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sanctions. If at all, Myanmar’s generals felt more secure after having
successfully fended off interventionist calls in the wake of cyclone
Nargis in 2008 (Bünte 2014; Egreteau 2016: 9). The ruling military
elite initiated the political transition in Myanmar and it did so from a
position of strength. To understand why and how Myanmar’s military
leaders would loosen their grip on power voluntarily and what this
top-down nature of transition means for social and political action, it is
important to analyse the country’s long path to transition, which started
in the late 1980s. Just before the end of the Cold War, international and
domestic forces started to reorder in ways that empowered Myanmar’s
central state over its restive periphery.
Internationally, China’s and Thailand’s interests changed. Instead
of providing covert support to various non-state armies, Beijing and
Bangkok became increasingly interested in profiting from Myanmar’s
promising economic potentials to develop their own land-locked and
marginalised peripheries. Myanmar’s vast but largely untapped natural
riches – including minerals, natural gas, and hydropower – and its
undeveloped export market, presented ideal opportunities for this
(Jones 2014: 791; Smith 1999). Conscious that ethnic rebels could not
be defeated in light of the thriving smuggling economy, Myanmar’s
military leaders concomitantly pushed for liberalising foreign trade.
This enabled Myanmar’s state to erode the revenue base of EAOs,
which tipped the power balance between the centre and periphery into
the direction of the central state (Jones 2014: 794).
Domestically, Myanmar’s generals have managed to marginalise EAOs
with bilateral ceasefire agreements since the late 1980s. EAO leaders
entered these arrangements out of a variety of reasons, among which
war weariness and humanitarian concerns featured prominently. They
initially hoped that ceasefire agreements would lead to political dialogue
and eventually a negotiated settlement of their demand for greater
autonomy. This did not materialise under the previous military-led
regimes – the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
established in 1988 after the student revolution and renamed the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in 1997. Yet, the ceasefires
allowed rebels to retain their arms and govern pockets of territory in
newly established special administrative regions. Moreover, leaders of
ceasefire groups were rewarded with opportunities to partake in an
unregulated ‘ceasefire capitalism’: the mutual exploitation of their area’s
natural resources together with foreign and domestic businessmen as
well as Tatmadaw generals (Woods 2011; Brenner 2019: 40–6).
These ceasefire politics enabled the Tatmadaw to establish itself as the
most powerful military, political, and economic actor in Myanmar’s
border areas. Militarily, the Tatmadaw has rapidly expanded its troop
size and firepower in the country’s rebel borderlands. Overall troop size
increased from 200,000 troops in 1988 to 320,000 troops in 1995, most
of which were stationed in the country’s border areas and outfitted with
US$2bn worth of modern Chinese weaponry (Smith 1999: 426;
IDS Bulletin Vol. 50 No. 3 September 2019 ‘Accountability Amidst Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: Learning from Recent Cases’ 17–36
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