may also help alleviating the severity of incompatibilities by making them less important or even irrelevant compared with mutual benefits arising from such interdependence.

The last particular function of mediation regime is to absorb tensions or shocks arising from incompatibilities. Since the process towards the integration or co- existence of contradicting positions or goals takes considerable time, a mediation regime should in the meantime be equipped with this absorbing capability, which may serve to prevent or manage crisis. Put differently, this capacity can be regarded as enabling incompatible positions of conflicting parties to co-exist with each other in the short and long term. Thus, specific mechanisms such as hotlines between top civilian or military leaders on both sides, emergency meetings, and shuttle diplo-macy and more general aspects of “politics of ambiguity” (Caballero-Anthony 2005: 108; Oishi 2017) may be mobilized to ensure that the crisis may not reach more serious levels, but be brought under control. Southeast Asia has demonstrated this capability, contributing to achieving and maintaining regional stability and to preventing the region from plunging into chaos (Oishi 2017). The so-called “ASEAN Way of conflict management” (Askandar et al. 2002) owes considerably to this ten-sion or shock-absorbing capacity.

1.4.2 Mediation Regime and Good Governance

Governance has become one of the key concepts in several fields of social sciences, especially in International Development. A number of definitions of governance have been provided by scholars and practitioners, including inter-governmental organizations. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), governance means “the process of decision- making and the process by which decision are implemented (or not implemented)” (ESCAP 2009: 1).5 On the other hand, Thomas Weiss defines global governance as:

5 Reflecting their own organizational mandates and responsibilities, other intergovernmental orga-nizations provide their own definitions of governance. Emphasizing the authoritative power exer-cised mostly by the government and traditional local institutions, the World Bank defines governance as follows:

• The exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs.

• The use of institutions, structures of authority and even collaboration to allocate resources and coordinate or control activity in society or the economy.

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“the sum of the informal and formal values, norms, procedures, and institutions that help all actors – states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), civil society, trans-national corporations (TNCs), and individuals – to identify, understand, and address trans-boundary problems” (Weiss 2013: 2). He also regards it “as the capacity within the international system at any moment to provide government-like services and public goods in the absence of a world government” (Weiss 2013: 32). Taking these definitions into account, this book defines governance as:

The collective capability and will to address publicly shared problems, equipped with the informal and formal values, norms, procedures, and institutions that help enhance the capability.

Obviously, governance can exist at different levels of social system  – local, national, regional, and global – according to the nature of the commonly shared problems. There is a major difference between intra-state (i.e., local and national) and inter- state (i.e., regional and global) spheres over which governance operates. In the former, governance is undertaken mostly by the government as the highest and authoritative body within a state, but it is also taken up to varying degrees by non- governmental actors such as civil society groups, private companies, and trade unions. In the inter-state sphere, on the other hand, governance has to be effected by state and non-state actors in the absence of an overall authority, that is, a world government, as remarked by Weiss (2013: 32). Thus, when problems of public nature are handled in positive manners, that is, effectively or constructively and with the satisfaction of stakeholders, it can be said that good governance is in place.

Among the problems to be dealt with by governance is conflict, where positions or goals of actors clash with each other. In the dynamism of ever-changing human society, such clashes are inevitable, and good governance with regard to conflict can be predicated about the ways in which it is handled. In this regard, protracted, intractable, or armed conflicts suggest that there is the lack of good governance in the social system from which the conflicts emerge. In other words, where good governance exists, all conflicting parties can be envisaged to participate in the pro-cess to constructively manage conflict, and it is not necessarily assumed that the authorities play dominant role in the processes. To the contrary, government institu-tions in many cases of intrastate conflict act as parties to conflict and need to be subject to good governance. An existing concept from the field of Peace and Conflict Studies that corresponds to good governance is “process advocacy” (Laue 1990:

• Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exer-cised. (Bigman 2007: 150).

On the other hand, the United Nations Development Programme’s definition of governance identifies three aspects of governance: (1) legality that sets up “the rules of the political system to solve conflicts between actors and adopt decision”, (2) legitimacy that ensures the “proper func-tioning of institutions and their acceptance by the public”, and (3) participation that enhances “the efficacy of government and the achievement of consensus by democratic means” (Sivaraman 2014: 107). While recognizing the usefulness of these definitions, this book defines governance based on the one given by the ESCAP for its inclusive and open-ended nature and its eight characteristics of good governance, which can be easily applied to actual cases.

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260–261; Oishi 2011: 210–212), which points to right processes to manage conflict and thereby aims to enhance the efficiency of a given conflict as a learning process for conflicting parties. This idea of learning capability can be applied to society at large under another concept of “social learning” (Fiorino 2001: 328–330), which would facilitate the constructive interaction among the stakeholders for optimal results for society. These two concepts contribute to enriching and operationalizing the idea of good governance applied to incompatibility management.

Based on this argument, this book adopts eight major characteristics of good governance that the ESCAP identifies: (1) participatory, (2) consensus oriented, (3) accountable, (4) transparent, (5) responsive, (6) effective and efficient, (7) equitable and inclusive, and (8) following the rule of law (ESCAP 2009: 1–3), to assess a mediation regime that is found operating to manage incompatibilities in a given conflict. Here, it is considered that governance at different social levels with particu-lar types of actors involved influences the quality of a mediation regime. Such qual-ity is regarded as good to the extent to which the elements of good governance exists in a given mediation regime.

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Chapter 2Myanmar’s Unwanted Ethnic Minority: A History and Analysis of the Rohingya Crisis

Stephen C. Druce

2.1 Introduction

At the time this chapter was submitted for publication, some 700,000 Muslims from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine (known as Arakan until 19891), who refer to themselves as Rohingya, had been driven from the country and were existing in squalid refugee camps along the Bangladesh side of the border.2 This mass exodus is mainly the result of the Myanmar army’s disproportionate use of military force in response to attacks in 2016 and 2017 by the recently established militant group Harakah Al-Yaqin (Faith Movement), known in English as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). While not the first military-driven exodus of Rohingya from Rakhine, the current humanitarian crisis is linked to violence that broke out in 2012 between the Rohingya community and another Myanmar minority, the Rakhine Buddhists, the largest ethnic group in Rakhine state. The violence of 2012 was the latest chapter in a long running conflict between these two communities that first erupted during World War II (WWII) and was largely a consequence of eigh-teenth- and nineteenth-century British colonial policies, including large-scale movements of South Asians into Myanmar. When Myanmar became independent after WWII, the conflict became triangular in nature as the two minorities felt disaffected by the new Burman-dominated government.3 Members of both communities launched separate and mutually incompatible rebellions against the

1 I use both Arakan and Rakhine in this chapter to refer to the geographic area of the current con-flict, generally using Arakan in historical contexts.2 Recent data from the Bangladesh government suggests the number of Rohingya in refugee camps could be as high as one million (The Straits Times 2018).3 The term Burman, or Bamar, refers to Myanmar’s dominant ethnic group who make up about two-thirds of the population and control the military and the government.

S. C. Druce (*) Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Bandar Seri Begawan, Bruneie-mail: stephen.druce@ubd.edu.bn

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central government with the Rakhine demanding an autonomous Arakan state within Myanmar and some Rohingya fighting for a separate Muslim state after fail-ing to have the Muslim-dominated areas of Arakan included in the newly created East Pakistan.

In the parliamentary era, there were attempts to manage and resolve the conflict in Arakan and the conflict between the two ethnic groups and the central govern-ment. However, following General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, management of these con-flicts changed dramatically. The new military government began a “Burmanization” programme that aimed to create a politically centralized and homogeneous nation in which they attempted to assimilate Buddhist minorities, such as the Rakhine, into a Burman nationalism while striving to erode their independent histories and under-mining ethnic languages. Non-Buddhist minorities were less favoured in this assim-ilation process, in particular the Rohingya, who because of their distinct language, ethnic and religious “otherness”, and large population concentration in northern Arakan were considered a potential threat to the nation and incompatible with the military vision of the country. Over time, management of the Rakhine conflict changed in favour of the Rakhine Buddhists with the Rohingya community increas-ingly portrayed as foreign intruders who had no loyalty and no place in Myanmar. In order to manage the perceived Rohingya problem, the government increasingly introduced numerous discriminatory policies against them, most notably the 1982 Citizenship Law that left most of them stateless. In addition, there were periodic military actions that drove large numbers of Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh, although most later returned due to international pressure or pragmatic government policies. While the Rakhine were favoured in the conflict, its triangular nature nevertheless remained as the government continually played on Rakhine fears of a Muslim takeover in order to maintain control over both minorities and reduce the potential for Rakhine nationalism. This was evident as recently as 2010 when the military government attempted to recruit Rohingya support with false promises of citizenship in the 2010 elections in order to limit the success of Rakhine nationalist politicians. As the military became more concerned with the threat posed by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), they came to see Rakhine nationalists as potential allies and in the build-up to the 2015 election afforded them political space to engage in political violence against the Rohingya community, which was evident from 2012. Further fuelling the ethnic conflict is Rakhine state’s lack of economic development. Consistent government neglect has left the state as one of Myanmar’s poorest regions, which has forced the two com-munities to compete for limited jobs and resources.

Much of the global media response to the violence of 2012 and the subsequent unfolding tragedy has tended to depict the conflict as one between a victimized Muslim minority and the state, often highlighting the rise of xenophobic Buddhist nationalist movements in Myanmar and denial of citizenship to the Rohingya. Other issues fundamental to understanding the conflict and its origins, incompatibilities, and complexities have often been ignored by non-specialists. These include the roles of history, ethnicity and identity, the effects of a long-standing “Burmanization”

S. C. Druce