Humanitarian engagement NGOs
Organisations that undertake engagement with NSAGs on humanitarian norms, or on one of the issue areas (landmines and children), and
contributed interviews for this study, included: the ICRC; Geneva Call; the International Labour Organisation; a number of INGOs such as Norwegian People’s Aid and DanChurch Aid involved with mine risk education and/or demining; INGOs involved with protection of children, UN agencies, and other independent and local or cross-border CSOs concerned with health, IDP welfare, human rights, or education. For ongoing security reasons, many of these organisations cannot be directly identified.287 These groups have a more specific focus on engagement with NSAGs than the general aid and development NGOs that have been included in the third grouping below.
NSAGs
The NSAGs of interest to this study are diverse in terms of their ethnicity, geographic location and distribution, size and strength, access to
resources, interaction with external actors, and awareness of, or
compliance with, humanitarian norms. They do share a similar historical and political context of protracted conflict with the central state,
establishment of some systems of governance in their areas of control, and claims to represent and protect their respective constituencies.
Significantly, for this study, they have all been involved to varying degrees in the past, or into the present, with the issue of landmines and of children affected by conflict. Also, ceasefires between the government and most major NSAGs have been agreed since 2012, and a coalition of ethnic
287 It became evident during fieldwork that CSOs, some close to NSAGs, that were involved with human rights advocacy, reporting and documentation, have had a significant role, both direct and indirect, in engagement with some Burma NSAGs, and are included in this group
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NSAGs have since been involved in negotiations with the government towards a nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA). A ceasefire military code of conduct (CoC) that addresses landmine and recruitment issues (as well as disposition and movement of forces) is a part of this
agreement. The NSAGs in this study have also been the subjects of various humanitarian engagement initiatives from external and local actors.
A total of four NSAGs are examined in detailed case histories in chapter eight: the Karenni National Progressive Party/Karenni Army (KNPP/KA);
the New Mon State Party/ Mon National Liberation Army (NMSP/MNLA);
the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF); and the Democratic Karen Buddhist/Benevolent Army (DKBA). The ABSDF is a
pro-democracy, pan-ethnic, political armed group, ideologically opposed to the military junta in Burma. It was formed by students following the military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1988. The KNPP and NMSP ethno-nationalist armed organisations have been in conflict with the state of Myanmar/Burma periodically since the 1950s. The DKBA is an example of the factionalism that has occurred periodically among Burma NSAGs, in that it split from the KNU in 1994 and supported government offensives against the KNU up until 2010, when the DKBA itself split.
As outlined earlier, choosing a range of four NSAGs provided more detail across the issues and the policies and practices of interest to the study.
These four NSAGs are long-standing having been in existence for at least twenty years, and over fifty years in the case of the NMSP and KNPP.
They have varied in the past in terms of their ceasefire status or lack of it with the government and participation in alliances with other NSAGs. They have all been involved to some extent in administrative activity in the areas they control or influence. Regarding landmine use and children involved with armed conflict, some groups have undertaken action on one issue and not another, while others have undertaken action, developed agreements or deeds of commitment through working with local
organisations, and others have done so with international organisations.
The choice of these groups, therefore, gives the best coverage of the
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range of policies and practices generated by the groups, and by humanitarian actors that have engaged with them. Apart from representing differing objectives (political change, democracy/ethnic autonomy, economic concerns, or reaction to intra-ethnic divisions), the NSAGs have also been chosen for practical reasons of accessibility to leadership and members, and to organisations that are close to, or involved with, them.
In chapter nine’s assessment of the role of external actors (local and international) that have engaged with the NSAGs on humanitarian norms, three other NSAGs are also considered. These are the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA), the Kachin
Independence Organisation /Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA) and the Chin National Front/Chin National Army (CNF/ CNA). While not dealt with in the detailed case histories in chapter eight, these groups are included in discussion of humanitarian engagement processes and actors undertaking this in chapter nine. The rationale for their inclusion in that chapter is their frequent mention in interviews and other reports in regard to the issues discussed, and their similarity in terms of history, conflict with the central government and organisation with the four NSAGs covered in detail in chapter eight. The KNU is the longest-established NSAG in Burma and has received considerable attention from academics and journalists.288 While it is not presented as a distinct case history in chapter eight, its trajectory is comparable to that of the KNPP and NMSP which are dealt with there. The KNU helped to found the KNPP and NMSP with which it was allied and shares a long common history of resistance to the central state. The KIO is a large ethnic NSAG in Burma’s northern Kachin state.289 Like the NMSP in Burma’s southeast, it agreed to a ceasefire with
288 See, for example, Ashley South, "Karen Nationalist Communities: The "Problem" of Diversity," Contemporary Southeast Asia 29, no. 1 (2007); Mikael Gravers, "Ethno-nationalism in Burma/Myanmar: The long Karen struggle for autonomy," in
Burma/Myanmar: Where Now?, ed. Mikael Gravers and Flemming Ytzen (Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press, 2014); Fong, Revolution as Development: The Karen Self-Determination Struggle against Ethnocracy.
289 See, for discussion of the Kachin conflict and the KIO, Mandy Sadan, Being and becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the state in the borderworlds of Burma (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 2013); Wai Moe, "The struggle for peace in northern Myanmar,"
in Burma/Myanmar: Where Now?, ed. Mikael Gravers and Flemming Ytzen (Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press, 2014).
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the government in the mid-1990s after decades of conflict. The KIO’s ceasefire, however, collapsed in 2011, while the NMSP’s remains intact at present. The CNF is a relatively small NSAG compared to the others in this study.290 It is also unusual as its area of operation is on the Burma-India border, rather than the border with Thailand or China. However, its leaders have been involved with external engagement actors in third party countries. Like the ABSDF, it was formed following the 1988 democracy uprising and is currently small, and, also like the KNU, KNO, KNPP and NMSP, it has been involved in ethnic NSAG coalitions. These three NSAGs are therefore relevant to the engagement processes discussed in chapter nine, which also include the four case study NSAGs from chapter eight. For the purposes of brevity, however, these additional three ethnic NSAGs have not received detailed biographies in chapter eight.
‘Observer groups’
A third set of groups including aid and development NGOs, religious and civil society groups, UN agencies, and individual academics and
journalists, were asked for their input into the study. They were able to provide different perspectives on the NSAGs and on humanitarian
engagement with them. The interviews and data from these organisations enabled further verification of any causal claims made by interviewees from the other two groups. Organisations in this dataset included major international aid NGOs and UN agencies active in and around Burma, academics and journalists, as well as some local faith-based and independent civil society groups.
Analysis
Chapters seven and eight, and nine, in particular, draw heavily on the interview data. The interviews provided both specific information via key informants on particular policies and practices, as well as a broad set of themes raised in response to the interview question topic prompts.
McNabb suggests a six step process for analysis of data in case study research. The steps are organisation of data; generation of categories and
290 See, for overview of the CNF, Keenan, By Force of Arms: Armed Ethnic Groups in Burma, 240-53; Burma News International, Deciphering Myanmar's Peace Process: A Reference Guide, 2014 (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Burma News International, 2014), 105-13.
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themes; coding; application of themes and categories to the data;
consideration of alternative explanations; and, writing up of the results.291 Following initial transcription of interviews, analysis involved repeated reading of interview transcripts, and organisation of relevant excerpts from them into categories. The categories were initially informed by the central question and the topics raised in the semi-structured interviews regarding influences on NSAG behaviour. The practices and policies on the two issues chosen as indicators of adherence or otherwise with humanitarian norms (landmines and children affected by armed conflict), were
developed as categories across which contributory factors (positive and negative) to NSAG behaviour and humanitarian engagement with them were able to be positioned. For example, attention was given to where respondents may have referred to economic or resource factors, to issues of legitimacy or identity, limitations to capacity, to the work of local civil society, or to military or political necessity, and so forth. Themes also included consideration of specific actions or processes, for example, mine risk education or demobilisation of child soldiers, as well as other aspects of these issues raised in the interviews that had not initially been
considered. The categories were further disaggregated between those policies and practices of NSAGs that contributed to improved civilian protection and norm compliance, and those that did not, and the reasons for that.
Coding was carried out within word documents using different colour highlighting for relevant excerpts. During the reading and re-reading for coding, key informant responses that provided particular insight into an issue or provided an effective summation or representative example about how that issue was perceived or understood were also noted. These excerpts were collated respectively in documents dedicated to significant themes or issues raised in the interviews. As Yin states regarding the use of theoretical propositions during analysis generated from the literature, they help to point to “relevant contextual conditions to be described as well
291 McNabb, Research Methods for Political Science: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, 367.
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as explanations to be examined.”292 Therefore, attention was focused, not only on where respondents were in agreement on thematic issues, but also where they diverged, and where alternative explanations not foreseen by the original propositions were raised. This meets McNabb’s fifth step, of considering alternative explanations. It also helped with taking into
account different perspectives on the issues being addressed. This
triangulation from “multiple perspectives” provides not only verification, but also “serves to clarify meaning by identifying different ways the
phenomenon is being seen.”293 The interview themes were also assessed against other data sources including from the academic and practitioner literature, UN and NGO reports, and local media. The findings were then summarised and assessed in terms of the Burma case study as a whole, and compared against the original theoretical propositions developed for the study. The interview responses were deployed in analysis of the landmine and child soldier issues in chapter seven, in the individual case studies of the NSAGs in chapter eight, and assessment of humanitarian engagement processes with them in chapter nine.