to pursue a new round of ceasefire initiatives with individual major ethnic opposition
groups in an effort to lay the groundwork for its carefully constructed version of
democracy. The 2008 constitution made it obligatory for armed ethnic groups to shift
allegiances and military capabilities to the BGF branch of the military and all previous
ceasefire agreements were voided (Vandergrift, 2010).
Two primary goals were achieved by this maneuver: first, it inadvertently
expanded the military by bringing the ethnic factions under direct Tatmadaw authority;
second, it guaranteed the military a strong hand in border regions, thus enabling it to
maintain operational control over everyday workings and a means to mobilize against any
resistance movements that could potentially arise. According to Felbab-Brown (2017):
The constitution formally centralized resources in the hands of the central
state, giving ethnic areas disproportionally little. It also concentrated in the
hands of the central state control of all land not licensed to other actors. . .
As if to add insult to injury, anti-insurgent militias constituted a core of the
BGF . . . the Tatmadaw also used the BGF ploy to splinter and co-opt the
rebel groups, provoking divisions and in-fighting over political goals as
well as economic spoils. (p. 11)
This quote highlights the fact that the BGF plan was merely another aspect of the
military’s larger scheme to maintain power and control. By instigating fighting among
and between rebel groups the military was able to effectively carry out a divide and rule
strategy. It would prove essential in the years to come for the military to expand its
control in the border regions as decentralization began to take hold as a national ideology.
Up to the 2008 constitutional referendum, it was lucrative for the military to
engage in ceasefire deals with armed ethnic groups because it allowed them to benefit
from Burma’s illicit economies. By 2008 those in the highest positions of authority in
Burma discovered that in order to continue to be economically prosperous and powerful
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