Non-state armed groups in the Myanmar peace process: What are the future options?

In Myanmar/Burma the government and the many ethnic non-state armed groups (NSAGs) are close to signing a national ceasefire agreement that will end almost 65 years of conflict in the country's resource-rich borderlands. This is taking place alongside a transition from totalitarian military rule towards democracy, and a rapid influx of international aid agencies and foreign investors. While there is progress in the peace negotiations, the process has been contested and fighting has continued in Kachin state. A key controversy concerns the future status of the many NSAGs that represent different ethnic nationalities, such as the Karen and the Mon. The NSAG leaders demand a political settlement that allows them to retain arms and political positions within a federalist system. The government has now agreed to discuss a federal system, but this is not backed by the powerful Burmese army generals. Moreover, the term 'federalism' can have many meanings. Left out of the peace negotiation talks has been any open discussion of what will happen to the many middleand lower-ranked armed actors after an agreement has been reached. Failure to include this may be detrimental to sustainable peace and to the building of trust in the peace settlement. This paper is a preliminary attempt to discuss the future options for the members of the ethnic NSAGs in Myanmar: what 'exit' options do the NSAG members have after decades of conflict and, for many of them, entire lives spent inside the armed groups? How do they envision their future - as armed actors, civil servants, politicians, businessmen or something else? In addressing these questions we draw on interviews held in Mon and Karen states in January 2014 and on prior research. We engage with that segment of the international peacebuilding literature which debates the transformation of ex-combatants through different forms of ‘Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration’ (DDR) programmes. A core argument of the paper is that in the Myanmar context it is highly unlikely that conventional DDR programmes will suffice to support sustainable peace and stability. This is not only due to the exceptionally low involvement of international aid agencies in the peace process, but also because of the predominant focus in DDR programmes on disarmament and on economic incentives to successful integration. In Myanmar this overlooks key political motives behind both the causes of conflict and the negotiations for peace. It also ignores the fact that the NSAGs have enjoyed decades of state-like control over territories and people. Based on this, we do not take a point of departure in disarmament, but instead outline seven different integration options. These consist of a combination of different forms of political, economic, civil society and security sector integration. We call for more in-depth analyses of the armed groups in Myanmar as a complex and dynamic set of actors with various motives, aspirations and incentives. Finally, the paper concludes by reflecting on the future role of international aid agencies in the context of the peace process

Mutual Transformations of State and Traditional Authority. The renewed role of chiefs in policing and justice enforcement in Mozambique

This article explores the renewed role of chiefs in policing and justice enforcement from the perspective of every-day practices and modes of organising the relationship between chiefs and local state institutions. Based on ethnographic material from Dombe in Sussundenga District, in Mozambique, it asks what the newly forged relationship implies for local state and traditional authority. The article shows that the Decree 15/2000 was appropriated by the local tiers of state police not as a benign recognition of already existing chiefly practices, but as a means to regulate chiefs and bolster state authority in the former war-zone of Dombe.Este artigo explora o renovado papel dos chefes na aplicação da justiça e da lei a partir da perspectiva das práticas quotidianas e modos de organização das relações entre os chefes e as instituições estatais locais. Baseado em material etnográfico recolhido em Dombe, distrito de Sussundenga, em Moçambique, questiona-se quais as implicações das novas relações quer para o Estado local quer para as autoridades tradicionais. O artigo demonstra que o Decreto 15/2000 foi apropriado pelos membros locais da polícia estatal não como um reconhecimento benigno das práticas já existentes dos chefes mas sim como um meio para controlar os chefes e proteger a autoridade do Estado na antiga zona de guerra em Dombe

The contested role of community policing: 'New' non-state actors in the plural legal landscape of Mozambique

Since the turn of the millennium 'Community Policing' has become a significant and widespread element of everyday policing in poor rural and urban areas of Mozambique. This development is not unique to Mozambique, but reflected globally. Community policing (CP) has since the 1990s enjoyed widespread popularity as a philosophy and strategy of 'democratic policing' that seeks to substitute centralised, paramilitary-style state policing with active citizen inclusion in policing. In Mozambique, councils of community policing members have been formed since 2001, with the purpose of reducing crime as well as making the state police more transparent and accountable to the public. This paper explores how community policing has been appropriated in practice in Mozambique. It asks what CP has meant for everyday policing practices, and what it has implied for the ways that public safety and justice provision is organised in different local arenas. A key focus is on the interaction of actors enrolled in CP with state officials as well as with other non-state institutions that engage in conflict resolution and assert some form of authority locally. The paper shows that everyday practices not only deviate from the original CP model launched by the Ministry of Interior, but also that CP has given way to new layers of collaboration, overlap and competition between different state and non-state policing and justice providers. This result, the paper argues, is only partly caused by the lack of a clear legal framework. It is equally informed by the fact that policing itself is an avenue to power, prestige and resources over which different actors compete. From a human rights and rule of law perspective, this poses key challenges: CP actors mimic problematic state police practices in their attempts to assert power, even as they help to reduce crime