Chapter 1

Who are the “Other” or “Quiet” Minorities?

I define the “quiet” or “other” minorities as members of minority groups who decline to take part in armed resistance against the state. The analytical dividing line between the “rebels” and their “other” counterparts is that the former are active participants, either in civilian or military capacities, in armed rebellion against the government. Apart from this major difference, the level of support for the armed resistance movement and its degree of assimilation into the majority population varies widely among these “other” minorities.

The fact that in Burma some Karens live quietly and unobtrusively among their neighbors does not necessarily mean that they are loyal to, or provide support for, the Burmese military regime, and it certainly does not imply that they consider the KNU to be in any way illegitimate. In any minority population, there will always be some who can be depended upon to demonstrate their loyalty and support for the government in power. There will also be an element who are “apolitical,” whose primary concern is to make ends meet on a daily basis. Then there are those who will question armed rebellion as a legitimate cause, but may utilize a variety of nonviolent means to preserve and promote their group’s identity. In addition, there are those who believe in the legitimacy of armed rebellion, but who opt instead to pursue a course of “passive resistance” to provide indirect support to the armed resistance movement. Finally, a portion, perhaps even a small portion, of the minority population may actively participate in armed resistance to assist an eventual military victory. These categories, however, represent ideal scenarios and are neither fixed nor mutually exclusive. An individual may move from one position to another, or uphold a number of principles—even at times contradictory and inconsistent—and engage in a combination of actions depending on the nature of the political environment and the circumstances of the moment. In addition, there will always be a gap between individuals’ convention (what people believe) and their actions (what people actually do). It is entirely possible and common for activists to not be completely convinced in the justice of their cause, and it is entirely possible for those who do not act as partisans to be completely committed in their convictions to the cause. All combinations are possible and one cannot assume an alignment of interior convictions and external acts.

The “other” minorities include those who are sympathetic to the cause of armed rebellion, but who pursue nonviolent options to promote nationalistic causes. They may provide financial contributions to the armed resistance movement—but in Burma this is sensitive information and difficult to obtain. At the other extreme of the ”others” are those who directly support the military measures undertaken by the government to suppress the armed resistance movement. Members of these “other” or “quiet” minorities thus range from those who collaborate with state authorities, to former rebels who “re-enter the legal fold,” to those attempting to maintain their identity—and their very existence—through institutionalized channels and/or various forms of passive resistance.

In this study, I use the terms “rebel,” “insurgent,” and “armed” (resistance) interchangeably to refer to members of minority ethnic groups who are active participants, either in civilian or military capacities, in armed rebellion against the agents of government. It should be noted, however, that these terms are not used to make any kind of political or ideological statement. In fact, in both popular and academic discourse, armed resistance fighters are generally associated with negative terms such as “extremists,” “hard-liners,” and “non-conformists,” while those who collaborate with government are considered “moderates,” “compromisers,” “soft-liners,” or “accommodators.” These terms may be appropriate in some settings, but they cannot be readily applied in the context of a militarized state where the government itself has committed serious human rights violations, and where some groups have taken up arms either as a result of forcible recruitment, or because they had no other option but to defend themselves against aggression.

I reserve the terms “extremist” and “hard-liner” to refer to those who support a strategy of ethnic purification (either through disseminating the propaganda of racial hatred or undertaking strong measures against those who promote interethnic harmony and coexistence), those who refuse to acknowledge the concerns of other cultural groups, and those who strongly oppose any compromise that would undermine their own position and ideology. Some armed resistance fighters fit these definitions, while others do not. The “moderates” or “soft-liners,” on the other hand, are those who may be sympathetic to the rebel cause but understand the concerns and positions of the groups opposing them, those who believe in peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial compromise among different nationalities, and those who advocate nonviolent strategies to pursue these goals. “Moderates,” in short, are those who can see the issues from both sides. Of course, not all the “other” minorities fall into this category. Some have voluntarily joined the government militia or paramilitary organizations to help the state crush the rebel movement. An expert on ethnic politics in Sri Lanka puts it this way: “These ‘so-called’ Tamil moderates in Sri Lanka in fact are members of paramilitary groups who engage in open violence against the Tamil armed resistance group!!!”1

The Political Significance of the “Other” Minorities

Armed rebellion is a rare phenomenon, and it is a more common response for disaffected individuals to carry on normal life as best they can or resist in ways other than resorting to violence (Scott 1985).2 Social scientists have tended to focus on such uncharacteristic moments of opposition, often neglecting the unobtrusive presence of groups such as a majority segment of a minority population. These “quiet” minorities do not seem to provoke any immediate or pressing concerns for peace, stability or other social considerations. Nevertheless, because of their significant role in intra-ethnic as well as inter-ethnic conflict resolution and political reform, it is important to investigate these understudied minorities and incorporate them into the study of ethnic politics.

For a start, viewing particular cultural or religious groups as homogenous and monolithic overlooks tensions within groups, which can be just as hostile and violent as tension between groups. For instance, the Serb paramilitary units that swept into multiethnic Bosnian villages in 1992 first killed Serbian residents who were in favor of ethnic integration. Only later did they turn their attention to non-Serbs (Mojzes 1994, V. P. Gagnon Jr. 2004).3 In Rwanda, some 10,000 “moderate” Hutus (many of them intellectuals) were killed by “extremist” Hutus during the genocide of 1994 (Straus 2006, 51).4 In Northern Ireland where Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists had engaged in a long drawn out conflict over almost 30 years, 22 percent of the killings committed by the Protestant “loyalists” between 1983 and 1994 were carried out against Protestants, either in political feuds or because they were informers. Among the Catholic nationalist communities, between 1969 and 1993, 65 deaths were attributed to Catholic activists killing Catholic informers (Kennedy-Pipe 1997).5 One famous case in 1972 is the abduction and killing of Jean McConville, a converted Catholic and widow with 10 children, by the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA), an armed wing of Catholic nationalists. Although the reasons for her disappearance were never entirely clear, a frequently suggested explanation is that she “angered the IRA by comforting a (British) soldier who had been seriously injured outside her door” (Nagel 2003).6

Likewise, members of the LTTE, the dominant Tamil separatist group in Sri Lanka, murdered leaders of rival Tamil groups, dissidents within their own ranks, and civilian Tamils suspected of aiding the Sinhalese (Pfaffenberger 1995).7 One researcher notes that the LTTE and militant armed organization, has “killed more Tamils than the Sri Lanka state security forces, particularly in internecine war among various Tamil militant groups since 1985” (Sarvananthan 2007, 1,193).8 Such actions are not essentially different from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s execution of Palestinians alleged to have sold land to Israelis, and the killing of alleged “collaborators” in many other settings (Laitin 1995).9 During the Palestinian revolt against colonial British and the Jewish community in the 1930s, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip killed at least 800 of their own for allegedly supplying Israel with intelligence that helped the IDF combat the intifada (Schanzer 2008, 55).10

In the same manner, the PKK, a Kurdish armed resistance group in Turkey, is believed to have been responsible for the indiscriminate killing of moderate Kurds in Turkey and in Europe. Within Turkey, it consistently targeted educational institutions in the Kurdish region, branding the public schools “instruments of Ankara’s assimilation policy.” Between 1983 and 1999, the PKK killed 200 teachers and destroyed 150 schools to stop assimilation. It also blew up bridges and hospitals and assassinated collaborators (Yavuz and Gunter 2001).11 Many members of the Karen diaspora expressed alarm over the spectacle of “Karens’ killing Karens” as fighting between the KNU and Democratic Karen (Kayin) Buddhist Army (DKBA) (the KNU’s splinter group) continued to claim more lives.

My second major point is that ignoring the role, significance, and activities of the “other” minorities—whose voices and concerns may not reflect the goals and aspirations of the armed resistance groups—may harden the feelings of “moderates” who feel that they have been subsumed under a broad negative category. Life can be precarious for otherwise well-integrated minorities who are perceived to be associated with armed resistance groups through “blood ties” or their “shared faith.” For instance, some Muslims in the Philippines and Thailand—as in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere—express frustration that in the wake of September 11, 2001, they have been branded as religious fundamentalists and potential terrorists because of their faith. A similar mechanism can be seen at work in the U.S. government’s initial policy of denying asylum to Karen refugees because of their alleged support for the KNU, which is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. Gutoc, a Muslim intellectual from Mindanao, vents her frustration with this form of prejudice: “Several Muslim anti-state groups are sometimes treated as one, under the label ‘Muslim,’ absorbing the majority who are apolitical among them.”12 She concludes: “The articulate, rational voices of Islamism are therefore systematically ignored,” and the “multiplicity of voices within Muslim communities overlooked.” Charles King cautions that “it is important to avoid applying such ethnic labels to individuals who may have had no real conception of themselves as belonging to such a group” (King 2007, 38). He adds, “when analysts interpret ‘ethnic conflicts’ in terms of the alleged groups involved, they play immediately into the hands of those who have ‘ethnicized’ the conflict in the first place—casting it as a war between entire groups, rather than between mobilized individuals claiming to act on those groups’ behalf.”

Third, investigating the lives and activities of those who shun armed resistance will reveal many alternative voices, ideas, attitudes, and situations, including harmonious communal relationships and attempts to promote peace and stability and create an environment for normal activities in conflict zones as well as nonconflict areas. Some of these locally initiated survival strategies and nonviolent measures for dealing with ongoing conflict and entrenched poverty are worthy of study and emulation in a wider context.

Fourth, ethnic armed resistance groups commonly issue demands to national governments for separate autonomous regions or independent states. However such proposals, which would ideally allocate particular ethnic nationalities to clearly demarcated territorial regions, ignore not only the presence of the other minorities, but also of other nonmember minorities who may or may not share the goals and aspirations of the resistance movement. Given the ethnically mixed communities that already exist among various cultural groups and their varying personal and political stances, the creation of ethnically designated areas may exacerbate rather than eliminate existing problems. Michael Gunter, a leading expert on the Kurds, contends that “the fact that as many as 60 percent of Turkey’s Kurds now live west of Ankara, that is, outside of their historic homeland in the southeast of Turkey, makes Kurdish independence from Turkey even more impractical. Why would these ethnic Kurds, many of whom are at least partially assimilated anyway, want to give up their more prosperous lives in the west to return to a problematic future in the east?” (Gunter 2004, 106).13 In Sudan, many of the two million southerners (mostly Afro-Sudanese) who lived in the north and were in the process of adapting to northern Islamic-Arabian culture, and who sent their children to the Arabic language schools, have refrained from joining the southern autonomy movement (Deng 1995).14 When the Basque Statute of Autonomy in Spain was approved in 1978, the majority of constituents in Navarre, one of the four provinces within the Basque territory, voted not to be a part of the Basque region (Castells and Jauregui 1996, 220).15 A young Karen man from a well-off family in Mandalay, Upper Burma, asked in some bewilderment, “What would happen to people like us who live in Upper Burma? Are we supposed to move to the Karen state if the KNU gets the territories it wants?” (Author’s conversation, Singapore, 2006). One researcher also remarks that “the de facto regime of the LTTE in the North and East is even more racist than the Sri Lanka state. The treatment of ethnic minorities, particularly the Mulsim community, in the North and East by the LTTE lends credence to our view. It is important to recall at this moment, with shame, how Muslims were evicted from their historical habitats in the North in 1990 and massacred at mosques in the East by the LTTE” (Sarvananthan 2007, 1,194). Interestingly, while some Muslims who lived in the eastern island of Sri Lanka favored autonomous Muslim regions, those who lived in the South “seem mainly unbothered by the plight of their fellows in the west and east. Largely because they are dispersed geographically, there is little sense of a common Sri Lankan Muslim identity.”16

There is also considerable evidence to suggest that an overwhelming focus on the territorial solution to ethnic armed conflict has effectively silenced the concerns of nonmember minorities who reside in the areas controlled or claimed by an armed resistance organization. The marginalized role of the Lumad in the Moro resistance movement provides a good example. The Lumad are a non-Muslim indigenous group in the southern Philippines. Although they have never formed a revolutionary group of their own, they were recruited into the ranks of the MILF and the New People’s Army (a Communist armed organization), as well as into government paramilitary organizations fighting the Moros and the NPA. The priority for Lumad, who have lost much of their land to multinational corporations, logging companies, and wealthy Filipino settlers in Mindanao, is to secure rights to their ancestral domain (Muslim and Cagoco-Guiam 1999).17 However, as the Lumad themselves have pointed out, the top-down negotiations between the government and the MNLF have left them out of any peace agreement, and they have been denied a say in the appointment of officials and the setting of conditions for an autonomous region in Mindanao. The MNLF and MILF claimed to speak on behalf of all the native inhabitants of Mindanao and Sulu, including Muslims, Christians, and Highlanders (Lumad) as a national grouping distinct from the Filipinos in Luson and Visayas, and in the process marginalized the voices and concerns of Lumad (Muslim and Cagoco-Guiam 1999; Magdalena 2001, 80).18

Fifth, pragmatic solutions to interethnic conflict must take account not only of diversity within the group, but also of the mutual interactions and consequences of intra-ethnic divisions. Different types of intra-ethnic relations produce various kinds of interethnic conflicts, which in turn require context-specific solutions. It is important to examine how the presence and activities of quiet minority communities and their interactions with both their rebel counterparts and the state authorities have undermined, complemented, or enhanced the viability and legitimacy of both the armed resistance movement and the regime in power.

In sum, new studies and research are needed to fully incorporate the quiet minorities into discussions of ethnic politics and to analyze the ways in which their varying relationships with armed resistance movements and the state generate different types of interethnic conflict. A better understanding of these mechanisms will help produce more realistic, comprehensive, and context-specific solutions to inter-ethnic as well as intra-ethnic negotiations and the political settlements that result from them.

Bringing the “Other” Minorities into the Study of Ethnic Politics

Since the end of World War II, ethnic relationships have attracted considerable scholarly attention because of their implications for the survival of minority groups and for international peace and security. Much of the work, however, continues to take for granted the cohesion of ethnic groups and has focused more on interethnic (operating between different cultural/religious groups) rather than intraethnic (operating within a cultural/religious group) conflicts. The works discussed here are not intended to form a comprehensive listing and are selected for the purpose of illustration only. Neither can these studies all be strictly divided among the four major theories presented, as some of the authors discussed take a range of approaches to their subject (either within the work examined or in other studies).

The first theoretical approach, known as “primordialism” or “essentialism,” perceives ethnic identities as fixed and attributes ethnic conflicts to age-old animosities between groups (Huntington 1993).19 It argues that human beings are naturally ethnocentric, showing trust in and preference for those belonging to their own cultural group while remaining distrustful of other groups. Naturally, therefore, societies made up of markedly different cultural communities will have problems in managing their intergroup relations. Primordialism fails to account for differences among members of particular minority groups who display varying levels of ethnic consciousness and diverse political beliefs and ideologies.

The second prominent theory in ethnic politics, generally referred to as “structural” or “institutional” analysis, demonstrates how both the domestic and the international environment and the institutional rules or procedures, whether formal or informal, expressed in the polity and society influence political behavior and outcomes. It argues, for example, that choices made by ethnic members on whether to resort to, or eschew, armed resistance will be largely determined by a host of broader political and economic factors such as the level of openness of the political system, the state’s capacity and propensity for repression, and international and foreign influences. These choices are also influenced by the nature of political institutions, be they consociational or majoritarian democracies; federal or unitary, territorial or power-sharing arrangements; single-member or multimember constituencies; proportional representation or first-past-the-post electoral systems. For instance, it is generally agreed that federal arrangements, which give minority groups a certain level of autonomy, are more likely to moderate ethnic tensions than a centralized political system where power and authority are concentrated under a single group. Institutional theorists thus favor crafting certain institutional arrangements to mitigate ethnic tensions (Rabushka and Shepsle 1972, Lijphart 1977).20

An excellent example of structural analysis is seen in the work of Denise Natali (Natali 2005).21 Natali traces state-building processes and their impacts on national identity formation in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran and shows how Kurdish national identity or Kurdish nationalism has evolved differently in these three countries. Natali shows that the political boundaries and opportunity structures that have emerged in each state over time determine whether Kurdayeti or Kurdish national identity is directed by urban or tribal leaders, highly organized or weak, ethnicized or Islamized, or conciliatory or violent (Natali 2005, xviii). In contrast to colonial Iraq, the tightly ethnicized, centralized, and exclusionary political space in early Republican Turkey removed all opportunities for the Kurds as an ethnic group and gave rise to a more ethnicized and violent form of Kurdayeti (Natali 2005, 91). In Iran, limited tolerance of Kurdish ethnic identity, despite prohibitions against Kurdish-language instruction and political parties, resulted in a more culturally adaptive form of Kurdayeti than the extreme Kurdish ethno-nationalist sentiment that emerged in Ba’thist Iraq and Republican Turkey (Natali 2005, 153).

Studies that compare situations across two or more countries and utilize quantitative methods can be characterized as “structural” approaches to the extent that they elucidate a number of important macro environments and broad categories as highly correlated with the outbreak, duration, and risk of recurrence of civil conflict. Examples of these factors (known as independent variables in statistical analysis) include grievances or “relative deprivation” caused by cultural, political, and economic marginalization (Gurr 1970), bountiful natural resources (Ross 2004), politically weak central governments (Fearon and Laitin 2003), the presence of diverse religious and ethnic groups (Reynal-Querol 2002), and the sizes of cultural groups (Ellingsen 2000, Posner 2004a and 2004b).22 One influential study, for instance, found that countries that rely heavily on primary commodities (agricultural products and natural resources) for export are more likely to experience civil violence (Collier and Hoefller 2001).23 Others have found that weak state capacity in peripheral areas—measured in terms of poverty, a large population, dispersed rural settlement, and rough terrain—is a good predictor of countries that are at risk of civil war (Fearon and Laitin 2003, Collier 2007).24

Structural analysis provides powerful explanations why ethnic relationships are more volatile in one country or one period than others. However, the theory’s weakness is that it is deterministic and leaves little room for choices made by individuals. Although structural analysis can identify general political circumstances and social phenomena assisting the formation of armed resistance movements by ethno-nationalist groups, it tends to aggregate such group interests and thus fails to explain why some segments of minority populations choose accommodation with state authorities while others join insurgencies. The approach is also methodologically flawed as a result of its exclusive focus on armed rebellion and negligence of the “quiescent” members of a given minority group. This selection bias may give undue emphasis to some factors conventionally associated with armed rebellion and underestimate other crucial factors that set the quiet minorities apart from their martial counterparts (Geddes 1999, Landman 2000, 35, 47).25 For instance, a preoccupation with violence leads these studies to focus on grievances based on socioeconomic inequity, a lack of cultural and political autonomy, state repression, and greed (competition for power and resources) as the triggers for armed rebellion. However, these causal mechanisms are necessary but not sufficient to trigger violent outcomes in all cases—they overlook other minority communities that may experience these same conditions but opt to respond “quietly,” or join the government against their counterparts in armed resistance.

Not everyone who experiences social and economic injustice or who is motivated to strive for greater power and wealth will automatically pursue the option of armed resistance. One example of this process is the many Karens from conflict areas who have experienced or witnessed relatives and friends being tortured or killed at the hands of the Burmese military government, but who have chosen instead of reactive violence to enter refugee camps or leave the country in search of better educational or socioeconomic opportunities. Likewise, although the economic backwardness of the Kurdish regions and the lack of prospects for many young Kurds have greatly assisted the PKK in mobilizing recruits for the insurgency, by no means all Kurds in the economically depressed areas have joined the armed resistance. Some Kurds from the southeast have left the region for the west, adopted the Turkish language, and restricted the expression of their Kurdish identity to the private sphere (Romano 2006, 75, 82).26 In fact, it is estimated that more than three million people have left the region over the last 20 years, and overall a little less than half of all Kurds in Turkey have made “the rational choice of existing in the untenable situation in the southeast” (Romano 2006, 94). Even then, by no means all the Kurdish population in Turkey who remain in the east (70 percent) have joined the PKK. Some stay behind simply because they have a stake in jobs, land, livestock, businesses, and other fixed possessions or lack the financial means to move elsewhere despite their desire to do so. Even within individual families, some siblings may become staunch supporters or active participants in the armed resistance, while others join the government’s militia or remain noncommittal to both sides (Romano).

The third approach to understanding ethnic conflict is known as “rational choice” theory, or strategic or instrumental analysis. While there are many variants within this kind of analysis, they all take a micro or individual-level approach and share a common assumption that individuals are rational, goal-oriented, self-interested actors who are primarily motivated to maximize their material gains. For instance, some rational choice theorists argue that grievances based on socioeconomic injustice and lack of cultural and political autonomy do not necessarily ignite armed insurgency. According to this argument, the availability of resources and opportunities for collective action are considered more important than grievances in triggering armed rebellion, since grievances are widespread in every society and therefore insufficient conditions in themselves for the emergence of armed rebellion. Accordingly, rebels act in self-interested pursuit of material gain, and only economically viable rebel organizations are able to mobilize troops and sustain a war effort. To effectively mobilize peasants to join a rebellion, rebel leaders must provide material incentives to initiate and sustain it. Oil, diamonds, timber, and other primary commodities are among the contestable resources on offer and become an important source of revenue for which rebels fight their governments (Collier 2000, Fearon and Laitin 2003).27 Others acknowledge that, although grievance-based issues are at the core of the process that leads to civil conflict, greed becomes a salient factor when the rebel leadership is faced with the difficult task of motivating its fighters and they must pay selective benefits to keep them from defecting (Regan and Norton, 2005).28 This approach has the advantage of challenging the “ancient ethnic hatred” thesis and emphasizing the fluidity of ethnic identities. It argues that ethnic identity is simply one of many potential and convenient identities employed by the leaders as well as members of ethnic groups to compete for power, jobs, or resources. However, a theory that attributes all human decision-making to self-interest shows remarkably little insight into why people and groups actually behave as they do. In addition, greed is prevalent in all societies, and it is questionable whether the elites and rank-and-file soldiers in armed resistance movements are more prone to greed or less progressive than those who choose nonviolent paths.

Another variant of the rational choice theory argues that ethnic insurgency is the outcome of deliberate calculation by potential rebels who, given their grievances, compare their expected gains from war with the expected losses, which include the opportunity costs of forgoing productive economic activity and the likelihood that their support for any rebellion will be met with severe repression by the regime in power (Regan and Norton 2005, 324). The motivations for joining the rebellion may also vary between rank-and-file soldiers and the movement’s leadership. For instance, Regan and Norton argue that the main objective of rebel leaders is to gain authority and control, either through power-sharing arrangements or control of the bureaucracy, while nonelite rebels are motivated by personal gain in the form of a minimally acceptable improvement in their personal standards of living (Regan and Norton 2005, 323). While rational choice theories can be used as an analytical framework to assess intragroup divisions based on individual rational responses to different environmental constraints and opportunities, they are limited by several factors. First, people do not always consciously make choices to maximize their material gains, as many leading commentators on ethno-political conflict have pointed out. Rational choice theories leave little room for nonmaterial appeals such as values, norms, ideologies, faith, superstition, and identity. They rarely take into account the deep-seated nationalist sentiments that make individuals willing to defend and die for the causes they believe in. A number of recent studies in fact have discarded the dichotomy between greed versus grievances as rival explanations for taking up insurgency and demonstrate that individuals who join armed rebel movements have a combination of interests and motivations that are often inconsistent and contradictory (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008, Wood 2003).29

In addition, not only do goals and motivations vary within and across individuals, but also the availability of alternatives and people’s capacity to take up these options differ. When confronted with state policies that in general are hostile to their culture and survival, minority groups and individuals within them are faced with a variety of options. They may remain acquiescent, provide loyalty to the government or to the opposing force, withdraw support from it, or engage in passive, active, or violent forms of resistance. Their decisions are ultimately contingent upon their subjective interpretations of these policies and practices that have varying and immediate impacts upon their lives and surroundings. Their responses are based not only on rational calculations of the costs and benefits of various alternatives, but also on their age, gender, and socioeconomic status as well as their past experiences of the state authorities and coethnic and rival ethnic groups, and their individual ideological and religious values. Rational choice theorists have been mute on the origins and nature of individual values, interests, and predispositions. Last but not least, rational choice theory overemphasizes people’s ability to make choices, particularly in constrained environments, and thus fails to acknowledge the prevalence of forced recruitment practices in war zones, for example (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008).

The fourth major theoretical approach to ethnic politics sees ethnic identities as socially constructed. According to this line of argument, identities such as Hutu, Muslim, woman, gay, teacher, and factory worker are socially constructed to the extent that the meanings and attributes attached to these terms have been variously assigned in different cultures and are constantly reinterpreted depending on the reconfiguration of power and the dynamics of socioeconomic and political realities. However, most constructivist studies fall silent on the question of theoretical or empirical connections between the social construction of ethnicity and violence since “the mere observation that ethnic identities are socially constructed does not by itself explain ethnic violence” (Fearon and Laitin 2000, 845).30 A selective review of six constructivist studies show that they share common features with rationalist, strategic analyses in viewing individuals as agents who construct ethnic identities to achieve various ends (Fearon and Laitin 2000). It is, however, also possible that some constructivists may share the primordial approach by attributing particular cultural discourses to specific individuals in such a way as to dispose them to violence (Fearon and Laitin 2000).

Recently, some scholars have adopted “thick” rational choice theory, or “sociological rational choice,” to explain social outcomes as the combined result of macro environmental factors and micro individual decision-making. The proponents of “thick” models of individual action point to their substantial explanatory power, for they not only consider the influence of broader socioeconomic and political factors, but also incorporate the individual’s values and beliefs, which include material as well as nonmaterial factors ranging from local status, distributive justice, norms, emotions to music, and horse racing (Hechter and Kanazawa 1997, Kiser and Hechter 1998, Hechter 2000, Kalyvas 2006).31 “Thick” model theories are beginning to make empirical contributions to a broad range of substantive topics in the discipline such as family, gender, and religion (not to mention topics such as criminology, formal organizations, and labor markets). There have also been a number of micro-historical or ethnographic studies of civil conflicts that use thick rational choice approach to provide more fine-grained and nuanced analyses (Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2004, 2006).32 These analyses have shed light on the complex and messy nature of civil conflict and emphasize the value of long-term fieldwork and qualitative micro-oriented studies in capturing the very nuanced events that take place in war zones. Kalyvas, for instance, critiques previous studies’ simplistic descriptions of civil conflict and argues that messy and contradictory details are the norm rather than the exception at the local and personal levels where violence occurs. Here, there is a “bewildering labyrinth” in which “every fact is contested” in a “swirling pool of rumors” (Kalyvas 2004, 166).

We have benefited a great deal from the more realistic, sophisticated (albeit complicated), and meticulously detailed and insightful accounts provided by these micro-oriented historical and field research studies. Kalyvas, for example, points out that individual loyalties in civil wars are “often informed less by impersonal discourses” and more by fluid, shifting, and often locally based cleavages based on kinship, family friendships, the residues of old feuds, and the like (Kalyvas 2004, 170). In addition, Kalyvas notes that “no matter how deep the beliefs and how powerful the allegiances, they are not the only determinants of behavior. People can be coerced, and violence is used to force people to alter their behavior and behave in ways that may not be consistent with their preferences” (Kalyvas 2006, 94). Some recent quantitative work complements these studies by shifting the focus from country-level to individual-level comparisons. Contrary to the mainstream studies that tend to focus on armed insurgent movements and rebel segments of the population, a few studies now incorporate participants as well as non-participants, and insurgent as well as counterinsurgent recruitment into their analyses (Kalyvas and Kocher 2007, Humphreys and Weinstein 2008).33 By bringing this previously neglected segment of the minority population into the frame, we discover the absence of a “clear, unequivocal, and fixed dividing line between combatants and noncombatants”—for example, the information used to trigger reprisals may come from civilians (Kalyvas 2004, 184, Kalyvas 2006, 180).34 We now know also that the same indicators—poverty, a lack of access to education, and political alienation—that predict the decision to rebel also predict the decision to defend the status quo (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008, 452). This knowledge has enabled recent studies to isolate more specific circumstances that differentiate those who resort to arms from those who “quietly” remain. Kalyvas and Kocher, for instance, point out that the difficulty of differentiating enemies from friends propels the state to carry out counterinsurgency operations that indiscriminately target certain areas, thus making it more costly for civilians to shun participation rather than taking sides. Thus individuals may participate in rebellion “not in spite of risk but in order to better manage it since the rebel combatants have access to skills, resources, and networks that should promote their survival relative to noncombatants. This is particularly true in situations where large proportions of the population are living close to the subsistence line and where combatants tend to be the only people in a position to avoid war-induced famine in some civil wars” (Kalyvas 2006, Kalyvas and Kocher 2007, 187).

This book provides additional theoretical and empirical insights to studies that utilize the “thick rational choice” approach by using the Karen in Burma as a case study. The study offers nuanced descriptions and transformation of positions among the various segments of minority populations: from those who are completely assimilated into the majority culture, to those who strongly adhere to their own culture and religion; and from those who fight on “the wrong side of the war,” to those who remain noncommittal, to those who resort to nonviolent means short of armed resistance, and to those who actually join armed resistance movements. Particularly, it focuses on the lives and activities of the quiet segment of the Karen populations, and analyzes how their respective positions and activities have in various ways affected the legitimacy of the state and the armed resistance organizations, the survival of the groups themselves, and issues of political reconciliation.

The study focuses mainly on identity-centered civil conflict, which is generally defined as an armed rebellion waged by “ethno-nationalists” or “sub-state nationalist groups” who are fighting for greater autonomy or separate independent states (Gerr and Harff 1994, 15).35 The differences between identity-centered and ideologically driven civil conflicts are not as clear-cut as appears on the surface. For instance, some “ethnic” wars are fought for economic or ideological reasons. There are some similar patterns of violence and recurrent elements that are seen in these two types of civil wars (Kalyvas 2006). Nonetheless, the impact of ethno-nationalist armed rebellion on noncombatant co-ethnic community members can be more visible, immediate, and drastic because it is easier for a government to identify and profile people based on their physical features, skin color, accent, cultural practices, and dress than people who share similar ideological positions. These other minorities who are not part of the armed resistance movement have often found themselves uncomfortably squeezed between the two opposing sides. On the one hand, they may be put under microscopic scrutiny by the state, face various forms of discrimination, or be made the subject of negative stereotyping in the media and public discourse because of their perceived close association with co-ethnic members who have taken up arms against the state. For instance, after the KNU’s failed infiltration of a small armed unit into the Delta region in the late 1991, the Burmese government arrested more than 5,000 Karens (many of whom were tortured), bombed several villages, and, according to the government’s own account, killed 317 “terrorist insurgents,” most of whom, according to eyewitnesses, were innocent villagers.36

On the other hand, these “other” minorities are held to a certain level of expectation by their insurgent counterparts to conform to the community’s norms or make various forms of contribution to the armed resistance movement. The lives of these other minorities often involve sensitive and precarious balancing acts and deserve a special analysis, separate from other noncombatants in ideologically driven wars. A vast array of nonviolent activities through which some of these other minorities have also attempted to maintain and preserve their culture and identity also set them apart from their noncombatants in ideologically driven wars.

The following three chapters provide an in-depth study of the Karen in Burma by looking at the emergence of the Karen nationalist movement, diverse experiences among the Karen populations, and circumstances that set the other Karen from their counterparts who have joined the armed insurgency.

Notes

1. Professor P. Ramasamy, Conversation with the author, July 4, 2007, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

2. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

3. Paul Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans (New York: Continuum, 1994). Also see V. P. Gagnon Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004).

4. Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006).

5. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland (Longman: London and New York, 1997).

6. Quoted in Joane Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21.

7. Bryan Pfaffenberger, “The Structure of Protracted Conflict: The Case of Sri lanka,” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 20, no. 2 (1995): 121–147.

8. See Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, “In Pursuit of a Mythical State of Tamil Eelam: A Rejoinder to Kristian Stokke,” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 6 (2007): 1,185–1,195.

9. David Laitin, “Marginality,” Rationality and Sociology 7, no. 1 (1995): 31–57.

10. Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas Vs Fatah: the Struggle for Palestine (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2008).

11. M. Yuvuz and Michael Gunter, “The Kurdish Nation,” Current History (January 2001): 33–34.

12. Samira Gutoc, “A Time for Moro Times,” available at http://zamboangasouthwall.blogspot.com/2006/07/time-for-moro-times-text-samira-gutoc.html (accessed on July 1, 2006).

13. Michael Gunter, “Why Kudish Statehood is Unlikely,” Middle East Policy 11, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 106–111.

14. Francis Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington D.C.: Brooking Institute, 1995).

15. José M. Castells and Gurutz Jauregui, “Political Autonomy and Conflict Resolution: The Basque Case,” in Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World, ed. K. Rupesinghe and V. A. Tishkov (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1996).

16. “Sri Lanka’s Muslims: An Unhappy and Forgotten Minority,” The Economist (October 11, 2007) available at http://www.economist.com/node/9949827?Story_ID=E1_JJQJRNS (accessed 2 December 2008).

17. Macapado Muslim and Rufa Cagoco_Guiam, “Mindanao: Land or Promise,” Available at http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/philippines-mindanao/promised-land.php (accessed 15 July 2006).

18. Federico Magdalena, “Ethnicity, Identity and Conflict: The Ethnogenesis of the Philippine Moro,” Mindanao Journal xxiv (2001): 75–88.

19. Samuel Huntington, “The Clashes of Civilization,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22–49

20. Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies. A Theory of Democratic Stability (Columbus, Ohio: Charles Merrill, 1972). Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).

21. Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

22. Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970). Michael Ross, “What Do We Know About Natural Resources and Civil War?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 337–356. James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1, (2003): 91–106. Marta Reynal_Querol,“Ethnicity, Political Systems and Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46, no. 1 (2002): 29–54. Tanja Ellingsen, “Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches’ Brew?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 2 (2000): 228–249. Daniel Posner, “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi,” American Political Science Review 98 (2004a): 529–545. Posner argues that in Malawi, Chewas and Tumbukas each constitute large groups relative to the size of country as a whole and thus serve as viable bases for political coalition-building. In Zambia, Chewas and Tumbukas form small groups relative to the country as a whole and thus have failed to mobilize their respective communities as bases for political support. Daniel Posner, “Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in Africa,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4 (October 2004b): 849–863.

23. The Collier-Hoeffler model applies rational choice theory and econometric analysis to macron-statistics on 140 civil conflicts that have occurred around the world since 1945. P Collier and A. Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Project on “The Economics of Civil War, Crime and Violence,” 2001, Available at [http://www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/greedandgrievance.htm] (accessed October 3, 2007).

24. Paul Collier, “Questioning the Received Wisdom,” Harvard International Review 28, no. 4 (Winter 2007), available at http://hir.harvard.edu/ethnic-conflict/ethnic-civil-wars (accessed March 3, 2009).

25. Barbara Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Case Selection in Comparative Politics,” Political Analysis 2 (1990): 1–30. Todd Landman, Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000).

26. David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

27. Paul Collier, “Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44, (2000): 839–54.

28. Patrick Regan and Daniel Norton, “Greed, Grievance, and Mobilization in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 3 (2005): 319–336.

29. Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008): 436–455. Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

30. See a comprehensive analysis of constructionist theories by James Fearon and David Laitin: “Violence and Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International Organization 54, no. 4 (Autumn 2000): 845–877.

31. Michale Hechter. “Nationalism and Rationality.” Studies in Comparative International Development, 35, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 3–19. Michael Hechter and Satoshi Kanazawa,” Sociological Rational Choice Theory,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 191–215). Edgar Kiser and Michael Hechter, “The Debate on Historical Sociology: Rational Choice Theory and its Critics,” The American Journal of Sociology 104 (1998): 785–816. Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

32. Stathis Kalyvas, “The Urban Bias in Research on Civil Wars,” Security Studies 13, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 160–190.

33. Stathis Kalyvas and Matthew Adam Kocher, “How ‘Free’ is Free Riding in Civil Wars? Violence, Insurgency, and the Collective Action Problem,” World Politics 59 (January 2007): 177–216.

34. Stathis Kalyvas 2006, 180.

35. According to Gurr and Harff, there are four important kinds of politically active ethnic groups in modern states: ethnonationalists, indigenous peoples, communal contenders, and ethnoclasses. Ethnonationalists want to (re)establish their own states, whereas indigenous peoples are mainly concerned with protecting their traditional lands, resources, and culture. Communal contenders take their place among a number of culturally distinct groups in plural societies competing for a share of political power, whereas ethnoclasses seek equal rights and opportunities in order to overcome the effects of discrimination resulting from their immigrant and minority status. Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).

36. Amnesty International, Myanmar: No Law at All: Human Rights Violation under Military Rule, (London,1992), available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA16/011/1992/en (accessed July 4, 2006).