Inside the Karen Insurgency: Explaining Conflict and Conciliation in Myanmar’s Changing Borderlands

Brenner, David. 2018. Inside the Karen Insurgency: Explaining Conflict and Conciliation in Myanmar’s Changing Borderlands. Asian Security, 14(2), pp. 83-99. ISSN 1479-9855 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Since 2012 Myanmar’s oldest ethnic rebel group, the Karen National Union (KNU), has sought for considerable rapprochement with the government. To many, this seemed to be the direct outcome of wider political transition in Myanmar. This article proposes an alternative explanation. Based on extensive field research and an emerging literature on armed groups, it demonstrates that the group’s rapprochement with the government was driven by leadership struggles between two rival factions within the KNU. At the core of this contestation are shifting internal power relations, which resulted from military pressures and geopolitical transformations in the Myanmar-Thai borderlands. These findings point to significant shortcomings of Myanmar’s peace process. They also contribute to the field of Conflict and Security Studies with much needed primary source data on the internal politics of insurgency, which shows how dynamics of civil war are driven by an interplay between forces on different levels of analysis.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2017.1293657

Dates:

DateEvent
6 February 2017Accepted
18 April 2017Published Online
5 July 2018Published

Item ID:

24366

Date Deposited:

28 Sep 2018 15:19

Last Modified:

29 Apr 2020 16:54

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24366

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