Kevin Woods
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Kevin Woods has been engaged in research and activism on land politics in Burma for a decade. His initial research focused on the Burma–China timber trade, but since then has expanded to include research on the country’s emerging agribusiness sector as the front line of land grabs, conflict and forms of resistance. Kevin is currently a PhD Candidate at UC-Berkeley in the Environmental Studies, Policy and Management Department (ESPM). He has worked as a research analyst for both the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Forest Trends in Washington DC. He is currently a senior policy analyst for Forest Trends working on their Burma program.
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Abstract: The Commercialisation of Counterinsurgency: Battlefield Enemies, Business Bedfellows in Kachin State, Burma
I previously used the term ceasefire capitalism to describe the conjoined triage of military-state-making, capital accumulation and securitisation in ceasefire areas in northern Burma. My chapter in this volume seeks to outline how specific political–economic forces enabled by and shaping ‘ceasefire capitalism’ came together in the geo-politically well-positioned and resource-rich Kachin State. I describe the changing dynamics of the region’s ceasefire political economy, with a particular focus on the timber and agribusiness sectors. In doing so, I illustrate that logging and agribusiness concessions do much more than just provide timber and agricultural products to China. The power and authority that has seen private estates put in place protected by barbed-wire, along with the political, territorial and securitisation implications of those estates, speak volumes to the new types of violence deployed in Kachin State during the ceasefire period. They are also implicated in the return to war following the new military-government taking office, and the difficulties in securing a return to ceasefire without additional promises of political redress.
Areas of policy relevance in this chapter
- Agricultural policy;
- Cross-border trade;
- Land law;
- Economic relations between Myanmar and China;
- Economic development and infrastructure planning.
Questions for further work ...
- How have the Burmese military-state and the KIO deployed the “rule of law” over “legal” resource rent seeking during the ceasefire compared to the current war period?
- How have the biophysical landscape and rights and access to natural resources changed from the ceasefire period back into war?
- What has been the land tenure security of Kachin internally displaced persons (IDPs) during the current war period, and what will that mean for future policy?
- How can we account for the successful return and resettlement of Kachin IDPs?
- What are the micro-geographies of armed conflict in Kachin areas, and what does mapping the mosaic of micro-politics reveal about the nature of armed conflict?
Comments
Resources
Below are some reports that are relevant to the arguments of this chapter. Many authors also refer to the work of the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG), which has been particularly active in exploring issues around damming and agricultural development. You can see their work here.
